"Pleasurable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... must fit into certain places, and gather into certain harmonious groups: so that, for instance, the red chimney of a cottage is not merely set in its place as a chimney, but that it may affect, in a certain way pleasurable to the eye, the pieces of green or blue in other parts of the picture; and we ought to see that the work is masterly, merely by the positions and quantities of these patches of green, red, and blue, even ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... me from head to foot, leaving me weak and almost powerless, and really almost obliged to depend for support upon the arm which encircled me. If my partner failed from ignorance, lack of skill, or innocence, to arouse these, to me, most pleasurable sensations, I did not dance ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... of dawn), gave her a breadth of influence seemingly coextensive with the sum of things. Yes! his great mother was in touch with everything. Yet throughout he can but note her perpetual chastity, with pleasurable though half-suspicious wonder at the mystery, he knows not what, involved therein, as though he awoke suddenly in some distant, unexplored region of her person and activity. [169] Why the lighted torch always, and that long straight vesture rolled round so formally? Was ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... husband's intent gaze, felt a glow of embarrassment. To conceal her emotion, she turned, and seated herself in a chair, where she relaxed into a posture as listlessly indifferent as she could contrive in this moment of pleasurable turmoil. ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... her across, bring her back and provide in the interim for the afflicted children. This was Pauline's opportunity; she naturally succeeded to the position of leading lady, and kept it until her faults of temper developed and she had the pleasurable excitement of a fierce quarrel with her manager. Thus, while her talent was conceded, her stormy temperament prevented her achieving anything like permanent success, and every few months she would reappear at St. Ignace, live drearily in the dingy house, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... blurred, lost its walls, became formless space; out of which, to his pleasurable surprise, he saw the carefully garbed figure of Colonel Mapleson walking toward him. He never forgot that tea rose! Confound him—probably another benefit for one of his indigent song birds. As Howat was about to speak the Colonel disappeared. It was Scalchi, in street ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... slightly in a comical twist. He had a vivid imagination, and the shattered desk suggested an exciting and pleasurable moment in the near past. Some one chuckled at the rear of the room. Andy's face broke into ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... at Claremont, and then in Abingdon House, Kensington, where he lived for some time in apparently tranquil enjoyment, the delightful and salubrious vicinity affording to his family means of retired and pleasurable recreation. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... he had only to play a good piece in his own powerful style, and I was at once reconciled both with him and with his art. I was then often in a curious state of mind; many pieces particularly of old Sebastian Bach were almost like a fearful ghost-story, and I yielded myself up to that feeling of pleasurable awe to which we are so prone in the days of our fantastic youth. But I entered into a veritable Eden when, as sometimes happened in winter, the bandmaster of the town and his colleagues, supported by a few other moderate ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the doer in his next life. Only the fruits of those actions which are extremely wicked or particularly good could be reaped in this life. The nature of the next birth of a man is determined by the nature of pleasurable or painful experiences that have been made ready for him by his maturing actions of this life. If the experiences determined for him by his action are such that they are possible to be realized in the life of a goat, the man will die and be ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... and," continued Trevylyan, with enthusiasm, "he is above them; their fiat may crush his glory, but never his self-esteem. He stands alone and haughty amidst the wrecks of the temple he imagined he had raised 'To THE FUTURE,' and retaliates neglect with scorn. But is this, the life of scorn, a pleasurable state of existence? Is it one to be cherished? Does even the moment of fame counterbalance the years of mortification? And what is there in literary fame itself present and palpable to its heir? His work is a pebble thrown ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... In the pleasurable height of her anticipations, Polly found it indispensable to put down her piece of toast, cross one of her little fat knees over the other, and bring her little fat right hand down into her left hand with a business-like slap. After this gathering of herself together, Polly, ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... ape-and-monkey climes.' Edward Ward, a very voluminous poet in Hudibrastic verse, but best known by the London Spy, in prose. He has of late years kept a public-house in the City (but in a genteel way), and with his wit, humour, and good liquor (ale) afforded his guests a pleasurable entertainment, especially those of the High-Church party. Jacob, Lives of Poets, vol. ii., p. 225. Great number of his works were yearly sold into the plantations. Ward, in a book called Apollo's Maggot, declared this account to be a great falsity, ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... October 17.—Here am I in this capital once more, after an April-weather meeting with my daughter and Lockhart. Too much grief in our first meeting to be joyful; too much pleasure to be distressing—a giddy sensation between the painful and the pleasurable. I ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... desire lowest. And yet a third proof: I fancy the only quite real pleasures are those of the philosopher. There is an intermediate state between pleasure and pain. To pass into this from pleasure is painful, and from pain is pleasurable. Now, the pleasures of the body are really nothing more than reliefs from pains of one kind or another. And, next, the pleasures of the soul, being of the eternal order, are necessarily more real than those of the body, which are fleeting—in ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... of England. Whatever the particular times of his writing were, the people of his age, who began to grow wonderfully fond of diversions of this kind, could not but be highly pleas'd to see a Genius arise amongst 'em of so pleasurable, so rich a vein, and so plentifully capable of furnishing their favourite entertainments. Besides the advantages of his wit, he was in himself a good-natur'd man, of great sweetness in his manners, and a most agreeable companion; so that it is no wonder if with so many good qualities he made himself ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... of joy, related at the same time both to the mind and the body, I call pleasurable excitement (titillatio) or cheerfulness; that of sorrow I call pain or melancholy. It is, however, to be observed that pleasurable excitement and pain are related to a man when one of his parts is affected more than the others; cheerfulness and melancholy, on the other hand, when all parts are equally affected. What the nature of desire is I have explained; and besides these three—joy, sorrow, and desire—I know of ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... of Tilling. But the fuse was set now. Sooner or later the explosion must come. She wondered as they went out to commune with Elizabeth's sweet flowers till the other guests arrived how great a torrent would be let loose. She did not repent her exploration—far from it—but her pleasurable anticipations were ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... and rarely forgot anything. I could recall many pleasurable incidents of our prolonged and varied intimacy. We were one day wandering about the Montmartre region of Paris when we came into a hole-in-the-wall where they were playing a piece called "Les Brigands." It was melodrama to the very marrow of the bones of the Apaches that gathered and ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... with no covering upon his shoulders but a damp reindeer skin. It may not be unhealthy, and perhaps a physician of the water-cure practice might recommend it for certain ailments, but it would never become popular as a pleasurable pastime. At night the other two skins are put in the bed, one beneath and the other over the sleepers, and by morning are dry. But it seems almost a miracle that the occupants escape a severe attack of inflammatory rheumatism. In the morning the man again peels for ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... vivid and pleasurable thing to her, as far as she could look back upon it. She began to realise that she must have been very happy, because she had never found herself desiring existence other than such as had come to her day by day. Except for her passionate ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... an ecstasy of joy. To have Compadre under her own roof from Saturday to Monday would be too delightful. Brimful of her pleasurable anticipations, and more like the natural, joyous girl of former days than she had been since leaving Mrs. Harold and Polly, she flew to the piazza where her aunt, arrayed in a filmy lingerie gown, reclined in one of the big East India chairs. For a moment she forgot ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... of mine, life has been a more pleasurable business. We feel now that there are romantic possibilities about letters setting forth on their journey from our floor. To start life with so many flipperties might lead to anything. Each time that we send a letter off we listen in a tremble of excitement for the final FLOP, and when it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various
... of the dew as it dazzled and disappeared—all combined to charm sound, sight, and sense, and to produce a strong feeling of joy. But the horseman, who was passing through this graceful scene, scarcely needed the aid of any external object to enhance the pleasurable sensation that already filled his breast. The stately horse on which he sat, seemed, by its light steps, and by ever and anon proudly prancing, to share in the animation of its rider. So, the noble stag-hound that followed, and continually looked up contentedly at its master, appeared, likewise, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... was anything but pleasurable; but Captain Keppel's conciliatory and kind manner soon removed any feeling of fear; and was all along of the greatest use to me in our subsequent doings. The first qualification, in dealing with a Malay, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... look at her too closely. All at once it had dawned upon him that her situation must be tremendously more embarrassing than his own. He felt, too, the tingle of a new excitement in his veins. It was a pleasurable sensation, something which he did not pause to analyze just at present. Only he knew that it was because she had told him as plainly as she could that Bram had ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... days of pleasurable interest to all Englishmen who travelled in the tube and read their halfpenny papers. A great and enlightened Press had already solved the problem of creating the sensational without the aid of facts. This sudden deluge, ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Pursue thy pleasurable way, Safe in the guidance of thy heavenly guard, While melting airs are heard, And soft-eyed cherub forms around thee play: Simplicity, in careless flowers array'd, Prattling amusive in his accent meek; And Modesty, half ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... din were to him detestable. Around him were sunlight and freedom; the future gave him no anxiety; for he was disposed to accept from life whatever it could offer him. Sanine shut his eyes tight, and stretched himself; the tension of his sound, strong muscles gave him pleasurable thrills. ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... their rudeness was quite unintentional and without guile. They merely stared and obviously muttered comments to each other as they passed, each giving the hasty, unconscious touch to his young moustache, which is the automatic sign of pleasurable observation in the ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... attired," Crawshay hastened to explain. "If, instead of asking me very absurd questions at the aerodrome, they had provided me with some garments calculated to exclude the salt water, I should be able to look back upon the trip with more pleasurable feelings." ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... motion resulting from the swing of the frame of the Otto gives a pleasurable sensation, which those who have only experienced the constrained motion of a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... and even the Latin grammar has its delights. In short, I have a hujus pleasure in hic, haec, hoc; [cluck cluck;] and even the flourishing of the twigs of that tree of knowledge, the birch, hath become a pleasurable occupation to me, if not to those upon whom it is inflicted. I am like an old horse, who hath so long gone round and round in a mill, that he cannot walk straight forward; and, if it pleases the Almighty, I will die in harness. Still I thank thee, Jacob; and thank God that thou hast again proved ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... very strange in this—a mere reaction of the mind after severe pain—and, to a young man of twenty-five, there are few more pleasurable images than that of a beautiful maiden with blue eyes, blooming cheeks, and ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... San Francisco to Monterey and from Monterey to San Diego, with its rough roads, was as familiar to him who walked it with so much difficulty as it is to us who enjoy it by comfortable travel on the railroad or pleasurable motor trips; his fasts were austere and frequent, wine he never used, the discipline was no stranger to him, a bed was not among his possessions, on the bare floor or bench at most he would rest his sore missionary body; yet he never imposed unnecessary ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... generation. Moreover, capable, proud, and experienced as they were, they felt the need of a man's voice, and a man's hard, callous ideas. It was a case for Mr. Critchlow. Maggie was sent to fetch him, with a particular request that he should come to the side-door. He came expectant, with the pleasurable anticipation of disaster, and he was not disappointed. He passed with the sisters the happiest hour that had fallen to him for years. Quickly he arranged the alternatives for them. Would they tell the police, or would they take the risks of waiting? They shied away, but with fierce brutality ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... all the objects with which he has to do, all works of art, and the fairer forms of nature and human life, as powers or forces producing pleasurable sensations, each of a more or less peculiar or unique kind. This influence he feels, and wishes to explain, by analysing and reducing it to its elements. To him, the picture, the landscape, the engaging personality ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... door, in which I sat with no sentiment I can remember now but that of some slight shyness. He got in without a moment's hesitation, his friendly glance took me in from head to foot and (such was his peculiar gift) gave me a pleasurable sensation. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... suppose it is excitement, though it doesn't feel like it. You have been drunk, very slightly drunk with the speed of the car. But now you are sober. Your heart beats quietly, steadily, but with a little creeping, mounting thrill in the beat. The sensation is distinctly pleasurable. You say to yourself, "It is coming. Now—or the next minute—perhaps at the end of the road." You have one moment of regret. "After all, it would be a pity if it came too soon, before we'd even begun our job." But the ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... enigmatic moments of a fearful yet pleasurable dread. There was the ocean, on which an apparently abandoned vessel, a small spot in infinity, was staggering forward with no visible goal ahead and no visible starting-point behind. There were the heavens lying heavily ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... privacy of the little study,—Mr. Heth having fared forth to a Convention "banquet,"—the talk ranged wide. Late in the evening, it returned again to Carlisle, as the possessor of large independent funds, a topic of pleasurable possibilities from ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the journey went on with much flurrying and hot haste. To us at home, who live and feel our life every day, the manufacture of endless baby-linen and the packing of mountains of clothes does not give an idea of much pleasurable excitement; but at San Jose, where there was scarcely motion enough in existence to prevent its waters from becoming foul with stagnation, this packing of baby-linen was delightful, and for a month or so the days went ...
— Returning Home • Anthony Trollope
... anxiety, in spite of her fears as to the future, Jan's heart beat fast with pleasurable excitement. She was young and strong and eager, and here at last was the real East. A little soft wind caressed her tired forehead and she drank in the blessed coolness of ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... gestures or tricks have arisen in association with certain states of the mind, owing to wholly inexplicable causes, and are undoubtedly inherited. I have elsewhere given one instance from my own observation of an extraordinary and complex gesture, associated with pleasurable feelings, which was transmitted from a father to his daughter, as well as some other ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... than a person of my limited means can afford to do. The body, you say, is a subtle instrument to be played upon in every variety of manner and rendered above all things as sensitive as possible to pleasurable impressions. In fact, you want to be a kind of Aeolian harp. I admit that this is more than a string of sophisms; you may call it a philosophy of life. But it is not my philosophy. It does not appeal to me in the least. You will ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... in Coton Manor more than a mere passing resemblance to a tomb, she was neither awestruck nor downcast at the prospect of dissolution. She flung herself into the vault as she had flung herself onto the platform, all glowing with pleasurable anticipation. To Durant there was something infinitely sad in the spectacle of this young creature precipitating herself into the unknown with such reckless and passionate curiosity. The whole long evening through he could ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... think?" she cried, her eyes popping with pleasurable excitement. "The Haldens are in town for over Sunday, and the girls are going to the party tomorrow night! They've just landed yesterday and were in the customer's hunting up suits when ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... longer alone, a prey to the scourge of his thoughts. The moment he rode into sight of men a remarkable transformation occurred in him. A strange warmth stirred in him—a longing to see the faces of people, to hear their voices—a pleasurable emotion sad and strange. But it was only a precursor of his old bitter, sleepless, and eternal vigilance. When he hid alone in the brakes he was safe from all except his deeper, better self; when he escaped from this into the haunts of men his force and will ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... was as lovely as pure wintry air and cloudless sunbeams could render it; but rendered far lovelier still by our procession, if I may so call it, which was well calculated to awaken the most pleasurable feelings. In front, were the humble remains of that proud army, which, one and thirty months ago, captured our city, and thence, in the drunkenness of victory had hurled menaces and cruelties disgraceful ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... defined his spine for him before this pause ended, and then, when the roots of his hair began to crinkle, his grandfather would suddenly bow low over his plate and rumble in his head. It was very curious and weirdly pleasurable, and it lasted one minute. When it ceased the tension relaxed instantly, and every one was friendly and ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... suit with a suitable stipend. He did as generously with the Barber, giving him a gift and a dress of honour; moreover he settled on him a handsome solde and created him Barber surgeon[FN699] of state and made him one of his cup companions. So they ceased not to live the most pleasurable life and the most delectable, till there came to them the Destroyer of all delights and the Sunderer of all societies, the Depopulator of palaces and the Garnerer for graves. Yet, O most auspicious King! (continued ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... appreciate the beauty of ideas in just proportion and harmonious relation to each other, and the absurdity of the same ideas when distorted or brought into incongruous juxtaposition. The exercise of this sense of humour ... compels the mind to form a picture to itself, accompanied by pleasurable emotion; and what is this but setting the imagination to work, though in topsy-turvy fashion? Nay, in such a case, imagination plays a double part, since it is only by instantaneous comparison with ideal fitness and proportion that it can grasp at full force ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... to begin his journey, to be away from Deerham. Somebody else rose with feelings less pleasurable; and that was Lucy Tempest. Now that the real time of separation had come, Lucy awoke to the state of her own feelings; to the fact, that the whole world contained but one beloved face ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... when you, in a melancholy hour, shall reckon up your miseries by your murders in America. Life, with you, begins to wear a clouded aspect. The vision of pleasurable delusion is wearing away, and changing to the barren wild of age and sorrow. The poor reflection of having served your king will yield you no consolation in your parting moments. He will crumble to the same undistinguished ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... leaving terror and death in their path. We may say the same of the alternation of the seasons. Summer, while looked forward to with joyous anticipation, may bring us only suffering by its too ardent grasp; and winter, often welcomed with like pleasurable anticipations, may prove a period of terror ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... that this prospect of trouble seemed to afford the judge a pleasurable sensation; indeed, he had quite lost his former air of somber ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... Shakespeare's writings, in the most pathetic scenes, never act upon us, as pathetic, beyond the bounds of pleasure—an effect which, in a much greater degree than might at first be imagined, is to be ascribed to small, but continual and regular impulses of pleasurable surprise from the metrical arrangement.—On the other hand (what it must be allowed will much more frequently happen) if the Poet's words should be incommensurate with the passion, and inadequate to raise the Reader to a height of desirable excitement, then (unless the Poet's choice of his ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... All unknown to himself, Gerrard had not been intending to suffer alone, and it was a blow to discover that what had meant to him a real and terrible renunciation was to her a mere matter of course, rather pleasurable than otherwise. He groaned as the truth forced itself upon him, and Honour looked ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... you will admit that I have already been frank in my description of the man I am defending; but before I take you up upon this head, I will be franker still, and tell you that perhaps nowhere in the world can a man taste a more pleasurable sense of contrast than when he passes from Damien's "Chinatown" at Kalawao to the beautiful Bishop-Home at Kalaupapa. At this point, in my desire to make all fair for you, I will break my rule and adduce ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... couple have undergone every calamity, and experienced every pleasurable and painful sensation of which our nature is susceptible. You cannot by possibility tell the egotistical couple anything they don't know, or describe to them anything they have not felt. They have been everything but dead. Sometimes we are tempted to wish they had been ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... ease, which shine so conspicuously even in the prose works of the poet; but they have many redeeming points about them. His taste was as pure as his judgment was masculine. He has been heard to say, that the two most pleasurable moments of his life were—first, when he read Mackenzie's story of La Roche, and secondly, when Robert took him apart, at the breakfast or dinner hour, during harvest, and read to him, while seated on a barley sheaf, his MS. copy of the far-famed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... engaged to a medical officer in the army. There is another person who frequently completes the family circle at 11 Downing Street. It is Richard Lloyd, the old shoemaker who forty years ago risked his little all to educate his orphan nephew. It was one of the pleasurable anticipations of Lloyd George, when he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer with the privileges of this historic residence, that Richard Lloyd would be able to come and stay there. "My dear old uncle," he said, "will be so proud to come and stay at the house in which ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... a more wondrous tale than that of my Hunchback?" Thereupon the Nazarene broker came forward and said, "O King of the age, with thy leave I will tell thee a thing which happened to myself and which is still more wondrous and marvellous and pleasurable and delectable than the tale of the Hunchback." Quoth the King "Tell us what thou hast to say!" So he ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... moment leading my young and beautiful bride through the crowded salons of Devonshire House; and, at the next, I was contemplating the excellence and perfection of my stud arrangements at Melton, for I resolved not to give up hunting. While in this pleasurable exercise of my fancy, I was removing from before me some of the breakfast equipage, or, as I then believed it, breaking the trees into better groups upon my lawn, I was once more brought to the world and its dull reality, by the following passage which my eye fell upon in the newspaper ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... Sachs was, all unconsciously, forcing Edward Henry to believe in his own capacities; and the two as it were suddenly developed a more cordial friendliness. Each felt the quick lifting of the plane of their relations, and was aware of a pleasurable emotion. ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... condition is a singular process. It consists of a small number of memories, forecasts, Imaginings, repeated over and over again, till one would think the brain must weary itself beyond endurance. It can go on for many hours consecutively, and not only remain a sufficient and pleasurable employment, but render every other business repulsive, ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... whispers the Voice, "does this savage, merciless, persecuting animal, to which the sufferings and writhings of others of its wretched kind furnish the most pleasurable sensations, and the mass of which care only to eat, sleep, be clothed, and wallow in sensual pleasures, and the best of which wrangle, hate, envy, and, with few exceptions, regard their own interests alone,—with what right does it endeavor to delude ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... this—we did the work. Take heed, ye Captains of Industry, and note this truth, that where men and women work together under right influences, much good is accomplished, and the work is pleasurable. Of course there are vinegar-faced philosophers who say that the Scotch custom of pairing young men and maidens in the hayfield is not without its effect on esoterics, also on vital statistics; and I'm willing to admit there may be danger in the scheme. But life is a dangerous business anyway—few ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... which, they were so very often both. Such people stimulated, taken in small doses, but neither on her husband's account nor on her daughter's did Cecilia desire that they should come to her in swarms. Her attitude of mind towards them was, in fact, similar-a sort of pleasurable dread-to that in which she purchased the Westminster Gazette to feel the pulse of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... industry as keeper of my old den. Your parcels have been duly received and perused; but I had hoped to receive 'Guy Mannering' before this time. I won't intrude further for the present on your avocations, professional or pleasurable, but am, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... young man with a little break in his voice. This roused them all to another question, quite different from the first one. Her brother and sister looked at Ursula, one with a keen pang of involuntary envy, the other with a sharp thrill of pleasurable excitement. Oddly enough they could all of them pass by their father and leave him out of the question, more easily, with less strain of mind, than strangers could. Ursula for her part did not say anything; but she looked at her lover with eyes in which two big tears were standing. She could scarcely ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... one feel like the member of a large family, where you walk into the house of your neighbour, smoke his cigars and drink his whisky, brought to you while reclining in a long chair on the verandah with the punkah swinging lazily over you, waiting for the master's return. This is done with the pleasurable knowledge that your friend would naturally instal himself in your house under like circumstances. Here is real charm. Think, too, of the outdoor life, of those lovely evenings when the air is soft and warm, the moon at full and of a size never seen in England, ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... contented. And in its very stuff there is a complete and changeless joy. This is surely what the great mind meant when it said to the Athenian judges that death must not be dreaded since no experience in life was so pleasurable as a deep sleep; for being wise and seeing the intercommunion of things, he could not mean extinction, which is nonsense, but a lapse into that under-part of which I speak. For there are gods also ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... with a pleasurable feeling of excitement and interest. It was a new experience for him and one he was bound to remember. Already the locomotive was gathering momentum. The little town was left behind in the gathering dusk and soon they were threading ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... ridiculous. But also, in avoiding the ridiculous, you would tumble into the ridiculous, deeply and hopelessly! And think how your very original festival would delight the participators, how they would look forward to it with joy, and back upon it with pleasurable regret; how their minds would dwell sweetly upon the conception of shredded wheat, and how their faith would be encouraged and strengthened by the intellectuality ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... must expect to have her pay retrenched. Upon which the good Lord was dismissed, and has not attended the drawing-room since. You know one cannot help laughing, when one sees him next, and I own I long for that pleasurable moment." ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... which he insisted was the right of way through fields or woodlands, and especially beside the sea. With the advent of the motor-car and other swift means of locomotion, the public roads are no longer safe and pleasurable for pedestrians; besides the iniquitous fact that hundreds are kept from enjoying the beauties of nature by the utterly selfish and useless reservations of such ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... joyful or the wicked beautiful in reality, is impossible. In the narrow view the lust of the eye and the pride of life may seem beautiful, but in the broad perspective of the inward world they take on ugliness; in the moment they may seem pleasurable, but in the backward reach of memory they take on pain; to assert eternity against the moment, to see life in the whole, to live as if all of life were concentrated in its instant, is the chief labour of the mind, the eye, the heart, the enduring will, all ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... but the boy is in such pressing need of some pleasurable emotion that as soon as I looked at you and your roses I thought, 'Now, that would not be a bad thing for Bob.' You see, I was simply answering a question that has bothered me all day. Then will you drive ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... that the actions she has enjoined us for our necessity should be also pleasurable to us; and she invites us to them, not only by reason, but also by appetite, and 'tis injustice to infringe her laws. When I see alike Caesar and Alexander, in the midst of his greatest business, so fully enjoy human and corporal pleasures, I do not say that he relaxed ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... pride in stacking, for it was a test of skill. It was clean work. Even now, as I ride a country lane, and see men at work handling oats or hay, I recall the pleasurable sides of work on the farm and long ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... from the past to the future. He tried to look forward with pleasurable sensations to his return to the jungle of his birth and boyhood; the cruel, fierce jungle in which he had spent twenty of his twenty-two years. But who or what of all the myriad jungle life would there be to welcome his return? Not one. Only Tantor, the elephant, could he call friend. ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... declared useless and apparently harmless work, such as carrying water from the river and letting it flow in again, a distinct violation of the divine law, in which, however, I could never find any reference to the matter; but there has recently risen a sect which holds that all labor being pleasurable, each kind in its degree is immoral and wicked. This sect, which embraces many of the most holy and learned men, is rapidly spreading and becoming a power in the state. It has, of course, no churches, for these cannot be built without labor, and its members commonly dwell in caves ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... African railway is a disagreeable duty in times of peace, but in war-times, when trains were long and overcrowded, and the rate of progress never higher than fifteen miles an hour, then all other campaigning duties were pleasurable enjoyments. The majority of burghers, unaccustomed to journeying in railway trains, relished the innovation and managed to make merry even though six of them, together with all their saddles and personal luggage, were crowded into one compartment. The singing ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... themselves. They learn to know what they want. Their taste becomes surer and surer as their experience lengthens. They do not enjoy to-day what will seem tedious to them to-morrow. When they find a book tedious, no amount of popular clatter will persuade them that it is pleasurable; and when they find it pleasurable no chill silence of the street-crowds will affect their conviction that the book is good and permanent. They have faith in themselves. What are the qualities in a book which give keen and lasting ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... to Miss Sara Hennel, George Eliot writes that "there are but two kinds of regular correspondence possible—one of simple affection, which gives a picture of all the details, painful and pleasurable, that a loving heart pines after ..., and one purely moral and intellectual, carried on for the sake of ghostly edification in which each party has to put salt on the tails of all sorts of ideas on all sorts of subjects." These two classes ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... that night had been, therefore, of a nature more than usually pleasurable, and the mirth did not sound hollow, but wrung from the heart. Yet, as Eugenie from time to time contemplated the young people, whose eyes ever sought each other—so fair, so tender, and so joyous as they ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... that, within proper limits, is entirely innocent and healthful—the raising of new seedling fruits and the testing of new varieties. In these pursuits the elements of chance, skill, and judgment enter so evenly that they are an unfailing source of pleasurable excitement. The catalogues of plant, tree, and seed dealers abound in novelties. The majority of them cannot endure the test of being grown by the side of our well- known standard kinds, but now and then an exceedingly valuable ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... power present is put in better working order. Every one knows how lack of sleep and illness is often accompanied by loss in memory. Repetition, attention, interest, vividness of impression, all appeal primarily to this so-called "brute memory," or retentive power. Pleasurable results seem not to be quite so important, and repetition to be more so when the connections are between mental states instead of between mental states and motor responses. An emphasis on, or an improvement in, the ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... have observed to encircle the heads of saints and madonnas in those old paintings have been mostly of a dirty drab-color'd yellow—a dull gambogium. Keep your old line: it will excite a confused kind of pleasurable idea in the reader's mind, not clear enough to be called a conception, nor just enough, I think, to reduce to painting. It is a rich line, you say, and riches hide a many faults. I maintain, that in the 2d antist: you do disjoin Nature ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... hasty breakfast that first morning, and prepared to go out for a walk into the great unknown, perhaps the most pleasurable sensation in the world. Francesca was ready first, and, having mentioned the fact several times ostentatiously, she went into the drawing-room to wait and read the Scotsman. When we went thither a few minutes later we found ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... he insisted, and the request was taken up by others, till Parpon's face flushed with a sort of pleasurable defiance. The stranger stooped and whispered something in his ear. There was a moment's pause, in which the dwarf looked into the other's eyes with an intense curiosity—or incredulity—and then Medallion lifted the little man on to the railing of the veranda, and over the heads and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... miscellaneous wilderness of limitation the Personal Life. But at last I have decided to divide this vast territory of difficulties into two subdivisions and make one of these Indulgence, meaning thereby pleasurable indulgence of sense or feeling, and the other a great mass of self-regarding motives that will go with a little stretching under the heading of Jealousy. I admit motives are continually playing across the boundary of these ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... appetites, that we observe the grand distinction between man and the brute. There is nothing in the writings of evolutionists more pitiable than their attempts to degrade conscience into a mere gregarious instinct, an outcome of utility to the tribe, and to pleasurable sensations, resulting from the exercise of the social instincts. It would appear that these writers had so sophisticated their own minds that they have ceased to understand the fundamental, world-wide difference between right and gain, between duty and pleasure. "Do justice, though the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... of Leam's home-coming created quite a pleasurable excitement in the neighborhood, and the families flocked to Ford House to welcome her among them as one of themselves, all anxious to see if the Ethiopian of North Aston had shed her skin, if the leopardess had changed her spots. They were divided among ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... one pocket after the other and finally located a chunky, battered pipe, which he proceeded to fill with shavings from a black plug. Daniel watched him. A new idea was dawning in his mind, an idea which seemed to afford him some pleasurable anticipation. Mr. Ginn looked up from his ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... wishing apparently to ingratiate herself with the offended majesty of the nurse, Miss Levering said gravely over her shoulder, 'Now, lie down, Sara, and be a good girl.' Sara's reply to that was to (what she called) 'diddle up and down' on her knees and emit shrill squeals of some pleasurable emotion not defined. This, too, in spite of the fact that Dampney had picked up the pillow and was advancing upon Miss Sara with an expression calculated to shake the stoutest heart. It obviously shook the visitor's. 'Listen, Sara! ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... affection meek; That, oh! poor friend, might to life's downward slope Lead us in peace, and bless our latest hours. Ah me! the prospect saddened as she sung; Loud on my startled ear the death-bell rung; Chill darkness wrapt the pleasurable bowers, Whilst Horror, pointing to yon breathless clay, "No peace ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... Now, I both hope and believe, my advice will have the same weight with you from choice that my authority had from necessity. My advice is just eight-and-twenty years older than your own, and consequently, I believe you think, rather better. As for your tender and pleasurable passions, manage them yourself; but let me have the direction of all the others. Your ambition, your figure, and your fortune, will, for some time at least, be rather safer in my keeping than ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... lightning crimsoned the faces of the forlorn party with its glare. Then the heavens cleared; the sun came out; and the ox-cart went rumbling and creaking onward. No doubt the first days of that weary tramp had in them something of pleasurable excitement; the breezes of spring fanned the brows of the wayfarers, and told of the health and freedom of woodland life; the magnificence of the forest, the summits of the mountains, tinged with blue, the sparkling ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... Ali-Tomas, "we hope that you and your participants will enjoy Singhalut. It is a truism that, in order to import, we must export; we wish to encourage a pleasurable response to the 'Made in Singhalut' tag on our ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... pleasure in the love of producing offspring, because all that is delightful, pleasurable, blessed, and happy, in the whole heaven and in the whole world, has been from creation brought together into the effort and thus into the act of bringing forth uses; and these joys increase in an ascending degree to eternity, ...
— Spiritual Life and the Word of God • Emanuel Swedenborg
... these, for happy dwelling upon, is the poem the two poets lived. Morning and day were full of work, study, or that pleasurable idleness which for the artist is so often his best inspiration. Here, on the little terrace, they used to sit together, or walk slowly to and fro, in conversation that was only less eloquent than silence. Here one day they received a letter from Horne. There is nothing of ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... as was Rossetti as an artist and poet, he was still more wonderful, I think, as a man. The chief characteristic of his conversation was an incisiveness so perfect and clear as to have often the pleasurable surprise of wit. It is so well known that Rossetti has been for a long time the most retired man of genius of our day, and so many absurd causes for this retirement have been spoken of, that there is nothing indecorous in the true cause of it being ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... denied that he understood grace, young and innocent beauty, the forms which express the tender and delicate feelings, those which the divine pencil of Raphael so admirably represented. I own that he took little heed of the pleasurable aspect of things; his austere genius was at ease only in grave thoughts; but I do not agree that he was always a stranger to gentle beauty, to feminine beauty in particular. I shall not cite the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... what it is to pass suddenly from a state of pleasurable high spirits into deep despondency, to exchange in an instant bright mental sunshine for cloud and gloom. All, therefore, must sympathise with poor Jasmine, who believing the road before her to be smooth and clear, on a sudden became thus aware of a most troublesome and difficult ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... over, that she would be free once more, entirely her own mistress, released from every restraint and consideration. How rapturous was the idea that she would soon be roving through the fields and woods again with gay, reckless companions! Was there anything more pleasurable than to forget herself, and devote her whole soul to the execution of some difficult and dangerous feat, to attract a thousand eyes by her bewitching grace, and, sustained by her enthusiasm, force a thousand hearts to throb anxiously and give loud ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Marston becoming wearied. We have seen a cat worried and pulled and poked by its kitten almost beyond endurance, and we have observed that the cat endured it meekly— nay, evidently rejoiced in the annoyance: it was pleasurable pain. As it is with feline, so is it with human mothers. Their love overbears and outweighs everything. Ah! good cause have the rugged males of this world to rejoice that such is the fact; and although they know it well, we hold that it ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... swallow. With the unaccustomed flavour of gravy or fruit juice there may be seen on his face a look of hesitation or surprise. In the stolid and placid child these manifestations are as a rule but little marked, and pleasurable sensations clearly predominate. With children of more nervous temperament it is clear that sensations of taste are much more acute. Even in earliest infancy, children have a way of proclaiming their nervous ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... a sky of deep unclouded blue, while the white prairie glittered as if it were a sea of diamonds rolling out in an unbroken sheet from the walls of the fort to the horizon, and on looking at which one experienced all the pleasurable feelings of being out on a calm day on the wide, wide sea, without the disagreeable consequence of being ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... woman of yours," continued the Lodorian insolently, "both are my prisoners to do with as I please. Your fate," he continued, "I already have planned for you and I assure you that it will not be as pleasurable as the one to which she is destined. You will find that Tigana, on which you and those with you will be cast, is a world of terror such as you never could dream of. Even the monsters which crawl through the deliriums of the mind are not as horrible as those which infest the mad and haunted ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... which attracts you. But you like his manner, his demeanour, his handling of life. What he says, his looks, his gestures, his personality, affect you in a curious way. And at the same time you seem to discern a corresponding curiosity in him about yourself. It is a pleasurable surprise both to discover that he agrees with you, and also that he disagrees with you. There is a beauty, a mystery, about it all. Generally you think it rather surprising that he should find you interesting. ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... seize his hand—she knew not why, whether it was to thank him, to express her sympathy, or to express her submission. She struggled against this impulse, but the impulse was part of herself and of her inmost self; She was afraid, but her fear was pleasurable. She was ashamed, but her shame was pleasurable. She wanted to move away from where she stood. She thought: "If only I willed to move away, I could move away. But, no! I shall not will it. I like remaining just here, in this fear, this shame, and this agitation." She had a clear, ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... to his feelings. It would be impossible, indeed, to convey to those who have not, at some time or other, felt the charm of his manner, any idea of what it could be when under the influence of such pleasurable excitement as it was most flatteringly evident he experienced at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474 - Vol. XVII. No. 474., Supplementary Number • Various
... maritime constructions which lined the banks. When at last we reached London Bridge, this incredibly crowded centre of the greatest city in the world, and set foot on land after our terrible three weeks' voyage, a pleasurable sensation of giddiness overcame us as our legs carried us staggering through the deafening uproar. Robber seemed to be similarly affected, for he whisked round the corners like a mad thing, and threatened to get lost every other minute. But we soon sought safety in a cab, which took ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... important question. For, throughout our past reasonings about art, we have always found that nothing could be good or useful, or ultimately pleasurable, which was untrue. But here is something pleasurable in written poetry which is nevertheless untrue. And what is more, if we think over our favourite poetry, we shall find it full of this kind of fallacy, and that we like it all the ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... faces; but the others stared at her with an eager admiration, thinking that they had seldom seen anything so beautiful or so effective. Ste. Marie sat forward on the edge of his chair. His eyes sparkled, and he gave a little quick sigh of pleasurable excitement. This was drama, and very good drama, too, and he suspected that it might at any ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... increase his wealth, after the manner, O son of Kunti, of scattering seeds on the ground. Let there be no doubt then in thy mind. Where, however, wealth that is more or even equal is not to be gained, there should be no expenditure of wealth. For investment of wealth are like the ass, scratching, pleasurable at first but painful afterwards. Thus, O king of men, the person who throweth away like seeds a little of his virtue in order to gain a larger measure of virtue, is regarded as wise. Beyond doubt, it is as I say. They that are ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... seem to me—fond as he was of his wife, and anxious as he undoubtedly was to recover her—that he looked forward to the actual meeting, should it ever arrive, with any too pleasurable anticipation. ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... one of Landor's favorites, although he was quite ready to allow the greatness of il gran poeta. He had no sympathy with what he said was very properly called a comedy. He would declare that about one sixth only of Dante was intelligible or pleasurable. Turning to Landor's writings, I find that in his younger days he was even less favorable to Dante. In the "Pentemeron" (the author spelling it so) he, in the garb of Petrarch, asserts that "at least sixteen parts in twenty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... Mrs. Clemens was planning a visit to you, and so I am waiting with a pleasurable hope for the result of her deliberations. We are expecting visitors every day, now, from New York; and afterward some are to come from Elmira. I judge that we shall then be free to go Bostonward. I should be just delighted; because we could visit in comfort, since we shouldn't have to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... use for it. And each generation will only be happy or powerful to the pitch that it ought to be, in fulfilling these two duties to the Past and the Future. Its own work will never be rightly done, even for itself—never good, or noble, or pleasurable to its own eyes—if it does not prepare it also for the eyes of generations yet to come. And its own possessions will never be enough for it, and its own wisdom never enough for it, unless it avails itself gratefully and tenderly of the treasures and the ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... afraid of praising it too much, lest the secret should ooze out, and strangers suppose that all their great runs are with bag foxes, while the mere retaking of an animal that one has had in hand before is not calculated to arouse any very pleasurable emotions. Nobody ever goes frantic at seeing an old donkey of a deer handed back into ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... singularly beautiful. Often, too, they are places we have visited in former years, or seen briefly in passing by, and kept ever afterwards in pious memory; and we please ourselves with the fancy that we shall repeat many vivid and pleasurable sensations, and take up again the thread of our enjoyment in the same spirit as we let it fall. We shall now have an opportunity of finishing many pleasant excursions, interrupted of yore before our curiosity was fully satisfied. It may be that we have kept in mind, during all these years, the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... idealistic about him but his art, which in itself was more the outcome of emotionalism than conviction. He drew her gently down beside him, feeling her quiver like a leaf touched by the wind, and his own heart began to beat with a pleasurable thrill. The silence around them seemed waiting for speech, but none came. It was one of those tense moments on which sometimes hangs the happiness or the misery of a lifetime—a stray thread from the web ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... saw Lord Frederick's preference with pleasurable surprise. Although she did not altogether approve of the damsel in her care, she had become very fond of her; but she failed to see why Jennie was so much sought after, when other girls, almost as pretty and much more eligible, were neglected. She hinted delicately ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... vague, as praise should be, and allowed the imagination free scope. Under the stimulus, everything came easy; he mastered a passage of bound sixths that had baffled him for days. And in this elated frame of mind, there was something almost pleasurable in the pang with which he would become conscious of a shadow in the background, a spot on his sun ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... double pay. Now I felt a hero, and no mistake. All this time I had been a keen observer of both men and manners, and I had really seen all there was to be seen in Edinburgh and neighbourhood. It was, therefore, with pleasurable feelings that I heard that No. 7 Company, to which I belonged, was to be sent to the military garrison at Greenlaw—a bonny little village some ten miles from Edinburgh. I think the scenery in this district is about the most picturesque and romantic in all Scotland. ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... question that arises is: "Why does he not divide all feelings into pleasurable and not-pleasurable, rather than into 'painful and not-painful'?" A Westerner will not be at a loss to answer that: "Oh, the Hindu is naturally so very pessimistic, that he naturally ignores pleasure and speaks of painful and not-painful. The universe is full ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... to adopt a policy commensurate with modern demands. He should lead, but on the other hand a very legitimate fear of being discredited through failure deters him; traditional methods hold the field; peace at any price and pleasurable satisfaction play a large part in church affairs; the adult, whose character is already formed, receives disproportionate attention; money for purposes of experimentation in church work is hard to get; everything points ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... most powerful, of all the feelings. Added to the purely physical elements of it, are first to be noticed those highly complex impressions produced by physical beauty; around which are aggregated a variety of pleasurable ideas, not themselves amatory, but which have an organized relation to the amatory feelings. With this there is united the complex sentiment we term affection— a sentiment which, as it can exist between those of the same sex, must be regarded as an independent sentiment, but one which is here ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... clothes; and even when that is done she goes to bed with the certainty of being roused from her hard-earned rest by a husband who brings a sickening odour of bad tobacco and spirits home with him, and naturally her temper suffers. She knows nothing of love and sympathy; she has no pleasurable interest in life. Fatigue and worry are succeeded by profound disheartenment. One can imagine that while she was young, the worn garments she was wont to mend during those long lonely evenings were often wet with tears. The dulness must have been deadly, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Harbor his comings and goings were no longer events to cause pleasurable interest and excitement. The change there was quite as evident. Miss Snowden and Mrs. Brackett, leaders of their clique, always greeted him politely enough, but they did not, individually or collectively, ask his advice or offer theirs. There were smiles, significant nods, knowing looks ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... they were in the cars, and these in motion, Percival drew the letter from his pocket, And, while he read, a strange expression stole Over his features. "Now what is it, father?" Then with a sigh which her quick ear detected As one that masked a pleasurable thought, He said: "Poor little Linda!"—"And why poor?" "Because she will not be so rich again In wishes unfulfilled. That grand piano You saw at Chickering's—what was the price?" "Twelve hundred dollars ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... Calcutta. He had already mailed by registered post a set of duplicated receipts and insurance policies for his last shipment addressed to "Professor Andrew Fraser" and his mind was centered upon some peculiarly pleasurable coming events to take place in the Marble House. But the dreamy-eyed girl watching the man who had so gallantly saved her life, thought only of a love which had stolen into her heart to wake all its slumbering chords to life, and to loosen the sweet music of her ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... any single heading in the Summa, but must be gathered from the various sections dealing with man's duty to his fellow-men and to himself. One leading virtue which was inculcated with great emphasis by Aquinas was that of temperance. 'All pleasurable things which come within the use of man,' we read in the section dealing with this subject, 'are ordered to some necessity of this life as an end. And therefore temperance accepts the necessity of this life as a rule or measure of the ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... but although she was evidently in imminent peril they were much nearer in shore than we were. The danger we underwent on this occasion was great; but the excitement of so wild and grand a scene was highly pleasurable, and when success at last crowned our exertions, and we went dancing wildly in through the surf and spray upon a rocky unknown shore, and found the other crew on the beach ready to help us in hauling up, I felt that there is a charm ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... operatic company had been started in the town, and all the musical talent among the younger generation had been stirred up to take part in what was regarded as a pleasant occupation for winter evenings with the pleasurable anticipation of the excitement of a public performance as the outcome of practices. Our human triangle formed part of the company. All three were musical, and two of them more than usually talented ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... but for the imperfection of the artist's drawing, it might have been taken for a model of its kind. As it was, however, when viewed from his favourite point against the garden railings, and with some touch of distance, it caused a pleasurable rising of the artist's heart. "I have thrown away," he ejaculated, "an invaluable motive; and this shall be the subject of my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I dare to deceive, insult, or ill-treat another man, in whom I see and feel my fellow, who, like myself, is a god? Then, and then only, shall life be rich and beautiful.... Our daily life shall be a pleasurable toil, an enfranchised science, a wonderful music, an everlasting merrymaking. Love, free and sovereign, shall become the ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... had completed that record, whose actuality and wealth of moving detail had greatly affected him, and marked it "For the Press-Immediate," he felt very cold. It was, in fact, that hour of dawn when a shiver goes through the world; and, almost with pleasurable anticipation he took up his lighted candle and stole shivering out to his pile, rising ghostly to the height of some five feet in the middle of the dim lawn whereon a faint green tinge was coming with the return of daylight. Having reached it, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... The Mordvinian contributed to the entertainment by telling us of his people's costumes and habits, and gave us a lesson in his language, which was of the Tatar-Finnish variety. Like the Tchuvashi and other tribes here on the Volga, the Mordvinians furnish pleasurable excitement and bewilderment to ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... for our purposes, can only be estimated by those who have experienced them; and it is only to strangers to such feelings that it will appear ridiculous to say that even the nail to which our thermometer had been suspended was the subject of pleasurable recognition. ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... the meaning of joy in art—that incommunicable element of artistic delight which, in poetry, for instance, comes from what Keats called the 'sensuous life of verse,' the element of song in the singing, made so pleasurable to us by that wonder of motion which often has its origin in mere musical impulse, and in painting is to be sought for, from the subject never, but from the pictorial charm only—the scheme and symphony of the colour, the satisfying beauty ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... reconsider my verdict," he says, in answer to the other's look. "The issues of life and death are not in our hands. If you really understood his state, you would wonder that he is still alive. Keep all bad tidings from him," the doctor adds rather louder to Denise. "Tell him pleasurable things only; keep him cheerful. It cannot be for very long. And watch ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... urged against its habitual use, we cannot fail to be struck with the extraordinary fact, that so large a portion of mankind should voluntarily struggle through its repugnant qualities, both of taste and effect, until by habit its stimulus grows pleasurable, and the system becomes mithridated against its poison! It would almost seem as if the use of some substance of this class were necessary to the intellectual and physical economy of man, since no nation ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... seemed as though she had returned from a strange adventure. For a long time she remained sitting on the edge of the bed, gazing through the window into the bright, starlit night, and her soul was filled with vague and pleasurable expectations. ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... "Morvandelle," though a thick kind of flannel had been pressed into the interstices, it was decided to use the wooden parts to make two small boats for the pond, one for Stephen and the other for Richard, the old ones being rotten. There was much pleasurable planning for my husband in the scheme, and also some manual work for rainy weather. He was exceedingly careful and handy in doing joiner's work, and every one in the house applied to him for delicate repairs, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Plato draws between [Greek: eukolos] and [Greek: dyskolos]—the man of easy, and the man of difficult disposition—in proof of which he refers to the varying degrees of susceptibility which different people show to pleasurable and painful impressions; so that one man will laugh at what makes another despair. As a rule, the stronger the susceptibility to unpleasant impressions, the weaker is the susceptibility to pleasant ones, and vice versa. If it is equally possible for an event to ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... bruised, in the tranquillising influences about her, the young lady got up, expanded, and grew like herself again—not like enough, indeed, to say much, but to listen and follow his manly, refined, and pleasant talk, every moment with a pang, that had yet something pleasurable in it, contrasting the quiet and chivalric tone of her present companion, with the ferocious duplicity of the sly, smooth terrorist who ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... that men are in love with power and greatness: it affords them so pleasurable an expansion of faculty, so large a run for their minds, an exercise of spirit so various and refreshing; they have the freedom of so wide a tract of the world of affairs. But if they use power only for their own ends, if there be no unselfish service in it, if its ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various |
