"Oval" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... objects of engrossing interest are still far off in the distance. Staffa, the smaller and nearer of the two, presents but an unimposing front from the quarter by which we approach, being oval in form, low, and with a gently undulating surface, in which respect it does not differ materially, except in its dimensions, from the inferior islands among which we are steering our course, and which, cold, bald, and of a monotonous and desolate uniformity, betray ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... the hill, and across the brow of the ridge stretched the massive, irregular wall of the town. The great brazen gates were closed, and in the oval turrets that rose sentinel-like above the wall appeared no sign of life ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... scolding retort. On the road above stood an invalid carriage, piled up with innumerable parcels, and containing also a small boy. He was a charmingly pretty little fellow, with a very pale, delicately oval face, beautiful pathetic brown eyes, and rich golden hair that fell in curls over his shoulders like a girl's. He was peering out from amidst the host of packages and trying to look back along the road, and evidently arguing some point with the utmost persistence. The untidy servant girl who wheeled ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... small bed. com'pli ment, regard. pal'ate, part of the mouth. com'ple ment, fullness. pal'ette, an oval board. coun'sel or, an adviser. em'i grate, to move out. coun'cil or, member of a council. im'mi grate, to move in. cas'tor, the beaver. straight'en, to make straight. cast'er, one who casts. strait'en, to narrow. cur'rent, running. cal'en dar, an almanac. cur'rant, a small fruit. ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... discriminating them philosophically. Every one would say that the reform effected by Lavoisier and Guyton-Morveau in the language of chemistry consisted in the introduction of a new nomenclature, not of a new terminology. Linear, lanceolate, oval, or oblong, serrated, dentate, or crenate leaves, are expressions forming part of the terminology of botany, while the names "Viola odorata," and "Ulex Europaeus," belong ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... curtains, and its plain mahogany furniture, disturbed the harmony that had reigned before from the etching over the bed to the bowl of ferns on the table. Hannah was friendly and beaming, and not at all belligerent. Mrs. Eldred was all sweet, cheery thoughtfulness, but Frieda looking at herself in the oval mirror of the dressing-table, felt a sudden throb of pity for ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... the admiration of everyone by a face destined, like that of Mary, the mother of our Lord, to continue ever virgin, even after marriage. Her portrait, still to be seen in the atelier of Bridau, shows a perfect oval and a clear whiteness of complexion, without the faintest tinge of color, in spite of her golden hair. More than one artist, looking at the pure brow, the discreet, composed mouth, the delicate nose, the small ears, the long lashes, and the ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... size of a man's largest thumb-joint. Its shape was a smooth oval; its hue, even in that dim, wind-tossed light, showed a wondrous, tender opalescence that seemed to change and blend into rainbow iridescences as the staring Legionaries peered at it. The other pearls, black and white alike, ranked as marvelous gems; but this crown-jewel of the Great Pearl Star eclipsed ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... saw that the snakelike heads belonged to creatures with large oval bodies, and that, besides the fifty or more which had come up to look at the fire, there were whole droves of them upon the sandy beach beyond. As far as he could see on all sides, the bank was covered with them. A strange sight it was, and most fearful. For his ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... footsteps are heard approaching from within. The bolts are drawn, the door is opened, and you are led up to a spacious drawing-room. At the wall opposite the windows there is sure to be a sofa, and before it an oval table. At each end of the table, and at right angles to the sofa, there will be a row of three arm-chairs. The other chairs will be symmetrically arranged round the room. In a few minutes the host ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... those of you who in your long vacations have ever stayed near Dumblane will be, I think, disappointed in no small degree by this study of the abbey, for which I showed you the sketch at last Lecture. You probably know that the oval window in its west end is one of the prettiest pieces of rough thirteenth-century carving in the kingdom; I used it for a chief example in my lectures at Edinburgh; and you know that the lancet windows, in their fine proportion and rugged masonry, would alone form a study of ruined Gothic masonry ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... at him with dark eyes, unafraid. Through all his dazed astonishment he saw the wonder of those eyes, the perfect oval of that face, the warm, rich tints of her skin even though overspread with ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... time. They are then transferred to a kind of marsupial pouch, analogous to that of the kangaroo, where their development proceeds. After passing through certain changes here, the egg issues from the maternal pouch as an oval body, clothed with cilia—an animalcule in external aspect, and as unlike its parent as can well be imagined. For awhile the little creature dances freely through the water, and leads a gay, roving life; but at last it prepares to 'settle;' ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... arena was a blaze of riotous colour now, with the mid-morning's sun darting its rays almost perpendicularly on the south side of the huge oval place. A sea of heads gold and brown, ruddy and black oscillating in unison to right or left like waters driven by the tide, as the combatants down below shifted their ground across the floor of the arena—fans of coloured feathers swinging, mantles caught by a passing ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... place," said Paul, glancing at the long brown lashes and oval outline of the cheek so near his own, "is simple, yet affecting. A cruel, remorseless, but fascinating Hexie was once loved by a simple shepherd. He had never dared to syllable his hopeless affection, or claim from her a syllabled—perhaps I should say a ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... white, with a horizontal blue stripe in the center superimposed on a vertical red band, also centered; five white, five-pointed stars are arranged in an oval pattern in the center of the blue band; the five stars represent the five main islands of Bonaire, Curacao, Saba, ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... merry-voiced young people gathered around a great fireplace. As the impressive under-butler took her bags from Williams one of the group rose quickly and came toward her. She was very tall and slender with an oval-shaped face and a prominent nose like Mrs. Granger's. Robin knew she was Miss Alicia. She answered something unintelligible to Miss Alicia's informal greeting and let herself be drawn into ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... he reading or attitudinizing for effect of any kind on any person. He is following his own ordinary customs, and his book of devotion has been already so well used that "much attrition had deprived it of its corners, and worn it into an oval shape"; its attractiveness to Andrew being twofold—the first, that it contains doctrine to his mind; the second, that such sound doctrine is set forth under figures properly belonging to his craft. "I was e'en taking a spell o' worthy Mess John Quackleben's 'Flower ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Butter an oval baking-dish and spread chopped oysters on the bottom. Arrange upon it the fillets of four fresh mackerel, skinned and seasoned with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with chopped onion, parsley, and mushrooms, ...
— How to Cook Fish • Olive Green
... out of the town in the morning, and swarmed with me across the beautiful sward, as level as the Oval, which here widens into the country. No guest was ever sped on his way with a kindlier farewell. The fort is outside the town; we passed it on our left; it is a square inclosure of considerable size, ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... closing hour of the office the two articled pupils had left and were walking side by side through Bloomsbury. They skirted the oval garden of Bedford Square, which, lying off the main track to the northern termini, and with nothing baser in it than a consulate or so, took precedence in austerity and selectness over Russell Square, which had consented to ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... the soft lines of youth, was less oval than it looked, for the chin was square and the jaw bone accentuated. The short straight thin nose reclaimed the face and head from too classic a regularity, and the thin nostrils drew in when she was determined and shook quite alarmingly when ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... widow's weeds, in the dusky parlour in the house overgrown with the lustrous ivy of the sister isle, the solitary house at the end of the retired court shaded by lofty poplars. Hail to thee, dame of the oval face, olive complexion, and Grecian forehead; by thy table seated with the mighty volume of the good Bishop Hopkins spread out before thee; there is peace in thy countenance, my mother; it is not worldly peace, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... to the somewhat lean traditions of our rather dreary past, and it is hardly worth while to disturb it. I always heard it in my boyhood. Perhaps it is true; certainly it was a very convenient arrangement for discouraging an untimely visit. The oval lookouts in porches, common in our Essex County, have been said to answer a similar purpose, that of warning against the intrusion of undesirable visitors. The walk round the old wall of Chester is wonderfully ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... build than their European ancestors, had ever beheld. Of commanding stature and physique, with an air of highest breeding and repose, he looked both a man of the great world and an intolerant leader of men. His long oval face was thin and somewhat lined, the mouth heavily moulded and closely set, suggestive of sarcasm and humor; the nose long, with arching and flexible nostrils. His eyes, seldom widely opened, were light blue, very keen, usually cold. Like many other men of his ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... the right-hand wall of the front room, a folding door leading out to the hall. In the opposite wall, on the left, a glass door, also with curtains drawn back. Through the panes can be seen part of a verandah outside, and trees covered with autumn foliage. An oval table, with a cover on it, and surrounded by chairs, stands well forward. In front, by the wall on the right, a wide stove of dark porcelain, a high-backed arm-chair, a cushioned foot-rest, and two footstools. A settee, with a small round table in front of it, fills the upper right-hand corner. ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... the balls up one after another and set them whirling in a slender bright oval in the air, and added another, then another and another, and soon—no one seeing whence he got them—adding, adding, adding, the oval lengthening all the time, his hands moving so swiftly that they were just ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... phrase, the Creator's more private and sacred studio, for his magnum opus. Now, look at a hen's egg, which is a convenient one to study, because it is large enough and built solidly enough to look at and handle easily. That would be the form I would choose for my thinking-cell. Build me an oval with smooth, translucent walls, and put me in the centre of it with Newton's "Principia" or Kant's "Kritik," and I think I shall develop "an eye for an equation," as you call it, and a capacity ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Arab type of face. Had he been he would have at once been struck by the Eastern look in the girl's long, black eyes, by the Eastern cast of her regular, slightly aquiline features. Above her eyes were thin, jet-black eyebrows that looked almost as if they were painted. Her chin was full and her face oval in shape. She had hair like Gaspare's, black-brown, immensely thick and wavy, with tiny feathers of gold about the temples. She was tall, and had the contours of a strong though graceful girl just blooming into womanhood. Her hands were as brown as Delarey's, well shaped, but the hands ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... sometimes taken in another way. A party of natives proceed to a lagoon, or lake of still water, each carrying in his hand a small net (ken-de-ran-ko) of a semi-oval shape, about twenty inches long, from seven to nine inches across, and from five to seven inches deep. This net is kept in shape by a thin hoop of wood running round it in the upper part. With this the native ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... white, oval and very small. They measure barely two-thirds of a millimetre[8] in length. They stick together slightly and are piled in a shapeless heap which might be likened to a good-sized pinch of the unripe seeds of some orchid. As for their number, I ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... tall, English-looking young man, upright and soldierly, with his handsome, boyish face and well-fitting clothes. That was bad enough, but infinitely worse was she who was to have been the full-blown barmaid. Instead was this magnificent girl, nearly as tall as her brother, with her small oval face crowning the column of her neck, her eyes merry, her mouth laughing at some brotherly retort that Hermann had just made. Aunt Barbara took her in with one second's survey—her face, her neck, her beautiful ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... and a river bounding and rushing eagerly through the rich enclosure, form the scene, beneath that Italian sun which turns everything to gold. There is a fair breadth to the vale: it enjoys a great oval of sky: the falls of shade are dispersed, dot the hollow range, and are not at noontide a broad curtain passing over from right to left. The sun reigns and also governs in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Darrell gave one arm to me and the other to his daughter; and we went down a long passage, at the end of which was the dining-room, a noble old room, with dark oak panelling and a great many pictures by the old masters, which were, no doubt, as valuable as they were dingy. We dined at an oval table, prettily decorated with flowers and with ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... rectangle, is again lengthened by the pyramidal shape of the two central figures. The unrelieved square, it may here be interpolated, is not often found except in somewhat primitive examples. Still less often observed is the oval type of Samson's Wedding feast, Rembrandt (295), in the Royal Gallery, Dresden. Here one might, by pressing the interpretation, see an obtuse-angled double-pyramid with the figure of Delilah for an apex, but a few very irregular pictures seem ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... cranes waving their arms, and the smoke of the engine-fire rising in the mid-sea. An ugly reef is this of the Dhu Heartach; no pleasant assemblage of shelves, and pools, and creeks, about which a child might play for a whole summer without weariness, like the Bell Rock or the Skerryvore, but one oval nodule of black-trap, sparsely bedabbled with an inconspicuous fucus, and alive in every crevice with a dingy insect between a slater and a bug. No other life was there but that of sea-birds, and of the sea itself, that here ran like a mill-race, and growled about the outer reef for ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... greener with age, 1 in. or less across, very numerous, in stiff-branching, spike-like, dense-flowered panicles. Perianth of 6 oblong segments; 6 short curved stamens; 3 styles. Stem: Stout, leafy, 2 to 8 ft. tall. Leaves: Plaited, lower ones broadly oval, pointed, 6 to 12 in. long; parallel ribbed, sheathing the stem where they clasp it; upper leaves gradually ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... narrative had reference to a very large and very valuable oval gem enclosed in the substance of a golden chalice, which chalice, in the monastery of St. Edmundsbury, had once lain centuries long within the Loculus, or inmost coffin, wherein reposed the body of St. Edmund. By pressing a hidden pivot, the cup (which was composed ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... different, with deeply-cut leaves; {133b} up the next the Ceriman {133c} spreads its huge leaves, latticed and forked again and again. So fast do they grow, that they have not time to fill up the spaces between their nerves, and are, consequently full of oval holes; and so fast does its spadix of flowers expand, that (as indeed do some other Aroids) an actual genial heat and fire of passion, which may be tested by the thermometer, or even by the hand, is given off during fructification. ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... from the loss of visibility brought about by distance, but from the very nature of vision, however perfect it be. It is thus, for instance, that the circle seen sideways is changed into that kind of oval which among geometricians is known as an ellipse, and sometimes even into a parabola or a hyperbola, or actually into a straight line, ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... Travellers in America say that a well-kept cacao plantation is a very picturesque sight. In the Philippines, however, or at any rate in East Luzon, the closely-packed, lifeless-looking, moss-covered trees present a dreary spectacle. Their existence is a brief one. Their oval leaves, sometimes nearly a foot long, droop singly from the twigs, and form no luxuriant masses of foliage. Their blossoms are very insignificant; they are of a reddish-yellow, no larger than the flowers of the lime, and grow separately ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... present externally no other ornaments than a door in a simple square frame, with an oval in the centre of the upper part, on which are inscribed the hieroglyphical figures of a beetle, a man with a hawk's head, and beyond the circle two figures on their knees, in the act of adoration. Having passed ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... gown of dark-green velvet, richly trimmed with costly furs, and a small bonnet, likewise trimmed with furs, covered her head, and under this bonnet luxuriant dark ringlets were flowing down, surrounding the beautiful and noble oval of her face ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... Captain was seen calmly seated on a packing-case, with a solemn expression on his face. The rest of his party had been warned to behave with dignity. Even Benjy's round face was drawn into something of an oval, and Butterface made such superhuman attempts to appear grave, that the rest of the party almost broke down at ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... deep gardens before them, with willow trees and oaks above the flower beds, quaint ugly statues, and fountains that were sometimes dry. The narrower houses of South Park crowded one another about the oval enclosure and their common garden was the smaller oval ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... everybody, as they looked at the densely packed grandstand, at the throng in the extra tiers of seats raised to accommodate those who would pay a bonus in order to insure comfort; and finally the thousands who crowded the spaces back of the protecting ropes, all along the oval running track that, twice around, made exactly a quarter of ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... walked one whose slenderness and grace marked her from the rest. A scarlet shawl splashed the cream of her garments. Unlike the other women, she wore no disfiguring handkerchief on her head. Her face, oval and creamy-brown, was framed by two thick braids that fell over her shoulders. In the crook of her arm rested a basket of berries. At her side, rubbing against her now and then, came a powerful huskie, beautiful with the lean grace ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... stairway, shaped like a ladder, and in a first-story room a maid servant brought wine and biscuits to them. On the mantelpiece, at one of the corners of the room, was an oval mirror in a flower-covered frame. Through the open window one saw the Seine, its green shores, and the hills in the distance bathed with warm air. The trembling peace of a summer evening filled the sky, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and her right hand held aside the veil which covered the back of her head and fell lightly on her shoulders, a little open over the throat. Her face looked out from under it as if she were listening to a fine song or an interesting speech. Her thick, slightly waving hair framed the lovely oval of her face under the veil, and Alexander agreed with his sister when she expressed the wish that she might but once see this rarely beautiful creature. But the sculptor assured them that they would be disappointed, for time had treated ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... The faded, lemon-coloured shawl the girl had wrapped about her head emphasized the dark beauty of her oval face. She smiled, and her white teeth were fairly dazzling. Impulsively she thrust ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... about an expanded forehead; his eyes, softly brown, twinkled with varying expression, though the prevalent expression was sad; and the nose, slightly curved, and delicately carved at the nostril, with the lower outline of the face delicately oval, completed a head which was finely placed upon the shoulders, and gave importance and even dignity to a diminutive and shadowy stem. Who shall describe his countenance, catch its quivering sweetness, and fix it forever in words? There are none, alas! to answer the vain desire ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... the top of his head to the soles of his feet, but as the soles of his feet touched the floor his anger abated. After all, Jack hadn't meant to hurt him, and having witnessed several games of football, he knew how innately perverse an oval-shaped affair like the ball itself could be. Furthermore, there was Mrs. Jarley, who had disapproved of his purchase from the outset. If he wreaked vengeance upon poor little Jack for his unwitting offence, Jarley knew that ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... tire, the driver stopped the car beside a little stream in which two extremely pretty girls were bathing. With the evening sun glinting on their brown bodies and their piquant, oval faces framed by the dusky torrents of their loosened hair, they looked like those bronze maidens which disport themselves in the fountain of the Piazza delle Terme in Rome, come to life. I felt certain that they would take to flight when Hawkinson ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... important plant is the Cocoa Tree (Theobroma Cacao). It is a low tree with short-stalked, firm, brittle, simple leaves of large size, oval shape, and dark green colour. The young leaves are of a bright red colour, and, as in many tropical trees, hang limply downwards. The flowers are borne on the main stem or the older branches, and arise from dormant axillary buds (Cauliflory). Each petal is bulged ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... to be paid in hides delivered at Whoop-Up. West turned and went straddling to the place where he and Morse had left their horses. On the way he came face to face with a girl, a lithe, dusky young creature, Indian brown, the tan of a hundred summer suns and winds painted on the oval of her lifted chin. She was carrying a package of sacks to the place where the pemmican ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... human being; it was and is uniquely Milton's. Underneath the broad forehead and arched temples there are the great rings of eye-socket, with the blind, unblemished eyes in them, drawn straight upon you by your voice, and speculating who and what you are; there is a severe composure in the beautiful oval of the whole countenance, disturbed only by the singular pouting of the rich mouth; and the entire expression is that of English ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... hour, was brought by a slender pale lad, not in his Highness's service, but in that of the German physician Heiligenstern. The boy, who was said to be a Georgian rescued from the Grand Signior's galleys, and whose small oval face was as smooth as a girl's, accosted Odo in one of the remoter garden alleys with the request to follow him at once to the Duke's apartment. Odo complied, and his guide loitered ahead with an air of unconcern, as though not wishing to have his errand ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... work was done on the most common mosquito of the region, a species of Culex. But one day a friend sent him a different mosquito, one with spotted wings, and in examining it he was interested to note certain oval or round nodules on the outer walls of the stomach. On closer examinations he found that each of these nodules contained a few granules of the coal-black melanin of malarial fever. Further studies and experiments showed that these particular ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... more, and we are sitting at a little round table, each with a tall green glass of Mai-Trank before us, and a brisk Uhlanenritt in our ears. I look round with a pleasant sense of dissipation. The still, green trees; the cluster of oval lamps, like great bright ostrich-eggs; the countless little tables like our own; the happy social groups; the waiters running madly about with bif-tecks; the great-lidded goblets of amber-colored Bohemian beer; the young Bavarian officers, in light-blue ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... souls in Purgatory. It is believed that a soul is delivered for every cake eaten. At Antwerp the cakes are coloured yellow with saffron to suggest the Purgatorial flames. In southern Germany and Austria little white loaves of a special kind are baked; they are generally oval in form, and are usually called by some name into which the word "soul" enters. In Tyrol they are given to children by their godparents; those for the boys have the shape of horses or hares, those for the girls, of hens. In Tyrol the cakes left over at supper remain ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... stands on a rocky ridge which forms the last spur of the Toledo range, and is of extraordinary strength. The river Rivillas falls almost at right angles into the Guadiana, and in the angle formed by their junction stands Badajos, oval in shape, girdled with elaborate defences, with the Guadiana 500 yards wide as its defence to the north, the Rivillas serving as a wet ditch to the east, and no less than five great fortified outposts—Saint Roque, Christoval, Picurina, ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... ashes glowed in the coffee niche and shed a ray upon the shelf of small white cups with faint designs of gold. In a corner, his black face and arms faintly relieved against the wall, an old negro crouched, gazing into vacancy with bulging eyes, and beating with a curved palm stem upon an oval drum, whose murmur was deep and hollow as the murmur of the wind, and seemed indeed its echo prisoned within the room ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... fire there were trees. Of the faces which came out fresh and vivid as though painted in yellow and red, the most prominent was a girl's face. By a trick of the firelight she seemed to have no body. The oval of the face and hair hung beside the fire with a dark vacuum for background. As if dazed by the glare, her green-blue eyes stared at the flames. Every muscle of her face was taut. There was something tragic in her thus staring—her age between ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... At the oval table on the dais the guests were select and chosen. At the right hand of the King sat William; at the left Odo of Bayeux. Over these three stretched a canopy of cloth of gold; the chairs on which each sate were of metal, richly gilded over, ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gracefully proportioned. His shoulders were broad; and, rising from the midst of a slender throat, adorned with a fall of lace, appeared his stately head crowned with a wealth of long, brown curls. His face was of a beautiful oval, his complexion clear, his mouth wreathed with happy smiles. The brow was high and arched, and the fine gray eyes beamed with hope and energy. In one hand he held a rose, which he extended to a person not represented in the picture; the other band, half veiled by its overhanging fall ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... (as we call it) is a large fruit as big as a man's head, of a long or oval shape, and of a green colour; but one side is yellowish when ripe. The outside rind or coat is pretty thick, and very rough, with small sharp knobs; the inside is full of spongy pulp, within which also are many black seeds or kernels, in shape and bigness ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... for a moment, having seen the child move. Her calm face grew sad with pity and astonishment. Then, shivering, she hastily closed the window. She carried with her the rapid vision of a fair little creature with violet-coloured eyes under a head-covering of an old silk handkerchief. The face was oval, the neck long and slender as a lily, and the shoulders drooping; but she was blue from cold, her little hands and feet were half dead, and the only thing about her that still showed life was the slight vapour ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... head toward the speaker and now for the first time had a fair chance to look into the face of the voice's owner. She looked and saw the oval of a most comely face, white and drawn as though by exhaustion or by deep sorrow, or perhaps by both. For all their pallor the cheeks were full and smooth; the brow was broad and low; the mouth firm and sweet. From between the tall collars of the cape the ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... more ridiculous than mournful. When Nathan Perry became so prosperous that he proposed to remove the old wooden store on the corner of Water and Superior streets and replace it with a brick one, he concluded to expend something upon ornament. He ordered two oval stone signs to be made and to be built into the walls over the two doors, one on each street. These were among the earliest efforts of Dr. Garlick. Both of these stones were in existence until the ground was cleared for the present Bank building, when they were broken up and put ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... situated near the end of West Street, it is peculiarly neat, both as respects its external and interior appearance: an inscription upon an oval tablet in front, informs us, that it was erected by voluntary subscription in the year 1814. At the distance of about a hundred yards from the above, is the Roman Catholic chapel, with an embattled front surmounted by ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley
... cross, with a man's head but half the body of female form, and with, instead of a cloth or fig-leaf, the phallic crux ansata, or Egyptian cross or symbol of Life, placed sideways, and as if the oval represented the female organ of reproduction, and the tau or incomplete cross that of ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... to make mention of the noble entertainment given by the Queen my mother, on an island, with the grand dances, and the form of the salon, which seemed appropriated by nature for such a purpose, it being a large meadow in the middle of the island, in the shape of an oval, surrounded on every aide by tall spreading trees. In this meadow the Queen my mother had disposed a circle of niches, each of them large enough to contain a table of twelve covers. At one end a platform was raised, ascended by four steps formed of turf. Here their Majesties were seated at ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... This she dabs upon the plastic foundation, and continues the apparently rude operation until some twenty or thirty pills of clay are adhering at equal distances. She then forms these into a number of neat oval-shaped cells, about the size of a wren's egg, and in each cell she deposits one egg. She then flies off in search of spiders, which are to be laid tip in stores within the cells as food for ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... my first impression of Mme. Galli-Curci, as she entered her big, sunny parlor, where I was waiting to see her. Her delicate, oval face was aglow with the flush of healthful exercise, for she had just come in from a shopping expedition and the wintry air was keen. "I love to go shopping," she explained, "so I ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... in one of the leading canoes. He was born at Orleans in 1607, and was thirty-five years of age. His oval face and the delicate mould of his features indicated a modest, thoughtful, and refined nature. He was constitutionally timid, with a sensitive conscience and great religious susceptibilities. He was a finished ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... and filled with silky seeds. The same little tree was subsequently observed, growing round the head of the gulf of Carpentaria, and also at Arnheim's Land. Another shrub (Gardenia?), with opposite, oval, rather rough leaves, and large white or light yellow blossoms, like those of the Jasmine in shape and fragrance, had been observed once before, but was very common between this latitude and Port Essington; at which place a species of Guettarda, resembling it very much, ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... a little while, fascinated myself by his beauty, his dainty motions, his soft ears with a bright oval of light about them, his wonderful eyes glowing like burning rainbows kindled by the firelight. Far behind him the mother's cry ran back and forth along the hillside. Suddenly it changed; a danger note leaped into it; and again I heard the call to follow and the crash of ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... oval that plainly told of a vanished cartridge-belt, a string of cartridges trailed ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... attention to these mountaineers, the chief points of importance being the comparative absence of all elements of Brahminism, and the occurrence in their physiognomy of the most favourable points of Hindu beauty—regular and delicate features, oval face, and a clear brunette skin. Free from the other religious and social characteristics of Hinduism as the Tudas may be, they still admit a sort of caste; e.g., whilst the Peiki, or Toralli, may perform any function, the Kuta, or Tardas, are limited. ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... at her former governess with a start of involuntary wonder and admiration. Rose Stillwater was more beautiful than ever. Her exquisite oval face was a little more rounded. Her fair complexion had a richer bloom on the cheeks and lips. Her hair was darker in the shade and brighter in the light; her blue eyes were softer and sweeter; her graceful form fuller. She was ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... noble elms led from the lodge at the entrance of the domain and opened upon a beautiful carriage drive that wound round the velvet lawn, which formed a magnificent and spacious oval in front of ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... and utensils of the toilet, some formed of shells, some of mother-of-pearl, and others of ivory, covered with ornaments of gold in extraordinary taste. Two large figures, modelled in silver with antique purity; supported an oval swing mirror, which had for its rim, in place of a frame curiously carved, a fresh garland of natural flowers, renewed every day like a nosegay ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... least of the Thrushes in size, being about that of the common Bluebird, and he may be distinguished from his relatives by the dimness of the spots upon his breast. The Wood-Thrush has very clear, distinct oval spots on a white ground; in the Hermit, the spots run more into lines, on a ground of a faint bluish-white; in the Veery, the marks are almost obsolete, and a few rods off his breast presents only a dull yellowish appearance. To get a good ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... plain, rose a small and very isolated hill,—Lycabettus, whose peaked summit looked down upon the roofs of Athens. And last, but never least, about one mile southwest of Lycabettus, upreared a natural monument of much greater frame,—not a hill, but a colossal rock. Its shape was that of an irregular oval; it was about 1000 feet long, 500 feet wide, and its level summit stood 350 feet above the plain. This steep, tawny rock, flung by the Titans, one might dream, into the midst of the Attic plain, formed one of the most famous sites in the world, for it was the Acropolis of ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... Chancellor Clarendon fell a victim to his ridicule: nothing could withstand it. There, not in that iniquitous gallery at Whitehall, but in the king's privy chambers, Villiers might be seen, in all the radiance of his matured beauty. His face was long and oval, with sleepy, yet glistening eyes, over which large arched eyebrows seemed to contract a brow on which the curls of a massive wig (which fell almost to his shoulders) hung low. His nose was long, well formed, and flexible; his lips thin and compressed, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... title, Pilewort, from Pila, a ball, was probably first acquired because, after the doctrine of signatures, the small oval tubercles attached to its stringy roots were supposed to resemble and to cure piles. Nevertheless, it has been since proved practically that the whole plant, when bruised and made into an ointment with fresh lard, is really useful for healing piles; ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... slowly into the room. They wore, like the men, only skins of wild animals caught about their waists with rawhide belts or chains of gold; but the black masses of their hair were incrusted with golden headgear composed of many circular and oval pieces of gold ingeniously held together to form a metal cap from which depended at each side of the head, long strings of oval pieces falling ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... opened the upper part of the sound, we saw a very large fire about three or four miles higher up, which formed a complete oval, reaching from the top of the hill down almost to the water-side, the middle space being inclosed all round by the fire, like a hedge. I consulted with Mr Fannin, and we were both of opinion that we could expect to reap no other advantage ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... type. But what made Belasez glance from it to the brazen mirror fixed to the wall opposite? Was it Anegay of whom Bruno had been thinking when he murmured that she was so like some one? Undoubtedly there was a likeness. The same pure oval face, the smooth calm brow, the dark glossy hair: but it struck Belasez that her own features, as seen in the mirror, were the less ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... morning he landed at three Indian huts. These were of an oval form, each about fifteen feet long, and ten feet wide; and in the middle, only, they were high enough for a person to stand upright. In one part of each the ground was strewed with willow branches, probably as a bed for the family. The door or entrance was about two feet and a half high, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... swept by, turned her head with that movement a flower has which a breeze has stirred. Her eyes were sultry, darkened with stibium; on her cheek was the pink of the sea-shell, and her lips made one vermilion rhyme. The face was oval and rather small; and though it was beautiful as victory, the wonder of her eyes, which looked the haunts of hope fulfilled, the wonder of her mouth, which seemed to promise more than any mortal mouth ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... rock. So it is in the valley of the Ariege, and so it is in that of the Aston, and so it is in every other valley until you get to the far end where live the cleanly but incomprehensible Basques. Each of these steps is perfectly level, somewhat oval in shape, a mile or two or sometimes five miles long, but not often a mile broad. Through each will run the river of the valley, and upon either side of it there will be rich pastures, and a high plain of this sort is called a jasse, the same ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... given herself time to heed these things. Her eye had been caught by objects of quite another quality. A large white oblong paper box lay against the inside of the tree; over it, on a splinter, hung a small oval looking-glass. ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... attention first of all," said Drew, who had now joined them, and they all three gloated over the wonderful specimen which glowed with intense colours. There were no long loose flowing buff plume; for the bird was short and compact, its principal decoration being six oval feathers at the end of as many thin wire-like pens, three growing crest-like out of each side of its head. The whole of its throat and breast were covered with broad scale-like feathers of brilliant metallic golden hue, looking in the sunshine ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... to their lustrous fire; the long, straight nose with sharply curved nostrils, imperial with the pride of sensibility and spiritual power; the firm, handsome mouth, and the powerful chin, with its strong outlines melted into the utter grace of oval curves. In its calmness and repose, in its subdued strength and pervading serenity, it is the picture of the man's life in little." Spohr seems ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... set apart one-tenth of the income which the bride brings him, for the purchase of perfumes, essences, precious ointments, &c. All these articles were preserved either in golden boxes, or in little oval narrow-necked phials of dazzling white alabaster, which bore the name of onyx, from its resemblance to the precious stone of that name, but was in fact a very costly sort of marble, obtained in the quarries of Upper Egypt, or those of the Libanus in Syria. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... The night Ellenora Bishop met the young pianist in my atelier, I saw that she was interested. Arthur came to me with letters from several German critics. I liked the slender, blue-eyed young fellow who was not a day over twenty-one. His was a true American type tempered by Continental culture. Oval-faced, fair-haired, of a rather dreamy disposition and with a certain austerity of manner, he was the fastidious puritan—a puritan expanded by artistic influences. Strangely enough he had temperament, and set to music Heine and Verlaine. A genuine talent, I felt assured, and congratulated ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... you the place," she answered; and taking him by the hand, she led him up and up the oval-winding stair in one of the ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... returned below, I sat down on one end of a deep, semi-circular, or, rather, semi-oval settee, upholstered in red plush. It extended right across the whole after-end of the cabin. Mr. Burns motioned to sit down, dropped into one of the swivel-chairs round the table, and kept his eyes on me as persistently as ever, and with that strange air as if all this were ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... unprecedented, that I must have been blind, indeed, not to have foreseen what it prefaced. I had seen her face the first time I entered his house, where her photograph hung on a conspicuous wall: the charming, oval face of a young girl, little more than a child, with great eyes, that one guessed, one knew not why, to be the colour of violets, looking out with singular wistfulness from a waving cloud of dark hair. Afterwards, he told me that ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al |
