"Fineness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... humbled state of mind the offence she had taken at his acting in the charade became all the more odious. What a mean-minded girl she could be, to be sure; yet how perfectly he had risen above the situation. He had received her rudeness with an instinctive fineness that gave freshness to the Biblical admonition about the other cheek. He had returned good for evil, and in supporting her through the ordeal of the Uplift Plan he had proved himself ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... divined some fineness of feeling in this coarse man. He wanted to spare her not only pain, but the necessity of watchful eyes on her every moment. Lucy did not like to promise not to try to escape, if opportunity presented. Still, she reasoned, ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... the fineness of this politic drift, and who are the contrivers; that while bishops were to be baited down, then all presses might be open; it was the people's birthright and privilege in time of Parliament, it was ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... ideas out of their heads, and new ones in." His own verses are often rude and defective. The gold does not yet run pure, is drossy and crude. The thyme and marjoram are not yet honey. But if he want lyric fineness and technical merits, if he have not the poetic temperament, he never lacks the causal thought, showing that his genius was better than his talent. He knew the worth of the Imagination for the uplifting and consolation ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... its freshness, yet Keith found it more attractive in the growing daylight than amid the lamp shadows of the evening before. He had not previously realized the peculiar clearness of her complexion, the rose tint showing through the olive skin, or the soft and silky fineness of her hair, which, disarranged, was strangely becoming under the broad brim of the hat she wore, drawn low until it shadowed her eyes. It was not a face to be easily associated with frontier concert halls, or any surrender to evil; the chin round and firm, the lips full, ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... the moral theology of the Jesuits. For the rigid they may have a stricter morality, but for the lax their casuistry supplies a pliable code of morals, which, by the aid of ingenious distinctions, can find excuses for the worst of crimes. With force of logic, with fineness of irony, with energy of moral indignation, with a literary style combining strength and lightness, Pascal presses his irresistible assault. The effect of the "Provincial Letters" was to carry the discussion of morals and theology before a new court of appeal—not the Sorbonne, but the public intelligence ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... tempting showers in pleasant sort descend Into fair Phillis' lap, my lovely friend, When sleep her sense with slumber doth restrain. I would be changed to a milk-white bull, When midst the gladsome fields she should appear, By pleasant fineness to surprise my dear, Whilst from their stalks, she pleasant flowers did pull. I were content to weary out my pain, To be Narsissus so she were a spring, To drown in her those woes my heart do wring. And more; I wish transformed to remain, That whilst I thus in pleasure's lap ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... not go on if everyone went about espousing the cause of unhappy and badly-behaved individuals, and put on old clothes and played the Ass. But, for all that, it was not unpleasant to reflect that his own friend had chosen to do these things in despite of convention. There was a touch of fineness in it. And it was all over now, thank God.... What times they would have up ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... asserting that Rome would never be safe as long as Carthage was so powerful, so hostile, and so near. One day he drew a bunch of early ripe figs from beneath his robe, and, throwing it upon the floor of the Senate-house, said to the assembled fathers, who were astonished at the freshness and fineness of the fruit, "Those figs were gathered but three days ago at Carthage; so close is our enemy to our walls." From that time forth, whenever he was called upon for his vote in the Senate, though the subject of debate bore no relation to Carthage, his words were, "Delenda est ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... imagination. Compare with them the heads of the wits and statesmen of Charles II.'s time. See the difference;—the high, wide arch of the skull is lowered or narrowed; the broad brow cramped; the features finer cut, but losing in force what they gain in fineness. Look, for instance, at this Vandyck of Sir John Suckling,—only the next generation after the great men; but his portrait is that of an idler, his head that of a man without great thoughts or great interests. The age of imagination had passed; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... restored at length, against my own expectation and that of all around me. But, when I first again beheld the reflection of my own face, I thought it was the visage of a ghost. I was wont to be flattered by all, but particularly by my husband, for the fineness of my complexion—it was now totally gone, and, what is more extraordinary, it has never returned. I have observed that the few who now see me, look upon me as a bloodless phantom—Such has been the abiding effect of the treatment ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... the man from the moment that we have betrayed him." "I do not see why one should hate an excellent fellow, because one has his wife." "You do not see it?... You do not see it?... You all of you are wanting in that fineness of feeling! However, that is one of those things which one feels, and which one cannot express. And then, moreover, one ought not.... No, you would not understand; it is quite useless. You men have no delicacy ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... there were two Persians, who unfolded before our eyes some of those marvellous shawls, where you forget the barbaric pattern in the exquisite fineness of the material and the triumphant harmony of the colors. Scarlet with palm-leaf border,—blue clasped by golden bronze, picked out with red,—browns, greens, and crimsons struggling for the mastery in a war of tints,—how should ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... The fineness and variety of the machinery are so amazing, so beautiful,—there is such an exquisite combination of form and movement,—such sensitive teeth and fingers and wheels and points of steel,—such fairy knives of sapphire, with which King Oberon the first ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... fit to harvest in October. It is then pulled up and immersed in water; when the woody parts of the stalks separating from the bark, which sloughs off and undergoes a decomposition by which the fibres are divided, it is then combed (hackled), dried, and reduced to different fineness of texture, and spun for various purposes. It requires good land, and the seed is usually two bushels ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... and in talking to her brother, to notice the omission, Maude's position would have been peculiarly embarrassing but for the gentlemanly demeanor of James, who, always courteous, particularly to those whom he thought neglected, bowed politely, and made to her several remarks concerning the fineness of the day and the delightful view which Laurel Hill commanded of the surrounding country. She was no menial, he knew, and looking in her bright, black eyes he saw that she had far more mind than the ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... Tanit-Zerga more closely. For the first time I realized that she was beautiful. Her hair, which she wore falling over her shoulders, was not so much curly as it was gently waving. Her features were of remarkable fineness: the nose very straight, a small mouth with delicate lips, a strong chin. She was not black, but copper colored. Her slender graceful body had nothing in common with the disgusting thick sausages which the carefully cared for bodies of ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... at the foot of the staircase, H, the skeletons of eighteen adult persons, a boy and an infant were found huddled up together, unmoved during seventeen centuries since they sank in death. They were covered by several feet of ashes of extreme fineness, evidently slowly borne in through the vent-holes, and afterwards consolidated by damp. The substance thus formed resembles the sand used by metal founders for castings, but is yet more delicate, and took perfect impressions of ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... covered with a white cloth, and a china bowl set thereon with a silver spoon beside it; a delicate goblet and china pitcher also, both carefully covered with a napkin. Did Mrs. Roberts know how homely Sallie gloried in the thinness of that china and the fineness of that napkin? How does it happen that some of the very poor seem born with such aesthetic tastes? Mrs. Roberts had intuitions, and was given to certain acts, concerning which she could not give to others satisfactory explanations. Therefore, she sometimes left china where others would have judged ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... dialogue in the best of these plays was easy, lively, and witty; the situations in some of them audacious almost beyond belief. Under a thin varnish of good breeding, the sentiments and manners were really brutal. The loosest gallants of Beaumont and Fletcher's theater retain a fineness of feeling and that politesse de coeur—which marks the gentleman. They are poetic creatures, and own a capacity for romantic passion. But the Manlys and Homers of the Restoration comedy have a prosaic, cold-blooded profligacy that disgusts. Charles Lamb, in his ingenious essay on "The Artificial ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... never deviated into poetical language as such, whether in rhetoric or highly coloured phrase, yet throughout the substance of his talk the same mode of thought, the same imaginative grasp of nature, the same fineness and gentleness in his view of character, the same forbearance and toleration, the aurea mediocritas despised by fools and fanatics, which are stamped on his poetry, were constantly perceptible: whilst in the easy and as it were unsought choiceness, the conscientious and truth-loving precision ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... hands the Volsungs' sword. He went without and called to Grani, and like the sweep of the wind rode down to the River's bank. Shreds of wool were floating down the water. Sigurd struck at them with his sword, and the fine wool was divided against the water's edge. Hardness and fineness, Gram could cut ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... believe that I was glad of an opportunity to inspect her at close quarters. My dear boy, she is no more a miller's daughter than you are. Her beauty—there's race in it. Her manner and carriage, her voice, accent, her way of dressing, (I'd give a sovereign for the name of her dressmaker), the fineness of her skin, her hair, everything—there's race in 'em all, race and consciousness of race, pride, dignity, distinction. These things don't come to pass in a generation. I'm surprised at your lack of perspicacity. And those blue eyes of yours look so sharp, too. But perhaps your wish was father ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... extraordinary strength than extraordinary fineness or versatility. His power of dramatic imitation is perhaps never of the highest; and in its best state, it is further limited to a certain range of characters. It is with the grave, the earnest, the exalted, the affectionate, the mournful that he ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... nugget to the surface, but instead of its weighing two or three hundred pounds, it weighed one hundred and ten. But it was a splendid lump of gold, almost entirely free from quartz and dirt, and of rare fineness and purity.. The finders were overjoyed, as well they might be, and guarded their treasure with great care until they saw it safe in the custody of the government agent. A gentleman from Melbourne, who was on a visit to the mines for the purpose of collecting rare specimens of gold, ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... a wonderful year—that year which she had passed in France—wonderful in its histories of tragedy and self-sacrifice, and in its revelation both of the brutality and of the infinite fineness of humanity. Few could have passed through such an experience and remained unchanged, certainly no one as acutely sentient and ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... have less spiritual force than men, they certainly have greater fineness. Their smaller volume of power is compensated by their greater delicacy and tact, their more sensitive moral capacity: the power of self-sacrifice is surely higher than the power of self-assertion. The examples of queens, from ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... belt, he wore around his body a tarnished silken sash of the most gaudy colours; the buck-horn haft of his knife was profusely decorated with plates of silver; the marten's fur of his cap was of a fineness and shadowing that a queen might covet; the buttons of his rude and soiled blanket-coat were of the glittering coinage of Mexico; the stock of his rifle was of beautiful mahogany, riveted and banded with the same precious metal, and the trinkets of no less than three worthless watches dangled ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... many rivers that relate to the sea, Salmon-trouts, as much different from others, both in shape and in their spots, as we see sheep in some countries differ one from another in their shape and bigness, and in the fineness of the wool: and, certainly, as some pastures breed larger sheep; so do some rivers, by reason of the ground over which they ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... rocking harmonic fluid he sets afloat a charming melody, which is soon joined by a self-willed second part. Afterwards, this melody is dissolved into all kinds of fioriture, colorature, and other trickeries, and they are of such fineness, subtlety, loveliness, and gracefulness, that one is reminded of Queen Mab, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... for these strange mistakes? La Fontaine, who in most of his fables charms us with his exquisite fineness of observation, has here been ill-inspired. His earlier subjects he knew down to the ground: the Fox, the Wolf, the Cat, the Stag, the Crow, the Rat, the Ferret, and so many others, whose actions ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... being pounded into sand of such degree of fineness as the gold requires, passes through a perforated iron plate called a "grating," or "screen," on to an inclined surface of copper plates faced with mercury, having small troughs, or "riffles," containing mercury, placed at certain ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... the time When in the Junetide's prime We flew by meads and mountains northerly! - Yea, to such freshness, fairness, fulness, fineness, freeness, Love lures ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... son, a regular shop-drudge," he raged inwardly, watching the youth of the Faubourg Saint-Germain pass under his eyes; graceful, spruce, fashionably dressed, with a certain uniformity of air, a sameness due to a fineness of contour, and a certain dignity of carriage and expression; though, at the same time, each one differed from the rest in the setting by which he had chosen to bring his personal characteristics into prominence. Each one made the most of his personal advantages. Young men ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... things; if it disappears, like the gold or azure thread of the tapestry, it is only to emerge in the pattern farther on; and the victory is not to attach ourselves to the particular touches of beauty and fineness which we see in the familiar scene and the well-loved circle, but to recognise beauty as a spirit, a quality which is for ever making itself felt, for ever beckoning and whispering to us, and which will not fail us even if for a time the urgent ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... needle with the material, be careful not to make it so full that there will be a difficulty in passing it through the stitches. The size of the needle must depend on the material to be employed, and the fineness of the work. Steel needles are employed for every kind of netting except the very coarsest. They are marked from 12 to 24, the latter being extremely fine. The fine meshes are usually also of steel; but, as this material is heavy, it is better to employ bone or wooden ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... teeth and six molars on each side of both jaws, making in all 32 teeth. The fleece consists of two coats, one to keep the animal warm, the other to carry off the water without wetting the skin. The first is of wool, the weight and fineness of which depend on the quality of the pasture and the care bestowed on the flock; the other of hair, that pierces the wool and overlaps it, and is in excess in exact proportion to the badness of the keep and inattention with ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... it was put in, mixed of gold and silver, which is a miracle; and to see no silver at all but turned into water, which they can bring again into itself out of the water. And here I was made thoroughly to understand the business of the fineness and coarseness of metals, and have put down my lessons with my other observations therein. At table among other discourse they told us of two cheats, the best I ever heard. One, of a labourer discovered to convey away the bits of silver cut out pence by swallowing them down into his belly, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... yen, 374-4/10; and the United States dollar, 371-1/4. By making the "trade-dollar" slightly heavier than any coin used in the Eastern world, it would give our silver a new market; and the United States Government was simply asked to certify to the fineness and weight by coining it, provided the owners of silver paid the expenses of coinage. Inadvertently the trade-dollar was included in the list of coins in the act of 1873 which were legal tender for payments of five dollars, but, when this ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... was in a curiously uplifted frame of mind which for some time he could not dissect. Part of it he knew to be relief from the sudden suspicion that had overwhelmed him, but he was half-way home before he told himself that Peter's essential fineness had revived his faith in the goodness and kindliness in human nature. In a life where one could know a Peter, he thought, there must be beauty and a kind of beauty that Inez could neither find ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... have in the literatures where it is not native. Novalis[275] or Rueckert,[276] for instance, have their eye fixed on nature, and have undoubtedly a feeling for natural magic; a rough-and-ready critic easily credits them and the Germans with the Celtic fineness of tact, the Celtic nearness to nature and her secret; but the question is whether the strokes in the German's picture of nature[277] have ever the indefinable delicacy, charm, and perfection of the Celt's touch in the pieces I just now quoted, or of Shakespeare's touch in ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... that one day, tempted by the fineness of the weather up the road that led from the suburb farther into the country, Fanny was stopped by a gentleman in a carriage, who accosted her, as she said, very kindly: and after several questions, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... slice gives a good notion of the manner in which the components of the chalk are arranged, and of their relative proportions. But, by rubbing up some chalk with a brush in water and then pouring off the milky fluid, so as to obtain sediments of different degrees of fineness, the granules and the minute rounded bodies may be pretty well separated from one another, and submitted to microscopic examination, either as opaque or as transparent objects. By combining the views obtained in these various methods, each of the rounded bodies ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of the electric lamp is permitted to act. The vapour is so chosen that one, at least, of its products of decomposition, as soon as it is formed, shall be precipitated to a kind of cloud. By graduating the quantity of the vapour, this precipitation may be rendered of any degree of fineness, forming particles distinguishable by the naked eye, or particles which are probably far beyond the reach of our highest microscopic powers. I have no reason to doubt that particles may be thus obtained whose diameters constitute but a very small fraction of the length ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... go back and lo! there—prone on the sand, his rough muzzle on Stair's knees, his big brown eyes under shaggy bristles of eyebrow, gazing up into his master's face, lay Whitefoot. Only, such was the fineness of his breeding and the delicacy of his sheep-dog instinct, that he rose instantly when he heard Patsy's returning footsteps, and took himself out of the way. He worshipped none the less, only at a greater distance. Patsy's was ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... home from the field by the men, and ground into meal by the women. The sound of the grinding is heard in the street and is usually accompanied by a song that sounds weird but musical. The meal is ground into different grades of fineness and when used for bread is mixed with water to form a thin batter which is spread by the hand upon a hot, flat stone. It is quickly baked and makes a thin wafer that is no thicker than paper. When done it is removed from the stone by the naked hand and is rolled or folded ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... tongue were loosened as they had never been before. His woman, too (as we say in those parts, Melody; wife is the more genteel expression, but I never heard Ham use it. My father, on the other hand, never said anything else; a difference in the fineness of ear, my dear, I have always supposed),—his woman, I say, or wife, had not "turned up her toes," but recovered, and as he was a faithful and affectionate man, his heart was enlarged by this also. However it was, he talked more in those weeks, I suppose, than in the rest ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... beyond a certain point, or continue too long. From the first shock of her bereavement Mrs. Hilland's mind has not been exactly in a normal condition. There are phases of her trouble difficult to account for and difficult to treat. The very fineness of her organization made the terrible shock more serious in its injury. I do not say this to discourage you—far from it—but in sincerity I must call your attention to the fact that every new phase of her grief has tended to some extreme manifestation, showing a disposition toward, ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... freshest thing imaginable; he was overtall and gawky, his cheeks were as delicately rosy as apple blossoms, and his smile was an epitome of ingenuous interest and frank wonder. It was as if some quality of especial fineness, lingering unspotted in Hunter Kinemon, had found complete expression in his son David. A great deal of this certainly was due to his mother, a thick solid woman, who retained more than a trace of ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... boat, which I need scarcely say was ours, came sweeping grandly on, for the fineness of the evening, the calmness of the lake, the splendour of the scene, and the prospect of a good supper, to be followed by a good night's rest lent fresh vigour to the arms as well as to the ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... this establishment is the Royal Carpet Manufactory; such as are here produced are considered superior to those of Persia, with regard to the evenness of the surface, the strength, durability, and fineness of the workmanship, the beauty of the designs, and the brilliance of the colours, which are such as can never be surpassed, but if they were ever allowed to be sold, the price would be so enormous that some would amount to 150,000 francs (6000l.) ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... consideration which had often held her in check; it was simply the violence there would be in going when Osmond wished her to remain. A gulf of difference had opened between them, but nevertheless it was his desire that she should stay, it was a horror to him that she should go. She knew the nervous fineness with which he could feel an objection. What he thought of her she knew, what he was capable of saying to her she had felt; yet they were married, for all that, and marriage meant that a woman should cleave to the man ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... seemed to make her an object of their merriment. In general, indeed almost universally, the limbs of these people were small; of most of them the arms, legs, and thighs were thin. This, no doubt, is owing to the poorness of their living, which is chiefly on fish; otherwise the fineness of the climate, co-operating with the exercise which they take, might have rendered them more muscular. Those who live on the sea-coast depend entirely on fish for their sustenance; while the few who dwell in the woods subsist on such animals as they ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... supply of them at a level all over the world, than it is the demand and supply of most other commodities. And this all the more as there are not different kinds of gold and silver, but only different qualities of their fineness.(726) It also contributes to the uniformity of their value in exchange, that they minister mainly only to wants of luxury. The most indispensable commodities are subject to the greatest variations in price (see 103), whereas, in the case of the precious metals, the diversity of uses to which ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... bleached or unbleached damask. The latter—called "half-bleach" in trade vernacular—is made in Scotland and comes in cheap and medium grades alone. Though it lacks the choiceness of design and the beauty and fineness of the Belfast bleached linens, it is good for everyday wear and quickly whitens when laid in the sun on grass or snow; while the fact that its cost is somewhat less than that of the corresponding quality in the bleached ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... bar, the talent is superior to what it is without; and I have been often delighted with the amazing fineness, if I may use the expression, with which the Chancellor discriminates the shades of difference in the various points on which he is called to deliver his opinion. I consider his mind as a curiosity of no ordinary kind. It deceives itself by its own acuteness. The edge is too sharp; and, ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... mean part of speculative knowledge. The opinion of the pure and intellectual nature of numbers in abstract has made them in esteem with those philosophers who seem to have affected an uncommon fineness and elevation of thought. It has set a price on the most trifling numerical speculations which in practice are of no use, but serve only for amusement; and has therefore so far infected the minds of some, that they have dreamed of mighty mysteries involved in numbers, and attempted the ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... cried "Clubs?" and cracked his neighbours' heads with the precision and fineness of touch which only manual craftsmanship can give. The housewives who flatly refused to cook the hot dinner knew how much or how little, cold meat there was in the house. The sailor who defied discipline by mutinying at the ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... what the engagement to pay a pound? He contended that the word meant more than an abstraction—that it meant a certain weight of precious metal; and the engagement of a maker of a promissory note was to pay on demand a definite amount of that metal and fineness. A real measure of value in this just sense had existed till the year 1797, when bank paper became issuable without being convertible into metal. For some years the subject attracted little attention, until the bullion committee of 1810 ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... for the most part, such as may be executed in the house. The manufacturing their cloth is wholly consigned to their care. Having already described the process, I shall only add, that they have this cloth of different degrees of fineness. The coarser sort, of which they make very large pieces, does not receive the impression of any pattern. Of the finer sort, they have some that is striped and chequered, and of other patterns differently coloured. But how these ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... denser modes that we reach the principles on which these further conceptions are founded. Looking at this, therefore, in the light of a mathematical proposition, there is absolutely no limit to the fineness of any form, or to its susceptibilities ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... not banished himself from society? Did he know a single person whose existence would approximate his in seclusion and contemplation? Did he know a man capable of appreciating the fineness of a phrase, the subtlety of a painting, the quintessence of an idea,—a man whose soul was delicate and exquisite enough to ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... ... with poses that outnumbered the silver eyes in the peacock's tail in multitude ... and yet there was to be found in them a sincerity, a fineness, and a genuine feeling for humanity that "regular" folks never achieve—perhaps because ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... chemical laboratories at Pittsburg; extended tests have been made as to the explosibility of various mixtures of gas and air; as to the explosibility of dust from various typical coals; as to the chemical composition and physical characteristics of this dust; the degree of fineness necessary to the most explosive conditions; and the methods of dampening the dust by water, by humidifying, by steam, or of deadening its explosibility by the addition of calcium chloride, stone dust, ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... journal and to magazines. Towards the end of the evening Mr. Snale read the births, deaths, and marriages in this journal. It would not have been thought right to read them from any other newspaper, but it was agreed, with a fineness of tact which was very remarkable, that it was quite right to read them in one which was "serious." During the whole time that the reading was going on conversation was not arrested, but was conducted in a kind ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... of the sheep, there was a pause, Ehrenthal being quite overcome by the thickness and fineness of their fleece. He nodded and winked in ecstasy. "What wool!" said he; "what it will be next spring! Do you know, baron, you are a most fortunate man? Have you good accounts of ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... go up, then!" And, preceded by the dog Balthasar, they ascended through the field. The sun was almost level in their faces now, and he could see, not only those silver threads, but little lines, just deep enough to stamp her beauty with a coin-like fineness—the special look of life unshared with others. "I'll take her in by the terrace," he thought: "I won't make a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... silk, as it is spun by the silk-worm; the Pinna on the coasts of Italy and Provence (where it is fished up by iron-hooks fixed on long poles) is called the silk-worm of the sea. The stockings and gloves manufactured from it, are of exquisite fineness, but too warm for common wear, and are thence esteemed useful in rhumatism and gout. Dict. raisonne art. Pinne-marine. The warmth of the Byssus, like that of silk, is probably owing to their being bad conductors ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... had that fineness of mind that can even set aside a contemplated hospitality. "It's your evening, dear old boy," he said. "We'll try to get into the mass meeting at the ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... Pliny) for the elegancy and fineness of the wood, is next to the very cedar it self. There are several kinds of it, especially the white, which is wonderfully beautiful; this is call'd the French-maple, and grows in that part of Italy, that is on the other side of Po beyond the Alpes: The other has a curl'd grain, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... subordinate himself in money-earning relations, so did he become ill-at-ease, lose all spontaneity, in company above his social or intellectual level. Such a man's danger was obvious; he might, in default of congenial associates, decline upon inferiors; all the more that a softness of heart, a fineness of humanity, ever disposed him to feel and show special kindness for the poor, the distressed, the unfortunate. Sherwood's acquaintances had little attraction for him; they were mostly people who lived in a luxurious way, went in for sports, ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... bespeaks it. The fineness of his features is in direct contrast to some of the other types. The unusual size of his brain denotes a correspondingly intricate organization of nerves, for the nerves are tiny elongations ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... fingering it carelessly; "it is in reality a sort of air-gun, with a wonderful compression, and a most ingenious silencer; quite as deadly, they say, as any firearm ever invented. It ejects a cylindrically-shaped bullet, tapered down almost to the fineness of a needle. Now," he added, with a faint smile and a rapid glance round the room, "if only one dared—" he turned in his chair, and I saw the thing steal out below his cuff, "one could free the ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... weather. Heat, and the dust of the straw, the violent labour had darkened his face from brown almost to blackness—a more than swarthiness, a blackness. The stray cloud was spreading out in filaments, each thread drawn to a fineness that ended presently in disappearance. It was a sign to him of continued sunshine and the prosperity of increased wages. The sun from whose fiery brilliance I escaped into the shadow was to him a welcome friend; his neck was bare to the fierceness of the sun. His heart was gladdened because the ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... the houses full of such as looked at them; nor was there any part of the city which was not covered over with their multitudes; nay, a very great consternation seized upon the hardiest of the Jews themselves, when they saw all the army in the same place, together with the fineness of their arms, and the good order of their men. And I cannot but think that the seditious would have changed their minds at that sight, unless the crimes they had committed against the people had been so horrid, that they despaired of forgiveness from the Romans; but as they believed death with ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... Mr. Randall fumed a little feebly, thereby losing some of the fineness of his military air. It was as if his nephew had disparaged his importance, ignored his stake in the family's reputation, and as good as told him it ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... Friends complain finely that I do not appreciate their fineness. I shall not tell them whether I do or not. As if they expected a vote of thanks for every fine thing which they uttered or did. Who knows but it was finely appreciated. It may be that your silence ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... Mariano Perez, a Spanish musician, and one of a troupe that was performing at the old Lion Theatre on Washington Street in Boston. He had many opportunities for hearing Perez play upon the guitar. The richness and beauty of melody and harmony, and the unsurpassed variety and fineness of expression, that were evolved from this beautiful instrument by this master-performer, so charmed Holland, that he decided to give his chief attention to the study of the guitar. Not that he then dreamed of ever becoming a teacher or professor of the instrument: he wished to ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... granted me, persevere in it; for my own leaf and branch studies express conditions of shade which even these most exquisite botanical plates ignore; and exemplify uses of the pen and pencil which cannot be learned from the inimitable fineness of line engraving. The frontispiece to this number, for instance, (a seeding head of the commonest field-thistle of our London suburbs,) copied with a steel pen on smooth grey paper, and the drawing softly touched with white on the nearer thorns, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... indefinite age. Then there was Josie herself. She seemed to be the center of the family: always busy at service, or at home, or berry-picking; a little nervous and inclined to scold, like her mother, yet faithful, too, like her father. She had about her a certain fineness, the shadow of an unconscious moral heroism that would willingly give all of life to make life broader, deeper, and fuller for ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... impede cultivation or obstruct growth. The proper formation of a seed bed is a prime prerequisite to successful cropping. After the land is manured and plowed it should be gone over in all directions with a disk and smoothing harrow, until it is of a dustlike fineness. ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... That's what she was after the colonel for. She did not want to marry him, she wanted to make him give her the start she was after. I got the best of her because somewhere there is a snivelling little whelp of a man who has taken all the good and the fineness out of her and who now stands ready to sell her out for a few dollars. I imagined there would be such a man when I saw her and I bluffed my way through to him. But I do not want to whip a woman, even ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... on their account in Rybeeck. In the districts where the forest-trees mostly consist of lindens, the inhabitants are principally engaged in the manufacture of matting, which, according to its greater or less degree of fineness, is employed either for sacking or sail cloth, or merely as packing mats. The linden-tree grows only on moist soils, rich in black humus, or vegetable mould; but will not grow at all in sandy soils, which renders it comparatively scarce in some parts of Russia, while in others it ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... otter had to be worth a good high price. Its coat, chestnut brown above and silver below, would have made one of those wonderful fur pieces so much in demand in the Russian and Chinese markets; the fineness and luster of its pelt guaranteed that it would go for at least 2,000 francs. I was full of wonderment at this unusual mammal, with its circular head adorned by short ears, its round eyes, its white whiskers like those on a cat, its webbed and clawed feet, its bushy tail. Hunted and trapped by fishermen, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... six or seven years old he began to study with the teacher of his sisters, which was convenient and agreeable, but meant the addition of another petticoat. The fineness of his feelings, his fear of having wounded any comrade, which were later to inspire him in so many touching actions, were the result of this feminine education. His walks with his father, who already gave him much attention, brought ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... hand, and they came along back to the Hsiao Hsiang Kuan; where lady Feng had indeed sent her two small catties of a new season tea, of superior quality. But Lin Tai-y sat down, in company with Hsiang Ling, and began to converse on the merits of this tapestry and the fineness of that embroidery; and after they had also had a game at chess, and read a few sentences out of a book, Hsiang Ling took her departure. But we need not speak of either of them, but return now to Pao-y. Having been found, and brought back home, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... not seem to see him at all. Presently he sat down in George's vacated seat beside another man, who said something to him with a coarse chuckle. The man growled in response, and continued to scowl furtively at George, who stood talking to Maria. He said something about the fineness of the day, and Maria responded rather gratefully. She was conscious of an inward tumult which alarmed her, and made her defiant both at the young man and herself, but she could not help responding to the sense of protection which she got from his presence. She had not been accustomed to anything ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... machine, comes in and recounts her arts, wild and tame. In winter she goes off in dog-cariole, traps cross-foxes off her own bat, shoots moose, and smokes the hide according to the ancient accepted mode. Coming home, she takes the smoked hide and works upon it silk embroidery of a fineness which would be the envy of any young ladies' seminary in Europe or America. She weaves fantastic belts of beads and sets the fashion for the whole North in chef d'oeuvres of the quills of the porcupine. She is a most observant "old wife." Watching, fascinated, ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... war a weddin' dress," she exclaimed as she held it excitedly up to the light and appraised the fineness of the ancient silk with eyes more ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... all of a piece with the rest for rather old-fashioned fineness. It was large, lofty, beautifully kept. Carroll went round for Miss ... whatever her name was ... lighting candles in sconces; and as the flames crept up they glimmered on a beautifully polished floor, which was bare except for an Eastern rug here and there. The elder lady had sat down in a ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... belongings, her top drawer, her various boxes, and her linen closet. You must keep all these things just as she did. You may think it a very foolish thing for her to have three piles of handkerchiefs, each of a different age, or degree of fineness, but if that is her way, she will be better satisfied if she knows you will not lay a fine handkerchief over a more common one. So keep them as carefully divided as if they were the two parts ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... less degree the qualifications of gold and silver, but it was the first metal to be coined into money in ancient Rome. The Roman as or pondo weighed a Roman pound of good copper, therefore possessed the two principal attributes of good money, a definite weight and a definite fineness. It was divided like our troy pound into twelve ounces of ...
— The Paper Moneys of Europe - Their Moral and Economic Significance • Francis W. Hirst
... knees. Responsibility,—that's what these other women say they are afraid of! But it seems to me there's no responsibility like that of decreeing that young lives simply shall not be. Why, what good is learning, or elegance of manner, or painfully acquired fineness of speech, and taste and point of view, if you are not going to distil it into the growing plants, the only real hope we have in the world! You know, Miss Paget," his smile was very sweet, in the half darkness, "there's a higher tribunal than the social tribunal of this world, after all; ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... to such localities, than those just described. They are the Devons—also an English breed, and claimed there as an aboriginal race in England; and if any variety of cattle, exhibiting the blood-like beauty, and fineness of limb, the deep, uniformity of color, and the gazelle-like brilliancy of their eye, can claim a remote ancestry, and a pure descent, the Devons can make such claim, beyond almost any other. They were introduced—save now and then an isolated animal at an earlier day—into the United States ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... judicature, and had its name from being built of the cedars of Lebanon, and among groves of trees. Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews, book 8, chapter 6, section 5, states that when the Queen of Sheba came to Judea, she was amazed at the wisdom of Solomon, and surprised at the fineness and largeness of his royal palace; 'but she was beyond measure astonished at the house which was called the forest of Lebanon.' Matthew Henry follows the opinion of Bunyan; 'I rather incline to think it was a house built in the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... forty years of age; the good woman, though called Mrs. Dickinson, was a spinster, and according to her own account was of a good family, for her great uncle was a clergyman. She was remarkable for the neatness of her dress, for the fineness of her muslin aprons, and the accurate arrangement of her plaited caps. In one respect Mr. Bryant thought that she carried her love of dress too far, for she would always wear a hoop when her day's work was done. Mr. Bryant's apprentice, who was at the period of which we ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... into the secrets of a heart proud in some sort of its anguish. Everything about her, moreover, was in keeping with these thoughts which she inspired. Like almost all women who have very long hair, she was very pale and perfectly white. The marvelous fineness of her skin (that almost unerring sign) indicated a quick sensibility which could be seen yet more unmistakably in her features; there was the same minute and wonderful delicacy of finish in them that the Chinese artist gives to his fantastic figures. Perhaps ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... shivering in the rain! Indeed, the facts of aboriginal life seem to indicate that dress is developed out of decorations. And when we remember that even among ourselves most think more about the fineness of the fabric than its warmth, and more about the cut than the convenience—when we see that the function is still in great measure subordinated to the appearance, we have further reason for inferring ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... interest story depends upon the reporter's style. When we try to write human interest stories we are no longer interested in facts, as much as in words. Our readers are not following us to be informed, but to be entertained. And we can please them only by our style and the fineness of our perception. Although we have been told to write news stories in the common every-day words of conversation, we are not so limited in the human interest story. The elegance of our style depends very largely upon the size of our vocabulary, ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... and I to the Tower, to see the famous engraver, to get him to grave a seal for the office. And did see some of the finest pieces of work in embossed work, that ever I did see in my life, for fineness and smallness of ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... small; leaf-stalks below medium size, stained with red at the base. It is perceptibly less acid than most varieties, and remarkable for fineness of texture and ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... Hawthornden, and there, by reading the Greek and Latin authors, enriched the world with the product of his solitary hours. After he had recovered a very dangerous fit of sickness, he wrote his Cypress Grove, a piece of excellent prose, both for the fineness of the stile, and the sublimity and piety of the sentiments: In which he represents the vanity and instability of human affairs; teaches a due contempt of the world; proposes consolations against the fear of death, and gives us a view of eternal happiness. Much about this time he wrote ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... scale, from the earliest historic times, and the choice breeds of that animal, originally imported from Greece or Asia Minor, took so kindly to the soil and climate of Italy that home-grown wool came even to be preferred to the foreign for fineness and softness of quality. Foreign wools were, however, always imported more or less, partly because the supply of native wools seems never to have been quite sufficient, partly because the natural colors of wools from different parts varied ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... a daughter as blooming as his most florid fancies, and with a soul as fervent and imperious as his own. As is usual in such cases, she was the apple of his eye, and was loved by him above all humanity. Among his courtiers was a young man of that fineness of blood and lowness of station common to the conventional heroes of romance who love royal maidens. This royal maiden was well satisfied with her lover, for he was handsome and brave to a degree unsurpassed in ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.) |
