"Seductive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bread. This is the truth. But what has happened? Instead of getting hold of man's freedom, Thou has enlarged it still more! Hast Thou again forgotten that to man rest and even death are preferable to a free choice between the knowledge of Good and Evil? Nothing seems more seductive in his eyes than freedom of conscience, and nothing proves more painful. And behold! instead of laying a firm foundation whereon to rest once for all man's conscience, Thou hast chosen to stir up in him ...
— "The Grand Inquisitor" by Feodor Dostoevsky • Feodor Dostoevsky
... pretty, and not yet very old, all in a very proper and platonic manner. She was also a great giver of dignity balls, and when she was full dressed, Miss Belinda Bellarosa was altogether a very seductive personage. A warrant officer was an abomination. She had refused the hands of many master's mates, and I knew "for true," to use her own bewitching idiom, that several lieutenants had made ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... instinct with pockets. The ponderous watch—the plethoric purse—the massive snuff-box—the dainty tooth-pick—the grotesque handkerchief; all were accommodated and cherished in the more ample recesses of his coat; while supplementary fobs were endeared to him by their more seductive contents: as ginger lozenges, love-letters, and turnpike-tickets. Such were the days on which we should reflect with regret; such were the men whom we should imitate and revere. Had such a character ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... of darkness, that worketh in the children of disobedience. To increase disgust against the plan of redemption, to exasperate the natural enmity of the carnal heart, to give a specious appearance to objections, and to enforce, with seductive arguments, the cause of unbelief, is the untiring employment of the grand foe of God and man. It is indeed the darling achievement of infernal skill, to inflate a poor worm with pride of talent, and fill his heart with hatred to the Gospel, and then ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2 No. 7 Dec. 1827 • Aaron W. Leland and Elihu W. Baldwin
... force of conception and glow of color. The Aurora of the Rospigliosi Casino attempts a wider scheme of hues, and is certainly, except for some lack of refinement in the attendant Hours, a very noble composition. The S. Michael of the Cappuccini is seductive by its rich bravura style; and the large Pieta in the Bolognese Gallery impresses our mind by a monumental sadness and sobriety of tone. The Massacre of the Innocents, though one of Guido's most ambitious efforts, and though it displays an ingenious adaptation of the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... colleagues a deep and serious preoccupation with manly ideals of boy-life; and in these stories I tried my best to touch into life the poetical and beautiful side of virtue, to show life as a pilgrimage to a far-off but glorious goal, with seductive bypaths turning off the narrow way, and evil shapes, both terrifying and alluring, which loitered in shady corners, or even sometimes straddled horribly across ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to have us about, we were always held at a distance by a certain diffidence of his. There were rare occasions—when he was in the heat of work or of ideas—when he forgot to be shy, but they were so exceptional that no flattery was quite so seductive as being taken for a moment into Hartwell's confidence. Even in the matter of opinions—the commonest of currency in our circle—he was niggardly and prone to qualify. No man ever guarded his mystery more effectually. There was a singular, intense spell, therefore, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... falsehood bears like an intolerable weight upon the soul, I protest that we have richly deserved death, not on account of any heresy or sin of which ourselves or our order have been guilty, but because we have yielded, to save our lives, to the seductive words of the Pope and of the King; and so by our confessions brought shame and ruin on our blameless, holy, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... were pleasure-loving upstarts who were consumed with a desire for honors and power; all were young and beautiful; except Lucretia, all were vicious, graceful, seductive scoundrels, and, as such, among the most charming and attractive figures in the society of old Rome. For only the narrowest observer, blind to everything but their infamous deeds, can paint the Borgias simply as savage and ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... conversation was going on in the balmy, seductive evening air at the bridge, another was transpiring in the Albergo della Torre, one of those dark, musty dens of which we have been speaking. In a damp, dirty chamber, whose brick floor seemed to have been unsuspicious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... for souls who lose themselves in this way. It is so easy to go astray in the seductive paths of the world. Without doubt, for a soul somewhat advanced in virtue, the sweetness offered by the world is mingled with bitterness, and the immense void of its desires cannot be filled by the flattery of a moment; but I repeat, if my heart had ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... that they were received as literally true; but the reader surrendered himself up to the illusion, and was moved to admiration by the recital of deeds which, viewed in any other light than as a wild frolic of imagination, would be supremely ridiculous; for these tales had not the merit of a seductive style and melodious versification to relieve them. They were, for the most part, an ill-digested mass of incongruities, in which there was as little keeping and probability in the characters as in the incidents, while ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... characters he has cut in the glass will, the poet hopes, magically defend his mistress against the seductive entreaties of ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]
... ordinary party strategy, by which the vital questions of capacity and fitness are made subordinate to that of availability. We have in our history too many instances of such intrigues and their dangerous consequences, to admit of their success at the present time, though they come in the seductive form of military glory. The degenerate system of party strategy culminated seven years ago in the election of James Buchanan. In pursuance of the secret and treacherous preparations for the present infamous rebellion, the people ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... transformation of species," a doctrine against which they themselves protested strongly, saying that it belongs to a class of speculations which are sure to be revived from time to time, and are always "peculiarly seductive to young and sanguine minds."* (* ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... to any writer, and of dalliance with a Delilah so seductive it is futile to declare that I am innocent. My principles positively are known to myself; which is a measure of self-knowledge, in these any-thing-arian days, of that cabinet coin-climax the "8th degree of rarity;" and that those choice principles may not be concealed from so kind an eye ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... vain, for her own temperament stood in the way. With money in her pocket, there awakened in her again the former actress with her careless and sporty disposition and craving for pleasure and enjoyment. Being still seductive, she was surrounded by a swarm of various admirers with whom she squandered all she had, together with the reputation which she had succeeded in establishing for herself with the aid of ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... I loved Francoise—the good-natured intermediary who by a single word has made supportable, human, almost propitious the inconceivable, infernal scene of gaiety in the thick of which we had been imagining swarms of enemies, perverse and seductive, beguiling away from us, even making laugh at us, the woman whom we love. If we are to judge of them by him, this relative who has accosted us and who is himself an initiate in those cruel mysteries, then the other guests cannot be so very demoniacal. ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... roof-tree had received him once more—had received him when his quest had been accomplished, when all that he wished for had been gained, when his travelling-staff had been laid aside with the words "It is finished." And of this seductive frame of mind the true source had been the eloquent discourse of his hospitable host. Yes, for every man there exist certain things which, instantly that they are said, seem to touch him more closely, more intimately, than anything has done before. Nor is it an uncommon occurrence ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... mind like Motley's, the department of history presented the most attractive features. There could honestly be no dabbling with the specious and seductive alchemy of Fiction. Truth had molded every period of the world's life. Truth defied had tripped up nations in their headlong race after dominion and unrighteous power. Truth victorious had smiled upon their steady growth to greatness and honor. ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... I would make myself a child, and adore her, and sell my soul for her caresses; and make my brain the tool of my infatuation by yielding to her false, fatal sophistry, because that sophistry would be uttered by red lips, and would become truth in the dazzling light of her seductive smiles. Do you expect me, because I know it is all a lie, to resist sighs and murmurs, and those languid glances, which women employ to gain their ends? If you wish me to resist them, give me a lump of ice instead of a heart—a freezing stream instead of a warm current in my veins—make me ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... in his answers; and it is also related of him that once, being told by a priest that his figures were too seductive for altar-pieces, he replied: "A lusty fellow you must be, if painted figures so move you. Think how much you are to be trusted in places where there are living people for you to touch." At Isola, ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... happened was unnecessary. On these words, pronounced low and sounding mysterious in the half obscurity of the ante-room, we parted with an expressive and warm handshake. The grip of her strong, shapely hand had a seductive frankness, a sort of exquisite virility. I do not know why she should have felt so friendly to me. It may be that she thought I understood her much better than I was able to do. The most precise of her sayings seemed always to me to have enigmatical prolongations ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... a young life broken By sin's seductive art; And touched with a Christlike pity, I took him to my heart. He lived with a noble purpose And struggled not in vain; But the life that sin had stricken Never ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... not all dead within me. A misbegotten Caesar is Don Juan! Yes, 'tis another way of conquering; Thus I shall know that fever of the heart Which Byron tells us kills whom it devours; And 'tis a way of being still my father. Napoleon or Don Juan!—They're decision, The magic will, and the seductive grace. When to retake a great unfaithful land, Calm and alone, sure of himself and her, The adventurer landed in the Gulf of Juan, He felt Don Juan's thrill; and when Don Juan Pricked a new conquest in his list of loves, Did he not feel the pride ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... simplicity of her companion's character. Her cheeks, which had so lately been pale, flushed, and her eyes lighted with some of their former brilliancy. Feeling gave expression to her countenance and softness to her voice, rendering her who was always beautiful, trebly seductive and winning. ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... quiet stream, beached the canoes under the shade of the willows, walked a little way up the brook, past a deserted mill, under cool shadows of rock and wood, and enjoyed for half an hour the simple, seductive charms of the "Laughing Water." Then we tramped back to our boats, floated down under the old walls of Fort Snelling and between the chalk-white cliffs which line the broadening river, until we came in sight ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... and it is so easy to be severe; so seductive to say brilliant things, whether they be true or not. But there came a day, and it came soon, when Horace, saw that triumphs gained in this way were of little value, and when he was anxious that his friends should join with him ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... it came about that the front against socialism was built out from the immediate and practical into the ultimate and spiritual; and that inferences drawn from a reading of Jefferson's Declaration, with its emphasis on individual liberty, were pressed into service against the seductive ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... morn the ruddy shrub is as lively as a merry-go-round with the feasting and antics of flitting gems, and there are others by the dozen attentive to less seductive fare. For half an hour the courtship of a perfect Ulysses has interfered with the staid ways of those not in holiday humour. Unlike Cassandra, there is little in appearance to distinguish the sexes, nor in the wooing does the dame exhibit staid demeanour. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... foreign war, has for the past decade been the center of discussion at many European Socialist congresses. The recent Prime Minister of France, Briand, was long one of the leading partisans of this method of which he said only a few years before he became Premier: "It has the seductive quality that it is after all the exercise of an incontestable right. It is a revolution which commences with legality. In refusing the yoke of misery, the workingman revolts in the fullness of his rights; ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... a boy yet," said the canon, with affected humility. "Far be it from me to assert that he is a prodigy of learning, like Senor de Rey. In time, who can tell? His talents are neither brilliant nor seductive. Of course, Jacinto's ideas are solid and his judgment is sound. What he knows he knows thoroughly. He is unacquainted with ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... serious spirits were influenced by this menacing comet, which burned in the Heavens like "a great and gory sword." In a chapter on Celestial Monsters the celebrated surgeon Ambroise Pare describes this awful phenomenon in terms anything but seductive, or reassuring, showing us the menacing sword surrounded by the heads it had cut off ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... infancy to decrepitude—all conditions of life, from peer to parvenu—from plough to the anvil—pulpit to the bar—orators and beggars, soldiers and sailors, male and female of every grade—men of the most insinuating address, and women of the most seductive ages and loveliness, grace and beauty were enlisted and trained to serve—in what the pot-bellied, bald-headed little monster of war used to call his Cytherian Cohort! Snares set by these imperial policemen were difficult to avoid, from the almost utter impossibility of suspicioning ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... could find an Extra Day lying about in which to read it all. Each seeker held true to his or her first love, obeying an infallible instinct. The adventure and romance that hid in Tim and Judy, respectively, sent them headlong after anything that offered signs of these two common but seductive qualities. Judy lived literally in the air, her feet, her heart, her eyes all off the ground; Tim, filled with an equally insatiable curiosity, found adorable danger in every rabbit-run, and rescued ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... now—not Eve, but Clodagh—to remind me, you most dangerous little speckled viper! And in order that I may no more see your foolish little pretty face, I decree that, for the future, you wear a yashmak to cover up your lips, which, I can see, were meant to be seductive, though dirty; and you can leave the blue eyes, and the little white-skinned freckled nose uncovered, if you like, they being commonplace enough. Meantime, if you care to see how to draw a palace—I ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... was so great that it extended to the armed force, because the greater part of the chiefs and officers had joined one or the other of the societies. Besides the seductive influences of the lodges, two generals, distinguished for their services in the first insurrectionary war, brought with them a number of soldiers to the party to which each severally belonged. General Nicholas Bravo was the head of the Escoces, and Don Vincente ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... rather use them as a sort of diviners, who divine the truth, not by rules of art, but by an instinctive repugnance and extreme detestation which a noble nature has of the power of pleasure, in which they think that there is nothing sound, and her seductive influence is declared by them to be witchcraft, and not pleasure. This is the use which you may make of them. And when you have considered the various grounds of their dislike, you shall hear from me what I deem to be true pleasures. Having thus examined the nature of ...
— Philebus • Plato
... and professors, these facts are freely admitted and discussed, but the prospective patient hears a different story. "Cut loose the womb, shorten the ligaments, put it into the right position, and everything will be well." This sounds plausible and seductive; but everyday experiences expose the inadequacy and the destructive aftereffects ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... San Francisco life, had likewise been sterilized and purified. I wished I might have got there before the housecleaning took place; but, even so, I should probably have been disappointed. What makes the vice of ancient Babylon seem by contrast more seductive to us than the vice of the Bowery is that Babylon is gone and ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... because the widow gave signs of the temperament which makes a Spanish woman and a Creole particularly noted. She had black eyes and hair, the feet and form of a Spanish woman,—that swaying form the movements of which have a name in Spain. Her face, still beautiful, was particularly seductive for its Creole complexion, the vividness of which can be described only by comparing it to muslin overlying crimson, so equally is the whiteness suffused with color. Her figure, which was full and rounded, attracted the eye by a grace which united ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... glittering metropolitan restaurant where men of the world are wont to gather and discuss the stock market, and Leila a beautiful, blonde and orphaned waitress upon whom several of the fashionable frequenters had exercised seductive powers in vain. They lay in wait for her at the side entrance, followed her, while one dissipated and desperate person, married, and said to move in the most exclusive circles, sent her an offer of a yearly income in five figures, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... reflection a more lenient view. Clodius had a sister, a light lady who, weary of her conquests over her fashionable admirers, had tried her fascinations on the great orator. He had escaped complete subjugation, but he had been flattered by the attention of the seductive beauty, and was ready to help her brother out of his difficulty. Clodius was not yet the dangerous desperado which he afterward became; and immorality, though seasoned with impiety, might easily, it was thought, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... between their passions and our own. One would like them to open their lips and tell their history, tell us everything they used to do, no matter how futile, and what their cares and pleasures used to be. It is an irritating and seductive curiosity, a dreamy desire for knowledge, such as one feels regarding the past life of a mistress.... But they are deaf to the questions our eyes put to them, they remain dumb and motionless in their wooden frames, and we pass ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... treasury from Delos to Athens [217]. The motion failed—perhaps through the virtuous opposition of Aristides himself. But when at the siege of Ithome the feud between the Athenians and Spartans broke out, the fairest pretext and the most favourable occasion conspired in favour of a measure so seductive to the national ambition. Under pretence of saving the treasury from the hazard of falling a prey to the Spartan rapacity or need,—it was at once removed to Athens (B. C. 461 or 460) [218]; and while the enfeebled power of Sparta, fully engrossed by the Messenian war, forbade all ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his, the little curl of her lips seemed to transform her whole expression. She was no longer the gravely minded prophetess of a great cause, the scheming woman, furious at the prospect of failure. She was suddenly wholly feminine, seductive, a coquette. ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... opposite sides of the apartment; a very handsome clock, with a set of silvery chimes for the quarters and a deep rich-toned gong for the hours, occupied a conspicuous position on a wall bracket; chairs, couches, and divans of seductive shape and ample capacity were dotted here and there about the rich carpet; and a handsome table occupied the centre of the room, supporting and reflecting in the silvery depths of its undraped top a noble epergne ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... de Repentigny been ever so laggard and indifferent a lover the touch of that pretty hand, and the glance from the dark eye that shot fire down into his very heart, would have decided him to obey this seductive invitation. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... jury were all his friends; they had known him when he was little "barefoot Dave Dunne." Still, they were captivated by this new oratory, warm, vivid, and inspiring, delivered to the accompaniment of dulcet and seductive tones that transported them into an enchanted world. Their senses were stirred in the same way they would be if a flag ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... to strike full in the heart. The truth is that Paul de Gery was in no wise surprised by that meeting, which confirmed some previous suspicions and the instinctive repulsion he had felt for the seductive creature at their dinner-party some days before. But it seemed sweet to him to be pitied by Aline, to feel her sympathy in the increased tenderness of her voice, in the arm that leaned more heavily upon his. Like children who play at being ill for the joy of being petted ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... kindly to the English militia. It was too democratic, too free. James I, in the very first year of his reign, conferred upon its members the seductive but fatal gift of exemption from the burden of providing their own weapons.[18] As he himself took care not to provide them too profusely, the force speedily lost both in efficiency and independence. The ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... interesting, though neither the most startling nor seductive, of this batch is Segonzac. Like all the best things in nature, he matures slowly and gets a little riper every day; so, as he is already a thoroughly good painter, like the nigger of Saint-Cyr he has but to continue. Before ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... would often startle you with the boldness of his propositions, but never till he had contrived, somehow or other, to predispose you in favour of that view of the case which he was presenting. He had a most seductive smile; truth, candour, and gentleness seemed to beam from it upon you; and you were convinced that he felt perfect confidence in the goodness of his cause. He evinced a sort of intuitive sagacity, in adapting himself to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... better if Amrei had known nothing about it, but there was a strange, seductive charm in getting as close as possible to a subject that was forbidden. Accordingly every one spoke to Amrei of the mournful event, warned her not to tell Black Marianne anything about it, and asked if the mother had ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... Mr. Randolph's brilliant defence of General Jackson's bad spelling, together with Mr. Van Buren's willingness to place an ocean between the new administration and a master of sarcasm, to whom opposition had become an unchangeable habit, had dictated an offer of the mission, couched in such seductive language that Mr. Randolph yielded to it as readily as those ladies accept an offer of marriage who have often announced their intention never to marry. Having reached the scene of his diplomatic labors at the beginning of August, he began to ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... gratification of their appetites to maintain a great principle. They will sacrifice all personal considerations to secure the rights of the Colonies. Parliament proposes to tax this country without our having a voice in the matter. It is a seductive and insidious proposition—this export duty. I suppose they think we are simpletons, and will be caught in the trap they are setting. They think we are so fond of tea we shall continue to purchase it, but the time has come when we must ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... top of his nineteen years' experience, as if he were marked at birth to be the perpetrator of some signal action, to set back fallen Mercy, to overthrow the usurping devil that sat, horned and hoofed, on her throne. Seductive Jacobin figments, which he had often refuted at the Speculative, swam up in his mind and startled him as with voices: and he seemed to himself to walk accompanied by an almost tangible presence ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spreading plains is there not room For man and bison, that he seals its doom? What pleasure lies and what seductive charm In slaying with no purpose but to harm? Alas, that man, unable to create, Should thirst forever to exterminate, And in destruction find his fiercest joy. The gods alone create, gods ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... one—Madam Wetherill was quite at middle life—she herself was surely younger and might outlive the other. But at eighteen the child could choose, and she would be likely to choose the ways of the world, so seductive ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... ordination. She was not less charming than then. With her, death seemed but a last coquetry. The pallor of her cheeks, the less brilliant carnation of her lips, her long eyelashes lowered and relieving their dark fringe against that white skin, lent her an unspeakably seductive aspect of melancholy chastity and mental suffering; her long loose hair, still intertwined with some little blue flowers, made a shining pillow for her head, and veiled the nudity of her shoulders with its thick ringlets; ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... improvements, water, gas, bath, butler's pantries, and dumb-waiters; and the houses offered so cheaply that the solid, slow-going, honest business-men wondered how it could be done. The places had a wonderfully seductive look, and ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... man,' one doubts whether the British race can be perpetuated. The young Englishman of to-day is inferior to savages and to beasts of the field in that they are eager to show themselves in an agreeable and seductive light to the females of their kind, whilst he regards any such effort as beneath his dignity. Not that he cultivates dignity in demeanour. He merely slouches. Unlike his feminine counterpart, he ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... women dress for?" he demanded; "is it to make themselves seductive to men or to have other women admire ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... dusky girls beckoned him to come to them. Some happy strain they sang, like the "Whist! here, you darling boy!" so often heard at Brest. But seductive as was their country, their call was imperious and exasperating, making his very flesh shudder. Their perfect bosoms rose and fell under transparent muslin, in which they were solely draped; they were glowing and polished as in bronze statues. ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... throne, though I would have one near by for an adviser. I would set forward as prince a man of a good, medium understanding, lively rather than deep; a man of courtly manner, possessed of the double art to ingratiate and to command; receptive, accommodating, seductive. I have been observing you since your first entrance. Well, sir, were I a subject of Gruenewald I should pray Heaven to set upon the seat of government just ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rude and uncertain accompaniment, she was dancing it with a grace, precision, and lightness that was wonderful; in spite of its doubtful poses and seductive languors she was dancing it with the artless gayety and innocence—perhaps from the suggestion of her tiny figure—of a mere child among an audience of children. Dancing it alone she assumed the parts of the man and woman; advancing, retreating, coquetting, rejecting, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... five-grain allopathic pill. It was the erratic behavior of this tiny ball, its mysterious comings and goings, that had summoned Mr. Broad's audience and now held its observant interest. This audience, composed of roughly dressed men, listened attentively to the seductive monologue which accompanied the dealer's deft manipulations, and was greatly entertained thereby. "Three tiny tepees in a row and a little black medicine-man inside." The speaker's voice was high-pitched and it carried like a "thirtythirty." "You see him ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... beauteous May and June, My lovely daughters, and my valiant sons, All, all save one, have left me for that bourne Men call the Past. It seems but yesterday I saw fair August, laughing with the Sea, Snaring the Earth with her seductive wiles, And making conquest, even of the Sun. Yet has she gone, and left me here to mourn.' Then spake December, from an open door: 'Father, the night grows cold; come in and rest. Sit with me here ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... up its nose at flirtation. The fillets of drying salmon suspended from every bough were a million times more seductive than the dark Naiads who had dressed them. Slice after slice I tore down and devoured, as though my maw were as compendious as Jack the Giant Killer's. This so astonished and delighted the young women that they kept supplying me, - with the expectation, perhaps, that sooner or later I must ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... there to and fro for a long time, a calm, meditative ghost in his white drill-suit, revolving in his head thoughts absolutely novel, disquieting, and seductive; accustoming his mind to the contemplation of his purpose, in order that by being faced steadily it should appear praiseworthy and wise. For the use of reason is to justify the obscure desires that move our conduct, impulses, ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... never have been helped to live for Ireland in their own country, were suddenly held up by order of the Cunard Company—which, as a matter of fact, owed nearly its whole prosperity to its coffin boats of the Famine days, and whose glaringly seductive posters had emptied Ireland, neither for America nor Ireland's sake, but purely to get the passage-money of the emigrants who were now asked to go instead and "help England to give Constantinople to Russia, even if ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... It was before this seductive phenomenon that the three paused. The crowd was breathlessly watching the struggles of a very fat, very red-headed woman who chewed gum in exact rhythm with the bucking of the staircase, while she firmly marked time on ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... of their eloquence, or sweep back an ocean of innovations by their logic. I should like, however, to ask my sisters one question: Are they quite sure that women gain by these changes? Do they imagine, these "sporty" young females in short-cut skirts and mannish shirts and ties, that it is seductive to a lover, or a husband to see his idol in a violent perspiration, her draggled hair blowing across a sunburned face, panting up a long hill in front of him on a bicycle, frantic at having lost her race? Shade of gentle ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... quite ready to fall on his knees before her. A tall, sunbrowned, military-looking young man, as handsome as a Greek god, with eyes of heroic form; lustrous, and richly fringed; and a beautiful mouth, at once sensitive and seductive. He was also very finely dressed, in the best and highest mode; and he wore his sword as if it were a part of himself. It was no more in his way than if it were his right arm. Indeed, all his movements were full of confidence and ease; and yet it was the vivacity, ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... apostles of the faith of Mohammed. And it was really a religion that the bourgeois of the first Assembly thought to found. They thought to have destroyed an old world, and to have built a new one upon its ruins. Never did illusion more seductive fire the hearts of men. Equality and fraternity, proclaimed by the new dogmas, were to bring the reign of eternal happiness to all the peoples. Man had broken for ever with a past of barbarity and darkness. The regenerated world would in future be illuminated by the lucid ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... she declared, "I had been lost; the onion had betrayed me. Blessings on the bland, the seductive mayonnaise, which veiled the ardent lobster and his smell. She did smell it, however, and said, so cheerfully, poor dear, that Miss Carey was evidently going to give us a surprise to-morrow, for ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... eyes in a confusion, which, because more than half of it was genuine, made her look very fascinating. Nothing is more seductive than a little truth. As Bressant looked at her, and thought of what lie had done at that last interview, soft thrills crept sweetly through his blood, and he felt a most ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... a very slight suggestion of danger; for it was conceivable, though almost impossible, that some letter of hers or her husband's might fall into Griggs's hands. There was a perverseness about it which was seductive to ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... great voice of the social world roaring in her ears, and the wind of its stormy gusts blew round her. Her pretended friends, who maintained their reputations at the height of their rank and their positions, often produced in her presence the seductive idea of the lover; they cast into her soul certain ardent talk of love, the "mot d'enigme" which life propounds to woman, the grand passion, as Madame de Stael called it,—preaching by example. When the countess asked naively, in a small and select circle of these friends, ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... whole argument—went far beyond this particular absentee tax or any similar tax proposed, as happened in one instance, by a Colony. It was the superbly grandiose expression, and all the more insidiously seductive in that it was so grandiose, of a principle which all thinking men now know, or ought to know, is the negation of Empire, which lost us America, which came within an ace of losing us Canada, which might well have lost us South Africa, and which ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... fifteenth of April, 1521, the University of Paris, whose opinion respecting Luther's tenets the entire Christian world had for two years been anxiously expecting, pronounced its solemn decision. It condemned the writings of the German monk to the flames, on the ground that they were seductive, insulting to the hierarchy, contrary to Scripture, and schismatic. It likened his latest production, De Captivitate Babylonica, to Alcoran. It branded as preposterous the notion that God had reserved the discovery of what is needful to the salvation of the faithful for Martin Luther ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... There is something seductive and ingratiating about table talk when it is spirited. A luxurious dining room, seating eight or ten guests, of whom three or four are pretty women, one of whom should be a foreigner; as many men, none of them aristocrats—generally speaking, aristocrats are ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... petty personal ambitions, a war among the Great Powers brings halcyon days of flattery, bribery and seductive prospects in an imaginary future. In Greece all these and other attractions were dangled before the eyes of men of power and influence. The Sovereign, whose admiration for the Kaiser verges on idolatry, soon extended this platonic sentiment to the Kaiser's army. And ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... so—it's only human nature. But Otto is a handsome man and has a fine seductive voice; and mind you, music has charms to soothe the breast, savage or otherwise; as for your prospects, you may apply to me for a testimonial ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... stream seventy yards broad divided by a pebbly island, running over seductive riffles and swirling into deep, quiet pools where the good salmon goes to smoke his pipe after ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... made only the deeper by her inactivity, ignorance, and despair.... In another view she has passed the season of despair, and appears as the heartless votary of fashion, a flirt, or that most to be dreaded, most to be despised being, a married coquette; at once seductive, heartless, and basely unprincipled; or as beauty of person has faded away, she may be found turning from these lighter styles of toys to a quiet kind of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... there, for a while after his graduation at Princeton, and during the intervals of his arduous theological studies with Dr. Bellamy at Bethlehem. Perchance there are heart-sore maidens in the village, who, to their sorrow, could give more particular information of the exploits of the seductive Aaron at this period, than ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... now deserve it, Miss Evelyn would administer it much more severely. She looked amiability itself, and was truly beautiful in face and person, twenty-two years of age, full and finely formed, and dressed always with the most studied neatness. She was, in truth, a seductive creature. She made an instantaneous impression on my senses. There was, however, somewhat of a sternness of expression, and a dignity of carriage, which caused at once to fear and respect her. Of course, at first, all went smoothly enough, and seeing that mamma treated me precisely as she ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... judiciously. He made a detailed appraisal of the mirror image of the slim, green, backless, half-thigh-length sheath which had looked so breath-taking and seductive in a Ceyce display window. Trigger's eyes narrowed a little. The major had appraised the dress in ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... I want no explanation to see and understand how M. Josselin has written most of his chefs-d'oeuvre from the depths of a happy consciousness habituated to all that is most graceful and charming and seductive in real life—and a deeply sympathetic, poignant, and compassionate sense of the contrast to ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... of education is a very seductive bit of sophistry. Invalids whom the doctors can not cure, and scholars whom teachers can not teach, are often advised to take "a change." Still there is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... never had she seemed so desirable in his eyes; never had her voice sounded so seductive, so persuasive ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... well-known fact, that a person of the name of Tiffin announced himself to the world under this very seductive title, which, doubtless, had the effect of bringing him considerable custom from the loyal subjects of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... of this outcry, there glided in insinuatingly a soft-spoken crowd of tempting, seductive possibilities. Marise was so sensitive, so impressionable, so easily moved, so defenseless when her emotions were aroused. Hadn't he the right, the duty, he who knew her better than anyone else, to protect her against herself? Wasn't he deceiving ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the people up to a little higher stage of intelligence and taste. He was intensely egotistic, and totally indifferent to all religious belief. His false idolatry of art and his enthusiasm arrayed for heathendom, in all the beautiful charms of the most seductive poetry, had a tendency fatal to the cause of Christianity and to all public and private virtue.[36] He expressed himself sometimes as very favorable toward the Roman Catholic worship, and the adherents of that faith quote his words of approbation with evident ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... seductive kiss the soul-stirring melody was full born within her, as a world is called into the firmament by one spoken word of God. And as she played, Theodore moved silently toward her, for the fiddle was flashing out the fervor of the ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... It was like many others of its sort, only a little more daring, a little more finished. Mademoiselle Celaire, in her tight-fitting, shabby black frock, with her wild mass of hair, her flashing eyes, her seductive gestures, was, without doubt, a marvelous person. Peter, Baron de Grost, watched her every movement with absorbed attention. When the curtain went down he forgot to clap. His eyes followed her off ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... night, and the beauty of the stars and snow. And this evening he felt their claims upon him mightily stirring. A rising wildness caught his blood, quickened his pulse, woke longing and passion too. But chiefly snow. The snow whirred softly through his thoughts like white, seductive dreams.... For the snow had come; and She, it seemed, had somehow come with ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... about the book he had been reading, and the lawyer discussed fishing with Pierre, who constantly referred to his great authority, Meestare Bulky. Madame, charmed that her guest could converse with her in her mother tongue, generously filled his glasses, and provided his plates with the most seductive morsels. Monsieur Veelkeenson was the white-haired boy at that table, and he felt it, yielded to the full satisfaction of it. He had dined royally, and was fit for anything. When his friend asked him if he would ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... of the limelight, she certainly presented a wild and dazzling picture. Her beauty was indescribably accentuated. She appeared like a being ablaze with diamonds. Her every attitude was one of seductive grace, her every movement as swift and light as those ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... a free hand. His wife was to have a generous allowance on condition that she left him alone freely to bestow his affections on the seductive Emma, whose story, retold by Mr. Harrison, shows Lady Nelson to have been an impossible woman to live with. She made home hell to him, so he said. And making liberal allowance for Emma's fibbing propensities, there are ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... returned home from service in the East, and he immediately conceived a violent infatuation for this pretty friend of his cousin's. In this respect his conduct was in no way peculiar. Few men were proof against the seductive Mrs. Monte Irvin, not because she designedly encouraged admiration, but because she was one of those fortunately rare characters who inspire it without conscious effort. Her appeal to men was sweetly feminine and quite lacking in ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... by sucking the honesty out of simpler persons. You are here because the more private meetings of the English Council of Defence are being held at Rowchester. It is your object by bribery, or theft, or robbery, or the seductive use of those wonderful charms of yours, to gain possession of copies of any particulars whatever about the English autumn manoeuvres, which, curiously enough, have been arranged as a sort of addendum to those on your side of the Channel. You have an ally, I regret to say, in the Duke's ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the two foreigners who had driven over from Arles, and whose horses were being baited at the modest inn. The resources of this establishment we did not venture otherwise to test, in spite of the seductive fact that the sign over the door was in the Provencal tongue. This little group included the baker, a rather melancholy young man, in high boots and a cloak, with whom and his companions we had a good ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... the one who had forgotten this duty! It would have required no little "music" to soothe the "savage breast" of the aggrieved one; for—as we are pathetically reminded by the old song—"Christmas comes but once a-year," and so often, but no more, did we know that our chance of hearing this seductive harmony occurred. Hence our wrath, if through the neglect, the "breach of promise" of another, so solemnly pledged, we missed it. And even now, dear as is the oblivion of night and dreamless sleep to the spirit, harassed and world-worn, that in outgrowing its child-like feelings and happiness, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... before he became her husband. Natasha on the contrary had at once abandoned all her witchery, of which her singing had been an unusually powerful part. She gave it up just because it was so powerfully seductive. She took no pains with her manners or with delicacy of speech, or with her toilet, or to show herself to her husband in her most becoming attitudes, or to avoid inconveniencing him by being too exacting. She acted in contradiction to all those rules. She ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... their partisans; popular feeling revived in favor of Louis; a large portion of the clergy shared it; several counts of Neustria and Burgundy appeared in arms in the name of the deposed emperor; and the seductive and able Judith came afresh upon the scene, and gained over to the cause of her husband and her son a multitude of friends. In 834, two assemblies, one meeting at St. Denis and the other at Thionville, annulled all the acts of the assembly of Compiegne, and for ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... small magnitude, Helen encountered a still greater peril in the shape of a vast store of novels, poems, and romances, which Miss Cornelia had accumulated, and to which she was continually making additions. In that young lady's bedchamber, where Helen slept, there was a large bookcase full of these seductive volumes; even the upper shelves of the wardrobe closet, and a cupboard over the mantel, were closely packed with them; and there was not one of them all which Helen had not read by the time she was fifteen. Thus, in spite of natural good sense, strengthened ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various |
