"Smoothness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cars nothing but their watches told them of the rate of speed. Of the party on board every man was familiar with railway affairs; but there was not one who was not surprised at the smoothness of the track and the complete absence of uncomfortable motion. Only by lifting a window shade and straining the eyes into the blackness of the night, to see the red sparks streaming by or the dim outlines of house and tree loom up and disappear, was it possible to appreciate ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... of being Sophia's mother for nearly sixteen years had not been lost on Mrs. Baines, and though she was now discovering undreamt-of dangers in Sophia's erratic temperament, she kept her presence of mind sufficiently well to behave with diplomatic smoothness. It was undoubtedly humiliating to a mother to be forced to use diplomacy in dealing with a girl in short sleeves. In HER day mothers had been ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... very numerous, and gave a smoothness to the transactions of the day, which had a visible effect on business. Every species of fats were in high demand, but the glut of mutton gave a temporary check to the general facility ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... sojourn slipped by with exceeding smoothness. They did a little fishing and a good deal of quiet lazing, a little exploring, and even one ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... introducing our style of gardening into Germany, chiefly on account of its inferior turf for lawns. "Lawns and gravel walks," says a writer in the Quarterly Review, "are the pride of English Gardens," "The smoothness and verdure of our lawns," continues the same writer, "is the first thing in our gardens that catches the eye of a foreigner; the next is the fineness and firmness of our gravel walks." Mr. Charles Mackintosh makes the same observation. "In no other country in the world," he says, "do ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... more than truth. Beneath this straw hat very beautiful and plenteous brown hair escaped in defiance of authority, and frolicked into curls and wavelets, disporting itself on a forehead of creamy tone and smoothness, and just touching the eyebrows, which were of a slightly darker brown, faintly arched on the lower outline, and more prominently arched on the upper. Below the brows brown eyes, as honest as the day, and with a ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... the character-drawing of the principals that the author's strength lies. Exciting incidents develop their inherent strength and weaknesses, and if virtue wins in the end, it is quite in keeping with its carefully-planned antecedents. The N. Y. Sun says: "We commend it for its workmanship—for its smoothness, its sensible fancies, and ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... mortal pleasure, what art thou in truth? The torrent's smoothness ere it dash, below. CAMPBELL'S ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... here we are, you and I, and let us be thankful. Thankful for this lovely country set with pleasant towns and religious manners and nice people, and for the colour and smoothness of the sea we're going paddling in, and for our nice tea. Are you thankful, Thomas? ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... wonderfully in a long, graceful robe of white broadcloth, rich and soft and shining as the white satin which lay in folds about the bosom and sleeves and encircled her waist in a broad belt. Her hair, freed of puffs and braids, showed all its beauty in glossy smoothness and light coils, and in its meshes was one large red rose, the fellow of which was partly hidden among the laces at her bosom. Half-asleep she went to meet him, and his first feeling was a kind of awe at the sight of her. He had not ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... word came that the party was to stay to dinner. And then instantly the whole household sprang into activity. Above stairs everything would move with the smoothness of clockwork; but downstairs in the servants' quarters it was a serious matter that an elaborate banquet for seven people had to be got ready in a couple of hours. Even Samuel was pressed into service at odd jobs—something for which he was very glad, as it gave him ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... glass as, intent upon the island, he carefully turned the focussing screw, when the steamer, rising to the long smooth swell, careened over slightly, and one of the boy's feet, consequent upon the smoothness of his deck shoes, glided from beneath him, bringing forth the captain's ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... for a moonlight walk that night because, like Claire, he wished to be alone to think. He had fallen with a pleasant ease and smoothness into the rather curious life lived at Elizabeth Boyd's bee-farm. A liking for picnics had lingered in him from boyhood, and existence at Flack's was one prolonged picnic. He found that he had a natural aptitude for the more muscular domestic ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... we have now been tracing, had a large possession. He added much to the purity of the English stile in prose; his rhime is not so flowing, nervous, or manly as some of his cotemporaries, but his prose has an original excellence, a smoothness and dignity peculiar to it. His poetry, as well as sentiments, in ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... smoothness with which the law was executed emphasized the remarkable flexibility, adaptability and efficiency of our system of government and the devotion of our people. Here was a gigantic project in which success was staked not on reliance in the ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... covered with cedar bark; all the interstices are filled with it, and an upper or final layer is spread with some regularity and smoothness. Earth is then thrown on from base to apex to a thickness of about six inches, but enough is put on to make the hut perfectly wind and water proof. This operation finishes the house, and usually there are enough volunteers to complete ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... the shot of his powerful foe, though still so distant as to render her also a little uncertain, more especially should a set get up. The felucca had burnt to the water's edge; but, owing to the smoothness of the water, her wreck still floated and was slowly setting into the bay, there being a slight current in that direction, where she now lay. The town was basking in the afternoon's sun, though hid from view, and the whole island of Elba had ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... plaster and concrete, made in imitation of Travertine, a much-prized building marble of Italy. This composition has the warm ochre tone and porous texture of the original stone, thus avoiding the unpleasant smoothness and glare which characterize stucco, the ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... exchanged fancies while the train rolled over a track remarkable for its smoothness and leading ever onward across the vast, empty plains bare save for the low shrubs called sage-brush, and rising here and there into long swells and ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... activity reports itself in unevenness of delivery; life appears in gleams not in steady shining. But with continued effort to concentrate other minds upon his subject, this unevenness gives place to ease in delivery, to smoothness of voice. Continuity of thought impels smoothness of expression. When a thought is held steadily in the mind of the pupil, together with a dominating purpose to communicate that thought to others, the tones of his voice become ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... ease and smoothness of his style, and his delicate sense of form, Irving delighted his own and succeeding generations of both his countrymen and his British cousins. All his work is pervaded by the strong and winning personal quality that brought him the love and admiration of all. Charles Dudley Warner ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... improvements, especially in the hands of the Roman artists, this Egyptian paper was brought to a high degree of perfection. In later ages it was manufactured of considerable thickness, perfect whiteness, and an entire continuity and smoothness of surface. It was, however, at the best, so friable that when durability was required the copyists inserted a page of parchment between every five or six pages of the papyrus. Thus the firmness of the one substance defended the brittleness of the other; and great numbers of books so constituted ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... performance. His face and hands were of very dark complexion, either from constant exposure to wind and sun, or, as his black hair and dark eyes tended to show, from some strain of southern blood. His head was small, his face of an exquisite beauty of modelling, while the smoothness of its contour would have led you to believe that he was a beardless lad still in his teens. But something, some look which living and experience alone can give, seemed to contradict that, and finding ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... black soil flats impassable after the deluge, Mac left the track, having decided to stick to the ridges all day; and all that had gone before was smoothness itself in comparison to ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... and his wife met amicably, and without reference to their last talk. Patricia wore black-and-white for some six months, and Colonel Musgrave accepted the compromise tacitly. All passed with perfect smoothness between them; and anyone in Lichfield would have told you that the Musgraves were ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... that decides the exact place on the stock is the smoothness and greenness and health of it. I pick out the cleanest and best places. The whole top of the tree ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... his is so strange to her that, in spite of the natural false smoothness that belongs to ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... process must be added the positive, namely—attention to the due and proportionate development of all the vocal organs. Depth is increased by the expansion of the pharynx; roundness and volume are promoted by the enlargement of the oral cavity, especially its back part; and smoothness is the result of the free vibration of the vocal chords, while resonance is produced by the proper expansion of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... darkness with the wind whistling round her. It was so easy, as he knew, for a solitary being to fasten eagerly on another, like a beaten boat to the safety of a buoy, but while he thus admonished himself, he had no genuine doubt. He knew that she was what he wanted: her youth, her wisdom, her smoothness, her serenity, and the many things which made her, even the stubbornness ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... shall see in another chapter, the King's mind was destined at this point to be suddenly distracted in quite other ways; and when he was again able to turn his attention anywhere but to himself he found that and other matters which had disturbed his conscience tending with comparative smoothness toward a solution in which he personally ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... a certain humouring, smoothness, she promised herself that the first use she would make of Jon would be to take him up there, and show him "the view" ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... had made him well acquainted with the Latin tongue, but he had never discovered all its native smoothness of sound, and elegance of structure, until he had heard it spoken by Antonina. Word by word, he passed over in his mind her varied, natural, and happy turns of expression; recalling, as he was thus employed, the eloquent looks, the rapid gesticulations, the ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... for feeling and music. The very smoothness and gentleness of the limbs is in the series ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Rupert heard a loud squeal of fear, and saw a dark spot blotting the smoothness of the lake's frozen surface. The Sheep was struggling helplessly in an ice-hole of his own making. Rupert gave one loud curse, and then dashed full tilt for the shore; outside a low stable building on the lake's edge he remembered having ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... making yourself agreeable never comes amiss, Miss Kronborg. I should say you rather need a little practice along that line. When you come to marketing your wares in the world, a little smoothness goes farther than a great deal of talent sometimes. If you happen to be cursed with a real talent, then you've got to be very smooth indeed, or you'll never get your money back." Bowers snapped the elastic band ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... at one time, there had been a bunk. The flat shelf still projected out from the wall. Donald entered with an armful of spruce boughs, and threw them on the bunk. While he was arranging them to a semblance of smoothness for the blankets, his hand struck something hard and cold. He picked the object up and held it to the light of the fire. Then, with a cry, he leaned forward, ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... at them. True enough, their smoothness and pliant shape betrayed my disguise—the gay little captain was sharp-witted enough to note the contrast between them and the rough garb I wore, though no one else with whom I had come in contact had been as keen of observation as he. At first I was slightly embarrassed by his remark—but ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... ancient dames of his acquaintance (for albeit the Sergeant may have already numbered the allotted years of man, still his form is erect, his step is firm, his hair retains its sable hue, and, more than all, he hath a winning way about him, an air of docility and sweetness, if you will, and a smoothness of speech, together with an exhaustless fund of funny sayings; and, lastly, an overflowing stream, without beginning, or middle, or end, of astonishing reminiscences of the ancient Mississippi, which, taken together, form a 'tout ensemble' which ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... nettles of life are part of our discipline. Life would get nauseating if it were all honey. That table would be poorly set that had on it nothing but treacle. We need a little vinegar, mustard, pepper and horse-radish that brings the tears even when we do not feel pathetic. If this world were all smoothness, we would never be ready for emigration to a higher and better. Blustering March and weeping April prepare us for shining May. This world is a poor hitching post. Instead of tying fast on the cold mountains, we had better whip up and hasten on ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... their cosmetics, which were of the most innocent and simple description—the first receipt we subjoin was one in general use with them, and will be found efficacious in removing roughness, or coarseness, arising from accidental causes, and imparting that polished smoothness so essential ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... fine voice had regained its smoothness,—"once in New York I dropped in at Dick's studio when he did not expect me. I wanted him to take me out to luncheon; and I had the oddest experience! Oh! Mr. Devant, look at that bit, pinned to the wall! That ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... addressed either to the understanding or the passions, he is bold, figurative, and animated. Indulging too much in amplification, he is apt to tire with prolixity; but in all his excursions he is ardent, elevated, impressive, and often brilliant. His versification has not the smoothness which we admire in the compositions of Virgil, and his language is often involved in the intricacies of technical construction: but with all his defects, his beauties are numerous; and he discovers a greater degree of merit than is commonly found in the productions of a poet of twenty-six ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... the farther slope of a hill a whistling sound ran upon me through the wind, and looking back I saw a horseman galloping with great swiftness along the line of the crest, very plainly outlined by the sky, and by something of smoothness in the running of the horse I knew that it was Barry and his black stallion. But the whistling—the music! Dear God, man, have you read of the pipes of Pan? That night I heard them and it made ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... wanted to wipe that smile away with a set of knuckles but I knew that all I'd get would be a broken hand against Thorndyke's stone-hard flesh. "Now, Mr. Cornell," he said with that clinical smoothness, "let's not ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... got on board, and Jack took his seat, started his engine, took the tiller and glided out upon the river, and then down toward the railroad station, Percival noting the speed, the smoothness with which everything worked, and the apparent ease with which Jack managed it all, as though he had always ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh
... a native, an old man, in the woods; he had a beard of considerable length, which his new acquaintance gave him to understand, by signals, they would rid him of, if he pleased; stroaking their chins, and shewing him the smoothness of them at the same time; at length the old Indian consented, and one of the youngsters taking a penknife from his pocket, and making use of the best substitute for lather he could find, performed ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... splendours of colouring on a greater scale and with a more sombre magnificence. The great mass of cloud filling the head of the gulf had long red smears amongst its convoluted folds of grey and black, as of a floating mantle stained with blood. The three Isabels, overshadowed and clear cut in a great smoothness confounding the sea and sky, appeared suspended, purple-black, in the air. The little wavelets seemed to be tossing tiny red sparks upon the sandy beaches. The glassy bands of water along the horizon gave out a fiery red glow, as if fire and ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... search of plunder, and their cravings knew no bound, Every one among them deeming endless wealth would here be found. And that I with glozing smoothness hid a cruel mind within. Fondly then and vainly dreamt they; now they raise an angry din, And they glare askance in anger, and the light within their eyes Burns with hostile flames upon me. Yet therein no justice lies. All I promised, fully wrought I with the gods at hand to cheer, Naught ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle
... under-world of glamour and mystery. Shells, pink and pearly, brown and lilac, scarlet and cobalt, strew the flower-decked floor with infinite variety, concave and spiral, ribbed and fluted, fretted and jagged—the satin smoothness of convoluted forms lying amid rugged shapes bristling with spines and needles. We gaze almost with awe at the lovely vision of a dainty Nautilus, sailing his fairy boat down a blue channel fringed with ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... seated beside a person ready for real talk. Even more than his merits, his demerits pointed him out as a man to be a friend to a young woman who wanted one. His way of life pictured to her troubled spirit an enviable smoothness; and his having achieved that smooth way she considered a sign of strength; and she wished to lean in idea upon some friendly strength. His reputation for indifference to the frivolous charms of girls clothed him with a noble coldness, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... distance from its summit. It was a good-sized house, with stone walls and a corrugated iron roof. A few sheds and outhouses surrounded it, four or five blue gums afforded a little shade from the sun and a little relief to the grassy smoothness of the landscape. Two women met us at the door, one the wife, the other, I think, the sister of our host. Neither was young, but their smiling faces showed the invigorating effects of this delicious air. 'These are anxious times,' said the older; 'we hear the cannonading every morning at breakfast. ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... two special characteristics the worthy Archdeacon meant extremely well, but we prefer the real Keats, with his passionate wilfulness, his fantastic moods and his fine inconsistence. Part of Keats's charm as a man is his fascinating incompleteness. We do not want him reduced to a sand-paper smoothness or made perfect by the addition of popular virtues. Still, if Mr. Colvin has not given us a very true picture of Keats's character, he has certainly told the story of his life in a pleasant and readable manner. He may not write with the ease and grace of a man of letters, but he is ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... volume by Edmund Burke entitled: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. It is an exhaustive treatise, dealing first with the primitive conceptions of beauty—roundness and smoothness, I think they are, according to Burke. It is well said. Rotundity is a patent charm; as for smoothness—the more new wrinkles a woman acquires, ...
— Options • O. Henry
... is chiefly on follies of words. Biron and Rosaline are evidently the pre-existent state of Benedict and Beatrice, and so, perhaps, is Boyet of Lafeu, and Costard of the Tapster in Measure for Measure; and the frequency of the rhymes, the sweetness as well as the smoothness of the metre, and the number of acute and fancifully illustrated aphorisms, are all as they ought to be in a poet's youth. True genius begins by generalizing and condensing; it ends in realizing and expanding. It first ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... highly flavoured with almonds, gives the best general idea of it; but intermingled with it come wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, brown-sherry, and other incongruities. Then there is a rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp, which nothing else possesses, but which adds to its delicacy. It is neither acid, nor sweet, nor juicy; yet one feels the want of none of these qualities, for it is perfect as it is. It produces no ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... self-contradictory in the upper part of her face, she was hardly less at variance with established ideas of harmony in the lower. Her lips had the true feminine delicacy of form, her cheeks the lovely roundness and smoothness of youth—but the mouth was too large and firm, the chin too square and massive for her sex and age. Her complexion partook of the pure monotony of tint which characterized her hair—it was of the same soft, warm, creamy fairness all over, ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... was in disrepute. She had turned over her business in life to the kings and devoted too much attention to ornament. Such a serious person was Rudolph Agricola, who, in his treatise on logic, accepted the mediaeval tradition that rhetoric was concerned only with smoothness and ornament of speech and all that went toward captivating the ears, and straightway picked up all the serious purpose and thoughtful content of classical rhetoric which mediaeval rhetoric had abandoned, to hand them over to logic. Consequently, in a work which he significantly entitles ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... favour. He was ill-bred, but he was not mean; he was a vaunter but not a coward; he demanded adherence and did not beg alms. This was the attitude of his mind, but unhappily it was often apparently contradicted by the cringing of his body and the wheedling of his tongue. In attempting smoothness he fell into oiliness; where he aimed at polished brilliance, the result was blazing varnish. Had he known what to pray for, he would have supplicated heaven that he might meet eyes able to see the man beneath the ape. Such eyes, dimly penetrating with ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... they live poorly and dirtily, are hard-featured, and of very brown, or rather tawny complexions. As they seldom eat meat, their juices are destitute of that animal oil which gives a plumpness and smoothness to the skin, and defends those fine capillaries from the injuries of the weather, which would otherwise coalesce, or be shrunk up, so as to impede the circulation on the external surface of the body. As for the dirt, it ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... fingers—and as he gestured he quivered to his very finger-tips, and down there on the benches they quivered with him. The cold words—he warmed and revivified them. Under the caress of his beautiful, barely perceptible brogue the commonest, harshest lines took on smoothness and roundness; and from out his mouth the fine, tender words bloomed like summer flowers; and the larger, colorful words flashed ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... was more confident than in former days, his movements more rapid, his tone more animated and decisive, his whole manner more energetic. His face was slightly careworn, his brow had lost something of its unruffled smoothness, and the fresh carnation tints had faded out of his complexion; but the wealth of expression his countenance had gained might atone for heavier losses. In repose, his features wore a shade of habitual sadness; but that disappeared the moment he spoke, and was rather an air of reflection ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... kitchen) he had been consulted by Patsey Crimmeen about the chimney of the kennel boiler, had single-handed reduced it to submission, and had, in addition, boiled the meal for the hounds with a knowledge of proportion and an untiring devotion to the use of the potstick which produced "stirabout" of a smoothness and excellence that Miss Barnet herself ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... pronunciation of consonants certain points claim special attention. And first among these is the sounding of the doubled consonants. Whoever has heard Italian spoken recognizes one of its greatest beauties to be the distinctness, yet smoothness, with which its ll and rr and cc—in short, all its doubled consonants—are pronounced. No feature of the language is more charming. And one who attempts the same in Latin and perseveres, with whatever ...
— The Roman Pronunciation of Latin • Frances E. Lord
... freshener to my presence of mind, as a beginning. I felt the words of my lessons slipping off, not one by one, or line by line, but by the entire page; I tried to lay hold of them; but they seemed, if I may so express it, to have put skates on, and to skim away from me with a smoothness there ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... ideal dressing for beds, for in spite of its heavier body, it wrinkles and musses much more readily than good cotton. For table service, however, for the toilet, and for minor ornamental purposes linen has no equal. Its smoothness of texture, its brilliancy which laundering increases, its wearing qualities, its exquisite freshness, make it the one fabric ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... certain changes of the plan and structure, are probably much more faithful in detail than those of the other, we find two from Apollodorus, and the rest from Menander. Julius Caesar has honoured Terence with some verses, in which he calls him a half Menander, praising the smoothness of his style, and only lamenting that he has lost a certain comic ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... undertaking a very little weakness, a very small display of indecision, might easily have meant an appalling amount of bloodshed. As it was, the whole business was completed in a wonderfully short while, and with remarkable smoothness. The judicial and municipal administration of these centres was to remain English; but supreme authority was vested in the officer commanding the German forces in each place, and the heads of such departments as the postal and the police, were German. No kind ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... union between the two states; effected in June, 1575, required improvement. The administration of justice, the conflicts of laws, and more particularly the levying of monies and troops in equitable proportions, had not been adjusted with perfect smoothness. The estates of the two provinces, assembled in congress at Delft, concluded, therefore, a new act of union, which was duly signed upon the 25th of April, 1576. Those estates, consisting of the knights and nobles ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand thus: but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise: ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... But I was disappointed in Joe Bacon; how young and shabby he looked! He wore a monkey jacket, probably a remnant of his sea-going father's wardrobe. He had done his best, however, for his hair was greased, and combed to a marble smoothness; its sleekness vexed me, not remembering at that moment the pains I had taken to dress my own hair, for a ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... a new interest. It was the first time since the new owner had come to the Double R that he had dropped the mask of sleek smoothness behind which he concealed his passions. Even now the significance was more in his voice than in his words, and Duncan began to comprehend that Langford was deeper than he ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... on the table before him. It can not be said that the orange goes into the child's mind by any one of its senses. By sight he gets only the colour and shape of the orange, by smell he gets only its odour, by taste its sweetness, and by touch its smoothness, rotundity, etc. Furthermore, by none of these senses does he find out the individuality of the orange, or distinguish it from other things which involve the same or similar sensations—say an apple. It is easy to see that after each of the senses has sent in its report something more ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... table-land, showing perfectly straight parallel strata of rock extending all along its face, but slightly undulated near the summit of the range. Otherwise its grassy slopes were quite undisturbed in their virgin smoothness. ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... eyes again languidly, and turned them on a monk sitting beside him,—a monk whose face was neither old nor young, but which presented a singular combination of both qualities. His high forehead, white as marble, had no furrows to mar its smoothness, and from under deep brows a pair of wondering wistful brown eyes peered like the eyes of a lost and starving child. The cheeks were gaunt and livid, the flesh hanging in loose hollows from the high and prominent ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... time the sun had disappeared, and all over the west the yellow sky came down evenly, like a gold curtain, on the still sea that seemed to have solidified into a slab of dark blue stone,—not a twinkle on its immobile surface. Across its dusky smoothness were two long smears of pale green, like ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... Mr. Lambert's "Family of Cats" is considered one of the finest cat pictures in the world. In this painting the mother sits upon a table watching the antics of her four frivolous kittens. There is a wonderful smoothness of touch and refinement of treatment that have never yet been excelled. "After the Banquet" is another excellent example of the same smoothness of execution, with fulness of action instead of repose. And yet there is an undeniable lack of the softer ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... have so long accustomed myself to speak our own tongue, that I cannot pronounce Greek with sufficient exactness; for our nation does not encourage those that learn the languages of many nations, and so adorn their discourses with the smoothness of their periods; because they look upon this sort of accomplishment as common, not only to all sorts of free-men, but to as many of the servants as please to learn them. But they give him the testimony of being a wise man who is fully acquainted with our laws, and is able ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... in its dips and convolutions, was altogether a puzzle. "How did she ever fix it like that?" Her low evening dress—"what was it made of—some white stuff, but was it silk or muslin or what?" Her shoulders were startling in their bare powdery smoothness—"how dare that young pup dance with her?" And her face, that had seemed so jolly and friendly, floated past the window as pale and illusive as a wisp of fog. His longing for her passed into clumsy awe. He remembered, without resentment, that once on a hilltop ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... the opportunity of working a violin from the beginning, straight off the stocks, without being drawn away to some other work. Consequent upon this your work has not so much distinctive character, much effort at mere smoothness being apparent and in excess of good style. These old Italians were designing and making new violins day after day for their livelihood. Repairing, when they could make equally good, fresh instruments, was to them ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... the spear is a sumpit or blow-pipe. This is a small wooden tube about eight feet long. The smoothness and straightness of the bore is remarkable. The hole is drilled with an iron rod, one end of which is chisel-pointed, through a log of hard wood, which is afterwards pared down and rounded till it is about an inch ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... earth, being such, all things that grow grow in a manner proportioned to its nature—trees, flowers, and fruits; and again, in like manner, its mountains and stones possess, in the same proportion, smoothness and transparency and more beautiful colors; of which the well-known stones here that are so highly prized are but fragments, such as sardin-stones, jaspers, and emeralds, and all of that kind. But there, there is ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... that one rectifies the mistakes of the eyes; one judges thus of smoothness and solidity. Let me kiss these two fair sources of life. I prefer them to the hundred breasts of Cybele, and I am not jealous ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... number, prepared to fell the first trees, other men, called "swampers," were busy cutting and clearing of roots narrow little trails down through the forest from the pine to the skidway at the edge of the logging road. The trails were perhaps three feet wide, and marvels of smoothness, although no attempt was made to level mere inequalities of the ground. They were called travoy roads (French "travois"). Down them the logs would be dragged and hauled, either by means of heavy steel tongs or a short sledge on which one end of ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... mind, and an equable and happy temper, retard their formation. Whatever tends to promote the general health and to increase the bulk of the body, and particularly the disposition of fat in the cellular tissues, also tends to remove them and to increase the smoothness and beauty of the skin. The free and frequent use of warm water and soap, followed by the daily use of mild, stimulating, cosmetic lotions or fomentations, or friction with warm oil of a like character, and cod-liver oil internally, is all that art ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... "Jeronimo" whose "hopes have end in their effects" "when blood and sorrow finish my desires," "these were spectacles to please my soul." In "Titus," even the Satanic Aaron, "in the whirlwind of passion," "acquires and begets a temperance" that "gives it smoothness." ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... playing, we see only a reflex of the players who went before him, saving as it was permeated by the warmth which went out from his own genial personality. His manipulation of the keys had the quietness and smoothness that were praised in Bach ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... low-lying parts of the plains on which they stand. Hence we may say that the Maria are only level in the sense that many districts in the English Midland counties are level, and not that their surface is absolutely flat. The same may be said as to their apparent smoothness, which, as is evident when they are viewed close to the terminator, is an expression needing qualification, for under these conditions they often appear to be covered with wrinkles, flexures, and little asperities, which, to be visible at ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... we see in his best works cannot always be imputed to negligence. However they may appear to superficial observers, painters know very well that a steady attention to the general effect takes up more time and is much more laborious to the mind than any mode of high finishing or smoothness without such attention. His handling, the manner of leaving the colours, or, in other words, the methods he used for producing the effect, had very much the appearance of the work of an artist who had never learnt from others the usual and ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... of promise case,' he said at last, in a low voice. 'I—I am threatened with a breach of promise case.' Here, in desperate quest of inspiration, he made a clutch at his beard; his fingers closed upon the unfamiliar smoothness of a shaven chin; and with that, hope and courage (if such expressions could ever have been appropriate in the case of Pitman) conjointly fled. He shook Michael roughly. 'Wake up!' he cried, with genuine irritation in his tones. 'I cannot do it, ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... should Hawkesworthify him. He did not object to being carefully edited, but he did not want to be decorated. He wrote excellent French narrative prose, and his work may be read with delight. Its qualities of clarity, picturesqueness and smoothness, are quite in accord with the fine traditions of the language. But, as it was likely that part of the history of his voyage might be published before his return, he did not want it to be handed over to anybody ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... should suggest gayety, light and beauty. The floor, of course, is the most important detail. A polished hardwood floor offers the most pleasing surface for dancing. If the wood seems sticky, paraffine wax adds a smoothness that actually tempts one ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... and questions shall be answered in their proper places; here I will but say that I scorn and detest lying, and quibbling, and double-tongued practice, and slyness, and cunning, and smoothness, and cant, and pretence, quite as much as any Protestants hate them; and I pray to be kept from the snare of them. But all this is just now by the bye; my present subject is my Accuser; what I insist upon here is this unmanly attempt of his, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... cheeks the rich blood mantled now and then like wine in a Venice glass; and her lips—the outline of the upper one just defined by a penciling of down, the lower one full and pouting—glistened with the brilliant smoothness of a pomegranate flower when the dew is clinging. Her eyes—the opium-eaters of Stamboul never dreamed of their peers among the bevies of hachis-houris. They were of the very darkest hazel; one moment sleeping lazily under their long lashes, like a river under ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... yet so far as Ester and her future—yes, and the future of every one about her was concerned, things were very different. Perhaps Sadie had a glimmering of some strange change as she eyed her sister curiously, and took note that there was a different light in her eye, and a sort of smoothness on the quiet face that she had never noticed before. In fact, Sadie missed some wrinkles which she had supposed were part and parcel ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... taste is gratified by the flavour of it: afterwards the appetites of hunger and of thirst afford pleasure by the possession of their objects, and by the subsequent digestion of the aliment; and, lastly, the sense of touch is delighted by the softness and smoothness of the milky fountain, the source ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... and the "old professor" did not get along well together. It was really surprising how well they did get along. Their dynamic interview of last June had at once been buried out of sight, and since then their days had flowed along with unbroken smoothness. If there had been times when the young man's thought recoiled from the compact and the intimacy, his manner never betrayed any sign of it. On the contrary, he found himself mysteriously answering the growing dependence of the old man with a growing sense of responsibility ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... and Henry was coughing diligently. The service was placed on the piano; Henry touched the cool smoothness of a cream-jug, and tried to crystallize ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... time to interrogate me, or to comment upon my situation, one entered the apartment, whose habit and mien tended to encourage me. The stranger was characterized by an aspect full of composure and benignity, a face in which the serious lines of age were blended with the ruddiness and smoothness of youth, and a garb that bespoke that religious profession with whose benevolent doctrines the example of Hadwin ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... see that nudity is not an incident, or accident, of sculpture, but its very essence and principle; and his jealousy of undressed images strikes the reader as a strange, vague, long-dormant heritage of his straight-laced Puritan ancestry. Whenever he talks of statues he makes a great point of the smoothness and whiteness of the marble—speaks of the surface of the marble as if it were half the beauty of the image; and when he discourses of pictures, one feels that the brightness or dinginess of the frame is an essential part of his impression of the work—as he ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... on which the car is mounted is of course another specialty, turned off in another manufactory. We leave the rooms where the work goes on with easy smoothness like a demonstration in a lecture-hall, and come to raging, roaring, deafening furnaces and hammers. The hollow-chested artists give way to cyclops. Here we are in the Lobdell Car-wheel Company's premises. Negligently leaning up against each other, like wafers in the tray of an ink-stand, are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... time business went on with a smoothness and a despatch such as had not been known since the days of the Tudors. During the session of 1724, for example, there was hardly a single division except on private bills. It is not impossible that, by taking the course which Pelham afterwards took, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... mowing had commenced at the time of my visit, and the farmers were employing irrigation and manure to bring on the second crop. By this means they are enabled to mow the same fields every five or six weeks. The process gives the whole region a smoothness, a mellow splendor of color, such as I never saw ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... of the western horizon, while the wind had dwindled away until it had become the faintest zephyr, scarcely to be distinguished save by the slight ruffling of the water here and there where it touched, it being so nearly a flat calm that already great oily-looking patches of gleaming smoothness had appeared and were spreading momentarily through the faint blue ripplings that still betrayed a movement in the air. As for me, I was utterly exhausted with my long day's toil under the roasting ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... qualifier we wish it understood that mind, like body, has its accidental or acquired qualities. Vice, virtue, folly, wisdom, malignity and benevolence are not essential to mind, but like the accidents of matter known as roughness or smoothness, softness, hardness, blackness, etc., are merely qualities or attributes of its conduct. Vice is vicious action and virtue is virtuous action. But action arises from will and will from thought. All ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various
... this room was divided, with the kitchen partitioned off from the rest. Most of the furnishings were the products of the colony and chiefly of the family's own workmanship. The floor was of hewn timber, rubbed and scrubbed to smoothness. A woolen rug or several of them, always of vivid hues, covered the greater part of it. There were the family dinner-table of hewn pine, chairs made of pine saplings with, seats of rushes or woven underbark, and often in the corner a couch that would serve as an extra bed at ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting, that bids nor sit nor stand, but go! Be our joys three parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... had completed his second locomotive, he began to direct his particular attention to the state of the Road; as he perceived that the extended use of the locomotive must necessarily depend in a great measure upon the perfection, solidity, continuity, and smoothness of the way along which the engine travelled. Even at that early period, he was in the habit of regarding the road and the locomotive as one machine, speaking of the rail and the wheel ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... the next minute listening with a deference graceful enough to turn even the seasoned head of a warrior to a grey-haired general describing the taking of the Vimy Ridge; and finally, Helena, holding a dancing class under the cedars on the yellow smoothness of the lawn, after tea, for such young men as panted to conquer the mysteries of "hesitation" or jazzing, and were ardently courting instruction in the desperate hope of capturing their teacher for ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shave off in a horizontal manner the first slice, leaving the round flat and smooth. The meat is disfigured if this smoothness is not preserved; it is therefore necessary that your knife be sharp and your hand steady. It must be ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... highly civilized life comes from its smoothness and regularity. To-day is like yesterday, and we think that we can predict to-morrow. Of course we cannot really do so. The chances are still there. But we have covered them up so deeply with the artificialities of life that we lose sight of them. It seems as if everything in our neat ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke |
