"Ravishing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... debtor's prison, we took the open road again. But war was ravishing the land; there was no work for him to do. We starved slowly southward, day by day, shivered and starved from town to town across ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... by Dorothy Lane's ravishing description of you, have asked many times to see your picture. I am ashamed of my own carelessness in having gone away without obtaining one for exhibition purposes. Will you send me one at once? ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... man's death, the which I have often remembered, with wonderment and gladness. After he had lain for some time sick, his hour came that he must depart, and behold, while he lay, as we call it, drawing on, to the amazement of the mourners, there was heard about his bed such blessed and ravishing music as they never heard before; which also continued till his soul departed, and then began to cease, and grow, as to its sound, as if it was departing the house, and so still seemed to go further and further off, till at last they could hear it not longer. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... secured him by the methods and in the interest of the King; I can do with him as I will, as with all the artists, though they are most difficult people. They must be taken through the heart. Rossini has just composed a really ravishing piece; and, touched by the manner in which he is treated, he wishes to present it to the King in token of his gratitude, and wishes to receive nothing. He is right, but the King cannot accept gratis ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... and the black-caps, the linnets and the little Jenny Wrens, knowing the value of silence, are hoarding it like misers; but like prodigals, they 're squandering sound. The ear of mortal never heard such a delirious, delicious, such a crystalline, argentine, ivory-smooth, velvety-soft, such a ravishing, such an enravished tumult of sweet voices. Showers, cascades, of pearls and rubies, emeralds, diamonds, sapphires. The weather, says Anthony Rowleigh. He could n't stand the weather. The weather is as perfect as a perfect work of ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... now returning, though without wind, I approached until I could almost have touched her. It seemed a grossness of which I was incapable to break up her reverie by speech. I stood and drank her in with my eyes; how the light made a glory in her hair, and (what I have always thought the most ravishing thing in nature) how the planes ran into each other, and were distinguished, and how the hues blended and varied, and were shaded off, between the cheek and neck. At first I was abashed: she wore her beauty like an immediate halo ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hundreds of voices, a dread sound that had come so suddenly to displace at least temporarily the merry, trivial air of the "Ca ira!" which hitherto had been the revolutionary carillon. Instinctively Mme. de Plougastel and Aline clung to each other. They had heard the sound of the ravishing of that other house in the neighbourhood, without knowledge of the reason. What if now it should be the turn of the Hotel Plougastel! There was no real cause to fear it, save that amid a turmoil imperfectly ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... and looked away from my eyes. I saw the colour spreading in a slow wave over her cheeks; it was like those tints of early dawn that are so ravishing to the souls of poets. "In four or five months from now—-" ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... the content he might have had with such a woman for a wife. But then the thought of his disgrace—a disgrace he could not share with a wife—always dissipated the beautiful vision and made the hard reality of what was, seem tenfold harder for the ravishing beauty of what might ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... executed in so masterly a manner, that in the whole course of my life I had never heard anything so exquisite. So great was my amazement that I could scarcely breathe. Awakened by the violence of my feelings, I instantly seized my violin, in the hope of being able to catch some part of the ravishing melody which I had just heard, but all in vain. The piece which I composed according to my scattered recollections is, it is true, the best I ever produced. I have entitled it 'Sonata del Diavolo;' but it is so far inferior to that which had made so forcible ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... the going of each day's sun gilding cloud-crests, silvering waves, setting you matchless scenes in color effect, some ravishing in their gorgeous splendor, some soft and tender of tone as the light in the eyes of the woman you worship, scenes beside which the most brilliant stage settings which metropolitans flock like sheep to see are ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... his eyes. She has retreated behind the oleanders in the foreground on the left). Ravishing creature! I must follow her! (About ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... between Scott and Stevenson has been gravely offered by the latter's friends. They are doing a beautiful artist a serious injustice, You could place Stevenson's ravishing assortment of cameos in any chamber of Scott's feudal castle. It is an intaglio beside a cathedral, a humming-bird beside an eagle. It is anything ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... the new century came Volta's invention of the chemical battery as a means of producing electricity. A well-known Italian picture represents Volta exhibiting his apparatus before the young conqueror Napoleon, then ravishing from the Peninsula its treasure of ancient art and founding an ephemeral empire. At such a moment this gift of despoiled Italy to the world was a noble revenge, setting in motion incalculable beneficent ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... approbation to our ecclesiastick constitutions, and conclusions, knowing that a truly Christian minde and royall heart inclined from above, to religion and piety, will at the first discern, and discerning be deeply possessed with the love of the ravishing beautie, and heavenly order of the house of God; they both proceeding from the same Spirit. But as the joy was unspeakable, and the hopes lively, which from the fountaines of your Majesties favour did fill our hearts, so were we not a little troubled, when wee did perceive that your ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... of mine, As Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor, And still she pouts, this Love of mine, So cityward I go. But ere I start to do the thing, And speed my soul's imperilling For one who is my ravishing And all ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... intellectual standpoint all women to him were alike, made to be "managed" alike, used alike, and alike set aside when their use was done with. The leaven of the Jew or the Turk was in the temperament of this descendant of a long line of French nobles, who had gained their chief honours by killing men, ravishing women and plundering their neighbours' lands—though occasional flashes of bravery and chivalry had glanced over their annals in history like the light from a wandering will o' the wisp flickering over a morass. Gifted in his ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... also men whose business was to ravish and take away virginity from young girls. These girls were taken to such men, and the latter were paid for ravishing them, for the natives considered it a hindrance and impediment if the girls were ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... altogether a most dangerous man to deal with—one can tell that by merely glancing at his eyes—and I have a firm conviction that if you were perchance to offend him, he would without compunction stab you, or do you some other dreadful injury—perhaps kill you outright. Therefore,"—with a most ravishing smile, and a tightening of her grip upon my arm—"you will be pleased to consider yourself as ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... things?' 'Fair my soul,' rejoined the abbot, 'marvel not, for that sanctity nowise abateth by this, seeing it hath its seat in the soul and that which I ask of you is a sin of the body. But, be that as it may, your ravishing beauty hath had such might that love constraineth me to do thus; and I tell you that you may glory in your charms over all other women, considering that they please holy men, who are used to look upon the beauties of heaven. Moreover, abbot though I ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... sweetly met o' nights, There will I steal and with my hurried hand Startle them suddenly from their delights Before the next encounter hath been plann'd, Ravishing hours in little minutes spann'd; But when they say farewell, and grieve apart, Then like a leaden statue I will stand, Meanwhile their many tears encrust my dart, And with a ragged edge ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... objects in the first casino was a group by Bernini,—Pluto, an outrageously masculine and strenuous figure, heavily bearded, ravishing away a little, tender Proserpine, whom he holds aloft, while his forcible gripe impresses itself into her soft virgin flesh. It is very disagreeable, but it makes one feel that Bernini was a man of great ability. There are some works in literature that bear ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Erh-lang roamed the lakeside, delighting in the soft air, and saw, in front of a teahouse, a ravishing girl of about eighteen, in whose face, which was as dreamful as the Night Star, flowered all the blossoms of the time. He stopped, fixed to the ground with admiration and already riotous with love. He could not take his eyes from the rose radiance of this face, peach ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... witchery of Gladkovska, however, he was genuinely pierced to the heart, and his letters are as full of vague morose yearning as his Preludes. He left Warsaw for Vienna, but the memory of her pursued him. She had sung at his farewell concert in Warsaw, and made a ravishing success as a picture and as a singer. In Vienna he longed for her so deeply that he went about wearing the black velvet mantle of gloom which was so effective on the musicians and poets of ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... chapel on the left, the windows bricked up. It had a sinister and wicked air, somehow. The squire told me that they had unearthed a dozen skeletons in that little yard as they were laying a drain, and had buried them in the neighbouring churchyard. But the back of the house was still more ravishing than the front; surrounded by great brick walls, curving outwards, lay a grassy garden, with huge box-trees at the sides, and in the centre many ancient apple-trees in full bloom. The place was bright with carelessly ordered flowers; and behind, the ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... she be! how thankful, how pious, how virtuous, how rich in inward charms! These are what God asks in return. Think of it, young women, as it really is. See God clothing your forms with Beauty, rich and ravishing in its charms; see that Beauty winning for you flowery paths of life, softening all hearts that approach you, making it easy, ay, almost a necessity, for them to love and esteem you; think how much you prize it, and how pleasant it is to your friends; and then think what God asks in return ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... absorbed. While Margaret busied herself with the preparations for tea, his eyes followed her movements with a doglike, touching devotion. They travelled from her smiling mouth to her deft hands. It seemed that he had never seen anything so ravishing as the way in which she bent over the kettle. Margaret felt that he was looking at her, and turned round. Their eyes met, and they stood for an appreciable time ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... Phidias, full of majesty and of grandeur as they are—the matchless finish of the works of Apelles and Praxiteles, ravishing the senses with their carnal beauty, still lacked one element, without which art can never reveal itself in the full ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to the house, and began looking everywhere. They even opened the door of Avrillia's own bed-room, which was upholstered entirely in pink morning-glory satin, with hangings of opalescent mist; Sara thought it was quite the most ravishing place she had ever seen; at least she though so until Pirlaps distractedly led her down into the basement to Avrillia's kitchen. A smell of something delectable scorching enveloped them as they opened the door. And there ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... and often, also, in its old walks of pounded shell, the coco-grass and crab-grass had spread riotously, and sturdy weeds stood up in bloom. He stepped in and drew the gate to after him. There, very near by, was the clump of jasmine, whose ravishing odor had tempted him. It stood just beyond a brightly moonlit path, which turned from him in a curve toward the residence, a little distance to the right, and escaped the view at a point where it seemed more than likely a door of the house might open upon ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... parted smoothly across her unblemished forehead, which might have been marble, so smooth and pure, but for the warm blood that flowed through those delicate blue channels. The mouth and features were of the Grecian model, and when she smiled she showed a ravishing sweetness of expression, and teeth that rivalled those of an Indian. In form, her person was slightly voluptuous, though strictly within the most true female delicacy. Such is a sketch of the two whom we at the outset denominated as lovers; and such they were, as the progress ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... his offer. They had a penchant for a different pleasure. Ravishing virgins was not in their line. So they reviled Lot for setting himself up as a judge amongst them, called him "fellow," threatened to deal worse with him than with the strangers, and actually pressed so sore upon him that they "came near to ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... immense quantities of which are drunk, especially in the evening, or for fine champagne, the name bestowed upon superior brandy. However, ladies and gentlemen unite in disposing of half-frozen punch (sorbets) or eating ices—say a tutti frutti at the Cafe Napolitain—ravishing mixtures of cold and passion, the fruits of the tropics imbedded in a slice of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... whisky is to the drunkard, brought back a familiar picture. It was of a farmhouse with barns and many out-buildings. There were hens, ducks and turkeys in the yard and back of the house was a row of beehives that always emitted this ravishing odor. ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... yourself, and pronounce that you are ravishing," Victorine said at length, folding her hands with a sigh of satisfaction, as she fell back in an attitude ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the end it was Annabel who scored. For when at length she crossed Persis' threshold, a young man happened to be passing. A ravishing smile banished Annabel's look of sullen resentment. Her white-gloved ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... mighty passion that now raged in the heart of Ferdinand Armine, as, pale and trembling, he withdrew a few paces from the overwhelming spectacle, and leant against a tree in a chaos of emotion. What had he seen? What ravishing vision had risen upon his sight? What did he feel? What wild, what delicious, what maddening impulse now pervaded his frame? A storm seemed raging in his soul, a mighty wind dispelling in its course the sullen clouds ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... and the Duchess had, indeed, exhausted French art in turning the grand old place into a land of ravishing enchantment, with its many lights, its flowers, its works of art. Her abode was truly an enlivening scene, with its variety of ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... sung 'Le Parlate d'Amor' as no mortal ever sung and looked it, she left the stage and carried my heart and soul away with her. What chance had I? Here shone all the beauties that adorn the body, all the virtues and graces that embellish the soul; they were wedded to poetry and ravishing music, and gave and took enchantment. I saw my paragon glide away, like a goddess, past the scenery, and I did not see her meet her lover at the next step—a fellow with a wash-leather face, greasy ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... to hasten your enjoyment of them, I only require of you to pay to the people the increased obligation which the voluntary surrender of my dignity lays upon you. Other princes esteem it a peculiar felicity to bequeath to their children the crown which death is already ravishing from then. This happiness I am anxious to enjoy during my life. I wish to be a spectator of your reign. Few will follow my example, as few have preceded me in it. But this my deed will be praised if your future life should justify my expectations, if you continue to be guided by that wisdom which ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Night; Round her Seraphick Face so fair and young, Her Sable Hair in careless Dresses hung, Which added to her beauteous Features, show'd Like some fair Angel peeping through a Cloud? Her Breasts, her Hands, and every Charm so bright, She seem'd a Sun by Day, a Moon by Night; Her shape so ravishing, that every Part, Proportion'd was to the nicest Rules of Art: So awful was her Carriage when she mov'd, None could behold her, but he fear'd and lov'd, She danc'd well, sung well, finely plaid the Lute, Was always witty in her Words, or Mute; Obliging, not reserv'd, nor yet too free, But ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... seemed unaware of his presence, and read steadily, occasionally looking up and chirping with a pair of ravishing lips at a blackbird, which hung in a wicker cage ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... Constance had sung them so many times that she knew them by heart. Now she fixed her eyes on the east wall of the gymnasium, and, leaving the world behind her, rendered the beautiful selection as though she were in her own home, with only her dear ones to listen to the flood of ravishing melody that issued from ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... day of blue sky, a day when from the heavens some of the sparkle and brightness descends to earth. The green of tender grass and young wheat was of a ravishing delicacy, even the dun woods borrowed something from the azure of ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... tradition of their origin, he said, was as follows: A long, long time ago, an old man who lived on this mountain lost himself in the jungle at its foot, and at night, being tired, and afraid of snakes and the evil spirits of the wood, he climbed into a tree and fell asleep. He was woke by a noise of ravishing music, the sweetest gongs and chanangs mingling with voices over his head. The music came nearer and nearer to the place where he was, until he heard the sweet voices under the tree, and, looking down, beheld a large clear fountain opened, and ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... valet, scraping and bowing, informed Fitzhugh Williams, aged nine, that it was time to get up, and tub, and go forth in a white sailor suit, and be of the world worldly, Fitzhugh declined. A greater personage was summoned—Aloys, "the maid of madame," a ravishing creature—to whom you and I, good Americans though we are, could have refused nothing. But Fitzhugh would not come out of his feather-bed. And when madame herself came, looking like a princess even at that early hour, he only ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... shelter of poles and spruce branches, and rested at his ease. He thought of Flora Lockhart. Her sea-eyes and red lips were as clear and bright as a picture in his brain. Her wonderful, bell-like voice rang in his ears like fairy music. The spell of her was like a ravishing fire ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... Lily was perfectly ravishing in her splendor at the dance. The white Swiss frock she wore was high in the neck, but her brown shoulders and arms shone through the thin fabric with fine effect. About her slim waist she tied a narrow ribbon of blue, and she carried a pink feather fan, and the wreath about her forehead was ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... instruments of stringes in accorde, Heard I so play, a ravishing swetnesse, That God, that maker is of all and Lorde, Ne heard never better, as I gesse, Therewith a wind, unneth it might be lesse, Made in the leaves grene a noise soft, Accordant to ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... Nixon made a special class of us, and aided us so skilfully and earnestly in our endeavors to "see-a-cat," and "hear-a-dog-bark," and "look-at-the-hen," that we turned over page after page of the ravishing history, eager to find out how the common world looked, smelled, and tasted in the strange speech. The teacher knew just when to let us help each other out with a word in our own tongue,—it happened that we were all Jews,—and so, working ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... well to make me bid farewell to this ravishing nature on such a day," she said, looking at the beauty of the trees, all so full of foliage that they hid the shore. The only disapprobation her friends allowed themselves was to show a gloomy silence; and Veronique, receiving ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... expression for those who so firmly, compactly and sternly carried their eagles in triumph over the world and assembled the deities of conquered nations in their own Pantheon; while the marvelous grace and flexibility spread like a transparent veil of ravishing beauty over the well-posed members of a Greek sentence could emanate, from no source so naturally as the gay, beauty-loving sons of the Hellenes, whose conceptions of beauty are the ideals for all time; whose flexible ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... chateau than up in noisy Paris. On a fine afternoon it is said that it was no uncommon sight to see the chevalier, all togged up in his bravest court costume, sword and all, sitting at his harpsichord, playing ravishing music. This was out in the pretty little park back of the chateau, and the duchess would sit at Gluck's side and pour out champagne for him. All this may have been idle talk, but at last the duke got wind of the rumours, and one ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... in accord Heard I so play a ravishing sweetness, That God, that Maker is of all and Lord, Ne hearde never better, as I guess: Therewith a wind, unneth* it might be less, *scarcely Made in the leaves green a noise soft, Accordant* the fowles' song on loft.** ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... with hia stealthy pace, With Tarquin's ravishing strides, tow'rds his design moves ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... and fled, all hope resigned, Through Lanka's gates, nor looked behind. His voice each joyous Vanar raised, And Rama, conquering Rama, praised. Soft from celestial minstrels came The sound of music and acclaim. Soft, fresh, and cool, a rising breeze Brought odours from the heavenly trees, And ravishing the sight and smell A wondrous rain of blossoms fell: And voices breathed round Raghu's son: "Champion of Gods, well done, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... played on them! I regarded their performance as a species of duet; and the raw materials, ranged in the sand about the fire, were the keys. Frank touched this, Charley touched that, and over the fire the music grew—perfectly stomach-ravishing! ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... and self-contained in general company, would laugh till the tears ran down her cheeks; and the music of her laughter, which was deep and low, rang more agreeably to Barty's ear than even the ravishing strains of Adelina Patti—the last of the great prime donne of our time, I think—whose voice still stirs me to the depths, with vague remembrance of fresh girlish ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... embraces of the siren goddess, while life passes in a ceaseless orgy of sinful pleasure. But the poet wearies of his amorous captivity, and would fain return to the earth once more. In vain the goddess pleads, in vain she calls up new scenes of ravishing delight, he still prays to be gone. Finally he calls on the sainted name of Mary, and Venus with her nymphs, grotto, palace and all, sink into the earth with a thunder-clap, while Tannhaeuser, when he comes to his senses once more, finds himself kneeling upon the green grass ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... maid's advice he presented himself late in the day, and when he had cooled his heels in the salon for some time, a lady entered, who was of such ravishing appearance that ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the child is not a success. It has a rival who is rapidly beating it off the ground. This is the Parisian dog. As an implement of fashion, as a set-off to the fair sex, as the recipient of ecstatic kisses and ravishing hugs, the Parisian dog can give the child forty points in a hundred and win out. It can dress better, look more intelligent, behave better, bark better,—in fact, the child is simply not ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... gardens of Arcadia House and the superstitious terror with which he had watched it following upon the unconscious footsteps of the girl Esmay. Then, again, the fair-haired woman who only a few minutes ago had come to meet Quinton Edge on the north terrace, an apparition so ravishing that Constans must needs confound it with the flesh-and-blood presentment of his ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... The delegates of the people, after listening to the eloquent appeal of an intrepid Huguenot pastor, determined to petition the States General for the free exercise of the reformed religion. The representatives of the church made its complaints regarding the "ravishing wolves, false preachers, and their adherents, who are to-day in so great numbers that there are not so many true sheep knowing the voice of their shepherds." The "mild and holy admonitions" of the church having ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Also, there was a wheaten flommery as it was made in the West Country—for the cook chose quite at random—and a slip-coat cheese as Master Phillips proportioned it. Also, against the colic, which was ravishing the country, the cook prepared a metheglin as Lady Stuart mixed it—"nettles, fennel and grumel seeds, of each two ounces being small-cut and mixed with honey and boiled together." It is on record that the Lady Digby ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... red constellation from the remoter bays of the lawn; and there, taller yet, the evergreen Magnolia fuscata, full of its waxen, cream-tinted, inch-long flowers smelling delicately like the banana. He found the sweet olive, of refined leaf and minute axillary flowers yielding their ravishing tonic odor with the reserve of the violet; the pittosporum; the box; the myrtle; the camphor-tree with its neat foliage answering fragrantly the grasp of the hand. The dark camellia was there, as broad and tall as a lilac-bush, its firm, glossy leaves of the deepest ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... anthems of our festal days, Whose ravishing division held apart The lips of listening throngs in sweet amaze, Moved in all breasts the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... it a matter of pride to display her overskirts. These were arranged with ever so many tapes on the inside, and would readily tie up into the most ravishing bunches and puffs—how Lu and Kathie, wee-est mites of women though they were, did envy Winnie her tapes! Their mammas didn't know how to loop a dress—witness their little skirts pinned back into what ...
— Lill's Travels in Santa Claus Land and other Stories • Ellis Towne, Sophie May and Ella Farman
... room into which she was first ushered was of an inlaid foreign pattern, of which she could not guess the name or period. There was a player-piano to match the furniture, and a cabinet of rolls. Near by stood a specially made Victrola with an extensive selection of records. There were bronze lamps, ravishing bits of bric-a-brac, lace curtains of which she could judge the quality, and heavy hangings, sheathed now in their summer coverings. The decorations of the room were harmonious and bespoke a reckless disregard of cost. A fluffy Japanese spaniel with protruding eyes and distorted ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... "do not omit the last service that my elixir will do me. After hearing ravishing voices and imbibing music through every pore, after experiencing the keenest pleasures and the fiercest delights of Mahomet's paradise, I see none but the most terrible images. I have visions of my beloved Venice full of children's faces, distorted, like ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... deal of attention: or let him demonstrate a proposition in Euclid, in his five last books, extract a square root, or study Algebra: than which, as [3360]Clavius holds, "in all human disciplines nothing can be more excellent and pleasant, so abstruse and recondite, so bewitching, so miraculous, so ravishing, so easy withal and full of delight," omnem humanum captum superare videtur. By this means you may define ex ungue leonem, as the diverb is, by his thumb alone the bigness of Hercules, or the true ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... which, keen as is the penetration displayed on almost every subject of imposition and delusion, he appears still to cling, with the obstinacy of a veteran, to some of the darling Dalilahs of his youth, "to the admirable and soul-ravishing knowledge of the three great Hypostatical principles of nature, salt, sulphur, and mercury," and, proh pudor! to alchemy and astrology—and those seraphic doctors and professors, Crollius, Libavius, and Van Helmont. He closed his literary ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... Middleton's "More Dissemblers besides Women," A. 1, S. 3 (Dyce's edit, iii., 575), Dondolo, after a song by his page, says, "Oh rich, ravishing, rare, and inticing. Well, go thy ways, for as sweet a brested page as ever lay at his master's feet in a truckle-bed." And in the same writer's "Women beware ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... through a series of those grey-brown streets, neither commodious nor picturesque, in which the eastern quarter of the city abounds. Lucy soon lost interest in the discontent of Lady Louisa, and became discontented herself. For one ravishing moment Italy appeared. She stood in the Square of the Annunziata and saw in the living terra-cotta those divine babies whom no cheap reproduction can ever stale. There they stood, with their shining limbs ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... and still holding her guitar with one arm, while the other hand lifted her skirt daintily, she made us the deepest and most graceful of curtsies. Then she lifted her dark eyes shyly to Captain Clarke and with a ravishing smile bade him welcome in broken English. To me she vouchsafed not even a glance. I stood by stiff as any martinet while she made soft speeches to the captain in her adorable baby-English, and the captain responded ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... partner. It was then that Marguerite's deep violet eyes would sparkle and her face glow with enthusiasm, as she followed her father through the mazes of the game, and her clear silvery laughter had more charm than the ravishing strains ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... basques and impossible pleatings! Felicia couldn't get one of those bodies half around her healthy young waist. But she liked the bonnets and the shawls. They were adorable. The shawls were so soft, so quaintly shaped, the bonnets were fairly ravishing. Felicia tried them on, peering into a carved tortoise shell hand mirror, and giggled whimsically at the little flowered ones with lacy ties and the stuffy winter ones ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... hang the long pendent ferns, in richer, darker green. And with the grand old pine and fir trees lifting their heads to the heavens, and the thick tanglewood of shrub and underbrush, there is grandeur, grace, and beauty in bewildering, changeful, and ravishing confusion. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... before two, but not to-day: the escorts of both daughters remained, and a change of costume by Cora occasioned a long postponement. Justice demands the admission that her reappearance in a glamour of lilac was reward for the delay; nothing more ravishing was ever seen, she was warrantably informed by the quicker of the two guests, in a moment's whispered tete-a-tete across the banisters as she descended. Another wait followed while she prettily arranged ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... that of her picture, white, with a low bodice; but how utterly had the artist failed to reproduce the ravishing contours of her young form, the enchanting sweetness of her expression. The golden hair fell in luxuriant tresses about the face and down the dazzling shoulders. The lips were parted in a pleased smile as, with a gliding motion, she approached ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... knew her tastes, had chosen a soft, creamy stuff which he informed Mattie must be trimmed with no end of lace. Phillis had received and executed the order with such skill and discernment that a most ravishing costume had been produced. But Grace, who had her own ideas on the subject of those "Challoner girls," had received the gift somewhat coldly, and had even seemed displeased when her father pinched her ear and told her that Archie's gown ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... buttoned up to the top with gilt buttons. He brought every variety of collar and cravat in fashion at that epoch. He brought two of Buisson's coats and all his finest linen He brought his pretty gold toilet-set,—a present from his mother. He brought all his dandy knick-knacks, not forgetting a ravishing little desk presented to him by the most amiable of women,—amiable for him, at least,—a fine lady whom he called Annette and who at this moment was travelling, matrimonially and wearily, in Scotland, a victim to certain suspicions which ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... that at certain seasons choirs of these nymphs assemble in the sea, and with ravishing music sing their watery loves. It may be so. For Nature, which has peopled the land with rational souls, may not have left the sea altogether barren of them; above all, when we remember that the ocean is as it were the very fount of all fertility, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... nearer a horse than the distance between sidewalk and road. She smiled at you over her shoulder radiant in a white tricot Palm Beach suit, who thought palms grew in jardinieres only. On page 17 she was revealed in the boyish impudence of our Aiken Polo Habit, complete, $90. She was ravishing in her golf clothes, her small feet in sturdy, flat-heeled boots planted far apart, and only the most carping would have commented on the utter impossibility of her stance. Then there was the Killiecrankie Travel Tog (background of assorted mountains) made of Scotch ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... the presence of an audience presided over by so great a man, and in the midst of so numerous and distinguished a gathering of learned men who come kindly disposed to hear. For my part, if I were skilled to make ravishing music on the lyre, I should never play save before crowded assemblies. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... himself together, and got up and looked at himself in a mirror. He was elegant and genteel, at any rate, that everybody would be bound to allow. His whole get-up was unexceptionable—his chin was clean-shaven, his moustache and whiskers were downright picturesque, his cravat was ravishing, ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... immediately censured as mad. But if anyone let not only his senses but his judgment be imposed upon in the most ordinary common concerns, he shall come under the scandal of being thought next door to a madman. As suppose any one should hear an ass bray, and should take it for ravishing music; or if any one, born a beggar, should fancy himself as great as a prince, or the like. But this sort of madness, if (as is most usual) it be accompanied with pleasure, brings a great satisfaction both to those who are possessed with it themselves, and those who deride ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... like it or not, the task of speeding up the decrease of the human population becomes increasingly urgent.[31] To many of our Undesirables it may seem, mere sentiment to trouble about the ravishing of the world's beauty or the ravaging of the world's humanity. But certain hard facts, even to-day, have to be faced. The process of mechanical invention continues every day on an ever increasing scale ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... and carried to Morocco. You may easily imagine all we had to suffer on board the pirate vessel. My mother was still very handsome; our maids of honour, and even our waiting women, had more charms than are to be found in all Africa. As for myself, I was ravishing, was exquisite, grace itself, and I was a virgin! I did not remain so long; this flower, which had been reserved for the handsome Prince of Massa Carara, was plucked by the corsair captain. He was an abominable negro, and yet believed that he did me a great deal of honour. Certainly the Princess ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... of "Parsifal" began auspiciously. Quite puffed up with vainglorious pride over the little maiden's admiration of one of my modest possessions, while Bee's and Mrs. Jimmie's ravishing masterpieces had received not even a look, we met Jimmie bustling up with programmes and opera-glasses, and went toward the main entrance. We showed our tickets, and were sent to the side door. We went to the side door, and were sent to the back door. At the back door, to our indignation, ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... That was fully two weeks before; and now—no one knew just what ought to be done. It was known that Nina Beaubien had returned on the previous day from a brief visit to the upper lakes, and that she had a costume of ravishing beauty in which to carry desolation to the hearts of the garrison belles in leading that german with Mr. Jerrold. Old Madame Beaubien had been reluctant, said her city friends, to return at all. She heartily ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... the truth, or are unwilling to believe it. A servant in the neighbor's yard adjoining to Mrs. Bargrave's house heard her talking to somebody an hour of the time Mrs. Veal was with her. Mrs. Bargrave went out to her next neighbor's the very moment she parted with Mrs. Veal, and told her what ravishing conversation she had had with an old friend, and told the whole of it. Drelincourt's Book of Death is, since this happened, bought up strangely. And it is to be observed that, notwithstanding all the trouble and fatigue Mrs. Bargrave has undergone upon this account, she never ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... whose scales were as large as an ordinary piece of gold, and had the virtue to preserve from sickness those who lay upon it. 3. Fifty thousand drachms of the best wood of aloes, with thirty grains of camphire as big as pistachios. 4. A female slave of ravishing beauty, whose apparel was ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... with anything else," observed Pauline, with more tact. "See, now, with your white embroidered petticoat and the gray train they are ravishing—and the scarlet coat will enliven ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... female affection than twenty Sir Isaac Newtons! How must our reader, who perhaps had wisely accounted for the resistance which the chaste Laetitia had made to the violent addresses of the ravished (or rather ravishing) Wild from that lady's impregnable virtue—how must he blush, I say, to perceive her quit the strictness of her carriage, and abandon herself to those loose freedoms which she indulged to Smirk! But alas! when we discover all, as to preserve the fidelity of our history we must, when we ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... to kissing? Who could linger over it tenderly with a candle, or a lump of mutton fat, when cold had laid its cruel hand upon it? It is not tip-tilted like a flower; it is not whimsical with some ravishing and unexpected little crook. It is straight, like a mathematical line. But it has no parts. Her cheeks are round and fair. Each has its dimple and blush. They are thoroughly healthy, Mrs. Smith's digestion is ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... he understood, was chiefly important for the beauty of its sounds, by its possession of words resonant, glorious to the ear, by its capacity, when exquisitely arranged, of suggesting wonderful and indefinable impressions, perhaps more ravishing and farther removed from the domain of strict thought than the impressions excited by music itself. Here lay hidden the secret of the sensuous art of literature; it was the secret of suggestion, the ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... also, or somewhat qualifi'd, for the composition, arising from the mixture of the two extremes undiluted, makes a Purple, which though it be a lovely colour, and pretty acceptable to the eye, yet is it nothing comparable to the ravishing pleasure with which a curious and well tempered Green affects the eye. If removing the Paper, the eye be plac'd against cd, it will perceive the lower side of the Sun (or a Candle at night which is much better, because it offends not the eye, and is ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... sensuousness; just in the fashion of the romances of chivalry which were then being first printed and were much read. At that time Anne Boleyn, a lady who had lately returned from France, and appeared from time to time at Court, saw him at her feet; she was not exactly of ravishing beauty, but full of spirit and grace and with a certain reserve. While she resisted the King, she held ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... forwards, gazing around them the while and regarding the trees which bore for burthen ambergris and lign-aloes, sandal, cloves, and gelsamine,[FN35] all with flowers and fruits bedrest whose odours broadened the breast and excited the sprite. There also the birds warbled, with various voices, notes ravishing and rapturing the heart by the melodies of their musick. So Mubarak turned to the Prince and asked him saying, "How seest thou this place, O my lord?" and the other answered, "I deem, O Mubarak, that in very truth this be the Paradise promised to us by the Prophet (whom Allah ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... oblivion which they brought of the many painful and perilous prospects with which he had more recently become familiar. He had no thought of the present, and the pictures of the past were all rich and ravishing. To his wandering sense at that moment there came a sweet vision of beauty and love—of an affection warmly cherished—green as the summer leaves—fresh as its flowers—flinging odors about his spirit, and re-awakening in its fullest extent the partially slumbering passion—reviving ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... the swamp. You see it best by looking close into the very face of the flower as the bumblebee does when about to alight on it, and I think it is set there to show him the way. By the time he has seen that, he is near enough to be drawn by the faint but ravishing perfume which is breathed out by the flower. It is so faint that you must come like the bee to the very lip of the corolla before you will find it. It is so tender and of such refinement that when once you get ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... if one might wish for the re-introduction of the bastinado, it would be to apply it exclusively to those malicious wretches who have dared to besmear so many ravishing flights of fancy, so many fairy-like vagaries, ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... the great floor, holding the instrument delicately poised, and still awaking its ravishing voice, stood a figure, the sight of ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... might be remitted to the subjects; and that the state would still be rich enough to pay the tribute to the Romans: which assertion he proved to be true. But now those persons who, for several years past, had maintained themselves by plundering the public, were greatly enraged; as if this were ravishing from them their own property, and not as dragging out of their hands their ill-gotten spoil. Accordingly, they instigated the Romans against Hannibal, who were seeking a pretext for indulging their hatred against him. A strenuous opposition was, however, for a long time made to this by Scipio Africanus, ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... silence of night, with the man whom she secretly adored, with what that conversation might have been, had she possessed some share of charms and beauty—had she been loved as she loved, with a chaste and devoted flame! But soon sinking into belief that she should never know the ravishing sweets of a mutual passion, she found consolation in the hope of being useful to Agricola. At the dawn of day, she rose softly, and descended the staircase with little noise, in order to see if anything menaced ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... had her dream—ravishing and brief—but the awakening was terrible as the struggle back to life from a swoon or deathful lethargy. As to thinking, I believe nobody thinks at such seasons. Nature shrinks in speechless horror at sight of the descending weight, and when it has fallen, lies motionless, gasping in breath ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... to help my Lady to and from the carriage. One observes my Lady, how recognisant of my Lord's politeness, with an inclination of her gracious head and the concession of her so-genteel fingers! It is ravishing! ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... with her former kindness, or rather with an increase of it, was also seldom absent, and when she was so, the fault was wholly her own inclination: but in truth, that hurry of incessant diversion, which at first had seemed so ravishing to her young and unexperienced mind, began, by a more perfect acquaintance with it, to grow tiresome to her, and she rather chose sometimes to retire with a favourite book into her closet, than to go to the ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... momently conscious of a ravishing fragrance which seemed to pervade and invite the consciousness to all ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... as sweet as ditties highly penn'd, Sung by a fair queen in a Summer's bower, With ravishing division, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... fro. Reports were carried to the authorities of every movement made, of almost every meeting held. Men were arrested, imprisoned, flogged in the streets of Belfast. Information was forced from prisoners under the lash. Parties of yeomen rode through the country burning, ravishing, and hanging ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... were the Authors of them, and even a studyed conversation, wherein they discover to us the best only of their thoughts. That eloquence hath forces & beauties which are incomparable. That Poetry hath delicacies and sweets extremly ravishing; That the Mathematicks hath most subtile inventions, which very much conduce aswel to content the curious, as to facilitate all arts, and to lessen the labour of Men: That those writings which treat of manners contain ...
— A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason - and the Discovery of Truth in the Sciences • Rene Descartes
... But pretty, yes; as pretty as heart could desire, with her great velvety blue eyes and her pouting lips. She was a blonde, but one of those dazzling and radiant blondes found only in the countries of the sun; and from her hair, drawn high upon the top of her head, escaped a profusion of ravishing, glittering ringlets, which seemed almost to sparkle in the ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... at the gates of civilized Europe. If he gets inside nothing can stop him from ravishing us. This war has bound us so closely to Europe that we are, in a sense, one and the same. He who strikes our brother strikes us, even though he be so far away that the distance is measured by an ocean. We must get over the idea that distance makes ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... never mind," he coaxed, "you were really not responsible. It was fatigue, destiny, the spite of fortune,—whatever you like. In the case of the others, whom you despise so justly, I dare say it is sheer, disgraceful affection. But see that ravishing placard, swinging from the roof: 'This train stops twenty minutes for dinner at Utica.' In a few minutes more we shall be at Utica. If they have anything edible there, it shall never contract my powers. I could dine ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... melting, ravishing tune began, and a young man with curly hair bowed before her. She would have to dance, out of politeness, until she could find Meg. Very stiffly she walked into the middle; very haughtily she put her ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... Morgue. But for this I will not vouch. Only of this be sure. 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.' More and more the light peeps through the chinks. Soon, amidst music ravishing, the curtain will rise, and the glorious scene be displayed. Adieu! Remember me. Ha! 'tis dawn," Pinto said. And he ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pause, apparently to allow the editor to materialize this ravishing description, he said, gently, "Are you busy ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... rustle of her dress on the stairs and sprang to his feet. She paused in the doorway a vision of ravishing beauty in full evening dress, her bare arms and exquisite neck and throat gleaming ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... the cloudes in throngs The lightning leaps too, at my ravishing songs; Iris about my neck hangs round, And with her divers colour'd bow, I'me bound. Being now my selfe, and newly wak'd, My not unwelcome dreames, just now off shak'd; Thrice o're my Lute, I scarce had ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski
... England; to us they are merely beans; but to soissons they are known all over France, and in the mind and taste of the epicure there is no other bean just like them. This may be so or not, but there is no possible doubt whatever but that "soissons au beurre" is a ravishing dish which one meets with too infrequently, even in France, and this in spite of the millions of kilos of them which reach the markets through the gateway ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... "Do? You're ravishing! I'm going to make love to you all the evening, just for the sport of seeing the Acid Drop's face. Play up and ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... for my bright and faded hours! When life was like a summer stream, On whose gay banks the virgin flowers Blushed in the morning's rosy beam, Or danced upon the breeze that bare Its store of rich perfume along, While the wood-robin poured on air The ravishing delights ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... got the audience fairly into the hall and in their seats; and then music had to struggle with fashion. It had to fix and melt the wandering eyes, to tug at the worldly and the stony heart. And here it was that Arnold's music won the victory. The ravishing bonnet of Madam This or That no longer distracted the attention of its envying admirers, or of its owner; the numerous flirtations that had been thought quite worth the price of the ticket, and of the crushed flounces, died ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... ravishing. The green and gold brought out the tawny red glint of her hair, which was bound with two gold bands about the head, ending in tiny emerald clasps over the barely discoverable tips of her ears; little gold ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... red shadow mingled with the silver beams of the moon; around were the glittering tents and the silent woods; on all sides flashing eyes and picturesque forms. Cadurcis glanced at his companions, and gazed upon the scene with feelings of ravishing excitement; and then, almost unconscious of what he was saying, exclaimed, 'At length I have found ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... ugly man, with a delightful face, plays on the violin something that reminds one of all the sweetest birds that sing, and is sufficiently ravishing to call forth at intervals the exclamation, "Good, good!" from ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... these are. Combined with "hosieries." Countless are the smart hat shops for women. That is to say, the establishments of "chapeaux importers." In the miniature parlours framed by the windows' glass these chic and ravishing creations, the chapeaux, rise in a row high upon their slim and lovely stems. This one is the establishment of Mlle. Edythe, that of Mme. Vigneau. Countless, too, are the terrestrial heavens devoted to "gowns." ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday |
