"Delicately" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hangs in air above the frozen lakes, with all its green-blue ice-cliffs glistening in intensest light. Pitz Palu shoots aloft like sculptured marble, delicately veined with soft aerial shadows of translucent blue. At the summit of the pass all Italy seems to burst upon the eyes in those steep serried ranges, with their craggy crests, violet-hued in noonday ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... against the hill, and in the deepest stood the Thunder Bird, slim, delicately sturdy, every wire taut, every bit of aluminum in her motor clean and shining, a gracefully potent creature of the air. Across her back her name was lettered crudely, blatantly, with the blobbed period ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... smelt not more delicately—on every side appeared the marks of drunkenness and gluttony. At the upper end of the cave the sorcerer lay extended, etc.—Mirglip the Persian, in the ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and you'll forget the iron bridge," said Pilar. My eyes followed hers, and lit like winging birds upon a beautiful tower soaring delicately against the sky. So light, so fragile in effect was it, I felt that it might lean upon a cloud. In the golden light of afternoon the little pillars of old marble, the carved lozenges of stone, the arches of the horseshoe ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the centre of the lounge at the Ritz Hotel and with a delicately-poised forefinger counted her guests. There was the great French actress who had every charm but youth, chatting vivaciously with a tall, pale-faced man whose French seemed to be as perfect as his attitude was correct. The popular ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Yes—Babylon the Great—the commercial world of selfish competition, drunken with the blood of God's people, whose merchandise is the bodies and souls of men—her doom is gone forth. And then—then—when they, the tyrants of the earth, who lived delicately with her, rejoicing in her sins, the plutocrats and bureaucrats, the money-changers and devourers of labour, are crying to the rocks to hide them, and to the hills to cover them, from the wrath of Him that sitteth on the throne—then ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... inspiration. I'll tell you what, Roberts! I believe you can manage this business twice as well without me. But you must keep your eye out for the cook! You mustn't let any respectable butter-ball leave the room without asking her if she's the one. You'll know how to put it more delicately now. And I won't complicate you with McIlheny any more. I'll ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells
... remarked demurely, with but the flicker of a smile, that he was indeed honored to be in a religious company so noble that even Jesus could not have come up to its requirements. The man was dumfounded, he almost suspected something personal; but he never forgot the salutary lesson so delicately conveyed. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... look into his black volume and study it. His desire was to act humanely and generously; but the question inevitably recurred: "How can I utterly dash my prospects in the world?" It would be impossible to bring Dahlia to great houses; and he liked great houses and the charm of mixing among delicately-bred women. On the other hand, lawyers have married beneath them—married cooks, housemaids, governesses, and so forth. And what has a lawyer to do with a dainty lady, who will constantly distract him with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... interesting document must be assigned: the political will of Lodovico, which was among the manuscripts brought from Milan by Louis XII., in 1499, and is still preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale.[77] This document consists of thirty-four parchment leaves, enriched with delicately painted initials and the monogram of Lodovico and Beatrice, bound in black velvet and fastened with gold clasps. By the duke's orders, it was placed in an iron casket, richly ornamented with silver work, bearing his arms and those ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... Tonelli, who worked up to the point of betrothal with an expense of finesse and sentiment that would have made his fortune in diplomacy or poetry. What should he say now? that stupid young Doctor would cry in a desperation, when Tonelli delicately reminded him that it was time to answer the Paronsina's last note. Say this, that, and the other, Tonelli would answer, giving him the heads of a proper letter, which the Doctor took down on square bits of ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... my observation which seems to have escaped the eyes of the general public, but which you suggest so delicately in your letter, Uncle Peter, will be found in the beautiful words of ...
— Get Next! • Hugh McHugh
... small head droops, slightly, half the time. If she were not so slender she would be rather like a pretty dormouse half-recovering from its torpor. You insist on the determination of her little thrust-out underlip, only to be contradicted by her gentle and delicately-retreating chin. ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... She was small, and at the present moment had that air of the floweret surprized while shrinking, which adds a good thirty-three per cent. to a girl's attractions. Her nose, he noted, was delicately tip-tilted. A certain pallor added to her beauty. Roland's heart executed the opening ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... carried her like no weight at all. And she lay very close against him, her head on his crooked elbow, her arms about his neck. They had left a light burning in the box of a sitting-room. And as he entered there Perry Blair, looking down at her delicately parted lips and faintly fatigue-penciled eyes, breathed ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... a hundred such opponents. His blood boiled at the thought of the indignity offered to the girl; though he was not seriously concerned for her safety, judging that she had been carried off for ransom. But he pictured the distress and terror of a delicately nurtured Englishwoman at finding herself in the hands of a band of savage outlaws dragging her away to an unknown and awful fate. She was his friend, and he felt that it was his right as well as ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... the girl sat very still. Youthful animation lighted up every feature of her beautiful face; artistic feeling shone in her lovely eyes, which looked out with a soft, attentive gaze from underneath delicately pencilled eyebrows, in the quick smile of her expressive lips, in the bearing of her head, her arms, her neck. As to her dress, it was exquisite. By her side sat a sallow, wrinkled woman of five-and-forty, wearing a low dress and a black cap, with an unmeaning ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... quarter of an hour, then laid on our oars waiting for our ship. She was coming down on us with swelling sails, looking delicately tall and exquisitely noble through the mist. The captain of the brig, who sat in the stern sheets by my side with his face in his hands, raised his head and began to speak with a sort of sombre volubility. They had lost their ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... likeness of you, skipper, but it's got a pith helmet on, which the up-country nigger doesn't generally add to portraits of himself; and moreover, it's wearing a neat torpedo beard on the end of its chin, delicately colored vermilion." ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... Quiquendonian had a kind of recollection of what had occurred the evening before. One missed his hat, lost in the hubbub; another a coat-flap, torn in the brawl; one her delicately fashioned shoe, another her best mantle. Memory returned to these worthy people, and with it a certain shame for their unjustifiable agitation. It seemed to them an orgy in which they were the unconscious heroes and heroines. They ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... fall vertically, and the others—I can say almost with truth—were miles below me. I passed long streamers of white smoke, crossing and recrossing in the air. I knew the meaning of these, machine-gun tracer bullets. The delicately penciled lines had not yet frayed out in the wind. I went on down in a steep spiral, guiding myself by them, and seeing nothing. At the point where they ended, I redressed and put on my motor. My altimeter ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... tall as he, but slender and graceful as a young deer. Her hood had fallen back from her chestnut locks, which glistened in the sunshine like burnished copper. Her eyes were of a curious tawny tint, not unlike the colour of her hair, and her complexion was delicately fair, just tinged with rose colour at the cheeks, but of a creamy pallor elsewhere. Her features were delicate and regular, and she, too, was remarkable for the look of intellect in the broad brow ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... younger Elsie came into her mother's room with a note written in a manly hand, on delicately ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... can you speak so to me? Do you think that I blame Mr. Colville? Is that it? I don't ask you—I shall never ask you—how he came to remain, but I know that he has acted truthfully and delicately. I knew him long before you did, and no one need take his part with me." This was not perhaps what Mrs. Bowen meant to say when she began. "I have told you all along what I thought, but if you imagine that I am not satisfied with Mr. Colville, you are very much mistaken. I ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... the door behind her. She was so frail and so delicately beautiful in her white gown, with the ropes of pearls around her neck, the simply parted hair, and her dark eyes were so plaintive and yet so tender, that the angry exclamation died away on Lord ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... priest, my confessor, who had written to commend me to him, telling my story and sending the letter by a King's messenger, who left for London on the morrow of the Burning. Nor did he wait for any, for he bade me sit down and eat, plying me with more meats than I could swallow, all most delicately dressed, also with rare wines such as I had never tasted, which he took from a cupboard where they were kept in curious flasks of glass. Yet as I noted, himself he ate but little, only picking at the breast of a fowl and drinking ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... virtues necessary to the completion of the perfect man, there is none to be more delicately implied and less ostentatiously vaunted than that of exquisite feeling or ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... no blaze of diamonds was disclosed, but only, lapped in fleecy cotton, a small, beautifully shaped hand, most delicately sculptured in marble. Such loving care and nicest art had been lavished here, that the palm really seemed to have a tenderness in its very substance. Touching those lovely fingers,—had the jealous sculptor allowed ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... critic of his age half a lifetime! Yet I venture to maintain, for all that, that the young lady was right, and that the critic was wrong—if such a thing be conceivable. I know, of course, that when we speak of Ruskin we must walk delicately, like Agag. But still, I repeat it, the young lady was right; and it was largely the unconscious, pervasive action of Mr. Ruskin's own personality that ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... in Lamaism and in some ways reminds us of St. Francis of Assisi.[1065] He was a worker of miracles and, what is rarer in Tibet, a poet. His compositions known as the Hundred Thousand Songs are still popular and show the same delicately sensitive love of nature as ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... marked throughout by sincerity and skill, if not by genius. His portraits were in a style especially his own, thorough in workmanship, delicately modelled and strongly painted. His landscapes, too, are his own, clearly and definitely finished, and with a bewitching silvery gray tone, which could have come only by painting direct from his subject in the open air, a practice exceptional at the time. His pictures ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... at once. Every now and then he watched her. She ate delicately but with a healthy and unashamed appetite. A little colour came into her cheeks as the room grew warmer, her lower lip became less uncompromising. Suddenly she laid down her knife and fork. Her eyes were agleam with interest. She ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the man carried out the first part of the order; the latter half he obeyed with sprightly alacrity. Very slowly, very delicately, the expert drew in his dangerous burden. Once a current of air puffed it against the face of the rock, and the operator's head was hastily withdrawn. Nothing happened. Another minute and he had the tiny shell ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... So never wears within her eyes A false report of paradise, Nor ever modulates her mirth With vain compassion of the earth, Which made a certain happier face Affecting, and a gayer grace With pathos delicately edged! Yet, though she be not privileged To unlock for you your heart's delight, (Her keys being gold, but not the right,) On lower levels she may do! Her joy is more in loving you Than being loved, and she commands All tenderness ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... the patterned cornice or string-course of the Mashita building; and its flowered panels may compare for beauty with the Mashita triangular compartments. [PLATE XXXI., Fig. 2.] Sassanian capitals are also in many instances of lovely design, sometimes delicately diapered (A, B), sometimes worked with a pattern of conventional leaves and flowers [PLATE XXXII.], occasionally exhibiting the human form (D, E), or a flowery patterning, like that of the Takht-i-Bostan (F, Q). [PLATE XXXIII.] In the more elaborate specimens, the four faces—for ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... for the general welfare, and therefore that any further imposition must be pernicious". The government of this province, like that of Great Britain, of which it is said to be an epitome, is a mixed government. It's constitution is delicately framed; and I believe all must acknowledge, that the power vested in the crown is full as great as is consistent with the general welfare. The King, by the charter, has the nomination and appointment of the governor: But no mention being therein ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... in these soaked garments I taught during the day. In "boarding round" I often found myself in one-room cabins, with bunks at the end and the sole partition a sheet or a blanket, behind which I slept with one or two of the children. It was the custom on these occasions for the man of the house to delicately retire to the barn while we women got to bed, and to disappear again in the morning while we dressed. In some places the meals were so badly cooked that I could not eat them, and often the only food my poor little pupils brought to ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... be a velvet lawn studded with copper beeches, or a primary-hued landscape bathed in American sunshine. Connemara is austere and gloomy under a dull sky, but it has the poetic charm that belongs to all mystery, and its bare cliffs and ridges are delicately pencilled on a violet background, in a way peculiar ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of three thin layers. The outer layer is continuous with the lining of the auditory canal; the inner is a part of the lining of the middle ear; and the middle is a fine layer of connective tissue. Being thin and delicately poised, the membrana tympani is easily made to vibrate by the sound waves that enter the auditory canal. In this way it serves as a receiver of sound waves from the ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... a man dies, it must bring pause to a reasoning world. We may call his death-sickness pneumonia, but we all know that it was sheer overwork,—the using of a delicately-tuned instrument too commonly and continuously and carelessly to let it last its normal life. We may well talk of the waste of wood and water, of food and fire, but the real and unforgivable waste of modern civilization is the waste of ability and genius,—the ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... wires along which thoughts travel between country and country with the velocity of lightning. We see that the world with its swarming populations is growing more and more like some great organism whereof the nerve-centres are subtly, delicately connected by sensitive nerve-tissues. Even now, using a lady's thimble, two pieces of metal, and a little acid, we can speak to a friend across the Atlantic gulf, and before ten years are over, a gentleman in London ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... feeling, boy-like, that he never quite knew what being good involved, he wriggled uneasily in his chair. His father laid one of his hands on the boy's dark hair and the other beneath the delicately pointed chin, and, turning up the little face towards him, he kissed it with ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... proud and independent to ask or accept assistance.' The old friend, Mr. LEWIS CHAPUY, Comedian, had 'frequently offered him hospitalities, which he never accepted.' Offered him hospitalities! Worthy comedian! In faith, EUGENIUS, 'tis delicately worded. True 'Sensibility' here, supplemented by practical sympathy. Both, alas! unavailing. Somewhat of the doggedly independent spirit of the boot-rejecting Dr. JOHNSON in this poor deaf violinist apparently. Verily, EUGENIUS, the story requires but the 'decorative art' of the literary sentimentalist ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... unconsciously shivered a little, for my cheek must have felt cold, even though my surprised blushes did their best to warm it. Her dish, when opened, contained nothing but flowers, waxy white, but emitting a delicately sweet perfume. She held them toward my face, and presently breathed gently across them, as if to waft their perfume to me. Then scattering them about my cushion, she pressed her left cheek to mine, arose and tripped ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... to require an answer, but proceeded at once to several very objectionable remarks upon Mr. Ledbetter's personal appearance. He was not a very big man, but he looked strong to Mr. Ledbetter: he was as stout as his legs had promised, he had rather delicately-chiselled small features distributed over a considerable area of whitish face, and quite a number of chins. And the note of his voice had a ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... on." And the British aristocracy settled the rose in his button-hole and led the way. He moved strongly with long steps, but Mr. Barker walked delicately like Agag. ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... with adversity. They were clad in blue shirts and jean, and the hard brown hands of most betokened a close acquaintance with plough stilt, axe, and bridle, though here and there one had from his appearance evidently lived delicately. All appeared quietly resolute, for they knew that the law which had given them the right to build their homes upon that prairie as yet left them to bear the risks attached to the doing of it. Hitherto, the fact that the great ranchers had made their own laws and enforced them had been ignored ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... return home I found an Armenian merchant waiting for me who seemed somewhat less of a rogue than his brethren. He had brought me a Sipehr (shield) in delicately wrought steel, ornamented with inscriptions and arabesques, inlaid in gold; it belonged, he said, to Prince Mohammed-Veli-Mirza, and he demanded a sum of thirty-six toumans (about eighteen pounds), which I gave ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... the appliances of the great Chinese tea-importing houses. Here were huge piles of tea-chests, assorted and unassorted, and the high-salaried tea-taster with his row of tiny cups of hot-drawn tea, delicately sampling and classifying the varieties and grades for market. The breaking out of the war stopped the Southern supplies and sent Miss King's female agents to their Northern homes. But the business was made to conform to the new order of things. Large cargoes of imported black teas were ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... very delicately points out, when speaking of the necessity of a larger force on the frontier, that, "it is merely adverted to in connexion with the heavy obligations which rest upon the Government, and which have been probably ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... she became his nurse, attending to him as persistently and indefatigably as if the sole purpose for which she had been born was that. From the first service she rendered him—bathing his head and face through an intense August day with iced water delicately perfumed, arranging the curtains so that the air, when there was a breeze, blew freely to him, though the glare of the sun was gone, and his room in dim, soothing shadow—she seemed a blessing to him. Some hours after she came with her bright, quick ways, ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... quiet, eager eyes were fastened upon the door. Presently a tall form entered, that of a handsome man, apparently about thirty years of age, on whose arm was leaning, in sweet childlike smiling trust, the young and loved Ellen Lawton, whose rose-cheek delicately shaded the pale face, and who looked more beautiful in her angel loveliness than ever before, even to the eyes of the humble villagers, to whom she ever was but a "thing of beauty" and "a joy for ever." If thus ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... devoted as she was to her father. Nataly sighed, foreseeing evil, owning it a superstition, feeling it a certainty. We are easily prophets, sure of being justified, when the cleverness of schemes devoted to material ends appears most delicately perfect. History, the tales of households, the tombstone, are with us to inspire. In Nataly's bosom, the reproof of her inefficiency for offering counsel where Victor for his soul's sake needed it, was beginning to thunder at whiles as a reproach of unfittingness in his mate, worse than a public ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is also very wonderful. Two chapels are attached to the north transept, with a passage between them, its roof supported by a double row of pointed arches upheld by twisted pillars. The roof is delicately groined, as is the roof of the choir, and the whole abbey breathes a luxuriant richness of imagination, bearing everywhere the signs of high creative genius. The same lavish imagination is shown everywhere in the interlaced tracery, the black limestone giving the artist an admirable vehicle for ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... until a few weeks after my arrival in Paris that I became acquainted with the fact, thus delicately pointed at by my modest friend Mr H——. It would appear that no Parisian student of medicine can pursue his studies at home without assistance. A female friend, tutor, or whatever else she may be called, graced the lodgings of every one of my ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... reassured. One angle of light fell upon the gallery. In passing, she caught a fly on the wing, and presented it delicately to a spider established in a corner of the roof. This spider was so bloated that, notwithstanding the distance, I saw it descend from round to round, then glide along a fine web, like a drop of venom, seize its prey from ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... uncertain of the degree of favour on which she might rely. She offered no petition that could embarrass the king. She made no complaint of past neglects. She uttered no word of upbraiding for forgotten vows; but delicately implying that his presence was the source of her happiness, that this had constrained her to break through all the formal observances of courtly restraint and endanger life itself, she besought him to honour her by attending a banquet ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... forest would supply them with the materials for shelter and fuel and to some extent with food and clothing. All the rest must depend upon their own exertions. There was a pleasure in facing and overcoming the perils and difficulties which they encountered, which those, more delicately reared who now live here can never know. Their individual helplessness in the face of appalling obstacles to be met, but bound them closer together in mutual helpfulness. Accordingly we find that their social faculties were highly developed. It may well ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... queer, impersonal deliberation. She was wearing a smoke-coloured muslin gown and a black hat with gracefully arranged feathers. For a moment the weariness had passed from her face and she was a very beautiful woman. Her features were delicately shaped, her eyes rather deep-set. She had a long, graceful neck, and resting upon her throat, fastened by a thin platinum chain, was a single sapphire. There was about her just that same delicate femininity, that exquisite aroma of womanliness and tender sexuality ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and reassuring if you are a healthy man with some large conspicuous disease—a broken rib, cholera, or toothache; but if you are a fine, delicately-made man, pregnant with poetry as the egg of the nightingale is pregnant with music, and throbbing with an exquisite nervous sensibility, perhaps languishing under some vague and occult disease, of which you ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... the right or north bank, is St. Aspais, an elegant church of the 14th cent. surrounded by crocketed gabled chapels. By the side of the main entrance rises a buttressed square tower, terminating in a high peaked roof prolonged into a short spire. In the interior are some delicately sculptured canopy work and 8 windows with valuable old glass. A few yards off the main street is the Hotel de Ville with a round attached turret in each corner; and in the centre of the court a ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... he started on his perilous journey to the open air. As he walked delicately, not courting observation, he reminded himself of the hero of 'Pilgrim's Progress'. On all sides of him lay fearsome beasts, lying in wait to pounce upon him. At any moment Mr Gregory's hoarse roar might shatter the comparative stillness, or the sinister note of ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... Cornish), rather than an English, with just enough of the British element in it to give delicacy to its massiveness. The forehead and whole brain are of extraordinary loftiness, and perfectly upright; the nose long, aquiline, and delicately pointed; the mouth fringed with a short silky beard, small and ripe, yet firm as granite, with just pout enough of the lower lip to give hint of that capacity of noble indignation which lay hid under its usual courtly ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... Connie sped away, blasted with its side jets and turned to come back. Dowst tensed over the controls, trying to anticipate the next move. He touched the firing levers delicately, letting out just enough flame to maneuver. He slid the craft over the asteroid's surface to the side away from the Connie, going slowly enough so they could ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... was appeal in her face. Again he saw how young she was, how pure the light of her eyes, how delicately moulded each feature, and surprise came, as a third emotion, to mingle with the triumph and pity, and not in ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... beautiful secret, reposing inviolably in every breast or chest, as the case might be. She had no anxiety about anybody asking direct questions of the duellists, for if duelling, for years past, had been a subject which no delicately-minded person alluded to purposely in Major Benjy's presence, how much more now after this critical morning would that subject be taboo? That certainly was a good thing, for the duellists if closely questioned might have a different explanation, ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... numbers, the standard of material living, of general intelligence, of social decency, had been singularly high. Life, even at its hardest, had always had its luxuries; the babe had been a thing of beauty, to be delicately nurtured and proudly exhibited; the growing child had been decently dressed, at least for school and church; the house had been kept in order, at whatever cost, the gate hung, the shutters in place, while the front yard had been made to bloom ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... had the consciousness of being a selfish, self-centered little beast, not half enough grateful to Barney Bill for delivering him out of the House of Bondage and leading him into the Land of Milk and Honey. He was as much stung by the delicately implied rebuke as touched by the solicitude as to his future welfare. Romantic words, such as he had read in the story-books, surged vaguely in his head, but he could find none to utter. He kept silent for a few moments, his hand in his breeches pocket. Presently he drew it forth rather ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... avoided luncheon in order to give my appetite a chance. We sat down to a huge bowl of cold, greasy soup, in which enormous lumps of meat swam, as though for their life, awaiting rescue at the prongs of a fork. In addition to this epicurean dish was a teeming plate of water-soaked potatoes, delicately boiled. That was all. Letitia said that it was Swedish, and the most annoying part of the entertainment was that I was alone in my critical disapprobation. Letitia was so engrossed with a little Swedish conversation ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... Clavering, one of the best-natured women that ever enjoyed a good dinner, or made a slip in grammar, has had her appetite and good-nature sadly tried by constant family grievances, and disputes such as make the efforts of the best French cook unpalatable, and the most delicately-stuffed sofa-cushion hard to lie on. "I'd rather have a turnip, Strong, for dessert, than that pineapple, and all them Muscatel grapes, from Clavering," says poor Lady Clavering, looking at her dinner-table, and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... least one man does," he answered gravely. The next minute Gaston walked down the room with Delia Gasgoyne on his arm. The girl delicately showed her preference, and he was aware of it. It pleased him—pleased his unconscious egoism. The early part of his life had been spent among Indian women, half-breeds, and a few dull French or English folk, whose chief charm ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... During his rounds in the night Swanson would find time to collect from the chimneys the soot that the lamps gave. It was then weighed out into very small portions, which were pressed into cakes or buttons by means of a hand-press. These little cakes were delicately packed away between layers of cotton in small, light boxes and shipped to Bergmann in New York, by whom the telephone transmitters were being made. A little later the Edison electric railway was built on the confines of the property out through the woods, at first only a third ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... nature is we have no means of determining accurately; but in conjunction with the fact that our previous experiments failed to locate Monsieur X, we may adopt the hypothesis that the wireless apparatus of that individual is not so delicately responsive as the average. In other words, the zone within which he may be found is in fact wider than we ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... a marvel to Thyrza in the daylight, it was yet more so now that she entered it and found two delicately shaded lamps giving a rich uncertainty to all the beautiful forms of furniture and ornaments. She had thought the Grails' parlour luxurious. And the dear old easy-chair, now so familiar to her, how humble it was compared with this in ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... her to clothe herself delicately that she might please Merlin; and never before had beautiful clothes seemed so wonderful to her. She ran her long white fingers through the folds of silk, and let the laces cascade over her arms; but ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... taken bodily out of one room. Why? As she asked herself this question Barrie threaded her way delicately along narrow paths between chairs, extraordinary leather or hairy cowhide trunks and thrilling bandboxes of enormous size, made quaintly beautiful with Chinese wall-paper. She wanted to examine the grouped furniture whose pale coverings and gilded wood glimmered attractively even in ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... seen reason to believe in previous volumes of these Studies, there are in women (1) preferential sensory paths of sexual stimuli, such as, apparently, a predominence of tactile and auditory paths as compared with men; (2) a more massive, complex, and delicately poised sexual mechanism; and, as a result of this, (3) eventually a greater amount of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... for Hoodie's tears Magdalen thought it best to make no reply, but she stooped down and carefully lifted up the little bird. It was a pretty little creature—its wings and breast marked with delicately shaded colour, though just now the feathers were ruffled and disordered—a very young bird; and Magdalen's country-bred eyes recognized it ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... came back that evening, with my brain slightly confused by a few glasses of wine, a vague whiff of Oriental perfume delicately titillated my olfactory nerves. The heat of the room had warmed the natron, bitumen, and myrrh in which the paraschistes, who cut open the bodies of the dead, had bathed the corpse of the princess. It was a perfume at once sweet ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... a mixture of immature vegetables, served in a sort of saute. These were sprouting beans, lentils, peas and a number of others with which we were unfamiliar. The whole was delicately ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... are of the middle height, slim, and delicately formed; their features are agreeable and mild; the face is oval, the nose sharply chiselled, the lip by no means thick, the eye fine and soft, and the hair smooth and black. Their complexion varies, according to ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... and taste and delight, but she has her fevers of blood and fury, her awful reactions of raw brutality, her hidden sores of strange crime. Of all cities, Paris is the most refined, the most progressive in the highest way, the most delicately sensitive; of all cities, too, when the spasm is on her, she is the most mediaeval in her violence, her lust for blood, her horrible 'inhumanity to man'—Burns might have written ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... surveyed herself, half contemptuously, under lowered eyelids, with a set of her head and back that belied plainly enough the pout of her critical lips. And having admired that haggard image, she lifted her wasted hand and delicately touched her whitened, hollow cheeks with the tips of her ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... past life rose up in painful array before him, and occasioned reflections that disturbed him deeply. Should this young man prove, on examination, to resemble his sister in her views of moral life in general—should he find him as delicately virtuous, and animated by the same pure sense of honor, he felt that his recovery would disturb the future habits of his life, and take away much of the gratification which he expected from his society. These considerations, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... habitual. She sounded him in this way once or twice, carelessly perusing him, and waiting for the interesting edition of the Book of Man to summarize its character by showing its pages or remaining shut. It was done delicately, like the tap of a finger-nail on a vase. He rang clear; he had nothing to conceal; and where he was reserved, that is, in speaking of the developed beauty and grace of Renee, he was transparent. She read the sort of man he was; she could also hazard a guess as to the man's present ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Parole d'Honneur was as gay and as full of anecdote as of yore. She also told me, too, that the kind-hearted Frenchman having chanced to meet her out one day, long before she had been able to hear from me directly, had, in the most delicately- diplomatic way, led the conversation round to America, so that he might tell her that I was not ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... circumstance touched him more delicately; his room was arranged with greater care than before, and with an occasional exhibition of taste that certainly had not distinguished Mrs. Roberts's previous ministrations. One evening on his return he found a small bouquet of inexpensive flowers in a glass on his writing-table. He loved ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... Delicately worked samplers, faded water-colours, portraits, old seals, snuff-boxes, and lockets, attract the curio-hunter. Here is a Prayer Book with massive silver clasps, inscribed, "Dearest Mary, on our wedding ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... urgeth them with less restraint. Nor is this to be marvelled at, for that, an we choose to consider, we may see that fire, of its nature, catcheth quicklier to light and delicate things than to those which are denser and more ponderous; and we women, indeed,—let men not take it ill,—are more delicately fashioned than they and far more mobile. Wherefore, seeing that we are naturally inclined thereunto[232] and considering after how our mansuetude and our loving kindness are of repose and pleasance to the men with whom we have to do and ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the snow-like features were vaguely emerging, when the wind gave a wild howl, the night grew dark again, and in bellowing blackness the death-silent snow was upon them. But in a moment or two more, with Snootie's vigorous aid, he had drawn the body of a slight, delicately formed woman out of it's cold, white mould. Somehow, with difficulty, he got it on his back, the only way he could carry it, and staggered away with it toward his house. Thus laden, he might never have found it, near as it ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... gentleman in green slashed doublet and hosen of soft cream cloth. A green cap with a white swan's feather perched jauntily on the dark, curling hair, and from a belt of pale buckskin hung a sword with a delicately chased handle. The "poor gentleman of Devon" fresh from London and the court felt as gay as a dusty barndoor fowl might feel beside ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... her head with a certain dignity. Notwithstanding her softness and tenderness, there were occasions—even with those she loved best—when Lady Constance could delicately mark her displeasure. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... which he spoke of my father was gratifying to my vanity; the veil which he delicately cast over his benevolence, in alledging a duteous fulfilment of the king's latest will, was soothing to my pride. Other feelings, less ambiguous, were called into play by his conciliating manner and the generous warmth of his expressions, respect rarely before experienced, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... forgotten by most of the passengers, myself among the number. Scipio's preparations now put my palate in tune, and I did ample justice to the skill of Chloe's mother, who, as Scipio informed me, was "de boss in de kitchen." The tea strengthened me; the chicken, delicately fricasseed and garnished upon rice, seemed to refill my veins with fresh blood. With the exception of the slight pain of my wound, I already felt ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... law of compensation and the existence of evil and consequent suffering are actual entities to him. And yet these men do not belong to the same school. The resemblance is on the surface. Emerson dabbles delicately, yet, let it be conceded, energetically, with theories: his hands are not the nervy, sinewy hands of the Viking of English literature; he lacks his keen discernment of life, his quick comprehension of the mutual relations of men and their times; he often wants his ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... her sensations—not wholly inconsistent with her figure—gave the clue to Mrs. Jablett's sufferings. Resisting a frivolous impulse to reassure her as to the elasticity of the human integument, I considered her case in exhaustive detail, coasting delicately round the subject of "unsweetened," and finally sent her away, revived in spirits and grasping a bottle of Mist. Sodae cum Bismutho from Barnard's big stock-jar. Then I went back to investigate the Horrible Discovery; but before ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... that of the rose, you would be sadly confused about it; for the aster's plan of living is very different from the rose's. Each purple or white ray is a little home in itself; and these are all inhabited by maiden ladies, living each one alone in the one delicately colored room of her house. But in the middle of the aster you will find a dozen or more little families, all packed away together. Each one has its own small, yellow house, each has the father, mother, and one child: they all live here together on ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews
... Wherever she walked she was a picture, and whether she was working about the house, or idling with a cigarette on the verandah, or running over the sand to spank mischievous boys who had been trespassing, she was delicately graceful, something to watch and to remember. I shall remember her chiefly in the setting of the night when the moon cast her lemon-coloured beams ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... lies a thin bit of red rock, rippled as delicately as a woman's hair, bearing marks of raindrops that came from the south. It was once soft clay. It was laid down close to the igneous Archaean rocks when Mother Earth was in her girlhood and water ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... one of the loneliest, as well as one of the most vicious and abandoned, quarters of New York, was as safe and inviolate as—as—She shook her head again. Her mind did not instantly suggest a comparison that seemed wholly adequate. The pucker deepened, but the sensitive, delicately chiseled lips parted now in a smile. Well, she was safer here than anywhere else in the ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... deep and sometimes winding tunnel downward. In the dry wood at the bottom he makes a little round pocket and lines it with the very softest material. When one finds such a nest, with five or six white eggs delicately touched with pink lying at the bottom, and a pair of chickadees gliding about, half fearful, half trustful, it is altogether such a beautiful little spot that I know hardly a boy who would be mean enough ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... foul places, blind With harpy-wings, and sulphurous with the glare Of sinful furnaces—where hunger toiled, And pleasure gathered in a starveling prey, And death fed delicately ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... ye like to gentle streams run dry! Ah, lake of lilies, where grief's elephant Hath swung his trunk, and turned the crystal black, And scattered all the blue and crimson cups, And frightened off the birds! Ah, lily-cup, Tender, and delicately leaved, and reared To blossom in a palace built of gems, How dost thou wither here, wrenched by the root, Sun-scorched and faded! Noblest, loveliest, best!— Who bear'st no gems, yet so becomest them— How like the new moon's silver horn thou ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... are born with the first warm breath of the spring. All the winter they lie hidden in the crevices of the stone, in the carving of little names, and with the first spring day they stand delicately and dry their yellow wings on the little graves. There are the honeycombs of friendly bees, and the shelters of many a timid earth-born speck of life no bigger than a dewdrop, mysteriously small. Radiant pin-points of existence have their palaces on the broad blades of the grasses, and in the ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... a genius, certainly knew how to fry fish, and that morning we had for breakfast some of Jack Shark's pilots—the most delicately-flavoured deep-sea fish I have ever tasted—except, perhaps, that wonderful and beautiful creature, ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... at which two knife-blade marks crossed. When the target was in position this delicately marked bull's-eye could not be seen ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... black silk skirt she wore a black shawl, one end thrown over her shoulder. About her head was a close black silk turban, concealing, with the exception of two soft gray locks on either side of her face, what little hair she may still have possessed. Her white face was delicately cut: the lines of time indicated ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... really no control over her, whatever. She does as she pleases, and is ruining her complexion by running and galloping out of doors the whole time. Not that she had much complexion to start with. The Churchills never had, you know."...Sara cast a complacent glance at her delicately tinted reflection in the mirror.... "I tried to make Betty wear a sunbonnet this summer, but I might as well have ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... scarce touching on the benefits by them conferred on her, and skilfully dwelling rather on Ellen herself and setting forth what she had been to them. Mr. Lindsay could not be unconscious of what his visitor delicately omitted to hint at, neither could he help making secretly to himself some most unwilling admissions; and though he might wish the speaker at the antipodes, and doubtless did, yet the sketch was too happily given, and his fondness for Ellen too great, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... boiling water. She showed them, thus, more fully, the grace, the freshness, the look of latent buoyancy that made her so young, that made her, even now, in her black dress and with her gravity, remind one of a flower, submerged, momentarily, in deep water, its color hardly blurred, its petals delicately crisp, its fragrance only needing air and sunlight to diffuse itself. For all the youthfulness, a quality of indolent magic was about her, a soft haze, as it were, woven of matured experience, of detachment from youth's self-absorption, of the observer's ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... inexhaustible fund of sympathy for the babies. She was never without one in her arms. Three mothers, who had died on the road, left their children to her care. And it was wonderful and pitiful to see the delicately nurtured girl, making all kinds of efforts to secure little necessaries for the children she had ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... in Mrs. Linwood's face, on which the light of the chandelier resplendently shone, I observed lines of care on her smooth brow, which were not there two weeks before. The engraver was doing his work delicately, secretly, but he was at work, and it was Ernest's hand that guided the steel as it left its ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... to us the Kitely passages from Every Man in his Humour, in which piece at the acted performances he was, I suspect, the noblest Roman of 'em all. It was a truly fine performance; he brought out the jealousy in the most powerful and yet delicately suggestive fashion. Every emotion, particularly the anticipation of such emotions, was reflected in his mobile features. His voice, deep and sonorous, and at times almost flutey with softness, was under perfect control; he could direct it as he ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... pressing the delicately traced lines to her lips, "how near she seems to me! nearer almost than Theo;" and then involuntarily her thoughts went backward to the night when Henry Warner first told her of his love, and when in her dreams there had been a strange blending together of herself, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... we must walk delicately. The Germanic name Hatto, borne by the wicked bishop who perished in the Maeuseturm, gave the French name Hatt with the accusative form Hatton, [Footnote: In Old French a certain number of names, mostly of Germanic origin, had an accusative in -on, e.g. Guy, Guyon, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... bridge," thought Hilary, as he looked at the smooth dark water, dotted with the broad leaves of the yellow water-lily, and amidst the herbage of whose banks a sooty-looking water-hen was walking delicately upon its long thin green toes, darting its crimson-shielded head forward and flicking its white ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... rare natures who make collections for the sheer love of the objects they collect, and if they can be persuaded to show them off at all it is always with so much tenderness and sympathy that even the feelings of a delicately wrought Buddha could not be bruised. But there were none of these natures numbered among the trustees of Saint Margaret's. And because it was purely a matter of charity and pride with them, and because they never had any time ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... long hair which fell over her eyes, and poured out her heart in sad speech, in a quiet voice, like the breeze which, rising on a beautiful evening, blows through the thick growth of reeds beside the stream. They rustle, murmur, and give forth delicately mournful sounds, and the traveller, pausing in inexplicable sadness, hears them, and heeds not the fading light, nor the gay songs of the peasants which float in the air as they return from their ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... assured of a position, whose only handicap was the prospect, delicately insinuated by the foreman for his consideration, of the possible state of mind of the previous incumbent when he realized that his niche had been filled, and it did not add to his cheerfulness when the foreman examined his biceps with an expert ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... hold on taste if it were not carefully finished and constructed with elaborate care. Browne, if he was not a great writer, was a literary artist of a high quality. He exploits a quaint and lovable egoism with extraordinary skill; and though his delicately figured and latinized sentences commonly sound platitudinous and trivial when they are translated into rough Saxon prose, as they stand they are rich and ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... starts upon his long road, girds himself, and gathers his robes round him; and we have to 'run with perseverance the race set before us'; and shall never do it if our garments, however delicately embroidered, are flapping about our feet and getting in our way when ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... delicately nurtured that she should dread the great world of which she knew nothing, nor had Nanna's conversation during ten years done much to strengthen her in the paths of virtue. Her pride had done much more and ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford |
