"Tantalizing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that one of the lady Dewbell's spider-web silk hose would some morning have been found without a garter, and she herself hanging like a beauteous exhalation among the elm-leaves in the morning sunshine. Oh, had Sir Timothy been there then, he would have found, instead of his imperious and tantalizing coquette, the tenderest and truest of disconsolate maidens, ready to melt into his arms between the delicious pause of a sigh and a kiss. "Naughty, cruel Sir Timothy! Horrid creature! to take all my nonsense for real earnest, and to go away and leave me to be persecuted ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... on several occasions, but he still persisted in that tantalizing silence. The inquiry into the death of the unidentified man in Rannoch Wood had been resumed, and a verdict returned of willful murder against some person unknown, while of the second crime the public had no knowledge, for the body was ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... fingers for the precious fragments of intellectual splendour; lingering with fascinated glance over the broken remnants and deep, mysterious gulfs of a crumbling and devastated civilization. And then, impatient of their intoxicating and tantalizing search, suddenly grown desperate, they clutched and stored away everything, and returned home tattered, soiled, bedecked with gold and with tinsel, laden with an immense uncouth burden of jewels, and broken wealth, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... tantalizing over me as usual, I suddenly drew my one hand out of my irons, flew at him and struck him in the face, knocked out two or three of his teeth, and bruised his mouth very much. He cried out that the prisoner had got loose, but ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... in his marriage; the plunge into roaring London; the theatrical surroundings; the great encompassing drama of Elizabeth's England; the slow winning of a competence; the quiet years at the end, a burgess of Stratford town. There is a rich, tantalizing disclosure of a phase of the inner life in the Sonnets; what they seem to convey is a passion delicate and profound, striving to sublimate and satisfy itself, but baffled by unworthiness in the object, and perhaps by some unworthiness ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... more discontented than when he went. His speculation hung fire in a most tantalizing way; more than that, it had absorbed nearly all the "income not earned by toil," which was at the hazard of operations he could neither control nor comprehend. And besides, this little fortune had come to seem contemptibly inadequate. In his associations of the past year ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... wild beasts, crossed the bridge now every year. An infuriated elephant lifted the side of the old Edgewood Tavern barn, and the wild laughter of the roistering rum-drinkers who were tantalizing the animals floated down to the river's edge. The roar of a lion, tearing and chewing the arm of one of the bystanders, and the cheers of the throng when a plucky captain of the local militia thrust a stake down the beast's throat,—these sounds displaced ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... indeed, of young Sheridan was peculiarly tantalizing. Born and brought up in the midst of those bright hopes, which so long encircled his father's path, he saw them all die away as he became old enough to profit by them, leaving difficulty and disappointment, his only inheritance, behind. Unprovided with any profession by which he ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... little heart!" murmured Miss Kitty. For as his feet were tucked under him, she did not know that he had just put his shoes and stockings into the pig-tub, into which he all but fell himself from the exertion. He did not hear Miss Kitty, and thought on. He wanted to be out again, and he had a tantalizing remembrance of the ease with which the tender juicy stalks of the tulips went snap, snap, in that new place of amusement he had discovered. Thomasina looked into the kitchen and went away again. When she had gone, John ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... instead, on the lip, not a hard blow, but a tantalizing one. As the men drew back at the call of time a blotch of red was seen on Bert's lower lip. When he came back for the third round, that lip ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... Mother Mayberry and the Doctor on the end of the pew, and out of the corner of her eye she essayed a view of his magnificence, but caught him in the act of making the same pass in her direction. They both blushed, and her smile was wickedly tantalizing, though she kept her eyes fixed on the Deacon's face as he began to read the words of the service in his sweet old voice, with its note of tender affection for the pair of friends for whom he read them. And she never knew why she ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... reader—for well, indeed, has thy patience been tried, during the progress of this tantalizing narrative—we beg to assure thee, that unless thou art so exquisitely tender-hearted as to mourn over the fate of Bartle Flanagan, the shadows which darkened the morning and noon of our story have departed, and its eye will be dewy, and ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... noticed, Mr Holiday,' asked Vera, as if very friendly, 'how awfully tantalizing these flowers are? They won't open ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... initial piece of luck. Fortune, either regretting her previous treatment or tantalizing him in feminine fashion with the expectation of greater favours to come, threw him at the very outset of his inquiries against the red-headed luggage porter who had spoken with Sisily on her arrival from Penzance. The porter, leaning against the white enamelled walls ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... departed for America. It was an adventure little short of desperate for a singer to emerge from a retirement of a score of years and measure her musical and dramatic accomplishments against those of a predecessor whose tantalizing disappearance from the stage had rendered her on so many grounds more than ever the object of ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... awful wait," she said wearily. "We came here soon after two o'clock, thinking we would get the children on board early for their afternoon sleep; now it's after four, and we have stood here ever since. It's too tantalizing with the ship looking at us, and the poor babies are so tired. Still, I'm not the worst off. Look at that ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... to speedy marriage. Words and smiles led straight to matrimony; association with young girls was only possible for the purpose of the formation of a new household; and these lusty youths, gay, abounding in vitality, suffered a tantalizing torment discussing the most beautiful girls of the island, admiring them, yet living apart from them, in spite of moving in narrow limits which forced them to continual meetings. Their dearest hope was to get leave of absence, so that they might live a few days in Majorca or on the Peninsula, ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... now why the earth is gross, tantalizing, wicked, it is for my sake, I take you specially to be mine, you terrible, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... promised, with a tantalizing little laugh, and a moment after was swept off into the dance by Archie, who had been seriously considering organizing a ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... very low in intermittent fever; fresh mules and good ones." Next on the 5th of March, at the Indian village of Axitzel, is written, "Detained here five days; Hammond, strong and headstrong. Agree with Huertis that, to be safe, we must wait with patience the return of the good Cura." Slight and tantalizing memoranda of this kind occur, irregularly, until April 3rd, when we find the party safely arrived at Quiche, and comfortably accommodated in a convent. The jovial Padre, already often mentioned, who maybe regarded as the unconscious father ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... the swamp boy, who doubtless understood the new spirit that was urging the other on, with his wounded game constantly tantalizing him. ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... to Krokleven was as tantalizing as it was perfect in sublimity of scenery; for, from several elevated places, we could observe our path creeping along over the mountains, and down the valleys, to the very cottage where we ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... skirt and started for the door. Just what the motto was no one but herself knew. Sprawling in paint-brush hieroglyphics on a great flapping sheet of brown wrapping-paper, the sentiment, whatever it was, had been nailed face down to the wall for three tantalizing years. ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... statue, and his face was as white. The attorney dropped his words slowly from lips that still wore the tantalizing smile. ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... to depend on a condition, viz., their obedience, and that this condition was not fulfilled. But, besides that the Divine Being must have foreseen this circumstance, and therefore must have known that he was only tantalizing Abraham with a promise which would never be accomplished; this disobedience, and the consequences of it are expressly mentioned by Moses, and the other Prophets, only as a temporary thing, and what was to be succeeded by an effectual repentance, and ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... of coffee drifted through the cabin door, and Rick wondered why it is that coffee, bacon, and other breakfast scents are so much more tantalizing on the water. ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... shrubs of heavy, delicious odor, are interlocked and interwoven. Oh that you could see it all! It is wonderful; no words could describe it, far less mine. Mr. Darwin says so truly that a visit to the tropics (and such tropics) is like a visit to a new planet. This new wonder-world, so enchanting, tantalizing, intoxicating, makes me despair, for I cannot make you see what I am seeing! Amidst all this wealth of nature and in this perennial summer heat I quite fail to realize that it is January, and that with you the withered plants are shriveling in the frost-bound ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... without too great a delay. He was pacing along the terrace which bounded the pension garden lakeward, and his eye wandered back and forth between the superscription of the envelope and the distant mountain-shore of Savoy, as it appeared through the tantalizing line of clipped acacias which bordered the roadway that ran ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... wind was rising all the time, our coldest wind at this time of the year, coming as it does over the Gulf ice. It was tantalizing, as I stood with next to nothing on, the wind going through me and every stitch soaked in ice-water, to see my well-stocked komatik some fifty yards away. It was still above water, with food, hot tea in a thermos bottle, dry clothing, matches, wood, ...
— Adrift on an Ice-Pan • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... sleepy, stumbling pages, the smell of the hall, the members with heads leaning on their desks, the sounds of the voices speaking, with unusual intonations—the general moral atmosphere also of the close of this important session—the strong hope that the war is approaching its close—the tantalizing dread lest the hope may be a false one—the grandeur of the hall itself, with its effect of vast shadows up toward the panels and spaces over the galleries—all made a ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... motion of its heavy trucked Pullmans, and a crooning, lullaby sound of its droning wheels, came to a jarring stop at one of the mountain stations, and Lieutenant Allison wakened with a start. The echo of the laugh that he had heard in his dream still sounded in his ears, a tantalizing, compelling note, elusive as the Pipes of Pan, luring as a will-o'-the-wisp. Above the bustle of departing and incoming passengers, the confusion of the station and the grinding of the wheels as the train started again that haunting peal of laughter still rang in his ears, ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... soul-subduing; heart-stirring, heart- swelling, heart-thrilling; agonizing &c (painful) 830; telling, sensational, hysterical; overpowering, overwhelming; more than flesh and blood can bear; yellow. piquant &c (pungent) 392; spicy, appetizing, provocative, provoquant^, tantalizing. eager to go, anxious to go, chafing at the bit. Adv. till one is black in the face. Phr. the heart beating high, the heart going pitapat, the heart leaping into one's mouth; the blood being up, the blood boiling ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... soared away into his own domain. It is true that, having read Peter Ibbetson, he tried for a week to emulate that favored dreamer, throwing his arms up, clasping his hands behind his head and being most particular in the crossing of the feet. He dreamed, but only discouraging, tantalizing dreams, and the figure his magic summoned up was not the angelic one, but invariably the elfish eyes and star-pointing nose of Dennis de Brian ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... on the Garland side of the party-wall began to have a very gloomy effect by the contrast. When, about half-past nine o'clock, one of these tantalizing bursts of gaiety had resounded for a longer time than usual, Anne said, 'I believe, mother, that you are wishing you ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... at the time of the wreck no spirits had been saved but the captain's stock of brandy. Francesco felt this to be a great hardship. More than any other sailor he felt the need of his usual stimulant. It was very tantalizing to him to see the captain partaking of his private stock of brandy while he was compelled ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... would suddenly appear in what seemed a solid wall, revealing the well-stored shelves. This closet was the Goodwife's special pride, but to Zeb it was a continuous mystery. At one moment there was the solid wall; the next, without touch of human hands, a door would fly open, giving a tantalizing glimpse of things to eat which he could never touch, for if he came near, the door would close again as mysteriously as it had opened. Dan loved to tease him with it, and Zeb, fearing magic, would take to his ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... he cheered their hearts. In truth, however, he was very indignant at Ovando's cool behavior. That he should have left them for months in danger and uncertainty, with a mere tantalizing message and a scanty present of food—all this naturally made the great leader indignant. He believed that Ovando hoped that he might perish on ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... composed herself, and said it was silly, but there was still a sob in her throat, and she was shy and constrained as she used to be with papa, in old times. She says she would not tell us Captain Martindale was going to Scotland, because of not tantalizing us with his passing so near, but I fear it is that she will not confess how often she is left alone. I am so glad we are come, now he is out of the way. She has asked us to stay while papa has to be in London, and ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and working her shoulders more comfortably into the cushion, Joan crossed one leg over the other and lighted another cigarette. "Go on," she said with a tantalizing smile. "I love to hear you talk. It's far more interesting than listening to Howard Cannon's dark prophecies about the day after to-morrow and his gloomy rumblings about the writing on the wall. You stand for the unemancipated married ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... the conduct of Ovando. He had left him for many months in a state of the utmost danger, and most distressing uncertainty, exposed to the hostilities of the natives, the seditions of his men, and the suggestions of his own despair. He had, at length, sent a mere tantalizing message, by a man known to be one of his bitterest enemies, with a present of food, which, from its scantiness, seemed intended ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... It was tantalizing enough. The longer they swam, the more the boys began to believe that the island they sought was retreating from before them. Hank was almost certain they were moving in a circle, but Halstead, with a keen sense of location, insisted that they were going straight, ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... crew frayed out in the heat. By night they slept amid tantalizing dreams of food; by day they sprawled in dreary silences under awnings which held heat like sweat boxes. The high metal walls of the dock caught the sun's rays and threw out a furnace heat. The men endured it in net undershirts clinging to dripping bodies; their eyes ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... mounted the wind flung shut the stable door with a bang. Juno leaped as from a gunshot, and dashed away up the river to the northwest. Her rider tried in vain to change her course and quiet her spirit. The mare only surged madly forward, as if bent on outrunning the tantalizing, grinding wind. With the sense of freedom, and with the boundlessness of the plains, some old instinct of the unbridled days of by-gone generations woke to life and power in her, and with the bit between her teeth, she swept ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... octopus crouched, staring upward with motionless orbs, and gathering himself together. Then he sprang straight up, like a leaping spider. He fixed two tentacles upon the tantalizing prey; then the other tentacles straightened out, and with a sharp jet of water from his propulsion tube he essayed to dart back to ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... proficient in both languages; indeed, L'Estrange delighted in calling her a bas-bleu in a vain attempt to tease her), its tall, brass-handled secretary with its secret drawer, which Dorris called so tantalizing, because she had no secret to hide in its depths, and the eight-day clock ticking away in the corner, which now struck the hour, waking Dorris from her revery ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... not over," replied a civilian who had joined the party, with equal emphasis. "As a matter of fact, they are worse than ever. More tantalizing. What he says means that we have a tremendous power source, but it is in one spot. How are you going to transmit the power? We can't possibly move any power anywhere near that amount. We couldn't touch it to our lines without ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... entered what seemed a cul de sac; it looked like charging a black wall, except where a gleam of grey light suggested the further end of the Box Tunnel, and cheered our poor hearts for a short minute, whilst in the distance we heard the tantalizing song of the wild waves. The boughs on both sides brushed the boat; we held our hands before our faces to avoid the sharp stubs threatening ugly stabs, and to fend off the low branches, ready to sweep us and our belongings into the deep swirling water. The shades ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... holes in those piles of goods. Warehouses blazed. By nightfall for a mile upriver and down they faced a solid sheet of fire, and they smelled the tantalizing odor of burning bacon, coffee, sugar, and saw blue rivers of blazing ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... me, Nat. Leslie likes you just as well as she ever did." Joan broke forth with some impatience. "She runs around with Lola and Bess Walbert, I know, and makes a fuss over them. She is perfectly aware that it makes you sore. She does it to be tantalizing. Les likes to keep something going all the time. It is a wonder to me that she hasn't been expelled from college for some of the tricks she has put over. What you must do is to pay no attention to her when she is aggravating. Don't quarrel with her. She enjoys that. Simply behave as though ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... familiar scenes of his native Scotland, and under the olive-tree of Palestine. Prayer and meditation on the word were never forgotten; and a peace that the world could not give kept his heart and mind. When we were detained a day at Gaza, in very tantalizing circumstances, his remark was, "Jehovah Jireh; we are at that mount again." It was sweet at any time to be with him, for both nature and grace in him drew the very heart; but there were moments of enjoyment ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... was the first time she had ever called him Tom. As she spoke she looked distractingly pretty and tantalizing. But if she had calculated to floor Carmichael with the initial, half-promising, wholly mocking use of his name she had reckoned without cause. The cowboy received that greeting as if he had heard her use it a thousand ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... hand the presents to the children. In the pleasure of doing this, I did not stop to look at my own gifts; but when I was ready for them, my impatience for the real Christmas to begin almost got beyond control. I knew the gifts I already had were not those of which friends had thrown out such tantalizing hints, and my teacher said the presents I was to have would be even nicer than these. I was persuaded, however, to content myself with the gifts from the tree and ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... only provokingly laughed at her. A modern Christian woman of society would have left him. But perhaps in Pagan Athens she could not have got a divorce. It is only in these enlightened and progressive times that women desert their husbands when they are tantalizing, or when they do not properly support the family, or spend their time at the clubs or in society,—into which it would seem that Socrates was received, even the best, barefooted and dirty as he was, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... times, was of the spirited prancing order, but otherwise he was a lamb. Daylight, with doubled quirt ready in his right hand, ached for a whirl, just one whirl, which Bob, with an excellence of conduct that was tantalizing, refused to perform. But no Dede did Daylight encounter. He vainly circled about among the hill roads and in the afternoon took the steep grade over the divide of the second range and dropped into Maraga Valley. Just after passing the foot of the ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... a bowl of thick, sweetish soup, darkly red; placed before us a dish piled high with little circular cakes, crisp and brown, which had a tantalizing fragrance; poured for each of us a transparent crystal goblet ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... gloom, herself, meanwhile, all glorified with a ray of sunshine, that was attracted thitherward as by a certain sympathy. In the brook beneath stood another child—another and the same—with likewise its ray of golden light. Hester felt herself, in some indistinct and tantalizing manner, estranged from Pearl, as if the child, in her lonely ramble through the forest, had strayed out of the sphere in which she and her mother dwelt together, and was now vainly seeking to ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Hippe's house cautiously, and directed their steps towards Mr. Pippel's bird-shop. Golosh Street was asleep. Nothing was stirring in that tenebrous slum, save a dog that savagely gnawed a bone which lay on a dust-heap, tantalizing him with the flavor of food without its substance. As the gypsies moved stealthily along in the darkness, they had a sinister and murderous air that would not have failed to attract the attention of the policeman of the quarter, if that worthy had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... noise of construction the boy caught the silent brooding of the forest and, poured round all, the liquid glory of the sunset. Suddenly he saw the whole great picture as his own work, and it was a picture as elusive, as tantalizing, as a boy's first dreams of pirate adventure. Jim had come ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... were among their lodges, I was willing to pay well for its redemption. The old squaws, eying me distrustfully, averred I had come to steal one of their naked brats, who swarmed on my tracks with as tantalizing persistence as the vicious dogs. The jealous mothers would not hear of my searching the tents. Then I was compelled to make friends with the bevies of young squaws, who ogle newcomers to the Indian camps. Presently, I gained the run of all the lodges. Indeed, I needed not a little diplomacy to ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... kept him in fancied touch with his wife all these many deluding years. Without them he was like a drunkard deprived of his habitual stimulant. The craving to connect and hold them—for they came to him sometimes in tantalizing freaks of memory, and slipped away again like beads rolling off a broken thread—was almost the only form of mental suffering he was now conscious of. What had become of the message itself? Had they left it exposed to every heartless desecration ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... the capture of Paris. All this while Mr. Adams at St. Petersburg witnessed first the alarm and then the exultation of the court and the people as the rumors now of defeat, anon of victory, were brought by the couriers at tantalizing intervals; and he saw the rejoicings and illuminations which rendered the Russian capital so brilliant and glorious during the last portion of his residence. It was an experience well worth having, and which is pleasantly depicted ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... are good for nothing to sisters after they are married—worse! they are tantalizing. You are obliged to see what you used to have in somebody else's possession—and much more than ever you used to have; and it's tiresome. I'm glad I've no brothers. Basil is a good deal like a brother, and I ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... impatiently for inspection. Their compound is a series of roofless walled enclosures, and a visitor notes with grateful appreciation the strength of the chains anchoring the beasts to mother earth. A leviathan is straining at his tether in a mad effort to reach a vagabond who is tantalizing him with a pike, and your guide—one of the official messengers with sword and shield—says: "He no like Hindu people; last week he kill two." Beasts as docile as kittens take nuts from your hand, and evince disappointment when more are not forthcoming. Five magnificent ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... parentage, or education. A wild young man he was, and rather changeable; for sometimes he would have made sonnets to my eyebrows, if he had had the gift of verse; sometimes he would have stabbed me to the heart, if he had had a dagger; sometimes I was his adorable Lucy Ashton; then his tantalizing Miss Poggs; then his hated Betsy; whereas, all the time, I was nothing but the selfsame anonymous but fascinating creature, who under all these names, and in spite of all these variations in his humour, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... a tantalizing problem that confronted us. As long as we were vigilant, they could not escape; and as long as they were careful, we would be unable to catch them. Charley cudgelled his brains continually, but for once his imagination failed him. It was a ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... tantalizing to pass so near this famous burning mountain without having an opportunity of ascending it; but the expedition would have taken up too much time. In appearance Hecla differs very little from the innumerable other volcanic ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... know any more than the law allows. Besides, they are members. Didn't they vote for you? Didn't they know beans?" continued Pelham, in the most tantalizing ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... been tantalizing his business manager, or maybe he really was doubtful about the flexibility of the bar. At any rate, when he applied pressure he did not seem surprised when the glass became straight again. Then he proceeded actually to tie a knot in it, so bendable ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... had taken note of his features, but only to feel more deeply how little can be told in that way. Her inability to decide what impression he should have made on her was tantalizing—the aching question still remained. The face is but a likeness; you should know the original. And yet his countenance, so strongly painted on her mind, seemed always on the point of answering her profoundest query. It was as if she knew him. She now contemplated her mental image more deeply, ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... showed himself at the window, where the Sioux were sure to see him, and uttered a tantalizing shout. ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
... pleasure houses of the upper town. Here strange vices were also merchandise, but not such exotics as Wass provided. This was strictly for crewmen of the star freighters who could be speedily and expertly separated from a voyage's pay in an evening. The tantalizing scents of Wass' terraces were reduced here to simply smells, the majority of ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... it with youthful relish. For the first time in her life she was at peace with herself. She was not at peace when Clavering made love to her, far from it; but she enjoyed with all the zest of a woman with her first lover, and something of the timidity, this tantalizing preliminary to fruition. How could she ever have believed that her mind was old? She turned her imagination away from that lodge in the Dolomites, and believed it was because the present with its happiness and ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... cold, gray dawn came nosing over the house-tops, and the poor fellow's mind had reached the point where the slam of a window or the ripping creak of a floorboard would have shattered his brittle nerves into a thousand cursing tortures—then that teasing, tantalizing little friend of all rheumatic invalids—the Morning Nap—came swooping down upon him like a sponge and wiped out of his face every single bit of the sharp, precious evidence of pain which he had been accumulating so laboriously all night long to present to the Doctor as an incontestable ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... had seemed to her that they were making no way at all, and this was the more tantalizing because no one with the ghost of a literary temperament could doubt but that they had materials for one of the greatest biographies that has ever been written. Shelves and boxes bulged with the ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... brass cannon roared, and splinters flew from the boat; but its occupant, with tantalizing bravado, rose and waved his hand defiantly. The six-pounder then sent out a percussion shell, and just as the frail boat was entering the fog it was blown into a thousand fragments. Some of the observers swore positively that they saw the Malay floundering ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... Jean's eyes began to irritate him; the fearless, taunting gleam of his teeth, his audacious confidence, put him on edge. Twice again he struck out swiftly, but Jean had come and gone like a dart. His lithe body, fifty pounds lighter than Howland's, seemed to be that of a boy dodging him in some tantalizing sport. The Frenchman made no effort at attack; his were the tactics of the wolf at the heels of the bull moose, of the lynx before the prongs of ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... all," returned Elizabeth, "depends upon whether we submit to men or to God." If any other lips had spoken the Divine name, Edmonson would have sneered openly. As it was, he lay silent, looking out at the speaker through half-veiled eyes. This tantalizing woman always turned his words into impersonalities. Her power had roused his will to its utmost to make her feel his own. How far had he succeeded, that she would condescend to stay with him when there was no one else to ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... being disposed of Prescott told his chums of the visit during the night, and of his own share and Dave's in trying to nab the tantalizing prowler. ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... hungry, Emilia!" She smiled and sniffed the air with mock ardor. "Emilia, did n't you smell that tantalizing odor of hot biscuits in the cabin? I ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... early, and they could have a comfortable chat together here! Would she sing the "Ham-fat Man" for him? Would the dimples come back if she did? Should he ever know more of this quaint repressed side of her nature? After all, what a dear, graceful, tantalizing, lovable creature she was! Ought he not at all hazards try to know her better? Might it not be here that he would find a perfect realization of his boyish dreams, and in HER all that—what nonsense ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... world came Marcia's sweet voice, its very sweetness reminding him of that other lost voice, whose tantalizing music floated about his imagination like a string of phantom silver bells that all but sounded ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... into the light, please, you lovely, tantalizing witch," he answered, drawing the papers from the envelope and handing them to her. "If I didn't love you to distraction, I wouldn't stand this sort of thing a minute longer. God!" he cried, glancing heavenward, "you'll be ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... disobey his father, he inherited a fond and jealous nature; and his beautiful wife chafed it. Young Repentigny saw that she was like a Parisian. But Louizon felt that she was a spirit too fine and tantalizing for him to grasp, and she ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... it was in the leather purse in his breast pocket, and there was a little tantalizing delay in its opening. But when the lid was lifted, Christina saw a hoard of golden sovereigns, and a large roll of Bank of England bills. Without a word Andrew added the money in his pocket to this treasured store, and in an equal silence the flooring and drawers ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... hat. She sat leaning against the crisp trunk of a silver birch. Her hands were in her lap. Her dress was crumpled up, displaying her crossed feet and the tantalizing line of her slim ankles. Against the copper green of the tree trunk the mass of her hair was pressed, gold upon the shadow of gold. Her moist lips were half open. Her eyes ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... to seventy-four pages more. Such brevity, on such a subject, is unseasonable, and almost culpable. On such a subject as the Philosophy of Protestantism—'satius erat silere, quam parcius, dicere.' Better were absolute silence, more respectful as regards the theme, less tantalizing as regards the reader, than a style of discussion ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... he had pieced together a few sketchy fragments of Miss Terroll's biography, just enough to make the wish for fuller knowledge tantalizing. That was her maiden name, also used as a stage name, but she had been married when just out of Wellesley. She spoke little of that episode. Her girlhood was a pleasanter theme and its environment had been that of his own world—full of the gaiety and sunshine that is girlhood's inalienable ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... letters and his frequent visits, listened to his rapturous love-making—trembling, blushing, letting him see that she was under the spell, that she loved him. Indeed she could not have helped his seeing it had she wished; but when he spoke of marriage she hesitated—tantalizing him to the point of ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... Pahusca came into our school we had a new interest and for a time we forgot that tantalizing river wall below town. Jean was irregular in his attendance and his temper. He learned quickly, for an Indian. Sometimes he was morose and silent; sometimes he was affable and kind, chatting among us like one of our own; and sometimes ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... many things you might say truthfully," agreed Harry in a tantalizing tone. "Of course ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... by a strong south-easterly wind was rolling so high on the strip of beach behind which the village stood that we could not get off on board the State of Texas, nor even communicate with her. It was extremely tantalizing to us, tired, hungry, and camp-soiled as we were, to see the lights of our steamer only a quarter of a mile away, to know that almost within reach were a cool bath, a good supper, a clean bed, and all ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... definite purpose, which was the controlling interest in making it, renders the information which it gives us upon all the subjects in which we are now most interested fragmentary and extremely tantalizing, and forces us to use it with great caution. It remains, however, even with this qualification, a most interesting collection of facts, unique in all the Middle Ages, and a monument to the practical genius of the monarch ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... he had safely caught his tantalizing rainbow trout, which had not a chance even to wriggle. There was 2884 without an excuse in the shape of another customer, and there was Tobias, with whom, on the strength of the alleged "invention," Mr. Jim Logan had ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... fully aware of the fact that all Mr. Dunster's actions and words were carefully and thoughtfully pre- arranged to further the great unspoken desire of his life—that of being made a partner where he now was only a servant. Mr. Wilkins took a malicious pleasure in tantalizing Mr. Dunster by such speeches as the one I have just mentioned, which always seemed like an opening to the desired end, but still for a long time never led any further. Yet all the while that end was becoming more and more certain, and at last ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Tantalizing as temptation, Mary stood just beyond his reach. Her eyes were full of compliments, her body was bent, and, the folds of her gown held back, she swayed a little, in the attitude of one cajoling a tiger. She was quite at ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... Saturday, was due the debt of three hundred thalers to his scoffing and tantalizing money lender. Three o'clock came, and still there was but six shillings eight pence in the till. Where was his money to come from? But Loest sat still, and "possessed his soul in patience" for he ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... early air with its absence of city smoke went to his head like wine and set his pulses a-throb with a very joy of living, and five hours, three hundred glorious minutes, if the excursion were stretched a bit past breakfast time, of enchanting, tantalizing sport lay before him. ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... Captain Parry saw it across thirty miles of ice and water in 1819. Perhaps she was still in that same bay: these old friends wintering there, while the "Resolute" and "Intrepid" were lying under Dealy Island, and only one hundred and seventy miles between. It must have been tantalizing to all parties to wait the winter through, and not even get a message across. But until winter made it too cold and dark to travel, the ice in the strait was so broken up that it was impossible ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... and Spanish tried to take Charleston in 1706, but were repulsed with great loss, consisting principally of time which they might have employed in raising frogs' legs and tantalizing a bull at so much ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... minister had dressed it again. He believed he could get up and walk if he liked, but he did not mean to. He meant to stay here a few days and conquer this young beauty. It was likely only her way of vamping a man, anyway, and a mighty tantalizing one at that. Well, he would show her! And he would show Billy, too, whoever Billy was! A girl like that! Why,—A girl like that with a face like that would grace any gathering, any home! He had the fineness of taste to realize that after he got done ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... ever-receding tail of the newest addition to the family, a half-starved cur who had followed Jimmie in from the street, and had been fed into a semblance of reality. From this treasure a bare, round tail hung out behind in tantalizing fashion; Jimmie Junior, always imagining he could catch it, was toddling round and round and round the kitchen-table, clutching out in front of him, laughing so that after a while he sat ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... It was certainly a tantalizing state of affairs, though, in fact, this last one did but mean, "only he must be neglecting his affairs while he stops here." Lucia merely broke off because she felt as if Lady Dighton might think the words ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... pity that any thing so delightful should be so indefinite and perplexing, and indeed impossible, which rendered it still more desirable! If Lord Carisbrooke only could have remembered its name, or a single step in its figure—it was so tantalizing! ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli |
