"Prettiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all, it might be unsafe to my future to leave with him any motive for tracing me. I left him hastily. I have never seen nor heard of him more. I took the child to Coblentz. Madame Surville was charmed with its prettiness and prattle,—charmed still more when I rebuked the poor infant for calling me 'Maman,' and said, 'Thy real mother is here.' Freed from my trouble, I returned to the kind German roof I had quitted, and shortly after became ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it not go for as much as prettiness in a woman? It is no use being cynical, Isobel; it is part of our nature to admire pretty things, and as far as I can see an exceptionally handsome man is as legitimate an object of ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... it us, but it will please others better. It will be more of a whole, more worldly, more nourished, more commonplace - and not so pretty, perhaps not even so beautiful. No man knows better than I that, as we go on in life, we must part from prettiness and the graces. We but attain qualities to lose them; life is a series of farewells, even in art; even our proficiencies are deciduous and evanescent. So here with these exquisite pieces the XVIIth, XVIIIth, and IVth of the present collection. You will perhaps ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by the dogcart in the station yard. Colin was changed. He was no longer the excited child who came rushing to you. He stood for you to come to him, serious and shy. His child's face was passing from prettiness ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... pretty French Madonna in the middle of it, with her head a little aside, and her nimbus switched a little aside too, like a becoming bonnet. A Madonna in decadence she is, though, for all, or rather by reason of all, her prettiness, and her gay soubrette's smile; and she has no business there, neither, for this is St. Honore's porch, not hers; and grim and grey St. Honore used to stand there to receive you,—he is banished now ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... head covering toward him presently, however, showing him all the troubled pink prettiness it held, and said very genuinely through ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... but a nostalgia for open spaces and free wanderings had been always with him. He had come to hate the city with its hard walled-in ways and its dirty air, and also the eastern country-side with its little green prettiness surrounded by fences. He longed for a land where one can see for fifty miles, and not a man or a house. He thought that alkaline dust on his lips would ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... at first sight it does seem that his manner of arriving at his subject—if his subject is Emma Bovary—is considerably casual. He begins with Charles, of all people—Charles, her husband, the stupid soul who falls heavily in love with her prettiness and never has the glimmer of an understanding of what she is; and he begins with the early history of Charles, and his upbringing, and the irrelevant first marriage that his mother forces upon him, and his widowhood; and then it happens that Charles ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... drawn the words from me. You have made this outpouring of my heart seem as natural as breathing, for when you look as you do to-night, I can almost think aloud to you. You have a sympathetic face, my child, and when expressing intelligent sympathy it grows beautiful. It was only pretty before. Prettiness is merely a thing of outline and color; beauty comes ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... Essential conditions are required which can rarely be found in conjunction. The most important of all is the talent and character of the lady who does the honours. Without being old, she must have passed the age in which a woman is chiefly spoken of for her prettiness or her dress, and be at that point of time when a woman's mind may rule over the self-love of a man more than her youthful attractions enabled her to rule over ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... Mrs. Dennison. I dare say I am getting to be rather violent and careless in my way of talking. It's a reaction from the vagueness and prettiness of speech I used to hear down in Silvertree, where they begin their remarks with an 'I'm not sure, but I think,' et cetera. But, really, you must overlook my vehemence. If I could spend my time with sweet souls like you, I'd be a different ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... came the time when these days of careless childish joys were brought to a close. A new era opened, and romance, which budded early in that time and place, began to unfold its first tender leaves. Various youths of the town, attracted by the piquant prettiness and sparkling vivacity of the eldest daughter, began to haunt the Van de Grift house. In the sentimental fashion of the day, these sighing swains carved her name on the trees, and so wide was the circle of her fascination that there was scarcely ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... as a blue-eyed baby, too young to understand that its parents had just been drowned in the Nile. As brother and sister they grew up together until college separated the two. After four years Pauline's dainty prettiness struck Harry with a distinct shock, the delightful sort of shock known as love at first sight. It was really Harry's first sight of her as a woman. Every sense and instinct in him shouted, "Get that girl," and nothing in ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... and say that beauty appears to be a quality in objects which is not sharply differentiated from other and allied qualities. If we look at the usages of speech we shall find that beauty has its kindred conceptions, such as gracefulness, prettiness and others. Writers on aesthetics have spent much time on these "Modifications of the Beautiful.'' The point emphasized here is the difficulty of drawing the line between them. Even an expert may hesitate long before saying whether a human face, a flower or a cameo should ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Miss HELENA DACRE looks magnificent. Then Miss EDITH CHESTER combines prettiness with fun, and the duet between her and clever Miss LAURA LINDEN is enthusiastically encored—and deservedly so, for it is seldom that two young actresses will "go in" for a real genuine bit of nonsensical burlesque, and win. In fact it is all good, "and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... had written these last words, his attention was suddenly attracted by the clear and sonorous voice of Rose-Pompon, who, knowing her Beranger by heart, had opened Philemon's window, and, seated on the sill, sang with much grace and prettiness this verse of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... member of the family had developed with the child's promise, and at seventeen Florence was beautiful; not with a conventional prettiness, but with a vital feminine attraction. All that the mother had been, with her dark, oval face, her mass of walnut-brown hair, her great dark eyes, her uptilted chin, the daughter was now; but with added health and an augmented femininity that the mother had never known. ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... harp for its music, out in the open where beauty and sweetness beat down upon him. Out in the open a man gets blind. Lord!" went on Steering, remembering Miss Gossamer again, and trying to explain her to himself, "how can a man help loving prettiness! That's what a man loves often and always, Piney, prettiness, grace, vivacity—and then once in his life he loves a woman—Hah!" cried Steering, as though he had at last got the best of Miss Gossamer, ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... was no part of the girl's soul, no talent acquired by loving exertion, but something extrinsic, unavoidable, and unmeritorious. Why was it so? Why should fate treat Milly like a godchild? Why should she have prettiness, and adorableness, and the lyric gift, and such abounding confident youth? Why should circumstances fall out so that she could meet her unacknowledged lover openly at all seasons? Leonora's eyes wandered to the figure of Ethel reclining with shut eyes in the arm-chair. Ethel ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... life-products than women in frowsy and dowdy imitation clothes! Surely it was better to be serene and clean and pleasant, than to be terrible and bewildered, sick and quarrelsome! I was seized by a frenzy, a sort of instinctive animal lust for this life of ease and prettiness. No matter if those dirty, raucous-voiced hordes of strikers, and others of their "ilk"—as the "Times" phrased it—did have to wash my clothes and scrub my floors, just so that I stayed clean ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... a certain extent; and he took us in at once, evidently. A country-parson and his wife. If I say his pretty wife, I will promise faithfully that it shall be the last time I will refer to myself or my prettiness, the whole way, further than may be absolutely necessary; and it isn't every woman who will do as much. For with this man and his belongings I came to have much to do in the course of the next five years. Little thought I, as I heard him chatting soberly with my ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... like me very much; and as for me, I delight in the young girls. They are often very pretty; not so pretty as people say in the magazines, but pretty enough. The magazines rather overdo that; they make a mistake. I have seen no great beauties, but the level of prettiness is high, and occasionally one sees a woman completely handsome. (As a general thing, a pretty person here means a person with a pretty face. The figure is rarely mentioned, though there are several good ones.) The level of prettiness ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... family, was possessed of a mind rudimentary in its power of observation and analysis. Self-interest with her was high, but not strong. It was, nevertheless, her guiding characteristic. Warm with the fancies of youth, pretty with the insipid prettiness of the formative period, possessed of a figure promising eventual shapeliness and an eye alight with certain native intelligence, she was a fair example of the middle American class—two generations removed from the emigrant. Books were beyond her interest—knowledge a sealed book. In ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... snob. A pitiful, beautiful little snob!" Joan wafted a kiss. "Your prettiness saves you. If you had a turned-up nose you'd ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... the other. Clement was right in his obscure perception of Mr. Bradshaw's feeling while he was making his phrases. That gentleman was, in another moment, to have the tingling delight of showing the grand creature he had just begun to tame. He was going to extinguish the pallid light of Susan's prettiness in the brightness of Myrtle's beauty. He would bring this young man, neutralized and rendered entirely harmless by his irrevocable pledge to a slight girl, face to face with a masterpiece of young womanhood, and say to him, not in words, ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... demands upon design. You cannot begin by just throwing about sprays of natural flowers. It calls peremptorily for treatment—by which test the decorative artist stands or falls. Effective it must be; coarse it may be; vulgar it should not be; trivial it can hardly be; mere prettiness is beyond its scope; but it lends itself to dignity of design and nobility of treatment. Of course, it is ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... writing-chair on her right. Once, probably, she had been a pretty woman, and she still had abundant wavy brown hair and large dark-blue eyes with curling lashes; but she was too thin and faded and narrow-chested for any prettiness now. Her calico gown was unstarched, though scrupulously clean: she wore a thin blue-and-white summer shawl, and her old straw bonnet was trimmed with a narrow blue ribbon pieced in two places. Her voice was slightly monotonous, but low-keyed: as she spoke her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... deal of non-nitrogenous produce in proportion to the nitrogenous, but it is the latter which is chiefly useful to the animal consumer and not the former. This point is a very important one, which I have never seen clearly and distinctly put—the prettiness of Dumas' circulation of the elements ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... that Mr. Southard's music pleased, and that some of the most critical of the audience were roused to a real enthusiasm. And it is to be borne in mind that the music is cast in a grand mould; it has no prettiness; it is either great in itself, or wears the semblance of greatness. On the whole, we are inclined to think that the "Diarist" in Dwight's "Journal of Music" was not extravagant in saying that no first work since the time of Beethoven ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... things. Every tree may be imperfect, with half its branches dead for want of room or want of sun, but until the devotee turns critic—an easy step, alas, for half-hearted worshipers—we are conscious of no lack. Magnificence can do without prettiness, and a touch of solemnity is ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... happiness of Mr. Elton. Through Mrs. Goddard, the mistress of the local boarding-school for girls, she struck up an acquaintance, which she contrived rapidly to develop into intimacy, with a Miss Harriet Smith—a plump, fair-haired, blue-eyed little beauty of seventeen, whose prettiness, docility, good-temper and simplicity might be allowed to balance her lack of intelligence ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... single figures and heads are not, as a class, so true to nature as his compositions, although they are much better known to the public. Scattered far and wide through all the great art galleries of the world, they have been greatly admired for their delicate coloring, and for those qualities of prettiness ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... her lack of youthful prettiness. With unerring instinct as a child, she had chosen her riding clothes to show off in. Now these same clothes formed the basis of her system. By day she was always in tailored frocks of the strictest simplicity. They were linen, or silk, or wool, made ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... frustrated in several frantic attempts to end her life. She was so clever and so cunning that they had to watch her constantly; but even the most impatient of the attendants could not give her a cross word, her grief was so pathetic, and she seemed so sorrowfully helpless in her frail, gentle prettiness. ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... Substantially, she preserved the image of the mother who had been summoned to wander in other and less finite green pastures long before the waxing herds of kine had conferred royalty upon the house. She had her mother's slim, strong figure and grave, soft prettiness that relieved in her the severity of the imperious McAllister eye and the McAllister air of ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... depth of Perugino's feeling. In S. Francesco, Pinturicchio, with the same meticulous refinement, painted a letter addressed to him by Gentile Baglioni. It lies on a stool before Madonna and her court of saints. Nicety of execution, technical mastery of fresco as a medium for Dutch detail-painting, prettiness of composition, and cheerfulness of colouring, are noticeable throughout his work here rather than either thought or sentiment. S. Maria Maggiore can boast a fresco of Madonna between a young episcopal saint and Catherine of Alexandria from the hand of Perugino. The rich yellow ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... pretty, he knew that—lovely, no doubt, to her boy lovers. But to him, with the memory of Margaret's grand ideal beauty ever before him, Fay's pink and pearly bloom, though it was as purely tinted as the inner calyx of a rose, faded into mere color prettiness. And as yet the spell of those wonderful eyes, of which Frank Lumsden dreamed, had exercised no potent fascination over ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... theatre or the panels of a boudoir. The Olympus of Homer and of Virgil, as has been well said, becomes the Olympus of Ovid. Strength, sublimity, even stateliness disappeared, unless we admit some of the first two qualities in the landscapes of Vernet. Not only is beauty replaced by prettiness, but by prettiness in season and out of season. The common incongruity of introducing a spirit of elegance and literature into the simplicities of the true pastoral, was condemned by Diderot as a mixture of Fontenelle with Theocritus. We do not know what name he would have given to that still ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... looking more nearly into their features, I saw some further peculiarities in their Dresden-china type of prettiness. Their hair, which was uniformly curly, came to a sharp end at the neck and cheek; there was not the faintest suggestion of it on the face, and their ears were singularly minute. The mouths were small, with bright red, rather thin lips, and the little chins ran to a point. The eyes were large ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... I commonly turn, but northward, up a street upon which a flight of French-roof houses suddenly settled a year or two since, with families in them, and many outward signs of permanence, though their precipitate arrival might cast some doubt upon this. I have to admire their uniform neatness and prettiness, and I look at their dormer-windows with the envy of one to whose weak sentimentality dormer- windows long appeared the supreme architectural happiness. But, for all my admiration of the houses, I find a variety that is pleasanter in the landscape, when I reach, beyond them, a little bridge ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... painting, and a still worse taste, if possible, in sculpture. No soul, no grandeur, no simplicity; a meagre insipidity in the conception, a nicety of finish in the detail; affectation instead of grace, distortion instead of power, and prettiness instead of beauty. Yet the artists who execute these works, and those who buy them, have free access to the marvels of the gallery, and the treasures of the Pitti Palace. Are they sans eyes, sans souls, sans taste, sans every thing, but ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... being admired, By ladies of gentle degree—degree, With flattery sated, High-flown and inflated, Away from the city we flee—we flee! From charms intramural To prettiness rural The sudden transition Is simply Elysian, So come, Amaryllis, Come, Chloe and Phyllis, Your slaves, for ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... of her face was admirable: nothing could exceed in beauty the lines of her cheeks or the shape and softness of her chin. Those who were fastidious in their requirements might object to them that they bore no dimple; but after all, it is only prettiness that requires a dimple: full-blown beauty wants ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... discarding mere beauty with violence. "Pretty! Lord! what does prettiness matter? Of course you're pretty, but do you know what I said to myself the minute I saw you? I said, 'I'll bet that little girl has brains!' You smile," said Mr. Hazzard, with passionate earnestness, "but I'll swear to ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... the warts blown into the glass globe, hugging her knees in their sturdy ribbed stockings, her smooth brown hair enhancing her clean kind of prettiness, Lilly gazed up roundly. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... recapitulations, and codas; there are fugues, with counter-subjects, strettos, and pedal points; there are passacaglias on ground basses, canons ad hypodiapente, and other ingenuities, which have, after all, stood or fallen by their prettiness as much as the simplest folk-tune. Wagner is never driving at anything of this sort any more than Shakespeare in his plays is driving at such ingenuities of verse-making as sonnets, triolets, and the like. And this is why he ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... resolute advance, and I thought even then how strong his young face looked, and how purposeful, for all his youth, that grim nose of his and the steady eyes above it, in contrast with the pink-and-white prettiness of the many slim lads that were the ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... know how much importance I have always given, among the fine arts, to good dancing. If you think of it, you will find one of the robin's very chief ingratiatory faculties is his dainty and delicate movement,—his footing it featly here and there. Whatever prettiness there may be in his red breast, at his brightest he can always be outshone by a brickbat. But if he is rationally proud of anything about him, I should think a robin must be proud of his legs. Hundreds of birds have longer and more imposing ones—but for real ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... might have one or two if they pleased, and down they knelt upon the pavement, examining the contents of his basket, and talked in almost breathless whispers to each other of the respective merits, the softness, colour, and prettiness, ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... when she first announced the probability of her advent. Afterwards however she managed to forget the approaching annoyance and went to parties and danced to the last hour continuing to be a great success because her prettiness was delicious and her diaphanous mentality was no train upon the minds of her admirers ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... through her, while it was not too much to hope that Prebol, through his sufferings, might be willing to profit by their lesson. Rasba was glad that he had not overtaken her that night of inexplicable pursuit. Her brightness, her prettiness, her appeal had been irresistible to him, and he could but acknowledge, while he trembled at the fact, that for the time he had been possessed by ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... human apartment is to look as high as possible. A cathedral, or the rotunda of the Capitol, must have height to produce an overpowering effect. But in an ordinary room of ordinary size, comfort, convenience and prettiness are more to be ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... that he must be searched, to which they submitted at once. After that we went through their baggage. I wasn't going to have the sheriff or cowboys tumbling over Miss Cullen's clothes, so I looked over her bag myself. The prettiness and daintiness of the various contents were a revelation to me, and I tried to put them back as neatly as I had found them, but I didn't know much about the articles, and it was a terrible job trying to fold up some of the things. Why, there was a big pink ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... most unnecessarily in denying the prettiness of his language," said Clara. As she spoke she hardly moved her lips, and Dalrymple went on painting from the model. It was clear that Miss Van Siever understood that the painting, and not the pretty speeches, was the important business ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... careful to rectify the error, on catching sight of such terrible beings as bluejackets; but not before we had caught a glimpse at a rather pleasing face, with small, straight nose, rosy lips, splendid teeth, the blackest of eyes, and the brownest of skin. The veils, which serve to hide their prettiness, are real works of art, composed of gold and silver coins, beads and shells, tastefully and geometrically arranged on a groundwork of black lace. After repeated hand kissing from our amorous tars—an action whose significance is apparently lost on these damsels—we bid good bye to the "nut-brown ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... already tending to the superfluous. Fairfax himself, who, upon the whole, and with regard to a work of any length, is the best metrical translator our language has seen, and, like Chapman, a genuine poet, strangely aggravated the sins of prettiness and conceit in his original, and added to them a love of tautology amounting to that of a lawyer. As to Hoole, he is below criticism; and other versions I have not happened to see. Now if I had no acquaintance with the Italian language, I confess I would rather ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... visits, without fear of being upbraided with so infamous a conversation. He invited himself sometimes to eat with them; and then, assuming an air of gaiety, he desired the master to bring down the children to bear him company. When he had a little commended their prettiness, he asked to see their mother, and shewed her the same countenance, as if he had taken her for an honest woman. If she were beautiful or well shaped, he praised her, and said "she looked like a Portuguese:" after which; in private conversation, "you have," said he to ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... and became momentarily lost in reverie, his chin in the palm of his hand, and dreaming thus, Kitty's old French drawing-room and Kitty herself, her blond prettiness accentuated and enhanced by the delicate pinks and blues of her gown, vanished, and Marcia seemed to stand before him all in black and silver as he had seen her recently at a ball, with violets, great purple violets, falling below the ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... quick-witted man of the world and it was impossible to shut his eyes to the trouble. He thought of Bella as she was when he had first married her; he recalled their courtship, her pretty half shy, half tender ways—the girlish prettiness which time had ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... atolls. Later the same day we saw under more fit conditions the island of Taiaro. "Lost in the Sea" is possibly the meaning of the name. And it was so we saw it; lost in blue sea and sky: a ring of white beach, green underwood, and tossing palms, gem-like in colour; of a fairy, of a heavenly prettiness. The surf ran all around it, white as snow, and broke at one point, far to seaward, on what seemed an uncharted reef. There was no smoke, no sign of man; indeed, the isle is not inhabited, only visited at intervals. And yet a trader (Mr. Narii Salmon) was watching from the shore and wondering ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... put into these things,—her pride to have her small domain somewhat resemble the more affluent ones that she admired. Though her family had been decidedly plain, they had given her "advantages" in education and dress, and her own prettiness, her vivacity and charm, had won her way into whatever society Kansas City and Denver could offer. She had also visited here and there in different parts of the country,—once in New York, and again ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... penetrated even Mr. Nott's slow comprehension. Her novel opposition, and even the prettiness it enhanced, gave him a dull premonition of pain. His small round eyes became abstracted, his mouth remained partly open, even his fresh color ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... shows up every morning at nine and stays all morning, it's only because he's got an axe to grind. He talks. He lays down the law. He appeals to Barbara's mind and imagination; and it's all rather horrible—one of those poison snakes that look like an old rubber boot, and a bird all prettiness, bright colors, innocence, and admiration of how the world is made. Look at it in this way. She makes a great hit with the bust. Who's responsible? Well, the creature that supplied the inspiration, largely. ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... his teeth drolly at this sight. "By my troth, a gay bird!" he said echoing the other's words—then added, "But not so bad a build for all his prettiness. Look you, those calves and thighs are well rounded and straight. The arms, for all that gold-wrought cloak, hang stoutly from full shoulders. I warrant you the fop can use his dainty sword right ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... Sunday morning, bedewed with tallow, at the 'Hunters' Rest.' I was introduced; and we set off by way of Newhaven and the sea beach; at first through pleasant country roads, and afterwards along a succession of bays of a fairylike prettiness, to our destination— Cramond on the Almond—a little hamlet on a little river, embowered in woods, and looking forth over a great flat of quicksand to where a little islet stood planted in the sea. ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her well-shaped figure, coquettishly and spotlessly cuffed, collared, and aproned, and her clear blue but half-averted eyes, he again underwent a change. She certainly was very pretty—that most seductive prettiness which seemed to be warmed into life by her consciousness of himself. Why should he take her or himself so seriously? Why not play out the farce, and let those who would criticise him and think his acceptance of the work degrading ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and be, indeed, a busy ant-heap, with full granaries and long hours of leisure. But even then I think the whip will be in the overseer's hands, and not in vain. For, when it comes to be a question of each man doing his own share or the rest doing more, prettiness of sentiment will be forgotten. To dock the skulker's food is not enough; many will rather eat haws and starve on petty pilferings than put their shoulder to the wheel for one hour daily. For such as these, then, the whip will be in the overseer's hand; ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and forceful, but a hint of what Mrs. Keith called swagger somewhat spoiled his bearing. She thought he allowed his self-confidence to be seen too plainly. The girl formed a marked contrast to him; she was short and slender, her hair and eyes were brown, while her prettiness, for one could not have called her beautiful, was of an essentially delicate kind. It did not strike one at first sight, but grew upon her acquaintances. Her manner was quiet and reserved and she was plainly dressed in ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... she was pretty or plain, Tom was just now incapable of judging. He only knew that her eyes were wonderful. He never remembered to have seen such eyes—clear, dark blue-grey with fine shading of eyelash on the lower as well as the upper lid. Unquestionably they surpassed all ordinary standards of prettiness. Were glorious, yet curiously embarrassing; too in their seriousness, their intent impartial scrutiny—under which last, to his lively vexation, the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... seats or blocks, and tables absolute fixtures on account of the weighty legs upon which they were built. In short, the careful and cultivated decorator finds it as imperative to guard against exaggerated simplicity as unsupported prettiness. ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... great deal of petting, and he was always ready to humour her, the more as she was the only girl, and the one quiet member of his little family—although she had been known to use her fists upon occasion. Her prettiness and intelligence delighted him, her affection was one of the deepest pleasures of his life, and he was thankful for the return to him of his mother's beautiful and singular features. To-day the resemblance was so striking that he ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... like intelligence, prettiness, and youth—must have them at any cost! So that's understood. Of course, there are certain questions to be settled, arrangements to be made. For example, I assume responsibility for your losses at bridge, because playing when I wish you to is one of ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... told her that her face was still very attractive, although it had lost much of the girlish prettiness it possessed in the days when Tom had known and loved her; but then—thank Heaven!—she had never cared for such things, and all she wanted was success in her chosen profession, the one thing which ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... toque a band of violets not so much in keeping with the gray of the austere November day as with the blue of her faded autumnal eyes. Her eyes were autumnal, but it was not from this, or from the lines of maturity graven on the passing prettiness of her little face, that the notion and the name of Mother-Bird suggested itself. She became known as the Mother-Bird to the tender ironic fancy of the earliest, if not the latest, of her friends, because she was slight ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... on the couch seemed to move. Instead of the filmy draperies torn by his own hand, she wore the habiliments of poverty and looked at him out of a face of plebeian prettiness; a face of dimly confused features. The apparition rose and stood waveringly upright. "You murdered me, too!" it said in a voice of vague simplicity. Eben Tollman tried to ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... dull uniformity and stillness, was a contrast after the stir and freshness and prettiness of life in the Dallases's house. It struck Esther rather painfully. The room where she and her father took their supper was pleasant and homely indeed; a bright fire burned on the hearth, or in the grate, rather, and ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... some hundreds in a lifetime—the class from whence are taken the lauded "mothers, wives, and daughters of England." She was sincere, good-tempered, and affectionate; not over-clever, being more gifted with heart than brains; rather vain, which fault her extreme prettiness half excused; always anxious to do right, yet, from a want of decision of character, often contriving ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... speaking of the Queen about this time, said: "She is 'winning golden opinions from all sorts of people' by her affability, the grace of her manners, and her prettiness. She is excessively like the Brunswicks and not like the Coburgs. So much the more in her favor. The memory of George III. is not yet passed away, and the people are glad to see his calm, honest, and English physiognomy renewed in ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... barrier of reserve thus erected between them, Philip Oswald could not but admire the rare loveliness into which Mary Grayson's girlish prettiness had expanded, and again, and yet again, while she was speaking to his mother, and could not therefore perceive him, he turned to gaze on her, fascinated not by the finely turned form or beautiful features, but by the countenance beaming with gentle ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... Sherman stretch the cantonments—a Euclidian nightmare of bare boards, black roofs and ditches, making grim vistas of straight lines. This is the architecture of Need in contradistinction to the architecture of Greed, symbolized in the shop-window prettiness of those sanitary suburbs of our cities created by the real estate agent and the speculative builder. Neither contain ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... inhabited rooms of the old house looked bright and festal; there were fresh flowers in the pots, honey as well as butter on the breakfast table. The Major and Palmer were both in full uniform, wonderfully preserved. Eugene, a marvel of prettiness, with his curled hair and little velvet coat, contrived by his sisters out of some ancestral hoard. Betty wore thick silk brocade from the same store; Harriet a fresh gay chintz over a crimson skirt, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... failure by the essential nature of sculpture. A Western mind can have little sympathy with the art which has moved most on mystic lines, the art of India, which in such efforts has abandoned the search for beauty, and so given up the really artistic point of view. Mere prettiness no doubt is an unsatisfying ideal: but a loftier beauty, in harmony with the world around us and the soul within us, is ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... school was like the advance of a conquering hero. Although she had just entered this fall she was already one of the most popular girls in school. She had that fair, delicate prettiness which invariably appeals to boys, and an open, unaffected manner which endeared her to the girls. Beside her very lovable personality she had a background which was almost certain to insure popularity to a girl. She was rich and lived in a great house on a fashionable avenue; ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... these veg'table people," said the little girl. "They're cold and flabby, like cabbages, in spite of their prettiness." ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... see this girl again and as soon as possible. He was as liable as any young man in the world to the most sudden and most violent enthusiasms, but they had been enthusiasms for a pretty face, for a sensual appeal, for a sentimental moment. Here there was no prettiness, no sensuality, no sentiment. There was something so new that he felt like Cortez upon his peak ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... the Latin man, prompt. 'The musics are of sufficient prettiness, but not of necessity. Let us speak of business. I well know why we are here, since I observe my compatriots. You had a whisper yesterday, Senor Mellinger, of our proposals. To-night we will speak out. We know that you stand ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... Fine Art, because unfelt by ourselves; and that the only vestiges of a likeness to it should be in some of the more subtle passages of caricatures, popular (and justly popular) as much because they were the only attainable reflection of the prettiness, as because they were the only sympathizing records of the humors, of English girls and boys. Of our oil portraits of them, in which their beauty is always conceived as consisting in a fixed simper—feet not more than two inches long, and accessory grounds, pony, and groom—our ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... loved the state of peace she had been born in, had married into, and had never lost. Aggie was her eldest daughter, and she was a little vexed to think that she might have married five years ago if she hadn't been so particular. Meanwhile, what with her prettiness and her superiority, she was spoiling her younger sisters' chances. None of her rejected suitors had ever turned to Kate or Susie or Eliza. They were well enough, poor girls, but as long as Aggie was there they couldn't help looking plain. But as for ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... that." It was a long time before she found one at all to her mind, but finally she was accosted by a little girl, who looked wretched enough, to be sure,—tattered, and sickly, and starved. She was not quite up to the mark as to prettiness, though she had soft, sorrowful eyes and a delicate mouth. Hunger, cold, and ill-treatment are not very favorable to beauty. Then the name she gave was decidedly unromantic,—Molly Magee. But the poor child told a piteous story, which soon brought tears ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... sudden revelation of his wife's prettiness and its evident effect upon his visitors came over Ira. It resulted in his addressing the empty space before his door with, "Well, ye won't ketch much if ye go on yawpin' and dawdlin' with women-folks like this;" and ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... Fox; and a Portrait of Lady Jane Grey, after De Heere, is an interesting variety. Milton composing Paradise Lost, from a drawing by Stothard, is far from our taste; but the Blue Bell, by Fox, from a picture by W.A. Hastings, somewhat atones for the previous failure: its prettiness ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... afflictions of the old king. I can, however, quite imagine the irritation the sharp chirrup-chirrup of this little squirrel would cause to an invalid, for there is something particularly ear-piercing about it; but their prettiness and familiarity make up in great measure for their noisiness. They are certainly a nuisance in a garden, and I rather doubt whether they are of any use, as McMaster says, "in destroying many insects, especially white ants, beetles, both in their perfect and larval state," &c. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... a bird, Ascends the neighboring beech; there whisks his brush, And perks his ears, and stamps, and cries aloud, With all the prettiness of feign'd alarm And ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... grasp, and left the letter where it was. "I suppose he won't bite me, at any rate," she said, and she assumed that look of childish drollery which she would sometimes put on, almost with a grimace, but still with so much prettiness that no one who saw her ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... fallin' round her face and neck. And her great, earnest eyes wus lookin' into the West, and the light from the sunset fallin' through the mornin'-glorys wus a fallin' over her, till I declare, I never see any thing look so pretty in my hull life. And there was some thin' more, fur more than prettiness in her face, in her ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... of the ruins of the old Benedictine Abbey that used to stand at the rear of what's now called Abbey Gate—some of the ruins, as you know, are still there. Clever woman—reads a lot and all that sort of thing. Not at all a society woman, in spite of her prettiness—bit of a blue-stocking, I ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... Valerie offered the touching spectacle of one of those friendships between women, so cordial and so improbable, that men, always too keen-tongued in Paris, forthwith slander them. The contrast between Lisbeth's dry masculine nature and Valerie's creole prettiness encouraged calumny. And Madame Marneffe had unconsciously given weight to the scandal by the care she took of her friend, with matrimonial views, which were, as will be ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... type of prettiness favored in the community, often what is nowadays called the chicken type. Plump legs and fairly prominent bosom and hips are symbols of those desired among all grades of men, together with a pretty face. The homely girl finds it ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... of a girl like that, who has no manner, no talk, no intelligence; who has nothing to recommend her but an awkward, babyish prettiness! Dangerous to me? No, no! If there is danger at all, I have to dread it from the sculptor's daughter. I don't mind confessing that I am anxious to see Maddalena Lomi. But as for Nanina, she will simply be of use to me. All I know already about the studio ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... Pallas—were the gods of all that was nobly, purely, and wisely lovely; but the Greeks also believed in powers of ill, and there was a goddess of beauty, called Venus (Aphrodite). Such beauty was hers as is the mere prettiness and charm of pleasure—nothing high or fine. She was said to have risen out of the sea, as the sunshine touched the waves, with her golden hair dripping with the spray; and her favourite home was in myrtle groves, where she drove her car, drawn by doves, attended by the ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... consumed him to the bone. But extreme want, if long continued, eats up love when it has nothing else to eat. And when people are very long dying, the people they fret and trouble begin to think of that too often hypocritical prettiness of phrase called "a happy release." So the worn-out and half-famished wife did not care three straws for the dying husband, whom a year or two ago she had vowed to love and cherish in sickness and in health. But still ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... than Ruskin that a style so stiff with ornament was likely to produce all manner of faults. In overloading his sentences with jewelry he frequently obscures the sense; his beauties often degenerate into mere prettiness; his sweetness cloys. His free indulgence of the emotions, often at the expense of the intellect, leads to a riotous extravagance of superlative. But, above all, his richness distracts attention from matter to ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... not obeyed the call her eyes always made upon all of them for notice at her entrance, or before she took her seat, were spoken of with haughtiness, as, Jacks, or Toms; wile her favourites, with an affectedly-endearing familiarity, and a prettiness of accent, were Jackeys and Tommys; and if they stood very high in her graces, dear devils, ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Flowers," "Sea Beach," "The Little Dragon," "Little Purple," "Silver," "Chrysanthemum," "Waterfall," "White Brightness," "Forest of Cherries,"—these and a host of other quaint conceits are the one prettiness of a very ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... his flowing costume, like a colossal figure carved in ebony and ivory. They took a roundabout way through a street entirely of villa-pensions; every house in Carlsbad but one is a pension if it is not n hotel; but these were of a sort of sentimental prettiness; with each a little garden before it, and a bower with an iron table in it for breakfasting and supping out-doors; and he said that they would be the very places for bridal couples who wished to spend the honey-moon in getting well of the wedding surfeit. She denounced ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to the color of the leather upon which she worked. Yet through this seamed and discolored face, with thin grayish hair drawn back tightly from the temples, one could discern, as through a transparent mask, a past prettiness and an exceeding gentleness and faithfulness. "If my sister's little Helen was to be lost I shouldn't know whether my hat was on or not," said she. "I believe I should go ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... me on a bench under the awning sat a party of American ladies from the other side—at least so I conjectured, and with reason. A look decided it. They were clad in pronouncedly cool costumes, dresses that would make a full ball toilet in Canada, but which exposed much prettiness to the ruthless action of the sun and wind on this hot midsummer afternoon. They were using their lips and tongues in a violent manner, accompanying commonplace remarks with the most exaggerated varieties of facial expressions I ever saw. But they were ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... spectacles, her flushed prettiness, and old as he was he remembered well enough how a face like hers would seem to a young man's eyes. Of course she would get a husband? So he spoke in kindly irony. And she hated him for ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... appreciate it better; but, on the whole, it seems overwrought and melodramatic. Even its lyrics, like "Come into the Garden, Maud," which make this work a favorite with young lovers, are characterized by "prettiness" rather than by beauty ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... handsome. People who did not like him, Philistines and college tutors, and young men reading for the Church, used to say that he was merely pretty; but there was a great deal more in his face than mere prettiness. I think he was the most splendid creature I ever saw, and nothing could exceed the grace of his movements, the charm of his manner. He fascinated everybody who was worth fascinating, and a great ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... ter be virtuous as ter eat punkin pie fer breakfast. I come from Wisconsin, where we think more of our bodies than our souls; an' 'twas in Wisconsin that I first met Dr. Standish. He had a call to the town, wher I lived with—with my sister. She, my sister, was a real pretty girl then, but of a prettiness that soon fades. An' she hired out as cook ter the Doctor. He was a good man, an' a kind one, but she paid back his kindness by runnin' off with ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... Elsie's mind wasn't sufficiently alert to grasp the fact at the moment. She stood beside her tall, immaculate husband, a short, rather stout, flabby-looking woman with a sallow face wherein keener eyes than Elsie's might have detected traces of former prettiness, and frowsy, ginger-colored hair that had been curled on an iron. She wore a dingy pink tea-gown bordered with swan's-down, cut rather low and revealing a yellow, scrawny neck. A large cameo brooch took the place of a missing frog, and a pin in the hem disclosed missing stitches. ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... been put in command of colors, as well as of dough, and if the paste would have taken the colors, we may be sure her mice would have been painted brown, and her cats tortoiseshell; and this, partly indeed for the added delight and prettiness of color itself, but more for the sake of absolute realization to her eyes and mind. Now all the early sculpture of the most accomplished nations has been thus colored, rudely or finely; and therefore you see at once how necessary it is that we ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... plots to the English dramatists. Lodge's Rosalind and Robert Greene's Pandosto, the sources respectively of Shakspere's As You Like It and Winter's Tale, are short pastoral romances, not without prettiness in their artificial way. The satirical pamphlets of Thomas Nash and his fellows, against "Martin Marprelate," an anonymous writer, or {90} company of writers, who attacked the bishops, are not wanting in wit, but are so cumbered with fantastic whimsicalities, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Her prettiness and charm—of which she was modestly but confidently aware, by her experience of its effect—was a great satisfaction. It was remarkably noticeable today. In front of the glass Edith hesitated between her favourite plain sailor hat and a new black velvet ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... conscious rather of its own richness and force than of any definite aims or desires. Her expression was extremely reserved. A veil seemed to lie over her deep, heavy-lidded eyes, and over features that had now delicacy and bloom, but promised much more—something far beyond any mere girlish prettiness. She was tall and finely made, and for the school tableaux in which she had frequently helped she had been generally cast for such parts as 'Nausicaa among her maidens,' 'Athene lighting the way for Odysseus and Telemachus,' 'Dante's Beatrice,' or any other personage requiring dignity, ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... pale, and the style of the face and its expression lofty. When Berthe Alix was a child, people were accustomed to say she was pretty and refined enough to belong to the aristocracy; nobody would have dared to say so now, prettiness and refinement, together with all the other virtues admitted to a place on the patriotic roll, having become ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... kept, but poorly furnished, with that old-fashioned spindle-legged furniture which seems peculiar to lodging-houses. Yet the little sitting-room had an aspect of simple rustic prettiness, which is almost pleasanter to look at than fine furniture. There were pictures,—simple water-colour sketches,—and cheap engravings on the walls, and a bunch of flowers on the table, and between the muslin curtains that shadowed the window you saw the branches ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... doesn't make any difference." She watched me again a moment through her veil, the texture of which gave her look a suffused prettiness. "Do you know him very ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... fault with you to-day. You were a child of seventeen, the darling of a noble house, and an actor—yes, and not even a pre-eminent actor—a gross, poor posturing vagabond, just twice your age, presumed to love you. What child would not amuse herself with such engaging toys? Vivacity and prettiness and cruelty are the ordinary attributes of kittenhood. So you amused yourself. And I submitted with clear eyes, because I could not help it. Yes, I who am by nature not disposed to underestimate my personal importance—I submitted, because your mockery was more ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... than myself, very slender and graceful, and with eyes like a mother's. She wasn't exactly pretty, but her face was so full of intelligence and expression that it was worth a great deal more than any doll-like prettiness. ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... they ancient or modern, whom the consent of ages has marked out as classics: typical, immortal, peculiar teachers of our race? Alas! the Paradise Lost is lost again to us beneath an inundation of graceful academic verse, sugary stanzas of ladylike prettiness, and ceaseless explanations in more or less readable prose of what John Milton meant or did not mean, or what he saw or did not see, who married his great-aunt, and why Adam or Satan is like that, or unlike ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... father's arms, and lay on the sofa smiling; the firelight dancing on her small white face—white and unscarred. The disease had been kind to the blind child; she was, I think, more sweet-looking than ever. Older, perhaps; the round prettiness of childhood gone—but her whole appearance wore that inexpressible expression, in which, for want of a suitable word, we all embody our vague notions of the ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik |
