"Nudity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stones as a fertility rite is found in the trial of Jonet Wischert, one of the chief witches at Aberdeen, and is there combined with a nudity rite. 'In hervest last bypast, Mr. William Rayes huikes [saw thee at] the heid of thi awin gudmannis croft, and saw the tak all thi claiss about thi heid, and thow beand naikit from the middill down, ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... wrapping taken off, the young woman showed in the chaste nudity of her lovely form, preserving, in spite of so many centuries that had passed away, the fulness of her contours, and the easy grace of her pure lines. Her pose, an infrequent one in the case of mummies, was that of the Venus of Medici, as if the embalmers had wished to ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... miserable twelve-feet-square mud-and-log cabins we passed by. Every farmer we met was a perfect picture of wretchedness and misery; their women dirty and covered with rags, which could scarcely conceal their nudity; the cattle lean and starving; and the horses so weak, that they could scarcely stand ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... related that the Pope, scandalized at the nudity of certain figures, a nudity which Daniele da Volterra was afterwards charged to clothe, sent word to Michael Angelo that he must ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... of shame?" he said—"What shame is left in either man or woman nowadays? Naked to the very skin of foulness, they flaunt a nudity of vice in every public thoroughfare! Your sentiments, my grand Sergius, are those of an old world long passed away! You are a reformer, a lover of truth—a hater of shams—and in the days when the people loved truth,—and wanted justice,—and ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... although I should like him still better if his pictures looked in the least like what they typify. The most disagreeable of English painters is Etty, who had a diseased appetite for woman's flesh, and spent his whole life, apparently, in painting them with enormously developed busts. I do not mind nudity in a modest and natural way; but Etty's women really thrust their nudity upon you with malice aforethought, . . . . and the worst of it is ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tree Grew a shape; a nudity: Lithe and slender; silent as Growth of tree or blade of grass; Brown and silken as the bloom Of the trillium in the gloom, ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... condition. Of this sect it is said that many suffered burning with unclouded serenity, with triumphant feelings of cheerfulness and joy. Their orthodox enemies accused them of gratifying their passions at midnight assemblages in darkened rooms, to which both sexes in a condition of nudity repaired. A similar accusation, as is well known, was brought against the primitive Christians by ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... know all about that. One hand up—so—and one foot—so!" And she put herself in an attitude which, to use Rabelais' phrase, stripped Crevel bare from his brain to his heels, so quaint and delicious was the nudity revealed through the light film ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... guilty of sorcery by the aid of inspiration furnished during a dance. The whirling dance of the Eastern dervish is well known. Dancing also figures in the Bible. The Jews danced around the golden calf (Ex. xxxii. 19) in a state of nudity. David, too, danced naked before the Lord. Dancing was also part of the religious ceremonies attendant on the worship of Dionysos or Bacchus.[28] Along with the drinking of certain vegetable decoctions, dancing formed an important part of the witches' ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... tokens of amity reassured the natives, who, seeing them, now turned the bows of their canoes, and paddled towards the boats. The canoe contained four men, almost in a state of nudity, their only covering consisting of a narrow slip of cotton fastened round the middle. They were copper-coloured, and extremely ugly: their hair jet black, very long, and falling down the back; eyes were also black, and deeply sunk in the head, giving a vindictive appearance ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... were not yet satisfied, and they made him march five or six miles to visit a distinguished chief. This was done in a state of nudity, without anything like sandals or mocassins to protect his feet from the flint stones and sharp shells, and under the burning rays of an intolerable sun. Blood marked his footsteps. The king met ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... an orgy of goblins, an image Of nudity flouting the flood, Of shorn-headed brownies who scrimmage And splash ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... wanted to make the garments of Augustus with her own hands, this fancy of the Empress was considered to be in very bad taste. A long retinue of slaves (cutters, linen-dressers, folders, etc.), shared in the work of the feminine toilet, which, after all, was the simplest that had been worn, since the nudity of the earliest days. Over the scarf which they called trophium, and which sufficed to hold up their bosoms, the Roman ladies passed a long-sleeved subucula, made of fine wool, and over that they ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... common lodging-house, and lived in comparative decency. Some score of us, or perhaps a dozen, went up together for surgical examination, and were made to strip stark naked in each other's presence. I had never objected to this amongst my own kind and kindred, when one exposed one's nudity by the side of the clean brook or yellow canal in which we used to bathe in boyhood; but amongst this crew it was hard, and even terrible. We had all been bathed, perforce, before the medical examination began; but a mere tubbing ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... caused the Filipina women of the place to be stripped and compelled to march before him on the public plaza in a state of nudity. ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... the names the door swung wide and the man smiled a welcome. They entered amid a rabble of sled-dogs and puppies, which rolled about the floor in a seemingly inextricable tangle, with numerous dusky youngsters of various ages and conditions of nudity. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... attains a certain degree of beauty, has almost a claim to the right of nudity; it conceals itself in its own dazzling charms as in a veil. He who might have looked upon Josiana nude would have perceived her outlines only through a surrounding glory. She would have shown herself without hesitation to a satyr or ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... find to the people and their conditions. I have seen nothing but horror, and yet I went into these places without prejudice, prepared to be interested in the industry of the Southern country, and with no idea of the tragedy and nudity of these people's existence. The ultimate balance is sure to come; meanwhile, we cannot but be sensible of the vast individual sacrifices that must fall to destruction before the scales ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... reader, while you ponder these lines, there are men of the South Seas who wander about in a state of nudity and idleness; who practise every species of abomination, and kill, roast, and eat each other, just as they did ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... color, and criticised in other respects," she concluded. And she desires Ruskin to know the "wonder and light and color and space and air" that Page had put into his "Venus Rising from the Sea," which the Paris salon of that summer had refused on the ground of its nudity,—a scruple that certainly widely differentiates the Salon of ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... judged the hut to be about eight feet wide, and twelve long. It had a fire in the centre; and no vent either for smoke or heat. The chiefs who were with us threw off their mats and lay down close together in a state of perfect nudity. I had not been many minutes in this oven, before I found the heat and smoke, above, below, and on every side, to be insufferable. Though the night was cold, Mr. Kendall and myself were compelled to quit our habitation. I crept out, and walked in the village, ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... spirit, to clear and purify the human conscience. A perfect Christian spirit can exist quite outside civilisation as well as in the midst of the most complicated civilisation. A Christian negro, in his nudity, picking up dates under a palm tree, can be as good and saintly a man as any business man from the Strand in London or from the Fifth Avenue in New York. And, on the contrary, the most civilised men, like Bismarck and Nietzsche ...
— The Religious Spirit of the Slavs (1916) - Sermons On Subjects Suggested By The War, Third Series • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... exceedingly laborious. Each load consists of from fifty to seventy-five pounds of metal, which is carried in a very irksome and inconvenient manner in an untanned hide, called a capacho. The hapire performs his toilsome duty in a state of nudity, for, notwithstanding the coldness of the climate, he becomes so heated by his laborious exertion, that he is glad to divest himself of his clothing. As the work is carried on incessantly day and night, the miners are divided into parties called puntas, each party working for ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... three times as much as Felix any day,' said Wilmet, with a certain remembrance of the startling nudity of the bone of yesterday's leg of mutton. 'He is doing very well. You need not be afraid for him; but it seems to me that you should consider whether ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... chaste body naturally aroused hideous thoughts in the half-drunken idiot. And was it possible to be otherwise in our dark days? Even in the tale of a poet in love with beauty, the nudity of a chaste body calls out the judgment of hypocrites and the rage of people with perverted imaginations, as if it were the arrogant nudity of a prostitute. The austere virtue of these people is attached to them externally. It cannot withstand any kind of temptation or enticement. They ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... has some characteristics peculiar to itself, but, in a more general sense, their divisions are but three, viz, those who eat human bodies, the dog eaters, and those who have no custom of the kind. Early in the morning the pupils would be out on, the beach, or on the rocks, in a state of nudity. Each had a place in front of his own tribe, nor did intense cold interfere in the slightest degree. After the poor creature had crept about, jerking his head and screaming for some time, a party of men ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... is Garf," he said cheerfully. John Andrew tried not to stare at him too noticeably, but Ray made no bones about it; apparently the fishman thought nothing at all of his state of nudity. ...
— Stairway to the Stars • Larry Shaw
... Ait Amor, who marched in the rear of the army; these people received no pay, but were satisfied with what plunder they got after a battle; and accordingly, this principle stimulating them, they were always foremost on any contest, dispute, or battle. They begin the campaign almost in a state of nudity, and seldom return to their homes without abundance of apparel, arms, horses, camels, and money; but this property quickly disappears, and these people are soon again reduced to their wonted misery and nudity, and become ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... been generally pro-Mormon in tone) dated Camp Scott, May 22, 1858, contained the following: "Some of the deceived followers of the latest false Prophet arrived at this post in a most deplorable condition. One mater familiar had crossed the mountains during very severe weather in almost a state of nudity. Her dress consisted of a part of a single skirt, part of a man's shirt, and a portion of a jacket. Thus habited, without a shoe or a thread more, she had walked 157 miles in snow, the greater part of the way up to her knees, and carried in her arms a sucking babe less than six weeks old. The ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Gallicano, and then by a short steep road to Castelnuovo di Garfagnana at the foot of the great pass. The mountains have clustered round you, bare and threatening, and though you be still in the woods it is their tragic nudity you see all day long, full of the disastrous gestures of death, that can never change or be modified or recalled. It is under these lonely and desolate peaks that the road winds ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... and women are stark naked; but it must be allowed that their nudity is not so startling as would be that of an European without clothes, for the faces, arms, and generally every part of their bodies are tattooed. Sometimes the taste of these designs is really wonderful. They pierce their ears and the cartilage of their nose, and the nostrils often ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... nudity was, even in those days, held to be disgraceful, while the Greeks thought nothing so beautiful as the naked human body. The Hetaira Phryne was summoned before the judges for an offence against religion. Her defender, seeing that sentence ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not so readily find models; or, what is perhaps more to the point, they will not find a taste so capable of appreciating the merits of their performances. In Italy the eye is familiar with the human form in a state of almost complete nudity; and the beauty of muscular expression, and of the osteological proportions of man, is there as well known as that of the features and complexion of his countenance; but the same degree of nakedness could not be endured ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... into the Olympian Gardens, throw himself on a vernal bank. She seized this opportunity to become familiar with the god. The frolicsome deity honoured her with his caresses; and from this amour sprung the god of Love, who resembles his father in jollity and mirth, and his mother in his nudity. The allegory is ingenious. The union of poverty with riches must inevitably produce the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... slightly raised as if the touch of the marble chilled her. Her limbs are in an easy attitude, and beautifully modelled. She is represented as a slight young girl, and the figure stands out in exquisite nudity from a background of Pompeian red, and the dark green of myrtles. With one hand she is holding aloft the masses of her rich brown hair—the attitude suggests the stretching of the muscles after repose; with the other"—but here his memory failed him. ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... stood on rising ground in the centre of an immense courtyard. The windows were sheltered by those projecting pent-house roofs supported by squared trunks of trees which give so patriarchal an air to Northern dwellings. From beneath them the eye could see the savage nudity of the Falberg, or compare the infinitude of the open sea with the tiny drop of water in the foaming fiord; the ear could hear the flowing of the Sieg, whose white sheet far away looked motionless as it fell into its granite cup edged for miles around with glaciers,—in ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... early in my experience, when I was not more than 5, I awoke earlier than usual, and saw my nurse standing in complete nudity, commencing her toilet. She seemed to me a gross, coarse, and meaningless object; the hair under her armpits displeased me, and still more that on the lower part of her body. In the case of men, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... suggested contrast. Even the waste places by the side of the road were not, as Hawthorne liked to put it, "taken back to Nature" by any decent covering of vegetation. Wherever the land had the chance, it seemed to lie fallow. There is a certain tawny nudity of the South, bare sun-burnt plains, coloured like a lion, and hills clothed only in the blue transparent air; but this was of another description—this was the nakedness of the North; the earth seemed to know that it was naked, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be going home for some time to come," said another, a seraphic-faced nudity contemplating his biceps in the small looking-glass that adorned the inside of his chest, "so I shouldn't worry. I say, I'm sweating up a deuce of an arm on me. Shouldn't wonder if I pulled off the Grand Fleet Light-weights next ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... was not these qualities that caused Mike to gasp and Doree to blush deeply. It was the regal figure's almost complete nudity. She wore only the briefest of attire across ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... Garments throughout the whole compass of Civilized Life and Speculation, should lead to; the rather as he was no Adamite, in any sense, and could not, like Rousseau, recommend either bodily or intellectual Nudity, and a return to the savage state: all this our readers are now bent to discover; this is, in fact, properly the gist and purport of Professor Teufelsdrockh's Philosophy ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... he is as yet under the charm of Southern art and of ancient models; he does not weary of invoking and depicting the gods of Olympus. Nudity, which the image-makers of cathedrals had inflicted as a chastisement on the damned, scandalises him no more than it did the painters of Italy. He sees Venus, "untressed," reclining on her couch, "a bed of golde," clothed ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... penance go Hand in hand, I see! Would I could live so well, Soul of me should never know When my coverings fell, Nor feel this nudity! ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... nude. The painters of those days depicted on small panels allegories and bathing scenes, and they painted nude women. Full foreheads, round heads, golden hair, short figures of small build but with embonpoint, their nudity minutely represented and but thinly veiled; many such were produced in Flanders and in Italy. The illustrious masters, to whom those pictures appeared corrupt and indecent, doubtless wished to reproach Jeanne with having looked at them in ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... uneasy with delight, like a child on a birthday morning. The tender beauty of everything around her reassured Catherine, who had come from town in a mood of strange apprehension. As she looked at the expectant woods awaiting their lovely costume in fragile nudity, at the violets that seemed to sing in odours, at that pale and shallow sky which is a herald of the deeper skies to come, it seemed to her impossible that Mark, who could be so blithe, so radiant, could turn to dark imaginings in such an atmosphere of exquisite enterprise. ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... purpose they had borrowed or got together about a dozen Arab dresses of kinds, wherewith to cover the bodies and limbs of the unsophisticated Shilluks. The national costume for men is a state of nudity, but they occasionally sprinkle their bodies with red or grey ashes. The women usually wear scant leather or thong aprons. When the Sirdar ascertained the true cause of the delay, time pressing, he intimated he would waive for the nonce their putting ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... happens in the visions of solitary ascetics, some strange queen or female magician, with stars in her eyes and witchery in her voice, some loose woman who held up the symbolical lamp immodestly, to light up her radiant nudity, and the pink and white bouquet of her sweet-smelling skin, some woman in search of voluptuous pleasures, whose lascivious appeals it is impossible for any man to listen to, without being excited to the very depths of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... horrified at his guilt and be moved to tears at his fate—no air of sombre retribution. There was, as I walked along, the clear sunshine, a brilliance too passionate to be consoling, the streets full of jumbled bits of colour like a damaged kaleidoscope: yellow, green, blue, dazzling white, the brown nudity of an undraped shoulder, a bullock-cart with a red canopy, a company of native infantry in a drab body with dark heads marching in dusty laced boots, a native policeman in a sombre uniform of scanty cut and belted in patent leather, who looked up ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... the truth, it is proper to add that in order not to be immoral Art must appeal to those who have a feeling for it. Where the artist sees only beautiful forms, the gross see only nudity. I have seen a good man scandalized at the sight ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... loss of the "Eagle" the boys resumed their old sport of swimming and gathering wood. About this time, owing no doubt to the complaints of the riverside inhabitants, the city authorities determined to stop all further rows and displays of nudity. The orders against naked bathing were strictly enforced by a constable named Sam Long. Before the boys got thoroughly acquainted with him, he often captured an offender's clothing, which he detained until ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... was as strong in this as in most other instances; and great numbers of the English settlers who came over under various adventures resigned their pretensions to superior civilisation, cast off their lower garments, and lapsed into the nudity and barbarism of the Irish. The limit which divided the possessions of the English settler from those of the native Irish was called THE PALE; and the expressions of inhabitants WITHIN THE PALE, and WITHOUT THE PALE, were the terms by which the two nations ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... analogous to the narrative of Genesis, and associated with the myth of the formation of man by Prometheus. One famous sarcophagus in the Capitol Museum displays in the neighbourhood of the Titan, son of Japetos, who is performing his work as modeller—a pair—man and woman—in the nudity of primeval days, standing at the foot of a tree, the man's gesture showing that he means to gather its fruit.