"Amenity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the same time that there was nothing unamiable or invidious in his shyness, and above all that there was nothing preponderantly gloomy. The qualities to which the Note-Books most testify are, on the whole, his serenity and amenity of mind. They reveal these characteristics indeed in an almost phenomenal degree. The serenity, the simplicity, seem in certain portions almost child-like; of brilliant gaiety, of high spirits, there is little; but the placidity and evenness ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... Florence. He discoursed of Cimabue, Arpino, Carpaccio, and Argostino—of the gloom of Caravaggio, of the amenity of Albano, of the colors of Titian, of the frows of Rubens, and of the waggeries of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of manners, I am struck with the great difference between those of Frenchmen and Englishmen, of the same station in life. The latter treat women with a politeness that seems the result of habitual amenity; the former with a homage that appears to be inspired by the peculiar claims of the sex, particularised in the individual woman, ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... pacify him: in the town he will meet pleasant faces of men and women, and see beautiful flowers at a window, or hear a cage-bird singing at the corner of the gloomiest street; and for the country, there is no country without some amenity—let him only look for it in the right spirit, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... battle-pieces, and sea-ports; and of these he was most eminent in landscape. The scholar of Spagnoletto, he attached himself to the strong natural style and dark coloring of that master, which well accords with his subjects. In his landscapes, instead of selecting the cultured amenity which captivates in the views of Claude or Poussin, he made choice of the lonely haunts of wolves and robbers; instead of the delightful vistas of Tivoli and the Campagna, he adopted the savage scenery of the Alps, rocky precipices, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... of amateurs, or those who cultivate them for profit in gardens, and then they are neither so perfect by far, nor so palatable, as they are in New Netherland. In general all kinds of pumpkins and the like are also much drier, sweeter and more delicious, which is caused by the temperateness and amenity of the climate. ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... disregarding the majesty of Fashion, and continues to move about in society with the same kind of coat on his back as that worn by his first ancestor, hatless, disaffected of shoes, and totally obtuse to the amenity of an umbrella,—if, in fact, his only approach to humanity, as distinguished by apparel, is his occasional adoption of a collar precisely similar in general effect to those in which Fashion, empress of Broadway and of a great many other ways, condemns her wretched ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... unpleasant it was to find only cold politeness where he expected affection. This repulsiveness on the part of Napoleon was almost offensive, and must have been sensibly felt by my brother, who was not only remarkable for the mildness of his temper and the amenity and grace of his manner, but whose society was courted in the most distinguished circles of Paris on account of his accomplishments. He perceived in Bonaparte a kind of acerbity and bitter irony, of which he long endeavoured to discover the cause. 'I believe,' said ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... striking in this man's attitude at a moment of deadly peril that Brackenbury was overcome with respectful admiration; nor was he less sensible to the charm of his conversation or the surprising amenity of his address. Every gesture, every intonation, was not only noble in itself, but seemed to ennoble the fortunate mortal for whom it was intended; and Brackenbury confessed to himself with enthusiasm that this was a sovereign for whom a brave man ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... entire amiability of disposition, and the utmost amenity of manners, John Mayne was warmly beloved among the circle of his friends. Himself embued with a deep sense of religion, though fond of innocent humour, he preserved in all his writings a becoming respect for ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... antipathies lie deep beneath the personal relationship of George Sand and Gustave Flaubert; lie deep beneath their successors, who with more or less of amenity in their manners are still debating the same questions today. The main currents of the nineteenth century, with fluent and refluent tides, clash beneath the controversy; and as soon as one hears its "long withdrawing roar," and ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... semi-official body existing in most provincial towns in France for the purpose of organising public festivals for the citizens and developing the resources and possibilities of the town for the general amenity of visitors. Now Perpignan is as picturesque, as sun-smitten and, in spite of the icy tramontana, even as joyous a place as tourist could desire; and the Carnival of Perpignan, as a spontaneous outburst of gaiety and pageantry, is unique in France. But ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... the amenity of foreign manners in general, and French manners in particular, has been the theme of every tongue; and the bold Briton, who would fain look down upon all other nations, cannot deny the superiority of his continental neighbours in this respect at least. Why this should be, it is difficult ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... exhaustion, was revolting. The barren and cruel futility of such an end intimidated his affectation of careless pessimism. In comparison to it, the chance of being left floating in a boat, exposed to thirst, hunger, discovery, imprisonment, execution, presented itself with an aspect of amenity worth securing even at the cost of some self-contempt. He did not accept Nostromo's proposal that he should get into the boat at once. "Something sudden may overwhelm us, senor," the Capataz remarked promising faithfully, at the same ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... qualities which contrast with the severer manner of Bourdaloue. They are simple in plan; the preacher's art lay in deploying and developing a few ideas, and infusing into them an imaginative sensibility; he is facile and abundant; faultless in amenity, but deficient in force and fire. Yet the opening words of the Funeral Oration on Louis XIV.—"God alone is great, my brethren"—are noble in their simplicity; and the thought of Jesus suddenly appearing ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... the too great ardor," interrupted D'Artagnan, with perfect frankness and much amenity. "The fact is, monseigneur, that hospitality was ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... to resist the attacks of the Indians. This was not an easy task. It may be readily imagined that the Boones saw only the bright side of the contemplated expedition. They painted the fertility and amenity of the flowering wilderness in the most glowing colors. They described the cane-brakes, the clover and grass, the transparent limestone springs and brooks, the open forests, the sugar maple orchards, the buffaloes, deer, ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... family. After the extinction of the direct male heirs, a brother, who was a captain in the army, came home to take possession of the property. He was a person well-respected in life, and possessed some talent, and much amenity of manners. The country gentlemen, however, shunned and disliked him, on account of the existing prejudice. This person, thus shunned and slighted, seemed to grow desperate, and plunged into the lowest ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... lay the blame on the very softness and amenity of the climate, and to fancy that in the rigours of the winter at home, these dead emotions would revive and flourish. A longing for the brightness and silence of fallen snow seizes him at such times. ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this country is bounded on the south and east by the sea, which combines beautifully, from many elevated points, with the inland scenery; and, from the bay of Morecamb, the sloping shores and back-ground of distant mountains are seen, composing pictures equally distinguished for amenity and grandeur. But the aestuaries on this coast are in a great measure bare at low water[52]; and there is no instance of the sea running far up among the mountains, and mingling with the lakes, which are such in the strict and usual sense ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... been delighted with his visit to Virginia. The amenity of the climate, the magnificence of the forest scenery, the abundance of game,—all pointed it out as a favored land. He was pleased, too, with the frank, cordial character of the Virginians, and their ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... indifferent to all the other disadvantages of life. He was not the whole Heyst of course; he is only the physical and moral foundation of my Heyst laid on the ground of a short acquaintance. That it was short was certainly not my fault for he had charmed me by the mere amenity of his detachment which, in this case, I cannot help thinking he had carried to excess. He went away from his rooms without leaving a trace. I wondered where he had gone to—but now I know. He vanished from my ken only to drift into this adventure that, ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... grateful for your kindness in connecting the interest you take in the sentiments of an old friend with the able part you take in the service of your country. It is an instance, among many, of that happy temper which has always given a character of amenity to your virtues and a good-natured ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... at him with accusatory affection—a grace on her part not infrequent—could never find a word; but the Master, who was always all amenity and tact, helped him out now as he had often helped him before. 'That's his old idea, you know—on which we've so often differed: his theory that the artist should be all impulse and instinct. I go in ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... for. Above all it enabled her to clarify her attitude towards her home. Now she understood. One did not scorn Sparta. One respected it, it was a noble influence in life; but for an Athenian, for whom amenity and beauty and suavity were as essential as food, Sparta was death. As was natural to her age and temperament, she sucked a vast amount of pleasure out of this pitying analysis of her subtle, complicated needs and the bare crudity of her surroundings. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... the example of those wise nations be imitated, who, inhabiting most fruitful and delightful countries, and such as were likely to rear a listless and effeminate race, unfit for all manly exercises, in order to obviate the mischief wrought by the amenity and relaxing influence of the soil and climate, subjected all who were to serve as soldiers to the severest training; whence it came that better soldiers were raised in these countries than in others by nature rugged and barren. Such, of old, was the kingdom of the ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... head, there may be found, perhaps, little to find fault with on the score of mere manner and outward demeanour. To use servants with harshness, or to be wanting in that species of consideration for them which consists in a certain mildness and amenity of manner, would ruffle and deform that smooth surface of things which it is agreeable to the taste of people in high life to see around them. Nor do they, perhaps, interfere with the comfort of their dependents, by any undue ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... and awe Dissolve, like ice in winter's thaw, Beneath the genial touches of Amenity, ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... caricatured in a comic paper in the guise of a juggler keeping three balls in the air at once, the said balls being each of them legibly inscribed with one of the three words, "Gas—Gabble—Grab." Such a straining of the usual amenity of controversy witnesses to grave apprehension. Miss Quisante in her pension at Florence ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... along the deserted streets as quickly as possible. For a long time neither spoke. Then it was some trivial amenity that she uttered to which he made even shorter reply. Up in the elevator they went, silently watching the floor. At the door of her apartment he inclined his head. "Good-night," he said, without offering to ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... pleasantness, agreeableness &c adj.; pleasure giving, jucundity^, delectability; amusement &c 840. attraction &c (motive) 615; attractiveness, attractability^; invitingness &c adj.^; harm, fascination, enchantment, witchery, seduction, winning ways, amenity, amiability; winsomeness. loveliness &c (beauty) 845; sunny side, bright side; sweets &c (sugar) 396; goodness &c 648; manna in the wilderness, land flowing with milk and honey; bittersweet; fair weather. treat; regale &c (physical pleasure) 377; dainty; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... opening of the window had awakened her: surprise and terror had at first kept her silent—a surprise and terror that were by no means diminished by discovering who the intruder was. Although she had always spoken kindly to Karl, and even endeavoured, by the amenity of her manner, to soften his rude nature, she had from the first moment disliked him exceedingly, and felt his countenance most repulsive; so that, when she saw him entering her room through the window, she did not doubt that he was come for some very bad purpose, probably ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... they change the cloth whenever they bathe—going into the water in the one which they have worn from the previous day, and changing into the other when they come out; long practice enables them to do this in public without any undue exposure of the body. A good tank or a river is a great amenity to a village, especially if it has a ghat or flight of stone steps. Many people will spend an hour or so here daily, disporting themselves in the water or on the bank, and wedding and funeral parties are held by it, owing to the facilities for ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... house which he had to let, said, "It is free from opacity, tenebrosity, fumidity, and injucundity, or translucency. In short, its diaphaneity, even in the crepuscle, makes it a pharos, and without laud, for its agglutination and amenity, it is a most delectable commorance; and whoever lives in it will find that the neighbours have none of the truculence and immanity, the torvity, the spinosity, the putidness, the pugnacity, nor the fugacity observable in other parts of ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... when Deronda had come full of a gladdened consciousness, which inevitably showed itself in his air and speech, Lapidoth was at a crisis of discontent and longing that made his mind busy with schemes of freedom, and Deronda's new amenity encouraged them. This pre-occupation was at last so strong as to interfere with his usual show of interest in what went forward, and his persistence in sitting by even when there was reading which he could not follow. After sitting ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... scenery, which he could not praise too highly. A warm love of nature is frequently displayed in the description of the country which he wrote out for Ferdinand and Isabella, of Spain. Of one place, named by him Puerto Santo, he said: "The amenity of this river, and the clearness of the water, through which the sand at the bottom may be seen; the multitude of palm-trees of various forms, the highest and most beautiful that I have met with, and an infinity ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... to convince him of the impiety of his scepticism; while he remained cool, but unshaken; and I left him with mingled emotions of pity, for his adherence to doctrines so damnable; and of admiration, at the amenity and philanthropy with which ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... lone complain, Swoon'd, murmuring of love, and pale with pain. The cruel lady, without any show Of sorrow for her tender favourite's woe, But rather, if her eyes could brighter be, With brighter eyes and slow amenity, Put her new lips to his, and gave afresh The life she had so tangled in her mesh: And as he from one trance was wakening Into another, she began to sing, Happy in beauty, life, and love, and every thing, A song of love, too sweet for earthly lyres, While, like held breath, ...
— Lamia • John Keats
... the sensitive; but these things offend the plainest taste. It is a danger which threatens the amenity of the town; and as this eruption keeps spreading on our borders, we have ever the farther to walk among unpleasant sights, before we gain the country air. If the population of Edinburgh were a living, autonomous body, it would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hasten to add, lest my observation should appear to be of a sadly superficial character, that the manners and conversation of these gentlemen bore (whenever I had occasion to appreciate them) no relation to the state of their chin and their boots. They were almost always marked by an extreme amenity. At Toulouse there was the strongest temptation to speak to people simply for the entertainment of hearing them reply with that curious, that fascinating accent of the Languedoc, which appears to abound in final consonants and leads the Toulousians to say bien-g and maison-g like ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... veracity. She had been so badly grazed, in her recent encounter, that she was now constantly seeing doubt where no doubt was; and this wakeful attitude of suspicion towards others did not make for brotherly love. The amenity of her manners suffered, too: though she kept to her original programme of not saying all she thought, yet what she was forced to say she blurted out in such a precise and blunt fashion that it made a disagreeable ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... for themselves, and to be amiable and pleasing in their homes, and see that their neighbors enjoyed themselves. Thus, filled with a sense of duty, and wishing, at all costs, to obey her director, who bade her converse with amenity, the poor soul perspired in her corset when the talk around her languished, so much did she suffer from the effort of emitting ideas in order to revive it. Under such circumstances she would put forth the silliest statements, ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... the Death of Ananias, we look upon men whom the effusion of the Spirit has equally sublimated above every unholy thought; a common power seems to have invested them all with a preternatural majesty. Yet not an iota of the individual is lost in any one; the gentle bearing and amenity of John still follow him in his office of almoner; nor in Peter does the deep repose of the erect attitude of the Apostle, as he deals the death-stroke to the offender by a simple bend of his finger, subdue the energetic, sanguine ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... to the extreme amenity with which I was now treated by the French officers. The evening passed over quickly. About eleven we retired to rest, my friend furnishing me with clothes, and warning me, that next morning he would call me at daylight, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... bearing and intercourse; his mind was more logical than severe in temper, more vigorous than versatile, judicial in taste and tone, with more precision than eagerness; and his temperament united the gravity of a cultivated and thoughtful with the vivacity and amenity of a harmonious and cheerful nature. Like Washington and Morris, he was fond of agricultural pursuits; and like them, his example as a statesman seems to acquire new force and beauty from the long and contented ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... while tending the flocks of Mr Laidlaw at Blackhouse, was not wholly derived from his skill as a versifier, and capabilities as a musician, but, among the fairer portion of the creation, was perhaps scarcely less owing to the amenity of his disposition, combined with the handsomeness of his person. As a candidate for the honour of feminine approbation, he was successful alike in the hall and on the green: the rumour of his approach at any rural assemblage or merry-meeting was the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... endowed by nature with all that modesty and goodness which may occasionally be perceived in those few favored persons who enhance the gracious sweetness of a disposition more than usually gentle, by the fair ornament of a winning amenity, always ready to conciliate and constantly giving evidence of the most refined consideration for all persons, and under every circumstance. The world received the gift of this artist from the hand of Nature, when, vanquished ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... to Leroux from the monastery at leisure. If you knew what I have to do! I have almost to cook. Here, another amenity, one cannot get served. The domestic is a brute: bigoted, lazy, and gluttonous; a veritable son of a monk (I think that all are that). It requires ten to do the work which your brave Mary does. Happily, the maid whom I have brought ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... recess of the manse was explored, and the neat and beautiful gardens were traversed, and the glebe surveyed, and the "bonny burnside" visited, and the water laved from its channel. It was, in truth, a new world to its young visitants—and appeared, in the superior house accommodation and rural amenity around, a terrestrial paradise, contrasted with the circumscribed dwelling on the rocky shore of the German Ocean in the north, or in the hamlet of Muirden amid the wilderness on the southern border of Scotland. The sensations and sympathies ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various |
