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Allurement

noun
1.
Attractiveness.
2.
The power to entice or attract through personal charm.  Synonyms: allure, temptingness.
3.
The act of enticing a person to do something wrong (as an offer of sex in return for money).  Synonym: solicitation.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Allurement" Quotes from Famous Books



... variety of ambush which brings this method of hunting to considerable perfection lies in inciting the prey to approach the hiding-place instead of trusting to chance to bring it there. In such circumstances Man places some allurement in the neighbourhood—that is to say, one of the foods preferred by the desired victim, or at least some object which recalls the form of that food, as, for example, an artificial fly to obtain ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... republican virtue. Pride gave place to vanity, true liberty to titles of Honor, a needy independence to a luxurious servitude. To oppress or to plunder their native land as the absolute satraps of an absolute lord was a more powerful allurement for the avarice and ambition of the great, than in the general assembly of the state to share with the monarch a hundredth part of the supreme power. A large portion, moreover, of the nobility were deeply sunk in poverty and debt. Charles V. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... intercepting each other on her face on which hollows and protuberances abounded, imparted to it that suggestion of libertinism which the painter of love scenes gives to the rough sketch of his mistress. Everything about her,—her mouth, her eyes, her very plainness—was instinct with allurement and solicitation. Her person exhaled an aphrodisiac charm, which challenged and laid fast hold of the other sex. It unloosed desire, and caused an electric shock. Sensual thoughts were naturally and involuntarily aroused by her, by her gestures, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... London house should be prepared for him and his bride. He might travel,—not, however, going very far afield. He might get into Parliament; as to which, if such were his ambition, his uncle would give him every aid. He might have his friends at Scroope Manor,—Carnaby and all the rest of them. Every allurement was offered to him. But he had commenced by claiming a year of grace, and to ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope

... sweet remembrance brings Of better days-two-score of years gone by, Days when his mother, rapping softly thus, Called him to morning prayer. Again 't is heard. Is it a dream? Asleep! He cannot sleep With chains around and shameful death before him! Is it the false allurement of some foe Who would with such enticement draw him forth To meet destruction ere the appointed time? Softened and calmed, each angry passion lulled, By a soft voice, "Come in," he trembling calls. Slow on its hinges turns ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... Priscilla and she had found it. Then it had been lovely with narcissus and violets; now golden rod had kindled its fairy torches in the corners and asters dotted it bluely. The call of the brook came up through the woods from the valley of birches with all its old allurement; the mellow air was full of the purr of the sea; beyond were fields rimmed by fences bleached silvery gray in the suns of many summers, and long hills scarfed with the shadows of autumnal clouds; with the blowing of the west ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... pro and con, reason why; secret motive, arriere pensee [Fr.]; intention &c 620. inducement, consideration; attraction; loadstone; magnet, magnetism, magnetic force; allectation^, allective^; temptation, enticement, agacerie^, allurement, witchery; bewitchment, bewitchery; charm; spell &c 993; fascination, blandishment, cajolery; seduction, seducement; honeyed words, voice of the tempter, song of the Sirens forbidden fruit, golden apple. persuasibility^, persuasibleness^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... his search was in that very church in which he was praying for guidance; and, aided by unseen powers, he was able to recover it and convey it to Amalfi. All Italian towns that respect themselves offer the allurement of an entombed saint and if, occasionally, the same identical saint does duty for more than one city, who is to decide the local genuineness of the claim? Nothing in all Italy is so curious as is this town of staircases instead of streets; of houses perched on the angles ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... horses. On every hand might be seen the optical illusions of the plain. Beautiful lakes, placid and blue, forests and white-capped mountains, invited the horsemen to turn aside and rest. But the allurement of the mirage was an old story, and holding the objects in view, they jogged on, halting from time to ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams

... a minute of wonder, admiration, allurement, but at last he ventured to lift the diamond from the box. It was perfect, so far as he could see; perfect in cutting and color and depth, prismatic, radiant, bewilderingly gorgeous. Its value? Even he could not offer an opinion—only the appraisement of his expert would be worth ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle

... smell of fruit and wood fires and damp earth; there was a veil of magic over the whole landscape and, far off, the shining line of the channel seemed to be washing the feet of the blue hills. The country had the charm of home with the allurement of the unknown and, within sound of the steamers hooting in the river, almost within sight of the city lying, red-roofed and smoky with factories, round the docks and mounting in terraces to the heights ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG

... his love-affairs than for other things. It was no longer a question of self-respect with him, so that he only paid what he thought them worth. And yet such things had been his one allurement as a young man. He had, however, always been cool and methodical, even in his love-affairs. He had wanted, in a lordly way, to test for himself what the love of the woman who was the most in vogue ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt

... plays the introductory symphony and then pauses. Then she sings, he accompanying her. In a moment or two, the song comes back to her readily and she gives it with great witchery and allurement. JEYES starts up and goes to the window in the wall on the right and ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero

... background of desert, and a pale blue sky closed all. There was Egypt even as the Pharaohs, their engineers and architects, had seen it—land to cultivate, folk and cattle for the work, and outside that work no distraction nor allurement of any kind whatever, save when the dead were taken to their place beyond the limits of cultivation. When the banks grew lower, one looked across as much as two miles of green-stuff packed like a toy Noah's-ark with people, camels, sheep, goats, oxen, buffaloes, and an occasional horse. ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... on each side, out to the open part of the hall. There directly in front they encountered Captain Vane Thesel, with Helen Wrapp on his arm. Her red hair, her green eyes, and carmined lips, the white of her voluptuous neck and arms, united in a singular effect of allurement that Lane felt with scorn ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... of labor was a slavish life. All she did, and all she left undone, she looked at with sad-hearted reference to the great object of her life. Far away she put all allurement to tempting, youthful joy. What had she to do with merriment and jollity, while a sin remained unexpiated, or a moment of her father's suffering and sorrow ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... summer palpitated through the dusk, fanning the ardor in her heart. She ran forward, drawn by its allurement; then, all at once, she stopped, her hand flying to her heart, her breath suspended in a little cry of surprise. Blake had slipped unheard into the appartement, and was ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... The allurement which the unsettled lands of the Southwest had for the young men of the early part of the last century lay largely in the appeal of excitement and adventure, with a large possibility of worldly gain as well. The men of the South who drifted down the old River Road across Mississippi ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough

... after the sun is up, and from a couple of hours after mid-day until the mountain-shadows strike the water in the evening, are the best times to troll for bass. If so minded, they will rise to a fly at such times in the rapids; but no allurement excepting the troll will bring them to the surface in still water. When the river is rising, or the water is clouded with mud or drift, bass scorn all surface-diet; but the live minnow or crawfish, hellgramite or fish-worm, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... of the silvery Thames, green-wooded and sunny, proved too strong an allurement to resist. Jack did not know that Destiny, watchful of opportunity, had taken this beguiling shape to lead him to a turning-point of his life—to steer him into the thick of troubled and restless waters, of gray clouds and threatening storms. He discarded his paint-smeared blouse—he ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon

... again, he felt no longer any desire to go with Archy. He had successfully resisted the temptation, and the allurement was gone. But even for listening to temptation he had some small punishment, for he was late to school by nearly ten minutes, and had not his lessons as perfect as usual, for which the teacher felt called upon to reprimand him. But this ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth

... of sugar plums, comfits, and other kinds of confectionery, especially those sweetmeats of inferior quality, frequently exposed to sale in the open streets, for the allurement of children, the grossest abuses are committed. The white comfits, called sugar pease, are chiefly composed of a mixture of sugar, starch, and Cornish clay (a species of very white pipe-clay;) and ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum

... Deadwood, but not many good roads. The scenery, not the pavement, is the allurement; and in the morning, the young couple took a short drive to learn the trails. They had not gone a mile when they were brought to a standstill by a lumber wagon stuck in the middle of the narrow road and quite immovable. It was not the weight of the ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... their riding-boots with silver-mounted whips, and spitting superbly, as became men whose special province it was to order the lords of gold about like dogs. Merchants and pedlars, as many as could get permission from the sons of Musa, spread out their wares on the floor of the hall, and smiled allurement on the visitors. The servants of Cook and other Powers of Europe and America strutted about and gave command ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall

... vision and he keeps true to it. Regulus did not go back to Carthage to be tortured to death for the pleasure of it, or to avoid the greater pain of an uneasy conscience; he went in spite of foreseen pain and the allurement of possible pleasure. When a man endures privations for the sake of posthumous fame, it is not that he expects to enjoy that fame when it comes, or expects others to enjoy it; he is simply so made that he cannot resist the sway of that ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... and the Crown Prince of Austria, with many another high-placed friend, plead with Milan not to commit such a folly. He was driven to distraction between such powerful appeals and the allurement of the siren who had him so effectually under her spell, until in his despair he entertained serious thoughts of suicide as escape from his dilemma. Meanwhile, we are told, "a perfect hell" raged in the castle; each day brought its scandalous scene between his outraged Queen and ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... bond and oath of engagement which had been entered into by Huntly, Athole, the Earl of Seaforth, and other leading Highland chiefs, by which they had pledged themselves on oath to join firmly and faithfully together, and "neither for fear, threatening, allurement, nor advantage, to relinquish the cause of religion, of the king, and of the kingdom, nor to lay down their arms without a general consent; and as the best undertakings did not escape censure and malice, ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... are they never openly referred to," continued the maiden, who in spite of the declared no allurement of the subject did not seem disposed to abandon it at once, "but among the most select they are, by unspoken agreement, regarded as 'having no actual existence,' as you yourself ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... "Had he a home?" He had, indeed, a home, where all that was good and pure was daily practised—loving, warm-hearted sisters, and a fond trusting mother had not the power to drag him back from the tempting gulf of dissipation and allurement. But we will not say that their prayers were lost. There was yet a small, still voice, that would intrude itself upon the young man, and despite his attempts to silence it forever, would steal upon him in the silent hour of midnight, and haunt him in the noisy abodes of revelry and carousal. ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... whom—he having no idea whatever of its provoking cause—it produced the effect that might have been anticipated. Any young lady who wishes to enslave a young man will really do better work by showing an interest in himself than by any amount of fascination and allurement, on the lines of Greuze. We are by no means sure that it is safe to reveal this secret, so do not let it go any farther. Young women are formidable enough, as it is, without getting tips from the camp of ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... physical aspect of either path. The journey had become interminable. The unspeakable monotony, whose only variant was peril, had smothered the spark of hope and interest. The allurement of mystery had wholly ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... natural curve of the shell from which it was cut being preserved. A piece of bone was securely fastened to it by means of some pig's hair, but there was no bait, and it seems that the glitter of the mother-of-pearl alone serves as a sufficient allurement to the fish. ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... which both sexes are the advocates, and yours eminently the victims. If I could foresee that Theo. would become a mere fashionable woman, with all the attendant frivolity and vacuity of mind, adorned with whatever grace and allurement, I would earnestly pray God to take her forthwith hence. But I yet hope, by her, to convince the world what neither sex appear ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... the slaves gave small favor to the young posturer, although the patronage she received from the house enabled her to meet their disapprobation defiantly; while to the younger portion, in the vague sense that there was something wrong about it, her dance became surrounded by all the attraction and allurement of seeing life. It was not that the frowning ones did not go through many of the same motions themselves; but theirs were occasioned by the frenzy of the religious excitement, where pious rapture and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... now, however, of escaping altogether, for he cannot resist the allurement of rubbing, by which, as well as by chemical action and other means, we can summon him, like the genii of Aladdin's lamp, at any moment, from the "vasty deep," and compel him ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne

... from its frame and cast it into the fire, thus burning her for her witchcraft. I watched the flames leap and curl. The last look she gave me before they licked away her face had its infinite allurement, its devilish sorcery so intensified in the fierce yellow light, that the yearning for her clutched me by the throat and shook me through all ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... Great Britain, his hated rival, scorning the terms he had offered, disdaining the continental blockade, anchored in her strength by the control of Western seas, was vulnerable in India, and there alone. These considerations returned with overpowering allurement to his imagination, and four millions of francs were appropriated to improve the harbor and restore ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... benefit to Gerald Griffin. His knowledge of books and authors was limited to the extent of his mother's library, and it contained, among other choice works, the writings of the inimitable author to whose graceful allurement Washington Irving owed half his fame and all the classic sweetness of his fascinating style. He copied out whole chapters of the "Vicar of Wakefield," and rarely went out of doors without bringing for a companion a copy of ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... had acquired that subtilest, indefinable fascination which belongs only to imaginative reminiscence. In the future, I suppose, all this existence will have become such a childhood, its earth changed to sky, its dulness sharpened to a tender, delicious poignancy of allurement and suggestion. And were it not bliss enough for an immortality, this boundless deepening and refining of experience through memory and imagination? Only to feel thrilling in one's being chords of connection with times immeasurably ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... from his bosom a letter from his mistress, and loses himself in delightful reverie, thus I shut myself up in solitude and yielded to the sweet allurement of doubt. Before me, were the two empty seats which Brigitte and Smith had just occupied; I scrutinized them eagerly as though they could tell me something. I revolved in my mind all the things I had heard and seen; from time to time, I went to the door ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... and if the pastor who thinks that he has no field or who is getting a bit weary or professional in the routine ministry to unromantic middle life could but behold within his parish, however small, this very essence of vital reality, this allurement of unbounded possibility, this challenge of a lively paganism, and this greatest single opportunity to bring in the Kingdom of God, he would, in the very discovery of the boy and his significance, re-create himself into a more useful, happy, and genuine man. Is it not better to find new values ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben

... clear perception that the two views are quite distinct, that the colors and sounds and other characteristics of the male are not an appeal to any esthetic sense of the female, but an appeal to her sexual emotions, a stimulus to sexual excitement, an allurement to sexual contact. According to the first theory, the female admires beauty, consciously or unconsciously, and selects the most beautiful partner[22]; according to the second theory, there is no esthetic question involved, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... remembrance, nor a sigh, nor even a grave! Again, contemplate, honorable Mexicans, the lot of peaceful and industrious citizens in all classes of your country. The possessions of the Church menaced and presented as an allurement to revolution and anarchy; the fortunes of rich proprietors pointed out for plunder of armed ruffians; and merchants and the mechanic, the husbandman and the manufacturer, burdened with contributions, excises, monopolies, duties on consumption, surrounded by officers and collectors of these ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright

... whole criminal performance to apprehend its spiritual experiences. I understood all, and especially what he unwittingly betrayed even now; that deep thirst for the dramatic element in one's own life, which, when social conformity fails to supply it, becomes, to an eager soul, sin's cunningest allurement. ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable

... couch, walking softly, with a faint wonder as to why she had sent for him. She lay with long lashes sweeping her cheeks and her warm lips parted, in the careless abandon of a child, infinitely graceful, full of allurement. The thought entered his mind that it was a pose, a piece of pretty trickery. He bent down until his lips all but touched her cheek and the perfume of her hair rose to him, so that had she been feigning she must have given sign, or ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... important and the most sacred event in a woman's life is her marriage. It should never be lightly considered, no matter what may be the allurement—honor, wealth, social position. To play at marriage, even for a plausible pretext, is likely to be very imprudent, and may prove a sin against both God ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... gracious spell A fond allurement weaves; Her low refrain the moaning tempest swells, And thrills ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... powers of reasoning, and that natural uprightness and purity which no sophistry can warp, and no allurement betray, are farther displayed in ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... the importance of the eternal detail. From Connie he had gathered that the feminine mind tended naturally toward a material philosophy—toward a deification of the body, a faith in the fugitive allurement of the senses, and because of his earlier initiation he had taken Laura's intellectual radiance as the shining of a virtually disembodied spirit. His own senses had led him, he recognised now, to disastrous issues; ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... direction, to exalt or degrade him. He has not become rigid as he will under Puritanism. He is not uncrowned as in the Restoration." He has entered like a young man into all the lusty experiences of life, every allurement is known, the sweetness and novelty of things are strong with him. He plunges into all sensations. "Such were the men of this time, Raleigh, Essex, Elizabeth, Henry VIII himself, excessive and inconstant, ready for devotion and for crime, violent in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... their own particular acquaintance. Barren as this age may be in the growth of honour and virtue, the country does not want, at this moment, as strong, and those not a few, examples as were ever known, of an unshaken adherence to principle, and attachment to connexion, against every allurement of interest. Those examples are not furnished by the great alone; nor by those, whose activity in public affairs may render it suspected that they make such a character one of the rounds in their ladder of ambition; but by men more quiet, and more in ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... give ourselves no further trouble about him, but if he should stay here without being willing to undergo a course of cure, we shall at once expel him from our state with the order not to return.'[38] Words could not be plainer than these. Yet, in spite of them, such was the allurement of the cage for this clipped singing-bird, that Tasso went obediently back to Ferrara. Possibly he had not read the letter written by a greater poet on a similar occasion: 'This is not the way of coming home, my father! Yet if you or others find one not beneath ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... did not pull against his passion for Nedda, they both tugged at him. And this had one curious psychological effect. It made his love for Nedda more actual, less of an idealization. Now that she was close to him, under the same roof, he felt the full allurement of her innocent warmth; he would have been cold-blooded indeed if he had not taken fire, and, his pride always checking the expression of his feelings, they glowed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... was not only entitled, but bound to do.] To his historic sense a place amongst the nobility of his country was attractive, and its stateliness was something which his imagination clothed with more than merely superficial allurement. It was from no selfish feeling and no vanity of personal display, that he conceived the idea of leaving to those who were to come after him an inheritance compatible with that position. It would be unjust to blame Clarendon ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... more radiant in the absence of grief and anxiety, in the fact that she was smiling, and in the allurement of evening dress, that he could not speak. She, too, breathed a little quickly, and there was a light of daring in her eyes and cheeks as ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... ashamed—and goes to seek Gnorimus the music-master. The master is surprised to see him—as Phil. has heretofore distinguished himself by inveighing against music as a "corrupter of good manners, and an allurement to vices." Phil.'s experience of the supper-party has so far changed his views that he wishes as soon as may be to change his character of Stoic for that of Pythagorean. Thereupon the master begins to teach him from the very beginning, "as though ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor

... certain space in my garden, lest, when you first ran alone, you might fall and hurt your face on the pebbles. But the snares now spread beneath your steps are far more dangerous. They are strengthened by seductive appearances, and the ardor of youth would hurry you forward to the allurement; but that my watchful care, and the confidence you repose in me, serve to counteract the influence of this twofold power. Your bark is gliding near a rapid current; but your mother stands on the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... dancing on every green, and straying of couples amongst the greenery of the summer night; and in short the god of love was busy in the land, and made the eyes seem bright, and the lips sweet, and the bosom fair, and the arms sleek and the feet trim: so that every hour was full of allurement; and ever the nigher that war and peril was, the more delight had man and maid of ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... invitingly. There was an allurement about this all-pervasive name; it held her by a growing fascination and she was anxious for the older woman to amplify. Miss Smith, however, remained provokingly silent, so Miss ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... taught to govern, but a wit was an animal for whom no arts of taming had been yet discovered: the woman whom he could once get within his power, was considered as lost to all hope of dominion or of quiet: for he would detect artifice and defeat allurement; and if once he discovered any failure of conduct, would believe his own eyes, in defiance of tears, caresses, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... keystone; the why and the wherefore; pro and con, reason why; secret motive, arriere pensee[Fr]; intention &c. 620. inducement, consideration; attraction; loadstone; magnet, magnetism, magnetic force; allectation|, allective|; temptation, enticement, agacerie[obs3], allurement, witchery; bewitchment, bewitchery; charm; spell &c. 993; fascination, blandishment, cajolery; seduction, seducement; honeyed words, voice of the tempter, song of the Sirens forbidden fruit, golden apple. persuasibility[obs3], persuasibleness[obs3]; attractability[obs3]; impressibility, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... difficulty in the way of Madame Goesler's dinner-parties which had required some patience and great ingenuity in its management. She must either have ladies, or she must not have them. There was a great allurement in the latter alternative; but she knew well that if she gave way to it, all prospect of general society would for her be closed,—and for ever. This had been in the early days of her widowhood in Park Lane. She cared but little for ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... would not be tried,—since to try it is to be mad,—but for the circumstance, that when the disease began in the will, of rebellion and separation, the intellect is at once infected, so that the man ceases to see God whole in each object, but is able to see the sensual allurement of an object, and not see the sensual hurt; he sees the mermaid's head, but not the dragon's tail; and thinks he can cut off that which he would have, from that which he would not have. "How secret art thou who dwellest in the highest ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... undesirable secrecy, but you build normally on modesty; you lay foundations for a true sense of shame, disgust, and disgrace; and in doing so, set up one of the strong defenses against perversions and prurient allurement and seduction. ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various

... as she passed the needle in and out through the bit of snowy linen stretched upon the tiny embroidery-ring. She had fine eyes, he admitted; eyes with the little downward curve in brow and lid at the outer corners—the curve of allurement, he had heard it called. Also, her hands were shapely and pretty. He recalled the saying that a woman may keep her age out of her face, but her hands will betray her. Mrs. Honoria's hands were still young; they looked almost as young as Patricia's, he decided. ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... suddenly, her mouth slightly open. She gave him a sidelong glance of wonder, interest, and speculation. Then she threw her head slightly back, and all the curls gathered in a bunch and shook like bronze flowers. It was a head of grace and power, of charm and allurement—of danger. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the dance-hall and the glitter and the shine, The beauty, and the jewels, and the whirl, The madness of the music, the rapture of the wine, The languorous allurement of a girl! She is like a lost madonna; he is gaunt, unkempt and grim; But she fondles him and gazes in his eyes; Her kisses seek his heavy lips, and soon it seems to him He has staked a little claim ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service

... have sacrificed any other for him. She tried it upon Dom Ferdinand and the Marquis de Casablanca. They struggled, because they wished to make an impression upon the two girls in the house; but they could not hold out against the allurement of the primitive woman in Lady Dauntrey, and though they paid the girls compliments and went about with them docilely, they looked at Eve. And the girls saw not only the looks, but the weapons which Lady Dauntrey used to win the men for herself, when she ought to have ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... places to ride through and leave behind; for their purring slumberous beauty is vaguely suggestive of the beauty of a sleeping tiger: a sleeping tiger with deadly fangs and talons hidden under a wonder of soft allurement; and when exiles in the towns sit and dream their dreams are all of stretches of scorched ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... Steevens, in a note on the "Comedy of Errors," act ii. sc. 1, has collected a number of quotations to show the meaning of the word stale, and to them the reader is referred. In this place it signifies a false allurement, bait, or deception on the part ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... swing and dash and freedom of it all! The perfect trust, each in the other. The absence of all coquetry and allurement, of all pretence or sham. Just chums, good fellows, born comrades; joining in the same laugh, stilled by the same thoughts; absorbed in the same incidents, no matter how trivial: the hiving of a swarm ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith

... a wooden two story building, occupied an unkempt lot some distance back from the river and near a group of high sand dunes which possessed a sinister allurement to me. They had a mysterious desert quality, a flavor as of camels and Arabs. Once you got over behind them it seemed as if you were in another world, a far-off arid land where no water ran and ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... Seville or Malaga, I do not know which, and with the usual company of freight-cars idling about, empty or laden with sheets of cork, as indifferent to them as if they were so much mere pine or spruce lumber. There is a sufficiently attractive hotel here for transients, and as an allurement to the marine and military leisure of Gibraltar, "The Picnic Restaurant," and "The Cabin Tea Room," where no doubt there is something to be had beside sandwiches and tea. Here also is the pier for the Gibraltar boats, with the Spanish custom-house which their ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... reminded him of Aminta Farrell's very eyes under the couchant-dove brows—something of her mouth, the dimple running from a corner. She had, as Aminta had, the self-collected and self-cancelled look, a realm in a look, that was neither depth nor fervour, nor a bestowal, nor an allurement; nor was it an exposure, though there seemed no reserve. One would be near the meaning in declaring it to bewilder men with the riddle of openhandedness. We read it—all may read it—as we read inexplicable ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... were riding as hard from other directions to win the woman who belonged to an absent husband, win her and run away with her if he could. It was the culmination of a year of extravagances, the last cry in sensations, and the telephone wires had been hot with daring, wild allurement, and mad threat in several directions ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... despite every care he might take, he, too, would fall. He was tired of being shot down. Purvy was growing old, and the fires of war were burning to embers in his veins. He was becoming more and more interested in other things. It dawned upon him that to be known as a friend of the poor held more allurement for gray-haired age than to be known as a master of assassins. It would be pleasant to sit undisturbed, and see his grandchildren grow up, and he recognized, with a sudden ferocity of repugnance, that he did not wish them to grow up as feud fighters. Purvy had ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... Gontier, and reiterated to any one that would listen to him, the scruples which forbade him ever to think of marriage? To change this decision, in asking for the hand of Mademoiselle de Vermont, would-in appearance, at least—sacrifice to the allurement of wealth the proud poverty which he had long ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... furnished examples of individuals who have been distinguished from their contemporaries by actions of Heroism: but to find a similar instance of a whole body of men, thus repelling every allurement of protection and preferment, of home, country, friends, fortune, possessions, for the still calls of piety, and private dictates of conscience, precedent may be defied, and the annals of ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney

... attitude before me, her beauty shining with almost a statuesque splendor in the glow of the porcelain-shaded lamp at her side. Nor, though she presently roused herself, leading the way into the drawing-room with a gesture that was allurement itself, did she recur to this topic again; but rather seemed to strive, in the conversation that followed, to make me forget what had already passed between us. That she did not succeed, was owing to my intense and unfailing interest in ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green

... perhaps think from the conversation that you heard the other night, that Sally now will cease all thought of coquettish allurement in her acquaintance with Moses, and cause him to see by an immediate and marked change her entire indifference. Probably, as she stands thoughtfully before her mirror, she is meditating on the propriety ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... This does not mean that the stories must be about paragons of virtue; the villains of fiction and history have their value in teaching life and character, and we need not fear that they will contaminate the minds of the young, for in most children the instincts may be relied upon to reject the allurement of the base character. But fiction that is false in its sentiment, that does not present truthful pictures of life, is likely to give perverted ideas of human relations and false standards of value. City children who have access to the theatre ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... these holy places they flock in great numbers on certain festivals, when the lonely spots, often hill-tops, surrounded by the most wild and romantic scenery, witness devotions and festivities, to which the revels form the chief allurement. ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... notice in the first place that evil curiosity which stimulates young persons to intrude into things of which it is their blessedness to be ignorant. Satan gains our souls step by step; and his first allurement is the knowledge of what is wrong. He first tempts them to the knowledge, and then to the commission of sin. Depend on it that our happiness and our glory, in these matters, is to be ignorant, as well as to be guiltless. St. Paul says that ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... that it may not be unheard where he meant it. He hath salves for every sore, to hide them, not to heal them; complexion for every face; sin hath not any more artificial broker or more impudent bawd. There is no vice that hath not from him his colour, his allurement; and his best service is either to further guiltiness or smother it. If he grant evil things inexpedient or crimes errors, he hath yielded much; either thy estate gives privilege of liberty or thy youth; or if neither, what if it be ill? yet it is pleasant. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... Carr came into her reception-room that afternoon, gowned for conquest, she expected only Philip, and him penitent. She came hurrying toward him, smiling, radiant, ready to use every allurement she possessed, and paused in dismay when she saw his cold face and his father. "Why, Phil!" she cried. "When ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter

... They are full of life, intelligence, sympathy; they have fascination of manner, winsomeness of mood, grace of bearing. We see this in his best-known work—the Mona Lisa of the Louvre. It has much allurement of personal presence, with a depth and abundance of ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... allurement. To the actively inclined among us it seemed always possible, and daring, busy brains were indefatigable in concocting schemes for it. The only bit of Rebel brain work that I ever saw for which I did not feel contempt was the perfect precautions taken to prevent our escape. ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... into a sort of spiritual element, that is meagre, and imperceptible, and wholly uninviting to the eye of mortals here below; where every vestige of materialism is done away with, and nothing left but certain unearthly scenes that have no power of allurement, and certain unearthly ecstasies with which it is impossible to sympathise," The sensitiveness with which many thus shrink from almost alluding to the physical element of enjoyment in heaven, because it is unworthy to be compared with the spiritual glory that is to be revealed, arises, ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod

... nobility. I came to stay, my lord, to be his wife, His serving-maid, his mistress,—what he would; I told him that I loved him beyond men; I pleaded and entreated him, in vain, To keep and hold me evermore. No word Could move him, no allurement charm; he bade Me wait the dawn and then return to you, To beg you with humility for grace, And pardon for my utter want of truth, Complete forgetfulness of womanhood, And wifely loyalty. My lord, Sir Torm, I promised ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask

... appealing. He has just taken his pipe from his lips, momentarily diverted by the presence of an alert lizard his melody has attracted. The lizard is here hidden in the leafage. The arch amusement of the whole figure, the mischievous, boyish smile upon his face, have allurement, just lifted from the normal by the quaint suggestion of small horns still in velvet. Here in his youth is the wholesome, simple, poetic Pan of the earlier myths, he who grew into the "Great God Pan," rather than the hero of the more subtle and diversified later legends. ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry

... remained to be added. This maneuvering business was very fatiguing to me. I proposed it to Philidor, offering him at the same time a part of the profits. He came twice, and did something to the middle parts in the act of Ovid; but he could not confine himself to an assiduous application by the allurement of advantages which were distant and uncertain. He did not come a third time, and I finished the ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... only province of woman, at present, they might easily guard against exterior graces, and quickly learn to despise the sensibility that had been excited and hackneyed in the ways of women, whose trade was vice; and allurement's wanton airs. They would recollect that the flame, (one must use appropriate expressions,) which they wished to light up, had been exhausted by lust, and that the sated appetite, losing all relish for pure and simple pleasures, could only be roused by licentious arts of variety. What satisfaction ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... are often used as decoys, and sometimes the bird whistle already described is used for the same purpose. For the capture of the ptarmigan, the bait consists of a heap of gravel. It is hard to imagine a less tempting allurement, but as the food of the birds during the winter is sapless and hard, it becomes necessary for them to swallow a considerable amount of gravel to promote digestion. The great depth of the snow renders this commodity very scarce during the winter season; and the Indians, taking advantage of ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... landscapes offered solace to the street-wearied imagination, but upon these Piers Otway did not fix his eye; it was drawn irresistibly to the faces and forms of beautiful women set forth with varied allurement. Some great lady of the passing time lounged in exquisite array amid luxurious furniture lightly suggested; the faint smile of her flattered loveliness hovered about the gazer; the subtle perfume of her presence touched his nerves; the greys of her complexion transmuted themselves ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... playful theme, when his work was over! And, behold, the dream of so many years was all but realised; the beauty and education of Avdotya Romanovna had impressed him; her helpless position had been a great allurement; in her he had found even more than he dreamed of. Here was a girl of pride, character, virtue, of education and breeding superior to his own (he felt that), and this creature would be slavishly grateful all her life for his heroic condescension, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... to propitiate those Southern expansionists who in the lower South at least formed so large a part of the political machine, who must somehow be lured back into the Union; to whom the Virginia Compromise, as well as every other scheme of readjustment yet suggested, offered no allurement. Like Lincoln defeating the Crittenden Compromise, like the Virginians planning the last compromise, Seward remembered the filibusters and the dreams of the expansionists, annexation of Cuba, annexation of Nicaragua and all the rest, and he looked about for a way ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... independent temper, and the seeming maturity of his mind, supplied another excuse for the imprudent confidence which left him to his own resources. Yet the perils of the situation were great indeed. A youth of less concentrated purpose, more at the mercy of casual allurement, would probably have gone to wreck amid ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... enchanted and limitless garden of silence and of slumber, their horses' feet falling without noise as though upon deep carpets, the bright moon and its few attendant stars working the harsh land of the day over into a soft sweet country of subtle allurement—the picture of all this was to spring up vivid and vital in many an idle hour of the days to follow. Little speech passed between them that night: they rode close together, they forgot the wagon which rocked and jolted along somewhere far behind them; ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... signals! The natives could not have known of the Boy Scout system of warnings, and Hans would certainly have volunteered nothing in the way of allurement. ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson

... Florrie seemed to float with all the elusive, magic loveliness of a sunbeam. From the shining nimbus of her hair to her small tripping feet she was the incarnation of girlhood—of that white and gold girlhood which has intoxicated the imagination of man. She shed the allurement of sex as unconsciously as a flower sheds its perfume. Though her eyes were softly veiled by her lashes, every male clerk in Brandywine & Plummer's was dazzled by the deep blue light of her glances. In her red mouth, with its parted lips, in the pure rose and white of her flesh, in the rich curve ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... music. But I shall always remember the sounds of the distant, approaching or receding, snake- charmers' piping, heard through the heat, as it so often is on Sundays in Calcutta. To my inward ear that is India's typical melody; and it has relationship to the Punch and Judy allurement of our childhood. ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas

... must look like to her husband, this weak recourse to the protection of Augustine's presence; it looked like bashfulness, a further feminine wile, made up of self-deception and allurement, a putting off of final surrender for the greater sweetness of delay. And as the reading of him flashed through her it brought a strange pang of shame, for him; ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... an English robin and he was a PERSON—not a mere bird. An English robin differs greatly from the American one. He is much smaller and quite differently shaped. His body is daintily round and plump, his legs are delicately slender. He is a graceful little patrician with an astonishing allurement of bearing. His eye is large and dark and dewy; he wears a tight little red satin waistcoat on his full round breast and every tilt of his head, every flirt of his wing is instinct with dramatic significance. He is fascinatingly conceited—he burns with curiosity—he ...
— My Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... sound of her lover's mandolin, and sighing at the ardor of his passion; or again, she may be going abroad, with lace mantilla about her shapely head, armed with her fan,—that article of comfort and coquetry, as it has been called,—which is at once a shield and an allurement as wielded by her deft fingers. With the thought of Spain there comes also the snap of the castanets and the flash of bright-colored skirts as they move in time to the tarantella. All in all, it is the poet's ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... to be partakers of the feast. When all was ready, on the appointed day, they were severally summoned by the Messenger who had been sent by the Father; He was even then in their midst. But the cares of riches, the allurement of material things, and the pleasures of social and domestic life had engrossed them; and they prayed to be excused or irreverently declared they could not or would not come. Then the gladsome invitation ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... but thrilled to the droning cry of the shadoof men on the brown banks, as the dripping water jars went up and up, tier after tier above the river level. Not one but felt a strange allurement in the passing scene; the dark mystery of palm groves, whose slender stems were prison bars against the shining sky; the copper glow of the mud-bricks in piled-up villages; the colour of the flowing water, where secret gleams ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... power of this new thought by its effect, saying that it makes me "fix my regard" on a Lady, and speaks to me words of allurement, that is to say, it reasons before the eyes of my intelligent affection, in order the better to induce me, promising me that the sight of her eyes is its salvation. And in order to make this credible to the Soul experienced in love, it says that ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri

... man, soon hurries him onward into those fascinating habitations where vice and voluptuousness mingle their degrading powers. Once in these whirlpools of sin, the young man finds himself borne away by every species of vicious allurement-his feelings become unrestrained, until at length that last spark of filial advice which had hovered round his consciousness dies out. When this is gone, vice becomes the great charmer, and with its thousand snares and resplendent workers ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... straight began: "When my desire invited thee to love The good, which sets a bound to our aspirings, What bar of thwarting foss or linked chain Did meet thee, that thou so should'st quit the hope Of further progress, or what bait of ease Or promise of allurement led thee on Elsewhere, that thou elsewhere should'st ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... was still floating through the passages with a mocking allurement. The tramp of feet and laughter of many voices rose with it. A flicker of irony passed over his drawn face. He straightened his collar with absolute steadiness, and moved away in the direction of ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell

... it, through which the most distant objects appear focused with amazing sharpness. The sun is only pleasantly warm; the jinricksha, or kuruma, is the most cosy little vehicle imaginable; and the street-vistas, as seen above the dancing white mushroom-shaped hat of my sandalled runner, have an allurement of which I fancy ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... not answer. This was a new possibility. Of course his reason for advising my selling was plain enough, but, leaving the Coltons entirely aside, the idea was not without allurement. The town's convenience in the matter of a road might be considered, just as he said. And my scruples against selling at a profit were, after all, based ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln

... are always conscious that the gaze of the spectators is fastened upon them, addressing themselves constantly to them, there reigns in its very essence a mixture of innate tenderness and mutual vanity, as full of delicacy and propriety as of allurement. ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... defeat. Here was the refuge for a broken heart; here the scorn of men would but make tenderness increase; here was all pity and all charity with loving-kindness. It was a delightful picture, conceived in the "come rest on this bosom," and "a ministering angel thou" manner, with touches of allurement that made devotion all the sweeter. He soon found that he had idealized a little; in the affair of young Bennett, while the men were contemptuous the women were virulent. He had been rather fond of Agatha Gervase, and she, so other ladies said, had ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... for the mysterious allurement of George's image was strong enough to make her understand what it might be for Miriam, and she held herself to the bed lest she should be tempted to play the spy; yet, had she brought herself to open her sister's door, she would have ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young

... day-light we resumed our seats near the fire, and C—— C——, seeing how dull I was, was delicately attentive to me. She attempted no allurement, all her movements wore the stamp of the most decent reserve, and her conversation, tender in its expressions and perfectly easy, never conveyed the shadow of a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... asserted that his representations were exaggerated, and that crime amongst the native born population was one half less than in England. The whig Bishop of Norwich sustained the views of Dr. Whately. In reply, the minister stated that they had stripped transportation of its allurement. Some punishment for life was essential; Englishmen would not endure the perpetual imprisonment of human beings, or the sight of felons in their streets working in chains. It was resolved, however, to reduce ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... and with the vote Consenting in full frequence was impowered, 130 Have found him, viewed him, tasted him; but find Far other labour to be undergone Than when I dealt with Adam, first of men, Though Adam by his wife's allurement fell, However to this Man inferior far— If he be Man by mother's side, at least With more than human gifts from Heaven adorned, Perfections absolute, graces divine, And amplitude of mind to greatest deeds. Therefore I am returned, lest confidence 140 Of my success ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton

... me to her social walls, That 'mid the vast Metropolis arise, Where Splendor dazzles, and each Pleasure vies In soft allurement; and each Science calls To philosophic Domes, harmonious Halls, And [1]storied Galleries. With duteous sighs, Filial and kind, and with averted eyes, I meet the gay temptation, as it falls From a seducing pen.—Here—here I stay, Fix'd by Affection's ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... girl, not as he had loved Adele, of course, but quite as humanly. Her mediumship, so vital to the world, so sacred in his eyes, had but added to her allurement. "All that I am, and all I hope to be, is bound up in the possession of that sweet, wonderful child," he said, in acknowledgment of his discovery. In a very subtle way he now apprehended a change in the girl, and, realizing how utterly his aims, his ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... lawless, it creates infidelity, nourishes incontinence; its seeming freedom is but slavery to passion, and this, too, the poet proclaims in Manru's confession that faithfulness is impossible to one to whom each new beauty offers irresistible allurement, and whose heart must ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... repose in agitation There are defeats more triumphant than victories There are some upon whom their rich clothes weep There can be no pleasure to me without communication There is more trouble in keeping money than in getting it There is no allurement like modesty, if it be not rude There is no long, nor short, to things that are no more There is no merchant that always gains There is no reason that has not its contrary There is no recompense becomes virtue There is none ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne

... who, writing of vice, ascribed its influence entirely to the allurement of the fair disguises that it wore, and asserted that it only needed to be seen with the mask off to excite the hatred of all mankind, uttered a very plausible moral sentiment, which wants nothing ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... fifty times Oyez! as the heralds do. The Romans, in their religious exercises, began with 'Hoc age' as we in ours do with 'Sursum corda'; these are so many words lost to me: I come already fully prepared from my chamber. I need no allurement, no invitation, no sauce; I eat the meat raw, so that, instead of whetting my appetite by these preparatives, they tire and pall it. Will the licence of the time excuse my sacrilegious boldness if I censure the dialogism of Plato himself as also dull and heavy, too much stifling the matter, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... over the city. They exhibit themselves splendidly attired and abundantly perfumed, in finely garnished houses, with trains of waiting-women. These women are extremely accomplished in all the arts of allurement, and readily adapt their conversation to all sorts of persons, insomuch that strangers who have once tasted their attractions seem to get bewitched, and are so taken with their blandishments and their fascinating ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... a gloomy canyon. She had eyes, blue in repose, but shading to violet tints when aglow with vivacity; her nose was not perfect, because a trifle tip-tilted, but her face gained character through the defect; her very red lips held most delicious allurement in their slightly full curves. Her hands and feet were small enough to pay tribute to her birth and breeding, but not so small as to be doll-like. She wore a simple, white dress, freshly laundered, which made her look cool ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... were not mythical heroes exalted by the gods above the limitations of nature. They were human beings, with wives and children, or mothers and sisters, whom they desired to see again. They hated this war. Death had no allurement for them, except now and then as an escape from intolerable life under fire. They would have been superhuman if they had not revolted in spirit, though still faithful to discipline, against the foul conditions of warfare in the swamps, where, in spite of ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... So that's it!" And then, as they came to a bench under some trees, "Won't you sit down a while?" There was allurement in her glance, but it made George shudder. It was incredible to him that he had ever been attracted by this crude girl. The ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair

... for his mistress's caprices? Mr. Raleigh proceeded on his walk alone. And what was her husband to him? He did not know that such a man existed. For him there had been no deadly allurement in the fervid scene; it had stretched a land of promise veiled in its azure ardors, with intimations of rapture and certainty of rest. Now, as he wandered on and turned down another lane to the woods, the tints grew deeper; his eyes, bent inward, saw all ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... this young man was, in the palace of splendor, and surrounded by every allurement to voluptuous indulgence, two domestic calamities opened his eyes to the vanity of all earthly grandeur, and led him to enter those paths of piety where his soul found true repose. The death of his ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... explain. They could have smoked in their own rooms as well, and have drunk gin and water there, if they had any real predilection for that mixture. Mrs. Davis was neither young nor beautiful, nor more than ordinarily witty. Charley, it is true, had an allurement to entice him thither, but this could not be said of Scatterall, to whom the lovely Norah was never more than decently civil. Had they been desired, in their own paternal halls, to sit and see their mother's housekeeper darn the family stockings, they would, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... about the Bayswater romance which was not without its allurement, and a portion of the mystery was connected with Madalina's mother. Lady Demolines was very rarely seen, and John Eames could not quite understand what was the manner of life of that unfortunate lady. Her daughter usually spoke of her ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... which opposed her residence at Mr Delvile's, all that belonged to inclination and to happiness encouraged it: while with respect to Mr Briggs, though the objections were lighter, there was not a single allurement. Yet whenever the suspicion recurred to her that Miss Belfield was beloved by young Delvile, she resolved at all events to avoid him; but when better hopes intervened, and represented that his enquiries were probably accidental, the wish of being finally acquainted with his sentiments, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... marsh too; a whole new life to be learned; a complicated, mysterious, dank, slippery, reedy, treacherous life, but with its own beauty and an allurement that could grow on one, so that you could forget the solid world and love only that ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens

... every conquest suggesting many more not yet achieved but brought within range of possibility, old theories of cosmic degeneration and circular futility have gone to pieces, the glamour of antiquity has lost its allurement, the great days of humanity upon the earth have been projected into the future, and the gradual achievement of human progress has ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... seems at cease In the vague void of night-time, And heaven's wide roomage stormless Between the dusk and light-time, And fear at last is formless, We call the allurement Peace. ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... beauty and swear that it is of the kind that drives to distraction. She is fire and flesh and carnal—she is more than beauty. There is allurement about her body; sylph-like, sinuous; the olive tint of her complexion, the wonderful glory of her hair and the glowing night-black of her eyes. Men pause; she is of the superlative kind that robs the reason, a supreme glory ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... of an ancient Celtic religion which did not disdain to employ the humble allurement of human sacrifice. Very little is now known about the Druids and their faith. Pliny says their religion, originating in Britain, spread eastward as far as Persia. Caesar says those who desired to study its mysteries went to Britain. ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... in marriage, because they are angels:—is there then the love of the sex there?" And the angelic spirits replied, "In heaven your love of the sex does not exist; but we have the angelic love of the sex, which is chaste, and devoid all libidinous allurement." Hereupon the novitiates observed, "If there be a love of the sex devoid of all allurement, what in such cases is the love of the sex?" And while they were thinking about this love they sighed, and said, "Oh, how dry and insipid is the ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... to whom strange changes never come. They pursue the even tenor of their way in humdrum monotony, content to tread the broad safe path of routine. For them the fascination of the mountain peaks of giddy chance has no allurement, the swift turbulent waters of intrigue no charm. There are others with whom Dame Fortune plays many an exciting game, and to these adventure becomes as the very breath of life. To such every hazard of new fortune is a diversion to be ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... Mrs. Bretton yet know at whose feet her own young idol had laid his homage? Would she approve that choice? I could not tell; but I could well guess that if she knew Miss Fanshawe's conduct towards Graham: her alternations between coldness and coaxing, and repulse and allurement; if she could at all suspect the pain with which she had tried him; if she could have seen, as I had seen, his fine spirits subdued and harassed, his inferior preferred before him, his subordinate made the instrument of his humiliation—then Mrs. Bretton would have pronounced Ginevra ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... he was not even attempting to make love to her, not even flirting with her. Would any other man she knew have ridden beside her thus after the gentleness she had shown? Was that perhaps the very secret of his attraction? Or was it a physical allurement - the irresistible charm of bigness and strength, independent of anything else, drawing ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... commonest understanding shows that if we imagine, on the one hand, an act of honesty done with steadfast mind, apart from every view to advantage of any kind in this world or another, and even under the greatest temptations of necessity or allurement, and, on the other hand, a similar act which was affected, in however low a degree, by a foreign motive, the former leaves far behind and eclipses the second; it elevates the soul and inspires the wish to be able to act in like manner oneself. Even moderately young children feel this impression, ...
— Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals • Immanuel Kant

... into her eyes, and she was aware that he was trying to draw her nearer to him. There was about him at, that moment a subtle allurement that was hard to resist. Old memories thrilled through her at his touch. For five years she had held herself as belonging to him. Could the spell be broken ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... was her duties as president, and her new task as correspondent, or perhaps it was just the allurement of the beautiful out-of-doors that made it so hard for Genevieve to spend time on her lessons that autumn. Perhaps, too, her lack of enthusiasm for Miss Hart had something to do with it. Whatever it was, to concentrate her attention ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter

... a struggle going on within her. He had proposed the route along the canal because nobody would be likely to recognize them, and her pride resented this. On the other hand, there was the sweet allurement of the adventure she craved, which indeed she had come out to seek and by a strange fatality found—since he had appeared on the bridge almost as soon as she reached it. The sense of fate was strong upon her. Curiosity urged her, and, thanks to the eulogy she had read of him that day, to the added ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... punctualities of the law for an ordinary plea; but no of the right sort of knowledge and talent to take up the case of a forlorn lassie, misled by ill example and a winsome nature, and clothed in the allurement of loveliness, as the judge himself said ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... of rum as a beverage had strong allurement for the white man, it made an absolute slave of the Indian, who never hesitated for a moment to undertake any task, no matter how hard, bear any privation, even the most terrible, or brave any danger, although it might demand reckless ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... erect and strong. But as she was watching, her expression was that of simply listening, without comment or intention to reply—an expression of which she was perfect mistress. Her hazel eyes, set in dark lashes, her sensuous mouth, her pallid skin, smooth and healthy, seemed the climax of allurement to which all the lines of her delightful figure pointed. To another woman it would have been obvious that she was amusing herself by trying to draw him under the spell of physical attraction; a man would have thought her a mere passive listener, perhaps ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... a raised voice, and a glow like fever in her cheeks. All the artless, girlish charm of the performance in happier and better days was gone. The native dramatic capacity that was in her came, hard and bold, to the surface, stripped of every softening allurement which had once adorned it. She would have saddened and disappointed a man with any delicacy of feeling. She absolutely electrified Captain Wragge. He forgot his politeness, he forgot his long words. The ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... port of entry for St. Jago de Leon across the mountains which rose in tree-clad slopes diversified by bold precipices for ten thousand feet back of the palace, and from the commoner sort of women the young captain held himself proudly aloof, while his love safeguarded him from the allurement of the evil and the shameless who flaunted their iniquity in ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... love his country much better than that wherein either he 5 or his forefathers were born. Here the rewards of his industry follow with equal steps the progress of his labor; his labor is founded on the basis of nature, self-interest. Can it want a stronger allurement? ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... almond-shaped brown eyes, a clever, rather mocking mouth, and enormous masses of black hair twisted about her head. She was not pretty but there was a certain charm of interest and mystery in her face, and Rilla found her fascinating. Even her occasional moods of gloom and cynicism had allurement for Rilla. These moods came only when Miss Oliver was tired. At all other times she was a stimulating companion, and the gay set at Ingleside never remembered that she was so much older than themselves. ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... most monstrous falsehoods about him. Nor are they restrained by the consideration that he is their friend; the qualities which have engaged their own admiration make it necessary to warn away those to whom the allurement would be a peril. So the man of charming personality, while loved by all the ladies who know him well, yet not too well, must endure with such fortitude as he may the consciousness that those others who know him only "by reputation" ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce



Words linked to "Allurement" :   invitation, enticement, attraction, temptation, attractiveness



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