"Urbanity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the flesh—and, worst of all, regular colonial experiences of servants—one went off at a day's notice—and for two or three days we had nobody but Rex's orderly, such a handy, imperturbable soldier, who made beds, cooked the dinner, hung pictures, and blew the organ with equal urbanity. He didn't know much—and in the imperfect state of our cuisine had few appliances—but he affected to be au fait at everything—and what he had not got, he "annexed" from somewhere else. One of our maids uniformly ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... they were intimate companions; in reality, no man and woman in all England were wider apart. From his elevation he looked down on her with commiseration that was heightened by curiosity and amazement; and she daily writhed under his gracious condescension and passionless urbanity; under her own consciousness of inferiority and consequent self-scorn. He could no more sympathize with her petty aims, than she with the high views and ambitions; and conjugal sympathy was far more necessary to her than to him. His studious friends and clever children afforded him an ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... he commends public worship so long as it is not made a substitute for spiritual religion. Liturgies are evil, and tithes abominable. His exposition of social duty tempers Puritan strictness with Cavalier high-breeding, and the urbanity of a man of the world. Of his motives for publication and method of composition ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... necessary consequence of an elevated material and intellectual one; and therefore it is that we find the Dane distinguished for kindness, urbanity, and regard for others,[189] and this is found in all portions of society. In visiting the Museum of Northern Antiquities, which is open to the public, free ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... presence of his name on the title-page; and now that reputation has mellowed into memory, even the word of interpretation seems superfluous. Mr. Warner wrote out of a clear, as well as a full mind, and lucidity of style was part of that harmonious charm of sincerity and urbanity which made him one of the most intelligible and companionable of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... them all alike as Odes. The Epodes are amongst his earliest publications, and bear signs of a 'prentice hand. "Iambi," he calls them, a Greek word meaning "lampoons"; and six of them are bitter personal attacks on individuals, foreign to the good breeding and urbanity which distinguish his later writings. More of the same class he is believed to have suppressed, retaining these as specimens of that earlier style, and because, though inchoate, they won the admiration of Virgil, and preferred ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... contagion, suffered a less dangerous taint than in the Atheistical coteries of Paris. Many, in consequence, who came prepared to be disgusted with the degenerated Romans, often bade them adieu with sentiments of respect, and remembered their urbanity and accomplishments with ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... encountered the age of philosophic synthesis and of cosmopolite criticism. One of these contrarieties happened when, in the seventeenth century, the blunt, isolated genius of England awkwardly tried to don the new polish of urbanity, and when, in the sixteenth century, the lucid, prosaic French intellect tried to gestate a living poesy. It is this secret concordance of creative forces which produced the exquisite courtesy and noble ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... takes acquaintance to found a noble esteem, but politeness prepares the way. Indeed, as Montaigne says, Courtesy begets esteem at sight. Urbanity is half of affability, and affability is a ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... see you comprehend true urbanity, or politeness, as we phrase it. There is an elegance in addressing the husband of your sister as brother. Erasmus commends it in his opening chapter, under the head of Salutandi formuloe. And indeed," added my father, thoughtfully, "there is no great difference between politeness and ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... too, his urbanity, so opposite to the rapid, slang, Vivian-Greyish style current in the literary conversation of the day. "Sixty years since," men had time to do things better and more gracefully ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Pater was in harmony, when you got accustomed to its particular forms of expression: the heavy frame, so slow and deliberate in movement, so settled in repose; the timid and yet scrutinising eyes; the mannered, yet so personal, voice; the precise, pausing speech, with its urbanity, its almost painful conscientiousness of utterance; the whole outer mask, in short, worn for protection and out of courtesy, yet moulded upon the inner truth of nature like a mask moulded upon the features ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... the very best quality. After all, there was no great hardship in dining with him— but, "upon compulsion!"—No. The officers bowed. The captain, satisfied with their obedience, intended, although he had brought them there by force, to do the honours of his table with the greatest urbanity. ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... at least seventy and very patriarchal in appearance because of his flowing white locks and long snowy beard, received the young Frenchman with great urbanity and condescension in a sumptuously furnished salon full of rare art treasures and dazzling with gold and satin. He met him with outstretched hand and said, warmly, at the same time glancing at the Captain's card as if to refresh ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... peace," he declared, "and I am taking means to procure it, but it does not depend on me alone"; and he dismissed Vincent with an unwonted urbanity. His was not the only hard nature that was softened by contact with St. Vincent de Paul. The love of this man for his fellow men was infectious, for it was born ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... United States, Thomas Jefferson, with less urbanity, but more acumen, said of these verses that ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... be a very delightful sejour; everything is very cheap; a fine country highly cultivated; a remarkably healthy climate; a society which unites much urbanity and a love of amusement with a taste for the fine arts and for the graver sciences, and a general appearance of opulence and comfort. The shops in Verona appear very splendid, and the Bra, when lighted up in the evening, is a ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... a person on whom one was utterly dependent? That would not be bravery but temerity, a quality of which the citizens of Rouen could no longer be accused as in the days of those heroic defenses by which the city had made itself famous. Above all, they said, with the unassailable urbanity of the Frenchman, it was surely permissible to be on politely familiar terms in private, provided one held aloof from the foreign soldier in public. In the street, therefore, they ignored one another's existence, but once indoors they were perfectly ready to be friendly, and each ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Despite his visitor's urbanity, he was still a little nervous. The Colonel had a somewhat purposeful air, and he had seated himself directly in ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Pendennis, I am delighted to have the honour of seeing ye again. The night's journey on the top of the Alacrity was one of the most agreeable I ever enjoyed in my life, and it was your liveliness and urbanity that made the trip so charming. I have often thought over that happy night, sir, and talked over it to Mrs. Doolan. I have seen your elegant young friend, Mr. Foker, too, here, sir, not unfrequently. He is an occasional frequenter of this ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... King Cole, with many a puff That haloed his urbanity, Would smoke till he had smoked enough, And listen most attentively. He beamed as with an inward light That had the Lord's assurance in it; And once a man was there all night, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... The next day, Jack sent in his card to the governor at the Adams House, and followed the pasteboard before the message could be returned. The governor received his visitor with his usual urbanity. ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... with complete recovery of his usual urbanity, replied: "It's nothing, only the old story, he wants his case to be tried by an English judge-they all do that-but when he began to hint that the other side were in improper relations with the native judge I had to shut him up. Gunga Ram, the man he wanted to make ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... perfectly," she said to Madame de Maintenon. "His urbanity is of good origin; that is how a king's son ought ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... allowed to be wholly herself, in a small, quiet circle, she is praised by every one, low or high, who has been favoured with an invitation to the royal table, for her natural and unaffected manners, her urbanity, and her gentle courtesy. ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... means to success. The Church had become his profession, and he had worked hard at his calling. He had taught himself to be courteous and urbane, because he had been clever enough to see that courtesy and urbanity are agreeable to men in high places. As a bishop he never spared himself the work which a bishop ought to do. He answered letters, he studied the characters of the clergymen under him, he was just with his patronage, he endeavoured ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... the public, and warning them against teaching which they believed to be insidious and even immoral. I honour them for doing this, and I applaud them, especially if they did violence to their own feelings of courtesy and urbanity in doing so. Then there were some good-natured reviewers who practically said that the book was simply a collection of amiable platitudes; but that if the public liked to read such stuff, they were quite at liberty to do so. I admire these reviewers ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... immediately registered in form by the proper officers. Each one who followed was emulous of the example of those who had preceded him, and desirous of evincing as much zeal and generosity as they. Then, besides, the duke received these vassals with so much condescension and urbanity, and treated them with so much consideration and respect, as greatly to flatter their vanity, and raise them in their own estimation, by exalting their ideas of the importance of the services which they could render in carrying so vast an enterprise to a successful result. In a word, the ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... superiority, which looked over these court pastimes to objects of greater moment, Bruce merely endured them; but it was with an urbanity congenial with his friend's, and while the princes of France were treading the giddy mazes of the dance, or tilting at each other in the mimic war of the tournament, the Prince of Scotland, who excelled in all these exercises, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... an English expletive, meant as an aside. Enough! No sooner did the testy old gentleman hear the familiar sound, invariably associated with the travelling Britisher in old days, than he turned to me with the utmost urbanity, saying in French, "Pardon a thousand times, I thought you were a German from the fluency of your speech; I had no idea you were an Englishman. Why did you not tell me at once? What orders shall I give for you? How can I help you?" It ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... that granny thought it best to supply the key, thinking, perhaps, that a little jealousy would do Jem no harm. But the effect on him was to produce a fit of hearty laughter, as he remembered poor Lord Ormersfield's unaccountable urbanity and suppressed exultation in the morning's ride. 'I honour the Ponsonbys,' he said, 'for not choosing to second his lordship's endeavours to tyrannize over that poor fellow, body and soul. Poor ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... As has been so often said, the genius of the French language is its clearness, firmness, and order; to this clearness certain circumstances in the history of French society have added the delightful qualities of liveliness in union with urbanity. Now as one of the most important parts of popular education is to put people in the way of amusing and refreshing themselves in a rational rather than an irrational manner, it is a great gain to have given them the key to the most amusing and ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley
... scorn and contempt, making ignominious reflections upon his person and his actions, taunting his real imperfections, or fastening imaginary ones upon him, they transgress their duty, and abuse their wits; 'tis not urbanity, or genuine facetiousness, but uncivil rudeness or vile malignity. To do thus, as it is the office of mean and base spirits (unfit for any worthy or weighty employments), so it is full of inhumanity, of iniquity, of indecency and folly. For the weaknesses of men, of what kind ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... put him without the pale of all decent society and honorable men. I would strongly inculcate the propriety of being tender of the feelings, as well as the failings, of those around him. I would teach immutable integrity, and uniform urbanity of manners. Scrupulously to guard individual honor, by a high personal self respect, and the practice of every commendable virtue. Once let such a system of education be universal, and we should seldom hear, if ever, ...
— The Code of Honor • John Lyde Wilson
... pursuits. In spite of his deafness, as severe an embargo on social reputation as can well be laid, Dr. Leighton is said to have been equally noted among his friends for his keen intellectual quality and his urbanity. ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... not perceive your worth by your person, for at a glance it may be seen it deserves all the cream of courtesy and flower of polite usage;" and raising her up by the hand he led her to a seat beside the duchess, who likewise received her with great urbanity. Don Quixote remained silent, while Sancho was dying to see the features of Trifaldi and one or two of her many duennas; but there was no possibility of it until they themselves displayed them of their ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... we will say nothing by way of defence. The Commons of Great Britain, my Lords, are a rustic people: a tone of rusticity is therefore the proper accent of their Managers. We are not acquainted with the urbanity and politeness of extortion and oppression; nor do we know anything of the sentimental delicacies of bribery and corruption. We speak the language of truth, and we speak it in the plain, simple terms in which truth ought to be ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... attracted its thousands, and at this moment two dramas (both from the United States) are very popular in the Strand and Oxford Street. A few nights ago, anxious to save you the trouble of filling a stall with your customary urbanity and critical acumen (to say nothing of your august person and opera-glasses), I visited the Princess's, to assist at a performance of The Shadows of a Great City. It was really a most amusing piece, written by JEFFERSON, the Rip Van Winkle of our youth, who you will remember was wont in ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... no other place in which one may so readily learn the meaning of that misused word "urbanity." Urbanity is the state of mind adapted to a city, as rusticity is adapted to the country. In each case the perfection of the adaptation is evidenced by a certain ease of manner in the presence of the environment. There is an absence of fret and worry over what is ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... the great council lodge, the great chief, Wetara Sharoj, received us with great urbanity, assigned to us places next to him, and gave the signal for the Pawnee elders to enter the lodge. I was very much astonished to see among them some white men, dressed in splendid military uniforms; but the ceremonies having begun, and it being the Indian custom to assume indifference, whatever ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... moustache, which lights up his pale face, Colonel Lamont has the mouth of a man who is silent and the ears of a man who listens, while the quick glances of his eyes take in what there is to be seen. The possessor of great personal urbanity, always clear-headed, and very reticent, especially concerning the President, he is emphatically "the right man in the right place." He keeps up his Albany habit of calling Mr. Cleveland "Governor," while the President familiarly calls him "Dan." There is no "Kitchen ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... 1801, of that able Minister. In the following month Addington, the Speaker of the House of Commons, with the complacence born of bland obtuseness, undertook to fill his place. At first, the Ministry was treated with the tolerance due to the new Premier's urbanity, but it gradually faded away into contempt for his pitiful weakness in face of the dangers that threatened ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... at Miss Heredith in friendly fashion as he entered the dining-room, and Sir Philip greeted his sister with polite, but somewhat vague courtesy. Sir Philip's manner to everybody was distinguished by perfect urbanity, which was so impersonal and unvarying as to suggest that it was not so much a compliment to those upon whom it was bestowed as a duty which he felt he owed to himself ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... Colonel Jacques himself waited inside the living-room door. A tall man, as are almost all the Belgian officers—which is curious, considering that the troops seem to be rather under average size—he greeted us cordially. I fancied that behind his urbanity there was the glimmer of an amused smile. But his courtesy was beautiful. He put me near the fire and took the next ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Montague, on whom the urbanity and candor of the captain of the Foam were beginning to have a softening influence. "You have no objection to let me see your papers, and examine your ship, ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... you, is it?" snapped the Court Godmother, with none of her customary urbanity. And then, recollecting the necessity of keeping up appearances, threw in a belated "my dear." "Well, I hear you are taking time before you put Mirliflor out of suspense, but I presume you've already decided to ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... but imposed upon mankind the wearing of unnatural masks. Before the multitude of locked souls with labels of smiling faces the sensitive nature feels itself mocked, and is soon distraught. It cannot suffer convention gladly for an ultimate good, but is chilled by this everlasting urbanity, which must, it fancies, be compact of irony ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... impeachment; and his commanding, copious, and sonorous eloquence was wanting to that great muster of various talents. Age and blindness had unfitted Lord North for the duties of a public prosecutor; and his friends were left without the help of his excellent sense, his tact, and his urbanity. ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... statesman who was present did indeed, by persistent courtesy, contrive to give him a few moments of uneasiness; and the sympathies of the party were so plainly on the side of the statesman that even our tyrant appeared to suspect that urbanity was sometimes a useful quality. We all breathed more freely when he took his departure, and there was a general sense of heightened ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... future. It was a rough and turbulent world, our ancestors were dogged, quarrelsome, and self-assertive, and the first task of civilization was to produce some sort of decent order. The world was a long way off from the firm urbanity of the English policeman. And yet the men of the Middle Ages never fell into that delusion which, as it would seem, has ruined other civilizations; the great effort for order was not in their mind to be fulfilled by any mere mechanical discipline, by any system imposed from outside, the only system ...
— Progress and History • Various
... occasion to call on one of those "Criminal Curiosity Hunters" lately. He received me with extreme urbanity, and pointing to an old-fashioned-looking arm-chair, requested me to be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... the rurality of the Bocking side is indistinguishable from the urbanity of the Braintree side; it is just a little muddier. But there are dietetic differences. If you will present a Bocking rustic with a tin of the canned fruit that is popular with the Braintree townsfolk, you discover one of these ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... our former station near Sansawe's village, he ran to meet us with wonderful urbanity, asking if we had seen Moene Put, king of the white men (or Portuguese); and added, on parting, that he would come to receive his dues in the evening. I replied that, as he had treated us so scurvily, even forbidding his people to sell us any food, if he did ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... all hob-a-nob as friends, not foes! E'en the MACULLUM MORE cocks not his nose Too high in Punch's presence; he knows better! Supremacy unchallenged is a fetter E'en to patrician pride, provincial vanity; Scot modesty, and Birmingham urbanity, Bow at my shrine, because they can't resist. Thus I'm the only genuine Unionist, While all the same, my British Public you'll err, If you conceive I'm not a firm Home-Ruler. Perpend! There's sense and truth in my suggestions, And therefore, do not ask superfluous questions. You might as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... Fortune, no doubt, was kinder to him than to them, but, apart from all other questions, Sir Wilfrid's personal qualities had no small influence in bringing about his party triumphs. Alike in Opposition and in power, his unfailing tact, old-fashioned courtesy, conciliatory methods, urbanity, moderation, and unvarying good temper evoked the sympathy of thousands whom Blake's coldly intellectual feats failed to attract and Mackenzie's rigidity of demeanour served only to repel. Simultaneously ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... years that he submitted to the House of Representatives an initiative proposition for the impeachment of Mr. Jefferson. The house condescended to consider it. The gentleman debated it with his usual temper, moderation, and urbanity. The house decided upon it in the most solemn manner, and, although the gentleman had somehow obtained a second, the final vote stood one for, and one hundred and seventeen against, the proposition. * ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... cuts and cleans your nails. Perhaps you'll present your friend to me," added he in the same breath, with a glance at the Yorkshireman, upon whose arm Mr. Jorrocks was resting his telescope hand. "Much pleasure," replied Mr. Jorrocks, with his usual urbanity. "Allow me to introduce Mr. Stubbs, Mr. Green, Mr. Green, Mr. Stubbs: now pray shake hands," added he, "for I'm sure you'll be werry fond of each other"; and thereupon Jemmy, in the most patronising manner, extended his two forefingers to the Yorkshireman, who presented him ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... however imperceptibly, by all that he could do to purify and intensify his infinitesimal share of the force that was to bring it about. Meanwhile he made friends with the fathers of Bengali schoolboys, who appreciated his manners, and sent him with urbanity flat baskets of mangoes and nuts and oranges, pomegranates from Persia, and little round boxes of white grapes in sawdust from Kabul. He seldom dwelt upon the converts that already testified to the success of the mission; it might ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... had restored loyalty, truth, and fidelity among semi-barbarians; it had favored the cultivation of the soil; it had raised up a hardy rural population; it had promoted chivalry, and had introduced into Europe the modern gentleman; it had ennobled friendship, and spread the graces of urbanity and gentleness among rough and turbulent warriors. But it had, also, like all human institutions, become corrupt, and failed to answer the ends for which it was instituted. It had become an oppressive social despotism; it had widened the distinction between the noble and ignoble classes; it had produced ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... close of the play Lord Beatty, who is urbanity itself, offered to scrap Portsmouth Dockyard, and asked if anybody present would like Canada. President Harding replied with his customary tact that if England wanted the Philippines, he would think it what he ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... you please, signior," insisted Lichonin, opening the door before the sub-professor with courtly urbanity, bowing and spreading his arms before him. "If ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... where his passions intervened—beneficent, save when prodigality had deprived him of the means, or prejudice of the wish, to confer benefits—his faults such as might often have drawn down hatred, but that they were mingled with so much urbanity, that the injured person felt it impossible to retain the full sense of ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... want of point in the dialogue and a general inferiority in the ideas, plan, manners, and style. They miss the poetical flow, the dramatic verisimilitude, the life and variety of the characters, the dialectic subtlety, the Attic purity, the luminous order, the exquisite urbanity; instead of which they find tautology, obscurity, self-sufficiency, sermonizing, rhetorical declamation, pedantry, egotism, uncouth forms of sentences, and peculiarities in the use of words and idioms. They are unable to discover any unity in the patched, ...
— Laws • Plato
... conductors of the impeachment; and his commanding, copious, and sonorous eloquence was wanting to that great muster of various talents. Age and blindness had unfitted Lord North for the duties of a public prosecutor; and his friends were left without the help of his excellent sense, his tact and his urbanity. But in spite of the absence of these two distinguished members of the Lower House, the box in which the managers stood contained an array of speakers such as perhaps had not appeared together since the great age of Athenian eloquence. There were Fox and Sheridan, the English Demosthenes and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... very jaws of danger, Muhlen-Sarkey made his adieux with no ruffle disturbing his customary urbanity. "Sorry we can't have your help," he remarked to Carter; "you have the place of honor, though. No need to caution ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... equal urbanity. "That was a slick piece of work tying up my bank account. I can't get a bond to-day, the bank is closed, and I suppose you're going to insist upon payment of that eighteen thousand dollars before midnight to-night or take the Tillicum and ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... hardy and undaunted veteran refused to shirk his share in the scene merely because the minority was recalcitrant and the majority perhaps subject to stage fright. When Mr Samuel had informed me that the Committee had no further questions to ask me with an urbanity which gave the public no clue as to the temper of the majority; when I had jumped up with the proper air of relief and gratitude; when the secretary had handed me his little packet of books with an affability which effectually concealed his dramatic function as executioner; when the audience ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... which there was a peculiar quickness and delicacy. That same Attic salt seasoned almost all Greece, except Boeotia, and a great deal of it was exported afterward to Rome, where it was counterfeited by a composition called Urbanity, which in some time was brought to very near the perfection of the original Attic salt. The more you are powdered with these two kinds of salt, the better you will keep, and the more you ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... insolence of the petty chiefs, and by marked deference to the Romans, as the only antagonists on an equality with him, he sought to obtain from them tolerable terms. Flamininus was sufficiently refined to feel himself flattered by the urbanity of the vanquished prince towards himself and his arrogance towards the allies, whom the Roman as well as the king had learned to despise; but his powers were not ample enough to meet the king's wishes. He granted him a two months' ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... mistress of itself, marvelous harmony and perfect unity. His quartet describes a day in one of those Attic souls who pre-figure on earth the serenity of Elysium. The first scene is a pleasant conversation, like that of Socrates on the banks of the Ilissus; its chief mark is an exquisite urbanity. The second scene is deeply pathetic. A cloud has risen in the blue of this Greek heaven. A storm, such as life inevitably brings with it, even in the case of great souls who love and esteem each other, has come to trouble the original harmony. ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... remark, my dear child," said he, "that between a capital and solitude there is no third choice; nor, I would add, can a mind extract the best of solitude unless it bring urbanity to the wilderness. Your rustic is no philosopher, and your provincial townsman is the devil: if you would meditate in Arden, your company must be the Duke, Jaques, Touchstone—courtiers all—or, again, Rosalind, the Duke's ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... apparently veering mind. I can notice this in so many little things: She oozes delicate flattery and he likes it; she plays upon his prejudices, and he seems to have a lot of them submerged beneath his inalienable urbanity and instinctive grace of manner that even this misery and abysmal gloom have not relieved of polish. Beneath it all I get the impression that he is very much in love with every member of his family.... that he would like to be alone with ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... Esther. Upon further inquiry it was ascertained that the proprietor at that time was still alive, and one of the principal citizens of the place. Holden lost no time in calling upon him, but was doomed to disappointment. He was received, indeed, with great urbanity by the gentleman, one of the old school, who proffered every aid in his power, and made an examination of his papers to discover the name of his tenant. He was successful in the search, and found that the name was the same given by Esther, but what had become of the man he ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... bi-lingual than to call their Latin a dead language. Greek never, of course, became so general a possession; but for the man who got it, it is not too much to say that he felt as if he were in the open air for the first time. Much of this Greek spirit was reflected in More; its universality, its urbanity, its balance of buoyant reason and cool curiosity. It is even probable that he shared some of the excesses and errors of taste which inevitably infected the splendid intellectualism of the reaction ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... seen that these two authorities concur in opinion; although it must be confessed that the late Vice-President of the so-called Confederate States in urbanity of manner and in the art of diplomacy far surpasses the late Vice-President (as Mr. Johnson, if his logic does not fail him, must soon say) ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... journalists always fills me with dread," said the German diplomatist, with serene urbanity; he looked as he spoke at Blondet, whom he had met at the Comtesse de Montcornet's. "It is laid upon you, gentlemen, to fulfil a prophecy ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... "Monsieur," said he, "your urbanity is French all over: it comes from my own country. I morally press the hand you refuse me. Make all precautions, and act as seems best to you. I will wait ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... facts involves no impugnment of American urbanity, American wit, American chivalry, or American enterprise. Only they are not so unique as Americans, in their isolation, conceive them to be. There are, in fact, others. It might not even be worth saying so much, if it were ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... prophesying rain. Fetching my horse, the owner of the stable robbed me with peculiar callousness, for he had bound my hands the day before, when I went to see how Aguador was treated, by giving me with most courteous ceremony a glass of aguardiente; and his urbanity was then so captivating that now I lacked assurance to protest. I paid the scandalous overcharge with a good grace, finding some solace in the reflection that he was at least a picturesque blackguard, tall and spare, grey-headed, with fine features sharpened by age to the strongest ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... Persius could not laugh with a becoming grace, that he was not made for jesting, and that a merry conceit was not his talent) turned his feather, like an Indian, to another light, that he might give it the better gloss. "Moral doctrine," says he, "and urbanity or well-mannered wit are the two things which constitute the Roman satire; but of the two, that which is most essential to this poem, and is, as it were, the very soul which animates it, is the scourging of vice and ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... is apt to run in streaks. Man, to use the language of another, is a queer combination of cheek and perversity, insolence, pride, impudence, vanity, jealousy, hate, scorn, baseness, insanity, honor, truth, wisdom, virtue and urbanity. He's a queer combination all right. And those mixed elements of his nature, in their effects on other people, we call personal influence. Many a man is not altogether what he has made himself, but what others have made ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... might have been, Mr. Atkins made no mention of politics. He was urbanity itself. He drew up to the table, partook of the ice cream and cake, and greeted his friends ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... eloquent rumblings. This is not a very healthy country, I think. These shaggy-haired, dumb peasants trouble me. I had thought France a nation of de Puysanges; I find it rather a nation of beasts who are growing hungry. Presently they will begin to feed, and I am not at all certain as to the urbanity of their ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... young lord, together with a goodly person, a kind of urbanity and innate courtesy, which both won the Queen, and too much took up the people to gaze on the new-adopted son of her favour; and as I go along, it will not be amiss to take into observation two notable quotations; the first was a violent indulgence of the Queen ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... ceremony, after some treaty, or marriage, or other occasion of solemn conference. Under this regime, which endured till the Revolution of '93, (and even, strangely enough, beyond that period,) politeness was, of course, the one chief quality of whosoever was well brought up,—urbanity was the first sign of good company,—and for the simple reason, that no one sought to infringe. There was no cause for insolence, or for what in England is called "exclusiveness," because there was no necessity to repel any disposition to encroach. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... genius, it was as a statesman that he was fitted preeminently to shine. He had the urbanity, the large impassive manner, and the magnetic eloquence of the old-style congressman. All he ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... of the contrary. But appearances cannot be long sustained without some touch of the reality. At all events there results a control over our actions; some good may be produced, and many a poisonous or offensive fruit will be prevented. Courtesy, urbanity, gallantry, munificence; the outward influence of the law shall I call it, or rather fashion of honour—these are the handsome hypocrisies that spring from the desire of distinction. I ask not the genius of a Machiavel, a Tacitus, or a Swift;—it needs only ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... of the interview Louis XV appeared charmed with his brother of Denmark. "He is a complete Frenchman," said he to me, "and I should be sorry if he left me dissatisfied." That same evening Christian VII visited monseigneur the dauphin, in whom he did not find the urbanity of his grandfather. The conversation was short and abridged out of regard to our prince, who only stammered, without being able to find one polished phrase. Never was there in his youth a more timid and awkwardly conducted prince than the present king. I shall mention him and his brothers ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... the Church in which I was brought up. Heading this statement, some of my readers suspected me of snobbish pride. I search my heart; yes, it brings a hidden thrill that as far back as I can remember I knew this atmosphere of urbanity, that twice every Sunday those melodious and hypnotizing incantations were chanted in my childish ears! I take up the book of ritual, done in aristocratic black leather with gold lettering, and the old worn volume brings me strange ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... unexpected display of kindness, than from the brutal asperity and violence which the Moor had before evinced. For in cases of extreme danger, violence will sometimes inspire a degree of courage, while condescension and urbanity from those who have the power to command is more distressing, inasmuch as it enervates that strong principle of resistance and leaves in its place the weaker and less decisive resource ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... ship before, and only one of our number had ever voyaged away from South Africa. Ours was a very cheerless prospect, for, although we did not know our exact fate, banishment for life loomed over us. The ship's officers were urbanity itself, and did everything in their power for our comfort. I shall always remember their kindness, but it would have required much more than human effort to have made our voyage enjoyable owing to the fact that we suffered so intensely ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... curtly. There was no trace of his usual urbanity and he chewed nervously upon the end ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... not love the dean,—was not a general favourite, being strict, ascetic, and utterly hostile to all compromises. At first there were certain hostile passages between him and the new dean. But the Dean, who was and is urbanity itself, won the day, and soon became certainly the most popular man in Brotherton. His wife's fortune doubled his clerical income, and he lived in all respects as a dean ought to live. His wife had died very shortly after his promotion, and he had been left ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... of the room, the urbanity of Mr. Mauleverer, the shy grief of the matron, all left a most pleasant impression. Rachel was full of delight and triumph, and Grace and Fanny quite enthusiastic; the latter even to the being sure that the Colonel would be delighted, for the Colonel was already beginning to dawn on the horizon, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... passes between Mrs. Swiggs and Mr. Hadger, who, as he says with great urbanity of manner, just dropped in to announce joyous tidings. He has a letter from Sister Abijah Slocum, which came to hand this morning, enclosing one delicately enveloped for Sister Swiggs. "The Lord is our guide," says Mrs. Swiggs, hastily reaching out her hand ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... answers: a cosmopolitan audience—an audience from the Grand Hotel. He is good enough not to pick us out, but we are included with the rest. The foreign residents have degraded the Opera. The audience which greets Patti is a rabble compared with that which listened to Sontag. 'The exquisite urbanity which is proverbially French,' and which was apparent at the Italiens fifteen or twenty years ago, has disappeared since Paris has become the world's railway terminus. M. Emile Villars, who is so obliging as to make the observation, proceeds to be very clever. ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... though he were cradled on a peak; and thereafter, wherever his wanderings may take him, and whether into Congress, Cabinet, or White House, he travels always downhill. It is this to account for that benignant urbanity, the inevitable mark of a Southern man, which teaches him faith in you as corollary of completest confidence in himself. It is a beautiful, even though an unreasonable trait, and as such the ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... entertain you with an incident, that seems to confirm the judgment of those two cynic philosophers. I took the liberty to differ in opinion from Mr Bramble, when he observed, that the mixture of people in the entertainments of this place was destructive of all order and urbanity; that it rendered the plebeians insufferably arrogant and troublesome, and vulgarized the deportment and sentiments of those who moved in the upper spheres of life. He said such a preposterous coalition would bring us into contempt with all our neighbours; and was worse, in fact, than debasing ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... clods came Tony, he of the race of Goths, who worked in the kitchen. He grinned at Burney's elbow, and that unhappy man, full of race animosity and holding urbanity in contempt, growled at him: ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... us to love one another. That is a miserable society, where the absence of affectionate kindness is sought to be supplied by punctilious decorum, graceful urbanity, and polished insincerity; where ambition, jealousy, and distrust rule, in place of simplicity, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Kennedy, returning and snatching away the pocket-book before Julian could read another verse. "'Like coffee made without trouble, drunk without regret,' as the Monday Oracle, with its usual exquisite urbanity, observed of a ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... admire in Mrs. Jenkin, mildness of demeanour was not one of them. And here he found per sons who were the equals of his mother and himself in intellect and width of interest, and the equals of his father in mild urbanity of disposition. Show Fleeming an active virtue, and he always loved it. He went away from that house struck through with admiration, and vowing to himself that his own married life should be upon that pattern, ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sold stock in very small blocks, and the confidence of them waxed apace. Amidon thought of a little money which his wife had saved from her boarders, and the barber immediately resolved to invest every cent he had in the United Fuel. Such was Captain Carroll's graciousness and urbanity that he idled away an hour in the barber-shop, and the other men melted away, although reluctantly, from an atmosphere of such effulgence. The milkman's hollow stomach drove him home for his breakfast. Little Willy Eddy thought uneasily of his Minna, and took ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman |
