"Contour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... covered externally with short reddish brown hair, the greatest part of its skin appearing to have been denuded of this clothing by eruptive blotches, such as I presume disfigure a measly hog. Although incomparably larger, the general contour of its body resembled the figure of a seal; its frame being of the same description, though differently moulded. It was considerably more bulky in proportion to its length, its chest and back more elevated, its fore flippers thicker and more rounded, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... don't know. The academic has its charm. There are moods in which I could imagine myself in love with an academic person. That regularity of line; that reasoned strictness of contour; that neatness of pose; that slightly conventional but harmonious grouping of the emotions and morals—you can see how it would have its charm, the Wedgwood in human nature? I wonder where Mrs. Mandel keeps her urn ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... crossing and military depot, but now also historically, on account of the operations centring around it, is at a height of 3,300. Beyond it the country, though often rough in detail, is gently rolling in general contour till near Glencoe, where the road climbs eight hundred feet in ten miles. From Glencoe a branch runs five miles east to Dundee, the site of extensive collieries, upon which Natal ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... frontispiece to the 1st vol.) a reduced whole length of Cicero from the antique; which in the mouth and chin, and indeed generally, if I do not greatly forget, will give you a lively representation of the contour and expression of Professor Wilson's face. Taken as a whole, though not handsome (as I have already said), when viewed in a quiescent state, the head and countenance are massy, dignified, and expressive ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... kind of beauty only to be achieved by the woman who makes the care of her appearance an art, and spends hours in absolute repose of mind and body. Her face had not a line in it of strain or sorrow. Faint pink tinted her cheeks. Her pink-linen gown, open in a low V, showed the perfect contour and creaminess of her breast. The restless, adoring eyes of her husband came back to her always with that glance, vigilant and sombre, that ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... Food, for months previous to the time of my attaining to such a dose as sixty grains, became literally loathsome; its sight would sicken me; my muscles, hitherto firm and well defined, began to diminish in bulk and to lose their contour; my face looked like a hatchet covered with yellow ochre: and this is the best and truest comparison I can institute. It was sharp, foreshortened and indescribably yellow. I had then been taking morphia for nearly two years, but only reached and sustained the maximum doses ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... it would be impossible to cross our wagon at any point on the bayou, and that we would have to ford around the mouth of the stream. Where the fresh and salt water met in the laguna, there had formed a delta, or shallow bar; and by following its contour we would not have over twelve to fourteen inches of water, though the half circle was nearly two miles in length. As we would barely have time to cross that day, the herd was at once started, veering for the mouth of the Arroyo ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... Sunday visits." She took the invalid's hand in hers, and, with the air of showing how little she felt any inequality between them, she leaned over and kissed her, where Mrs. Camp sat propped against her pillows. She had a large, nobly moulded face of rather masculine contour, and at the same time the most motherly look in the world. Mrs. Makely bubbled and babbled on, and every one waited patiently till she had done, and turned and said, toward the Altrurian: "I have ventured to bring my friend, Mr. Homos, with me. He is from Altruria." Then she turned to me and ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... largely negligent gathering. She had barely known Clare; Gordon was not certain that she had ever been in their house. He could see her plainly now—she stood clasping white gloves with firm, pink hands; her gaze was lowered upon the uneven flooring of the porch. He could see the soft contour of her chin, a shimmer of warm, brown hair. She was crisply fresh, incredibly young in the group of gaunt, worn forms; her ruffled fairness was an affront to the thin, rigid shoulders in rusty black, the sallow, deeply-bitten faces of the ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the common people are thus embalmed. But the bodies of prominent men and women are thus treated at government expense and unborn generations can look upon the full contour ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... must in form, colour, or accompaniment, have some degree of beauty to render the epithet just. "Nothing can be more sublime than the ocean, but wholly unaccompanied it has little of the picturesque." It should also be remembered that objects of rough and careless contour, as the worn cart-horse, and the tattered beggar (neither of them laying claim to an iota of sublimity) please better in a painting, than the sleekest racer, and the most finished belle ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... of my guide's wife, his daughter, and two sons. I recognised at once the difference between the two sexes, though the two females were of taller stature and ampler proportions than the males; and their countenances, if still more symmetrical in outline and contour, were devoid of the softness and timidity of expression which give charm to the face of woman as seen on the earth above. The wife wore no wings, the daughter wore wings longer than ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... character that had asserted itself. It had changed utterly one thing; the old knitting and narrowing of the forehead were gone; instead, the eyes had widened their spaces with a real calm that had grown in her, and their outer curves fell in lines of largeness and content toward the contour of the cheeks, making ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... law has become all. The lines are reduced to an easily counted number, and their arrangement is little more than a decorative sequence of pleasant curves cut in porphyry,—in the upper part of their contour following the outline of a woman's face in profile, over-crested by that of a hawk, on a kind of pedestal. But that the sign-engraver meant by his hawk, Immortality, and by her pedestal, the House ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... complexion denoted Indian parentage, but whose countenance had something in the highest degree interesting, even noble, in its expression. Her forehead was well formed, her black eyes had an arch, almost a roguish, glance, her finely cut lips, and the whole contour of her physiognomy, betrayed a frank and joyous disposition, whilst the slight curve of her Roman nose gave her an air of decision and self-reliance, with which her bearing and costume corresponded. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... is where the accident happened; is it?" observed Wyn, looking around at the shores of the little cove and the contour ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... name, and, indeed, a botanical form of the European black poplar, it is nevertheless widely distributed in America. When it has been properly placed, it introduces truly a note of distinction into the landscape. Towering high in the air, and carrying the eye along its narrowly oval contour to a skyward point, it is lofty and pleasing in a park. It agreeably breaks the sky-line in many places, and is emphatic in dignified groups. To plant it in rows is wrong; and I say this as an innocent offender myself. In ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... more akin to awe than anything else, Sim Gage bent over, looking down at the clear oval face, the piled dark hair, the tender contour of cheek and chin of Mary Warren, as beautiful a young lady as any man is apt ever to see; so beautiful that this man's inexperienced heart stopped in his bosom. This picture once had been buttoned in the tunic ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... the former denoting distinct individuality, the latter marked strength and sweetness of character; and while the upper part of the face indicated keen perceptions and quick sympathies, the general contour showed a nature strong either to do or to endure. The eyes were large and beautiful, but it was not their beauty which riveted Darrell's attention; it was their look of wistful appeal, of unsatisfied longing, which led him at last to ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... peeping sideways in half-reassured terror, as a mighty griffin with batlike wings, one of Leonardo's finest inventions, descends suddenly from the air to snatch up a great wild beast wandering near them. But note in these, as that which especially belongs to art, the contour of the young man's hair, the poise of the slave's arm above his head, and the curves of the head of the child, following the little skull within, thin and fine as some sea-shell worn ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... the wall of the jungle and the sky darkened, they all relaxed. Sinclair and George smoked contentedly, Mrs. Hill brought out some needle point, and the three cadets rested in comfortable contour chairs. They chatted idly, stopping only to listen to the wild calls of birds and animals out in the jungle as George, or Sinclair, identified them all. George told of his experiences on tyrannosaurus ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... now, as when you were a soft and beautiful baby, and you will permit me!" and lifting herself up, she steadfastly gazed at his emaciated face and shrunken temples, and opening his bosom, and baring its broad and finely-formed contour, she ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... most secret aspirations, you are becoming quite a work of art. A few more touches of the knife, and something like perfection shall have been attained! Look here, Dick, when I turn it towards the light—so—isn't there a beauty about the contour of that ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... he said. "It is quite a mistake to believe, as many people do, that the mind shows itself in the face. Vice may sometimes write itself in lines and changes of contour, but that is all. Our faces are really masks given to us to conceal our minds with. Of course occasionally the mask slips partly off, generally when we are stupid and emotional. But that is an inartistic accident. Outward revelations of what is going on inside ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... over from the Coptic sheune, which is the old-Egyptian shenet. The identity of sheune or shuna with the German "Scheune" is a quaint and curious coincidence. In the illustration of the Shunet ez-Zebib the curved line of crenelated wall, following the contour of the hill, should be noted, as it is a remarkable example of the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... there were other things which gave him the look of the great Napoleon. The contour of feature was the same: and on his brow, broad and massive, there might be seen those grand shadows with which French artists love to glorify the Emperor. Yet in addition to this he had that same serene immobility of countenance which characterized ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... Patty's age, but somewhat shorter and decidedly less slender. Her yellow hair was not long, indeed it was cut evenly round just above her shoulders, but it was crinkled and fluffed out until her head had the contour of a yellow pumpkin. ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... a sporting seal, transformed by some trick of his vision? But he had seen it through his glass, and now remembered such details as the face and features framed in their contour of golden hair, and believed he could even have identified them. He examined the rock again with his glass, and was surprised to see how clearly it was outlined now in its barren loneliness. Yet he must have been mistaken. His scientific ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... the sombre suggestiveness of her disguise and its ungraceful contour, there was no mistaking the adorable little head, tumbled all over with silky tendrils of hair from the hasty withdrawal of her coif, or the blue eyes that sparkled with frank delight beneath them. Key thought her more beautiful than ever. Yet the ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... followed therein. Wanderers upon the Downs and in the highways and byways at their feet will find Bartholomew's "half-inch" map, sheet 32, the most useful. This scale is much to be preferred to the "one inch" parent which lacks the contour colouring. ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... with what love and yearning the father bent over those little faces as he peered in upon them? The flickering light of the camp-fire threw an occasional glimmer over them—just enough to enable him to see at times the contour yet hardly to reveal the features of "his babies." He dare not kiss for fear of waking them. "God bless and guard you, darlings," was the choking prayer that fell from his lips. Then, vigorous and determined, he sprang ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... giggle, which appeared to come from the woman in the corner who had not yet spoken, and whose face and figure in the shadow he had previously overlooked. But he could now see that her outline was slim and graceful, and the contour of her head charming,—facts that had evidently not escaped the observation of the expressman and Mr. Heckshill, and that might have accounted for the cautious reticence of the one and the ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... the stranger's mind—the voice, the eye, the gait were Cassier's. He was familiar with the family, and in the hurried glance he got of the youths rushing by the saloon door he thought he recognized the contour of Alvira's beautiful face. He hastened to communicate his startling discovery to the Superintendent of the Police, and the city was once more in a ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... — N. outline, circumference; perimeter, periphery, ambit, circuit, lines tournure[obs3], contour, profile, silhouette; bounds; coast line. zone, belt, girth, band, baldric, zodiac, girdle, tyre[Brit], cingle[obs3], clasp, girt; cordon &c. (inclosure) 232; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... up to this period, various as they are in theme and metrical form, are uniform in the fashioning of their contour and color. As soon as this underlying uniformity of make is recognized it may be seen to be the coloring and relief belonging to any sort of poetic material, whether ordinarily accounted dramatic material or not, which is imaginatively externalized and made concrete. This peculiarity ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... plane, cut the lateral surfaces down to this outline. The back must stand a tremendous tensile strain and the grain of the wood should not be injured in any way. But you may smooth it off very judiciously with a spoke shave, and later with a file. The transverse contour of this part of the bow remains as it was in the ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... her way through the path-fields to the cowshed; she was gathering, in the fading light of an October evening, the belated stars of the grass of Parnassus, and strapped to her shoulders was the "budget," shaped to the contour of the back, and into which the milk was poured from the pails. It was a heavy load for a girl of twelve, but she was used to it, and did not grumble. Her father was dead, all the day-tale men had been called up, and her mother, she assured me, "was that thrang ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... head, seen from behind at his library bureau, where it was his practice to spend most mornings from half-past nine to eleven or even twelve, was observed to be of a shape to throw no small light upon his class and character. Its contour was almost national. Bulging at the back, and sloping rapidly to a thin and wiry neck, narrow between the ears and across the brow, prominent in the jaw, the length of a line drawn from the back headland to the promontory at the chin would have been extreme. Upon the observer there was impressed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... either case we want harmony. We cannot, therefore, throw together a number of forms unrelated to each in line, contour, or meaning. We seek in composing or designing not contradictions, but correspondences of form, with just an element of contrast to give flavour and point. In grouping pottery, for instance, we should not place big and little or squat and slender forms close together without connecting ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... from natural reality, the former places it on a base as on an ideal ground, detaching from it as much as possible all foreign and accidental accessories, that the eye may rest wholly on the essential objects, the figures themselves. These figures the sculptor works out with their whole body and contour, and as he rejects the illusion of colours, announces by the solidity and uniformity of the mass in which they are constructed, a creation of no perishable existence, but endowed, with a higher power ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... before him. It was as if one should have unearthed a statue, grey with time—a statue nobly formed, with a powerful head and severe features sternly set,—the growth of beard revealing, rather than concealing, the somewhat cruel contour of mouth and chin. The Professor walked slowly up to the bed and looked at this strange effigy of a human being for many minutes in silence,—Morgana watching him with strained but quiet suspense. Presently he touched the forehead—it ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... surprise you, but the contour of my countenance is decidedly infantile—for when had a babby a bridge?—and the addition of a penny trumpet completes the full-blown expression of the light-headed things known to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... which I have seen adhering to bottles of old wine. It lay there between the dish of medlars and the decanter, veiled indeed with thick dust as with a mantle, but revealing beneath it the shape and contour of a violin. ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... was come; the rosy fingers of light were moving about, recreating the world to vision, sketching a landscape hazily on a black canvas, then stippling in the colors, and finishing, swiftly but gradually, the details to an inconceivable minuteness of definition, giving each leaf its own sharp contour and every rock its every facet. From the brook below a mistlike cigarette smoke exhaled. The sky was crimson, then ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... to search it, to drag some secret out of it, and then she would resume her drawing. She was neither dark nor fair; she was comely, perhaps beautiful; she had beautiful lips, and her nose, behind the nostrils, joined the cheek in a lovely contour, like a tiny bulb. Yes, she was superb. But what mastered him was less her fresh physical charm than the rapt and extreme vitality of her existing.... He knew from her gestures and the tools on the table that she could be no amateur. She was a professional. He thought: Chelsea!... Marvellous place, ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... several other students, was taller than the rest, and attracted my attention at once. His face was pale and thin; a pair of keen dark eyes looked out from beneath heavy brows; his nose was prominent, too large to look well, I thought; a broad, thin-lipped mouth, and a square chin, completed the contour of his face. ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... were riding through a lost continent, yet its savage ruin was sublimely beautiful. The comparatively level spot that allowed the luxury of a gallop was made up of sand and stones, with here and there a black rock thrusting its bold contour above the shingle. A curiously habitable aspect was given to the desert by numbers of irregular alluvial mounds which, on examination, were found to consist of caked soil held together by the roots of trees. So, at one time, this arid plain had borne a forest. To the mind's ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... The contour of her face was admirable: nothing could exceed in beauty the lines of her cheeks or the shape and softness of her chin. Those who were fastidious in their requirements might object to them that they bore no dimple; but after all, it is only prettiness that requires a dimple: ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... made by one of their best cabinet-makers from choice walnut wood. The polish and tone of colour are equally gratifying; and resemble somewhat that of rose wood, but of a gayer aspect. The or-molu ornaments are tastefully put on; but the general shape, or contour, of the several pieces of furniture, struck me as being ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... in New York—the images coming out, after the long voyage, in all their proper forms and in all their proper contrast of light and shade. The photograph had forgotten nothing. It had equally preserved the contour of the everlasting mountains and the passing ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... little, old-fashioned, old-world court, back of Bloomsbury. They were a foreign-looking little pair—not in their dress, which was truly English in its clumsiness and want of picturesque coloring—but their faces were foreign. The contour was peculiar, the setting of the two pairs of eyes—un-Saxon. They sat very close together, a grave little couple. Presently the girl threw her arm round the boy's neck, the boy laid his head on her shoulder. In this position those who watched could have traced ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... lips with iron beams, tearing out what was left of his tongue. He could only sulk now, breathing hard and grunting when the pain was unbearable. One thought comforted him, and one only: Far back in his bulk he knew of a thin place in his hide,—so thin, owing to a dip in the contour of the hill,—that but a few yards of overlying rock and earth lay between it and the ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... brought about by the phonetic drift were allowed to stand, it is probable that most languages would present such irregularities of morphological contour as to lose touch with their formal ground-plan. Sound changes work mechanically. Hence they are likely to affect a whole morphological group here—this does not matter—, only part of a morphological group there—and this may be disturbing. Thus, ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... Germanic spirit considers events rather in their evolution, in their complex becoming, the Italian spirit takes them at a given moment, overlooks the shadows, the clouds, the mists, everything that makes the line indistinct, brings out the contour sharply, and thus constructs a very lucid story, which is a delight to the eyes, but which is little more than a symbol of ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... variety, it is gracefully put on the shoulders, belongs equally to Africa and Arabia, and would be exceedingly weak but for the beauty of the brow. As far as the mouth, the face, with the exception of high cheek-bones, is good; the contour of the forehead ennobles it; the eyes are large and well-formed, and the upper features are frequently handsome and expressive. The jaw, however, is almost invariably prognathous and African; the broad, turned- out lips betray approximation to the Negro; and the chin projects to the detriment of ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... Passage was found, though the everlasting ice mocked the efforts of the finders. In short, the entire continent was tapped and sounded with a view to forcing a way through or round it; and by the time the attempt was finally given up, the contour, size, and possible value of America had been estimated much more quickly and accurately than they would have been, had not India lain ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... clear that they seemed substantial, real. Yet the figure was so devoid of color that it could have been a light-image projected here upon these rocks. And the contour of the cliff was plainly visible in front ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... the topographic maps of the text-book and the laboratory the student should know that contours are lines drawn on maps to represent relief, all points on any given contour being of equal height above sea level. The CONTOUR INTERVAL is the uniform vertical distance between two adjacent contours and ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... quiet strength, and made him look like a bully and a soldier; and we can enter thoroughly into his feelings, and sympathise heartily with his uneasiness, because Boulanger has not quite caught the fineness of contour under the fatness of the face. Undoubtedly, the picture does not give the idea of a person of extreme refinement, or distinction of appearance. Nevertheless, judging from stories told by his contemporaries, and ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... up behind about as big as a nutmeg.... Now, observe the contour of her back as she sits up there; it is ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... number, and I could see the hard look of hunting relax in the aspect of us all: the peering, restless, sunken eyes came out of their furrowed caverns, turned calm, full, and satisfied; the lines of the brow and mouth, the contour of the cheek, the carriage of the head, the disposition of the hands, altered and improved. An hour ago, when we were the sport of ferocious nature in the heart of a country infernal, no more than one of us would have swithered to strike a blow at a fellow-creature ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... a fine head," Koenigin went on, "quite a ducal contour, according to our republican ideas of what a duke ought to be. I like the steady intense light of his eyes under those straight dark brows, and that little frown only increases the effect. Then his laugh is so frank and boyish. Yes, I like him ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... about the age of eighteen. Her stature was tall; her motion graceful. A knot of artificial flowers restrained the luxuriancy of her fine black hair, that flowed in shining ringlets adown her snowy neck. The contour of her face was oval; her forehead remarkably high; her complexion clean and delicate, though not florid; and her eyes were so piercing, as to strike the soul of every beholder. Yet, upon this occasion, one half of their vivacity was eclipsed by a languishing air ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... and into this cold solution, without heating, is dropped a small crystal of the same salt, there will be caused a rise in temperature, and the whole will then crystallise out quite suddenly; the water will be absorbed, and the whole will solidify into a mass which exactly fits the inner contour ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... three studies especially noteworthy for their musical beauty. The third (Lento ma non troppo, in E major) and the sixth (Andante, in E flat minor) may be reckoned among Chopin's loveliest compositions. They combine classical chasteness of contour with the fragrance of romanticism. And the twelfth study (Allegro con fuoco, in C minor), the one composed at Stuttgart after the fall of Warsaw, how superbly grand! The composer seems to be fuming ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... engaged in the practice of her profession. Well-developed, feminine in contour, but boyish in manner and movements; strong, though muscles small, and healthy, with sound nervous system; never had anaemia. Thick brown hair; pubic hair thick, and hair on toes and legs up to umbilicus; it began to appear at the age of 10 (before pubic hair) and continued ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... contour of the ground in the region over which the British Army fought at the Battle of the Aisne are deeply ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... forty years old, to strike a balance between the youth of eyes, mouth, and contour, and the age of deep lines and grayish, thinning hair. He had large, frank, blue eyes, a large nose, a strong forehead and chin, a grossly self-indulgent mouth,—there was the weakness, there, as usual! Evidently, the strength his mind and character ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... point on the mountain, at the extremity of the fortress (of Derbend), where the double wall terminates, there begins a single wall constructed in the same style, only this no longer runs in a straight line, but accommodates itself to the contour of the hill, turning now to the north and now to the south. At first it is quite destroyed, and showed the most scanty vestiges, a few small heaps of stones or traces of towers, but all extending in a general ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Hungarian. She was then twenty, very ignorant of life, her great Oriental eyes seeing nothing of stern reality; but, with all her gentleness, there was a species of Muscovite firmness which was betrayed in the contour of her red lips. It was in vain that sorrow had early made her a woman; Marsa remained ignorant of the world, without any other guide than Vogotzine; suffering and languid, she was fatally at the mercy of the first lie which should caress her ear and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... warehouses and dwellings, her rudder, port, and counter boarded in, and now gazing hopelessly through her cabin windows upon the busy street before her. But still a ship despite her transformation. The faintest line of contour yet left visible spoke of the buoyancy of another element; the balustrade of her roof was unmistakably a taffrail. The rain slipped from her swelling sides with a certain lingering touch of the sea; ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... the silver paradise without, and at every glance she groaned, as if groaning were a duty. The kitchen was unlighted save by the fire and one guttering candle; but even through such inadequate illumination the Widder Poll was a figure calculated to stir rich merriment in a satirical mind. Her contour was rather square than oblong, and she was very heavy. In fact, she had begun to announce that her ankles wouldn't bear her much longer, and she should "see the day when she'd have to set by, from mornin' to night, like old Anrutty Green that had the dropsy so many years afore ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... looked at the ceiling, and informed it obviously, though dumbly, that when nieces talked nonsense it was waste of breath to reply. Outraged dignity spoke in her rigid back, in the thin contour of her cheek. ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... plain arch. It will be noted that there may be various ridge formations such as ending ridges, bifurcations, dots and islands involved in this type of pattern, but they all tend to follow the general ridge contour; i.e., they enter on one side, make a rise or wave in the center, and flow or tend to flow out ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... one, and, perhaps, the most conspicuous portrait of an opera frequenter; but there are a variety of characters in the same school all equally worthy of a descriptive notice, and each differing in contour and force of chiaroscuro as much as the one thousand and one family maps which annually cover the walls of the Royal Academy, to the exclusion of meritorious performances in a more elevated branch of art. The Dowager ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... suddenly upon the gray stone. It startled her, for its rude contour, standing up in the pale moonlight, put on the appearance of a woman. She thought she was discovered, and she heard a noise; but another glance reassured her. She recognized the stone, and ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... were soon off on what Uncle Henry called the "longest lap" of their journey. The train swept them up the line of Lake Michigan, sometimes within sight of the shore, often along the edge of estuaries, particularly following the contour of Green By, and then into the Wilderness of upper Wisconsin and the ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... my expression, although I observe it is this that is particularly dwelt upon if one is sufficiently plain; but I hope, when you feel as kindly towards your fellow-creatures as I do, that some of that warmth may modify an otherwise bright and rather knifey CONTOUR. ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... or graceful cascades pouring through them. One might suppose that some giant of yore had ploughed out this country and left it. A newly-ploughed field must seem, to an ant's vision, something like the contour of this ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... shade must not be neglected; for what you effect in drawing by the contour of the figure, light and shade must effect with the projections of those parts which front you in the figure. Light and shade there produce what becomes outline to another drawing of the same object in a right angle to ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... upon the contour and nature of the island, that it is hard to say. If it were low and heavily covered with their green-blue vegetation, we might not be able to see even a rather large one, whereas if it were hilly and bare, we could probably see one only ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... opens or closes the "tap." It is the handiest imaginable contrivance for carrying liquids on horseback, the tough, pliant goat-skin resisting any amount of hard usage and accommodating itself readily to the contour of the pack-saddle, or itself forming a soft enough ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... that which passed into the Netherlands alone amounting to 50,000 crowns per annum—an enormous sum in those days. Modern Vandalism has done for this building what time had failed to effect; and now there is little remains of it to gratify the antiquary, save its metamorphosed contour and a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... the snow drifts down, and in the spring becomes a solid mass of ice, and the writer remembers upon one occasion after a long and weary scramble over rocks under the face of a cliff which towers up and overlooks counties, being shown a rock cave where there was a solid mass of ice, which, in its contour resembled a ship. The ice must have been at least sixty feet in length, twenty feet broad, and fully forty feet high, and adjoining it were all manner of caves. These caves are within a few miles of several settlements, ...
— A Desperate Chance - The Wizard Tramp's Revelation, A Thrilling Narrative • Old Sleuth (Harlan P. Halsey)
... to this is contained in another maxim: "Every creation carries its own mathematics along with it." You cannot create anything without at the same time creating its relation to everything else, just as in painting a landscape, the contour you give to the trees will determine that of the sky. Therefore, whenever you create anything, you thereby start a train of causation, which will work out in strict accordance with the sort of thought that started ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... neglect to aid, these efforts at self-culture? or shall we encourage and guide them as normal exercises of the perceptions and the powers of manipulation? If by furnishing cheap woodcuts to be painted, and simple contour-maps to have their boundary lines tinted, we can not only pleasurably draw out the faculty of colour, but can incidentally produce some familiarity with the outlines of things and countries, and some ability to move ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... minute looking at it as if it were a person. Her Stetson hat tilted a little to one side, her hair fluffed loosely at the sides, leaving her neck daintily slender where it showed above the turned-back collar of her gray sweater; her shoulders square and capable and yet not too heavy, and the slim contour of her figure reaching down to the ground. She studied it abstractedly, as she would study herself in her mirror, conscious of the individuality, ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... of colour for the whole of your dress, the better. Whether you prefer white to black, blue to green, or brown to red, no matter. Stick to the law of aesthetic unity—retain natural and undisguised contour, breadth and mellowness of colour, ease and dignity of movement, and you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... some thin, white material, the frilled hem of which failed by at least six inches to reach the floor, thereby displaying a pair of arched feet and slender ankles, clothed in open-work silk stockings. The skirt of this gown began immediately beneath the arms, and every contour of the wearer's form could be traced through its close-fitting and diaphanous folds. Miss Battledown's arms were bare, save for the black silk netted mittens that she wore; her dark curling hair was gathered pyramidally on the top of her head, and ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... group in the exhibition is that of Miss McLaughlin, one of the earliest artistic workers in clay of the United States. She sends a collection of lovely porcelain vases, of a soft white tone and charming in contour. Some of these have open-work borders, others are decorated in relief, and the designs are tinted with delicate jade greens, dark blues, or salmon pinks. This ware goes by the name of Losanti, from the ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... without good reason. With the old manuscript volume—a family heirloom of some Quaker friends of mine—from which I have drawn the facts of this narrative, came also an old miniature, the work of a well-known English artist of that period. The colors have faded considerably, but the general contour and the features are well preserved. The face is oval, with a rather higher and fuller forehead than usual; the hair, which was evidently of a rather light brown, being parted in the center, and brought ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... position of the sun and the contour of the sheltering tree, Banneker estimated that in a half-hour or less a flood of sunlight would pour in upon the slumberer's face to awaken her. Cautiously withdrawing, he let himself into the shack, lighted his oil stove, put on ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of the picture were two figures. Sleeping on a couch of ice was the form of a young girl. The flow of the drapery, the contour of the form, was grace itself, and yet all was ice. But the face was the most wonderful achievement. Christine saw her own features, as beautiful as in her vainest moments she had ever dared to hope. So perfect was the portrait ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... with flashing eyes—heaving bosom—and an expression of countenance denoting a fixed determination to accomplish some deed from which her better feelings vainly bade her to abstain:—when she drew her tall—her even majestic form up to its full height, the drapery shadowing forth every contour of undulating bust and exquisitely modeled limb—while her haughty lip curled in contempt of any consideration save her own indomitable will—she appeared rather a heroine capable of leading an Amazonian army, than a woman to whom the sighing ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... over the beautiful and glowing lips, and the bright, rich, dark hair, so carelessly, gracefully arranged you could almost see the balmy breezes of her native clime rustling amid the silken tresses; on the charming contour of the head and neck, slightly turned as if about to look back and give a parting glance at the garden ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... contour of the coast, involving easy access to the sea, there are other physical conditions which lead people to the sea or turn them from it. Although France was deficient in military ports on the Channel, she had both there and on the ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... little dwelling. It was built of stone, and then painted white, but the roof and gables were tiled with great pink tiles, giving an odd little foreign look to it, something like Anne Hathaway's cottage in general contour, Leslie declared. ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... little wife's face a great rushing, flushing wave of tenderness blocked out for a second all trace of the cruel, slim scar that marred the perfect contour of one cheek. ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... may be called Climatic, the chief influences of which are astronomical position, surface contour, prevalent winds, ocean currents, etc. Climatic zones have their own flora and fauna, and so far as these enter into industry as agricultural and pastoral produce, as raw materials of manufacture, as sustenance ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... is not much that could be altered for the better. The hunting-shirt of the finest buckskin leather with its fringed cape and skirt, hangs upon his body with all the grace of an Athenian tunic; while its open front permits to be seen the manly contour of his breast, but half concealed under the softer fawn-skin. The wrappers of green baize, though folded more than once around his legs, do not hide their elegant tournure; and an appropriate covering for his feet is a pair of ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... in the firm strength of this vine. In youth and beauty, she clings to the husband tree or parental wall for support, and, like a wife or daughter, conceals defects, and imparts a softer shadowing and contour to the support, without which she herself had never risen to light and life. Time passes on. The oak grows old, the wall is shattered by lightning; but the Ivy, now strong and firm, shelters the limbs or binds together the tottering walls with greater care than before, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... same strong and stalwart contour as ever.... But in his countenance I saw a change: that looked desperate and brooding—that reminded me of some wronged and fettered wild beast or bird, dangerous to approach in his sullen woe. The caged ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... frequent crescent-shaped lakes peculiar to the region; sometimes, miles in extent, the lacustrine contour is not discernible to the glance; here the broad expanse seemed as if the body of water were circular and perhaps three ...
— The Crucial Moment - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... the sky or the landscape, the uncommon, especially the amusing, details of personality—and of connecting these trifles in unexpected ways with the large aspects of things. He saw the mystery of the universe in the contour of a leaf; he saw the secret of a professor's character in the way he had built out his whiskers to hide an absolute lack of chin and to give the impression that a formidable chin was there. He told her stories of life on his father's farm that made her laugh, ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... about everything but Jane Brown. He knew when a new baby came, and was even given a glimpse of one, showing, he considered, about the colour and general contour of a maraschino cherry. And he learned soon that the god of the hospital is the Staff, although worship did not blind the nurses to their weaknesses. Thus the older men, who had been trained before the day of asepsis and modern methods, were revered but carefully ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... beginning he rode over the works, blue prints in hand, thus getting to know the contour of the country, and the actual location and run of the main canal and branch ditches, constructed and projected. With this knowledge safely filed away in his head, he proceeded to verify the calculations of others; for he had once had the bitter ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... of an almost bygone race of such figures, was Mogley at these moments, his form being long and attenuated, his visage smooth and of angular contour, his facial mildness really enhanced by the severity which he attempted to impart to his countenance when he conversed with such of his fellow men as were not ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... to fashion busts of close resemblance to the original. This is memory of touch and of the muscular sense, entirely equivalent to the visual memory of the portrait painters mentioned above. Practical knowledge of design and modeling—i.e., of contour and relief—though resulting from natural or acquired disposition, depends on cerebral conditions, the development of definite sensory-motor regions and their connections; and on psychological conditions—the acquisition and ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... he bent to his work he did not see a strange, level mass of gray that advanced slowly toward him. From a distance to the lay observer this mass would have looked like an ordinary cloud-bank, but the experienced eyes of a fisherman would have discerned its ghastly gray hue and its flat contour. ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... that it would have required a somewhat extended observation to convince you that he moved at all. His bead-like black eyes roved here and there. He did not look for a caribou—no such fool he—but for a splotch of brown, a deepening of shadow, a contour of surface which long experience had taught him could not be due to the forest's ordinary play of light and shade. After a moment his gaze centred. In the lucent, cool, green shadow of a thick clump ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... workers, the voiceless toilers, busy with their labours. Picks rose into the air, remained poised a moment, then sank to tear the sluggish earth and pull it apart. The clay was thrown out to front and rear, and scattered evenly, so that the natural contour of the ground might show no signs of man's interference. And even as we worked the section commanders stole up and down behind us, urging the men to make as little sound as possible—our safety depended on our silence. ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... looking, full of tact and efficiency. She was tall, with a perfect figure and graceful movement. Her eyes were large and dark, her hair black and abundant, in this being the only one of my mother's children who resembled her, as she did also in the contour of her face and nose. She was of a hopeful and joyous temperament and full of energy; by this latter gift she had raised herself from the humblest position to one of influence and acquired in no long ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... So it came to pass that at dusk on that same evening, Alec Trenholme, having put his friend to bed, joined the loungers on the railway platform in front of the inn, and watched lightning vibrate above the horizon, and saw its sheet-like flames light up the contour of Chellaston Mountain. He did not know what hill it was; he did not know precisely where he was in relation to his brother's home; but he soon overheard the name of the hill from two men who were talking about it and ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... the American propensity for exaggeration is the senior Senator from Pennsylvania, Boies Penrose. He has a personality and contour that lend themselves to caricature. Only a few deft strokes are needed to make his ponderous figure and heavy jowl the counterpart of a typical boss, an institution for which the American people have a pardonable affection in these days of political quackery. For, when the ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... informant related the incident and the romantic sequence of Shon's infatuation, the woman passed the tavern and was pointed out to Pierre. The half-breed had not much excitableness in his nature, but when he saw this beautiful woman with a touch of the Indian in her contour, his pale face flushed, and he showed his set teeth under his slight moustache. He watched her until she entered a shop, on the signboard of which was written—written since he had left a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... desire of our men in going back to look for their comrades, it should be stated that, from the contour of the ground, the Rough Riders were so much in advance of the Tenth Cavalry that, to reach the latter regiment from the former, one had really to go straight to the rear and then turn sharply to the right; and further, it is ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... her complexion was fairer; her long golden hair fell nearly to her waist, enfolding her like a magnificent, shining garment; her eyes were blue and large and set far apart; and there was in them, and in the whole contour of the face, a look of honesty and dignity, and calm intelligence, rarely witnessed in the countenance of woman. She did not appear to be at all alarmed; and when I told my story of the driver lashing the aged beggar, her face lighted up, and she said, with a look that ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... right the whole panorama lay snoozing in haze. The path by which we had turned our backs on Monty and Kagig went winding away and away below, here and there an infinitesimal thin line of slightly lighter color, but more often suggested by the contour of the hills. Our Zeitoonli in their zeal to return to their leader had been evidently cutting corners. If the smudge of smoke to the right front overhung Marash, then we were probably already nearer Zeitoon than when ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... the thicker a stone of a given spread the deeper the color will be. The color may also be deepened by giving to the stone a rounded contour, both above and below the girdle, and facetting it in steps instead of in the brilliant form. Increasing the number of steps also serves to slightly deepen the color, as a larger number of reflections is thus obtained within the material, the light thus has to travel a greater ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... original; and now she thought she caught a precious shadow of something like it in her aunt Lucy. Not in those pretty bright eyes which had looked through kind tears so lovingly upon her, but in the graceful ringlets about the temples, the delicate contour of the face, and a something Fleda could only have said it was "a something" about the mouth when at rest, the shadow of her mother's image rejoiced her heart. Rather that faint shadow of the ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... necessary. The heights of standing walls were measured from both sides, and openings were located on the plan and described in a notebook, as was done in the survey of the inhabited villages. The entire site was then leveled, and from the data obtained contour lines were drawn with a 5-foot interval. Irregularities in the directions of walls were noted. In the later plans of ruins a scale of symbols, seven in number, were employed to indicate the amount and distribution of the debris. The plans, as published, ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... either any previous knowledge of the spot or any object to establish a connection with it. He can also readily rise high into the air so as to gain a bird's eye view of the country which he is examining, so as to observe its extent, the contour of its coastline, or its general character. Indeed, in every way his power and freedom are far greater when he uses this method than they are in any of the ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... man, who moved with a jerking motion, as if his limbs were worked by a string like a child's toy, with dun-coloured hair lying thin and soft at the back and sides of his head; his forehead was so large it seemed to overbalance the rest of his face, which had, indeed, lost its natural contour by the absence of all the teeth. The eyes absolutely gleamed with intelligence; so keen, so observant, you felt as if they were almost wizard-like. Indeed, the whole room looked not unlike a wizard's dwelling. Instead of pictures were ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... away, thereby giving me the better opportunity to admire the perfect contour of face and neck, with the color coming and ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... face of lovely cast and almost Grecian contour, with features of classic regularity; while the absence of obliquity in the orbs of the eye—despite the dusky hue of her akin—forbids the belief in ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... notice in a foreigner is his dress. It is a requisite with them that the clothes must be loose, and so draped as to conceal the contour of the body. The short sack-coat and tight trousers of the foreigner are looked upon as certainly inelegant, if ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... comer with the interest with which a set of loafers in a rainy day usually examine every newcomer. He was very tall, with a dark, Spanish complexion, fine, expressive black eyes, and close-curling hair, also of a glossy blackness. His well-formed aquiline nose, straight thin lips, and the admirable contour of his finely-formed limbs, impressed the whole company instantly with the idea of something uncommon. He walked easily in among the company, and with a nod indicated to his waiter where to place his trunk, bowed to the company, and, with his hat in his hand, walked up ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sleep. Nay, the hopes of the young, in regard to keeping the body in subjection, are sometimes completely paralyzed by the grave assertion, that the strength of our passions and appetites is constitutional—as much our inheritance, as the color of our eyes, or the contour of our physiognomies, and almost ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott |
