"Fastidious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Academy soiree, where you meet people you thought were dead, and she vouchsafed the information, as if she owed it to me in candour, that Leolin had been obliged to recognise insuperable difficulties in the question of FORM, he was so fastidious; so that she had now arrived at a definite understanding with him (it was such a comfort) that SHE would do the form if he would bring home the substance. That was now his position—he foraged for her in the great world at a salary. "He's my 'devil,' don't you see? as if I were a great lawyer: ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... boldly produced, and, by preference, should be of local interest. As the doctor himself delighted in surprises of a terrifying or horrifying nature, it was unlikely that his inventions in that direction would be characterized by tameness. He would not, when hard pressed on a dull day, allow a fastidious care of even his own reputation to impede the development of one of his surprises. If the town of Bellevue was to stagnate mentally, it would not be the fault of George F. Castleton, ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... much smaller than the chamber assigned him, and he does not object to having half a dozen room mates. The bed is a wretched cot, but it is better than a bunk or a hammock, and Jack is not so used to cleanliness as to make him very fastidious. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... of our search that would have been quite sufficient to have deterred us from looking at it, but we could not now afford to be fastidious. Our own house was let, and move from it we must in less than a fortnight; so we desired the driver to take us into this bad neighborhood, and were rewarded for the additional distance we travelled by ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton
... You, fastidious {critic}, who carp at my writings, and disdain to read trifles of this kind, endure with some small patience this little book, while I smooth down the severity of your brow, and Aesop comes forward in a ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... the situation it presented was of great interest. We witness the manifold conflicts resulting from a marriage entered into in haste and under superficial emotions, between a war-hero and the more complicated type of modern woman—the woman of brains and nerves, fastidious, intellectually passionate and at the same time swayed by a sensuality, which is neither acknowledged nor understood. Hence this woman's marriage with a man, who, sufficiently a hero to die magnificently (as a matter of truth he does ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... substitute bell-ringing for it. Mr. Ruskin's particular grievance was, that his own nerves were crispe by the incessant ding-dong of the church-bells of Florence summoning the devout to prayer, but he generalized his wrath. Possibly, he would have been less sensitive and fastidious regarding the musical carillons of the Italian city were he wont to dwell within ear-shot of an American factory or railroad-station. Not that Mr. Ruskin fails to appreciate—or, rather, to depreciate—railways in their connection ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... leave behind The green traces Of their sportance in the mind, And thou shalt, ere we well may know it, Turn that daintiness, a poet, - Elfin-ring Where sweet fancies foot and sing. So it may be, so it SHALL be, - Oh, take the prophecy from me! What if the old fastidious sculptor, Time, This crescent marvel of his hands Carveth all too painfully, And I who prophesy shall never see? What if the niche of its predestined rhyme, Its aching niche, too long expectant stands? Yet shall he after ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... quarrel. He was, however, seldom at feud with any one whose enmity could materially injure him: extensive connections he always conciliated, and every popular man was his friend. Nor was he compelled, in order to compass these ends, to descend to any very low arts; for "the people," were not so fastidious in those days, as they seem since to have become; and a straightforward sincerity was then the first element of popularity. The politician was not forced to affect an exemplary "walk and conversation;" nor was an open declaration of principle or ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... were not remarkably fastidious. They knew but one form of celebration, and they had no thought of hunting out new ones. The one thing needful to make a celebration completely successful was—liquor. This they must have in order to ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... by the side of one or two of the mansion-houses that were not far from it, was painted too bright for Mr. Bernard's taste, had rather too fanciful a fence before it, and had some fruit-trees planted in the front-yard, which to this fastidious young gentleman implied a defective sense of the fitness of things, not promising in people who lived in so large a house, with a mushroom roof, and a triumphal arch for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... storage warehouses, furniture auction rooms, etc. The fact is, a very large proportion of the books, even of the older species, are in fine, clean condition, many being in choice bindings, and equal to the most fastidious requirement. ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... feelings which underlies good manners, he was able to make himself far more unendurable to Annie than a less sympathetic person could have done. Evening after evening she went to her room feeling as if she were covered with pin-pricks, from a score of little offenses to her fastidious taste which he had managed to commit. His thorough acquaintance with her, and knowledge of her aesthetic standards in every respect, enabled him to operate with a perfect precision that did not waste ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... course, disgusted; but he was too self-reliant and capable to show it. All his life he had been immaculate, almost fastidious in his care of himself. Here he was coming, perforce, in contact with a form of life which jarred upon him greatly. Steger, who was beside him, made ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... lover of the old-fashioned sort might possibly never have halted to weigh these doubts; but though he was in the church Cope's affections were fastidious—distinctly tempered with the alloys of the century's decadence. He delayed writing to Frances for some while, simply because he could not tune himself up to enthusiasm when worried by suspicions ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... pyramid of all learning previous to his epoch, in order to get the highest standpoint for his own survey of mankind. Neither was he "a man of parts," precisely; being in himself a distinct whole. His choice of reading was ruled by a fastidious need. He was fond of travels for a rainy day, and knew Mandeville; but at other times he took up books which seem to lie quite aside from his known purposes. [Footnote: See Appendix III.] Voltaire appears to have attracted ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... boots, though he pinched and starved himself with heroic courage and endurance. He did not mean to buy them at a shop; for he knew a place in Whitechapel where boots quite good enough for him were to be had for two or three shillings. He was neither ambitious nor fastidious; old boots patched up would do very well to start with, if he could only manage to get them before aunt Charlotte came up to town again. She had sent word she was coming the last Saturday in January; and early in ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... people help each other, or the waiters help them, at table, without a scramble, like hogs, for the best and the most—a custom which all travelled Americans detest and abominate as much as the most fastidious Englishman. ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... are blear: You eye your neighbour's; straightway you see clear, Like hawk or basilisk: your neighbours pry Into your frailties with as keen an eye. A man is passionate, perhaps misplaced In social circles of fastidious taste; His ill-trimmed beard, his dress of uncouth style, His shoes ill-fitting, may provoke a smile: But he's the soul of virtue; but he's kind; But that coarse body hides a mighty mind. Now, having scanned his breast, inspect your own, And see if there ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... list to our own country, and to our own times, it might be curiously augmented, and show the world what men the Critics are! but, perhaps, enough has been said to soothe irritated genius, and to shame fastidious criticism. "I would beg the critics to remember," the Earl of Roscommon writes, in his preface to Horace's Art of Poetry, "that Horace owed his favour and his fortune to the character given of him by Virgil and Varus; that Fundanius and Pollio are still valued by what Horace says of them; ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... provisions were found to feed 5,000 persons for three months, and the victors were able to regale their appetites with luxuries such as butter, crab, or salmon, which were plentiful. Looting, however, was strictly forbidden. For fastidious persons the bath, after many weeks, was again available, and proved, indeed, in view of steady accumulations of mud, a salutary course. Measures, meanwhile, were at once taken to restore the town to its normal ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... with every one round about her. She was in and out of the cottages. She knew all about the old people's ailments and nursed all the children. Eileen complained with a fastidious disgust that Stella did not seem to know whether the children were dirty or clean. She kissed and hugged them all the same. In likewise she loved and petted the animals and so commended ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... mouldy steps lead to utter darkness, with no friendly voice to guide the hapless customer. Fumbling along the dank wall, he is left to find the door of the shop as best he can. Not a likely place to encounter the fastidious from the Avenue! Yet ladies in furs and silk find this door and the grim old smith within it. Now and then an artist stumbles upon them, and exults exceedingly in his find. Two holiday shoppers are even now haggling ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... who was really a most fastidious child, and who shrank from the sticky-looking sweetmeats proffered to her by Dove. "I like the very best chocolate creams; Primrose brings them to me sometimes, but they are rather expensive. Oh! and ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... persistent itching and irritation of the scalp, particularly at the back of the head, lice or "nits" should be sought for. Sometimes it is more easy to find them on a fine-tooth comb passed through the hair. Lice are very common in dirty households, and are occasionally seen on the most fastidious persons, who accidentally acquire them in public places ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... to be seen to; the tally tables and all the packing and pressing machinery—which on this large estancia was carried almost to perfection—had all to be got into the very best working order imaginable. For, in the matter of sheep-shearing, Moncrieff was fastidious to a degree. ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... marriage separated you from her entirely. But now you meet again the scene is altered; three years of absence spent in the cultivation of an understanding naturally of the first order, by encreasing your wisdom, has made you more fastidious; while the same time spent by her in mere idleness and shew, has hurt her disposition, without adding to her knowledge, and robbed her of her natural excellencies, without enriching her with acquired ones. You see her now with impartiality, for you see her almost as a stranger, and all ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... shipboard which attracted my particular attention, was the manner in which the sailors partook of their meals. There was no tedious ceremony or fastidious refinement witnessed on these occasions. At twelve o'clock the orders were promptly given, "Call the watch! Hold the reel! Pump ship! Get your dinners!" With never-failing alacrity the watch was called, the log thrown, and the ship pumped. When these duties were performed, a bustle was ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... mountains changed into volcanoes, when cascades now filled with blood fell into the valleys, and avalanches of human beings rolled down the deepest precipices. Death reaped such a harvest there where human life had never been before, that the vultures, becoming fastidious through the abundance, picked out only the eyes of the corpses to carry to their young—at least so says the tradition of the peasants of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... of Court. It was not in his nature to assume or attempt to bolster up a false position. He would abandon his case first. He did so in the case of Buckmaster for the use of Durham v. Beener & Arthur, in our Supreme Court, in which I happened to be opposed to him. Another gentleman, less fastidious, took Mr. Lincoln's place and gained the case." His power as an advocate seems to have depended on his conviction that the right was on his side. "Tell Harris it's no use to waste money on me; in that case, he'll get beat." In a larceny case he took those who were counsel with ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... required to bring this result about. We acted merely as persons of common sense will always act in similar situations. We turned the landlady's ill-humour or stiffness into a joke, spoke bad German, mixed it with French and English, and won her heart by showing that we were neither sensitive nor fastidious. And the landlady's heart being fairly won, all the rest was easy. The husband, as in duty bound, fell into his wife's views, and the servants took their cue from their superiors. In Hayde, however, though we so far gained our end, that a good ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... house even: but her associations abroad had unavoidably imparted greater reserve to her ordinary deportment than the simplicity of cis-Atlantic usages would have rendered indispensable in the most, fastidious circles. With the usual womanly reserves, she was natural and unembarrassed in her intercourse with the world, and she had been allowed to see so many different nations, that she had obtained a self-confidence that did her no injury, under ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... it still, though the tobacco be not always the choicest—for one cannot be fastidious in the army, and sutlers do not keep much of an assortment—and still it brings me sweet dreams, though of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... become quite bearable. Of all that she read in the ashes, in the veiled softness of the lamps, of all her reminiscences, that of their married life was the most vague. She found a few isolated traits of it, some absurd images, a fleeting and fastidious impression. The time had not seemed long and had left nothing behind. Six years had passed, and she did not even remember how she had regained her liberty, so prompt and easy had been her conquest of ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... almost every article appertaining to the toilet, as linen, drapery, hosiery, fancy goods, etc., and is on that extensive scale, that their assortment possesses every diversity that can be desired, whilst even the most fastidious cannot fail of meeting that which must suit their taste. This establishment is not like many in the same way of business, who spend a little fortune in advertising their goods, incurring tremendous expenses in obtruding themselves and ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... rude incongruities of the gathering. Men were surprised at the manifestations on every hand of a vulgarity and coarseness which they had been accustomed to think the natural products and exclusive characteristics of a state of society farther north. To the eyes of the fastidious, a new class had suddenly arisen in their midst. Perhaps the lesson was not a new one. Many nations before, when in the midst of revolutions, have been called mournfully to learn that there are grades in every society, that rebellions ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... without being able to draw forth anything but discordant sounds. He seemed annoyed, laid the violin on the window-sill and snatching up the bow he began to push it to and fro with violence, like a mason sawing a block of stone. This effort only succeeded in wearying his fastidious ears, and he took the bow with both hands and snapped it in two on the innocent instrument, source of harmony and delight. It seemed as if I saw before me a schoolboy holding under him a companion lying face downwards, while he pommeled him ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... court favorite who had actually been cashiered for cowardice and misconduct in the field fifteen years before; but his peculiar critical temperament and talent, artistic, satirical, rather histrionic, and his fastidious delicacy of sentiment, his fine spirit and humanity, were just the qualities to make him disliked by stupid people because of their dread of ironic criticism. Long after his death, Thackeray, who had ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... up with alacrity from the grass. Lines were hurriedly examined, and the bait tin, when investigated, proved to contain an ample supply of succulent grubs and other dainties calculated to tempt the most fastidious ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... historical was wanting in him. "The history of a science," he writes,(25) "is not like the narration of things that have happened. What would it profit us to make a collection of absurd opinions, of decried doctrines which deserved to be decried? It would be at once useless and fastidious to thus exhume them in case we perfectly knew the public economy of social bodies. It can be of little concern to us to learn what our predecessors have dreamed about this subject, and to describe the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... — N. fastidiousness &c. adj.; nicety, hypercriticism, difficulty in being pleased, friandise[Fr], epicurism, omnia suspendens naso[Lat]. epicure, gourmet. [Excess of delicacy] prudery. V. be fastidious &c. adj.; have a sweet tooth. mince the matter; turn up one's nose at &c. (disdain) 930; look a gift horse in the mouth, see spots on the sun. Adj. fastidious, nice, delicate, delicat[obs3], finical, finicky, demanding, meticulous, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... these parsimonious Misters will soon recognise that it is not possible for modern up-to-date Art to be florescent under this retrograde and fossilized system, and be warned that such untradesmanlike goings-on will deservedly forfeit the confidence and patronage of their most fastidious customers. ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... deprecates the solitude which united souls may enjoy, by a selfish or fastidious seclusion from the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... and holding her thus at arm's length, looked down at her. Her straight young figure, glowing face, and flaming eyes under the ruddy aureole of her hair made a picture of grace, beauty and passion that would have fascinated a more fastidious ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... have dared to make war on him with means so utterly inadequate, she at once retorted: "Sire, I must confess to Your Majesty, the glory of Frederick the Great had misled us as to our real strength"—a retort which justly won the praise of that fastidious connoisseur, Talleyrand, for its reminder of Prussia's former greatness and the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... covered with gray cloth, invite the sportsmen to rest. Large dressing-rooms, fitted up with hot and cold water, invite them to refresh themselves with a bath. Everything has been done to suit the most fastidious taste. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... life he began to take snuff, but it was very sparingly, and always out of a box; and if he bore any resemblance to Frederick the Great, it was not by filling his waistcoat-pockets with snuff, for I must again observe he carried his notions of personal neatness to a fastidious degree. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... jolly!" he said, eagerly, surveying with satisfied eye all the neat appointments of the room, when at last everything had been arranged in accordance with his fastidious taste. ...
— Three People • Pansy
... clerical persons, and went up to receive their blessing, and even kissed the priest's hand every time, but he was not willing to enter into conversation with them. 'Such an extremely strong odour comes from them,' he explained: 'and I, poor sinner, am fastidious beyond reason; they've such long hair, and all oily, and they comb it out on all sides—they think they show me respect by so doing, and they clear their throats so loudly when they talk—from shyness may be, or I dare say ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... detested, Arthur removed his hat, and lifted his brow to receive the breath of heaven. The sun was not yet risen, and save the occasional clatter of a market-cart, as it went jostling by, or the sluggish step of some sleepy servant, on his way to procure the breakfast for his fastidious owners, there was no signs of life or business ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... aristocracy was of doubtful and impure source, cynical in manner, unbridled in habits, over-fastidious in taste, and politically powerful. In this society woman began to be felt as a political force. M. Brunetiere said: "Mme. de Lambert made Academicians; the Marquise de Prie made a queen of France; Mme. de Tencin made cardinals ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... very far from suspecting the gravity of his condition. Not until the third day, when, upon waking in the morning, he saw a slender thread of blood that had flowed from his mouth over his beard and reddened his pillow, did that refined dandy shudder, that fastidious creature who held in horror all forms of human misery, especially disease, and who saw it creeping upon him stealthily with its defilement, its weaknesses and with the self-abandonment which is the first concession to death. Monpavon, entering the room in Jenkins' wake, caught ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... strangers, who have defended me more strongly, than my contemptible pedant could attack me[7]. For the other, he is only like Fungoso in the play, who follows the fashion at a distance, and adores the Fastidious Brisk of Oxford[8]. You can bear me witness, that I have not consideration enough for either of them to be angry. Let Maevius and Bavius admire each other; I wish to be hated by them and their fellows, by the same reason for which I desire to be loved by ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... "Just good taste? Fastidious people? Oh—no! I believe all of us want the same things—we're all together, the industrial workers and the women and the farmers and the negro race and the Asiatic colonies, and even a few of the Respectables. It's all the same revolt, ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... tables, had yet the look of order and method. You would have said at once that there was something good in the family. The child in front of the fire told more for it. Her delicate features, the refined look and manner with which she stood there in her uncovered feet, even a little sort of fastidious grace which one or two movements testified, drew the eyes of mother and sisters, and manifestly stopped their tongues; even called forth ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... des Dames Anglaises" at St.-Omer, and all that she had retained from it was a small stock of French idioms, most of which she had forgotten how to use, though she did use them frequently, with a certain timid pretension. Of that habit Fountain, the fastidious, thought that he should break her. But for the rest, her religion, her poverty,—well, she had a hundred a year, so that he and Laura would be no worse off for taking her in, and the child's prospects, of course, should not suffer by a halfpenny. And as to the Catholicism, Fountain ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... on to say, that 'perhaps the language of the stage is purified in proportion as our morals are deteriorated; and we dread the mention of the vices which we are not ashamed to practise; while our forefathers, under the sway of a less fastidious but a more energetic principle of virtue, were careless of words, ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... plunged in sordid cares, The unfeeling vulgar mocks the boon divine; And harsh Austerity, from whose rebuke 440 Young Love and smiling Wonder shrink away Abash'd and chill of heart, with sager frowns Condemns the fair enchantment. On my strain, Perhaps even now, some cold, fastidious judge Casts a disdainful eye; and calls my toil, And calls the love and beauty which I sing, The dream of folly. Thou, grave censor! say, Is Beauty then a dream, because the glooms Of dulness hang too heavy on thy sense, To let her shine upon thee? So the man 450 Whose eye ne'er open'd ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... too fastidious and worldly-minded. If they love one another it doesn't matter a particle how old they are nor how poor. Women never should marry for money..." Amy caught herself up short as the words escaped her, and looked at her husband, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... suggested by the casual current of conversation. He was, about this time, and for years afterwards, a very frequent visiter at my house; and never was any one, independently of my personal regard for him, more welcome; for his conversation was always that of a ripe and varied scholar and fastidious gentleman. He was ever gay and animated as soon as he had recovered, which he quickly did, from the exhaustion of a long and severe day's work, and his fund of anecdote appeared inexhaustible. Never was any man ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... hardy, ready growers, and copious bloomers. The bee balm, one of our handsomest perennials, has bright red whorls; it spreads upon the surface of the ground like mint, and thus may be divided and increased to any extent. It loves rich, moist land, but is not fastidious. Among the evening primroses the Missouri one is the brightest and biggest; speciosa, white, from Texas, of blossoms the most prolific; glauca, riparia, fruticera, and linearis, all yellow; many others, ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... man whom Fate suddenly swings from his fastidious life into the power of the brutal captain of a sealing schooner. A novel of adventure warmed by a beautiful love episode that every reader will ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... the Jesuit system, were among the ablest writings of the age. Philosophy, poetry, science, history, art, were all making great progress, though there was a stateliness and formality in all that was said and done, redolent of the Spanish queen's etiquette and the fastidious refinement ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... regard on him. "The sort of man who rides a motor-bicycle.... You really should, Margery," he went on, "learn to be more fastidious. You mustn't let yourself be either dazzled by fancy waistcoats or sympathetically moved by unclean collars. Neither ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... general may feel upon the subject I know not, but I have discovered, since I so rashly took up my pen, that there are three portions of a novel which are extremely difficult to arrange to the satisfaction of a fastidious public. ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... became inseparable, and perhaps the thing that made those days of companionship bright with a singular and golden brightness, was that there was in his friend the same fastidious vein, the same dislike of any coarseness of talk or thought which was strong in Hugh. Looking back on his school life, with all the surprising foulness of the talk of even high-principled boys, it was a deep satisfaction to Hugh to reflect that there had never been in the ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... something about my relation to one of your books. I write now from bed, having had some influenzic pneumonia, now going off. For some days my temperature was 105 and I was very restless at night, anxious to read, but in too sensitive and fastidious a state to tolerate almost any book. I found that almost the only book which I could read was your "Malay Archipelago" (of course I had read it before). In spite of my complete ignorance of natural history there ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... scrupulous," said Dick. The Dean protested with a smile. "I mean too fastidious," Dick ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... Prefet; he was a madman, and one of the most dangerous kind, the lucid madman who pursues an idea from which nothing will make him turn aside. He pursued it with superhuman tenacity and with all the resources of his fastidious mind, enslaved ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... Governor was saying in evident surprise—"you too want a military commission? Really, the fifing and drumming must have effected a profound alteration in your convictions. In my character of recruiting sergeant I suppose I ought not to be fastidious, but"—there was a touch of irony in his manner—"well, have you forgotten that an ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... notorious fact. Suppose yourselves in some stately palace, amid marbles and bronzes, statues and pictures, and all that cunning brain and cunning hand, when wedded to the high instinct of beauty, can produce. The furniture is of the very richest, and kept with the most fastidious cleanliness. The floors of precious wood are polished like mirrors. The rooms have every appliance for the ease of the luxurious inmates. Everywhere you see, not mere brute wealth, but taste, purity, and comfort. There is no lack of intellect either:—wise ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... gossiping remarks. "How she has changed!" said Mrs. Ton to Mrs. Style. "She used to be the most fastidious of exclusives; and now she has adopted nobody knows whom, and one of Mr. Goldwin's clerks seems to be on the most familiar footing there. I should have no objection to invite the girl to my parties, ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... great favourite with fowl-keepers, especially those who have on eye to profit rather than to amusement. Those varieties known as the "silver spangled" and the "gold spangled" are handsome enough to please the most fastidious; but the common black breed, with the bushy crown of white feathers, is but a plain bird. The chief value of the common Poland lies in the great number of eggs they produce; indeed, in many parts, they are as well known as "everlasting layers" as by their proper name. However, the experienced ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... said Colonel Forrester, "despite of that discomfiture, there was nothing in the conduct of those engaged that should call a blush into the cheek of the most fastidious stickler for national glory. There is not an officer here present," he continued, "who is not prepared to attest with myself, that your column in particular behaved like heroes. By the way, I could wish to know, (but you will ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... allowing them to enter stages and steam-boats. "Yet, you allow the same privilege to vulgar and ignorant white men, without a murmur," I replied; "Pray give a good republican reason why a respectable colored citizen should be less favored." For want of a better argument, he said—(pardon me, fastidious reader)—he implied that the presence of colored persons was less agreeable than Otto of Rose, or Eau de Cologne; and this distinction, he urged was made by God himself. I answered, "Whoever takes his chance in a public vehicle, is liable to meet with uncleanly ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... dressed, with diamonds sparkling in her gray hair, came rustling down the steps, bringing with her faint odours of patchouly and violet-powder. She was followed by a girl of doll-like prettiness, with a snub nose and petulant little mouth, who held up her satin-and-lace skirts with a sort of fastidious disdain, as though she scorned to set foot on earth that was not carpeted with the best velvet pile. As they approached their carriage the inert dark bundle, crouched in the corner, started into life—a woman, with wild hair and wilder eyes, whose pale lips quivered with suppressed weeping as ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... it with characteristic swiftness and decision. She reasoned that Ian had enjoyed a period of great happiness in his marriage with her, in spite of the singularity of its conditions; but that now, while Milly could never satisfy his fastidious nature, she herself had grown to be a hinderance, a dissonance in his life. Could she strike a blow which would sever him from her, he would suffer cruelly, no doubt; but it would send him back ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... that having lived a life of such irreproachable gentility as this, Miss Carew would have the bad taste to die in any way not pleasant to mention in fastidious society. She could be trusted to the last, not to outrage those friends who quoted her as an exemplar of propriety. She died very unobtrusively of an affection of the heart, one June morning, while trimming ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... Osborne, too, who had spoken with such languid criticism to Mrs. Gibson about various country belles, and even in his own home was apt to give himself airs—only at home his airs were poetically fastidious, while with Mrs. Gibson they had been socially fastidious—what unspeakably elegant beauty had he chosen for his wife? Who had satisfied him; and yet satisfying him, had to have her marriage kept in concealment from his parents? At length Molly tore herself ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... popularity. But the classical taste is a love for form and delicate beauty of line as such, quite irrespective of any associations which may accompany them, or lamps, be they seven or seventy times seven. And to build his house in this style was the natural thing for a sculptor and fastidious seeker after the ideal in form. He found the man he wanted in ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... feelings to their duties; who, in the cause of humanity, liberty, and honour, abandon all the satisfactions of life, and every day incur a fresh risk of life itself. Do me the justice to believe that I never can prefer any fastidious virtue (virtue still) to the unconquered perseverance, to the affectionate patience of those who watch day and night by the bedside of their delirious country, who, for their love to that dear and venerable name, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... silent as the grave, save for the winds that moan through her portholes and corridors, she lies rusting in sun and storm, a gloomy presence that fills the soul with awe. Even the birds of the air shun her barren decks; less fastidious bats have taken up their abode in the heart of her, and spiders great and small are at work on ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... between Scarborough and Llandudno quite easily with my eyes shut. Speaking as an expert, I may say that there is nothing to beat a small Cromer and seltzer; though some prefer a Ventnor and dash. Ilfracombe with a slice of lemon is popular, but hardly appeals to the fastidious." ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... your money." He turned upon his heel now, for he relished the Inn room little, and its company less, being a fastidious lackey, and made to go, as if ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... was not so white as it should have been, the nails were not so well trimmed as a more fastidious mood might have demanded; but Westray did not notice these things. He took the shaky old hand, and gripped it warmly, not saying anything, because he ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... advances and the facile intimacies of artists, Durtal had been attracted by this man's fastidious reserve. It was perfectly natural that Durtal, surfeited with skin-deep friendships, should feel drawn to Des Hermies, but it was difficult to imagine why Des Hermies, with his taste for strange associations, should take a liking to Durtal, who was the soberest, steadiest, ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... you may please.... It is very unequal, but the best truly excellent. The sonnets are numerous, and some good, though the best work in the book is not among them. There are two poems—The Garden, and another called, I think, On a dried-up Spring, which are worthy of the most fastidious collections. Many of the poems are unnamed, and the whole has too much of a ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... the pantaloons. He went into that store a blue spider, he came out a reasonable-looking seafaring boy, rather narrow and sloping about the shoulders, it is true, but smart enough and baggy enough—especially about the nether garments—to please even Bax, who, in such matters, was rather fastidious. ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... these voracious creatures are not fastidious. No particular vegetable seems to be chosen by them. The leaves of the bitter tobacco plant appear to be as much to their liking as the sweet and succulent blades of maize! Pieces of linen, cotton, and even flannel, are devoured by ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... his use, and he is driven to coin them. But in the character of Arabian story-teller he is simplicity itself, and whilst avoiding words of length, he introduces just enough of antique phrase as gives a bygone and poetic flavour. The most exacting and the most fastidious will be satisfied at the felicitous handling of immortal themes. A delightful characteristic is the division of the text into Nights. Lane and Payne, for peculiar reasons of their own, have both omitted to mark the breaks in the recital. But now for the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... in accord with her cousin's opinion. Although the robust, if promiscuous, flirtations in which Fanny, before her engagement, had indulged freely had never appealed to the more fastidious Toni, she had always been quite ready to join in any fun which might be going. She had eaten sweets gaily in the cheap seats of theatre or picture-palace, had made one at the many informal and harmless little ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... joyous anticipation in Pollyanna's heart. But with the whistle of the engine there came to her a veritable panic of doubt, shyness, and dismay. She realized suddenly what she, Pollyanna, almost alone and unaided, was about to do. She remembered Mrs. Carew's wealth, position, and fastidious tastes. She recollected, too, that this would be a new, tall, young-man Jamie, quite unlike ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... reverberation to keep the brain behind it still. A perfume of violets, and the more dainty scent of primroses, pervaded the garden. It seemed incredible that any man should be allowed to live in such a spot; but then Captain Carey was almost as gentle and fastidious as a woman. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... of Athens suggested itself to Miss Polly Street in far-off Chicago, a prominent citizen strode from the offices in the direction of the boarding-house. He moved with decision, for he was hungry, and Mrs. Van Zandt was fastidious as to hours. The office force ate its supper at six, and the fact that Marc Scott was the assistant superintendent and, in the absence of the superintendent on affairs matrimonial, in charge altogether, was no reason ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... and opened the San Francisco Fair, parading at the head of a procession of a hundred thousand people. The Fair is truly most exquisitely beautiful. There are many buildings that would even, no doubt, please your most fastidious eye. ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... young gentleman's head. As to the ball, we do not recollect ever to have seen one in the works of any of the old masters so true to nature. In conclusion, the buttons on the jacket, and the button-holes, companions thereto, would baffle the criticism of the most hyper-fastidious stab-rag; and the shirt collar, with every other detail—never forgetting the chiaro-scuro—are equal to any ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... the poor. The curious thing is that these humble, rustic, unlettered folk were presented to the world sympathetically by a man who was almost an intellectual snob. One of the most exact scholars of his day, one of the most fastidious of mortals, one of the shyest men that ever lived, a born mental aristocrat, his literary genius enabled him to write an immortal masterpiece, not about the Cambridge hierarchy, but about illiterate tillers of the soil. The Elegy is the ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... undeniable testimony of his disciple Theophrastus that there were bores, ill-bred persons, and detractors even in Athens, of species remarkably corresponding to the English, and not yet made endurable by being classic; and altogether, with my present fastidious nostril, I feel that I am the better off for possessing Athenian life solely as an inodorous fragment of antiquity. As to Sappho's Mitylene, while I am convinced that the Lesbian capital held some plain men of middle stature and slow conversational powers, the addition of myself ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... as he could still feel for woman, he had gradually come to centre upon his fair and graceful cousin, who added to her personal attractions the other indispensable attributes, blood, breeding and fortune. Mr. Landale was as essentially refined and fastidious in his judgment as he was ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... apostolical usages, because they had been practised by the catholics, who, instead of allowing Rome to be a church in error, denied that its followers could be saved, and thus raised the dark cloud of schism against the sun of the reformation; their rashness, uncharitableness, and fastidious scruples, in purifying what they owned to be non-essentials, have, I say, imped the dragon's wings, and placed the scarlet abomination, as ye call it, in a tower of strength, which the artillery of your covenant, lighted as it is by the flame of treason and civil commotion, can never ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... you what you are," certainly never suspected the signal confirmation which the entomological world would bestow upon his saying. Our gastrosopher was speaking only of the culinary caprices of man rendered fastidious by the sweets of life; but he might, in a more serious department of thought, have given his formula a wider and more general bearing and applied it to the dishes which vary so greatly according to latitude, climate and customs; he might above all have taken into his reckoning ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... to his genius. He had everything to spoil him,—beauty, precocious intelligence, and a personal charm which might have made him a universal favorite. Yet he does not seem to have been generally popular at this period of his life. He was wilful, impetuous, sometimes supercilious, always fastidious. He would study as he liked, and not by rule. His school and college mates believed in his great possibilities through all his forming period, but it may be doubted if those who counted most confidently on his future could have supposed that he would develop the heroic power of concentration, ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... wounded in the battle of Ste. Foye. He was afterwards received with royal favour by King George the Third, being present at the state dinner when His Majesty with the dignity which he knew how to assume when the occasion required, rang for the carriage of his sometime favourite, the fastidious Beau Brummel, who had presumed on his august good ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... slowness of the Lilac, many of the fair ones were not so elegantly dressed as they had hoped to be and were quite mortified; but the shower in the night had freshened them and taken away much of their faded appearance, so that none but the most fastidious of their visitors could detect any failing. The Garden walks were quite lively with such of the callers as were obliged to walk, while those that kept their wings, and so could fly, were moving in the air in every direction. The Bee, in his shining yellow coat, was rushing ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... that he could not do so until he completely realised it. These silent enthusiasts were indeed fastidious about what was genuine. Most things were not genuine enough for them. That is why they are so prone to intoxicate themselves; they wish to get away, to form a world for ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... first caravan enlightened me also on the subject of honga, or tribute. Tribute had to be packed by itself, all of choice cloth; for the chiefs, besides being avaricious, are also very fastidious. They will not accept the flimsy cloth of the pagazi, but a royal and exceedingly high-priced dabwani, Ismahili, Rehani, or a Sohari, or dotis of crimson broad cloth. The tribute for the first caravan cost $25. Having more than one hundred and ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... were interested in seventeenth-century swords. They were fastidious about them. They had a whole armoury of these weapons brought out and rolled clattering about the counter, until they found two of precisely the same length. Presumably they desired the exact symmetry for some decorative trophy. Even then they felt the points, ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... were about half the size of those that are ordinarily supplied at private tables and restaurants. Hector managed to eat the apple, but the crust he was obliged to leave. He noticed, however, that his fellow pupils were not so fastidious. ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... deliberately laid aside his paddle and raised the fatal rifle. Then several times he brought the piece to his shoulder, and when his companions were expecting its report he as often lowered it to request the Indians would permit their enemies to approach a little nigher. At length his accurate and fastidious eye seemed satisfied, and throwing out his left arm on the barrel, he was slowly elevating the muzzle, when an exclamation from Uncas, who sat in the bow, once more caused him ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... a looker, but it wasn't that. She was fine-drawn, if you get me; clever and fastidious. I think fastidious is the word I want. She belonged to clean, quiet places where everything is right. That's what made my notion I understood her strange. You see, I have had to struggle in ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... prose, with all a Poet's art, Tickles the fancy, while it melts the heart!— Since at apologies I ne'er was handy,— Come, while fastidious Readers run me hard, And screen, sly playful wag! a hapless Bard, Behind one volume of thy ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... courtier, Hamlet; or the warrior, Posthumus; he is always the same—a gentle yet impulsive nature, sensuous at once and meditative; half poet, half philosopher, preferring nature and his own reveries to action and the life of courts; a man physically fastidious to disgust, as is a delicate woman, with dirt and smells and common things; an idealist daintily sensitive to all courtesies, chivalries, and distinctions. The portrait is not yet complete—far from it, indeed; but already it is manifest that Shakespeare's nature ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... look to her laurels. Slovenliness is the aptest word to apply to the workmanship of Maria (Hutchinson), the latest heroine of the Baroness Von Hutten. Maria has the air of having been contracted for, while that fastidious overseer who lurks at the elbow of every honest craftsman, condemning this or that phrase, readjusting the other faulty piece of construction, has frankly abandoned the contractor. Maria was the daughter of an artist cadger (name of Drello), friend of the great and seller of their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... doubled about the knees they put up to the head. That is all the opulence and comfort that their beds can boast of, which are made of a thin mat. These are their Holland and Rouen linens, which serve for their opulence and their fastidious cleanliness. That is their whole wealth of quilts and covers, which protect them from the cold and from the mosquitoes. All is so exactly adapted to necessity, that there is no difference between the chief women and the slaves—as ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... certain over-fastidious women have long clamored for some new method of putting on a pillow case, but these people have either lost their teeth, or the new ones do not grasp the situation. They have tried several new methods, such as blowing the pillow case up, and trying to get the pillow in before the wind got ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... please. Give your husband to understand that cleanliness and freshness is not a "sex-limited" attribute, and just as a husband wants his wife to be clean and dainty and well-groomed, so a wife may enjoy the same qualities in her husband. Some women are very fastidious, and while they may say nothing to their husbands for fear of irritating them, they may ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... off about the eighth of an inch or more in width. The second cut should extend from the base of the ear in front, somewhat obliquely, to intersect the other cut within a few lines of the point of the flap. These two cuts will shape the ear in such a style as to please the most fastidious eye, and will require no further trimming. The pieces taken from the first ear will answer as guides in cutting the other. The mother should not be allowed to lick the ears of the puppies, as is generally done, under the supposition that she assists in the healing process, when, in fact, ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... growing into the regular tastes of the refined, fastidious Eton boy; wrote of the cut of his first tail-coat that 'this is really an important thing;' and had grown choice in the adorning of his room and the binding of his books, though he never let these tastes ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lighted end. Not a long and steady connection, but one that came in gusts. After two gusts I decided that it was perhaps safer to blow from my end, and for a little while we had in this way as much smoke around us as the most fastidious cigar-smoker could want. Then I accidentally dropped it; something in the middle of it shifted, I suppose—and for the rest of my stay behind it only one ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... done, perhaps—he could not have had it better. She was seized with a loathsome disease, which devoured her beauty, like Herod and his glory. I believe that she still lives, but no one can go near her; least of all, the fastidious Montague." ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... speaker laughed, a pleasant, deep laugh of complete enjoyment. "I thought we were in for a swim that would knock the cross-Channel record silly! However, I borrowed a suit from the skipper—and he wasn't what you'd call fastidious in ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie |
