"Charm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... See how the lovers sit in state together, As they were giving laws to half mankind! The impression of a smile, left in her face, Shows she died pleased with him for whom she lived, And went to charm him in another world. Caesar's just entering: grief has now no leisure. Secure that villain, as our pledge of safety, To grace the imperial triumph.—Sleep, blest pair, Secure from human chance, long ages out, While all the storms of fate ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... perfect. Mr Wegg, if you was brought here loose in a bag to be articulated, I'd name your smallest bones blindfold equally with your largest, as fast as I could pick 'em out, and I'd sort 'em all, and sort your wertebrae, in a manner that would equally surprise and charm you.' ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Hilaire, thoughtfully—he knew that Harry would repeat nothing, "and who nevertheless has the utmost confidence of his men. He does not joke with them as the young Napoleon did with his soldiers. He has none of the quality that we call magnetic charm, and yet his troops are eager to follow him anywhere. He has won no victories, but his men believe him capable of many. He takes none of his officers into his confidence, but all have it. Incredible, but true. Why ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... it on more than one authority, was the handsomest man of his day. The gallantry of his bearing merited the approval of so fastidious a critic in such matters as Baldassare Castiglione, who mentions it in his Il Cortigiano. Of his personal charm there is also no lack of commendation from those who had his acquaintance at this time. Added to this, his Italian splendour and flamboyance may well have dazzled a maid who had been reared amid the grey and something stern tones of the Court of ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... to the council-table: And, "Please your honors," said he, I'm able, By means of a secret charm, to draw All creatures living beneath the sun, That creep or swim or fly or run, After me so as you never saw! And I chiefly use my charm On creatures that do people harm, The mole and toad and newt and viper; And people call me the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... the quiet caressing tones of the flute, floated through the silence and stole into Janina's soul, lulling it sweetly . . . and later, a dance of some kind, soft, voluptuous, and intoxicating, enveloped her with its charm, lured and rocked her on the waves of rhythm and held her in ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... Greek letters represents 365, the number of the deities supposed by the Basilidians to be subordinate to the All Ruling One, was a mystical name for the supreme God, and was engraved as a charm on stones together with the figure of a human body (Cadaver), with cats head and reptiles feet. From this the name Abracadabra may have arisen, with a sense of power in it as a charm. Serenus Sammonicus, a celebrated physician who lived about ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... judges that they believed him supported by witchcraft. "Ecce homo!" he exclaimed, from time to time, with insane blasphemy, as he raised his blood-streaming head from the bench. In order to destroy the charm which seemed to render him insensible to pain, they sent for the shirt of a hospital patient, supposed to be a sorcerer. When clothed in this garment, however, Balthazar was none the less superior to the arts of the tormentors, enduring all their inflictions, according to an eye-witness, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... herself at Belgravia Terrace before the Countess, who advanced to meet her with a charm which at once placed the girl ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... was kindness itself to me at all events, then and afterwards. That was the charm of ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... the deadly blow be stricken, and what matter then even if she fell into the hands of the authorities? What matter even if her life was pronounced a forfeit to the law? for life now had little charm for her. ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... sect has an interesting history. In his childhood he gave no evidence of future greatness. His education was of a low order, but his feeling heart and sympathetic soul won him the esteem of all that knew him. The woods possessed the same charm for him as for Wordsworth or Whitman. With the latter especially he seems to have much in common. While a child, he absented himself frequently from the narrow and noisy heder, and spent the day in the quiet of the neighboring woods. When he grew up, he accepted the menial position ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... and Thor had ceased to satisfy the expanding soul of the Anglo-Saxon; and the new faith rapidly spread; its charm consisting in the light it seemed to throw upon the darkness encompassing man's past ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... height. Vilna, with her "many well-educated wives," attracted the attention of Montefiore in the early "forties"; Tarnopol speaks in terms of high praise of the Jewish women of Odessa in the "sixties"; they "charm by their culture, by the ease and precision with which they speak several European languages, by the correctness of their judgment, and the beauty of their conversation."[21] The memoirs of Madame Pauline Wengeroff throw a sidelight also on the accomplishments of her sisters in the ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... I saw all that was to be seen in the old city we first visited, which, in addition to its architectural beauties, should have a special charm for all Englishmen from the fact of the dauntless Richard Coeur de Lion having such an affection for the town that he bequeathed it his lion heart, and then we journeyed on through la belle Normandie, loitering here and there at those historic spots, woven ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... to be a very pretty girl, and still kept budding and blossoming, and daily putting on some new charm, which you no sooner became sensible of than you thought it worth all that she had previously possessed. So unformed, vague, and without substance, as she had come to us, it seemed as if we could see Nature shaping out a woman before our ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his journey was tedious and for the most part dull and uninteresting. In these Satan-like days of "going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down in it" travelling has lost much of its old romantic charm, . . the idea of traversing long distances no more fills the expectant adventurer with a pleasurable sense of uncertainty and mystery—he knows exactly what to anticipate.. it is all laid out for him plainly on the level lines of the commonplace, and nothing is left to his imagination. ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... to your health," said he, drinking himself. From one subject to another the chat with the officer was prolonged. He was an intelligent gentleman, and suffered himself to be led away by the charm of Aramis' wit and Porthos' ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... possessed in full measure that charm of a constitutional freshness of aspect which may defy for a long time extravagant or erring habits of life; a physiognomy, [195] healthy-looking, cleanly, and firm, which seemed unassociable with any form of self-torment, and made one think of the muzzle of some ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... in the necessary, the precious "tightness" of the place (whatever the issue) on the strength of any respectable hint. It being thus the respectable hint that I had with such avidity picked up, what would be the story to which it would most inevitably form the centre? It is part of the charm attendant on such questions that the "story," with the omens true, as I say, puts on from this stage the authenticity of concrete existence. It then is, essentially—it begins to be, though it may more or less ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... Daddy, who had been looking at me in that keen way of his, "I don't think I ever saw you so enthusiastic before. Your mind has been fully opened to the charm of the wilderness, and that is something that city people seldom understand. You were never so earnest before. What is it? Are ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... is opened before she reaches it, and, finding herself caught, she slips behind the chintz window-curtain. A woman has entered, who is clearly the original of the large photograph. She is not strictly pretty, but there is charm in her pale, resolute face, with its mocking lips, flexible brows, and greenish eyes, whose lids, square above them, have short, dark lashes. She is dressed in blue, and her fair hair is coiled up under a cap and motor-veil. She comes in swiftly, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... said the ancient Rabbi. There is no friendship equal to that which is made over the common study of books. At the Talmud meetings held at the house of Arthur Davis were founded lifelong intimacies. Unpretentious in their aim, there was in these gatherings a harmony of charm and earnestness; pervading them was the true "joy of service." Above all he loved the liturgy. Here the self-taught man must ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... pay best; the honour of serving them is sufficient wages; there is a charm in their looks that delivers a pleasure with their commands, and gives our duty ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... oppressor of his offspring with a butcher-knife in his boot, a six-shooter at his belt, and a rifle in his hand. Frank himself was less of a buccaneer and was conspicuous because he was practically the only man in Little Missouri who did not carry arms. He was big-hearted and not without charm in his nonchalant disregard of the moralities, but there was no truth in him, and he was so foul-mouthed that he became the model for the youth of Little Missouri, the ideal of what a ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... But for that passage we might almost suppose that the feeling of Sunday morning in the country which Orlando describes so perfectly in As You Like It was the beginning and end of Shakespear's notion of religion. I say almost, because Isabella in Measure for Measure has religious charm, in spite of the conventional theatrical assumption that female religion means an inhumanly ferocious chastity. But for the most part Shakespear differentiates his heroes from his villains much more by what they do than by what they are. Don John in Much ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... ago. He was not an idler; he was no sham foisted as a great man on an ignorant public. He had really some touch of genius, and he cultivated it assiduously. But the harder he worked, the greater was his need of gaiety and extravagance. Gifted with good looks and a charm of manner, he was popular alike in the great world and the world of Bohemia. He kept and wanted to keep a foot in each. That he was in desperate straits now, probably Helene Vauquier alone in Aix had recognised. ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... was the signal for breaking up quarters at St. Louis, and the young fortune-hunters started up the river in good spirits. It was only the second time either of them had been upon a Mississippi steamboat, and nearly everything they saw had the charm of novelty. Col. Sellers was at the landing to bid ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... the occurrence now and then of modes of expression more familiar and colloquial than is usually the case in historical works. This, however, is a characteristic feature of the original, to which in fact it owes not a little of its charm. Dr. Mommsen often uses expressions that are not to be found in the dictionary, and he freely takes advantage of the unlimited facilities afforded by the German language for the coinage or the combination of words. I have not unfrequently, in deference to his wishes, used ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... "Charm'd with the sight, 'The world,' I cried, 'Shall hear of this thy deed; My dog shall mortify the pride Of man's ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... church, otherwise poor and even mean, owes whatever interest or beauty it possesses. Without tiles, rooms like the Sala das Sereias or the Sala dos Arabes would be plain whitewashed featureless apartments, with them they have a charm and a romance not easy to find ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... accompaniment to bread and cheese, is naturally awful, but garlic used as it should be used is the soul, the divine essence, of cookery. The palate delights in it without being able to identify it, and the surest proof of its charm is manifested by the flatness and insipidity which will infallibly characterise any dish usually flavoured with it, if by chance this dish should be prepared without it. The cook who can employ it successfully will be ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... head-long charge, the ignominious retreat, and the battle-field after the bloody assault, with its dead and wounded heroes, are all excellently portrayed, and with an ease and vigor of style that lend a peculiar charm to the book, and rivet the attention of the reader from cover to cover. It is really refreshing to meet with such a work as this in these degenerate days of namby-pamby novels, so enervating to mind and morals. Captain Glazier's work elevates ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... Green and then down Grafton Street. Though his eyes took note of many elements of the crowd through which he passed they did so morosely. He found trivial all that was meant to charm him and did not answer the glances which invited him to be bold. He knew that he would have to speak a great deal, to invent and to amuse and his brain and throat were too dry for such a task. The problem of how he could pass the hours till he ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... the delight. All the stages come in turn, over and over again, observation, experiment, inquiry from others whether orally or in books, and in this subject books abound more fascinating than fairy tales, and their latest charm is that they are laying aside the pose of a fairy tale and ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... of the decoration into which fitted, as figures in a frame, the various guests. Even the waxed floor seemed to take on new reverberations as the pianoforte sounded the sweet despair of the Pole. To her dismay Ermentrude caught herself drifting away from the moment's hazy charm to thoughts of her poet. It annoyed her, she sharply reminded herself, that she could not absolutely saturate herself with the music and the manifold souvenirs of the old hotel; perhaps this may have been the spell of ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... but a dream, Like Sleep which short doth lengthened seem Till dawn of day, when the bird's lay Doth charm the ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... charm form the raw materials of the most entertaining city life in the country. For whatever San Francisco is or is not, it is never dull. Life there is in a perpetual ferment. It is as though the city kettle had been set on the stove to boil half a century ago and had never been ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... may be said, was the one man, above all others, who made the Romans feel how great a charm eloquence lends to what is good, and how invincible justice is if it be well presented. An incident occurred in the theatre, during his consulship, which showed what his speaking could do. Formerly the ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... charm in his conversation. He was a delightful companion, ever ready in wit and repartee, versatile and resourceful in debate, with the wide knowledge that is gained by travel and garnered from many fields of study. He reminded me of Wendell Phillips as an orator, with the impression of having ...
— Alexander Crummell: An Apostle of Negro Culture - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 20 • William H. Ferris
... not order their conversation aright; they did not execute judgment, and relieve the oppressed, did not walk soberly, did not mortify sinful lusts, &c. Alas, we deceive ourselves with the noise of a covenant,(285) and a cause of God; we cry it up as an antidote against all evils, use it as a charm, even as the Jews did their temple; and, in the mean time, we do not care how we walk before God, or with our neighbours: well, thus saith the Lord, "Trust ye not in lying words," &c. Jer. vii. 4, 5, 6. If drunkenness reign among you, if filthiness, swearing, oppression, cruelty reign ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... muse! whose sweet nepenthean tongue Can charm the pangs of death with deathless song, Canst stinging plagues with easy thoughts beguile, Make pains and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... whom he had become acquainted had bored him by their insipidity or disgusted him by their precocity; but from this one there emanated a kind of charm which rested while it attracted him. It was pleasant to lean back and look at and listen to her; to watch the soft tendrils of dark hair stirred by the wind, to see the frank smile light up the gray eyes and curve the sweet red lips; to listen to the ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... presence of these same riches which she speedily began to scatter with a lavish hand. Her life slipped very easily back into its accustomed groove, save that the pinch of poverty was conspicuously absent. The first day of every month brought her a full purse, and for a long time the charm of this novelty went far towards quieting the undeniable sense ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... is doubtful if he understood all that Tom said, as it was half Spanish and half English. But the Indian knew a little English, too. "Valdez, when he find no gold is very mad. Only papers in the yellow silk-papers with queer marks on. Valdez think it maybe a charm to work evil, so he burn them ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... unexpected moments, bolted right round, and stopped short occasionally; but Beth sat tight mechanically, following her own fancies. Captain Caldwell was going to inspect one of the outlying coastguard stations; and they went by the glen road, memorable to Beth because it was there she first felt the charm of running water, and found her first wild violets and tuft of primroses. The pale purple of the violets and the scent of primroses, warm with the sun, were among the happy associations of that time. But her delight was in the mountain-streams, with their mimic waterfalls and fairy wells. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... a gentleman called Doolan with an eloquence would charm ye When he talks of shooting landlords and of peaceful themes like that: But I'd like to undesave him on the subject of the Army— Sure the things he says about us are the idlest kind of chat! We are all (says he) ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... gave her grief and pleasure; but when she no longer saw him, and reflected that the charm he carried about him when present, was an introduction to love, she was very near imagining she hated him, out of the excessive grief which that ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... part, the desire to shift the weight. She could as little have slept as she could have slept that morning, days before, when she had watched the first dawn from her window. Turned to the east, this side of her room was now in shade, with the two wings of the casement folded back and the charm she always found in her seemingly perched position—as if her outlook, from above the high terraces, was that of some castle-tower mounted on a rock. When she stood there she hung over, over the gardens and the woods—all of which drowsed below her, at this hour, in the immensity of light. ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... above all. "Long live the great Zenobia!" ran along the ranks from the centre to the extremes, and from the extremes back again to the centre. It seemed as if, when her name had once been uttered, they could not cease—through the operation of some charm—to repeat it again and again, coupled too with a thousand phrases of loyalty ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... to express their approbation of his writings. Hard indeed was his fate, born to adorn the times in which he lived, yet compelled to fall a victim to pride and poverty! His destiny, cruel as it was, gives a charm to his verses; and while the bright thought excites admiration, the recollection of his miseries awakens a tender sympathy and sorrow. Who would not wish that he had been so fortunate as to relieve a fellow creature so accomplished, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... wherefore; pro and con, reason why; secret motive, arriere pensee[Fr]; intention &c. 620. inducement, consideration; attraction; loadstone; magnet, magnetism, magnetic force; allectation|, allective|; temptation, enticement, agacerie[obs3], allurement, witchery; bewitchment, bewitchery; charm; spell &c. 993; fascination, blandishment, cajolery; seduction, seducement; honeyed words, voice of the tempter, song of the Sirens forbidden fruit, golden apple. persuasibility[obs3], persuasibleness[obs3]; attractability[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... how to locate a subterranean vein of water by means of a twig of witch-hazel. Eph also confided to Johnnie that he himself could stanch the flow of blood or stop a toothache instantly by force of a certain charm, but he could not tell how to do this because the secret could be imparted only from man to woman, or vice versa. Even the shadowy domain of spirits had not been exempt from Eph's investigations, and he related many ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... He is a romancer. His dialogues are romances. It is the novelist and artist running side by side in the legend and the drawing, but almost independently of each other, the wit and the poet in him trying to play each other's game, that provides the contradictoriness—the charm in his pictures. The point of the "joke" seems very often a mere excuse for working off several incidents of beauty that ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... War this year begun, Its first gun fired by youthful Washington; The shots flew fast from hidden foe, And many a one was then laid low, Yet never a wound that grand form felt, Though shots like rain at him were dealt. Old Indian chiefs declared a charm Preserved his ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... high and undisputed. He is original and alone; his style and conceptions are his own; his thoughts are ever at home, and always natural; he extracts pleasing subjects out of the most coarse and trivial scenes, and finds enough to charm the eye in the commonest occurrences. His subjects are usually from low life, such as hog-sties, farm-yards, landscapes with cattle and sheep, or fishermen with smugglers on the sea-coast. He seldom or ever ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... well-dressed Englishman, bowing, smiling, and debonair. Daisy liked Norburn very much—how much she never quite knew—but there was no doubt that two young men were a pleasant change from one, and the contrast between them increased the charm—a novel charm to her—of the situation, for she was well aware that, different as they were from one another, strong as the contrast was, they were both at this moment thinking precisely the same thought, namely, "Who's this fellow, and what does ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... did not read long. The charm of the green world around her was greater than the pictured world of the book. Chicken Little fell to making pictures of her own—dream pictures that changed quickly into other dream pictures, as real dreams sometimes do. As she stared down the leafy arcades between the rows ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... of the nightingale," remarks Peacock, "ceases about the time the grass is mown." The charm, however, is less in such detached beauties, however exquisite, than in the condensed opulence—"every epithet a text for a canto," says Macaulay—and in the general impression of "plain living and high thinking," pursued in the midst of every charm of nature and every refinement ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... agreed that a force of three thousand foot and five hundred horse should be sent to the assistance of the king. Moreover, the state-paper drawn up on this occasion was conceived with so much sagacity and expressed with so much eloquence, as particularly to charm the English queen when it was communicated to her Majesty. She protested very loudly and vehemently to Noel de Caron, envoy from the provinces at London, that this response on the part of his Government to De Morlans was one of the wisest documents that she had ever seen. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... which centers around the making and the enjoying of a mountain camp, spiced with the fun of a lively troop of Girl Scouts. The charm of living in the woods, of learning woodcraft of all sorts, of adventuring into the unknown, combine to make a busy and an ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope
... cool thy bosom's fiery glow. Orestes, fondly lov'd,—canst thou not hear me? Hath the terrific Furies' grisly band Completely dried the life-blood in thy veins? Creeps there, as from the Gorgon's direful head, A petrifying charm through all thy limbs? If hollow voices, from a mother's blood, Call thee to hell, may not a sister's word With benediction pure ascend to heaven, And summon thence some gracious ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... so frightened last night," she said, so soon as were together, "and I am sure I should have seen something dreadful if it had not been for that charm I bought from the poor little hunchback whom I called such hard names. I had a dream of something black coming round my bed, and I awoke in a perfect horror, and I really thought, for some seconds, I saw a dark figure near the chimney-piece, but I felt under my pillow ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... her cowardice, only hankered and refrained. Her malign egoism rises up uncontrolled, and calls to its aid her quick and subtle intellect. She ruins the other woman's happiness, but in doing so incurs a danger from which her sense of personal dignity revolts. Life has no such charm for her that she cares to purchase it at the cost of squalid humiliation and self-contempt. The good and the bad in her alike impel her to have done with it all; and a pistol-shot ends what is surely one of the most poignant character-tragedies in literature. ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... stones in the middle of its course rather impeded its progress. The noise it made, and the anger it showed, seemed to please our sulky bear mightily, so he sat down on the bank with his toes in the water to enjoy the spectacle. The scene was a very striking one, and was fitted to charm the most indifferent eye; and Bruin, bear as he was, could not help being attracted by it. Whatever his meditations, however, it was not destined that he should pursue them long without interruption; for his quick ear soon detected the sharp, quick bark ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... Where one person is capable of becoming a skilful musician, twenty may become good readers. Where there is one occasion suitable for the exercise of musical talent, there are twenty for that of reading. The culture of the voice necessary for reading well, gives a delightful charm to the same voice in conversation. Good reading is the natural exponent and vehicle of all good things. It is the most effective of all commentaries upon the works of genius. It seems to bring dead authors to life ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... for her. She was a striking-looking girl, with rather sad, almond-shaped brown eyes, a clever, rather mocking mouth, and enormous masses of black hair twisted about her head. She was not pretty but there was a certain charm of interest and mystery in her face, and Rilla found her fascinating. Even her occasional moods of gloom and cynicism had allurement for Rilla. These moods came only when Miss Oliver was tired. At all other times she was ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... house of gold, star of the morning....' Yes, Goddess, when I recall these hymns of praise my heart melts, and I become almost an apostate. Forgive me this absurdity; thou canst not imagine the charm which these barbarians have imparted to verse, and how hard it is to follow the path ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... to beat violently. The colour left her lips, and she sank into a chair, covered once more with shame and confusion. But, boy or girl, the charm of her peculiar personality was still the same, and it had its effect upon him even at that moment, indignant as he was, as she sat there, her long hair falling behind her, looking up at him with timid eyes and ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... man's honesty. Now, my friends, from all I have remarked, none of you are slayers of lions, and fear is easily produced among you. However, if you doubt my skill in this instance, I will propose a still easier trial,—one which commits nobody, which works like a charm upon the mind, and makes the thief come forward of his own accord, to ease his conscience and purse of its ill-gotten wealth, at one and the same time. I propose the Hak reezi, or the heaping up earth. ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... snobbishness, he discounts his "Irish charm," and though he praises highly his gifts as dramatist and story-teller he lays little stress on his genuine kindness of nature and the courteous smiling ways which made him so incomparable ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... the most diversified manner, with beautiful inland bays and seas, broken by headlands, inclosed by mountains, and studded with islands of every form and magnitude, which gives to the scenery of Greece its proud pre-eminence. "Greek scenery," says Humboldt, "presents the peculiar charm of an intimate blending of sea and land, of shores adorned with vegetation, or picturesquely girt with rocks gleaming in the light of aerial tints, and an ocean beautiful in the play of the ever-changing brightness of its deep-toned wave."[27] And over all the serene, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... this uniform on, I said, as I looked in the glass, "It's one to a million That any civilian My figure and form will surpass. Gold lace has a charm for the fair, And I've plenty of that, and to spare, While a lover's professions, When uttered in Hessians, Are eloquent everywhere!" A fact that I counted upon, When I first put ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... up to the bluff behind Madeira Place. As he came through the Madeira grounds Crittenton Madeira came out of the house and stood on the back porch, regarding him quizzically. Piney had a peculiar, poorly hidden dislike of Madeira that, taken with the boy's charm of personality, more or less amused ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... light Awoke those shapes of might Once known that never die; Forms of titanic birth, The elder brood of earth, That fill the mind more grandly than they charm the eye. ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... rescue those who have well earned the sympathy of the world, by what they must have already suffered. These northern seas will yet be explored. The very difficulty of accomplishing it, will itself give it a charm, which in this restless age will operate with increasing power. And should efforts now be relaxed, and in some future time the evidence be brought to light that some of the party yet existed, long after all efforts to rescue them had been abandoned, the ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... OENONE, my own soul, Behold this fruit, whose gleaming rind ingraven 'For the most fair,' would seem award it thine As lovelier than whatever Oread haunt The knolls of Ida, loveliest in all grace Of movement, and the charm of ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... "the Greek physician gave this to me. He told me it was an Eastern charm to keep the lives of those who wore it. Will you wear it ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... i.e., labor for the satisfaction of their requirements; and, having discovered this, I convinced myself that labor for the satisfaction of one's own needs falls of itself into various kinds of labor, each one of which possesses its own charm, and which not only do not constitute a burden, but which serve as a respite to one another. I have made a rough division of this labor (not insisting on the justice of this arrangement), in accordance with my own needs in life, into four parts, corresponding ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... us into our shanty when the evening meal was ready. Our host wished to slaughter a lamb, but we deferred that till the morrow, and we ate what we had brought with us. It was, barring the smoke, a delightful experience, and its charm never diminished. That hour spent before turning in, after supper, when the tobacco tins circulate, and the shepherds crowd in from the neighbouring huts, made an impression which it will not be ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... like to know that Thorwaldsen, the great Thorwaldsen, loved to hear Andersen repeat these tales. It is true he has quite a peculiar way of relating them, which adds greatly to their charm. I begged him one day to tell me the story of "The Top and Ball," and he immediately sat down on the sofa and began. Though I knew it by heart from beginning to end, so often had I read it over, yet it now seemed quite new, ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... peace of twilight had already descended there. Miss Hitchcock strolled on, apparently forgetful of fatigue, of the distance they were putting between them and the club-house. Sommers respected the charm of the occasion, and, content with evading the chattering crowd, refrained from all strenuous discussion. This happy, well-bred, contented woman, full of vitality and interest, soothed all asperities. She laid him in subtle subjection to her. So they chatted of the trivial ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Raveloe scene is full of typical errors. It is too pretty, too decent, too neat, too humourous. There is very little fun to be got out of public-house humours, because the vanity of the various talkers is offensive, and their stupidity has not the charm of simplicity. If such a man as, say, Mr. Matthew Arnold wanted to test the accuracy of the "Silas Marner" chapter for critical purposes, he would scarcely recover the ordeal of a night spent in a haunt of the hardened toper. If the company happened to be unembarrassed, ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... any other charm me? Even you, with your heart of flint, should feel sparks struck out of it at ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... fearless and daring as she has ever been in her denunciation of wrong, and her advocacy of right, and extraordinary as are the abilities she has displayed in the management of an enterprise for which few men would have been competent, the greatest charm of her character is her unaffected modesty, and disposition to esteem others better than herself. To her friends she declared that she had made no sacrifices in the work, none really worthy of the name—while there were abundance of women who had, but who were and must remain ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... new shoots from the root were given to one neighbor after another all through the district. The bushes are slender, but they grow tall without climbing against the wall, and sway to and fro in the wind with a grace of youth and an inexpressible charm of beauty. How many lovers must have picked them on Sunday evenings, in all the bygone years, and carried them along the roads or by the pasture footpaths, hiding them clumsily under their Sunday coats if they caught sight of any one coming. ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... back directly and return again the next day. He is the guest of the coast; he passes in the morning and again at night. His life is spent going from one point to another; he is the only one who gives the coast some animation, something to look forward to, and, I was almost going to say, some charm. ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... atmosphere and to study its character. For every ancient city that has stood up against adversity and overcome it has a very definite character of its own. And it is a mysterious, wonderful thing this character, this cachet of a great city; the charm of Paris or the grandeur of London, the glittering stillness of Venice or the insistent glory ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... firm immutable immortal laws Impress'd on Nature by the GREAT FIRST CAUSE, Say, MUSE! how rose from elemental strife Organic forms, and kindled into life; How Love and Sympathy with potent charm Warm the cold heart, the lifted hand disarm; Allure with pleasures, and alarm with pains, And bind Society in ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... years of jubilee which immediately followed the Restoration, the Hamiltons were preeminently conspicuous. The long fair ringlets, the radiant bloom, and the languishing blue eyes of the lovely Elizabeth still charm us on the canvass of Lely. She had the glory of achieving no vulgar conquest. It was reserved for her voluptuous beauty and for her flippant wit to overcome the aversion which the coldhearted and scoffing Grammont felt for the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 1904. That the Anglophobe outbursts of the Parisian Press and populace in 1902 should so speedily give way to a friendly understanding was the work, partly of the friends of peace in both lands, partly of the personal tact and charm of Edward VII. as manifested during his visit to Paris in May 1903, but mainly of the French and British Governments. In October 1903 they agreed by treaty to refer to arbitration before the Hague Tribunal disputes ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... only weakness was a professional pride in his wonderful achievements in induction. He was ever ready to astound and charm his listeners ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... nature warm to its own, kindly to all, cheerful, fond of sport and fun, and always fed from pure fountains, and with it a character so founded upon the rock, so humbly serviceable, so continuing in power and grace, must wake in all the responses of happy appreciation and leave the charm ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... no times when woman's figure has not the charm of womanhood, unless she attempts to improve it by some monstrous contrivance of her own; no times when good taste and womanly tact cannot so drape it that it will possess some attraction peculiar to her sex. And were it not so, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... figures breathing there, Beheld as living spirits—to her eyes 570 The naked beauty of the soul lay bare, And often through a rude and worn disguise She saw the inner form most bright and fair— And then she had a charm of strange device, Which, murmured on mute lips with tender tone, 575 Could make that spirit ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... (of whom he invariably got the better) always having a consummate good-humor, and bearing himself with a certain manly grace, that might exhibit somewhat of the camp and Alsatia perhaps, but that had its charm, and stamped him a gentleman: and his manner to Lady Castlewood was so devoted and respectful, that she soon recovered from the first feelings of dislike which she had conceived against him—nay, before long, began to be interested ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... glancing at her sideways, wondered indeed where all that rosy-cheeked, ripe bloom had gone, which so far had made the constant charm of Rachel Henderson. Instead a bloodless face, with pinched lines, and heavy-lidded eyes! What a formidable thing was this "love," that she herself had never known, though she had had her quiet dreams of husband ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... visit, but the totally different train of thought which it evoked assisted her to recover her ordinary mental tone. It was, however, touched by a minor key of sadness, of humility (save when roused by any moving cause to indignation), which gave the charm of soft ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... stranger and the handsome dowry. But of course she hadn't; though at the sight of Nix Naught Nothing she fell so much in love with him, that, knowing the hen-wife to be a witch, she went straight to her, and offered all her savings for a charm by which she ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... this: 'George Bronson, colored, aged twenty-nine, a resident of Thompson Street, was caught cheating at poker last night. He was not murdered.' There you tell what has not happened. There is a variety about it. It has the charm of the unexpected. Then you might say: 'Curious incident on Wall Street yesterday. So-and-so, who was caught on the bear side of the market with 10,000 shares of J. B. & S. K. W., paid off all his obligations in full, and retired from business with $1,000,000 clear.' Or we might say, 'Superintendent ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... the interval between the second and third Parliaments of James, the nation was absolutely governed by the Crown. The prospects of the Lord Keeper were bright and serene. His great place rendered the splendour of his talents even more conspicuous, and gave an additional charm to the serenity of his temper, the courtesy of his manners, and the eloquence of his conversation. The pillaged suitor might mutter. The austere Puritan patriot might, in his retreat, grieve that one on whom God had bestowed without measure all the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms in the great Limberlost Swamp; the manner in which everyone who meets him succumbs to the charm of his engaging personality; and his love-story with "The Angel" ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... the events he is recording, and he will wax amazingly sentimental, and perhaps shed as many real tears as Sterne or Dickens do sham ones over their figments. This realism of Carlyle's gives a great charm to his histories and biographies. The amount he tells you is something astonishing—no platitudes, no rigmarole, no common-form, articles which are the staple of most biography, but, instead of them, all the facts and features ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... I have not added to this book any information I have received since I wrote it, as it does not seem to me fair to do so. My only regret regarding it is that I have not dwelt sufficiently on the charm of West Africa; it is so difficult to explain such things; but I am sure there are amongst my readers people who know by experience the charm some countries exercise over men—countries very different from each ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley |
