"Connoisseur" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... work succeeds as it must succeed, do honour to my presence by taking notice of nothing that surrounds you, neither of the crowd, which must always remain strange to us, even if it takes us in for a moment, nor of the connoisseur, nor of the brother artist, for we have none. Only look in my eye just as if you would do if you were playing to me, and be assured that it will return your glance blissfully, brightly, and gladly, with that intimate understanding which ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... your Lordship," replied the connoisseur; "and if Mr. Porcupine will but attend to the suggestions I have thrown out, this picture will make his fortune;" and the learned critic began to put on his ...
— Comical People • Unknown
... a drawer, to which the old lady runs with almost indecent haste. The connoisseur ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... mosaics of art!" said Varillo with languid satisfaction, "They may possibly please a connoisseur,—but they are ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... helped by exercise. Antonius, in Cicero's books of the Orator, calls it a sort of observation and not an art. But this opinion is not there asserted as truth, but only to keep up the character of Antonius, who was a connoisseur at concealing art. Lysias seems to be of the same opinion, which he defends by saying that the most simple and ignorant people possess a kind of rhetoric when they speak for themselves. They find something like an exordium, they make a narration, they prove, refute, and their prayers ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... of an eye for national types would have had no difficulty in determining the local origin of this undeveloped connoisseur, and indeed such an observer might have felt a certain humorous relish of the almost ideal completeness with which he filled out the national mould. The gentleman on the divan was a powerful specimen of an American. But he was not only a fine ...
— The American • Henry James
... those embittered employers who merely seek to make money out of him the labourer does at least meet with some keen recognition of his usefulness; but with these others he is all at sea. Non-introspective, a connoisseur of garden crops and of pig-sties, and of saved-up seeds; cunning to understand the "set" of spade or hoe, and the temper of scythe and fag-hook; jealous of the encroachment of gravelled walk or evergreen hedge upon the useful ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... a gray dress of some soft material, which Malcolm, who was rather a connoisseur on feminine attire, decided in his own mind was a Paris gown,—strange to say, he was right,—and the black Gainsborough hat and feathers suited her exactly. It was evident Mr. Carlyon agreed with him, for Malcolm saw him once looking at her ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... is chiefly manner, a smile recently achieved, a different way of wearing the beard, a little less of the stern moralist, a little more of the man of the world. A connoisseur of Hughes, who has studied him for nearly twenty years, after a recent observation, pronounced judgment: "It's the same Hughes, a trifle less cold, but just as dry." And the Secretary of State himself, when one ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... Twain was taken by a friend to Whistler's studio, just as he was putting the finishing touches to one of his fantastic studies. Confident of the usual commendation, Whistler inquired his guest's opinion of the picture. Mark Twain assumed the air of a connoisseur, and approaching the picture remarked that it did very well, but "he didn't care much for that cloud—"; and suiting the action to the word, appeared to be on the point of rubbing the cloud with his gloved finger. In genuine horror, Whistler ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... poem your lordship bade me look at, upon taking the length, breadth, height, and depth of it, and trying them at home upon an exact scale of Bossu's, 'tis out, my lord, in every one of its dimensions. Admirable connoisseur! —Sterne. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... I am invited to a dinner where a rich New Yorker has asked some connoisseur friends to inspect his new purchase, a Raffaelle Madonna and child, for which he has just given a fabulous amount of dollars. I was asked for special judgment as an artistic Englishman. Well: the drawing was perfect; but I didn't like ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... market hour (2) when heralds from the king and Tissaphernes arrived. These were barbarians with one exception. This was a certain Phalinus, a Hellene who lived at the court of Tissaphernes, and was held in high esteem. He gave himself out to be a connoisseur of tactics and the art of fighting with heavy arms. These were the men who now came up, and having summoned the generals of the Hellenes, they delivered themselves of the following message: "The great king having won the victory and slain Cyrus, bids the Hellenes ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... answered, inspecting the ash of his cigar with the aspect of a connoisseur, and evading my glance, "your position gives you an advantage, but you are trying to make too much use of it. I had the most perfect assurances that the old man would be treated kindly, and I know that nobody has any intention to do ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... of the Baroness's parties in the Rue Murillo, did not confess himself inferior to any one as an epicure. He would taste the wines, with the air of a connoisseur, holding his glass up to the light, while the liquor caressed his palate, and shutting his eyes as if more thoroughly to ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... was then living at W——, when one day, just before I was going to sit down to dinner, a chaise stops at my door, out steps a very "smart man," and is ushered into my library. When I went into the room, he was examining, quite in a connoisseur attitude, Eusebius, a picture; he was very fond of pictures, he said; had a small but choice collection of his own, and I won't say that he did not speak of the Correggiosity of Correggio. I was upon the point of interrupting him, with the intimation that I did not mean ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... Ferrara, owner of "a nine-hundred-years-old name," is showing the portrait, with an intention in the display, to the envoy from a Count whose daughter he designs to make his next Duchess. He is a connoisseur and collector of the first rank, but his pride is deeplier rooted than in artistic knowledge and possessions. Thanks to that nine-hundred-years-old name, he is something more than the passionless art-lover: he is a man who has killed a woman by his egotism. But even now that ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... the intrusion of such anomalous figures into nature,—namely, that they were inevitable; that the artist was drunk with a passion for form which he could not resist, and which vented itself in these fine extravagances,—no longer dignifies the chisel or the pencil. But the artist and the connoisseur now seek in art the exhibition of their talent, or an asylum from the evils of life. Men are not well pleased with the figure they make in their own imaginations, and they flee to art, and convey their better sense in an oratorio, a statue, or a picture. Art makes the same effort which a ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... master's golden period, is incontestably genuine, and finer in some respects than any Stradivarius that I have ever seen, not even excepting the famous Dolphin itself. You need be under no apprehension as to its authenticity: no connoisseur could hold it in his hand for a second and entertain ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... Hospital. The wizened old caretaker knew us well, and having opened the door, would leave us to wander through the empty, echoing rooms at our own will. We furnished them handsomely in later Queen Anne style, of which my father was a connoisseur, sparing no necessary expense; for, as my father observed, good furniture is always worth its price, while to buy cheap is pure waste ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... true that I was not very scrupulous about giving it pure; for with a very small quantity of the genuine leaf I managed to make a large store, with the assistance of different sorts of dungs. I had a great tact in discovering amongst my customers the real connoisseur, and to him I gave it almost genuine. My whole profits, in fact, depended upon my discrimination of characters. To those of the middling ranks, I gave it half-mixed; to the lower sort, three-quarters; and to the lowest, almost without ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... greater beauty, or sweetness, or wisdom:—it is the kind of face to go mad for, because it cannot walk out of its frame. There is also a famous dead Christ and live Apostles, for which Buonaparte offered in vain five thousand louis; and of which, though it is a capo d'opera of Titian, as I am no connoisseur, I say little, and thought less, except of one figure in it. There are ten thousand others, and some very fine Giorgiones amongst them, &c. &c. There is an original Laura and Petrarch, very hideous both. Petrarch ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... sun should have begun the serious duties of the day. The birds were singing in the trees and breakfasting on the lawn, while Edwin, seated on one of the flower beds, watched them with the eye of a connoisseur. Occasionally, when a sparrow hopped in his direction, he would make a sudden spring, and the bird would fly away to the other side of the lawn. I had never seen Edwin catch a sparrow. I believe they looked on him as a bit of a crank, and humored ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... sensational," Pao-ch'ai smilingly expostulated, "well then you may fitly be looked upon as being no connoisseur of plays. But come over and I'll tell you. This play constitutes one of a set of books, entitled the 'Pei Tien Peng Ch'un,' which, as far as harmony, musical rests and closes, and tune go, is, it goes without saying, perfect; but there's among the elegant ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... I ever ate," answered Chester enthusiastically, as if he were a connoisseur in all kinds of taffies. The ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in their parlor. They received me sociably, inquired after my health, my last evening's entertainment, the company, &c.; when, after a little pause, Mrs. Richman said, "And how do you like Major Sanford, Eliza?" "Very well indeed, madam; I think him a finished gentleman. Will you, who are a connoisseur, allow him that title?" "No, my dear; in my opinion he falls far below it, since he is deficient in one of the great essentials of the character; and that is virtue." "I am surprised," said I; "but how has he incurred ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... in various branches, viz. smiths, carpenters, joiners, masons, &c. under the superintendance of Europeans in their different trades, who for ingenuity and adroitness in their respective capacities, would deserve the approbation even of the connoisseur in these arts; while in many other instances they discover a genius of the most intelligent character, and a decency in their dress and manners distinguished from that among the surrounding tribes; which is the never failing consequence of ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... is wondrous and were it graven with needle-gravers on the eye-corners it would be a warning to whoso would be warned and a matter of thought to whoso would think. Learn, O Commander of the Faithful, that my father was a jeweller man, a connoisseur in gems, who owned no son save myself; but when I had increased in age and had grown in stature and Allah had given me comeliness and perfection and beauty and brilliancy and plenty and good fortune, and my sire had brought me up with the best of education, Allah vouchsafed to him a daughter. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... the true collector's soul. I don't believe that Carmen really admired them either. But the minx knew that the Senator prided himself on having the only "pot-hooks" of the great "A," or the first artistic efforts of "B,"—I leave the real names to be filled in by the connoisseur,—and the Senator became interested. For the last year, two or three of these abominations had been hanging in his study, utterly ignored by the casual visitor. But here was appreciation! "She was," she added, "only a poor young artist, unable to purchase such treasures, but equally unable ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... of Angelique looked dangerous and full of mischief, but Bigot was not afraid or offended. In truth, her jealousy flattered him, applying it wholly to himself. He was, moreover, a connoisseur in female temper: he liked to see the storm of jealous rage, to watch the rising of its black clouds, to witness the lightning and the thunder, the gusts and whirlwinds of passion, followed by the rain of angry tears, when the tears were on his account. He thought ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... long galleries, spacious chambers, join'd By no quite lawful marriage of the arts, Might shock a connoisseur; but when combined, Form'd a whole which, irregular in parts, Yet left a grand impression on the mind, At least of those whose eyes are in their hearts: We gaze upon a giant for his stature, Nor judge at first if all ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... invited us to his house, would give us some excellent hock, introduced us to his family, amongst the rest a little fellow with a sabre by his side, with curling locks and countenance and manner interesting as Owen's. Hearing I was fond of pictures and painted glass, he carried me to a fine old Connoisseur, his father-in-law, whose fears and temper were a good deal roused by the "peste," as he termed it, of still having half a dozen Cossacks in his house. However, they were officers, and by his own account did him no harm whatever; but for fear of accidents he had unpanelled his great ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... hand was icy cold as she held it up to the lamp-light to show the large diamond which flashed from the fourth finger as proof of what she said. The stone itself was of the first water, but the setting was old, so old that a connoisseur in such matters might wonder why Judge Markham had chosen such a ring as the seal of his betrothal. Ethelyn knew why, and the softest, kindliest feeling she had experienced for her promised husband was awakened ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... fifteen, on the ground tier, Mrs. Shiffney settled herself with Madame Sennier, Jacques Sennier, and Jonson Ramer. Susan Fleet was next door with friends, a highly cultivated elderly man, famous as a lawyer and connoisseur, and his wife. Alston Lake's family and most of his many friends were in the stalls, where Armand Gillier had a seat close to a gangway, so that he could easily slip out to pay his homage to Enid Mardon. His head was soaked with eau-de-quinine. On his muscular hands he wore thick white kid ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... The Adventurer, by Hawksworth, is completely trite and vapid, aping all the faults of Johnson's style, without any thing to atone for them. The sentences are often absolutely unmeaning; and one half of each might regularly be left blank. The World, and Connoisseur, which followed, are a little better; and in the last of these there is one good idea, that of a man in indifferent health, who judges of every one's title to respect from their possession of this blessing, and bows to a sturdy beggar with sound limbs and a florid complexion, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... sea-blue Mandarin's coat, embroidered with peaches, and small, crafty touches of black here and there, and looked at it with the loving eye of a connoisseur. His whole shop was a fountain of colour, and he was not unworthy of it in his silk petticoat. A ray of sunlight fell in through the door and touched a few threads of gold in the coat as Mhtoon Pah hung ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... saddle, on which he had ridden so many hundred miles. And the Senor regarded it with interest, because of the carved leather workmanship which was of the finest and he was a connoisseur of such matters. ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... intelligent than pretty, but Montague won't care for that—excuse the old joke, but it is the figure Monte is after. He hasn't any manners, but he's not a bad sort of a fellow, generally good-natured, immensely pleased with New York, and an enthusiastic connoisseur ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... suitable models for our young wood carvers to copy. The Ellesmere Cabinet (illustrated) was one of the productions of the "Home Arts and Industries Association," founded by the late Lady Marian Alford in 1883, a well known connoisseur and Art patron. It will be seen that this is virtually ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... the people shouted. From every window, burgher's or nobleman's, handsome women greeted the handsome cardinal who was known to be a connoisseur in female beauty. The crowd outside followed him to the palace-gates, and when his carriage stopped, they shouted so vociferously, that the noise reached the ears of the empress; and so long, that their shouts had not ceased when the cardinal, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Semitic features wore an expression of great self-satisfaction, and his knowing air betokened intimate knowledge of the world and all that therein is. He nodded familiarly to a couple of young men who passed by, and glanced with the appreciative eye of a connoisseur at the shop-girls who were walking ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... pause after the stockbroker's clerk had concluded his surprising experience. Then Sherlock Holmes cocked his eye at me, leaning back on the cushions with a pleased and yet critical face, like a connoisseur who had just taken his first sip of a ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Donato might have brought me luck had I kept him longer," he muttered, draining the little flask of wine as he sat on the door-step, and musing with that curious mixture of avarice and regret at losing a treasure peculiar to the connoisseur. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... more from curiosity than as a connoisseur, whilst Captain Nemo enchanted me with his ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... print, inquiring eagerly and gravely which is Joseph, and which is Benjamin, is not more capable of receiving a strong, even a sublime, impression from the rude symbol which it invests with reality by its own effort, than the connoisseur who admires the grouping of the three figures in Raphael's "Telling of the Dreams;" and whether also, when the human mind is in right religious tone, it has not always this childish power—I speak advisedly, this power—a noble one, and possessed more in youth than at any period of after life, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... expended by the amateur artist, the needleworker, and the connoisseur of home art a generation or two ago has provided the collector to-day with an exceptionally interesting class of curio, for there is much to admire in amateur craftsmanship, and especially in the handiwork of the needlewoman and the weaver and decorator ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... Mary of Egypt's locks, and irreverently compared them to the effects of Mrs. Allen's "World-wide Hair Restorer." We have observed that the forehead of Holbein's great Virgin is too high to please us, and made many other connoisseur-like remarks. I have pointed out to Mr. Musgrave the Saint Catherine which has a look of Barbara, and we have both grown rather tired of St. Sebastian, stuck as full of darts as a pin-cushion of pins. Now we are sitting down resting our eyes and our strained ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... for them," put in Wallace, emitting a volume of smoke and gazing round the cave walls with the eye of a connoisseur. "My archaeological pursuits have given me great experience with centipedes, as you may imagine, considering how many old tombs, caves and cliff-dwellings I have explored. This Algonkian rock is about the right stratum for ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... ambition—no, wait!—the ambition of his father, a 'cattle king,' is that he should acquire the difficult art of painting in oils. 'Want me?' asked Caffyn, as I pushed a chair for him. 'What for? If it's to admire the 'rainbow' you've been mixing, I'm a connoisseur and I don't pass it. Your hand's steady enough, one or two lines admirably defined, but you've gotten the pink noyau and the parfait amour into their wrong billets. If, on the other hand, you want me to drink ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... generally indifferent to what he ate or drank,—the reaction, perhaps, of the luxury of his home; but having had a present of some peculiar trout from Captain Fitzhugh, and being, as an angler, a connoisseur in fish, many were his exclamations at detecting that those which were served up at breakfast were not ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... when Eloquent thought fit to visit his aunt, Mr Ffolliot had left his writing-table and was standing in one of the great windows that he might look out and, with the delicate appreciation of the connoisseur, savour the crimson beauties of ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... We're proud to see you, I can tell you. Our host owns some marvelous tapestries and they're hung out to-night for the world to see." She guided Armitage toward the Secretary's gallery on an upper floor. Their host was almost as famous as a connoisseur as for his achievements in diplomacy, and the gallery was a large apartment in which every article of furniture, as well as the paintings, tapestries and specimens of pottery, was the careful choice ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... blemish, and very large and smooth. The body of it was waxy yellow, but on the side where the sun had touched it, it blushed a delicious deep red. Since October it had been in the dark, cool storage-room, and Horace, like some old monkish connoisseur of wines who knows just when to bring up the bottles of a certain vintage, had chosen the exact moment in all the year when the vintage of the Bellflower was at its best. As he passed it to me I caught, a scent as of old crushed apple blossoms, or fancied I did ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... soldiers of the line, with bronzed wondering faces, marching together in little companies of six or seven, and stopping every now and then at Napoleon or Leonidas as they appear in proper vulgar heroics in the pictures of David or Gros. The taste of these people will hardly be approved by the connoisseur, but they have A taste for art. Can the same be said of our lower classes, who, if they are inclined to be sociable and amused in their holidays, have no place of resort but the tap-room or tea-garden, and no food for conversation except such as can be built upon ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... were slight of build, and willowy of motion. Their hair was long and black, but it was as fine as silk, and shone like the plumage of a blackbird. There was not that oily swarthiness in the complexion, which makes so many Indian women hideous in the eyes of a connoisseur of beauty; but the cheeks of these girls were a pale olive, and sometimes, when they were excited, a faint tinge of rose came out like the delicate pink flush that appears in the olive-grey of the morning. And these maidens, ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... life. Judy and her pipe had become as familiar a figure at the periodical entertainment as the executioner himself—more so, indeed, for she had seen many generations of these latter, and could compare their styles with the judgment of a connoisseur. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... kindly allowed me to reproduce a part of their plan of Birkenhead Priory. Illustrations were also kindly lent by the Clarendon Press, the Cambridge University Press, Mr. John Murray, Mr. Fisher Unwin, the Editor of The Connoisseur, and Mr. G. Coffey, of the Royal Irish Academy. A small portion of the first chapter has appeared in The Library, and is reprinted by kind permission of the editors. Mr. C. W. Sutton, M.A., City Librarian ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... mark of the connoisseur to be able to read character and habit and to divine at a glance all a creature's potentialities. This sort of penetration characterises the man with an eye for horse-flesh, the dog-fancier, and men and women of the world. It guides the born leader ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... a good deal.'" He inspected her with the freedom of an old friend and with the thoroughness of a connoisseur. Women who took pains with themselves and were satisfied with the results liked Stanley Baird's knowing and appreciative way of noting the best points in their toilets. "You're looking fine," declared he. "It must be a pleasure to them up in the Rue de la Paix to dress you. That's more ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... just as necessary," pursued the old connoisseur, when Peter was reseated, "it is just as necessary for a gentleman to have a delicate palate for the tints of the vine as it is for him to have a delicate eye for the tints of the palette. Nature bestowed a taste both in art and wine on man, ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... nothing about it;[2325] she was no connoisseur in tapestry and in paintings, like the Duke of Bar and the Duke of Orleans; neither were her judges, not on this occasion at any rate. And if they were concerned about a picture in the house of Maitre Boucher, it was not so much on ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... arrive only after you had got there had gone out of the world and left nothing but the ambition to be at this point or that without the trouble of having reached it. He smiled as he recalled the stock criticism of the connoisseur in The Vicar of Wakefield, that the picture would have been better if the painter had taken more pains; but he did not smile gayly: there seemed to him a sum of pathetic wisdom in the saying which might well weigh down the blithest ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Painter, Connoisseur, Collector. By BYRON WEBBER. Illustrated with nearly 100 Photogravure Plates and a number of Drawings in half-tone. Two Vols., small folio, buckram gilt, ...
— Chatto & Windus Alphabetical Catalogue of Books in Fiction and General Literature, Sept. 1905 • Various
... hung on the walls or lay on brackets and tables, but no books such as our modern time produces were to be seen; only tied- up bundles of papyri and curious little tablets of clay inscribed with mysterious hieroglyphs. Flowers adorned every corner—many of them strange blossoms which a connoisseur would have declared to be unknown in Egypt,—palms and ferns and foliage of every description were banked up against the walls in graceful profusion, and from the latticed windows the light filtered through colored squares, giving ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... almost imagined that the canvass before me lived. I saw its eye all but glisten, its lips all but open to speak; the very marble of its cheek begin to glow; when I was awakened by a lively voice, saying, in French—"Ah, Mr Marston, I perceive that you are a connoisseur." I turned, and saw the speaker, a man somewhat above the middle size; a remarkably noble-looking personage; in full dress even at that hour, powdered and perfumed, and altogether a court figure; his hands loaded with jewels, and a diamond star of the order of the garter ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... chair, and I will talk to you.' Her eyes flashed as she spoke, and the contempt in them added mightily to her beauty. Mr Thomas Jackson, otherwise Jules, erstwhile head waiter at the Grand Babylon, considered himself a connoisseur in feminine loveliness, and the vision of Nella Racksole smote him like ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... guide, or who had approached them from curiosity, listened with mouth agape to the dissertations on foss and vellum, ports dextra, sinistra, and decumana, which Sir John Clerk delivered ex cathedra, and his learned visitor listened with the deference to the dignity of a connoisseur on his own ground. But when the cicerone proceeded to point out a small hillock near the centre of the enclosure as the Praetorium, Corydon's patience could hold no longer, and, like Edie Ochiltree, he forgot all reverence, and ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... says the pseudo-connoisseur, where we should only, or at least first, bring knowledge? This is the common cant of those who become critics for the sake of distinction. Let the Artist avoid them, if he would not disfranchise himself in the suppression of that uncompromising test within him, ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... place, - the portrait (rather a good one) of a citizen of Narbonne, whose name I forget, who is described as having devoted all his time and his intelligence to collecting the objects by which the. visitor is sur- rounded. This excellent man was a connoisseur, and the visitor is ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... Valtelline can only be tasted in cellars of the Engadine or Davos, where this vintage matures slowly in the mountain air, and takes a flavour unknown at lower levels. In a word, it had amused my leisure to make or think myself a connoisseur. My literary taste was tickled by the praise bestowed in the Augustan age on ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... she was struggling against the tears which already dimmed her eyes. He filled her glass himself. The professor set his own down empty with the satisfied smile of a connoisseur. ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... connoisseurs could sell them," Julia objected. "If I were a connoisseur and bought one when they were for sale, I could sell it to you if ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... The old-time rake felt his instincts of libertinism aroused by the perfume exhaled by this woman, an indefinable perfume of flesh fresh and virginal, which he thought he inhaled, like a connoisseur, more with the imagination than through sense of smell. At the same time—a strange thing for him!—he experienced a timidity which deprived him of speech; a timidity like that he had felt in his early youth when, far from the easy conquests ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... said Miss Benson, feeling it, and holding it up against the light, with the air of a connoisseur; yet all the time she was glancing at Ruth's grave face. The latter kept silence, and showed no wish to inspect her present further. At last she said, in a ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Uncle Ezra could never be put in a hole. "Maud's case is a very different one from Mr. Painter's or mine. We can carry back what we like personally, but for Maud to carry home a doubtful picture into the atmosphere she has to live in—why, it would be intolerable—with her uncle a connoisseur, all her friends owners of masterpieces." Uncle Ezra had a flowing style. "It would expose her to annoyance, to mortification—constant, daily. Above all, to have taken a special gift, a fund of her aunt's, and to apply it in this mistaken fashion ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... significant becoming. For Browning's trenchant imagination things were not gradually evolved; a sudden touch loosed the springs of latent power, or an overmastering energy from without rushed in like a flood. With all his connoisseur's delight in technique, language and sound were only spells which unlocked a power beyond their capacity to express. Music was the "burst of pillared cloud by day and pillared fire by night," starting up miraculously from the ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... an answer to her letter and feeling sure that it would bring the money, she began to talk to Mr. Hastings of her new piano. playfully remarking, that as he was a connoisseur in such matters, she believed she should call on him to aid in her selection; and this he promised to do, thinking the while of the unused instrument in his deserted parlor, and feeling strongly tempted to offer her its use. Thus the weeks passed on, while Eugenia became more ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... dead with your much money," said the Captain with an angry gesture, as he snatched the trinkets from him, and eyed them to my vast surprise with the air of a practised connoisseur; "let's handle the stuff, and don't gibber. How much for this?" He held up the miniature, and admiration betrayed ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... was I to know? Your instructions to me were positive. Don't monkey with curtain till bell rings. When bell rings, if down, pull her up; if up, pull her down. I'm not a connoisseur on bells— ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... entered the room with a low, stealthy tread, and looked me over in a cursory way and yet with the air of a connoisseur. ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... J. Duveen, the well-known art connoisseur of London and New York, although he did not take to stamp collecting till 1892, has already got together the finest collection, outside the British Museum, in this country. It is celebrated not only for the beauty of its specimens, but also ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... and of his keen sense of humour. Long before these two gentlemen (Bully Hayes and Ben Peese) had commenced to exploit the Ellice, Gilbert, Kingsmill, Marshall and Caroline Groups, Bully, then owner of a small, fast-sailing schooner, had made unto himself a name—particularly as a connoisseur of Island beauty—among the Marquesas, Society, Hervey and Paumotu Groups, from Nuka-hiva to Rapa-nui (Easter Island), that ethnographical mystery of the Southern Seas, whose gentle and amiable people, thirty years ago, met with so dreadful ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... that dress, I presume," laughed Betty. "Well, it's not very suitable, that's a fact. But I had no idea that the captain was such a connoisseur in ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... place in which he could have spent the evening; it was filled with the most extraordinary varieties of plants. "They were gathered from all over the world," said Mrs. Winnie, seeing that he was staring at them. "My husband employed a connoisseur to hunt them out for him. He did it before we were married—he thought it would ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... called in the tavern and would have called herself,—the unchanging, seemingly immortal Miranda, who cared for the guests as if she were their nursing mother, and pressed the specially favorite delicacies on their attention as a connoisseur calls the wandering eyes of an amateur to the beauties of a picture. Who that has ever been at the old ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... sorrowing loneliness of night; but in London on it comes, or rather down it comes, like the mystic medium in a pantomime—it is a thing that you will not gaze on for long; and you rush instinctively from daylight to candle-light. I stopped in front of an old-fashioned public-house, and soon (being a connoisseur in these matters) satisfied myself that if comfort were the desideratum, "The heart that was humble might hope for it here." I shook the snow from my "Petersham," and seeing the word "parlour" painted in white letters on a black door, bent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... work miracles in the treatment of such cases by means of certain fumigations; but he only undertook a cure after stipulating for his fees, which he reckoned not by tens, but by hundreds of crowns. He was a great connoisseur in the arts of design. Chancing to pass one day before my shop, he saw a lot of drawings which I had laid upon the counter, and among these were several designs for little vases in a capricious style, which I had sketched for ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... a pancake, nothing more. It is without inherent or artificial glamour; and this unfortunately, when you come right down to it, is true of food in general. For food, after all, is one of the lesser considerations; the connoisseur, the gourmet, even the gourmand, spends no more than four hours out of the day at his table. From the cycle, he may select four in which to eat; but whether he will or not, he must set aside seven of the twenty-four in which ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... boats," Monsieur Dufour repeated gravely, and he examined them closely, commenting on them like a connoisseur. He had been in the habit of rowing in his younger days, he said, and when he had that in his hands—and he went through the action of pulling the oars—he did not care a fig for anybody. He had beaten more ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... twenty-five centuries, and with historical and biographical allusions and references of all sorts and things. A word or two, suggesting some apposite allusion, will often greatly enhance the beauty of a composition for the connoisseur, but will fall flat on the ears of those to whom the quotation is unknown. Simple objects in everyday life often receive quaint names, as handed down in literature, with which it is necessary to be familiar. For instance, a "fairy umbrella" means a ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... twenty by twenty-four feet—though in fact this carpet concealed exactly two- thirds of the white clean plank. Then the chairs were massive and even rich, while one might see his face in the dark mahogany of the tables. There were cellarets—the captain being a connoisseur in wines— bureaus, secretaries, beaufets, and other similar articles, that had been collected in the course of twenty years' housekeeping, and scattered at different posts, were collected, and brought hither by means of sledges, and the facilities of the water-courses. ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... grand and figurative, leads me to believe that he is of Oriental origin, and that he has absorbed what he found good among the Europeans. He is passionately fond of music, wild over poetry, inquisitive about paintings, a connoisseur in everything—I cannot remember all. He has friends who know architecture, and though skilled in his own profession, he ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... master. But we cannot guarantee it. There is, however, a gentleman present who is amply qualified to pass upon the merits of this work. With his permission"—his eye sought Lanyard's—"I venture to request the opinion of Monsieur Michael Lanyard, the noted connoisseur!" ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... could tell her pictures mid a billion, So daubed were they with ochre blots and splashes of vermilion; She claimed to be a connoisseur of objets d'art and curios, But what attracted notice was her openwork and lury hose, Fashioned in every colour from magenta down to cinnabar, Suggestive of a rainbow or the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... Churchill and Beauclerc were among the group of gentlemen; neither was a stranger to her. Mr. Churchill admired and applauded as a connoisseur. Beauclerc listened in silence. Mr. Churchill entreated for more—more—and named several of his favourite Italian airs. Her ladyship really could not. But the slightest indication of a wish from Beauclerc, was, without turning towards him, heard and attended to, as her sister ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... officer of the Coldstream Guards who sat in one of these holes, like many others. A nice, gentle fellow, fond of music, a fine judge of wine, a connoisseur of old furniture and good food. It was cruelty to put such a man into a hole in the earth, like the ape-houses of Hagenbeck's Zoo. He had been used to comfort, the little luxuries of court life. There, on the canal-bank, he refused to sink into ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... you that book for one franc twenty-five centimes, Monsieur," replied Coccoz, whose face at once beamed with joy. "It is historical; and you will be pleased with it. I know now just what suits you. I see that you are a connoisseur. To-morrow I will bring you the Crimes des Papes. It is a good book. I will bring you the edition ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... House, and allude frequently to the parsimonious habits of George III. and his Queen. The story goes that this monarch, having remarked of Gillray's drawings, "I don't understand these caricatures," the artist drew him ("A Connoisseur Examining a Cooper," 1792) studying minutely with a glass the miniature of Oliver Cromwell, remarking at the time: "I wonder if the Royal Connoisseur will ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... and wine; the room was a small one, and in its furniture exhibited nothing remarkable. Over the mantelpiece, however, hung a small picture with naked figures in the foreground, and with much foliage behind. It might not have struck every beholder, for it looked old and smoke-dried; but a connoisseur, on inspecting it closely, would have pronounced it to be a Judgment of Paris, and a masterpiece of the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... comprehend dimly why Lady Throckmorton disliked her, and thought her unsuited to Denis Oglethorpe. There was an absence of anything girl-like in her fine, ivory-pale face, somehow, though it was a young face and a handsome face, at whose fine lines and clear contour even a connoisseur could not have caviled. Its long almond-shaped, agate-gray eyes, black-fringed and lustrous as they were, still were silent eyes—they did not speak even ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of great price and varied bloom. Tables were set with works of silver, ivory and other precious material, wrought with the most delicate skill. Wine of moderate flavour was despised; Falernian and Chian were the only brands that the true connoisseur would deem worthy of his taste. A nice discrimination was made in the qualities of the rarer kinds of fish, and other delicacies of the table were sought in proportion to the difficulty of their attainment. The fashions of dress followed the tendency of the age; the rarity of the material, its fineness ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... A short connoisseur with a red face—red in spots—close-clipped gray hair that stood up on his head like a polishing brush, gold eyeglasses attached to a wide black ribbon, and a scissored mustache. He was dressed in a faultlessly fitting serge suit enlivened by a nankeen waistcoat supporting a gold watch-chain. ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... said the captain, drawing back a step, and looking at the beautiful animal with the eye of a connoisseur; "if I am not mistaken, he was bred between the mountains of Grenada and the Sierra Morena. I rode such a one at Almanza, and I have often made him lie down like a sheep when he wanted to carry me off at a gallop, only by pressing ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... simpered the connoisseur, and, reading, herself, added meditatively, "I should hate anyhow, for you to have that thing. The devil would be ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... a connoisseur's due appreciation of a good old brand, sipped at his glass slowly, while Spruce, hastily swallowing his measure of the cordial, wiped his mouth furtively with the back of his hand, murmuring: "Your good 'elth, an' many ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... he looked at that fair painted semblance. Did it recall the past too vividly? His face showed no pain; only tranquillity. His eye was rather that of a connoisseur than a lover. He smiled gently; then held ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... which surrounded the building was large, and laid out with all the taste of a perfect connoisseur. In its center was a fountain, whose limpid waters fell into a large marble basin, while the spray which constantly arose from the falling stream seemed to render the heat of that sultry climate ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... Mr. Cupples applied himself to the enjoyment of the view for a few minutes before ordering his meal. With a connoisseur's eye he explored the beauty of the rugged coast, where a great pierced rock rose from a glassy sea, and the ordered loveliness of the vast tilted levels of pasture and tillage and woodland that sloped gently up from the ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... table. The article fell to the last bidder. A murmur went round the assemblage, then the bidding recommenced. The Cavaliere Davila, a Neapolitan gentleman of gigantic stature and almost femininely gentle manners, a noted collector and connoisseur of majolica, gave his opinion on each article of importance. Three lots in this sale of the Cardinal's effects were really of 'superior' quality: the Story of Narcissus, the rock-crystal goblet, and an embossed silver helmet by Antonio del Pollajuolo presented by the City of Florence to the ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... intellectual tastes, who entered politics reluctantly and only in obedience to the resistless leading of his conscience. He was a student of literature and art; a connoisseur of engravings, for example, of which he made a valuable collection. He was fond of books, conversation, and foreign travel, and in Europe, while still a young man, had made a remarkable impression in society. But he left all this for public life, and in 1851 was ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... her voice as she said the words "distinguished lawyers" showed the priest that she knew very well both the strength and weakness of the enemy. She made her talent so plain to this connoisseur emeritus in the course of a conversation which lasted a long time in the tone here given, that Troubert finally went down to Mademoiselle Gamard to obtain her answer to ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... was perhaps no great connoisseur of female charms, but he thought, as he slowly tried to make up his mind whether he should venture to assist her, that he had rarely seen ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... says that the stables here are among the finest in Germany, and that the Count owns the best race-horses in the land, and is a connoisseur of everything ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... beautiful forms and more artistic work. The Etruria Company especially have succeeded in giving the warm flesh tints to the "Parian" for busts and statuettes, now to be seen in many shop windows. These goods ought always to be labeled and known as American—it adds to their value with any true connoisseur. Some of these establishments, more than others, have the enterprise to experiment in native clays, for which the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... bounder than the bounder thought, and it was not he who had knocked at the bounder's gate. Yet the sound of that knock, pealing muffled through the hot silence, had been distinctly welcome. Nor could our incipient connoisseur of rum towns pretend that the sight of Magin bowing in the doorway was wholly unwelcome, so long had he been stewing there in the sun by himself. What annoyed him, what amused him, what in spite of himself impressed him, was to see how the bounder ignored advantages of position. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various |