[69] We meet with the same group in a bas-relief built into the wall of the small garden of the Villa Albani in Rome, only here it is in ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... colour, and inspection of them through the telescope showed them to be absolutely naked, wherefore I decided not to pay them a visit until some future occasion when Billy should not be with me, although, apart from their state of nudity, they impressed ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... upon as ignoble an animal as a Barbary ass, goaded by a dusky little islander almost in a state of nudity, that, an hour before sunset on the day of his arrival, the English traveller approached the casino of the Consul's daughter, for there a note from Major Ponsonby had invited him to repair, to be introduced to his daughter, and to taste his oranges. The servant who received ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... he thought she was going to throw herself on his neck and burst into tears. A sudden impulse seemed to impel her. But they saw each other in their semi-nudity. She, who had not noticed it before, was now conscious that she was only half dressed, that her arms were bare, her shoulders bare, covered only by the scattered locks of her unbound hair, and on her right ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... in South Brazil thus writes of a famous monk: "There, in a shed at the back of a small farm, half sitting, half reclining on a mat and a skin of some wild animal, was a man of about seventy years of age, in a state of nudity. A small piece of red blanket was thrown over his shoulders, barely covering them. His whole body was encrusted with filth, and his nails had grown like claws. His vacant look showed him to be a poor, helpless idiot. Beside him a large wood fire was kept burning. The ashes of this fire, ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... eats her dinner. The second volume has a fine illumination divided into four parts, with a handsome border—not quite perhaps so rich as the preceding. Among the subjects, there is a singular one of Lancelot du Lac helping a lady out of a cauldron in a state of nudity: two gentlemen and a lady are quietly looking on. The text appertaining to this subject runs thus: "Et quant elle voit lancelot si lui dist hoa sire cheualiers pour dieu ostes moy de ceste aure ou il a eaue qui ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... form, and the feeling for delicacy and beauty of outline, it followed of course that they became more and more removed from nature in their desire to rival each other in the forced attitudes of their figures, and in the exhibition of nudity, until at last such disgusting caricatures were produced as we find in the works of Martin Heemskirk or Franz Floris, artists who were even deficient in good colouring, the old ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... ignorance that his knowledge strove to dominate, had its wild moment of liberty under the smiling stars. The lights moved and swayed. Now the seamed rock, with its cold veins and slimy crevices was gilded, its nudity clothed with fire. Now on the water a trail of glory fell, and travelled and died. Now the red men were utterly revealed, one watching with an ardor that was surely not of this world, some secret in the blackness, another turning as if to strike in ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... a native, named Tomby, who speaks excellent Arabic. This fellow has been twice to Khartoum, and he wears clothes, instead of walking about in a state of absolute nudity like his countrymen. He has an excellent rifle that was given to him by his old master, a French trader, Monsieur Bartholome. Tomby has been employed as interpreter; and having been born and bred in these parts, he is a perfect chronicler. It appears that Abou Saood treacherously ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... judged, and not unjustly. In the pursuit of truth, I said what I had to say bluntly—and it seems I had nothing but commonplaces to give forth. In the search for sincerity of style, I reduced every proposition to its barest form of language. And that abnegation of rhetoric has revealed the nudity ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... is not uncommon in the Antilles. It blights the lives of children, and it is one of the worst of fates to be "overlooked" by an Obeah man possessing it. Higes, or witches, too, are seen, who take off their skins, and in that state of extra-nudity go about looking for children, whose blood they suck, like vampires. Lockjaw is caused by this loss of blood. There is a three-footed horse, also, that gallops about the country roads when it has come freshly out of hell and is looking for victims it can eat. If it ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... the manners of an age which counts its women not dressed if they are not half undressed, and with his sensibilities further calloused by a night devoted to restaurants the entree to which, for women, seemed to be conditioned on at least semi-nudity, Lanyard was none the less inclined to think he had never seen, this side of footlights, a gown quite so daring as that which revealed the admirably turned person of the lady who named herself Liane. There was so little of it that, he reflected, its cost must have been something enormous. But ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... picture, the product of a talented hand, but an execrable picture from a moral point of view. Yes, M. Flaubert knows how to embellish his paintings with all the resources of art, but without the discretion of art. With him there is no gauze, no veils, it is nature in all her nudity, in all her crudity! ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... render the words, 'The whole house was on fire.' Charles Emerson will translate the sentence 'The entire edifice was wrapped in flames.'" It was natural enough that a young admirer should prefer the Bernini drapery of Charles Emerson's version to the simple nudity ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... that Longfellow would never have apostrophised the welcome, the thrice-prayed-for, the most fair, the best-beloved Night, if he had known what it was to work his passage through pitch-black purgatory, in a state of paradise—nudity, with the incongruity of the association pressing on his mind. Ignorance again; but ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... these men are well aware that the moral sense which sound philosophy and Christian faith have developed, is still strong in the minds and deeper conscience of the English-speaking races, and that were they to present materialism in all its loathsome nudity to the public gaze, they would be hissed off the stage. And so they dress it up in the clothes of the old religion just for the present, with many a quiet wink between themselves at the ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... in two waves which united under the chin, and fell down to her feet in one wavy sheet. It was, indeed, the miraculous hair, a fabulous fleece, with heavy twists and curls, a glorious, starry efflorescence, the warm and living robe of a saint, perfumed with its pure nudity. ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... imposing a figure in his new dress, and assumed such an air of pomposity, that it was no wonder the uninitiated should have been deceived, and have taken him for a lion of the very first nobility; nor can we be surprised that a poor cur, almost in a state of nudity, should, in the most abject manner, supplicate a trifle from "His Lordship;" that an ignorant cat, in passing, should take off his cap and make a profound bow; or a kitten, just behind, cross its paws as though it stood in the presence of a superior. There was one, ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... of dress are sometimes pestilential. If any doubt this truth let him remember the nightmares wherein his nudity made torment. And, while remembering the anguish such lack of clothing has occasioned in dreams, let him think with pity on the suffering of Zeke whose plight was real. It was in sooth, a predicament to strain the savoir faire of the most polished ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... boat-stretchers which we carried, and knocked over several of them while on the wing as they flew towards us. They were incited, we discovered, to attack us in defence of their young, numbers of which, from the little gaping nudity just out of the shell to well-fledged bantlings, covered the ground. There was also a great number of eggs, many of which were newly laid. Of these we got a large store, besides half filling the boat with ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... as Dodona did tripods. It places the grisette on the throne, as Rome placed the courtesan there; and, taking it altogether, if Louis XV. is worse than Claudian, Madame Dubarry is better than Messalina. Paris combines in an unprecedented type, which has existed and which we have elbowed, Grecian nudity, the Hebraic ulcer, and the Gascon pun. It mingles Diogenes, Job, and Jack-pudding, dresses up a spectre in old numbers of the Constitutional, and ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... whose modesty is shocked by the nudity of Francis; but Italy is not Germany nor England, and the thirteenth century would have been astonished indeed at the prudery of the Bollandists. The incident is simply a new manifestation of Francis's character, with its ingenuousness, its exaggerations, its longing to establish a complete ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... Jayadratha!) That end which becomes theirs who touch Brahmanas or fire with the feet, that end which becomes theirs who throw phlegm and excreta and eject urine into water, even that miserable end shall be mine, if I do not slay Jayadratha! That end which is his who bathes (in water) in a state of nudity, or his who does not hospitably entertain a guest, that end which is theirs who receive bribes, speak falsehood, and deceive and cheat others, that end which is theirs who offend against their own souls, or who falsely utter praises (of others), or of those low ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... fell upon the lights and girdled them with gold an expression of languorous rapture came into his eyes, and he felt happier than if he had been privileged to contemplate the Greek goddesses in their sovereign nudity, or the chatelaines of romance in their ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... placing themselves beyond the possibility of breaking their vow, or of giving evidence of their constancy, certain it is that they loaded their prepuce with an enormous fibula, or ring; and, in their warm climate, where nudity does not shock ideas of propriety or decency, devout women not unfrequently repaired to these soi-disant saints, to admire and venerate such efforts of virtue and self-denial; they are even reported to have knelt down, and, in that humiliating posture, to have kissed the preputial ring, no ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... which had nothing, so far as he knew, to recommend it, except that a certain amount of civilisation, the wearing of trousers and petticoats, banking, railways, and steam navigation were on one side, and a very primitive mode of life with nudity, or getting on to it, on the other. True, that there is the question of the slave trade, and that iniquitous business is kept up entirely by the Arabs, but that very important matter had no weight at that time with Harry, who merely knew that the slaves he had ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... it may be well again to repeat, that too little clothing (that state of semi-nudity which the vanity of some parents encourage) is frequently productive of the most sudden attacks of active disease; and that children who are thus exposed with naked breasts and thin clothing in a climate so variable as ours are the frequent ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... McCoy came up at the moment. Having passed the "staggering" period of life, he no longer walked the earth in a state of nudity, but was decorated with a pair of very short tapa trousers, cut in imitation of seafaring ducks, but reaching only to the knees. He also ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... connecting links with the net-work of human life; or else it was that nightmare-feeling which we sometimes have in dreams, when we seem to find ourselves wandering through a crowded avenue, with the noonday sun upon us, in some wild extravagance of dress or nudity. He was conscious of estrangement from his towns-people, but did not always know how nor wherefore, nor why he should be thus groping through the twilight mist in solitude. If they spoke loudly to him, with cheery voices, the greeting translated itself faintly and ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Elizabethans had been forced to drive in closed cars through the Nevada desert in the summertime, they might have started a cult of nudity, Malone felt. It was bad enough now, in what was ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... which they say the men of that country customably refresh and wash themselves, the king, looking into the baths, saw in them men wholly naked with every garment cast off. At which he was displeased, and went away quickly, abhorring such nudity as a great offence, and not unmindful of that sentence of Francis Petrarch 'the nakedness of a beast is in men unpleasing, but the decency of raiment makes ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman
... horses were lying in a lake of mud about the very door of the railway station; three of them were females in absolute nudity. The fourth was a male, with one stocking on. This proved to be Hillsbro' Harry, warned in vain up at Damflask. When he actually heard the flood come hissing, he had decided, on the whole, to dress, and had got the length of that one stocking, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... nutra. Nourishment nutrajxo. Novel (romance) romano. Novelty novajxo. November Novembro. Novice novulo. Noviceship noviceco. Novitiate provtempo. Novitiate (place) novicejo. Now nun. Nowadays nuntempe. Nowhere nenie. Noxious malutila, venena. Nozzle nazeto. Nude nuda. Nudity nudeco. Null nuliga. Nullify nuligi. Numb rigidigi. Numbness rigideco. Number (quantity) nombro. Number numero. Numeral numero. Numerical nombra. Numerous multa. Numerously multege. Nun monahxino. Nuncio nuncio. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... teachers have become so intoxicated with the dream of Pan-Germanism that in the utmost sincerity they have espoused and with a certain pride proclaimed the vicious principles of Machiavelli in all their moral nudity. There is an emotional and mystical element in the advanced German thinker, which makes him capable of accepting in full sincerity intellectual and moral absurdities of which the more robust common sense of other nations would ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... of dried apples that had been dropped and trodden under foot, which, with her toothless gums, she attempted to masticate with all the eagerness of a starving swine. Little children, from one to four years old, were crawling about in a state of nudity, and almost of starvation, while their own mothers and fathers, were staggering, and fighting, and swearing. It is a fact, that while these poor creatures cannot articulate a word of any thing else in English, the most awfully profane expressions will drop from their ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... knew: in the centre of Mrs. Willy P. Goldmark's yellow and gold drawing-room, under a thousand-candle-power chandelier, with reflectors aimed at her from every point of the compass. I had seen her wincing and shivering there in her outraged nudity at one of ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... gifts of humour and pathos to which Crabbe could make no pretension. From Chaucer, Crabbe passes to the great but very different master, on whom he had first built his style. Was Pope, then, not a poet? seeing that he too has "no small portion of this actuality of relation, this nudity of description, and poetry without an atmosphere"? Here again, of course, Crabbe overlooks one essential difference between himself and his model. Both were keen-sighted students of character, and both described sordid and worldly ambitions. But Pope was strongest exactly where Crabbe ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... The candour, nudity, pose, tranquility, youth, grace, sex, counsel of a statue erect in the centre of the table, an image of Narcissus purchased by auction from P. A. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... live his agreeable attraction.—Live Jesus, when he intoxicates me with a sweetness that gives me life.—Live Jesus, when his mouth touches me with an amorous kiss.—Live Jesus, when he calls me, my sister, my dove, my lovely one.—Live Jesus, when his good pleasure reduces me to nudity; live Jesus, when his blandishments fill me with chaste delight."—And this erotic stuff is for ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... caravans, car after car, spins by us, under the mystic impulse which seems to know not whether its train is loaded or empty. We are used to force in the muscles of horses, in the expansive potency of steam, but here we have force stripped stark naked,—nothing but a filament to cover its nudity,—and yet showing its might in efforts that would task the working-beam of a ponderous steam-engine. I am thankful that in an age of cynicism I have not lost my reverence. Perhaps you would wonder to see how some very common sights impress me. I always take off my hat if I stop to ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... opportunity, took advantage of the "fair," and assembled in hundreds, while the Kafirs, in a species of unbelieving surprise, met them in thousands to exchange wares. It was a new idea to many of these black sons and daughters of nudity, that the horns which they used to throw away as useless were in reality valuable merchandise, and that the gum, which was to be had for the gathering, could procure for them beads and buttons, and brass-wire and cotton, with many other desirable ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... something of the nudity of arm and leg he must have presented to eighteen's tender sensibilities in Mr. Latz's expression now as he sat well forward on the overstuffed chair, his overstuffed knees strained apart, his face nude of all pretense ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... the absurdity, too tired to leave my chair. I was pleased to notice that her nudity did not this time appeal to my doting madness. This marked an improvement—a foretaste of victory. ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... stark naked in the middle of the room. I cannot see why a man should not be credited with some feeling of modesty about his soul. I detest having my last garments plucked from me in public. Complete spiritual nudity ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... in Grand Lake. Hubbard remarked that it looked like Lake George, save that the hills were lower. For a few miles above its outlet the shores on both sides of the lake are low. Then on the south come bluffs that rise, stern and grand in their nudity, almost perpendicularly from the deep, clear water, while on the north come lower hills, the most part wooded, that retreat more gently from the rocky shore. Heading for the extreme upper of the lake, where Low's ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... great tree he watched them pass—a disreputable mob of blacks, some garbed in the uniform of German East African native troops, others wearing a single garment of the same uniform, while many had reverted to the simple dress of their forbears—approximating nudity. There were many black women with them, laughing and talking as they kept pace with the men, all of whom were armed with German rifles and equipped with ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the sign, and keep only the latter as their religion. Some, such as the [U]kharas and S[u]kharas, appear to have no distinctive features, all of them being the 'refuse of beggars' (Wilson). Others claim virtue on the strength of nudity, and subdue their passions literally with lock and key. The 'Potmen,' the 'Skull-men,' G[u]daras and K[a]p[a]likas, are distinguished, as their names imply, only by their vessels. The former, however, are the remnant of a once thoughtful ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... conduct cannot be defended, but then his punishment was altogether too severe. There is every reason to suppose that DIANA wanted some one to accidentally notice her proficiency in swimming, else why should she have chosen a place of popular resort for her bath? And then the simple nudity in which she was surprised was not nearly as suggestive as the peculiar costumes in which our fashionable ladies now-a-days enter the surf in the presence of admiring crowds. However, ideas change with successive ages, and what we now consider perfectly proper would probably have brought ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... does the person mean?" I thought it, however, most prudent to obey his command, and followed him down the staircase. The shop and the portal were now thronged with the inhabitants of Finisterra, men, women, and children; the latter for the most part in a state of nudity, and with bodies wet and dripping, having been probably summoned in haste from their gambols in the brine. Through this crowd the figure whom I have attempted to describe pushed his way with ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... swell the power of the family, though in some instances they are put to death. Albinos are valued, though their colour is not admired. If death occurs in a natural manner, the body is usually either buried in the village or outside. A large portion of the negro races affect nudity, despising clothing as effeminate; but these are chiefly the more boisterous roving pastorals, who are too lazy either to grow cotton or strip the trees of their bark. Their young women go naked; but the mothers suspend a little tail both before and behind. As the hair of the negro will not ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... "Vergine Santa, d'ogni grazia piena," but a Virgin, whose brick-dust coloured face, harsh unfeminine features, and muscular, masculine arms, give me the idea of a washerwoman, (con rispetto parlando!) an infant Saviour with the proportions of a giant: and what shall we say of the nudity of the figures in the back-ground; profaning the subject and shocking at once good taste and good sense? A little farther on, the eye rests on the divine Madre di Dio of Correggio: what beauty, what sweetness, what maternal love, ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... realise it and has detached himself from his unworthy because unreal surroundings, is himself God. Akin to Vedantic mysticism is the Yoga system, which teaches extreme asceticism, retirement into solitude, fastings, nudity, mortification of the flesh, profound meditation on unfathomable mysteries, and the endless reiteration of magic words and phrases as the means of accelerating that ineffable fusion of God and man. The materialism of the Sankhya and the idealism of the Vedanta ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... of the most disgusting kind that could be conceived; the most lascivious attitudes and gestures, young girls and married women, travelling with their fathers, would indulge in, to the extent of frisking about the streets in a state of nudity. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... sunlight, such as sometimes occurs at four o'clock in the afternoon, fell on the stained-glass rose-window, threw on the sand tracks of rainbow-coloured lights, softly bathing the bronze or the marble of the statues, imparting an iridescent hue to the nudity of a beautiful figure, giving to the vast museum something of the luminous life of a garden. Felicia, absorbed in her deep and sad reverie, did not notice the man who advanced towards her, superb, elegant, fascinating, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... poets thus assert, occasionally, that the unblushing nudity of their pride is a conscious departure from convention, they would not have us believe that they are fundamentally different from older singers. One seldom finds an actual poet, of whatever period, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... prison, into which the water had already found its way through the bulk-head scuttles. Jumping overboard, he seized a plank, and was swimming towards a small sandy quay (key) about three miles distant, when a boat picked him up, and conveyed him thither in a state of nudity. It is worthy of remark, that James Morrison endeavoured to follow his young companion's example, and, although handcuffed, managed to keep afloat until a ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... contours, so exquisite, in the armless figure of the Venus de Milo,—from the aerial posture of John of Bologna's Mercury, to the inimitable and firm dignity in the attitude of Aristides in the Museum of Naples,—from the delicate lines which teach how grace can chasten nudity in the Goddess of the Tribune at Florence, to the embodied melancholy of Hamlet in the brooding Lorenzo of the Medici Chapel,—from the stone despair, the frozen tears, as it were, of all bereaved maternity, in the very bend of Niobe's body and yearning ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... every faculty; I had had no time to think of my companions; I had forgotten them. Now in the painful surges of awakening realization, of full human understanding of that inhuman annihilation, I turned to them for strength. Faintly I wondered again at Ruth's scantiness of garb, her more than half nudity; dwelt curiously upon the red ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... was not content till he had found in Cuba the ark, the raven and dove, the uncovering of Noah, and his curse; in fact, the Indians were descended from this unfortunate son whom Noah's malediction reduced to nudity, but the Spaniards, descending from another son, inherited his clothes. "Why do you call me a dog?" said an old Indian of seventy years to Cabrera, who had been insulting him. "Did we not both come out of the same large ship that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... hospitality and company of the "Go-nakeds," we tried to discover if nudity were the badge of a particular order among the Bawe, but they could only refer to custom. Some among them had always liked it for no reason in particular: shame seemed to lie dormant, and the sense could not be aroused ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... be fastened to the tables, almost in a state of perfect nakedness?" he replied, "Yes; they used to think they tore their clothes all to pieces; some of them would do that." "In point of fact, were they not fastened to the tables, sitting in a state of perfect nudity?" Answer: "They used to be so at the table; they were chained all round." In regard to the apparatus, so ingeniously cruel, by which one of the patients (Norris) was chained ten or twelve years, Haslam, the apothecary at Bethlem, when asked, "Do you think ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... and here were the gods: the female ones in a state of divine semi-nudity, the male ones mostly clad in black coats with pleated shirt-fronts puffing out. Every time one of them moved up to the desk Peter would watch and wonder, was this Mr. Lackman? He might have been able to pick out a millionaire from an ordinary ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... poems, or edifying sermons, or important documents, or charming romances: our tribal citizens know nothing about that and do not want to know anything: all that they do know is that incest, prostitution, abortion, contagious diseases, and nudity are improper, and that all conversations, or books, or plays in which they are discussed are improper conversations, improper books, improper plays, and should not be allowed. The Censor may prohibit all such plays with complete certainty that there will be a chorus of "Quite right too" sufficient ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... told that it had been cut off after the fulfilment of vows, reminding one of a custom to which we find frequent reference in both the Old and New Testaments. I also saw a very disgusting sight—men in stark nudity, sitting in a very composed dignified fashion, and women approaching them with folded hands, and paying them profound homage. These were deemed men of great sanctity, whose blessing brought signal benefit, while their curse entailed terrible calamities. ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... bustle of the monthly steamship-day died with the going of the Noa-Noa, the through passengers departing in angry mood because their anticipated hula dance had been a disappointment—wickedness shining feebly through cotton gowns when they had expected nudity in a pas seul of abandonment. There was a violent condemnation by the duped men of "unwarranted interference by the French Government with natural ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... heads, declaring they would continue doing so till the children died, if the police did not leave the camp. Sometimes also the women of a gang have been known to throw off all their clothing and appear in a perfect state of nudity, declaring they would charge the police with violating their modesty. Men of this tribe are expert cattle-lifters, but confine themselves chiefly to buffaloes, which they steal while out grazing and very dexterously ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... the aids which have been mentioned let this one still be added: Make for thyself a definition or description of the thing which is presented to thee, so as to see distinctly what kind of a thing it is in its substance, in its nudity, in its complete entirety, and tell thyself its proper name, and the names of the things of which it has been compounded, and into which it will be resolved. For nothing is so productive of elevation ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... and hand, feel them in the head alone, and love them for the joy they bring you, and which goes to your heart, know that the author having in an evil hour let his ideas, id est, his inheritance, go astray, and being unable to get them together again, found himself in a state of mental nudity. Then he cried like the woodcutter in the prologue of the book of his dear master Rabelais, in order to make himself heard by the gentleman on high, Lord Paramount of all things, and obtain from Him fresh ideas. This said Most High, still busy with the congress ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... instigation of their director, a priest called David, the nuns, it is reported, were seized with an irresistible desire of imitating the primitive Adamite simplicity: the novices were compelled to return to the simple nudity of the days of innocence when taking exercise in the conventual gardens, and even at their devotions in the chapel. The novice Madeleine, on one occasion, was reprimanded for concealing her bosom with the altar-cloth at communion. ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... occasionally as human beings. The souls of heroes were given to them for lovers and husbands. One of the most graceful of the early Indian myths is the story of the apsaras, Urva. Urva loved Puravaras and became his 'wife, on the condition that she was n-ever to behold him in a state of nudity. They remained together for years, till the heavenly companions of Urva determined to secure her return to them. They accordingly beguiled Puravaras into leaving his bed in the darkness of night, and then with a lightning flash they disclosed him, in his nudity, to his wife, who ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... naked black bodies in a hideous manner with pipe-clay. After dark, they lit their fires, which are small, but kept blazing with constant additions of dry bark and leaves, and the sable gentry assembled by degrees as they completed their evening toilette, full dress being painted nudity. A few began dancing in different parties, preparatory to the grand display, and the women, squatting on the ground, commenced their strange monotonous chant, each beating accurate time with two boomerangs. Then began ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... whose sides was lined with mirrors that echoed each other all along the walls, reflecting, as far as the eye could reach, whole series of rose boudoirs, had been celebrated among the women who loved to immerse their nudity in this bath of warm carnation, made fragrant with the odor of mint emanating from the ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... on every hand The prairie all environs me; I see Nought save a stretch of green and treeless land, Conspicuous alone for nudity: A sea of earth, a boundless stretch unspanned Except by ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... picture of a mere naked woman, however well executed, is never art if art means idealism. The realism of the thing was its offensiveness. Ideal nakedness may be divine,—the most godly of all human dreams of the superhuman. But a naked person is not divine at all. Ideal nudity needs no girdle, because the charm is of lines too beautiful to be veiled or broken. The living real human body has no such divine geometry. Question: Is an artist justified in creating nakedness for its ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... Renaissance. There are those who prefer (perhaps for reasons of sentiment) the early Gothic, and many more who love far better the sweet purity of the early Renaissance. Before us Raphael presents his full figures replete with action, rich with broad, open curves in nudity, and magnificent with lines of flowing drapery. To him be accorded all due honour; but, if it is the privilege of the artist's spirit to wander still on earth, he must find his particular post-mortem punishment in viewing the deplorable school of exaggeration which his ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... that modesty is wholly a matter of conventionality and custom. Competent observers have testified that savages who have been accustomed to nudity all their lives are covered with shame when made to put on clothing for the first time. They exhibit as much confusion as a civilized person would if compelled to strip naked in public. In the words of a competent authority on this subject: "The facts appear to prove ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... things made of cloth and linen, this common duty is confounded with that fair procedure, elaborate of many thoughts, in whose accord the fop accomplishes his toilet, each morning afresh, Aurora speeding on to gild his mirror. Not until nudity be popular will the art of costume be really acknowledged. Nor even then will it be approved. Communities are ever jealous (quite naturally) of the artist who works for his own pleasure, not for theirs—more jealous by far of him whose energy is spent only upon the glorification ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... at once obtained power to cure diseases, and especially snake-bite. One day all the women were transplanting rice, and it was found that Lona could do as much work as all her companions put together. So they watched her, and when she thought she was alone she stripped off her clothes (nudity being an essential element in magic), muttered some spells, and threw the plants into the air, when they all settled down in their proper places. Finding she was observed, she tried to escape, and as she ran the earth opened, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... is any truth in this passage, nudity becomes a virtue; and no decent woman, for the future, can ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... of the day. Anything that does not deviate from the old beaten track meets with little encouragement from the present race of amusement-seekers, and, consequently, does not pay the entrepreneur. Nudity in public adds fresh charms to the orchestra, and red-fire and crackers have become absolutely essential to harmony. Acting upon this principle, Signor Venafra gave (we admire the term) a fancy dress ball at Drury-lane Theatre on Monday evening last, upon a plan hitherto ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various |
