"Prepossessing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... let on Mr. Hamilton's estate; it was very easy to settle in it a man lower in rank, but hard, unrelenting as himself, an unprincipled instrument of his will. The business was done, and the new neighbour, prepossessing in appearance and manners, speedily ingratiated himself with all, and even obtained, by a semblance of hard-working industry, and regular attendance at public worship, seconded by quiet and unobtrusive conduct, the notice and regard of his landlord, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... inquiring into the whole matter I shall not be surprised if this remarkable woman should carry the day. From the description our friend gives of her, Mother Marie-des-Anges is a small woman, short and thick-set, whose face is prepossessing and agreeable beneath its wrinkles and the mask of saffron-tinted pallor which time and the austerities of a cloister have placed upon it. Carrying very lightly the weight of her corpulence and also that of her seventy-six years, she is lively, ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... altogether, Dr. Rendall was a decidedly more prepossessing looking man than O'Brien. In fact he was rather good-looking, with grey hair and moustache, face of a deep bronze-red hue and very blue eyes. He was well set up, and quite well dressed too in rough tweeds, and the only thing against him was that look in his ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... had only one eye, and a black shade where the other one should have been. To train his moustache to resemble that of the All-Highest, he wore some apparatus plastered over it, reaching nearly to his eyes and secured behind his ears, so that his appearance was the reverse of prepossessing! I complained to him once about not serving me properly. He waited outside the saloon and cursed me afterwards. "I a German soldier," he said, "not your steward!" I told him that if he had any reason to complain of what I had said or done he should report ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... shopkeepers walked like that), then he carefully sniffed at this sleeves, the inside of his cap, made a grimace, looked at himself in the little looking-glass hanging in between the windows, and shook his head; he certainly did not look very prepossessing. "So much the better," he thought. Then he took several pamphlets, thrust them into his side pocket, and began to practise speaking like a shopkeeper. "That sounds like it," he thought, "but after all there is no need of acting, my get-up is convincing enough." Just then he recollected ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... Pipe, the great chief of the Delawares, appeared. This distinguished warrior had a prepossessing appearance and bland manners, and his language to the prisoners was kind. His purposes, however, were bloody and revengeful. With his own hands he painted every prisoner black! As they were conducted towards the town, the captives observed the bodies of four of their friends, tomahawked ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... of age, prepossessing in appearance, with a bright, happy expression. Her nature was deep and affectionate, her tastes domestic and social. When she was twenty, Mr. and Mrs. Lawton had moved to California and settled in the pretty little ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... I am convinced that a peculiar bias was given to my own disposition in consequence of not being understood by the nurse and aunt who petted my brother, while they neglected me. Perhaps I was not a prepossessing child, but I had deeper qualities which might have been drawn out, though, on the whole, I do not regret what threw me early on my own resources. It has ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... intimidated poor Jane; but there were many others upon whom it had no deterring effect at all. Some of these brought art-books in monthly parts; others brought polish for the piano legs. Many of them were quite as prepossessing in appearance as Jane was; some of them were much less plain and dowdy; few of them were so recklessly indiscreet as to betray themselves at the threshold by ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... this juncture that the young woman was not particularly distressed. Instead, her rather pretty face was full of eagerness and there was a certain lightness in her manner that puzzled him for the moment. Her companion was the older of the two and quite as prepossessing. Both were neatly dressed and both looked as though they were or had been bread-winners. If they had a secret, it was now quite evident to this shrewd, quick thinker that it was not a dark one. In truth, he was beginning to feel that something mischievous lurked in the attitude ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... the first glance, Port Louis is not a prepossessing place to live, or try to live, in. I will say nothing of the shabby shops, the dilapidated-looking dwellings, one passes in a rapid drive through the streets, because I know how deceitful outside appearances are as to the internal resources ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... pleased with Rollo's appearance and demeanor when he accosted them, and they were now still more pleased, when they saw Mr. George, to find that he was a young gentleman, of about their own age, and that he was so prepossessing in his countenance and in his air and manner. Mr. George readily agreed to join the party. They asked him if he knew of any body else that he thought would like to go. He inquired whether there were to be any ladies in the party. They said that there were to be several. ...
— Rollo in Rome • Jacob Abbott
... averse, to mixed or general society. It was probably owing to the same cause that his conversation, for a man who had seen so much, had nothing remarkable, and was rarely striking or animated. Hence, although his appearance was interesting and prepossessing, he was apt to disappoint the expectations of strangers; and those persons who estimated his general talents from his powers of conversation, formed an erroneous and inadequate opinion ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... ardent sportsman who seemed to lose all common sense in order to satisfy that passion, and who spent large sums on his dogs, his keepers, his ferrets and his guns. The bride, Rosalie Roussel, had been courted by all the likely young fellows in the district, for they all thought her prepossessing, and they knew that she would have a good dowry, but she had chosen Patu, partly, perhaps, because she liked him better than she did the others, but still more, like a careful Normandy girl, because ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... task for a stranger—and such a stranger! Not very prepossessing, to say the least. But he has a good eye, and will get along with the boys all right. Nothing assertive about him; not enough go, perhaps. Would you like ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... steel, his body poised lightly and tensely upon the balls of his feet—in a word, ready. Prepared against the worst he was hopeful of the best: apprehensive, he reminded himself that he had first met Labertouche under auspices hardly more prepossessing than these. ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... large, as has ever been the case, with all his family, but he has a broad chest and wide shoulders to carry off these excrescences, and on the whole his figure is good. His countenance, however, is not specially prepossessing. His hair is lank, and of a dull pale reddish hue. It is always formed into three straight lumpy masses, each brushed with admirable precision, and cemented with much grease; two of them adhere closely to the sides of his face, and the other lies at right angles above them. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the attention paid him by his new friend. There are some who have no difficulty in making friends at first sight, but this had not often happened to him. In fact, there was very little that was attractive or prepossessing about him, and though he could not be expected to be fully aware of that, he had given up expecting much on the score of friendship. Yet here was a stranger, who, to Martin's undiscriminating eyes, appeared quite the gentleman, who had given him ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... pleasure, the door bell rang, and Mr. Pickle, a man of straight person and medium height, entered. His hair was black, and curled down his neck, which was symmetrical. And, too, his face was singularly expressive, and his features prominent. In a word, his appearance was prepossessing. And in addition to dressing in the fashion of the day, he wore many jewels. His bearing also was graceful; and on entering the room, he addressed the lady with much courtesy, and called her Maria. She ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... we shall see,' returned Sir John, whose face cleared up when he saw who it was, and whose prepossessing smile was now restored. 'I am sure we have met before,' he added in his winning tone, 'but really I ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... leaves and decayed brushwood that had nearly concealed them from view. One of these men was past the middle age, of a hardy but somewhat worn appearance. The other was in the prime of young manhood, of a finely-moulded form and an unusually prepossessing face and countenance. But we may as well let the dialogue that ensued between them disclose their identity; the matter that was now engaging their attention; and their reasons for thus appearing in ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... that it might have been intended as an extra security against the loss of his head. Altogether he was quite the type of an old-fashioned Methodist preacher. In the pulpit his appearance was exceedingly prepossessing; he always had a smile on his face while talking, as if he thoroughly enjoyed the good news he was telling to others. In beginning to speak, or when about to say something which he thought particularly good, he had a way of holding his head a little over on one side, and clapping ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... Harriet Skelton, a woman who had been detected passing forged Bank of England notes. She was described as prepossessing, "open, confiding, expressing strong feelings on her countenance, but neither hardened in depravity nor capable of cunning." Her behavior in prison was exceptionally good; so good, indeed, that some of the depraved inmates ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... social functions only added zest to the determination with which Mrs. LeCord carried the war into his own office. She chose to consult him for advice on financial matters and she came accompanied by Caroline, a young woman rather prepossessing in her own right. The two were readily admitted into Grant's private office, where they had opportunity not only to meet the young man in person, but to satisfy their curiosity concerning ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... so affectionate, his education had been so finished, and he possessed so much natural grace, that he had the gift of pleasing even where he was not personally known. His exceeding loveliness was immediately prepossessing, the delicacy of his constitution rendered him interesting in the eyes of women, the full yet graceful cultivation of his mind, the sweet and captivating originality of his conversation, gained for him the attention of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... rusty kind of black, something like that of soot, but I have seen many of the women almost as light as a mulatto. We have seen a few of both sexes with tolerably good features, but in general they have broad noses, large wide mouths, and thick lips; and their countenance altogether not very prepossessing; and what makes them still less so, is, that they are abominably filthy; they never clean their skin, but it is generally smeared with the fat of such animals as they kill, and afterwards covered with every sort of dirt; sand ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... in addition, she seemed as much devoted to him and his every interest as a young mother is to her first-born. During this time he wrote his longest prose romance, entitled the Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym. Poe had a remarkably pleasing and prepossessing countenance—what the ladies would call decidedly handsome. He died after a brief and fitful career at Baltimore, October, 1849, where his remains lie interred in an ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... have their individualities. Although they are much of the same size and pattern, an observing eye would have picked out the Binnie cottage as distinctive and prepossessing. Its outside walls were as white as lime could make them; its small windows brightened with geraniums and a white muslin curtain; and the litter of ropes and nets and drying fish which encumbered the majority of thatches, was pleasantly absent. Standing on a little ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... across the fields. She slackened her pace, and looked furtively around. Then she went on more quickly again; but, in a few moments, a slight bend in the road brought before her a sight at which she stopped short and uttered a cry of alarm. An exceedingly ill-favoured man, and a no more prepossessing woman, were sitting upon the bank, by the road-side, discussing a dinner of broken victuals. They were thorough-going tramps, of middle age. Marian would have fled; but their evil eyes held her ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... far from prepossessing. In its way it was as evil as that of Tandakora. He had sought Robert's life more than once. In the naval battle he had seen the Frenchman pull trigger upon him. Why? Why had he singled him out from the others in the endeavor to make a victim of him? ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... concerned about fame than I durst declare till this occasion, when methinks I should find more credit than I could heretofore: since my writings have had their fate already, and it is too late to think of prepossessing the reader in their favour. I would plead it as some merit in me, that the world has never been prepared for these trifles by prefaces, biased by recommendations, dazzled with the names of great patrons, ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... some cushions in front of it sat a man, whom he recognized as the leader of the party who seized him. Other Arabs were squatted on the ground or standing round. The chief was past the prime of life, but still a powerful and sinewy man. His features were not prepossessing; but Edgar, looking round, thought that the expression of his face was less savage than that of the ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... landlord should each spend a certain amount in improvements. Rents had gone up in the past four years, and last spring when Anthony had waived his option the landlord, a Mr. Sohenberg, had realized that he could get a much bigger price for what was now a prepossessing apartment. Accordingly, when Anthony approached him on the subject in September he was met with Sohenberg's offer of a three-year lease at twenty-five hundred a year. This, it seemed to Anthony, was outrageous. It meant ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... pains, however. I had no more than saluted him and exchanged the merest preliminaries before I saw that he was in a state of panic far exceeding that of my following. His coarse face, which had never been prepossessing, was mottled and bedabbled with sweat; his bloodshot eyes, when they met mine, wore the fierce yet terrified expression of an animal caught in a trap. Though his first word was an oath, sworn for the purpose of raising his courage, the bully's bluster was gone. He spoke ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... earl of Portland employed as a spy, had insinuated himself into the confidence of Nevil Payne, an active and intelligent partisan and agent of king James; by which means he supplied the earl with such intelligence as raised him to some degree of credit with that minister. This he used in prepossessing the earl against the king's best friends, and infusing jealousies which were soon kindled into ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... slovenly girl, with an impediment in her speech, took her order and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen, and Miss Donovan discreetly lifted her eyes to observe the man sitting nearly opposite. He was not prepossessing, yet she instantly recognised his type, and the probability that he would address her if the slightest opportunity occurred. Beneath lowered lashes she studied the fellow—the prominent jaw and thick lips shadowed ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... mystery that we are bid gaze upon, or are we to be the dupe of self-deceived impostors? Our intimacy is with poets of the last two centuries,—not the most inspired period in the history of poetry. And in the ranks of our multitudinous verse-writers, it is not the most prepossessing who are loudest in promising us a fair spectacle. How harsh-voiced and stammering are some of these obscure apostles who are offering to exhibit the entire mystery of their gift of tongues! We see more impressive figures, to be sure. Here is the saturnine Poe, who with contemptuous smile assures ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... and prematurely aged, he drifted to the town of O——, and remained there for good, having now lost once for all every hope of leaving Russia, which he detested. He gained his poor livelihood somehow by lessons. Lemm's exterior was not prepossessing. He was short and bent, with crooked shoulders, and contracted chest, with large flat feet, and bluish white nails on the gnarled bony fingers of his sinewy red hands. He had a wrinkled face, sunken cheeks, and compressed ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... extremely prepossessing father, as fathers go. He seemed half man, and half ape, and yet not ape, and not yet man. I fail to describe him. There is nothing like him to-day on the earth, under the earth, nor in the earth. He was a large man in his day, and he must have weighed all of a hundred and thirty ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... brow." His natural lines were all upward curves, his smile most ingratiating, his eye so frank, even his trick of rubbing his clean, well-feel, English-looking hands, had something about it coaxing and debonnaire, something that actually decoyed you into trusting your money into hands so prepossessing. Indeed, to him might be fully applied the expression—Sedem animce in extremis digitis habet,—"He had his soul's seat in his finger-ends." The critics observe that few men have ever united in equal perfection ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... young man of rather prepossessing appearance, a trifle tall for his breadth of shoulder, fair, with blue eyes and a curling reddish beard and mustache, the former trimmed to a point. So much the president was able to note in the appraisive glance—and to ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... things as horror, passion, gentleness, and other invisible things conveyed to us in the lines of a drawing. We may indeed know genius from talent by the much more of the invisible which it transfers to visible line. Du Maurier, in drawing children, for instance, secures their prepossessing qualities. Drawing is great when it conveys something which in itself has not an outline—like the "atmosphere" of a ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... Israel Lewis was prepossessing; his manner and address easy and commanding. To those unacquainted with his private life, his ungoverned passions, and his unprincipled, revengeful disposition, he could appear the gentleman, ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... John remarked a curly-headed young gentleman of wonderfully prepossessing appearance, from whom emanated an air, an atmosphere, of genial enjoyment which diffused itself. The bricks of the school-buildings seemed redder and warmer, as if they were basking in this sunny smile. The youth was smiling now, smiling—at John. For ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... he was? In outward aspect all accounts agree that he was singularly, noticeably prepossessing—bright, animated, eager, with energy and talent written in every line of his face. Such he was when Forster saw him, on the occasion of their first meeting, when Dickens was acting as spokesman for the insurgent reporters engaged on the Mirror. So Carlyle, who met him at dinner shortly after ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... the last few days, he had remarked with some uneasiness that a youth frequently passed the house and gazed at the barred windows, and he at first imagined he might be leagued with the nocturnal marauders he had heard of; but the prepossessing appearance of the stripling, who could not be more than sixteen, and who was singularly slightly made, soon dispelled the idea. Still, as he constantly appeared at the same spot, the grocer began to have a new apprehension, and to suspect he was an emissary of the Earl ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... prairie rose, while old Dubois with his iron-gray hair bristling on his bullet-shaped head, his thick, furrow-encircled neck, his swarthy, obstinate, brutal face, was seventy, a remarkable seventy, it is true, but seventy, and far from prepossessing. It was too absurd! It must be one of the lady doc's practical jokes—it was sufficiently indelicate, he told himself. At any rate he would soon see Dubois returning crestfallen from his courting expedition, and the sight, he felt, ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... service that it was literally threadbare from collar to skirt, and showed numerous patches, darns, and other evidences of needlework, applied long since to its original manufacture. His cow-hide boots, though whole, had a coarse look; and his long dark beard gave his face, not a very prepossessing one at best, a no ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... was a man thirty-eight years of age, and of prepossessing appearance; sympathetic notwithstanding his coldness; wearing upon his countenance a sweet, and rather sad expression. This settled melancholy had remained with him ever since his recovery, two years before, from a dreadful malady, which ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... and could not satiate themselves with looking at the dress and physiognomy of Leviathan; but the mayoress, a native of Saxony, towered above them all, like an Oriad. The expressive look of Faustus had attracted her attention, as well as his prepossessing figure, and his fine handsome face. She blushed when he saluted her, and could find no other answer to his eloquent address than a few broken words, which the ears of Faustus caught like enchanting music. The senators ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... married in February next. He is plain in person, but has a pleasing expression of countenance; and, if he be moulded after the old man, and not after his minister, the country may perhaps have in him the 'lucky accident' of a good governor.[11] I have rarely seen a finer or more prepossessing man than the Raja, and all his subjects speak well of him. We had an elephant, a horse, abundance of shawls, and other fine clothes placed before us as presents; but I prayed the old gentleman to keep them all for me till I returned, as I was a mere voyageur without the means of carrying ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Young, irresistibly prepossessing in his appearance, with great eloquence, crude but considerable knowledge, an ardent imagination and a subtle mind, and a generous and passionate soul, under any circumstances he must have obtained and exercised influence, even if his Creator had not also ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... Frank Cowperwood at this time was, to say the least, prepossessing and satisfactory. Nature had destined him to be about five feet ten inches tall. His head was large, shapely, notably commercial in aspect, thickly covered with crisp, dark-brown hair and fixed on ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... laundryman's daughter in Tooley Street, a favourite topic which he tries to invest with pathos. It appears that, after bidding the fair blanchisseuse good-night, he chanced one evening to take a walk up and down Liverpool Street, where he fell into conversation with a girl of prepossessing appearance. Quite oblivious of the fact that Mademoiselle Soap-Suds had followed him, "just to see if he was as simple as he looked," he enjoyed himself immensely for some twenty minutes, and then ran right into her. He ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... correctly, but he lacks in the conciliatory advantages of personal appearance; and his physiognomy, though indicating considerable strength of mind, is not so prepossessing. He is evidently a man of more education than his friend, that is, of more reading, perhaps also of more various observation, but he has less genius. His tact is coarser, and though he speaks with more vehemence, he seldomer touches the ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... but of poor timid Miss Nelson and of wondering Ermengarde. Mr. Wilton could be the jolliest of companions if he pleased, but he also could be stern, with a severity which Basil inherited. At such times his face was scarcely prepossessing. He came of a proud race, and pride, mixed with an almost overbearing haughtiness of manner, made him a person to be ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... Albert I.,—who did succeed, though not at once, or till after killing Rudolf's immediate successor, [Adolf of Nassau; slain by Albert's own hand; "Battle" of Hasenbuhel "near Worms, 2d July, 1298" (Kohler, p. 265).]—Albert was by no means a prepossessing man, though a tough and hungry one. It must be owned, he had a harsh ugly character; and face to match: big-nosed, loose-lipped, blind of an eye: not Kaiser-like at all to an Electoral Body. "Est homo monoculus, et vultu rustico; non potest esse Imperator (A one-eyed ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... worse than the yaws; and hating the measure, they could not but dislike the men who were come to execute it. In common with their sex, they were sufficiently partial to soldiers of honor. But alas! they were not permitted the pleasure to contemplate the British in that prepossessing light. On the contrary, compelled to view them as mere 'fighting machines', venal wretches, who for pay and plunder, had degraded the man into the brute, the Briton into the buccaneer, how could ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... happening to cast my eye through the open door, caught sight of a face gazing through the ironwork of the outer office with a fixed and glittering expression, a face anything but prepossessing, the face of a half-breed, deeply pock-marked, with a coarse hook nose, and evil-looking eyes, unnaturally close together. He looked for all the world like a turkey buzzard, eagerly hanging over offal, and it was evident from his expression, that he had not missed ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... somewhere in the Rockies, but the exact location is a mystery. That is why I need your help. You will soon understand the reason. Well, as I said, myself, Folwell and the others, who were not exactly prepossessing sort of men, started west. When we got to a small town, called Indian Ridge, near Leadville, Colorado, the men insisted that I must now proceed in secret, and consent to be blindfolded, as they were not yet ready to reveal the secret of the place ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... gives to those who exhibit it a mysterious and almost unbounded ascendency over all within their influence. Alexander was characterized by these qualities in a very remarkable degree. He was finely formed in person, and very prepossessing in his manners. He was active, athletic, and full of ardor and enthusiasm in all that he did. At the same time, he was calm, collected, and considerate in emergencies requiring caution, and thoughtful and far-seeing in respect to the bearings and consequences of his acts. He formed strong ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... commonplace career. It is possible that the sort of mystery previously attaching to me, combined with her father's glowing eulogiums and her own gratitude for his preservation, worked upon Bertha's ardent and susceptible imagination, prepossessing her in my favour. For my part, I had been struck to the heart by the very first glance from the dark eyes that sparkled like diamonds beneath their lashes of sable silk; I had been captivated and fettered on the instant, by the smile of enchanting sweetness that played ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... look of calm and settled sorrow which she invariably at such times cast upon her child seemed to touch even them, and to disarm their coarseness. On the other side of the widow sat a young gentleman of plain yet prepossessing exterior, who seemed especially to attract the notice of the dandies. His surtout was not absolutely threadbare, but it had evidently seen more than one season; and I could perceive many contemptuous looks thrown upon it ...
— Catharine's Peril, or The Little Russian Girl Lost in a Forest - And Other Stories • M. E. Bewsher
... ashes and smoke in all directions, for a moment obscuring everything. When the firelight again illuminated the room there was seen, sitting gingerly on the edge of a stool by the hearthside, a swarthy little man of prepossessing appearance and dressed with faultless taste, nodding to the old man with a friendly and engaging smile. "From San Francisco, evidently," thought Mr. Beeson, who having somewhat recovered from his fright was groping his way to a ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... six years, during which my brother was between eleven and seventeen years old. At seventeen, I am told that he was remarkably well informed and clever. His manners were, like my father's, singularly genial, and his appearance very prepossessing. He had as yet no doubt concerning the soundness of any fundamental Christian doctrine, but his mind was too active to allow of his being contented with my mother's child- like faith. There were points on which he did not indeed doubt, but which it would none the less be interesting ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... was soon boarded by a messenger from Mr. Wetter, the outgoing American Consul at Madagascar, and I was piloted ashore. The view of Tamatave from the ship was not prepossessing, and my walk through the city to the hotel was not inspiring. The attempt to dignify the six or eight feet wide alleys (which were the main arteries for travel) as avenues or streets, seemed ludicrous, and the filthy condition, the absence of all sanitary ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... 1846, she found herself in Wurtemburg, where, much to her annoyance, she discovered that a certain Amalia Stubenrauch, a prepossessing damsel, who would now be called a gold-digger, had conquered the spare affections of King William, on whom Lola herself had designs. But that large-hearted monarch had, as it happened, few affections to spare for anybody just then, for, when she encountered ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... in an animated conversation, interrupted momentarily by his entrance. In fact they had seemed to regard his intrusion rather in the light of a personal affront. Their general appearance was not prepossessing, and Vane having paused in the doorway, and stared them both in turn out of countenance, had been amply rewarded by hearing himself described as an impertinent ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... for the present," said Gerrard in the same placidly pleasant manner, as he drew him aside. "But I may mention before you go that there is, on the lower deck, ample space if you wish to fulfil your promise to complete the adornment of my prepossessing features. I am quite at your service later ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... city of Ulm, the place I should have reached yesterday, except for the inclemency of the weather, and where I cross from Wurtemberg into Bavaria. On the uninviting uplands of Central Wurtemberg one looks in vain among the peasant women for a prepossessing countenance or a graceful figure, but along the smiling valleys of Bavaria, the women, though usually with figures disproportionately broad, nevertheless carry themselves with a certain gracefulness; and, while far from the American or ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... that we were not prepossessing in appearance; nor were we as cleanly as young gentlemen should habitually be; in fact, I may as well confess that I would not now, if I could help it, allow a tramp, as dilapidated in raiment, as unwashed, unshorn, uncombed, and populous ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... two Schadows much, and they are estimable both as artists and as men; but the Catholicism of Overbeck and one of the Schadows excludes entirely many topics of conversation." Overbeck is elsewhere described as of "very prepossessing physiognomy, taciturn and melancholy," with a "proselyting spirit." Bunsen, who no less than Niebuhr deplored these conversions, writes in 1817 that Overbeck had been for a fortnight in August a welcome guest at Frascati, that he had finished ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... good man of business—an acute lawyer—a fine casuist—a great divine. Her attainments were immense; her self-confidence unbounded. She was a woman of middle height, and masculine bearing. She was not prepossessing, notwithstanding her white teeth and large mouth, and the intolerable grin that a customer to the amount of a halfpenny and upwards could bring upon her face under any circumstances, and at any hour of the day. Her complexion might have been good originally. Red blotches scattered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... don't believe it. He was a big, burly, noisy, small-eyed, large-faced, double-chinned, swinish-looking fellow in later life (as we know from the likenesses of him, painted by the famous HANS HOLBEIN), and it is not easy to believe that so bad a character can ever have been veiled under a prepossessing appearance. ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... an old-fashioned European dress of blue silk; her coal-black hair was neatly plaited, at the top of a head as round as a ball; her flat nose and thick projecting lips were certainly not very handsome, yet was her countenance on the whole prepossessing and agreeable. On seeing me, she laid down the psalm-book in which she had been reading, and having, with the help of her attendants, changed her lying for a sitting posture, she held out her hand to me in a very friendly manner, with many "Arohas!" and invited me to take a seat on a chair ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... dentist, or indeed of any visits at all, had wrought this ruin in faces also wrinkled and weather-beaten by exposure to the strenuous climate. The women showed to better advantage than the men, and the French were more prepossessing and better preserved than the English, especially in the matter of teeth, owing probably to a steady diet of onions ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... Jupiter-like forehead highly and broadly arched, as in the case of Goethe, and deeply furrowed with the plough of mental labour; his kindly, mild eyes looking forth under the shadow of prominent brows; his amiable mouth surrounded by a copious silver-white beard. The cordial, prepossessing expression of the whole face, the gentle, mild voice, the slow, deliberate utterance, the natural and naive train of ideas which marked his conversation, captivated my whole heart in the first hour of our meeting, just as his great work had formerly, on my first reading ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... which impressed me as instructive and amusing. The newspapers told the tale, which ran somewhat as follows: A wealthy woman of position, residing in one of the best quarters of St. Petersburg, hired a prepossessing young lackey as one of her large staff of domestics. Shortly after his advent, many articles of value began to disappear. Finally, suspicion having turned on this lackey, he also disappeared, and the police undertook to find him. It then became apparent that ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... sounded through the muffling thickness of the dust, and a man made his appearance on the top of the little rising where the lane climbed up into a curve of wild-rose hedge and honeysuckle which almost hid the actual road from view. He was not a prepossessing object in the landscape; short and squat, unkempt and dirty, and clad in rough garments which were almost past hanging together, he looked about as uncouth and ugly a customer as one might expect to meet anywhere on a lonely road at nightfall. He carried a large basket ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... a runt, as Mr. Hildreth had said, and deprived of his fair share of nourishment was bony and far from prepossessing. Rosemary had no desire to touch him, but Shirley was fascinated and she and Sarah put him to bed in the box and covered him up with all the care and devotion they had hitherto showered on dolls. As Richard observed, when he came to tell them he was starting ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... "bearded cook." Every body thinks, when I say this, that I am going to tell them about a man, but it is nothing of the sort. Isabella Lyon, in spite of her pronounced beard, was a very fine woman; exceedingly good-humoured looking and fresh-coloured, with most amiable prepossessing manners. She had not long arrived, and had been at once snapped up for an hotel, but she applied for my place, saying she wished for quiet and a country life. Could any thing be more propitious? I thought, like Lois, that ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... were quite young, and pulled their little faces out of shape, giving an uncomfortable expression. Sarawak Malays always said, "A Sakarran Dyak may be trusted, but a Sarebas is deceitful." It is a curious fact, however, that the Sakarrans, with all their fair words and sleek prepossessing looks, did not embrace the gospel as the Sarebas did. The Rev. Walter Chambers lived at Sakarran for some time, but gathered no converts. He then settled himself among the Balows of the Batang Lupar and Linga, and when there was a community of Christians from these rivers, at Banting, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... stared at him with languid insolence in his half-closed eyes, and, though he came of a lineage that had been famous in the old country, there was nothing very prepossessing in his appearance. His mouth was loose, his face weak in spite of its inherited pride, and there was little need to tell either of the men, who noticed his nervous fingers and muddiness of skin, that he was one who in the ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... I liked his looks or was greatly attracted by him. He was not prepossessing. Fair, with a flaccid unwholesome complexion, foxy haired, his beard cut to a point, small moustaches curled upward showing thin pale lips, and giving his mouth a disagreeable curve also upwards, ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... self-consciousness. I suppose one has insular prejudices, for we are certainly not looked upon as models of courtesy or consideration by our Continental neighbours. I suppose we reserve our best for ourselves. I expressed a wish to look at some of the new buildings, and a young gentleman of prepossessing exterior became my unaffected cicerone. He was not one who dealt in adjectives; his highest epithet of praise was "pretty decent," but one detected an honest and unquestioning pride in the place for ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... disappeared as soon as I saw my father; which was not surprising, for he could not be called a prepossessing half-breed. His lower lip protruded and hung sullenly. He had heavy brows and a shaggy thatch of hair. Our St. Regis Iroquois kept to the buckskins, though they often had hunting shirts of fulled flannel; and my father's buckskins were ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... I saw him pointing at me, but he seemed to be in such a bad temper that I imagined that he was angry with you for exchanging a prepossessing young lady ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... greatly surprised, as it had all happened so quickly and unexpectedly. We thought and talked it over the whole day. He is a well-to-do man, to be depended upon, he has two posts in the government and has already made his fortune. It is true that he is forty-five years old, but he is of a fairly prepossessing appearance and might still be thought attractive by women, and he is altogether a very respectable and presentable man, only he seems a little morose and somewhat conceited. But possibly that may only be the impression he makes at first sight. And beware, dear Rodya, when he comes to Petersburg, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... I, "what a nuisance!" for I shared the common antipathy to his country and his creed. Nor was his appearance prepossessing—one of Froude's "tonsured peasants," as I looked down at the square shoulders, the stout, short figure and the broad beardlessness of the face of the padre. But his voice, rich and mellow, attracted me ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... third party, or, indeed, I might as well say a third and a fourth, for they are brother and sister, a Miss Lucretia Spender and her brother Tom. They're relations of the late duchess on the Simkins's side. Mother was an aunt of hers. Not particularly prepossessing, either of them. Run a second-hand clothing shop over in Camden Town; down on their luck and expected the brokers in. Came to see the duchess in the effort to borrow money. She bundled them out neck and crop, and the brokers did ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... of this Essay we have been led to observe the different ways, in which the mind of man may be brought into a position tending to exhibit its powers in a less creditable and prepossessing point of view, than that in which all men, idiots and extraordinary cases excepted, are by nature qualified to appear. Many, not contented with those occupations, modest and humble in certain cases, to which their endowments and original bent had designed ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... of the complexion described as pasty, a pair of greyish-blue eyes, and a tangle of reddish curls just long enough to admit of being tied back with the bit of crumpled ribbon which kept them tidy. Cash was not of prepossessing appearance; yet perhaps because, the grateful glance touched a chord common to humanity in the heart of the stranger, or because one naturally warms to any creature whom one has befriended, or perhaps simply from the sweet womanliness which finds all childhood ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... to wait. Madame Fritsche had on a neat white cap; she smiled, spoke in an ingratiating voice and evidently tried to give an affable expression to her morose countenance, which was, however, none the more prepossessing for that, but on the contrary ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... it—Amelia alone was a witness to all the little secrets and artifices by which Josephine, the woman of thirty-three years, had to bolster up her beauty. But only the head stood in need of some artificial assistance. The body was as yet youthful, prepossessing, and remarkable for its attractiveness and luxuriant forms, and when Josephine now had finished her task, she was truly a woman of enchanting beauty and loveliness. Her eyes were so radiant and fiery, her smile so sweet and sure of her ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... not particularly prepossessing. He was about the middle height, portly, and had a couple of fierce grey eyes, that flashed fire from beneath a pair of great bushy beetling eyebrows and overawed all who came near him. It was in respect of his personal appearance, however, that, if he ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... our first experience of the western "peculiar institution," and it was not very prepossessing. We did not tarry long to observe it, but hurried on to the home of the Latter-Day Saints, the stronghold of the prophets, the capital of the only absolute monarch in America—Great Salt Lake City. As the night closed in we took sanctuary ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... countenance, somehow. The original lines were not prepossessing. The handwriting I knew as one sometimes knows a face, without being able to remember who the plague it belongs to; but, still, with an unpleasant association about it. I examined it carefully, and laid it down unopened. I went through half-a-dozen others, and recurred to it, and ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... its emotions. Whenever he made the great mission of his life the theme of his declamations—and he took every suitable occasion for doing so—let his listeners be friends or foes, his appearance, at all times striking and prepossessing in the extreme, became as that of one inspired. His ample chest expanded with noble feeling; every gesture of hip hand, every movement and posture of his commanding form, grew eloquent with meaning. Unmasked of its habitual cast of reserve, his handsome face, clear, strong, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... are good-natured but not prepossessing in looks or cleanly. They live in dwellings kept very hot, and both men and women injure themselves by immoderate indulgence in the banya, a small Turkish bath, often attached to the barabaras, or native huts. ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... abjure the social toast, And pipes, and such frivolities, You possibly some day may boast My prepossessing qualities!" ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... M., son of a gentleman of wealth in Ohio, early acquired the evil practice which has ruined so many bright lads. He was naturally an intelligent and prepossessing lad, and his father gave him as good an education as he could be induced to acquire, affording him most excellent opportunities for study and improvement. But the vile habit which had been acquired at an early age speedily began its blighting ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... apartment the truant couple were sitting, very innocently looking over the hotel scrap-book and the album containing views of the neighbourhood. No sooner had the old man entered than the young lady—who now showed herself to be quite as young as described, and remarkably prepossessing as to features—perceptibly turned pale. When the nephew entered, she turned still paler, as if she were going to faint. The young man described as an opera-singer rose with grim civility, and ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... fellatio by the bote, who probably himself experiences the orgasm at the same time. The bote is not a pederast, although pederasty occurs among these Indians. Holder examined bote who was splendidly made, prepossessing, and in perfect health. With much reluctance he agreed to a careful examination. The sexual organs were quite normal, though perhaps not quite so large as his physique would suggest, but he had ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... to the library and resumed his work, and was busily engaged in engrossing a deed of conveyance when the door opened and Judge Merlin entered accompanied by a tall, dark-haired, handsome, and rather prepossessing-looking man, of about fifty years of age, whom he introduced as ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... what it can have been that moved me to act as I then did, for, in the truth, the manner of that rascal of a groom was little prepossessing, and his master, I doubted, could be little better that he left the fellow to hector it thus over that wretched tavern oaf. But I ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... never saw him act, but I once heard him recite in a private salon his famous role of Saul in Alfieri's tragedy of that name. In person he was tall and largely built, His countenance was not prepossessing, and, like Michael Angelo, he had a broken nose. His eye could assume a terrific aspect, and his voice was rich, powerful and varied in its tone. At times it rolled like thunder, while at other moments it was as soft ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... Professor's house was opened to them by Helene Jegado, another of M. Bidard's servants. She was a woman of forty odd, somewhat scraggy of figure and, while not exactly ugly, not prepossessing of countenance. Her habit of looking anywhere but into the face of anyone addressing her gave her rather a ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... prepossessing than the lieutenant. He was educated, about twenty-four years of age, and undeniably handsome. His campaigns of exposure, hardship and fighting had hardened his frame into the mould of the trained athlete. The faded uniform which he ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... hard words, quarrels, and misunderstandings betwixt them. But, afterwards, they galled Titus more, by ascribing the victory to themselves, and prepossessing the Greeks with reports to that effect; insomuch that poets, and people in general in the songs that were sung or written in honor of the action, still ranked the Aetolians foremost. One of the pieces most current was the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Byron under altered circumstances, and receives from her friends the same shower of superlatives, whenever they have occasion to touch upon her merits. Richardson's ideal lady is not at first sight more prepossessing than his gentleman. After Clarissa's death, her friend Miss Howe writes a glowing panegyric on her character. It will be enough to give the distribution of her time. To rest it seems she allotted six hours only. Her first three morning hours were devoted to study ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... among them one young man, however, who appeared to take no share, and find no enjoyment in the conversation; though he seemed to force himself to attend to it. He was tall and slender, and of extremely prepossessing appearance. His features were fine, though emaciated. He had a profusion of black glossy hair that curled lightly about his head, and contrasted with the extreme paleness of his countenance. His brow ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... your impression of Eskimo abodes now you have seen their interiors? Well, they are not prepossessing to a European with the ordinary notions of what belongs to the necessaries of life, yet they are airier and cleaner than I had expected from their exterior aspect. I am assured that there is much Christian life in those queer homes, and ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... Aloysia Weber, and he went to Munich to offer her marriage. She, however, saw nothing attractive in the thin, pale young man, with his long nose, great eyes, and little head; for he was anything but prepossessing. A younger sister, Constance, however, secretly loved Mozart, and he soon transferred his repelled affections to this charming woman, whom he married in 1782 at the house of Baroness Waldstetten. His naive reasons for marrying show Mozart's ingenuous nature. He had ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... the adjacent forms and staring eyes of Phineas and Mo, who for the first time in their military career beheld him on easy terms with a strange and prepossessing young woman. After a second's thought he ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... in the evening, just in time for the night boat. Uncle Eb was a sight in his dusty broadcloth, when we got off the cars, and I know my appearance could not have been prepossessing. Once we were aboard the boat and had dusted our clothes and bathed our hands and faces we were in ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... hand, and wealth had answered to that knock herself. He was a man of influence, ever increasing, in New Jedboro. In St. Cuthbert's, he was held in high esteem by all, and the next election, we knew, would call him to the elder's honoured place. Prepossessing in appearance, manly in bearing, musical in speech, fragrant in character, Angus might well wake the echoes of even ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... anything but prepossessing character was imparted to the physiognomy of this individual by the extraordinary keenness of his small eyes, his almost lipless mouth, which stretched from ear to ear, and his long teeth, which were dazzlingly white; their enamel being intact, for he had never been attacked ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... Another maid, less prepossessing, admitted her to the dressing-room of the woman of fashion; and this last greeted Sally with a fretful, preoccupied frown, visible in the mirror, which reflected as well the excellent results obtainable from discreet employment ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... person was remarkably handsome, and his manners extremely prepossessing, while to a cultivated understanding and an early fondness for the belles lettres he joined the ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... objects—on one of these blessed evenings, on my road to Camden Town, I chanced to miss my way, and was compelled, notwithstanding a certain shyness towards strangers, to ask my direction of the first respectable person I should meet. Many passed me by, but none sufficiently prepossessing; when, on turning down some nameless street that leads to Tottenham Court-road, I chanced to come behind a staid-looking gentleman, accoutred in a dark brown coat, with an umbrella—the cotton of which had shrunk half-way up the whalebone—held ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... dictates of common sense and prudence, in this one instance at least enforced by the attractions of pleasure, pointed out the vast superiority of England to the oppressed, impoverished country which he had left, as a field for genius and industry to work upon. Having a prepossessing face and person, and manners frank, conciliating and firm, he soon extended his acquaintance to a wide circle of friends, whose advice conspired with his own taste to bring him to a determination, in consequence of which he settled near the metropolis, and became a practitioner ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... of 'Bishop' Black in his late years, says the Hon. S. L. Shannon, who remembers him well, was very prepossessing. He was of medium height, inclining to corpulency. In the street he always wore the well-known clerical hat; a black dress coat buttoned over a double-breasted vest, a white neckerchief, black small clothes and well polished Hessian boots completed ...
— William Black - The Apostle of Methodism in the Maritime Provinces of Canada • John Maclean
... quartermaster's department. Her features were very large, and so coarse and masculine was her general appearance that she would readily have passed as a man, and in her case the deception was no doubt easily practiced. Next day the "she dragoon" was caught, and proved to be a rather prepossessing young woman, and though necessarily bronzed and hardened by exposure, I doubt if, even with these marks of campaigning, she could have deceived as readily as did her companion. How the two got acquainted, I ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... the headquarters of the Kulkalega tribe of Torres Strait Islanders who are now absent on one of their periodical migrations, leaving in possession only the old man whom we met yesterday, and his family, among whom is a daughter of rather prepossessing appearance for a female of her race. The village consists of a single line of huts, which would furnish accommodation for, probably, 150 people. It is situated on the north-west, or leeward side of the island, immediately ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... was the way it had always been with Tom Slade. He had always made good, but somehow, the applause and the grateful tributes had gone to others. Nature had not made him prepossessing and he did not know how to talk; he was just slow and dogged and stolid, like a British tank, as I said, and just about as homely. You could hardly expect a girl to make much fuss over a young fellow who is like a British ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... he was very slender, and the deep sunken eye, the gloomy frown which was fixed between his brows, and the thin lips, had no very prepossessing expression, and yet there was something imposing in the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... gentle harmony. His utterance was very distinct—a capital requisite in a speaker—and he had the art of varying his tones, so as to sustain the attention of both judges and juries for almost any length of time. His person and attitudes, also, were most prepossessing. Their chief characteristics were a calmness and dignity which never disappeared in even the most exciting moments of contest, and of irritability, and provoking interruption. Woe, indeed, to one who ventured to interrupt him! However plausible, cogent, or even ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... full-length portrait of Rogers was published in London in 1776. He is represented as a tall, strong man, dressed in the costume of a Ranger, with a powder-horn strung at his side, a gun resting in the hollow of his arm, and a countenance by no means prepossessing. Behind him, at a little distance, stand his Indian followers."—[Parkman's Conspiracy of Pontiach, ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... there always seemed to be plenty more where that came from. Where it did come from was, I need hardly say, a subject of keen curiosity in social circles; and when I state that the signorina was now about twenty-three years of age, and of remarkably prepossessing appearance, it will be allowed that we in Whittingham were no worse than other people if we entertained some uncharitable suspicions. The signorina, however, did not make the work of detection at all easy. She became almost at once a leading figure in society; her salon was ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... chess-player," remarked Napoleon, advancing quickly. "The face is made of wax, but who will warrant that there is not a human countenance concealed under it, and that this prepossessing and well-proportioned form does not really consist of ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... priest, about twenty-eight years of age,—Jean Jacques Olier, afterwards widely known as founder of the Seminary of St. Sulpice. Judged by his engraved portrait, his countenance, though marked both with energy and intellect, was anything but prepossessing. Every lineament proclaims the priest. Yet the Abb Olier has high titles to esteem. He signalized his piety, it is true, by the most disgusting exploits of self-mortification; but, at the same time, he was strenuous in his efforts to reform the people and the clergy. So zealous was ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... a very dark period in his life. He was alone in London, without friends, without money, without introductions; his appearance was the reverse of prepossessing; and, even despite that medical degree and his acquaintance with the learned Albinus and the learned Gaubius, he had practically nothing of any value to offer for sale in the great labour-market of the world. How he managed to live at all is a mystery: it is certain that ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... Mr. Beamish, we found him a most prepossessing young man, of elegant manners and refined speech; in short, a gentleman. He begged me to allow his portmanteau to be placed in the carriage; and as I observed that he was not expected to dress for our family dinner, he ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... have been uttered by their foes. They that are good, having regard to the state of their own feelings, can understand the feelings of others, and therefore remember only the good deeds and not the acts of hostility of their foes. Thou hast acted even as good men of prepossessing countenance do, who transgress not the limits of virtue, wealth, pleasure and salvation. O child, remember not the harsh words of Duryodhana. Look at thy mother Gandhari and myself also, if thou desirest to remember only what is good. O Bharata, look at me, who am thy father unto you and am ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... fairness, great apparent candor, and with wonderful interest. He did not abuse the South, the Administration, or the Democrats, or indulge in any personalities, with the solitary exception of a few hits at Douglas's notions. He is far from prepossessing in personal appearance, and his voice is disagreeable, and yet he wins your attention and good ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... he has said himself, are constructed from many models. And the Marstons are, it seems, the only personages he has drawn solely from life. Gardiner, with whom some readers have identified Starlight, was, it is recorded, 'a man of prepossessing appearance and plausible address, who had many friends even among the settlers never suspected of sympathy with criminals, while many of the fair sex regarded him as a ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... nasal tone by an old grey- haired man of a rather comical cast of countenance in one of the streets in the outskirts of the town of Bolton. It was about a week after the sad death of Frank Oldfield that we come upon him. Certainly this approach to the town could not be said to be prepossessing. The houses, straggling up the side of a hill, were low and sombre, being built of a greyish stone, which gave them a dull and haggard appearance. Stone was everywhere, giving a cold, comfortless look to the dwellings. Stone- paved roads, stone curbs, stone pathways—except ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... tittle quite of this world. They were, so to speak, more earthy, too definite, too true to the mould, like figures in a bleak, bright light viewed out of darkness. Certainly not one of them was at first blush prepossessing. Yet who finds much amiss with the fox at last, though all he seems to have ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare |
