"Unctuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... make affidavit that the brain was pregnant. To what purpose doth the Pia Mater lie in so dully in her white formalities; sure she hath had hard labour, for the brows have squeezed for it, as you may perceive by his buttered bon-grace that film of a demicastor; 'tis so thin and unctuous that the sunbeams mistake it for a vapour, and are like to cap him; so it is right heliotrope, it creaks in the shine and flaps in the shade; whatever it be I wish it were able to call in his ears. There's no proportion between that head and appurtenances; ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... station nearly hidden by mist and steam. A cold, damp wind makes the passengers hurry into the carriages, and strikes us sharply as we step on to the foot-plate of the engine, which has just joined the train. But as we get behind the shelter of the screen, we feel a generous and slightly unctuous sensation of warmth very comforting to a chilly man. The brasswork of the engine shines brilliantly, the footboard has been newly scrubbed, and the driver and stoker stand waiting for the signal. The needle shows ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... you, Mr. Vancouver," said his host, whose extremely Celtic appearance was not belied by unctuous modulation of his voice, and the pleasant roll ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... embellishments could not be surpassed. If sensuous beauty is the sole end of music, his touch must be pronounced the ideal of perfection, for it extracted the essence of beauty. Strange as the expression "unctuous sonorousness" may sound, it describes felicitously a quality of a style of playing from which roughness, harshness, turbulence, and impetuosity were altogether absent. Thalberg has been accused of want ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the solids and lentor of the fluids. I have experienced great benefit from it in rheumatic pains, particularly those of the fixed kind, and which were seated deep. In these cases I have given from ten grains to a scruple of the fresh root twice or thrice a day, made into a bolus or emulsion with unctuous and mucilaginous substances, which cover its pungency, and prevent its making any painful impression on the tongue. It generally excited a slight tingling sensation through the whole habit, and, when the patient was kept warm in bed, ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... the sacrament had been intoned. The scene had been well studied, and it made the desired impression upon the by-standers. "There was no one among the people," say the registers of the Hotel de Ville in unctuous phrase, "be he small or great, that did not shed warm tears and pray God in behalf of the king, whom he beheld performing so devout an act and worthy of long remembrance. And it is to be believed that there lives not a Jew nor an infidel who, had he ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... eleven; perfect unanimity, with some haziness and dimness, before twelve. N. B.—My single affection is not so singly wedded to snipes; but the curious and epicurean eye would also take a pleasure in beholding a delicate and well-chosen assortment of teals, ortolans, the unctuous and palate-soothing flesh, of geese wild and tame, nightingales' brains, the sensorium of a young sucking-pig, or any other Christmas dish, which I leave to the judgment of you and ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... was oiled, moistened with diluted Cologne water, combed, brushed, parted, and tossed in wavy flakes over his head, and was as fragrant, glossy, and unctuous as the skill ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... conducted, making unctuous snorts of pleasure, into the field to taste a little fresh grass and rout about with his inquisitive nose; but the garden was of course forbidden ground. Therefore, when he was once discovered in the act of enjoying himself amongst Andrew's potatoes, the consternation ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... the minister, now thoroughly roused to a pitch of unctuous enthusiasm. "Say not so. Poor child! who knowest not the meaning of the word used. Catholic signifies universal. God forbid a universal Papacy! You are not a Catholic—no! You are a Roman—by which name we understand ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... slashing articles holding him up to ridicule and denouncing him as an "assassin." He whimpers that it is very hard that he, who pays every attention and regard for the Emperor's feelings, should be pursued and made the victim of calumnies. These expressions of unctuous pharisaism are coldly received by the French, who ask no favours but claim justice. Their thoughts are full of the wrongs perpetrated on the great man who is the object of their attachment and pity. They will listen to none of Lowe's canting humbug. They see incontestable evidences ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... overrun with a great shaggy growth of rag-weed, some of the parson's flock—father and blue-nosed boys—were lifting poor crops of "bile-whites" or "merinos." From time to time, a tall house jutted upon the road, with unctuous pig-sty under the lee of the garden-fence and wood-pile sprawling into the highway, where the parson would rein up his nag, and make inquiry after the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... mind in boiling, chaotic waves of frustration. What was the good of his work, all this great installation, all the gleaming expensive equipment in the lab around him? He was alone. None of them seemed to share his problem, the unctuous, always correct Gordon, the easy-mannered, unbearable Mason, all of them gave him a feeling of actual ...
— Security • Ernest M. Kenyon
... marriage; he does not complain of it; he does not insist, in printed Utopian dreams, on the mutual consent and bond of souls which can never become general; he pairs with a vehemence of which the bonds are constantly riveted by the hammer of necessity. Modern innovators write unctuous theories, long drawn, and nebulous or philanthropical romances; but the thief acts. He is as clear as a fact, as logical as a ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... this crisis enables us to know the real man. For a few days he kept aloof, unapproachable, overcome by the ruin of his work. He made no attempt to conciliate opinion: in moments of bitterness he scoffed at the 'unctuous rectitude' of certain politicians who were improving the occasion. But he spoke frankly to those who had the right to question him. He went to London in February and saw Mr. Chamberlain, the Colonial ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... things ecclesiastical, and, indeed, he was lay-preacher at a Penzance chapel. Tom, who had taken care to set himself on his other hand, kept a careful eye for his plate and glass, being particularly liberal with the cider. The lawyer spoke little; when he did his voice was rich and unctuous—the sort of voice that Ishmael always described to himself as "porky." He was as attentive to Mrs. Ruan's wants as Tom to his, and she, never a great talker save in her outbursts, still kept up a spasmodic flow of low-toned remarks to him, whom of ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... after an Amen that lasted five minutes; and the priest, in an unctuous voice, murmured some Latin words, of which one could hear only the sonorous endings. He then walked round the boat, sprinkling it with holy water, and next began to murmur the "Oremus," standing alongside the boat ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... the shutters hanging about the windows in rags of rotten wood; before its gate, the stream which had gladdened it now soaking slowly by, black as ebony, and thick with curdling scum; the bank above it trodden into unctuous, sooty slime: far in front of it, between it and the old hills, the furnaces of the city foaming forth perpetual plague of sulphurous darkness; the volumes of their storm clouds coiling low over a waste of grassless fields, fenced from ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... the element Fire:—"Fire is the purest and noblest of all Elements, full of adhesive unctuous corrosiveness, penetrant, digestive, inwardly fixed, hot and dry, outwardly visible, and tempered by the earth.... This Element is the most passive of all, and resembles a chariot; when it is drawn, it moves; when it is not ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... the crash of doom to the cautious old tenants of the Hanover aviary. If there were any drops of false or questionable doctrine in the silver shower of eloquence under which they had been sitting, the plumage of orthodoxy glistened with unctuous repellents, and a shake or two on coming out of church left the sturdy old dogmatists ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... They're crazy over it," said Clown with an unctuous smile. Strange that whatever Clown says, it makes me itching mad. "But, if you don't look out, there is ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... porter had mentally summed up as, "Po' white trash"; but the Yiddish shopman could not place his prospective customer under any head or type with which he was familiar. He was neither "kike," "wop," "rough-neck," nor beggar, and, as the proprietor laid out his wares with unctuous solicitude, he was, also, studying his unresponsive and early visitor. When Samson, for the purpose of trying on a coat and vest, took off his own outer garments, and displayed, without apology or explanation, a huge and murderous-looking revolver, the merchant became nervously ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... was the chief characteristic of Lady Ryehampton. As the purport of her great-nephew's letter slowly penetrated her mind, a broad and beaming smile of gratification spread slowly over her large round face; and as she handed the letter to Miss Hendersyde, her companion, she cried in unctuous tones: "The dear boy! So young, but already enthusiastic ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... watching beside the gate he made no sign. His fat shoulders, commonly so erect, were bowed as if he had suddenly grown old. His face had lost its unctuous smile and was haggard with care; and for once he paid no heed to George Fox's un-Quakerlike gambols, fraught with danger to the open buggy he drew. A pale-faced woman in the orthodox attire of the birthright Friends sat beside the miller and clung to him in ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... quickly with apprehension of having been spotted by another capper, if not Bill Brady himself (for the voice was not Colonel Sunderson's unctuous tones) I saw Jim of the Sidney station platform ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... an elaborate appearance of carelessness, but the unctuous complacency was wiped from his face, and the narrow eyes and mouth showed how deep was his anger at La ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... none so quick as women to scent resistance. His very unbending attitude aroused their inherent craving for rigidity in his profession; he was neither plastic, unctuous, nor subservient; his very homeliness, redeemed by the eyes and mouth, compelled their attention. One of them told Mrs. Larrabbee that that rector of hers ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... time he suffered the torments of this awakening. Shame buffeted him on the right cheek and the left; he looked about like one who slinks from merited chastisement. Oh, thrice ignoble varlet! To pose with unctuous hypocrisy before people who had welcomed him under their roof, unquestioned, with all the grace and kindliness of English hospitality! To lie shamelessly in the face of his old fellow-student, who had been so genuinely glad ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... if they were frank and sincere, he met them halfway; he was so patient and considerate, so entirely devoted to pleasing the critical trout, and so successful in his efforts,—surely his heart was upon his hook, and it was a tender, unctuous heart, too, as that of every angler is. How nicely he would measure the distance! how dexterously he would avoid an overhanging limb or bush and drop the line exactly in the right spot! Of course there was a pulse of feeling and sympathy ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... another school: we must give him a liberal share of the feminine sensitiveness and closeness of observation of which Miss Austen is the great example. And perhaps, to fill in the last details, he ought, in addition, to have a dash of the more unctuous and offensive variety of the dissenting preacher—for we know not where else to look for the astonishing and often ungrammatical fluency by which he is possessed, and which makes his best passages remind us of the marvellous ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... so unlike the practical dryness, or even the more unctuous humour, of Frank Vance, that it took Lionel by surprise, and his voice faltered as he pressed the hand held out to him. He answered, "I don't deserve your praise, Vance, and I fear the pride you tell me to put under lock and key has the larger share of the merit you ascribe to better ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Nancy but with stress of unctuous generosity. This, if his hearers knew what he had suffered at her hands, must tell greatly to his credit; if they were not aware of the circumstances, such a tone would become him as the young ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... that, at length, should do so distinctly, and provoke the observer to take pleasure in seeing how completely the workman is master of the particular material he has used, and how beautiful and desirable a substance it was, for work of that kind. In oil painting, its unctuous quality is to be delighted in; in fresco, its chalky quality; in glass, its transparency; in wood, its grain; in marble, its softness; in porphyry, its hardness; in iron, its toughness. In a flint country, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... line joining the two highest points of this wave was, of course, that in which the shock travelled. This circumstance, which was accidentally noticed by an engineer at Odessa,(4*) suggests the plan of keeping, in countries subject to earthquakes, glass vessels partly filled with treacle, or some unctuous fluid, so that when any lateral motion is communicated to them from the earth, the adhesion of the liquid to the glass shall enable the observer, after some interval of time, to determine the direction of ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... he began to carefully carry out Flynn's direction. The first dip of the pan in the running water carried off half the contents of the pan in liquid paint-like ooze. For a moment he gave way to boyish satisfaction in the sight and touch of this unctuous solution, and dabbled his fingers in it. A few moments more of rinsing and he came to the sediment of fine black sand that was beneath it. Another plunge and swilling of water in the pan, and—could ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... on the part of the King his master with great compliments that his Majesty seeks to please me and satisfy me in everything that I could possibly desire of him," said James, rolling over with satisfaction these unctuous phrases as if they really had any ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... deep, hearty, unctuous laugh that came from the very depths of the man's chest. It was a laugh with no trace of merely superficial joy. He who uttered it laughed because his heart and soul were in it. It was a laugh of mirth, relief and triumph, all carried to the highest degree. It was a long laugh, rising and falling, ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... anthropology at the University of Texas, an emancipator from prejudices and ignorance. It is a pity that all the college students who are forced by the bureaucrats of Education—Education spelled with a capital E—"the unctuous elaboration of the obvious"—do not take anthropology instead. Collegians would then stand a ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... the magnolias and white columns which Carol had accepted as proof of romance, but hating the negroes, obsequious to the Old Families. A Western mining-settlement like a tumor. A booming semi-city with parks and clever architects, visited by famous pianists and unctuous lecturers, but irritable from a struggle between union labor and the manufacturers' association, so that in even the gayest of the new houses there was ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... gravel in which these pebbles and boulders are found to be tightly packed, is of a light-blue color, which gives the name to the lead. Much of this clay is remarkably fine and free from coarse particles, and is smooth and unctuous to the touch. It is said to be strongly impregnated with arsenic, as was shown by chemical analysis, and contains large quantities of iron and sulphur in solution, for pyrites and sulphurets of iron are deposited in shining metallic crystals in every vacant crevice. Fine gold is found among ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... and that I, having been entrapped, through an unconscious expression, in the meshes of some antiquated law, was doomed to administer in some measure to their need by the payment of a penalty and costs. The fat old fellow who presided as judge, and beneath whose robe of office an unctuous leathery surtout was all too visible, peered in vain through a pair of massive horn-spectacles into a huge timber-swathed volume in search of the act, the provisions of which I had violated. At length, the schoolmaster—a meagre, pensive-looking scarecrow, industriously patched all over—came ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... cause is to be found in the very prosperity of monachism, which brought to the religious houses wealth and all its responsibilities. Wealth always imposes fetters, as every rich man, from Seneca downwards, has declared with unctuous lamentation. But what first strikes the student who compares early English monachism with the later is, that whereas the monks of the first period were most concerned with their monastic duties, their religious observances, and their scribing and illuminating, ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... names and numbers (xxiii.-xxvii.), in the enumeration of mere subjects without predicates, which simply stand on parade and neither signify nor do anything. The monotony is occasionally broken only by unctuous phrases, but without refreshing the reader. Let the experiment of reading ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... in his pink-striped shirtsleeves, sat upon the steps of his saloon as they went by. He wished them an unctuous good-evening. The oily smoothness of Mr. Saunders' voice cannot be described with plain pen and ink; it gurgled with sweetness, like molasses poured from a jug. This was not a special tone put on for the occasion; no one except his wife ever ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... plays a wider part, and affects the whole country. The people are drugged with the hashish of false hopes and urged to deeds of frightfulness by the goadings of manufactured panics; their higher feelings are exploited by devious channels of unctuous hypocrisy, their pockets picked under anaesthetics of flattery, their very psychology affected by a conspiracy ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... been relieved from illness by some remedy of mine, requesting him to use his influence with the priest, and in due course I had the satisfaction of possessing this valuable relic of history. The vase is made of a soft, unctuous stone resembling steatite (soapstone); it is true agalmatolite, a mineral popularly called pagoda stone. Through the mouth of the human head carved out in front passes a copper tube, which once no doubt pierced the thick wall of the vessel and penetrated ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... Shorthouse with unctuous gravity, "will come in time to be recognized as one of the saddest books ever written"; and, if the critics keep on expounding it much longer, I truly fear it will. It may be urged that Cervantes himself was ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... consolation from it. The more genteel worshippers take up their quarters mainly on the ground floor—at the back of the central seats and at the sides. The poor have resting places found for them immediately in front of the pulpit and at the rear of the galleries. Very little of that unctuous spasmodic shouting, which used to characterise Wesleyanism, is heard in Lune-street Chapel. It has become unfashionable to bellow; it is not considered "the thing" to ride the high horse of vehement approval and burst ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... was quiet, but none the less thrilling on that account. Mr. Raider received her cordially, and with a great deal of unctuous fatherly advice. He took her into his office, which was one corner of the press room glassed in by itself, and talked over her duties, which, as far as Lark could gather from his discourse, appeared to consist in doing ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... have said to that? But where the old customs have not much altered, the milker sits down in the morning to his cow with the stars still visible overhead, punching his hat well into her side—a hat well battered and thickly coated with grease, for the skin of the cow exudes an unctuous substance. This hat he keeps for the purpose. A couple of milking pails—they are of large size—form a heavy load when filled. The milker, as he walks back to the farmhouse, bends his head under the yoke—whence so many men are round-shouldered—and steps slowly with a peculiar ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... in every face. Only old Jason seemed capable of rising to the situation. For barely an instant he floundered, and then his small eyes began to twinkle, his voice held a rippling, unctuous quality as he laid ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... replied the chairman, in his most unctuous tones. "It is not easy to know what to do in the position which has suddenly been forced upon me—a condition without precedent, so far as I know, in the whole country. If I have failed in my duty, I ask your pardon; but with so many local issues—so many details at loose ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... You put in it, if you like, crusts of bread, or, at times, toast, and then it becomes a species of soup; otherwise it is drunk as broth; and, ordinarily, it was in this last fashion the King took it. It is unctuous, but very warm, a restorative singularly good for retrieving the past night, and, for preparing ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... entirely because the whale is so excessively unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence; that appears to result, in some way, from the consideration before mentioned: i.e. that a man should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea, and eat it too by its own light. But no doubt the first man that ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... may or may not have loved Pecksniff comically, but he did not love him seriously; he did not respect him as he certainly respected Sam Weller. The same of course is true of Mrs. Gamp. To any one who appreciates her unctuous and sumptuous conversation it is difficult indeed not to feel that it would be almost better to be killed by Mrs. Gamp than to be saved by a better nurse. But the fact remains. In this book Dickens has not allowed us to love the most ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... figger fits," laughed the fat porter, with an unctuous chuckle. "Coffee sacks 'uld ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... being invited to headquarters, suspicious but not certain of our status until we finally landed behind the iron doors. Without doubt Maastricht authorities were waiting for us even as we stepped off the train, showing that we were doomed from the time we left the border. Our captor, an unctuous, pink-cheeked politzei, made his appearance not far from the internment camp. Where ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... with a broadsword belted below his Geneva gown. Savagery, savagery, rank and stinking! I'll say it to his face in another world, and a poor evangel and ensample truly for the quarrelsome landward folk of this parish, that even now, in the more unctuous times of God's grace, doff steel weapons so reluctantly. I found a man with a dirk at his hip sitting before ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... river-bluffs still held on to their leaves, although the latter were entirely brown and dead, and rattled around me with an ominous sound, as I climbed to the level of the prairie, leaving the bed of the muddy Illinois below. Peck's hoofs sank deeply into the unctuous black soil, which resembled a jetty tallow rather than earth, and his progress was slow and toilsome. The sky became more and more obscured: the sun faded to a ghastly moon, then to a white blotch in the gray vault, and finally retired ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... drawn his bank account down to the irreducible minimum and borrowed on his securities up to the insurmountable maximum. It was a bad time for his children to tap him. But here they were—Jno. P., Jerry, and Julia—all very unctuous over the home-coming, and yet all of them evidently cherishing ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... and there was an alteration of the nails, which became black and rough, and again, there was clammy sweat. When the scalp was affected the head was sore to the touch and excessively itchy. A clammy and agglutinating sweat then occurred over the cranium, the hair became unctuous, stuck together, and appeared distended with an adhesive matter of reddish-brown color, believed by many observers to be sanguineous. The hair was so acutely sensitive that the slightest touch occasioned severe pain at the roots. A viscid matter of a very offensive smell, like that ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... wickedness;—and, though she rebelled against the consequences, she had not rebelled against the wickedness. Now to this unfortunate young woman and her two companions, Mr. Emilius discoursed with an unctuous mixture of celestial and terrestrial glorification, which was proof, at any rate, of great ability on his part. He told them how a good wife was a crown, or rather a chaplet of aetherial roses to her husband, and how high rank and great station in the world made such ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... prayer-meeting, lately, Mrs. Ward. It is a blessed place, a blessed place: the Lord touches sinners' hearts with a live coal from off his altar; souls have been taught to walk in the light, in the light of God." Mr. Dean prolonged the last word in an unctuous way, which he reserved for public prayer ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... Scottish engineer, well known and esteemed in Edinburgh and Glasgow. He may be relied on. What he tells against Scotland is violently against his own will, for he is intensely national, of which I will give the reader one instance that may make him smile. Much of the rich, unctuous coal, from Northumberland and Durham, gives a deep ruddy light, verging to a blood-red, and certainly is rather sullen, on a winter evening, to the eye. On the other hand, the Scottish coal or most of it, being far poorer as to heat, throws out a very beautiful and animated scarlet blaze; ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... a moment, turning my head toward Hynds House, blazing with lights. I could hear voices, laughter, snatches of song. From the kitchen Mary Magdalen's great, rich, unctuous laugh rolled out like an organ peal. Silhouetted against the lighted library window was one of our big black cats, with an arched back and an ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... valleys and open country supplied animal and vegetable "delicacies" which a white man would pass unnoticed. Many a time, when I was as hungry as a wolf, I found my vagabonds in a nook of the woods, luxuriating over a mess with the unctuous lips of aldermen; but when I came to analyze the stew, I generally found it to consist of a "witch's cauldron," copiously filled with snails, lizards, iguanas, frogs ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... grin—it burst out the next instant in a long-drawn "haw, haw!" followed by a sudden collapse into utter gravity, as the knife and fork darted down on the prey. Martin Poyser's large person shook with his silent unctuous laugh. He turned towards Mrs. Poyser to see if she too had been observant of Tom, and the eyes of husband and wife met in a ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... 'gainst the epilepsy: And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber, Headed with diamond and carbuncle. My foot-boy shall eat pheasants, calver'd salmons, Knots, godwits, lampreys: I myself will have The beards of barbels served, instead of sallads; Oil'd mushrooms; and the swelling unctuous paps Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off, Drest with an exquisite, and poignant sauce; For which, I'll say unto my cook, "There's gold, Go forth, ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... had been anxious to get back to the hospital, but he would have infinitely sooner resigned all pretensions to the place, than have owned in any manner to Mr Slope's influence in his favour. Then he thoroughly disliked the tone of Mr Slope's letter; it was unctuous, false, and unwholesome, like the man. He saw, which Eleanor had failed to see, that much more had been intended than was expressed. The appeal to Eleanor's pious labours as separate from his own grated sadly against his ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... heartily glad the fellow has gone. I hate his supercilious manner, his superior tone, and his unctuous bearing. He's simply ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... difficulties, but she had married a Canadian frontiersman and remained. She wore all the slum marks—bad teeth, loose-feeble-will in the mouth, furtive whining eyes. She was clean personally and paraded her religion in unctuous phrase; but I need only to tell a Canadian that she had lived in her shanty three years and it was still bare of comfort as a biscuit box, to explain why the Dominion regards this type as unsuitable for pioneering. The American ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... pomatum-laden winds breathe across the daffadown dillies from the warm chambers of the south. A cloud crosses His Honour's face, a summer cloud dissolving into sunshine. "It is the pomade of Saul:—but it is our own glorious David whose unctuous curls carry the Elysian fragrance." Then taking up his harp and dancing an ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... and unctuous voice, on the heels of Tess' declaration. "Wha's all dis erbout—heh! Glo-ree! Who done let dat goat intuh disher yard? Ain' dat Sam Pinkney's ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... ain' nuffin' to be skeered of 'bout Marse Wes. Eve'ything all right ef you got patience, an' ef you got sense, an' ef you got haht enough. Sperrit an' sense go far, but the haht gwine carry you froo. Now I said my say"—her tone mellowed into unctuous kindness—"what you want, Missy? Som'n Aun' Dolcey c'n fotch you? Temme what it is, f'r I got to be up an' erbout my wuk. I got er weddin' cake to mek yit this ebenin'. Yes, ma'am—I gwi' mek you weddin' cake fill de bigges' ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... powdered hair and imposing presence, who presented a striking contrast to the meagre personage engaged in conversation with her. The Duke de Riancourt was a small, nervous man of thirty years or thereabouts, with a sanctimonious, unctuous mien, shifting eyes and long, smooth hair, carefully parted near the middle of the forehead, and a rigidity of movement that showed ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... which can't be done with many American "Camemberts" or, indeed, with the dead, dry French ones sold out of season. Then came the Roquefort, a regal cheese we voted the best buy of the lot, even though it was the most expensive. A plump piece, pleasantly unctuous but not greasy, sharp in scent, stimulatingly bittersweet in taste—unbeatable. There is no American pretender to the Roquefort throne. Ours is invariably chalky and tasteless. That doesn't mean we have no good Blues. We have. But they are ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... you've asked for anything but daily rations, Sister Halsey; glad to see you plucking up heart. The living God giveth us all things richly to enjoy." He repeated the last words in an unctuous drawl while he was looking for the paper, "richly to—enjoy. Well now, I was thinking we had some with a black border on it, but you're more than welcome to such as ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... agreed with unctuous righteousness in his plump face. "And to think of that scalawag, making a loan right in your face, after you ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... swellings, and keep books and clothes there it is among from moths and other worms, and save them fro fretting and gnawing. The fruit of laurel trees are called bays, and are brown or red without, and white within and unctuous. ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... gray-eyed, insincere Southerner, with a belly like a Chinese god's, dewlaps like a hunting hound's, cold, stubby, and very clean hands, and a gown that gave him a grotesque dignity. And he had eyed wee Shane unctuously. And wee Shane did not like fat, unctuous men. He liked them lean and active, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... So-and-so, Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, St. Jerome, and Cicero, "And moreover," (the sonnet goes rhyming), "the skirts of St. Paul has reached, Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than ever he preached." Noon strikes,—here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and smart With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart! Bang-whang-whang, goes the drum, tootle-k-tootle the fife; No keeping one's haunches still: ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... shall come upon thee, and overtake thee.' And suddenly, in the mild summer air, it seemed as if, like a swarm of bees inadvertently wakened, the blessings of the Bible were actually rushing after me. From the hot, remote, passionate past of Hebrew history, out of the Oriental climate and unctuous lives of that infuriate people, gross good things were coming to overwhelm me with benedictions for which I had not bargained. Great oxen and camels and concubines were panting close behind me, he-goats and she-goats and rams of the breed of Bashan. My ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... of a real spiritual teacher. Archbishop Thomson will never get within a million miles of their meaning; nor will anybody be deceived, by the unctuous "Oh that" with which he concludes his discourse, like a mental rolling of the whites of ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... common light for houses consists of palm oil burnt in native manufactured lamps, some constructed of iron and others of earthenware. The oil of the nut is the most general in use among the natives, both for light and cooking, because it is the richest, being the most unctuous. This use of the nut-oil is certainly an antiquated custom among the people of this region, whilst those contiguous to Liberia have recently learned that the kernels could be put to commercial use, by the ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... that Christian love is mere sentiment. I shall have to speak a word or two about that presently, but I would fain lift the whole subject, if I can, out of the region of mere unctuous words and gush of half-feigned emotion, which mean nothing, and would make you feel that it is a very practical commandment, gripping us hard, when our Lord says ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... The unctuous plausibility of the pretense that prisons are beneficent purgatories and not hells renders it the more sickening. Life is a God-given discipline for men, and at best a severe one; but if we believe in God, we know it is given in love, for loving ends. All ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... rising and going to her. He tried to shake it off, but it remained. He tried again, keeping his eyes on her all the time. Then the long vista of green plush seats leading to her was blotted out and he found himself gazing into a dusky countenance, while an unctuous ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... said, with an unctuous accent in his voice, and rubbing his hands like a miserable old Fagin, "Truly the Lord is delivering them into our ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... united band, who now tumbled clown from the wall with horrid pains, for the oil did easily run down the whole body from head to foot, under their entire armor, and fed upon their flesh like flame itself, its fat and unctuous nature rendering it soon heated and slowly cooled; and as the men were cooped up in their head-pieces and breastplates, they could no way get free from this burning oil; they could only leap and roll about in their pains, as they fell down from the bridges they ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... religious side, but solely from the historical point of view. We shall judge of the present in its relations to the past. And, unquestionably, there is great satisfaction to be derived from so doing; the mere effort seems at once to take us into another atmosphere,—an atmosphere as foreign to unctuous cant as it is to what is vulgarly known as "electioneering taffy." This evening we pass away from the noisy and heated turmoil of partisan politics, with its appeals to prejudice, passion, and material interest, into the cool of a quiet academic discussion. It is like going ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams
... came to the Cowperwoods an uncle who had not previously appeared in the life of the family. He was a brother of Mrs. Cowperwood's—Seneca Davis by name—solid, unctuous, five feet ten in height, with a big, round body, a round, smooth head rather bald, a clear, ruddy complexion, blue eyes, and what little hair he had of a sandy hue. He was exceedingly well dressed according to standards ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... physique of these oarsmen, at once slender and sinewy. Both bride and bridegroom looked uncomfortable in their clothes. The light that fell upon them in the church was dull and leaden. The ceremony, which was very hurriedly performed by an unctuous priest, did not appear to impress either of them. Nobody in the bridal party, crowding together on both sides of the altar, looked as though the service was of the slightest interest and moment. Indeed, this was hardly to ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... she was back in the world again, a flood of sound was about her ears, and in front of her the red face of Mrs. Smith, her mouth wide open, like the mouth of an eager fish, singing about "the Blood of the Lamb" with unctuous satisfaction ... ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... again sharply. He could hear the two dealers' voices murmuring unctuous words, in which, "honor," "gratitude," and many fine long noble titles played the chief parts. The voice of another person, more clear and refined than theirs, answered them curtly, and then, close by the Nuernberg ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... corner above Julia's, as he passed, a hoarse and unctuous voice, issuing out of an undistinguishable lawn, called his name: "Noble! Noble Dill!" And when Noble paused, Julia's Uncle Joseph came waddling forth from the dimness and rested his monstrous arms upon the top of the fence, where a street light revealed them as shirt-sleeved ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... few strides, and stopped again. Suddenly, changing my attitude, I fold my hands, hold my head to one side, and ask, with an unctuous, sanctimonious tone of voice: "Hast thou appealed also to him, my child?" It ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... found myself shut into a narrow box, like one of those which considerate pawnbrokers provide for their more diffident clients, and in a similar, but more intense, degree, pervaded by a subtle odour of uncleanness. The woodwork was polished to an unctuous smoothness by the friction of numberless dirty hands and soiled garments, and the general appearance—taken in at a glance as I entered—was such as to cause me to thrust my hands into my pockets and studiously avoid contact with any part of the structure but the floor. ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... He was very heavy, very unwieldy, very unctuous and oppressive. He affected the "honest farmer," but so badly that the poorest husbandman would have resented it. There was a suggestion of a cheap lawyer about him that would have justified any self-respecting judge in throwing him over the bar at once. There was a military suspicion ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... must work. It's easy enough to recall that in 1870 Fantin Latour shut himself up and painted fruit and flowers, and by emulation, buoyed up perhaps by this precedent, you sit down and sketch a still life. What greater joy than to seek out a harmony, find the delicate suave tones, and paint it in an unctuous medium. Yes, it's a joy, but only when head and heart are both in it! The museums too, used to be a source of untold pleasure, but even if they were open you wouldn't go, because the head and the heart are 'Out there' where that wondrous youth is being mowed down—'Out there' where ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... examples, and many others, which we might produce to this purpose, we may gather, that, when we grind and stir the Cacao, the divers parts, which Nature hath given it, doe artificially, and intimately mixe themselves one with another; and so the unctuous, warme, and moist parts, mingled with the earthy (as we have said of the steele) represses, and leaves them not so binding, as they were before; but rather with a mediocritie, more inclining to the warme, and moist temper of the Aire, then to the cold and dry of the ...
— Chocolate: or, An Indian Drinke • Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma
... to make a living for his family than to help a rich man make more profit for his company. This principle was too sound to be fought openly. It is the kind of principle to which politicians delight to pay unctuous homage in words. But we translated the words into deeds; and when they found that this was the case, many rich men, especially sheep owners, were stirred to hostility, and they used the Congressmen they controlled to assault us—getting most aid from certain demagogues, who ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... warm throb of spring in the earth, rising in a potent mist, sap pervaded and tangible, having a clinging, unctuous softness like the touch of unfolding beech leaves, lured me out to finish the transplanting of the pansies among the hardy roses, while the first brown thrasher, high in the bare top of an ash, eyes fixed on the sky, proclaimed with many turns and changes the exact ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... shrivels up and changes to a deep brown; the juice squeezed from the mucilaginous pulp contained in the husks of these nuts appears like cream, and has a very grateful taste of a cordial quality. The nuts have a light pleasant smell, and an unctuous, bitterish, roughish (not ungrateful) taste. Those of Nicaragua and Caracas are the most agreeable and are the largest; those of the French Antilles, and our own West India ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... chair, and matched his hands together by the thumbs and by the forefingers, and by the other fingers, one by one; and little by little the musical, false voice of his lady, and the singularly gentle and unctuous tones of his host, Arnold de Curboil, blended together and lost themselves, just as the gates of dreamland ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... you stand in the pulpit to plead a brief for Christ the simple, unaffected earnestness that everywhere else carries conviction is abandoned for such a musty instrument as an unctuous whine or a holy drone. The young priest should ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... charm all but a few cross-grained critics. His good humour seemed inexhaustible; and those who saw his cherubic face beaming sweetly on the company at banquets or assemblies fancied that so delightful a man was never known before. But this suave, unctuous gentleman, who fascinated every one, from Queen to cottager, spent a pretty fair share of his life in writing vicious witticisms and scandals concerning the folk with whom he seemed to be on affectionate terms. At ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... with a squalid inn, we dined, at two, deliciously, on a red shrimp soup; no, not soup, it was a potage; no, a stew; no, a creamy, unctuous mess, muss, or whatever you please to call it. Sancho Panza never ate his olla podrida with more relish. Success to mine host of the jolly ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is a sort of clerical Inigo Jones; and ought to have been an architect. He is a rather polished reader; but he holds his teeth too tightly together, and there is a tremulousness in his voice which makes the utterances thereof rather too unctuous. As a preacher he is clear, calm, and methodical. His sermons, all written, are scholarly in style cool in tone, short, and, in the orthodox sense, practical. In their delivery he does not make much stir, he goes on evenly and rapidly, looking little to either the right hand or the left, broiling ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... a globular, unctuous little man, this Carbajal; he reminded O'Reilly of a drop of oil. He evinced an unusual interest in the affairs of his American guest, and soon developed a habit of popping into the latter's room at unexpected moments, ostensibly ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... them and accepts them now as "additional proofs of the truth of Scripture." A little juggling with words, a little amalgamation of texts, a little judicious suppression, a little imaginative deduction, a little unctuous phrasing, and the thing is done. One great service this eminent and kindly Catholic champion undoubtedly rendered: by this acknowledgment, so widely spread in his published lectures, he made it impossible for Catholics or Protestants longer to resist the main conclusions ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... long before he sat down to it, that the stagnant gravy was chilled and congealed into patches of greasy white. He managed to swallow it with many pauses of invincible disgust—only to find it replaced by a solid slab of pale brown suet pudding, sparsely bedewed with unctuous black treacle. ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey |
