"Seductive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reviewer of these two volumes of the continuation in the Neue Critische Nachrichten,[8] while recognizing the inevitability of failure in such a bold attempt, and acknowledging that the outward form of the work may by its similarity be at first glance seductive, notes two passages of sentiment "worthy even of a Yorick,"—the episode "Das Hndchen" and the anecdote of the sparrows which the traveler shot in the garden: both are additions on Bode's part, and have no connection ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... pride, and from which seemed to emanate the moral instincts of a Corsican. In that was the only link between herself and her native land. All the rest of her person, her simplicity, the easy grace of her Lombard beauty, was so seductive that it was difficult for those who looked at her to give her pain. She inspired such keen attraction that her old father caused her, as matter of precaution, to be accompanied to and from the studio. The only defect of this truly poetic creature came from the very power of a beauty so fully developed; ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... a young life broken By sin's seductive art; And touched with a Christlike pity, I took him to my heart. He lived with a noble purpose And struggled not in vain; But the life that sin had stricken Never ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... between the three victorious brothers and their partisans; popular feeling revived in favor of Louis; a large portion of the clergy shared it; several counts of Neustria and Burgundy appeared in arms in the name of the deposed emperor; and the seductive and able Judith came afresh upon the scene, and gained over to the cause of her husband and her son a multitude of friends. In 834, two assemblies, one meeting at St. Denis and the other at Thionville, annulled all the acts of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... are, or ought to be, very anxious to hear how I contrived to get out of the scrape into which you and the Honourable George managed to inveigle me, having previously availed yourselves of my innocence, and succeeded, through the seductive medium of oysters and porter, in corrupting my morals, then leaving me, poor victim! to bear the blame, and suffer the consequences, of our common misdemeanour. However, mine is no pitiful spirit to be quelled by misfortune, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... describe my feelings that night as I sat alone in my room, and heard the voice of St. James mingling with my step-mother's, which was modulated to its sweetest, most seductive tone. The desolateness of my future life spread out before me. A home without love! Oh, what dreariness! Oh, what iciness! Had my father lived, how different it would have been. I thought of the happy vacation, when he opened his warm ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... came to Paris, resolved to win in an administrative career a position to command respect, bury in oblivion the quartermaster of the 6th of the line, and secure for Madame Diard a noble title. His passion for that seductive creature enabled him to divine her most secret wishes. Juana expressed nothing, but he understood her. He was not loved as a lover dreams of being loved; he knew this, and he strove to make himself respected, loved, ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... some of them had indeed very pleasant faces, their white, regular teeth contrasting admirably with their shining black skins, and the three "triangular flaps of hair, streaming with oil." Coral ornaments in their noses, and large amber necklaces round their throats, gave them what Denham calls a "seductive appearance." Some of them carried fans made of grass or hair, with which to keep off the flies; others were provided with branches of trees; all, in fact, carried something in their hands, which they waved ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... seized with a cold shudder—like a wanderer who carelessly pursues his way gazing up at the moon and stars, and suddenly perceives an abyss yawning; at his feet. Recollections of his mother and of her warnings against the seductive wiles of the Egyptian women, and particularly of this very woman, flashed through his mind like lightning; she was looking at him—not royally by any means, but with anxious and languishing gaze, and he would gladly have kept his eyes fixed on the ground, and have left the cup ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of slave labor for white a temporary expedient. Again in 1661 a loud call for more slaves was heard.[225] In the October treaty of the same year, the Dutch yielded to the seductive offer of the English, "to deliver two or three thousand hogsheads of tobacco annually ... in return for negroes and merchandise." At the first the Negro slave was regarded as a cheap laborer,—a blessing to the Province; but after ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... become the feeling between them. He only realized that delight which comes from working with another for a cherished cause, the goal of one's life, which has such deeper significance when the partner in the struggle is a woman. They both experienced that most seductive of all influences, a secret knowledge and a pact of mutual silence ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... there may be truth in this," I returned, scarcely knowing how best to speak at such a time, marking the agitation of her breathing. "Naladi is a fair woman, softly spoken and seductive when it is her purpose to please. There are not many men who could resist her wiles. Yet possibly, Madame, were you to have converse with the Chevalier your plea might break ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... the compositions which he entitles polonaises, but for all that its physiognomy does not on the whole strike one as particularly Spanish, certainly not beyond the first section of the Bolero proper and the seductive strains of the Pililento, the second tempo of the introduction. And in saying this I am not misled by the points of resemblance in the rhythmical accompaniment of these dances. Chopin published the Bolero in 1834, four ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... personal ambitions, a war among the Great Powers brings halcyon days of flattery, bribery and seductive prospects in an imaginary future. In Greece all these and other attractions were dangled before the eyes of men of power and influence. The Sovereign, whose admiration for the Kaiser verges on idolatry, soon extended ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... there she unfolds herself in glittering mist. On the unbounded plain, you behold her in the form of an enchanted city—a paradise of leafy loveliness, or it may be simply as a fantastic Erl-King, a giddy dazzling vapour. Let her appear, however, where and how she will, she is ever seductive, mysterious, and beautiful, and attended with the awe of a strange ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... Every day he odiously betrays his country, and nevertheless, despite his treason, remains an idol for half Germany, which, dazzled by him, accepts unresisting the poison poured out by him in his periodic pamphlets, wrapped up and protected as he is by the seductive mantle of a great poetic reputation. Incited by him, the princes of Germany, who have forgotten their promises, will allow nothing free or good to be accomplished; or if anything of the kind is accomplished in spite of them, they will league themselves with the French to annihilate it. That ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... point in the road where three choices offer themselves to the wayfarer. By going straight on he may win through to the village of Moresby-in-the-Vale, a charming little place with a Norman church; by turning to the left he may visit the equally seductive hamlet of Little Weeting; by turning to the right off the main road and going down a leafy lane he may find himself at the door of Platt's farm. When Maud, reaching the cross-roads, suddenly swung down the one to the left, Lord Belpher was for the moment ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... very few books of Seneca, some things of the poets, and such few volumes of his own sect as were written in Latin and neatly, and was daily practised in speaking, he acquired a certain eloquence, which proved the more pleasing and seductive because under the guidance of a good wit, and with a kind of natural gracefulness. Is it not thus, as I recall it, O Lord my God, Thou judge of my conscience? before Thee is my heart, and my remembrance, Who didst at that time direct me by the hidden mystery of Thy providence, and didst set those ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... to say that all appearances, relative to myself, were false. No. I was uneasy; desirous to speak, desirous that he should speak, and could accomplish neither. I accused myself of having given hopes that were seductive, and wished to retract. In short, I have not been altogether so consistent as I ought to be; as my letters to you, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... this was to the happy-go-lucky service and jollity of the White Sulphur! Then the interior parks of the United States and the Grand Union, with corridors and cottages, close-clipped turf, banks of flowers, forest trees, fountains, and at night, when the band filled all the air with seductive strains, the electric and the colored lights, gleaming through the foliage and dancing on fountains and greensward, made a scene of enchantment. Each hotel was a village in itself, and the thousands of guests had no more in common than the frequenters of New York hotels and theatres. But what a paradise ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... then, Finn!" The gate was less than five feet high, and the seductive odour of this peculiar meat floated just beyond it in the still night air. Finn drew back a pace or two, and then, with a beautiful spring, cleared the gate easily. While giving Finn the piece of meat he had been holding, the man slipped a swivel on to the ring of the handsome green ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... poor elements of Spanish, without either past tense or future, amply sufficient for their purposes. But these were mere luminous chinks in the long grey passage of the streaming river, up which the throbbing engines beat. A certain liberal heathen deity, in the shape of a demi-john, held seductive court aft, and, it ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... magnetism—deep, from the chest, with vibrant throat tones suggesting a volume of sound which may in fact be only hinted by the loudness the man at the moment sees fit to employ. Such a voice is a responsive instrument on which emotion and mood play wonderfully seductive strains. ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... is a soft dusky brown, under which you can see the blood warming her dimpling cheeks. Her figure is perfection's self, ripe and round and full, while every movement shows some new grace and more seductive curve. Her rich brown hair reaches far below her slender waist, and when it is dressed with crimson pohutakawa blossoms, the orange flowers of the kowhaingutu kaka, or the soft downy white feathers that ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... and in speeches and pamphlets, the people were assured in the most seductive and extravagant language that railroads were imperative in developing the resources of the country; that they would be a mighty boon and an immeasurable stimulant to progress. These arguments had much weight, especially with a population stretched over ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... deer-horns, bear-skins, and fox-tails; for the captain's double-barreled rifle had seen service in Canada and Jamaica; he had killed salmon in Nova Scotia, and trout, by his own account, in all the streams of the three kingdoms. But in an evil hour a seductive stranger came from London; no less a person than R., who, among other multitudinous wanderings, had once been upon the western prairies, and naturally enough was anxious to visit them again. The captain's imagination was inflamed by the pictures of a hunter's paradise that his guest held forth; ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... indeed, the perpetual kissing, and twining, and panting of these amorous persons, is rather ludicrous than seductive; and their eternal sobbing and whining, raises no emotion in our bosoms, but those of disgust and contempt. Even to younger men, we believe, the book will not be very dangerous: nor is it upon their account that we feel the indignation and alarm which we have already endeavoured ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... with their vast over-educated and over-fed monsters of the deep. Though there may be respectable angling for accomplished artists thereabouts in late April and May, the true sport does not begin till the May-fly comes in, which he generally does in June. Then the Kennet is a lovely and seductive spectacle to the angler. Between the turns of sun and shower the most beautiful delicate insects, frail as gossamer and fair as a fairy, are born, and flit for their hour, and float down the water, soon to be swallowed ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... a seductive lay Let faith be given, Nor deem the light that leads astray Is light ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... he gets command of the situation, they said, and is granted the Peace, he will do just what we should now request him to promise to do. {322} So they obtained the Peace from you, by holding out these seductive hopes, without including the Phocians. But they had still to prevent the expedition to Thermopylae, for the purpose of which, despite the Peace, your fifty ships were still lying ready at anchor, in order that, if Philip marched, you might prevent him. {323} How then could it be done? what ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... species," a doctrine against which they themselves protested strongly, saying that it belongs to a class of speculations which are sure to be revived from time to time, and are always "peculiarly seductive to young and sanguine ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... a Mormon. The idea made him laugh. But upon reflection it was not funny; it sobered him. What a situation! He felt instinctively that he ought to fly from this hidden valley. But he could not have done it, even had he not been in the trader's employ. The thing was provokingly seductive. It was like an Arabian Nights' tale. What could these strange, fatally bound women do? Would any one of them become involved in sweet toils such as were possible to him? He was no fool. Already eyes had flashed ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... seductive and bewitching powers of women, on the difficulty of keeping a secret which they wish to know, and to gain which they employ the soft artillery of tears and prayers, and blandishments and menaces, are familiar to all men, but they had little weight with me, because they were unsupported by my ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... the money market, and stupid people who cling to the status quo merely because they are used to it, is obtained by heredity, by simple purchase, by keeping newspapers and pretending that they are organs of public opinion, by the wiles of seductive women, and by prostituting ambitious talent to the service of the profiteers, who call the tune because, having secured all the spare plunder, they alone can afford to pay the piper. Neither the rulers nor the ruled understand ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... the Alderman seemed staggered. If la belle Barberie had not yielded to the fascinations of that wayward, but seductive, eye and smile, to that singular beauty of face, and to the secret and often irresistible charm that encircles eminent personal attractions, when aided by mystery, to what had she yielded, and whither had ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... although he made us feel that he liked to have us about, we were always held at a distance by a certain diffidence of his. There were rare occasions—when he was in the heat of work or of ideas—when he forgot to be shy, but they were so exceptional that no flattery was quite so seductive as being taken for a moment into Hartwell's confidence. Even in the matter of opinions—the commonest of currency in our circle—he was niggardly and prone to qualify. No man ever guarded his mystery more effectually. There was a singular, intense spell, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... of death, where the least falsehood bears like an intolerable weight upon the soul, I protest that we have richly deserved death, not on account of any heresy or sin of which ourselves or our order have been guilty, but because we have yielded, to save our lives, to the seductive words of the Pope and of the King; and so by our confessions brought shame and ruin on our ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... by name, a great snare of the Devil, and many were entangled by him through the smooth lure of his language. Because he had read some of Cicero's orations and a few of Seneca's books, some of the poets, and such volumes of his own sect as were written in good Latin, he acquired a certain seductive eloquence. But it soon became clear that he was ignorant in those arts in which I thought he excelled, and I began to despair of his solving the difficulties which perplexed me. He was sensible of his ignorance in these things, and confessed it, and thus my zeal for the writings of the Manichaeans ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... isles, and low-lying, endless, unknown Archipelagoes, and impenetrable Japans. Thus this mysterious, divine Pacific zones the world's whole bulk about; makes all coasts one bay to it; seems the tide-beating heart of earth. Lifted by those eternal swells, you needs must own the seductive god, bowing your head to Pan. But few thoughts of Pan stirred Ahab's brain, as standing like an iron statue at his accustomed place beside the mizen .. rigging, with one nostril he unthinkingly snuffed the sugary musk from the Bashee isles (in whose sweet woods mild lovers ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... into their customary expressions of torpor, vacuity and expectation. Very little expectation! They knew well enough, by this time, the kind of thing to expect from him, the turn of phrase, the rise and fall of the voice, the pause dramatic, the whisper expostulatory, the thrust imperative, the smile seductive. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... sunny nature was Hamish Channing's. This sobering blow which had fallen on it had probably not come before it was needed. Had his bark been sailing for ever in smooth waters, he might have wasted his life, indolently basking on the calm, seductive waves. But the storm rose, the waves ran high, threatening to engulf him, and Hamish knew that his best energies must be put forth to surmount them. Never, never talk of troubles as great, unmitigated evils: to the God-fearing, ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... been ever so laggard and indifferent a lover the touch of that pretty hand, and the glance from the dark eye that shot fire down into his very heart, would have decided him to obey this seductive invitation. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... that bathe your beard!"—there may have been something peculiarly effective in the song of the chestnut-man who shouted "Fat chestnuts," and added, after a lapse in which you got almost beyond hearing, "and well cooked!"—I do not deny that there was a seductive sincerity in the proclamation of one whose peaches could not be called beautiful to look upon, and were consequently advertised as "Ugly, but good!"—I say nothing to detract from the merits of harmonious chair- menders;—to my ears the ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... are strangers to his soul. All the childhood recollections of this same Da Vinci are full of charm. There is a veritable master spirit shown in the chapters in which the author portrays for us the enigmatic and seductive Mona Lisa. Finally, he has given us a relief of rare energy in the terrible struggle between Peter and Alexis, between the man of iron whom nothing can affect and his son, kind and timid, who, while having a mortal fear of his father, still loves him. ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... Toboso. In short, Senora Dona Rodriguez, if you will leave out and put aside all love messages, you may go and light your candle and come back, and we will discuss all the commands you have for me and whatever you wish, saving only, as I said, all seductive communications." ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... her again; never meet the seductive pleading of her eyes any more; never hear her laughing voice calling to him, ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... which act upon doctors are very different, though not less powerful. They become epicures in spite of themselves, and must be made of bronze to resist the seductive power of circumstances. The "dear doctor" is all the more kindly welcomed that health is the most precious of boons; and thus they are always waited for with impatience and received with eagerness. Some are kind to them from hope, others from gratitude. They are fed like pet pigeons. They let things ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... have arrived at the conclusion that Madame la Baronne was a somewhat heartless and not particularly brainy little fribble, he was never able to forget or deny a certain charm of manner which he had not elsewhere encountered, and which had in it a seductive warmth and gentleness. Before he fairly knew it, he was talking with something of the ease and intimacy of an old friend. He had been so sore-hearted of late and so removed from all feminine companionship, that this unexpected, unlooked-for intercourse with ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... in the heart. One who desires to do wrong offends God as effectively as another who does the wrong in deed. Not only that, but he who makes evil the food of his mind and ponders complacently on the seductive beauty of vice is no less guilty than he who goes beyond theory into practice. This is something we frequently forget, or would fain forget, the greed of passion blinding us more or less voluntarily to the real ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... world such as this, with the agents of evil ever active and threatening, with error strewn as thorns about our path at every step, and with polished and seductive voices whispering doubt and suggesting rebellion and disobedience to men, already too prone to disloyalty, and arguing as cunningly as Satan, of old, argued with Eve; in such a world, who, we may well ask, does not see the pressing need as well as the inestimable ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... plains is there not room For man and bison, that he seals its doom? What pleasure lies and what seductive charm In slaying with no purpose but to harm? Alas, that man, unable to create, Should thirst forever to exterminate, And in destruction find his fiercest joy. The gods alone create, ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... successful snap at Gav, and Corp had gloomy fears that he would lose his head in presence of the Teuch and Tasty, from which humiliation indeed he was only saved by the happy idea of requesting Tommy to shout "Deuteronomy!" in a warning voice, every time they drew nigh Californy's seductive stand. ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... her attachment to her friends. Epicharis, the soul of the conspiracy of Piso against the execrable Nero, was a courtesan, and the severe Tacitus, who cannot be taxed with a partiality for gallantry, has borne witness to the constancy with which she resisted the most seductive promises and endured the most terrible tortures, without revealing any of the details of the conspiracy or any of ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... the honor of an officer; there is the half-pistole;" and he showed him the seductive coin, but did not give ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... guarantee of power and peace. Their warm and pious affections will cling to it as to their only hope of prosperity and happiness, in defiance of pernicious abstractions, by whomsoever inculcated, or howsoever seductive or ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... in the seductive and seemingly beautiful form in which it parades through the world. Because of this deceptive appearance the gods did not at first avoid him, but treated him as one of themselves in all good-fellowship, taking him with them wherever ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... life and not a daily staple. That was something Thor would never understand, that a man's life needed a stolen bliss to give it piquancy. There was a kind of bliss which when it ceased to be hidden ceased to be exquisite. Mysteries were seductive because they were mysteries, not because they were proclaimed and expounded in the market-place. Rosie in her working-dress among the fern-trees and the great white Easter lilies was Rosie as a mystery, as a bliss. It was the pity of pities that she couldn't be ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... wild untameable beauty of the coast scenery would be almost as absurd as to endeavour to portray the seductive sensuality and exotic perfection of the interior landscapes—but a brief catalogue of some of the outstanding horticultural marvels will do no harm to anyone and perhaps convey to the lay mind a slight conception of the atmosphere in which Ah! Ah! was born and bred. For instance, the flowering ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... many sorts are ingredients in these homes. Many things that are imperative to the aristocratic home are regarded as needless, and in their place appear other things that the aristocrat would despise, books, instruction, travel in incorrect parts of the world, games, that most seductive development of modern life, played to the pitch of distinction. Into both these homes comes literature, comes the Press, comes the talk of alien minds, comes the observation of things without, sometimes reinforcing the tradition, sometimes ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... here of their special merits or demerits. Esmond was brought out as a whole. The others appeared in numbers. "He lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." It is a mode of pronunciation in literature by no means very articulate, but easy of production and lucrative. But though easy it is seductive, and leads to idleness. An author by means of it can raise money and reputation on his book before he has written it, and when the pang of parturition is over in regard to one part, he feels himself entitled to a period of ease because the amount required ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... may fit men, far better than the old morality, for the purposes of such a state as theirs, and may go much further in supporting their power and destroying their enemies. They have therefore chosen a selfish, flattering, seductive, ostentatious vice, in the place of plain duty. True humility, the basis of the Christian system, is the low, but deep and firm, foundation of all real virtue. But this, as very painful in the practice, and little imposing in the appearance, they ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... enthusiasm, we must further remember that the Russian educated classes, in spite of the severe northern climate which is supposed to make the blood circulate slowly, are extremely impulsive. They are fettered by no venerable historical prejudices, and are wonderfully sensitive to the seductive influence of grandiose projects, especially when these excite the patriotic feelings. Then there was the simple force of reaction—the rebound which naturally followed the terrific compression of the preceding ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... ennobled them by mingling serious thoughts with frivolous recreations, and as yet called for no suffering, or no sacrifice, while it opened to the eyes of men a dazzling and delightful perspective. The eighteenth century was, beyond all question, the most tempting and seductive of ages, for it promised to satisfy at once the strength and weakness of human nature; elevating and enervating the mind at the same time; flattering alternately the noblest sentiments and the most grovelling propensities; intoxicating with exalted hopes, and nursing with effeminate ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... from them a tolerably just idea of English fashionable society, provided he does not forget to deduct qualities which the national self-love has erroneously claimed —namely, grace for its roues, seductive manners and witty ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... discontented with his work, ready to rub out and begin again. He follows a bee, and never quite touches that which drew him on. Plainly, the mere ability to do is a dry straw, but through it our seeker tastes an intoxicating, seductive liquor, from which he cannot take ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... would set forward as prince a man of a good, medium understanding, lively rather than deep; a man of courtly manner, possessed of the double art to ingratiate and to command; receptive, accommodating, seductive. I have been observing you since your first entrance. Well, sir, were I a subject of Grunewald I should pray heaven to set upon the seat of government just ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... secrets of the past; and so, as Felix said a little while ago, we can call up and renew the life of legend and tradition. This is the Astral Light of the mystics. Its deeper and more living aspect seems to inflame the principle of desire in us. All the sweet, seductive, bewitching temptations of sense are inspired by it. After death the soul passing into this living light goes on thinking, thinking, goes on aspiring, aspiring, creating unconsciously around itself ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... legislated also concerning marriage, bigamy, adultery, rape, abortion, seductive arts and obscenity. The theatre, the circus and gambling were unsparingly denounced, and soothsayers and jugglers, pagan festivals and customs, and pagan oaths were ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... is to allow children yet in their teens to wander so far from home. It more especially illustrates the folly of giving them long holidays in a foreign land, full of seductive dissipation. Port for men, claret for boys, cried Dr. Johnson. Even so, men only should drink the strong drink of travel; boys should still be kept on milk and water at home. Middies! you may despise your mother's leading-strings, but they are the man-ropes my lads, by which many ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... pretty things, Russian Bear! Seductive and promising things; That rat-a-tat-too, Which suggests a Review— Makes his legs whirl as swiftly as wings. How he springs And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... gets Sally out to service. She has a keen nose for drains and a passion for clean hands and faces. What worries her most is the fatalism and improvidence of the poor. She is full of exhortations to "lay by" for the rainy day, and seductive in her praises of the Penny Bank. The whole life of the family falls within her supervision. She knows the wages of the husband and the occasional jobs of the wife. She inquires what there is for dinner and gives wise counsels ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... one look at his face, she slipped in ever so quietly, like a very good child. . . . Marvellous the instinct and finesse of the young when they are women! . . . Not a vestige in her of yesterday's seductive power; not a sign that there had been a yesterday at all—just confiding, like a daughter. Sitting there, telling him about Ireland, showing him the little batch of drawings she had done while she was away. Had she brought them because she ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... not unnaturally falls easily into the habit of dropping, of an evening, into the snug, well-lit bar-parlour of the "Goat and Compasses" or the "Mariner's Friend," or some such house of entertainment, with its glowing fire and warm, seductive, tobacco-and grog-scented atmosphere, there to wile away the time swopping yarns with old friends. Sometimes, if opportunity offer, he is not averse from a mild game of cards for moderate points; and usually ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... exquisitely delicate. In contrast, Ingigerd's face, with which Frederick fleetingly compared hers, seemed unrefined, even coarse. Here was the aristocracy of a too highly bred race, somewhat faded, to be sure, but at that moment all the more seductive. ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... geisha may be inane in her patter and have little more than conventional grace and charm, I have been waited on by girls who added real mental celerity, wit and a power of skilful mimicry to that elusive and seductive quality that accounts for the impregnable position of their class. At one dinner impersonations in both the comic and the tragic vein were given by a girl of unmistakable genius. Frequently a plain, elderly geisha will display unsuspected mimetic ability. Alas, behind the ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... she resumed without effort her seductive smiles, her voice became again soft and winning, but Philip could not so easily put away the pupil as she the pedagogue; and this impression convicted with the feelings her stories had aroused in him. He looked at her more narrowly. He liked her much better ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... a great peace, which was not wholly to be accounted for by the fact that he had inveigled his feet into shoes a size too small for them. I misgave more than ever, and having once launched Reginald on to the McKillops' lawn, I established him near a seductive dish of marrons glaces, and as far from the Archdeacon's wife as possible; as I drifted away to a diplomatic distance I heard with painful distinctness the eldest Mawkby girl asking him if ...
— Reginald • Saki
... Highness is indulging in a dangerous flirtation with Baron Bergen," she advised the King. "They must be separated at once lest that exemplary young man fall victim to her seductive wiles. I beseech Your Majesty to order the Crown Princess to Pillnitz and put a stop ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... condition, not only foreign to the realities of things, but superfluous to man himself. Never had Captain Forest appeared so sane and her father so superficial as the hour in which she grasped that truth. It is not what the world makes of you, but what you make of yourself that counts, the beauteous, seductive night kept whispering to her. Why, then, if this be true, should the world about her appear so remote? It was not the actual world—the world as it really is that she would be called upon to give up, but merely the world ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... Christopher could not forego the seductive intention of calling upon the poetess and romancer, at her now established town residence in Exonbury Crescent. One wintry afternoon he reached the door—now for the third time—and gave a knock which had in it every tender refinement that could be thrown into the somewhat antagonistic vehicle ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... of death had been added violence. Thus fortified he returned, to take his seat before the vision in the alcove; steadily, with the harsh official manner of his caste, to meet the evil, strangely seductive, malice of its look and suggestion. ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... 'Ah!' with meaning, and Henrietta tried to sit straighter on the seductive settee. She could not allow Mrs. Batty to utter insinuating ejaculations and, raising her voice, ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... were also other devices, other soft, seductive under strappings. I know them all to their last most intimate detail. I feel that now I could join a woman's sewing circle and talk with as much authority and wisdom as the most veteraned corset wearer present. My views would be radical perhaps but at least they ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... thought. A label on her program materialized to claim her presently. Stubby looked after her and grinned. MacRae looked thoughtful. The girl was pretty, almost beautiful. She looked like Dolores Ferrara, dark, creamy-skinned, seductive. And MacRae was comparing the two to ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... law—call it what you like— of that which says we must not always do a thing because it is pleasant. There are two great ethical parties in the world, and, in the main, but two. One of them asserts the claims of the senses. Its doctrine is seductive because it is so right. It is necessary that we should in a measure believe it, in order that life may be sweet. But nature has heavily weighted the scale in its favour; its acceptance requires no effort. It is easily perverted and becomes a snare. In our day nearly all genius ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... German confidently thinks That absinthe is the prince of drinks, And therefore must attack the land That keeps the most seductive brand. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... right principle. But now, think of it. Macassar Oil will defend itself; it is specious; the name is seductive. It is offered as a foreign importation; and we have the ill-luck to belong to our own country. Come, Popinot, have you the courage to kill Macassar? Then begin the fight in foreign lands. It seems that Macassar ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... were not looking at each other with loving eyes when he drew near. Elizabeth turned to him, her face aglow: "Let us walk a bit before Mr. Eschenbach sings." Her manner was almost seductive. Mrs. Minne sneered slightly and waved her fan condescendingly at the two as they moved slowly up the room. "There go the biggest pair of fools in all Christendom," she remarked to Biterolf; "why, she will believe everything he tells her. She wouldn't listen ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... amount of spare time, and that at uncertain intervals, to devote to this seductive pursuit, I am always a great stickler for economy of time in all the processes, as well as for economy of material, the former with me having, perhaps, a shade more ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... may give a very good guess at it without any assistance from us. The beautiful girl was young, and credulous, and innocent, as might naturally be inferred from the confusion of her manner, and the tremulous tones of her voice, which, indeed, were seductive and full of natural melody. Her heart palpitated until its beatings might be heard, and she trembled with that kind of terror which is composed of apprehension and pleasure. That a gentleman—one of the quality—could condescend to feel any interest in a ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... barbarous in the treatment of their remaining women and children; and such people can reasonably calculate on help from sympathizers, adventurers, etc., of other countries, especially South American, and people of kindred races and instincts. The cry of freedom and liberty is always seductive ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... this outcry, there glided in insinuatingly a soft-spoken crowd of tempting, seductive possibilities. Marise was so sensitive, so impressionable, so easily moved, so defenseless when her emotions were aroused. Hadn't he the right, the duty, he who knew her better than anyone else, to protect her against herself? ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... much more convincing impression of the normal, settled and pleasant characters who are incidental to the plot. Make for yourself the acquaintance of the charming Wilfred Vail and the most amusing and seductive Cockney artiste, Betty Barnfield, and you will admit, however pessimistic your views, that there may be something ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... back to the dancers. It was a pretty scene. To the rhythm of a particularly seductive waltz, the guests were gliding about the floor. I noted the gay colors of the ladies' gowns, the flowers, the ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... himself, James felt the influence of her deference, of the faint seductive perfume exhaling from her. No self-respecting Forsyte surrendered at a blow; so he merely said: He didn't know—he expected she was spending a pretty penny ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... distinguished by God himself, when Adam was created. Again, the daughters of men were fair. The word fair is not a correct rendering of the original, except as it covers simply the idea, captivating, enticing, seductive. ...
— The Negro: what is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed. • Buckner H. 'Ariel' Payne
... long after the arrival of the latter in the Metropolis he had given up all idea of pursuing the law, to which his mother's legal connections had perhaps first attracted him, and had determined to adopt the more seductive occupation of living by his wits. At this date he was in the prime of youth. From the portrait by Hogarth representing him at a time when he was broken in health and had lost his teeth, it is difficult to reconstruct ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... should discard the more distasteful fruits to be painfully harvested by following her mother's tuition, and accept the easily gathered luscious golden fruit offered her by her father. Like all children and many adults, the glitter and the tinsel of the present enjoyment were too powerful and seductive to be resisted, or to be postponed for a ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... the female character in Antigone is characterized by great austerity, and it is sufficient of itself to put an end to all the seductive representations of Grecian softness, which of late have been so universally current. Her indignation at Ismene's refusal to take part in her daring resolution; the manner in which she afterwards repulses Ismene, when repenting of her former weakness, she begs ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... religion, passionately courageous, passionately loyal and affectionate—they are without the manliness which would give strength and solidity to the sentimental part of their dispositions; while the surface and show is so seductive and winning that only experience of its instability can resist its charm."* Such summary judgments are seldom accurate. Every one must be acquainted with individual Irishmen who do not correspond with Froude's general ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... fell on Christmas or on New Year's, or which celebrated some important family gathering, the pungent odor of eggnog would have greeted you even before you could have slipped off your gum-shoes in the hall, or hung your coat on the mahogany rack. This seductive concoction—the most potent of all Malachi's beverages—was always served from a green and gold Chinese bowl, and drunk not from the customary low tumblers, but from special Spode cups, and was, I must confess, productive of a head—for I myself was ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... this mysterious struggle with these mysterious persons. His secret passion for that woman grew by reason of all these obstacles. Madame Jules was ever there, erect, in the midst of his thoughts, in the centre of his heart, more seductive by her presumable vices than by the positive virtues for which he had ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... to any writer, and of dalliance with a Delilah so seductive it is futile to declare that I am innocent. My principles positively are known to myself; which is a measure of self-knowledge, in these any-thing-arian days, of that cabinet coin-climax the "8th degree of rarity;" and that ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... colleagues a deep and serious preoccupation with manly ideals of boy-life; and in these stories I tried my best to touch into life the poetical and beautiful side of virtue, to show life as a pilgrimage to a far-off but glorious goal, with seductive bypaths turning off the narrow way, and evil shapes, both terrifying and alluring, which loitered in shady corners, or even sometimes straddled ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... descriptions of wine-houses where dancing was going forward, perhaps amongst fishwomen and scavengers, I noticed a large lantern hanging out over the door, upon which was inscribed, "Bal seduisant, le Paradis des Dames," which may be translated, "Seductive Ball, the Paradise of Ladies." The traveller may remark on the road from Boulogne to Paris and within a few leagues of the latter, in a small village at a house little better than a hut, where the insignia of a barber is displayed, ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... the shelter of prejudice, ignorance, and fear. It would seem that in Europe, where man so easily submits to the despotic sway of women, they are nevertheless curtailed of some of the greatest qualities of the human species, and considered as seductive but imperfect beings; and (what may well provoke astonishment) women ultimately look upon themselves in the same light, and almost consider it as a privilege that they are entitled to show themselves futile, feeble, and timid. The women of ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... hour, of course, was the wanderer Zotique. He stood in the main room of the house, the kitchen, near the long improvised table, with its burden of seductive viands, and shook hands with the guests without even the slightest tinge of the superiority which it was thought he ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... when chivalry still charmed the world by the remains of its seductive splendours, towards the close of the fifteenth century, that I find an instance of this kind occurring in the Pas de Sandricourt, which was held in the neighbourhood of the sieur of that name. It is a memorable affair, not only for us curious inquirers after manners and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... au temps des Croisades, by M. Vaublanc, which has lately made its appearance at Paris, in four handsome octavo volumes. It is the fruit of long and conscientious researches, and is written in a style of seductive elegance. The author is no dry chronicler, or plodding statician, but an artist, fully alive to the picturesqueness of his topic. He carries his reader with him into the time and the scenes he describes, and makes ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... top of his nineteen years' experience, as if he were marked at birth to be the perpetrator of some signal action, to set back fallen Mercy, to overthrow the usurping devil that sat, horned and hoofed, on her throne. Seductive Jacobin figments, which he had often refuted at the Speculative, swam up in his mind and startled him as with voices: and he seemed to himself to walk accompanied by an almost tangible presence of new ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cabinets, and to detach venal powers from the coalition, and to foment revolutionary symptoms in Belgium. Dumouriez alone knew the channels by which this money was to flow. His exhausted personal fortune, his costly tastes, his attachment to a seductive woman, Madame de Beauvert, sister to Rivarol; his intimacy with men of unprincipled character and irregular habits,—reports of extortion charged on his ministry, and falling, if not on him on those he trusted, tarnished his character in the eyes of Madame Roland and her husband. ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Seductive Waltz!—though on thy native shore Even Werter's self proclaim'd thee half a whore: Werter—to decent vice though much inclined, Yet warm, not wanton; dazzled, but not blind— Though gentle Genlis, in her strife with Stael, ...
— English Satires • Various
... complaint, and feared no one except his brother Napoleon, who reprimanded, lectured, and scolded him as if he had been his own son. There was a question at the time of making him a sailor, less with the object of giving him a career, than of removing him from the seductive temptations which the high position of his brother caused to spring up incessantly around his path, and which he had little strength to resist. It may be imagined what it cost him to renounce pleasures ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... but he claimed that it could only educate the people up to a little higher stage of intelligence and taste. He was intensely egotistic, and totally indifferent to all religious belief. His false idolatry of art and his enthusiasm arrayed for heathendom, in all the beautiful charms of the most seductive poetry, had a tendency fatal to the cause of Christianity and to all public and private virtue.[36] He expressed himself sometimes as very favorable toward the Roman Catholic worship, and the adherents of that faith quote his words of ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... at this point old Fanny's imagination ceased to function, and something else displayed a certain amount of energy, her knowledge of the world. What would Mr. Arabian be like as a husband? He was charming, seductive even, caressingly sympathetic—yes, caressingly! But—as a husband? And old Fanny felt mysteriously that something in her recoiled from the idea of Arabian as the husband of Beryl, whereas she could think of Mr. Craven in that situation quite calmly. It was all very ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... Along whose necks, like trails of grapes, Stream down the tresses of their hair: Proudly they walk, with eyes that dart The shafts and arrows of despair, And all the champions of the world Are slain by their seductive air. ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... respecting Luther's tenets the entire Christian world had for two years been anxiously expecting, pronounced its solemn decision. It condemned the writings of the German monk to the flames, on the ground that they were seductive, insulting to the hierarchy, contrary to Scripture, and schismatic. It likened his latest production, De Captivitate Babylonica, to Alcoran. It branded as preposterous the notion that God had reserved the discovery of what is needful to the salvation of ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... leaning back against the dark green upholstery and showing her flawless teeth; her long, narrow eyes with their seductive gleam flashed into his. A ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this session of the General Assembly that Mr. Toombs displayed the skill and sagacity of a statesman in fearlessly exposing a seductive scheme for popular relief. He was called upon to confront public clamor and to fight in the face of fearful odds, ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... the shallowness of his thought, by striking images and flowery metaphors, and by all the phraseology of rhetoric in which the versatile French nature is so superior to our sober German one. It is all the more important that we should not let ourselves be dazzled by these seductive tricks, and particularly by adduced facts which bear upon the most important and fundamental questions of human science, but that we should extract the hard kernel from the savoury and fragrant fruit. In the preface to my "Evolution of Man," and in the notes 22 and 23 ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... gratifies any whim, well knowing that it is her male protector who will have to pay, not she. She will, on occasions, use her children for such base ends. She knows the game is in her hand. Even if the man resists her for a time, she understands how easily she can break down his objections by a seductive display of silk stockings! The character of woman as the inherent coquette is very deeply rooted. It is only a little more baneful to the freedom of the sexes than that opposite pernicious side of woman as ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... he heard the girl murmur something that sounded like, "Why shouldn't I?" Her face was turned up to him in a way that had but one significance for maiden or medium. She was, he reminded me, Ena's sister, about to become his own; there was a clinging, seductive scent about her, too, and a subtle aroma of Benedictine; and, well, he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... margins; and, almost equally of course, the binder, durus arator, will cut them down with his abominable plough. One is almost tempted to say that margins should always be left untouched, for if once the binder begins to clip he is unable to resist the seductive joy, and cuts the paper to the quick, even into the printed matter. Mr. Blades tells a very sad story of a nobleman who handed over some Caxtons to a provincial binder, and received them back MINUS 500 pounds worth of margin. Margins make a book ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... ambition. You have said it, and it is true, you love me, notwithstanding I am a prince. I confess to you, there are many lovely women of the court who are your rivals, and who would try to separate us in order to attract me to themselves. They are beautiful and seductive, and I am young and passionate; and if these lovely women have no respect for my dignity as a married man, how then should I have it, who married for duty, not for love? But there is one whom I respect ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... interested in her and in her opinion of them, and yet kept herself inaccessible by a pride which was the more fascinating because it always seemed about to give way. Her instinct fastened upon the weak point in those she approached. This made her seductive to men, because she flattered their weak points; and hateful to women, because she flouted and ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... and the Mayor were talking at the foot of the stairs, Mr. Frere was listening sardonically. As Sarah Brown went past them into the Shop, she smelt the unflower-like scent that always denoted the presence of Miss Ford. Sarah Brown herself was accompanied by nothing more seductive than a faint smell of gasoline, showing that her clothes had lately been home-cleaned. In the darkness of the Shop she saw Miss Ford stooping, trying to shut the big difficult drawer in which the ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... come over here and settled in Kentucky, and commenced makin' whiskey, payin' a tax of $2.00 per gallon, and sellin' the seductive flooid for $1.50 per gallon, gettin' rich at that, which may surprise you, altho' it doesen't our Eternal Revenoo Offisers, who, as Mr. ANTONY remarked of H. BEECHER STOW when she stabbed Lord Byron, "are ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... prettily at him that it was as seductive as a smile. It was also a way of gaining time while she tried to remember what it was he was ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... believe that the universal good is of more consequence than our individual gain. Such faith is hard to grasp and difficult to maintain; and consequently the temptation of self-will is exceedingly seductive, and is never far from any ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... leaves the sufferer exposed to an immediate and more dangerous reaction of the frost. This effect Bertram experienced: a pleasant sensation began to steal over him; one limb began to stiffen after another; and his vital powers had no longer energy enough to resist the seductive approaches of sleep. At this moment an accident saved him. The whole troop pulled up abruptly; and at the same instant a piercing cry for help, and a violent trampling of horses' hoofs, roused Bertram from ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... take kindly to the English militia. It was too democratic, too free. James I, in the very first year of his reign, conferred upon its members the seductive but fatal gift of exemption from the burden of providing their own weapons.[18] As he himself took care not to provide them too profusely, the force speedily lost both in efficiency and independence. ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... wife hated young Barnet, and wished to get rid of her step-daughter. The writing-master, therefore, had a fair field. He flattered the poor young girl by his attentions and praised her beauty. Her moral training had not fitted her to withstand this seductive influence; no mother's love, with its quick, instinctive sense of danger threatening its object, interposed between her and the tempter. Her old friend and playmate—he who could alone have saved her—had been rudely repulsed from the house by ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... dead within me. A misbegotten Caesar is Don Juan! Yes, 'tis another way of conquering; Thus I shall know that fever of the heart Which Byron tells us kills whom it devours; And 'tis a way of being still my father. Napoleon or Don Juan!—They're decision, The magic will, and the seductive grace. When to retake a great unfaithful land, Calm and alone, sure of himself and her, The adventurer landed in the Gulf of Juan, He felt Don Juan's thrill; and when Don Juan Pricked a new conquest in his list of loves, Did he not feel the pride of Bonaparte? And, after all, ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... charming than then. With her, death seemed but a last coquetry. The pallor of her cheeks, the less brilliant carnation of her lips, her long eyelashes lowered and relieving their dark fringe against that white skin, lent her an unspeakably seductive aspect of melancholy chastity and mental suffering; her long loose hair, still intertwined with some little blue flowers, made a shining pillow for her head, and veiled the nudity of her shoulders with its thick ringlets; ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... his arm and Magda, dismissing her little court of disgruntled admirers with a small gracious nod, laid her slim hand on his sleeve. As they moved away together the orchestra broke into the swinging seductive rhythm of ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... around with chastity; [110] corrupted by no seductive spectacles, [111] no convivial incitements. Men and women are alike unacquainted with clandestine correspondence. Adultery is extremely rare among so numerous a people. Its punishment is instant, and at the pleasure of the husband. He ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... they said in that seductive way in which a dry-goods clerk tells you that he has no checked gingham, and makes you think you are a fool that you asked for checked gingham; that you never should have asked, least of all, ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... cottage. The shorter of the two failed to occupy his attention for an instant; he never stopped to think whether she was or was not the major's daughter. His eyes were riveted on the other figure—the figure that moved over the garden walk with the long, lightly falling dress and the easy, seductive grace. There, presented exactly as he had seen her once already—there, with her back again turned on him, was the Woman ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... bankers pursue their avocations, and shopkeepers display their wares in a pleasant array of modern shops. On the streets walk leisurely an indolent and elegant people; the dark women are especially chic and it must be said refined and restrained, and not so seductive in appearance as the South would suggest. You see also at the many open-air cafes and in the street a very distinguished-looking type of man with finely cut features and plentiful iron-grey hair. You surmise that you are looking upon the most indolent people in the world—not ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... and soberly to his work as a lawyer. He was not a success, however, as a practitioner in the courts, unless he could plead before a bench of judges. In the Common Pleas an ordinary pettifogger would often take a case away from him. He could not, if he would, have practised those seductive arts by which Rufus Choate drew the jury into his net, in spite of their deliberate intentions to the contrary. Yet, Sumner's reputation steadily improved, so that when Longfellow came to live in Cambridge he found Sumner delivering ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... to live for Ireland in their own country, were suddenly held up by order of the Cunard Company—which, as a matter of fact, owed nearly its whole prosperity to its coffin boats of the Famine days, and whose glaringly seductive posters had emptied Ireland, neither for America nor Ireland's sake, but purely to get the passage-money of the emigrants who were now asked to go instead and "help England to give Constantinople to Russia, even if it cost ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... liking began to take on a supervisory form, and it was not without a touch of irritation in his voice that Alan informed his sister that he had acquired a second father, and with juvenile malignity attributed the incumbrance to her seductive influence. ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... which she had sung through the long winter nights, in which her deft fingers had wrought needlework, the envy of Rehoboth. The old arms mutely opened as though to welcome her; the rockers, too, seemed ready to yield that oscillation so seductive to the jaded frame. And the trimmings! and the cushion! the same old pattern, somewhat faded, perhaps, but as warm and cosy as in the days of yore. It was the chair, too, at which she used to kneel, the chair that had so often caught the warm breath from her lips as she had whispered, ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... dress, showed the great beauty of her shape. Her throat, of a pure white, was charming in tone against the blue,—the right color for a fair skin. A long blue sash with floating ends defined a slender waist which seemed flexible,—a most seductive charm in women. She wore a rice-straw bonnet, modestly trimmed with ribbons like those of the gown, the strings of which were tied under her chin, setting off the whiteness of the straw and doing no despite ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... a formidable artillery, which our enemies supposed, as indeed they had a right to suppose, we were deprived of. At the voice of his country in danger, another academician, the young and learned Meunier, readily renounced the seductive pursuits of the laboratory; he went to distinguish himself upon the ramparts of Koenigstein, to contribute as a hero to the long defence of Mayence, and met his death, at the age of forty years only, after having attained the highest position in a garrison wherein shone the Aubert-Dubayets, ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... him the money and sat down awhile to watch him as he went on with his work. It was the cheapest amusement I have yet enjoyed. Indeed Sol Rollin became a dissipation, a subtle and seductive habit that grew upon me and on one pretext or another I went every Saturday to the shop if I ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... restaurants. Servants receive little pay where the patronage is rich, with the understanding that they will make it up out of the customers. Thus if you go to a hotel you fee the bell-boy for bringing you a glass of water. If you order one of the seductive cocktails you fee the man who brings it; you fee the chambermaid who attends to your room. Infinite are the resources of these servants who do not receive a fee. You fee the elevator or lift boy, or he will take the opportunity to jerk you up as though ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... "It's rather seductive," said he, "but it won't do. Carry your interplanetary collision business to its logical end, and what do you come to? Gaseousness. And that's just what the Angus Falls Times, the Fairchild Star, and the other loathsome sheets printed ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... he hastily disengaged himself from the arms of Don Manuel, and endeavouring to conceal his own emotion, gave the word of command. He bounded lightly on his spirited barb, and the martial display of his men, the glitter of armour, and the seductive prospect of future glory and renown, powerfully contributed to dispel the cloud that hung over him. Yet it was a sad parting, for there was something peculiarly affecting in the sight of a father who, like Monteblanco, found himself in old age isolated in the midst of the world, ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... reposed at the top of one of the trunks. Janet had insisted on packing it, but she had never found an opportunity of wearing it. It was one of those dainty, bewildering combinations of Indian muslin and embroidery and lace, that are so costly and seductive; and when Fay put it on, with a soft spray of primroses, she certainly looked what Fergus called her, "Titania, queen of ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... hand of Seraphitus, hoping thus to draw him to her, and to lay on that seductive brow a kiss given more from admiration than from love; but a glance at the young man's eyes, which pierced her as a ray of sunlight penetrates a prism, paralyzed the young girl. She felt, but without comprehending, ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... arrears of stocking-darning. Dolly was engaged on the object to which she gave lifelong attention, that of keeping her doll asleep. I do not fancy that Dolly was very inventive; but then, you may be, at three-and-a-half, seductive without being inventive. Besides, this monotonous fiction of the need of her doll for sleep was only a scenario for another incident—the fear of disturbance by a pleace'n with two heads, a very ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... of which is now presented to the reader, has occupied me many years—though often interrupted in its progress, either by more active employment, or by literary undertakings of a character more seductive. These volumes were not only written, but actually in the hands of the publisher before the appearance, and even, I believe, before the announcement of the first volume of Mr. Thirlwall's History of Greece, or I might have declined going over any portion of the ground cultivated by ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hands and the dance ceased. The woman spirited her snakes away. The blind was drawn upward and in a moment all was normal again with the punkah swinging slowly overhead, except that the seductive smell remained, that was like the early-morning breath of all the ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... answers—and I was determined I would have it out of him without his suspecting what I was at. I meant to trap him with a deep, deep ruse. I would tell him all about my own business, and he would naturally so warm to me during this seductive burst of confidence that he would forget himself, and tell me all about his affairs before he suspected what I was about. I thought to myself, My son, you little know what an old fox you are ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... dalal's pious and seductive tongue could urge him further the Turk sat down again ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... callous by time, could not conceal their exultation; the mature and suffering looked grave and full of meditation; while the young and sanguine fairly trembled, and for once, doubted. But, as the philosopher led his party from precipice to precipice in safety, as rocks were scaled and seductive valleys avoided, a common feeling of security began to extend itself among the audience; and we all followed him in his last experiment among the ice, with that sort of blind confidence which the soldier comes, in time, to entertain in the orders of ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... rewards intelligent oversight and skilful direction, the more you increase the love of labor. We have already manufacturing communities so well supplied with tasks for brains and hands, that everybody works, or would do so but for Circe and her seductive hollow-ware. We are beginning to push machinery into agriculture, where it will have still greater scope. With the means we now have, in the enormously increased production of iron, our almost omnipresent and omnipotent machine-shops, our railroads ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... refused to admit that Usanga was entirely capable of handling it alone and therefore in no further need of help or instruction, and so in the mind of the black there formed a determination to outwit the white man. The lure of the twenty-four seductive wives proved in itself a sufficient incentive and there, too, was added his desire for the white girl whom he had long ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fragrant, are delightful to the eye, and cluster everywhere among the hedges, groves, and coffee estates. There is a blossoming shrub, the native name of which we do not remember, but which is remarkable for its multitudinous crimson flowers, so seductive to the humming-birds that they hover about it all day long, burying themselves in its blossoms until petal and wing seem one. At first upright, a little later the gorgeous bells droop downward and fall to the ground unwithered, being poetically called Cupid's tears. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou |
