"Voluptuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... theatre-party. He wanted to go; he was glad he was going; the memory of Lois in the tea-palace excited him. And he could refuse a hearing to his conscience, and could prevent himself from thinking uncomfortably of the future, as well as most young men. His secret, unadmitted voluptuous eagerness was alloyed only by an apprehension that after the scene over the telephone Lois might be peevish and ungracious. The fear proved to ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... equal to you!" he exclaimed. "Voluptuous fatigues of labor which render the mattresses of idleness so sweet. Not the satisfaction of self-esteem nor the feverish slumbers stifled beneath the heavy drapery of mysterious alcoves equals that calm and honest joy, that legitimate self satisfaction which work bestows on the laborer ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... lovelier effect in all nature than a Sicilian sunset, when the sky is one rich blaze of colour and the sea below reflects every vivid hue as in a mirror,—when the very air breathes voluptuous indolence, and all the restless work of man seems an impertinence rather than a necessity. Morgana, for once in her quick restless life, felt the sudden charm of sweet peace and holy tranquility, as she ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... goaded by two such shocks? As it was, this second violation of the sacred traditions of the nude, which had been exclusively reserved for allegorical subjects, was considered an outrage; and the innocent, natural model, of by no means voluptuous appearance, was regarded as a disgraceful intrusion into the chaste category of nymphs and goddesses. As a painter, however, Manet had shown himself unmistakably ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... could be no fit mistress for him—this starveling drudge, with passive passions, meek, accepting, with well-nigh every spark of spontaneity choked out of her. The women of his dreams were quite other—beautiful, voluptuous, full of the joy of life, tremulous with poetry and lofty thought, with dark, amorous orbs that flashed responsive to his magic melodies. They hovered about him as he wrote and played—Venuses rising from the seas of his music. And then—with his eyes full of the divine tears of ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... origin of poetry first arose. These ballads will of course vary according to the customs and temperaments of the different nations, and according to the climate to which they are accustomed. In the south they assume a passionate and voluptuous form; in the north they are rather remarkable for their tragic and warlike character. But notwithstanding these diversities, all such productions have one feature in common: they are not only founded on truth, but making allowance for the colorings of poetry, they are all strictly true. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... of his infatuation, and her image was the only thing he saw distinctly. He was entranced, possessed; but the feeling was delicious, and he roamed far and wide in the dark streets, making long detours by the river-side quays to lengthen out his reveries, his heart full, overfull of passionate, voluptuous imaginings. He was content because he was weary; his soul lay drowned in a delicious languor that no pang of desire troubled; to look and long was more than sufficient as yet to still the cravings ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... of horns, flutes and flageolets. I leave the reader to imagine the amount of noise produced by such a combination: my ears did not cease tingling for a week. But everybody praised the music, and evidently enjoyed the fun. The dancing was like all Oriental dancing, very voluptuous and enthusiastic, adapted especially to display the exquisite charms of the performers and move the passions of the audience. The play that followed possessed no merit, except in the bewildering beauty of the girlish actresses, and their superb adornments of natural flowers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... fair women and brave men; A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes that spake again, And all went ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... start or twitch, as if dazed. Then she looked up at her husband with a queer smile, puckering the corners of her eyes. He looked at the cigarettes, not at her. His face had the blunt voluptuous gravity of a young lion, a great cat. She kept him standing for some moments impassively. Then suddenly she hung her long, delicate fingers over the box, in doubt, and spasmodically jabbed at the cigarettes, clumsily raking ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... robes were floating free, And bracelets clashing in their glee A pleasant tinkling made. The anklet's chime, the Koil's(82) cry With music filled the place As 'twere some city in the sky Which heavenly minstrels grace. With each voluptuous art they strove To win the tenant of the grove, And with their graceful forms inspire His modest soul with soft desire. With arch of brow, with beck and smile, With every passion-waking wile Of glance and lotus hand, With all enticements that excite ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... have remained, and now remain, where they are. Take away this hope, by making slavery the distinctive bond of union of a new government, and you drive them to the North. These persons are not among the rich, the voluptuous, the effeminate; nor are they the despised, the indigent, the thriftless—they are men of moderate property, of intelligence, of conscience—in every way the "bone and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... calculations as easy and as certain as these. And Milton, in whose soul Puritan austerity was as yet only contending with the more genial currents of humanity, had a far greater than average susceptibility to the charm of woman. Even at the later date of Paradise Lost, voluptuous thoughts, as Mr. Hallam has observed, are not uncongenial to him. And at an earlier age his poems, candidly pure from the lascivious inuendoes of his contemporaries, have preserved the record of the rapid impression of the momentary passage of beauty upon ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... white witch of a creature, with its petals moulded in wax or ivory, its golden-brown leaf-sheathings, and its unequalled emerald (is it a tint, or is it but a shadow?) far down within the lovely cup, with that overpowering voluptuous odor, burdening the atmosphere, permeating the innermost fibres of sensation, steeping the soul in lethargy! What more fit exponent can there be for this weird plant's expression than the song of the serpent-charmer, the singing which can root the feet unto the ground and stay the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... passionately—and to see another preferred! There is a brotherhood in agony, that brings even opposite natures into sympathy. He passed into the gallery, a long low room, hung with modern tapestries, richly coloured, voluptuous in design. Clusters of wax tapers in gilded sconces lit up those Paphian pictures. There were several tables, at which the mixed company were sitting. Piles of the new guineas, fresh from his Majesty's Mint, shone in ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... future life as that here set forth, it is plain, was strikingly adapted to win and work fervidly on the minds of the imaginative, voluptuous, indolent, passionate races of the Orient. It possesses a nucleus of just and natural moral conviction and sentiment, around which is grouped a composite of a score of superstitions afloat before ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... sensuousness—such as we observe in Judaism continually struggling against a higher and purer element—but which in this less favored branch of the Semitic family reigns uncontrolled, and gives to its religion a gross, material, and even voluptuous character. The ideal and the spiritual find little favor with this practical people, which, not content with symbols, must have gods of wood and stone whereto to pray, and which in its complicated mythological system, its priestly hierarchy, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... himself in the bars of African public-houses, in mosques, in the two-pair-backs of dervishes, in bazaars—which he pictured to himself like those opened by royalties at the Queen's Hall—in Moorish interiors surrounded by voluptuous ladies with large oval eyes, black tresses, and Turkish trousers of spangled muslin, flitted before his mental gaze. When the train ran upon Dover Pier, and the white horses of the turbulent Channel foamed at his feet, he started as one roused from a Rip Van Winkle sleep. Severe illness ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... "Why do I stand here and speak to a priest about a woman? When you take your vows of celibacy you pretend to dislike anything that wears petticoats. But I doubt whether even you could resist the temptation of a handsome face and voluptuous form." ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... on euery syde with temptacions/ tribulacions/ aduersities & combraunce/ to bringe [the] home agayne vn to thyne awne herte/ & to set thy sinnes wich thou woldest so fayne couer & put out of mynd with delectacion of voluptuous pastymes/ before [the] eyes of thy conscience: then call [the] faithfull ensample of Ionas & all lyke stories vn to thy remembraunce/ and with Ionas turne vn to thi father that smote [the]: not to cast [the] awaye/ but to laye a corosie and a freatinge ...
— The prophete Ionas with an introduccion • William Tyndale
... of the funeral over than my friend and I went to Dalcastle, and took undisputed possession of the houses, lands and effects that had been my father's; but his plate, and vast treasures of ready money, he had bestowed on a voluptuous and unworthy creature, who had lived long with him as a mistress. Fain would I have sent her after her lover, and gave my friend some hints on the occasion; but he only shook his head, and said that we must lay all selfish ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... in his "French Revolution" paints a wonderfully vivid picture of the idle, voluptuous noblesse of the eighteenth century: compare the views ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... autobiography, Mary Smith, is the daughter of a gardener on a large English estate. Her family is much noticed and favored by the ladies of the mansion, and she, who is handsome and intellectual, soon acquires tastes and an education above her position; and as she is vain and selfish and of a voluptuous temperament, the consequence seems inevitable. Her first fault, however, is committed with her betrothed husband, a young gentleman, destined for the Church, by whose sudden death, at a time when his life was more than ever essential to her happiness, she is left ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... Those little blossoms of the Gothic with their perennial beauty, they are one of the smiles of that far time that shed cheer through the centuries. They are not the grandiose affairs of the Renaissance whose voluptuous development contains the arrogant assurance of beauty matured. They do not crown a column or trail themselves in foliated scrolls; but are just as Nature meant them to be, unaffected bits of colour and grace, upspringing from the sod. In the cathedral at Berne is a happy ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... constituted led the fashions and formed the manners of the people. It stamped the age with that type of character which belongs to the adventurer and devotee. The splendors of the court were maintained at the expense of the people. The glory of Versailles rose above the darkness of the nation. The voluptuous and luxurious pleasures of the nobility were the measure of the poverty and suffering of the people. The aristocracy enjoyed life as if it were a prolonged comedy, while the nation was moving toward the enactment ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... round the curtain that screened me from people below. "A handsome girl," he would murmur, upstaring, (and so I am). "But—too much sex in her build; fine eyes, but eyelids too heavy; A bosom too full for her age; in her lips too voluptuous a look." (It may be. But who put it there? Assuredly ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... hearty!" yelled Sweet William, in dulcet strains, reminding the King of the "voluptuous smell of physic," spoken of by ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... This is the African hemp plant: it is esteemed for the extraordinary and pleasing voluptuous vacuity of mind which it produces on those who smoke it: unlike the intoxication from wine, a fascinating stupor pervades the mind, and the dreams are agreeable. The kief is the flower and seeds of the plant: it is a strong narcotic, so that ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... black. A small mouth, bordered by lips of coral fulness, disclosed, when she smiled, teeth white and even; while a forehead, high for her sex, combined with a nose, somewhat more aquiline than Grecian, to give dignity to a countenance that might, otherwise, have exhibited a character of voluptuous beauty. Yet, although her features, when lighted up by vivacity or emotion, were radiant with intelligence; their expression when in repose was of a pensive cast, that, contrasted with her general appearance, ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... ambitious plans. You knew Biron as an effeminate, yielding, pleasure-seeking favorite of the empress—you saw him devoted only to amusement and enjoyment, and you said to yourself: 'That is the man I need. As I cannot myself be made regent, let it be him! I will govern through him; and while this voluptuous devotee of pleasure gives himself up to the intoxication of enjoyments, I will rule in his stead.' Well, Mr. Field-Marshal, were not those ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... But it is my misfortune that I am his sister. So long as I strive, while awake, to commit no such {attempt}, let sleep often return with the like appearance. No witness is there in sleep; and yet there is the resemblance of the delight. O Venus and winged Cupid, together with thy voluptuous mother, how great the joys I experienced! how substantial the transport which affected me! How I lay dissolved {in delight} throughout my whole marrow! How pleasing to remember it; although short-lived was that pleasure, and the night sped onward rapidly, and was envious of my ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Garden of Proserpine should be read only when one is in a reclining position. Then one's voice conveys more perfectly the weariness of all things mortal and the sweet delight of rest. I find I must practice breathing more deeply, if I wish to render the voluptuous, sinuous lines. Don't you think this is a great ambition, to read Swinburne well? I am so glad to find something to do, something I love to do. Perhaps I may escape from ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... Annette, that this young man was making a change for the worse, and could not forbear silently lamenting, that he should be drawn from the innocence and beauty of these scenes, to the corrupt ones of that voluptuous city. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... literary artist than Washington Irving, "Kuenstler Leben" as better music than "There is Sunlight in My Soul." Irish? I still doubt it, despite the Stammbaum. Who ever heard of an Irish epicure, an Irish flaneur, or, for that matter, an Irish contrapuntist? The arts of the voluptuous category are unknown west of Cherbourg; one leaves them behind with the French pilot. Even the Czech-Irish hypothesis (or is it Magyar-Irish?) has a smell of the lamp. Perhaps it should ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... are rites in which "words are uttered by persons who, on other occasions, would think themselves disgraced by the use of them."[1933] The Phalgun festival in northern India commemorates Krishna's voluptuous amusements. The rites are indecent.[1934] The mythological stories about the gods have to be converted by interpretation or special pleas into something which modern mores can tolerate.[1935] Songs, dances, pantomimes, and mythological dramas are represented in ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... the year when, to those who look on the surface of society, London wears its most radiant smile; when shops are gayest, and trade most brisk; when down the thoroughfares roll and glitter the countless streams of indolent and voluptuous life; when the upper class spend, and the middle class make; when the ball-room is the Market of Beauty, and the club-house the School for Scandal; when the hells yawn for their prey, and opera-singers ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... families, including domestics. It abounds with magnificent houses, and has a lake thirty miles in circuit within its walls, on the banks of which are superb palaces of people of rank. [344] The inhabitants of Qninsai are very voluptuous, and indulge in all kinds of luxuries and delights, particularly the women, who are extremely beautiful. There are many merchants and artisans, but the masters do not work, they employ servants to do all their labor. The province of Mangi was ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... contrasted their rich foliage in the sunshine with the pineapple, banana and the rich soft turf of the mesquit-grass. The air was fragrant with magnolia and orange bloom, the gardens glittering with the burning beauty of tropical flower, jessamine thickets and voluptuous grape arbors, the golden wine-like sun pouring an intoxicating balm over it; graceful white cottages festooned with vines, with curving chalet or Chinese roofs colored red; pinnacled arbors and shadowy retreats of espaliers pretty as a coral grove; and a fair ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... days of state subsidy of school libraries the child is hard to find who has not free access to books of fiction full of voluptuous allusions that make undesirable impressions which only blunt, candid discussion of sex facts can make harmless. Children now learn, whether in fashionable private schools or crowded slums, practically all that is lascivious and unwholesome about sex. ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... popular room of all with visitors—and quite naturally—is the little boudoiresque study of Francis I, with its voluptuous ladies on the ceiling and the secret treasure-room leading from it, while on the way, just outside the door, is a convenient oubliette into which to push ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... wickedness to him, and left me hope That in mine own heart I can live down sin And be his mate hereafter in the heavens Before high God. Ah great and gentle lord, Who wast, as is the conscience of a saint Among his warring senses, to thy knights— To whom my false voluptuous pride, that took Full easily all impressions from below, Would not look up, or half-despised the height To which I would not or I could not climb— I thought I could not breathe in that fine air That pure severity ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... Mabille could have objected to. Certainly, no one who retains a seat during the performance of a ballet can say a word on the subject. If the charge of indelicacy is to be brought against either, it would, I think, weigh most heavily against the latter. The Indian dance is voluptuous and graceful, as a dance should be; which is more than can be affirmed of a ballet of the French school, some of the attitudes of which are certainly not addressed only to the sense of beauty. But it was now late, and, although the festivities showed no signs of abatement, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... doubt by the outcry against its immorality. Lewis tried to defend himself by pleading that the outline and moral of his story were borrowed from "The History of Santon Barsisa" in the Guardian (No. 148). But the voluptuous nature of some of the descriptions induced the Attorney General to enjoin the sale of the book, and Lewis bowed to public opinion so far as to suppress the objectionable passages in later editions. Lewis' melodrama "The Castle Specter" was first performed December 14, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... love is reciprocated by the celestial Bayadere (apsara); when, in Malati, a love-glance is said to be "anointed with nectar and poison;" when the arrows of the Hindoo gods of love are called hard, though made of flowers; burning, though not in contact with the skin; voluptuous, though piercing—when we come across such symptoms and fancies we have no right as yet to infer the existence of romantic love; for all these things also characterize sensual passion, which is love only in the sense of self-love, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... themselves, that the popular idea of it is different in different countries, according as the opinions and social circumstances of the country have given to the women living in it any speciality of development or non-development. An Oriental thinks that women are by nature peculiarly voluptuous; see the violent abuse of them on this ground in Hindoo writings. An Englishman usually thinks that they are by nature cold. The sayings about women's fickleness are mostly of French origin; from the ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... exhausting him. This, indeed, was one of the causes of the deep silent sadness of Orlando, who was compelled to witness the swift deterioration of his conquering race, whilst Sacco, the Italian of the South—served as it were by the climate, accustomed to the voluptuous atmosphere, the life of those sun-baked cities compounded of the dust of antiquity—bloomed there like the natural vegetation of a soil saturated with the crimes of history, and gradually grasped ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... before him on his way down town. Pretty soon she makes a signal to him that cannot be mistaken, and our Ohio friend, rather astonished at the freedom of the aristocratic and well- bred ladies of the metropolis, but nothing loth, hastens to her side, and accompanies her to her richly voluptuous mansion in Bleecker, Green, Mercer, or Crosby streets. In the watches of the night he awakens to find the aristocratic lady fastened on his throat, and a male friend of hers, with a villainous countenance, ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... those who are wealthy enough to purchase and maintain such precious merchandise. These maidens are very honourably and virtuously instructed to fondle and caress men; are taught dances of a very polite and effeminate kind; and how to heighten by the most voluptuous artifices the pleasures of their disdainful masters for whom they are designed. These unhappy creatures repeat their lesson to their mothers, in the same manner as little girls among us repeat their catechism without understanding one word ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... white cloth shoes, made snowy with chalk duly laid on every morning; but the majority of the people were almost as dark as negroes—women with comely features, fine black eyes, rounded forms, inclining to the voluptuous, clad in a single bright red or white garment that fell free and unconfined from shoulder to heel, long black hair falling loose, gypsy hats, encircled with wreaths of natural flowers of a brilliant carmine tint; plenty of dark men in various costumes, and some with nothing on but a battered ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a-tremble, she obeyed her own injunction. With slow deliberation she crushed her lips, full and voluptuous, into mine. The warmth of them seemed to catch hold of something deep down in me, and, with exquisite painfulness, draw it out. Blinded with emotion, I clutched close to her. She laughed. I put one hand over her full breast as infants ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... eve of this obscure and neglected young soldier's departure to spread the blessings of Fraternity in Italy, the voluptuous Barras was commissioned by him to announce to the Directory his marriage with Citizeness Tascher Beauharnais. Then began a period of devouring love and war such as the world has never beheld. In the midst of strife ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... break into the sacred precincts of theology, bringing nothing along with them but an impudent front, some vulgar trifles and foolish scholastic technicalities, unworthy of respect even at the crossing of the highways. This is the unworthy, vagrant, voluptuous race, fitter for the hog sty (haram) than the altar (aram), that basely prostitute divine literature; these are they who fill the pulpits, creep into the palaces of our nobility after all other prospects of existence fail them, owing to their imbecility of ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... appropriated his cards. An Alsatian completed the party. In a distant corner a Turco, wearing his red fez upon his head, sat with his chin on his knees amid an improvised bivouac of bed-clothes and looked on uncomprehendingly. The rest smoked cigarettes and toyed with the voluptuous ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... had gathered, and the whole sublime congregation of mountains was bathed at once in warm sunshine. They seemed more like some luxurious vision of Eastern romance than like a reality of that wilderness; all were melted together into a soft delicious blue, as voluptuous as the sky of Naples or the transparent sea that washes the sunny cliffs of Capri. On the left the whole sky was still of an inky blackness; but two concentric rainbows stood in brilliant relief against it, while far in front the ragged cloud still streamed before ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... excellently well, but in a style quite different to ours, and the women very fat and plain. And though Moll, being but a slight slip of a lass, in whom the warmer passions were unbegotten, could not give the bolero the voluptuous fervour of the Spanish dancers, yet in agility and in pretty innocent grace she did surpass them all to nought, which was abundantly proved when she danced it in our posada before a court full of Spaniards, for there they were like mad over her, casting their silk handkerchiefs at her feet ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... is not, and you find this more in music than in any other phase of Spanish life. The Germans dance the gay and voluptuous waltz with a 'bock' in their hand, singing the Gaudeamus igitur, that students' hymn glorifying the material life free from care. The French sing amid rippling laughter, and dance with their free and elastic limbs, greeting with rapturous applause ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible [NOTE: It must be borne in mind that by the "Bible" Paine always means the Old Testament alone.—Editor.] is filled, it would be more consistent that we called ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... longer, she would throw herself into an armchair where she remained for a long time with her eyes fixed, in deep and miserable meditation. At these moments she was a prey to sudden fits of tenderness, she confessed without shame, nay even with voluptuous enjoyment, the love that she felt; she pardoned Luis with all her heart, and vowed to love him all her life long in silence and never to belong to another man. As days went by this feeling increased and took the ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... and upon that a throne was set. The visitors had but time, however, to catch a confused idea of the place—of carved and gilt ottomans and couches; of fans and jars and musical instruments; of golden candlesticks glittering in their own lights; of walls painted in the style of the voluptuous Grecian school, one look at which had made a Pharisee hide his head with holy horror. Herod, sitting upon the throne to receive them, clad as when at the conference with the doctors and lawyers, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... dispose her garments and floating drapery to hide the too-maddening symmetry of her limbs! Gods! She is transformed all at once into an Amazon—the fawn-like timidity of her first demeanour is gone. Bold and beautiful flushes her cheek with animated crimson—her full voluptuous lip is more compressed and firm—the deep passion of the huntress flashing in her lustrous eyes! Widdicomb becomes excited—he moves with quicker step around the periphery of his central circle—incessant is the smacking of his whip—not ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... enjoyment, and, provided he has his mistress at his will, concerns himself not in the slightest degree as to what becomes of his companions, is not an every-day touch. Nor is the strong contrast of the chambers of feast and dalliance—undisturbed, voluptuous, terrestrial-paradisaic—with "the horror and the hell" in the courts below. Nor, last of all, the picture of the more than half innocent Marion, night-garbed or ungarbed, but with sword drawn, first ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... abuse, in order to form some idea of its pernicious consequences. Women worthy of credit have declared over and over again that their first visit to the confessional opened the way to their perdition, by inflaming the imagination with ideas of a most voluptuous and obscene nature, and exciting their curiosity on subjects which had never before even entered into the mind or conception. Should any person doubt these statements, let him turn to any book of Roman ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... the effect of fair hair and blue eyes in the soft, voluptuous decorous dance? Such a girl does not knock audaciously at your heart, like the dark-haired damsels that seem to say after the fashion of Spanish beggars, 'Your money or your life; give me five francs or take my contempt!' ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... the radiant and voluptuous beauty who had incurred the secret wrath of Ann Howland at Bar Harbor. These years of war, during which she had known hard physical labor and often insufficient nourishment, more rarely still a full night's sleep, had taken her lovely curves of cheek and form, her ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... the aristocratical Captains were those who completely abandoned to others the direction of the vessels, and thought only of making money and spending it. The way in which these men lived was so ostentatious and voluptuous that, greedy as they were of gain, they seldom became rich. They dressed as if for a gala at Versailles, ate off plate, drank the richest wines, and kept harems on board, while hunger and scurvy raged among the crews, and while ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... gentleman aged about thirty-five years, with a handsome oval face, grey eyes, thin straight nose, and hair and well-trimmed moustache and Vandyke beard of a deep golden brown, the moustache not altogether hiding the pleasant, somewhat voluptuous mouth. And it seemed to Fan when she looked at it and the grey eyes gazed back into hers, and the pleasant lips seemed to smile on her, that she had never seen among living men a more ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... time Edith left him, he married Abby Wilson. She had grown into a voluptuous though coarse maturity, and was dashing in dress and manner. Her father had recently died, leaving her a fine property. She had always coveted Ben, and did not delay the nuptials from any sense of delicacy, ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... urged thereto by the failing health of his overtasked wife,—adopted as half daughter, half serving maid, a beautiful and friendless girl, who might otherwise have gone to ruin. Her name was plain Hannah Lee. No name can be imagined too liquid, sweet and voluptuous in its sound to typify her loveliness. It was not strange, therefore, that she had not been long in the house before Jason Fletcher, hitherto deprived of much cheerful female society, felt stealing over him a new and strange excitement of mingled ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... L'Isle. "Indifferent to external decoration, they reserved all their ingenuity for the interior of their edifices. Stimulated by a sensuous religion and a luxurious climate, they there lavished whatever was calculated to delight the senses, and accord with a sedentary and voluptuous life. They sought a shady privacy amidst sparkling fountains, artificial breezes, and sweet smelling plants; amidst brilliant colors and a profusion of ornaments, seen by a light sobered from the glare of a southern sun. Numberless ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... physician, and father of Cornelius Ford, generally known by the name of parson Ford, the same who is represented near the punch-bowl in Hogarth's Midnight Modern Conversation. In the life of Fenton, Johnson says, that "his abilities, instead of furnishing convivial merriment to the voluptuous and dissolute, might have enabled him to excel among the virtuous and the wise." Being chaplain to the earl of Chesterfield, he wished to attend that nobleman on his embassy to the Hague. Colley Cibber has recorded ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... royal day: Voluptuous July held her lover, Earth, With her warm arms, upon her glowing breast, And twined herself about him, as he lay Smiling and panting in his dream-stirred rest. She bound him with her limbs of perfect grace, And hid him with her trailing robe of green, And ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... What multitudes of fish to satisfy the most voluptuous of wishes, can China glory in which Virginia may not in justice boast of?... Let her publish a precedent so worthy of admiration (and which will not admit belief in those bosoms where the eye cannot be witness of the ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... of Physic is in this group; and the Franklin, the voluptuous country gentleman, contrasted with the Physician, and, on his other hand, with two Citizens of London. Chaucer's characters live age after age. Every age is a Canterbury Pilgrimage; we all pass on, each sustaining ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... tropical sun, shooting above the eastern horizon as suddenly as the volcanic cone had been lifted above the fog. This hot sun burned away the mists in a few minutes and there, stretching below us, in all its oriental beauty was the sinewy, voluptuous form of the ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... the first time, to take joy in sitting next to a pretty and well-dressed woman. And all this, not from any broad, philosophic perception that fine feathers have their proper part in the great scheme of cosmic evolution; but because the check dress suited her, and the heavy, voluptuous parasol suited her, and the long black gloves were inexplicably effective. Women grow old; women cease ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... sterner criticism to the shade of Alfred de Musset—the Oscar Wilde of the later Romantics[6]—who had never known the stress of thought, and had filled his poetry with light love and laughter and voluptuous despairs; the new poets were to be no such gay triflers, but workers at a forge, beating the glowing metal into shape, and singing as they toiled.[7] Carducci, too, derisively contrasts the 'moonlight' of Romanticism—cold and infructuous ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... preciousness in my eyes, and pleasure, like the flower of the cemetery, grew but more luxuriant from the neighbourhood of death. This very night my triumph, my happiness, had seemed complete. I had been the presiding genius of that voluptuous scene. Both my ambition and my love of pleasure had drunk deep of the cup for which they thirsted. Looked up to by the learned, and loved by the beautiful and the young, I had seen, in every eye that met mine, either ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... man, the good husband, the tender father; he slips into the conjugal bed, his imagination still afire with the illusive forms of the operatic nymphs, and so turns to the profit of conjugal love the world's depravities, the voluptuous curves of Taglioni's leg. And finally, if he sleeps, he sleeps apace, and hurries through his slumber as ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... column of silver spray; and at its upper end, against a background of the dainty white roses called "Felicite perpetuelle" sat the Queen, in a high chair of carved ivory, surrounded by her ladies. Delicious music, performed by players and singers who were hidden behind the trees, floated in voluptuous strains upon the air, and the King, looking at the exquisite grouping of fair women and flowers, lit by the coloured lamps which gleamed here and there among the thick foliage, wondered to himself how it chanced, that amid surroundings which were calculated to move the senses to the ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... by want of shrubs and trees. This was in 1787: the poet, accompanied by his future biographer, Professor Walker, went, when close on twilight, to this romantic scene: "he threw himself," said the Professor, "on a heathy seat, and gave himself up to a tender, abstracted, and voluptuous enthusiasm of imagination. In a few days I received a letter from Inverness, for the poet had gone on his way, with the Petition enclosed." His Grace of Athole obeyed the injunction: the picturesque points are now crowned with thriving woods, and the beauty of the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the "finely-cut and well-moulded features," the "silken curls," the "dark and brilliant eyes," the "splendid forms," the "fascinating smiles," and "accomplished manners" of these impassioned and voluptuous daughters of the two races,—the unlawful product of the crime of human bondage. When we take into consideration the fact that no safeguard was ever thrown around virtue, and no inducement held out to slave-women to be pure and chaste, we will not be surprised when told that immorality pervades ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... the man who came after the waste paper, staggered into the room. The tips were off both his shoe-lacings. The baby experienced a voluptuous sense of futility at the sight of the tipless-lacings and ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... joke this book-faking. Wouldn't Thackeray have lambasted the best sellers? A fancy picture of a girl on the cover, something doing all the time, and a happy ending—that's the recipe. Or else be as voluptuous as velvet. Wait till my novel, 'Three Minutes,' comes ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... profile, his long, lank, unpowdered locks, his simple uniform, and awkward seat in the saddle, he looked like a new human type, neither angel nor devil but an inscrutable apparition from another sphere. To officers and men the voluptuous city extended wide its arms, and the shabby soldiery were incongruous figures where their entertainers were elegant and fastidious beyond what the guests had dreamed. With stern impartiality the liberator repressed all excess in his army, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... these encounters was, that he dreamed day and night, absorbedly, of a voluptuous woman and of the meeting with a small, withered foreigner of ancient breeding. No sooner was his mind free, no sooner had he left his own companions, than he began to imagine an intimacy with fine-textured, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... was overspreading this country. The moral and religious restraints, which the government under the Commonwealth had imposed, were dissolved by the accession of a debauched prince to the throne of England; a prince who was bribed, to injure or destroy the best interests of the country, by the voluptuous court of France. He had taken refuge there from the storm; and had been defiled and corrupted beyond ordinary conception. The king and his court were surrounded by pimps, panders, courtesans, and flatterers. The example of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... man would say at first, second, or third sight of Angelique des Meloises. She was indeed a fair girl to look upon,—tall, and fashioned in nature's most voluptuous mould, perfect in the symmetry of every part, with an ease and beauty of movement not suggestive of spiritual graces, like Amelie's, but of terrestrial witcheries, like those great women of old who drew down the very gods from Olympus, and who ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... laid down the best and truest regulations governing this style of poetry in his lines: "For it becomes a pious bard to be chaste himself, though there is no need for his verses to be so. Nay, if they are to have wit and charm, they must be voluptuous and ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... But my expression, my jealous or false smile, which she knew so well, and the voluptuous glances of the musician, evidently excited her. I saw that, after the first interview, her eyes were already glittering, glittering strangely, and that, thanks to my jealousy, between him and her had been immediately established that sort of electric current ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... which we ate a-bed in most voluptuous disorder, Charles got up, and taking a passionate leave of me for a few hours, went to town, where concerting matters with a young sharp lawyer, they went together to my late venerable mistress's, from whence I had, but the day before, made my elopement, and with whom he was determined to settle ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... impurity was the reigning vice in India amongst the Portuguese, he applied himself, in a particular manner, to withdraw them from their voluptuous living. The first rule of his proceeding was to insinuate himself into the favour, not only of the concubinarians, but of their mistresses; and he compassed this by the mildness of his aspect, by the obligingness of his words, and sometimes by good offices. Yet we cannot think that ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... scrolls, or sea-horses with leaves growing instead of fins. The same spirit is seen in the grotesques of the Renaissance, where the sense of humour is not emphasized, the ideal in this class of decoration being simply to fill the space acceptably, with voluptuous graceful lines, mythological monstrosities, the inexpressive mingling of human and vegetable characteristics, grinning dragons, supposed to inspire horror, and such conceits, while the attempt to amuse the ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... the soul has fewer reasons for action, and the closer the walls of Jean-Christophe's prison of care and banal tasks were drawn about him, the more his heart in its revolt felt its independence. In a life without obstacles he would doubtless have abandoned himself to chance and to the voluptuous sauntering of adolescence. As he could be free only for an hour or two a day, his strength flowed into that space of time like a river between walls of rock. It is a good discipline for art for a man to confine his efforts between unshakable bounds. ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... regulate mine or my wife'& behaviour by the twaddle they talk! I'll have that dagger." Slipping it slowly into its sheath he watched it travel home, the supple female curve gliding and yielding as a woman yields to a man's caress. "Voluptuous, I call it. Under the left breast, eh?" He drew it again and held it poised and pointing at his cousin. "Come, even I could cut your heart out with a gem of a blade like that." Lawrence held himself lightly erect, his big frame stiffening from head to foot and ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... fly for them! Look at the other Russians—there are beards for you! beards grown where brandy freezes! but, they are thawed out now. Look at these men: hear their wild northern tongue, how it rolls out the sounds that frighten Italians back to sleepy sonnets and voluptuous songs. Hurrah, my Russians! look fate in the face. Your ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... left our young Englishman may aptly be compared with that of the assassin neophytes, whom, according to the tale, the Old Man of the Mountain was wont to introduce into an enchanted garden, peopled with ravishing houris, whence, after a short enjoyment of the most voluptuous delights, he again thrust them forth into the dark and dismal night of the desert, with nothing remaining of their past pleasures save a wild confusion of the senses, a chaos of images and visions, and a burning desire to recover the lost paradise. True it is, as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... forget the intense excitement that thrilled me when I found myself rolling along on the magnificent avenue of pollard-elms, that runs all the way from Rivoli to Turin. The voluptuous air, which seemed to fill the landscape with a dreamy gaiety; the intense sunlight, which tinted every object with extraordinary brilliancy, from the bright leaves overhead, to the burning domes of Turin in front; the dark eyes of the natives, which flashed with ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... true, Amelia is more beautiful, in the common acceptation of the word; her eyes are larger, her cheek rosier, her smile more fresh and youthful, and her small but graceful figure is at the same time childlike and voluptuous. She would make an enchanting shepherdess, but is not fitted to be a queen. She has no majesty, no presence. She has not by nature that imposing gravity, which is the gift of Providence, and cannot be acquired, ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... foam; her heavy hair Fraught with the perfume of a thousand forests Tossed round about her beauty: and her mouth A scarlet mystery of distant flower Up-turned to take the kisses of the sun. But like a troop of boys let loose from school The adventurers went by, startling the stillness Of that voluptuous dream-encumbered shore With echoing shouts of laughter and ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... nothing does the character and happiness so much depend as on the first affection of the heart. Were you caught by some fleeting and superficial charm—a bright eye, a blooming cheek, a soft voice, or a voluptuous form—I would warn you to beware; I would tell you that beauty is but a passing gleam of the morning, a perishable flower; that accident may becloud and blight it, and that at best it must soon pass away. But were ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... mine, but not to riotous halls, Where dancing sylphs supply voluptuous songs, But seek the huts where pestilence appals, And death completes the ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... by these two additional primary colors can only be vaguely hinted at by analogy. Just as blue is delicate and mysterious, yellow clear and unsubtle, and red sanguine and passionate, so he felt ulfire to be wild and painful, and jale dreamlike, feverish, and voluptuous. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... Volcanic vulkana. Volley (gun firing) pafilado. Voluble babilema, fluantparola. Volume (book) volumo. Volume (size) dikeco. Voluminous multdika. Voluntary memvola, propramova. Volunteer memvolulo. Voluptuous voluptema. Voluptuousness volupteco. Vomit vomi. Vomiting vomado. Vomitory vomilo. Voracious englutema. Voracity engluteco. Vortex turnakvo, turnigxado. Vote vocxdoni, baloti. Vouch ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... universal jollity had reached its height, two Bayaderes, who belonged to the suite of the Maharajah of Sabathu, made their appearance, Indian beauties, whose voluptuous feminine charms were calculated to make the blood even of the spoilt European run warm. Dressed in gold-glittering petticoats and jackets, which left a hand's breadth of light brown skin visible round the waist, with gold coins upon the blue-black hair, they executed their ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... from thy russet stem Unfoldest timidly, (for in strange sort This dark, frieze-coated, hoarse, teeth-chattering month Hath borrow'd Zephyr's voice, and gazed upon thee With blue voluptuous eye) alas, poor Flower! 5 These are but flatteries of the faithless year. Perchance, escaped its unknown polar cave, Even now the keen North-East is on its way. Flower that must perish! shall I liken ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... their silken hangings in their slow progress with their helpless burden to the lace-canopied and snowy couch of the young gambler, it seemed almost a profanation of some feminine seclusion. Gideon, to whom such luxury was unknown, was profoundly troubled. The voluptuous ease and sensuousness, the refinements of a life of irresponsible indulgence, affected him with a physical terror to which in his late moment of real peril he had been a stranger; the gilding and mirrors blinded his eyes; even the faint perfume seemed to him ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... yet grown quite an idiot, compelled his royal forefathers to share in the ball, by making their dry bones dance in their biers. Death, becoming a go-between whether he would or no, lent a sharp spur to the voluptuous revel. Then broke out those unclean fashions of an age when ladies made themselves taller by wearing the Devil's horned-bonnet, and gloried in dressing as if they were all with child.[64] To this fashion ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... luminously over far mountain-ranges, paling in brilliancy on the hill-side, where the blushing vine, bending with the clusters, is still enlivened by the song of the vintagers; and in the valley, where the grain sheds its gold under the sickle. You are lost in voluptuous reverie. You breathe the sunlight; intellect is thawed and mellowed; emotions take the place of thought; "your senses, sun-tranced, rise into the sphere of soul." You feel the heart of humanity throbbing through all nature, and your own warms into ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... exceed the dreariness, gloominess, and humidity, of a Milanese sky in winter; which, I conclude, under the old regime, led to all the hospitality, and conviviality, practised here, by their voluptuous but ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol. I. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... sounded more suppressed but not less fiery, amongst the scattered sketches, the outlines, the glowing, voluptuous paintings; amongst the drawings on the floor there was many a sketch of vigorous beauty, like unto the daughters of the Campagna, yet they themselves were much more beautiful. The six-armed lamp glowed brightly, and the human forms warmed ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... in all other pleasures there is satiety, and after they be used, their verdure departeth, which showeth well they be but deceits of pleasure, and not pleasures; and that it was the novelty which pleased, and not the quality. And, therefore, we see that voluptuous men turn friars, and ambitions princes turn melancholy. But of knowledge there is no satiety, but satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable; and, therefore, appeareth to be good in itself simply, without fallacy or accident. Neither is that pleasure of small efficacy and contentment ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... Gargilius, sleek, voluptuous lord, A hundred dainties smoke upon his board; Earth, air, and ocean ransack'd for the feast, In masquerade ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... to feed voluptuous thought, The beauteous forms of Nature wrought,— Fair trees and gorgeous flowers; The breezes their own languor lent; The stars had feelings, which they sent Into ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... female productive principle, as Baal did the male. It was originally a name for the energy of God, on a par with Baal. In one of her aspects she represented the moon; but more commonly she was the representative of the female principle in Nature, and was connected more or less with voluptuous rites,—the equivalent of Aphrodite, or Venus. Tanith also was a noted female deity, and was worshipped at Carthage and Cyprus by the Phoenician settlers. The name is associated, according to Gesenius, with the Egyptian goddess Nut, and with the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... cannot feel the delight of giving happiness to others, I sincerely pity them, as they are incapable of tasting what is, in my opinion, a greater honour, a higher interest, and a sweeter pleasure than the ambitious, the avaricious, or the voluptuous man can ever obtain." ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... Jerome, commenting on Matt. 11:8, "Behold they that are clothed in soft garments are in the houses of kings," says: "Hence we gather that an austere life and severe preaching should avoid the palaces of kings and the mansions of the voluptuous." But the needs of secular business induce men to frequent the palaces of kings. Therefore it is unlawful for religious to occupy ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... in playfulness and lightness of spirits she was almost a child: now those indications of an unawakened heart had mellowed into a tenderness full of that melancholy so touching and holy, even amid the voluptuous softness which it breathes and inspires. But this day, whether from that coquetry so common to all women, or from some cause more natural to her, she seemed gayer than Falkland ever remembered to have seen her. She ran over ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... peculiarly ungracious in her tone and manner. It seemed to Maude that she had never before been alone with so singular a person. There was, in the first place, her striking and yet rather sinister and voluptuous beauty. ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... my fairy fancies, and calling me a voluptuous Mahometan; but I am certain I would be a happy creature, beyond anything we call bliss here below; nay, it would be a paradise congenial to you too. Don't you see us, hand in hand, or rather, my arm about your lovely waist, making our remarks on Sirius, the nearest ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... their character they may bear a comparison, in many points, with religious impostors. There is this striking difference, however, in the effect of their teaching: the religious impostor has often promised a paradise of merely voluptuous enjoyment, but he has promised it as the reward of certain self-denying virtues to be practised here on earth; whilst the socialist insists upon bringing his sensual ill-ordered paradise, wherein all virtue is dispensed with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... homage. She was still young, and in all the splendor of her ravishing beauty, when the king died. For the sake of appearances, she retired for a few months into a nunnery. Soon, however, she emerged again into the gay world. Her limitless power over the voluptuous old monarch had enabled her to amass an enormous fortune. With this she reared and embellished for herself a magnificent retreat, adorned with more than regal splendor, in the vicinity of Paris—the Pavillon de Luciennes, ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... whiteness of her hands, from her elastic, but at the same time as it were, irresolute gait, from the very sound of her sweet and languorous voice—there breathed, like a delicate perfume, a subtle and incomprehensible charm—something which was at once tender and voluptuous and modest—something which it was difficult to express in words, which stirred the imagination and disturbed the mind, but disturbed it with sensations which were ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... propagation of Mohammedanism with the propagation of Christianity; for it is useless, if not absurd. Suffice it to say that the former was propagated by fanaticism, falsehood, pandering to the passions, promising a voluptuous paradise, and the frequent use of the sword; but the latter by sanity, truth, restraining the passions, promising a pure and holy heaven, and the use of no other sword but the sword of the Spirit, that is, the word of God. Christianity came—saw—and conquered. And all her victories have been bloodless—of ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... scene; Vittoria suggesting, under the metaphor of a dream, that her lover should compass the deaths of his duchess and her husband. The dream is told with deadly energy and ghastly picturesqueness. The cruel sneer at its conclusion, murmured by a voluptuous woman in the ears of an impassioned paramour, chills us with the sense of concentrated vice. Her next appearance is before the court, on trial for her husband's murder. The scene is celebrated, and has been much disputed by critics. Relying on her own dauntlessness, on ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... of the manners and mode of life of the Hyperborean race, with whom he had once passed a summer. Glancing my eye then to the south,—"See," said I, "while the Kamtschadale is providing his supply of furs and of fish, for the long winter which is already knocking at the door of his hut, the gay and voluptuous native of the Sandwich and other islands between the tropics. How striking the contrast! The one passes his life in ease, abundance, and enjoyment; the other in toil, privation, and care. No inclemency of the seasons inflicts present suffering on these happy islanders, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... slow, almost languid movements, full of infinite and inexpressible witchery. Every limb of her body and every feature of her face followed, with a sort of effortless grace, the movements of her feet. Yet the general effect of the whole was suggestive of a sweet and dainty repose, voluptuous yet refined, glowing with life, yet dreamily restful. In a certain sense her physical movements, even her body itself, seemed merged and lost in the artistic ideal created and born of her performance. And so it was that he carried away that day no vivid thought-portrait of ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... two sorts of voluptuous men, and of their death and defection; and of the continuance ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... dainty appliances of Art for beauty; the lavish profusion of bijouterie; and the usual statuettes of innocence, to indicate, perhaps, the presence of that commodity which might not be guessed at otherwise; and burning in a silver cup, a rich perfume loaded the air with voluptuous sweetness. Through a half-open door an inner boudoir was to be seen, which must have been Delphine's; it looked like her; the prevailing hue was a soft purple, or gray; a prie-dieu, a book-shelf, and desk, of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... rid of two-thirds of his burning poison by the help of man's chief nurse, sleep; and now he must work off the rest, grumbling at this the kind severity of his lot. Warm men, respectable men, among whom justices of the peace and other voluptuous disciplinarians, were tempted out of delicious beds by the fragrant berry, the balmy leaf, snowy damask, fire glowing behind polished bars—in short, by multifarious comfort set in a frame of ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... now indicated what was most admirable in Voltaire's personal character. On the whole, he was far from being an admirable man. He was vain, he was shallow, he was frivolous, he was deceitful, he was voluptuous, he fawned on the great, he abased himself before them, he licked the dust on which they stood. "Trajan, est-il content?" ("Is Trajan satisfied?")—this, asked, in nauseous adulation, and nauseous self-abasement, by Voltaire of Louis XV., so little like Trajan in ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... obeyed, yielding anew to the sense of indolent luxury and voluptuous ease his surroundings engendered,—and presently the aroma of rising incense mingled itself with the scent of the strewn rose-petals,—the pages had replenished the incense-burner, and now, these duties done so far, they brought each a broad, long ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the weather was of that voluptuous vernal kind which calls forth all the latent romance of a man's temperament, filling his mind with music, and disposing him to quote poetry and dream of beauty. In wandering through the magnificent saloons and ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... asserts to be "the darling idol of the English." There are delicious languors, Neapolitan reposes, Creole siestas, "long days and solid banks of flowers." But it is the birthright of the man of the temperate zones to alternate these voluptuous delights with more heroic ones, and sweeten the reverie by the toil. So far as they go, the enjoyments of the healthy body are as innocent and as ardent as those of the soul. As there is no ground of comparison, so there is no ground of antagonism. How compare a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... the mind be wise, Gravina, With me haste to the tranquil haunts of Baiae, Haunts that pleasure hath made her home, and she who Sways all hearts, the voluptuous Aphrodite. Here wine rules, and the dance, and games and laughter; Graces reign in a round of mirthful madness; Love hath built, and desire, a palace here too, Where glad youths and enamoured girls on all sides Play and ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... deified creature, thus preventing the direct intercourse of the soul with the gospel and with him who fills the gospel. And then, M. Renan's book at bottom flattered all the bad contemporaneous instincts; it made the apotheosis of that melancholy and voluptuous skepticism which covers up with a certain distinction and a certain charm the most positive materialism; it flattered our languid wills, substituted the worship of the beautiful for the worship of the holy, and authorized, by ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... unable, indeed, to awaken into any feeling of Sabbatical straitness. The morning was delicious,—such a morning as never visits any place except an island; a bright, sparkling morning, with the exhilaration of the air softened by the sea. What a day it was for idleness, for voluptuous rest, after the flight by day and night from St. John! It was enough, now that the morning was fully opened and advancing to the splendor of noon, to sit upon the upper balcony, looking upon the Bras d'Or and the peaceful hills beyond, reposeful and yet sparkling ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... hotel, post-lunch coffee was merging into afternoon tea. The number of idle persons in the world, and the number of busy persons who ministered to them, and the number of artistic persons who played voluptuous music to their idleness, struck Mr. Prohack as merely prodigious. He had not dreamed that idleness on so grandiose a scale flourished in the city which to him had always been a city of hard work and limited meal-hours. He saw that he had a great deal to learn before he ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... word, which so much offends their hearing. And if it imply any chief pleasure or exceeding contentments, it is rather due to the assistance of vertue, than to any other supply, voluptuousnes being more strong, sinnowie, sturdie, and manly, is but more seriously voluptuous. And we should give it the name of pleasure, more favorable, sweeter, and more naturall; and not terme it vigor, from which it hath his denomination. Should this baser sensuality deserve this faire name, it should be by competencie, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... time! Beat out thy last voluptuous beat Of hope and fear, my heart! I thought the clock I' the chapel struck as I was pushing through The ferns. And so I shall no more see rise My love-star! Oh, no matter for the past! So much the more delicious task ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... seemed clothed in a halo of light and colour, every fold of her dress radiating the most delicate tones. Yet there was nothing voluptuous or sensual about it. I was raised above earthly things. Men and women were no longer men and women—they were brilliant creatures of whom I was one. It was sensuous, but not sensual. I looked at my own clothes. ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... leaves, showed the blanched look of her skin and the fine lines chiselled by tears around her eyes. Encircling her mouth, which Gay had once described as looking "as though it would melt if you kissed it," there was now a heavy blue shadow which detracted from the beauty of her still red and voluptuous lips. In many ways she was finer, larger, nobler than when he had first met her—for experience, which had blighted her physical loveliness, appeared, also, to have increased the dignity and quietness of her ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... possessed by it, and this is why the people of Brittany are so chaste a race. Their lively imagination creates an aerial world which satisfies their aspirations. The true poetry of such a love as this is the sonnet on spring in the Song of Solomon, which is far more voluptuous than it is passionate. "Hiems transiit; imber abiit et recessit.... Vox turturis audita est in terra nostra.... ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... every variety of nation, drawn together by the vilest passions, commanded by some reckless adventurer, and paying a species of allegiance to any power that either endangered them, or afforded them the hopes of plunder. Bloodthirsty and voluptuous alike, they were viewed with equal terror by the Frank pilgrim, the Syriac villager, the Armenian merchant, and the Saracen hadji—whose ransom and whose spoil enriched their chambers, with all that the licentious tastes of ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as a Sphinx, after the Greek rather than the Egyptian conception. A voluptuous, soft, round, feline body, graceful, cruel paws, a wonderful bosom as if hewn out of marble, and above it all Pilar's regally poised head with its crown of shimmering gold hair, shrewd eyes, and blood-red vampire ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... divine fruit Fragrant berries Rich, royal berry Voluptuous berry The precious berry The healthful bean The Heavenly berry The marvelous berry This all-healing berry Yemen's fragrant berry The little aromatic berry Little brown Arabian berry Thought-inspiring bean of Arabia The smoking, ardent beans Aleppo sends That wild fruit ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... (where the essence of mediaeval England lingered) and came to the threshold of the conservatory. It was a scene confusedly beautiful. The air, as it touched his face, was tropically warm and indolent with voluptuous fragrance of flowers and plants. Luxuriant shrubs, with broad-drooping leaves, stood motionless in the heat. Two palm-trees uplifted their heavy plumes forty feet aloft, on slender stalks, brushing the high glass roof. In the midst of the conservatory ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... eyes shining, her cheeks white, her bruised lips a vivid red; she was tired, indifferent, mute, happy and lovely, seeming to guard beneath her cloak, which she held wrapped about her with both hands, some remnant of warmth and voluptuous pleasure. ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... we did not watch Him like the Pharisees, nor circumvent Him like the Scribes and lawyers; by what possible sophistry can we be involved in the complicity of that guilt? The savage of New Zealand who never heard of Him, the learned Egyptian and the voluptuous Assyrian who died before He came; how was it the ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... runs and trills and joyous little cadenzas that were to follow. A sudden shower of jewels it seemed like, and when the last drops had fallen the bird began another song, a continuation of the first, but more voluptuous and intense; and then, as if he felt that he had set the theme sufficiently, he started away into new trills and shakes and runs, piling cadenza upon cadenza till the theme seemed lost, but the ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... wild Oriental dream? Could it all be real—the glittering fires, the gayly-costumed crowds, the illuminated barge, the voluptuous strains of music? Might it not be some gorgeous freak of the emperor, such as the sultan in the Arabian Nights enjoyed at the expense of the poor traveler? Surely there could be nothing real like it since the days of ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... All the women have their skirts honeycombed with capacious pockets, in which they carry substantial lunches to eat while Isolde is deceiving King Mark. Why, the very principle of German music is based on a theory of well-fed auditors. The voluptuous scores of Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, Max Schillings and Co. were not written for skinny, ill-nourished wights. Even Beethoven demands flesh and bone of his hearers. The music of Bach is directly aimed against the doctrine of asceticism. "The German capacity ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... fame, pleasure and wealth, and the love of these is the strong passion of the heart. But it is the most prolific source of individual, social and public misfortune, the most mischievous, contentious and demoralizing passion. The ambitious, the voluptuous, the rich and the great are not necessarily happy. Alexander wept upon the throne of the world because there was not another ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... a summer day, before he plunges into the glittering green water. A few more days, another meeting, and she knew that she would be immersed—deeply in love. Now she toyed with it, held the moment at arm's length, and let her eyes feast on the seeming voluptuous certainty of it. And when Mr. Arthur began the long preface to the point towards which his mind was set, it sounded distant, aloof, as the monotonous voice of a priest, chanting dull prayers in an empty church, must sound in the ears of one whose whole ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston |
