"Touch on" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... statement as to authorship was made on the authority of Robert Chambers.), a Free Kirk minister, and dabbler in Natural History. I should be very glad to see any good American reviews, as they are all more or less useful. You say that you shall touch on other reviews. Huxley told me some time ago that after a time he would write a review on all the reviews, whether he will I know not. If you allude to the 'Edinburgh,' pray notice SOME of the points which I will point out on a separate slip. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... been before. She had, of course, flirted with him in a very innocent way, if her methods had been a little cruder than Blanche's would have under the same circumstances. The repartee had been simple and the caresses nothing more than a slight touch on waist or arm, repulsed by her with more alarm than prudery. Phoebe was fonder far of Ishmael than of Archelaus; she told herself that she admired Ishmael more—he was so much the gentleman.... What she did not know was that a rebel ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... on the bosom as it ceased to breathe. A kindly touch on his shoulder brought him to a knowledge ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... mountain-side; and on the very spot (I must observe that I am here quoting its owner) where was the camp in which Marius lay with his legions until the time was ripe for him to strike the blow that secured Southern Gaul to Rome. This matter of Marius is a ticklish subject to touch on with the Vidame: since the fact must be admitted that other antiquaries are not less firm in their convictions, nor less hot in presenting them, that the camp of the Roman general was variously elsewhere—and all of them, I regret to add, display ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... interview with Mrs. Brown-Smith herself? I assure you that you can trust her, and I happen to know that her view of the man about whom we are talking is exactly your own. More I could say as to her reasons and motives, but we entirely decline to touch on the past or to offer any opinion about the characters of our patients—the persons about whose engagements we are consulted. He might have murdered his grandmother or robbed a church, but my ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... shame and self-contempt subsided, were forgotten. He heard the wind sough in the Luxembourg trees, he smelled the pink flowering chestnuts, a soft voice was in his ear, a soft touch on his arm, her breath on his cheek, the old, old faces came crowding up. Clifford's laugh rang faintly, Braith's grave voice; odd bits and ends of song floated out from the shadows of that past and through the troubled ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... said, he felt easier. It had merely been the awkwardness of having to touch on the thing that had troubled him. That his news might be a blow to McEachern did not cross his mind. He was a singularly modest youth, and, though he realized vaguely that his title had a certain value in some ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... was right. He might have been happy enough to pass his days thus if life were unchanging; if Septimus Marvin should never age and never die; if Miriam should be always there, with her light touch on the deeper thoughts, her half-French way of understanding the unspoken, with her steady friendship which might change, some day, into something else. This was, of course, inconsistent. Love itself is the most inconsistent of all human dreams; for ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... loose in front of us. The earth shivers as if a volcano is beneath our feet. The pock-marked ridges in the distance are covered with the advancing waves of field-grey forms. Our boys are going up happily shouting and singing to the battle. Sorry, I didn't quite catch what you said about being in touch on the right. The brazen roar of the cannon is mingled with the intermittent rattle of innumerable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... extraordinary in that; the strangeness of the matter consisted in the fact that they were all hard at work, apparently in concert with another troop of their brethren down below who seemed to be rushing to and fro between the rock and an adjacent clump of thorn bush. A touch on the bridle brought Prince to a halt, and I then produced my telescope and brought it to bear upon the busy party, when I perceived, to my amazement, that the gang of monkeys who were rushing to and fro between the clump of bush and the boulder were engaged in collecting and dragging ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... when his heart stopped beating at an ineffable touch on his sleeve. For, with a sharp cry, she sprang to him; and then, once more, among the lilac bushes where he had caught the white kitten, his hand was seized and held between two small palms, and the eyes of Miss Betty Carewe looked into the very soul ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... possible to touch on any subject, that will not suggest an allusion to some corruption in governments. The simile of "fortifications," unfortunately involves with it a circumstance, which is directly in point with the matter above ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... the orator will be able to escape this suspicion, and will not cause such weariness. Wherefore it will be desirable to act in the way which most people adopt, on account of its easiness; that is, to touch on each topic separately, and in that manner briefly to run over all sorts of argumentation; and also (which is, however, more difficult) to recount what portions of the subject you previously mentioned in the ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... brisk, decisive ring at the door. He continued working. After an interval the bell rang again, briefly, as though the light touch on the electric button had lost ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... sooner done than I strolled forth into the streets with some design of viewing the cathedral; and the little man was silently at my heels. A few doors from the inn, in a dark place of the street, I was aware of a touch on my arm, turned suddenly, and found him looking up at me ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cry of rage that might have come from some animal which saw its prey escaping, struck out at him with the heavy stick. The blow missed Pratt's head, but it grazed the tip of his ear, and fell slantingly on his left shoulder. And then the anger that had been boiling in Pratt ever since the touch on his arm in the dark lane, burst out in activity, and he turned on his assailant, gripped him by the throat before Parrawhite could move, and after choking and shaking him until his teeth rattled and his breath came in jerking sobs, flung him violently against the masses of stone by which ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... silent. Then, drawing her closer, I touched her lips with mine. But who was ever satisfied with that one touch on the lips for which the heart has craved? It was like contact with a strange, celestial fire that instantly kindled my love to madness. Again and yet again I kissed her; I pressed her lips till they were dry and burned like fire, then kissed cheek, forehead, hair, and, casting my arms about her ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... roared as soon as he had closed the door. Without lights the sand car churned a path through the city and out into the desert. Though the speed picked up, the driver still drove in the dark, feeling his way with a light touch on the controls. The ground rose, and when they reached the top of a mesa he killed the engine. Neither the driver nor Brion had spoken ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... by a touch on my arm. I sat bolt upright in an instant. Runnles was leaning over me, with his finger at his lips. The other men were already awake, and seeing, I suppose, a look of inquiry on ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... impressive as the type of venerable age, was putting Aunt Clara's foot into a soft shoe as carefully as though it was the last time it could be dressed. She 74, neat and velvet-faced, was stone blind, and so paralyzed that the slightest touch on the arm or hand made her spring and cry like a child. The shock put out both her eyes, and made her as helpless as an infant ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... "gullwing" curve. Raise a few feet of that all but invisible plate three-eighths of an inch and she will yaw five miles to port or starboard ere she is under control again. Give her full helm and she returns on her track like a whip-lash. Cant the whole forward—a touch on the wheel will suffice—and she sweeps at your good direction up or down. Open the complete circle and she presents to the air a mushroom-head that will bring her up all ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... does not alter the case. The fire very often burns up through the centre, and frequently, when the space between the windows is large, along the front or back wall, till it arrives at the roof, which the water cannot touch on account of the slates or tiles. On the other hand, when the firemen enter the house, the fire is almost wholly under their command. And when it happens that there is any corner which the water cannot directly strike, the fire in it may often be extinguished by throwing the ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... extracted still more short stalks and rubbish till the finished strick came clean and shining as a lock of woman's hair. From the hanks of long tow he seemed to bring out the tresses like magic. In his swift hand each strick flashed out from the rough hank with great rapidity, and every crafty, final touch on the teeth made it brighter. Giving a last flick or two over the small pins, Mr. Baggs set down his strick and soon a pile of these shining locks grew beside him, while the exhaust sucked away the rubbish and fragments, and the mass ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... touch on the money-question last, with any other fellow than you; but you always know that money's the hinge, and nothing else lifts a man out of a scrape. It costs a stiff pull on your banker, and that reminds me, you couldn't go to Sir Billy for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... People had ceased to be afraid of Irene. She was now like an ordinary child. It was quite true that those who watched her narrowly still saw that wild glance in her eyes, which could be easily excited; but then, Rosamund was near to subdue if the moment came, and little Agnes's affectionate touch on her arm had always the power to ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... a little bow of comprehension. "When Mr. Edestone calls on me tomorrow," he said, "I shall not even touch on the question of the purchasing of this alleged invention, but shall offer to facilitate in every way his mission as peacemaker. I shall take him at his word that he does not intend to sell to any ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... half-breed nothing was seen, and we were already more than one hundred and eighty miles Tsalal Island. At every point of the compass was the sea, nothing but the vast sea with its desert horizon which the sun's disk had been nearing since the 21st and would touch on the 21st March, prior to during the six months of the austral night. Honestly, was it possible to admit that William Guy and his five panions could have accomplished such a distance on a craft, and was there one chance in a hundred that the could ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... Raven, watching her, felt a clutch at his throat. Surely there was nothing in the known world of plastic action so wonderful as these movements of mothers' hands in their work of easing a child. With a last quick touch on the rug, drawing it slightly away from the baby cheek, she returned to her chair, and Raven again took his. He was afraid lest she repent her open-mindedness toward him and talk no more. But she was looking at him earnestly. It was evidently a part of her precautionary foresight that he ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... all-wise Providence." She assisted me in understanding this by touching her middle finger. "Philip and I owe a duty to each other, and accept a responsibility under those circumstances—the responsibility of getting married." A touch on her third finger, and an indulgent bow, announced that the lesson was ended. "I am not a clever man like you," she modestly acknowledged, "but I ask you to help us, when you next see my father, with some confidence. You ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... train to Juliaca, rising to 15,000 feet; thence two days to Cuzco, the celebrated southern capital of the Incas, whose history I will not here touch on. Not only are there abandoned Inca remains, but also in high Peru and Bolivia remains of structures erected, as it is now supposed, 5000 years ago. The pottery recently found would suggest this, it being as gracefully moulded and ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... aged, world-weary poet; artificial light was withdrawn, and the moonlight streamed through the window upon his noble figure. Wife and son, doctors and nurses, were silent around him. And as Death put the last cold touch on the once passionate heart, it found him still clasping the book of the mighty magician. * Let it be also noted that no Christian priest was at his bedside. He needed not the mum-lings of a smaller soul to aid him in his last extremity. Hope he may have had, but no fear. His ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... this plant betrays it. In a thick tuft, where the leaves disappear, I thrust in my hand, and the bite of the thorns betrays the topmost stem. In the open again, and when I hesitate if it be clover, a touch on the leaves, and its fine sense and retractile action betrays its identity at once. Yet it has one gift incomparable. Rome had virtue and knowledge; Rome perished. The sensitive plant has indigestible seeds - so they say - and it will flourish for ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... War Departments; but, as we shall see, Dundas strongly objected to the creation of a Secretary of State for War, because his duties would overlap those of the other Departments, and important decisions must be formed by the Cabinet as a whole.[209] I shall touch on this question more fully in Chapter XII, but mention it here as a sign of the mental cloudiness which led British Ministers for the first eighteen months of the war to plod along with the most haphazard arrangements known even to that age. The contrast ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... into a sheen of gold. It drops its yellow light upon a bed of ferns until each separate frond stands out like a willow plume nodding up and down in the mellow gleam. A flowering dogwood bathed in its ethereal light shimmers like a bridal veil adorning a wood nymph. It lays its gentle touch on the waterfall, transforming it into a torrent of molten silver, and causing each drop to glisten like topaz ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... Gradually, the results of the step she had taken obtruded themselves before her, and with a keen pang of pain and grief came the thought, "What will Dr. Hartwell think of me?" All his kindness during the time she had passed beneath his roof—his genial tones; his soft, caressing touch on her head; his rare, but gentle smile; his constant care for her comfort and happiness—all rushed like lightning over her mind, and made the hot tears gush over her face. Mrs. Chilton would, of course, offer him some plausible solution of her sudden departure. ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... disappeared as snow does before the heat of the sun, for her whole nature being of intense love, its heat melted all prejudices before it. All of you are familiar with the grand work in her own State. I need not touch on her work in other States, for you all know it so well. I am glad to state that California which has always been so proud of her material resources is now far prouder of the fact that on its soil was born ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... tender touch on my hair, Their mute caress, and their clinging hold; Oh for the past that was green and fair, With a cloudless sky, ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of the good man will not be excuse enough for the introduction of such a long preamble to a story for which only a few will in the least care. But the said preamble happening to touch on some interesting subjects, I thought it well to record it. As to the story itself, there are some remarks of Balzac in the introduction to one of his, that would well apply to the schoolmaster's. They are to the effect that some stories which ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... of thorns.' Neither is this altogether true for me. If sadness and sorrow tend to loosen us from life, they make the place of rest more desirable." The talk of Socrates in the Republic, and the fine phrases in Cicero's De Senectute, hardly touch on the great grief, apart from physical infirmities, of old age—its increasing solitariness. After sixty, a man may make disciples and converts, but few new friends, while the old ones die daily; the "familiar faces" ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... a warning touch on her foot as Pat went on talking rather eagerly about the sunsets that were sometimes to be seen, which interested his aunt, and turned the conversation from what the children had been ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... would have to leave his horses and their accoutrements here, he determined to make this a trading post, where the trappers and hunters, to be distributed about the country, might repair; and where the traders might touch on their way through the mountains to and from the establishment at the mouth of the Columbia. He informed the two Snake Indians of this determination, and engaged them to remain in that neighborhood and take care of the horses until the white men should return, ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... district continued to send him every two years from that time until his death. He did much excellent work in the House, and was conspicuous in more than one memorable scene; but here it is possible to touch on only a single point, where he came forward as the champion of a great principle, and fought a battle for the right which will always be remembered among the great deeds of American ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... Barnard, "let's put the finishing touch on this job while both of us are here to do it. What do you say? Shall we haul up ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Tower of David! O Star of the Sea! have you no comfort for my sore heart? Am I for ever to hope? Grant me at least despair!'—and so on she went, heedless of my presence. Her prayers grew wilder and wilder, till they seemed to me to touch on the borders of madness and blasphemy. Almost involuntarily, I spoke as if to ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... that they must keep silent. Up they went, and the airman quite enjoyed himself. He looped the loop and practiced all sorts of stunts to his own satisfaction with no interruption from his passengers until he felt a touch on his arm. "What is it?" he said impatiently. "I'm so sorry to trouble you," said a voice behind, "and I know I oughtn't to speak. I do apologize sincerely, but I can't help it. I thought perhaps you ought to ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... has been stung too suddenly, even by Oliver's light touch on something which he thought was a complete and mortuary secret, to be ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... hush which had suddenly succeeded to the noise of the village, Ethel again went to the door. She was greatly struck by the scene, and was looking wonderingly at it, when she felt a touch on her shoulder, and on looking round saw the Fawn gazing pityingly at her, and at the same time signing to her ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... the dusk, a whisper in darkness; perhaps in her bedroom the subtle intuition of another presence. And sometimes a touch on her arm, a breath on her cheek, delicate, exquisite—sometimes the haunting sweetness of some distant harmony, half heard, half divined. And now and then a form, usually unknown, almost always smiling and friendly, visible for a few moments—the space of ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... blame of over-medication must, I fear, rest with the profession, for yielding to the tendency to self-delusion, which seems inseparable from the practice of the art of healing. I need only touch on the common modes of misunderstanding or misapplying the evidence ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... your letter in which you touch on Slavery; I wish the same feelings had been apparent in your published discussion. But I will not write on this subject, I should perhaps annoy you, and most certainly myself. I have exhaled myself with a paragraph or two ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... conversational opening which elicited the fact that Henry represented this journal at Geneva. For himself, he was, it transpired, correspondent of the Daily Sale, a paper to which the British Bolshevist was politically opposed but temperamentally sympathetic; they had the same cosy, chatty touch on life. ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... play of semitones. Though they went straight to Titian for color, they never approached Venetian lucidity and glow. There was something vulgar in their imagination, prosaic in their feeling, leaden in their frigid touch on legend. Who wants those countless gods and goddesses of the Farnese Gallery, those beblubbered saints and colossal Sibyls of the Bolognese Pinacoteca, those chubby cherubs and buxom nymphs, those ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... himself had been the man to whom she owed her life. Yes, for him, Dick realized with poignant sympathy, the happening that night was terrible indeed: for her, as he guessed now at last, the torture must be something easily to overwhelm all her strength. His touch on her grew tender beyond the ordinary tenderness of love, made gentler by a great underlying compassion for ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... uncle agreed. We had got some way along the deck when I felt a touch on my shoulder, and turning round, saw Larry's countenance grinning ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... meekly. The pet sobriquet was in as familiar use among them as her real name, but her touch on the bell did not suggest the imperiousness of royalty. Aunt Rachel was an old family servant, faithful, fat, and important, and Aunt Rachel hated to be hurried. She said "it pestered her, an' made her spile the vittles." She answered ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... which by design did not touch on the smallpox scare, was received with respect, if not with enthusiasm. I ended it, however, with an eloquent peroration, wherein I begged the people of Dunchester to stand fast by those great principles of individual freedom, which for twenty years it had been ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... were more dangers with the club!" says he, and sheathed his rapier. As for me, espying the three-legged stool, I sat me down mighty dejected and full of bitter thoughts until, feeling a touch on my bowed shoulder, I looked up and found him ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... however, before answering these questions at large, perhaps once more necessary to touch on what may be called the historical-accuracy objection. If anybody says, "The man represents Charles I. as having been taken, after he had been sold by the Scotch, direct from Newcastle to London, tried at once, and executed ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... walked through the garden to send him on his way across the fields did Agnes touch on the offending article. They were standing on opposite sides of a sun-dial at the end of a fruit-walk; and both were recalling the earlier Sundays when Eric had asked with sympathetically lowered voice: "No news of Jack, ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... treatment. The upper intestine and the liver and kidneys may be relieved by a more or less abrupt modification of the diet, or even a starvation period, and the bowels will generally become cleaned; but frequent profuse purging with salines or some drastic cathartic puts the final touch on a cardiac failure. ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... on Mendelssohn that "he lived years where others only lived weeks," gives a faint idea of the fulness with which his time was occupied. It is only possible to touch on his activities in composition, for he was always at work. In May 1836 when he was twenty-seven, he conducted in Duesseldorf the first performance of his oratorio of "St. Paul." At this period he wrote many of those charming piano pieces which he called "Songs ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... him. Two soldiers precede and two follow him, with the sergeant in command. They cross the room to the wall opposite the door; but when Richard has just passed before the chair of state the sergeant stops him with a touch on the arm, and posts himself behind him, at his elbow. Judith stands timidly at the wall. The four soldiers place themselves in a ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... him the sound of running feet. In his fear and agony he could have shrieked, but from his parched throat there issued no sound. Friend or foe, for him it meant the same fate—one touch on that knob and a ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... ideals in literature—that as he survived the Restoration taste, so he survived the new classicism of the eighteenth and the romanticism of the early nineteenth century. It is also clear that a full record of the influence of Shakespeare on English-speaking readers would touch on almost all the varied changes of thought and conduct that have entered into the history of ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... past glories of Florence, or even touch on Cosmo's "immortal century;" I cannot speak of its galleries, so rich in painting, so unrivalled in statuary; nor can I enter its Pitti palace, with its hanging gardens; or the city churches, with their store of frescoes and paintings; or its Santa Croce, with ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... every part, a bright, glancing, various creature, equally compounded of simplicity and common sense. Her greatest charm was precisely what we call charm—a sweetly willing, pliant disposition, an air of gay seriousness, such as a child has, and a mood which could run swiftly, at the touch on some secret spring, from the ripple of laughter to the urgency of tears. She was very devout, but not at all in our way, who must set our God very far off if we are to consider His awful nature; she carried her gaiety with ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... away. A moment later Evelyn, standing in the aisle beside Charlotte, felt a touch on her arm. She looked up, and met Jeff's eyes smiling down ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... touch on some of it and must leave out much, but it is worth while noting that there has been very little overlapping in the work. The total percentage of overlapping was estimated by the War Charities Committee on their investigation ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... of lessee seem likely, sooner or later, to demand the attention of the National Mining Board. (I shall not touch on the question of distribution, inland and export. That is another ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... now like to touch on two facts—the fact that there is a particular and desperate need of a vision for the soul of the American people at this time, and the fact that the body to express the vision grows logically out of what already is and that this body is going to ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... in wretchedness were the cogitations that he did not hear the light, hesitant footstep. But he felt in every vein and fiber the appealing touch on his shoulder. ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the way he puts that last touch on too, and you could almost hear the sigh of relief as he fades down the aisle, leavin' me in one ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... wit of this piece, should find admirers among the public, and procure reputation for the author? Could not the Government, which has re-established, in a manner, the theatrical censorship, and forbids or alters plays which touch on politics, exert the same guardianship over public morals? The honest English reader, who has a faith in his clergyman, and is a regular attendant at Sunday worship, will not be a little surprised at the march of intellect among our neighbors across ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... A touch on his shoulder caused the speaker to cease. Mabel was standing erect in the canoe, her light, but swelling form bent forward in an attitude of graceful earnestness, her finger on her lips, her head averted, her spirited eyes riveted on an opening in the bushes, ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... I now touch on the moment that binds my past existence to the present, some friendships of that period, prolonged to the present time, being very dear to me, have frequently made me regret that happy obscurity, when those who called themselves ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... off. He had turned aside when she spoke to Giles, and was asking of Tibble last instructions about the restoration of enamel, when he felt a touch on his arm, and saw Dennet standing by him. She looked up in his face, and held up a crimson silken purse, with S. B embroidered on it with a wreath ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... (2d of the Nineteenth Corps) in four brigades formed line of battle in front and to the right of the gorge. In touch on the left was Ricketts' Division of the Sixth Corps, and resting on Ricketts' left was Getty's Division of the same corps. Getty had 16 regiments in line; Ricketts, 12 with 6 batteries; ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... impossible, indeed, to avoid some sort of parallel a la Plutarch between Thackeray and Dickens. We do not intend to make out which is the greater, for they may be equally great, though utterly unlike, but merely to touch on a few striking points. Thackeray, in his more elaborate works, always paints character, and Dickens single peculiarities. Thackeray's personages are all men, those of Dickens personified oddities. The one is an artist, the other a caricaturist; the one pathetic, the other sentimental. ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... private position and your worldly affairs, of which it seems you had left her entirely ignorant. Of course, with my native Scottish caution, and my knowledge of human nature gained in the academies of prosperity and the ragged schools of adversity, I did not touch on certain matters of a delicate nature. That is no business of mine. If there is discretion in this world in which you can trust blindly, it is that of Phineas McPhail. I just told her of Denby Hall and your fortune, which I fairly accurately computed at a ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... procedure. On the private law side 18 clauses apply to rights of property and possession, 13 to succession and family law, 37 to contracts, including marriage when treated as an act of sale; 18 touch on civil procedure. A subject which attracted special attention was the law of status, and no less than 107 paragraphs contain disposition dictated by the wish to discriminate between the classes of society. Questions of public law and administration are discussed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... did it. Viewed superficially, his life consists of fairly conventional incidents, and might easily fall under fairly conventional phrases. It might be the life of any Dublin clerk or Manchester Socialist or London author. If I touch on the man's life before his work, it will seem trivial; yet taken with his work it is most important. In short, one could scarcely know what Shaw's doings meant unless one knew what he meant by them. This difficulty ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... into his arms, but he turned away from her irresolutely. The last glow was gone from behind the Mountain. Everything in the room had turned grey and indistinct, and an autumnal dampness crept up from the hollow below the orchard, laying its cold touch on their flushed faces. Harney walked the length of the room, and then turned back and ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... equally unpleasant descriptions. So for drunken the euphemism intemperate came to be used, but is now hardly a more polite description. We would not willingly speak of a person being "fat" in his presence. If it is necessary to touch on the subject, the word "stout" is more favoured. In the absence of the fat person the humorous euphemism may be used by which he or she is said to "have a good deal ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... languidly in through the open church window, stirring the curly lock which Boyd now and then impatiently pushed away from his eyes ... was a delicate fingertip touch on Drew's cheek. A subdued shuffle of feet could be heard as the congregation arose. It was Sunday in Gainesville, and a congregation such as could only have gathered there on this particular May 7, 1865. Rusty gray-brown, patched, and with ill-mended tears, ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... like omitting some of the principal features in the drawing of a portrait. Often have they been mentioned, it is true; but subsequent events have so weakened the remembrance of them, that they now present themselves to the mind more like dreams than realities. However, I shall touch on the most ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... touch on a very small point I write here "the Book of Genesis," not "the Book Genesis." English literature, if I do not mistake, is as unfamiliar with the latter phrase as it is ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... "you come this way," and he crossed the hall. Val followed. At the study door he felt a touch on ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... love of his brother. Anything that concerns his brother moves him; it is like a touch on a musical instrument. Perhaps I should say ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and mounted the steps, between the lions, the child's feet stumbling a little as they went, but Achilles's hand held fast and his touch on the bell summoned hurrying feet... there was a fumbling at the chains—a swift, cautious creak, and the door swung back. "Who is it?" said a voice that peered out. The dawn ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... a few moments later when Gigi was awakened suddenly by a touch on his shoulder. The boy opened his eyes and stared about, bewildered. He did not know where he was. Who was this bending over him in the dim light? Not Tonio; not Cecco; not the Giant? Then he recognized Mother Margherita, stooping ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... the creative mood and moment is the reward of the little group whose touch on any kind of material is imperishable. It comes when the spell of inspired work is on them, or in the moment which follows immediately on completion and before the reaction of depression—which is the heavy penalty of the artistic temperament—has set in. Balzac knew it in that frenzy ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... by his view of the procedure of a politician, whom he had once admired, whose talents he still recognised, but from whom he now turned away with indignant aversion? However this may have been, his poems which touch on politics do not imply that respect for the people thinking, feeling, and moving, in masses which is a common profession with the liberal leaders of the platform. Browning's liberalism was a form of his individualism; he, like Shakespeare, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... I touch on these religious opinions (before mentioned) but briefly, is because of my own strong impression since I have been writing this memoir, that in that next chapter of existence upon which Newman has now entered, he ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... Costello, like the passing of Pippa in the poem, had left its light, ineffaceable touch on at least ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... trying, now right, now left, to force his way through the congestion at the door, like a harried rabbit at a wattled fence. A touch on the shoulder simultaneously with the click of a trigger at his ear brought his face round over his shoulder. He made the instinctive pioneer motion to his hip, looked into the bore of the Colonel's pistol, and under ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... a touch on his side. That contact, lighter than the caress of a mother's hand on the cheek of a sleeping child, had for him the force of a crushing blow. Omar had crept close, and now, kneeling above him, held the kriss in one hand while the other skimmed over his jacket ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... to him, and shortly after drove him to the station for London. My aunt Dorothy had warned me that she was preparing some deed in my favour, and as I fancied her father to have gone to London for that purpose, and supposed she would now venture to touch on it, I walked away from the East gates of the park as soon as I heard the trot of her ponies, and was led by an evil fate (the stuff the fates are composed of in my instance I have not kept secret) to walk Westward. Thither my evil ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... what anguish to touch on The fatal stain of thy princely escutcheon; In thy story's bright garden the one spot of bleakness, Through ages of valour the one hour of weakness! Thou, the heir of a thousand chiefs, sceptred and royal— Thou to kneel to the Norman and swear to ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... other things unexplainable even to Kent; for one, this night flitting to Gaston to put the finishing touch on an edifice of fraud which had been builded shamelessly in the ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... weapon in two with one blow, and split his head with the next. The man with the flail gave back at sight of this, and a kick freed me from the unarmed ape-like creature at my feet, so that I found myself clear of my assailants, and none the worse for my encounter, save for a touch on the leg and some stiffness of the neck ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... walked on in silence. Then he felt a timid touch on his arm; her hand had been laid ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... by a touch on the shoulder nearest the door. A voice addressed him. For a moment Zaidos was unable to locate it. Then he discovered that it was coming from the partly open door. It was the young husband who had sobbed in ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... hat to him, as I stood there, in a wilderness of white, crimson, and purple flowers, and let him blaze away in my face for a quarter of an hour. And as I walked home with my back to him, I often turned my face from side to side that I might feel his touch on my cheek. How a man can live, who is sentenced to a year's imprisonment, is ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... Sylvia felt a touch on her arm and looking round found herself face to face with Albert Morris, a short red haired ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... zeal to Mary's partisans in England;[**] and even men of the most opposite parties began to cry aloud for some settlement of the succession. These humors broke out with great vehemence in a new session of parliament, held after six prorogations. The house of peers, which had hitherto forborne to touch on this delicate point, here took the lead; and the house of commons soon after imitated the zeal of the lords. Molineux opened the matter in the lower house, and proposed, that the question of the succession and that of supply should go hand in hand; as if it were intended to constrain ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... very heartless game. Haven't you enough imagination even to faintly picture what's been going on upstairs? That poor chap, with the drops of sweat on his forehead, and biting his lips so as not to cry out, and every touch on his leg agony and—" ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... on Dantes brow. Until this day and for how long a time!—he had refrained from talking of the treasure, which had brought upon the abbe the accusation of madness. With his instinctive delicacy Edmond had preferred avoiding any touch on this painful chord, and Faria had been equally silent. He had taken the silence of the old man for a return to reason; and now these few words uttered by Faria, after so painful a crisis, seemed to indicate a serious relapse into ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of seeing Boris bending over you while you lay ill, and feeling his touch on your face, and hearing his voice, of course troubles me. This that you describe must have happened a fortnight after he died. I say to myself that you were dreaming, that it was part of your delirium, but the explanation does not satisfy ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... the word?' asked Zero. 'Well, I will not defend it. But for efficiency, you touch on graver matters; and before entering upon so vast a subject, permit me once more to fill our glasses. Disputation is dry work,' he added, with ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... pause to turn over these records of a dearly-valued friendship. They begin years ago with words of encouragement as to certain investigations in which both of us felt interest. Here and there they touch on matters of social or personal value, but for the most part they deal only with science. I used to wonder in those days, and still am surprised anew as again I turn over these letters, at the amount of what I might call suggestiveness in Wyman. He ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various |
