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Pristine   /prˈɪstin/   Listen
Pristine

adjective
1.
Completely free from dirt or contamination.
2.
Immaculately clean and unused.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Pristine" Quotes from Famous Books



... every thing which is moved perpetually and participates of time, revolves periodically and proceeds from the same to the same. And hence the soul, from possessing motion, and energizing according to time, will both possess periods of motion and restitutions to its pristine state. ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor

... it was new?" The Elgin Marbles are allowed by common consent to be the perfection of art. But how much of our feeling of reverence is inspired by time? Imagine the Parthenon as it must have looked with the frieze of the mighty Phidias fresh from the chisel. Could one behold it in all its pristine beauty and splendour we should see a white marble building, blinding in the dazzling brightness of a southern sun, the figures of the exquisite frieze in all probability painted—there is more than a suspicion of that—and the whole standing out against the intense ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various

... Italian literature once more rose out of chaos. The political organism had resolved itself into its constituent elements, and fresh combinations had arisen. Nevertheless, though the Empire was hardly now the shadow of its pristine greatness, men still looked to Rome as the centre of the civilized world. As the seat of the Church, it stood for the one force capable of supplying a permanent element among the warring interests of European politics. Nothing was more natural ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... Saba mission-house been the theme of their thoughts, and topic of discourse. They will re-people the deserted dwelling, restore it to its pristine splendour; bring its long neglected fields under tillage—out of them make fortunes ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... voice among the Wallencampers—if anything so weak could be designated by so strong a term—and his manner of keeping time with his head was clock-like in its regularity and painfully arduous; yet, out of that pristine naughtiness which found a hiding-place in the hearts of the Wallencamp youth, Lovell was frequently encouraged to come to the front during their musicals, and if not actually beguiled into executing a solo, was generously applauded in the performance ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... to the whole nation, as is marked by the 'ye' there compared with the 'thou' in verse 4, and it lays down for succeeding generations the conditions on which the new Temple, that stood glittering in the bright Eastern sunshine, should retain its pristine beauty. While the address to Solomon incited to obedience by painting its blessed consequences, that to the nation reaches the same end by the opposite path of darkly portraying the ruin that would be caused by departure from God. God draws by holding out a hand full of good things, and He no less ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the Church lost of that pristine and powerful joy. The furnace of civilization has withered and hardened her. She has become anxious and troubled about many things. She has sought earthly honours, earthly powers. Richer she is than ever before, and probably better organized, and perhaps more intelligent, ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke

... delicacy of feeling in her music. It is all in pastels. There is something very youthful and warm in it that perhaps no other composition of yours displays, as though in composing it you had recaptured pristine ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... the thaumaturgic element in this pretty romance which chiefly made it popular among its pristine audiences, yet it was probably the pathos with which it is coloured that granted it longevity, causing it to be handed down from generation to generation long before the advent ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... modern villas, dotting it here and there, whoever treads the one echoing street of the Alton for the first time, feels that two centuries must have brought very little external change to the objects by which he is surrounded. In this pristine place, the short-spiked steeples, and the broad-slated roof of the old cathedral of St. Machar may be seen rising over a cluster of fine old trees which top the sloping bank of the winding Don, from the opposite ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various

... emotions which cannot be spoken in words, owing to the poverty of our language, must be expressed otherwise. God or Satan taught the proper method to Adam and Eve, and it has come down to us by patristic succession, so that we have it to-day in all its pristine glory and expressiveness. Some have spoken against the time-honored custom, and claim to mark its decadence. Connecticut forbade it by law on Sundays, and frowned upon it "Fridays, Saturdays, and all"; but when it dies, the Lord will ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... of a man who had frittered away in numberless flirtations what little heart he originally had. He belonged to the male species, with something of the pristine vigor of the first man, who said of the one woman of all the world, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh"; and one whom he had first seen but a few short months since now seemed to belong to him by the highest and divinest ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... fanciful, declare that he had experienced a fate similar to that of the good King Arthur, who, we are assured by ancient bards, was carried away to the delicious abodes of fairy-land, where he still exists in pristine worth and vigor, and will one day or another return to restore the gallantry, the honor and the immaculate probity which prevailed in the glorious days of the ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... full original strength and without having been interfered with by any other vibrations; and if, again, the new waves running into the faint old ones from exterior objects and restoring the lapsed molecular state of the nerves to a pristine condition were absolutely identical in character on each repetition of the occurrence with the waves that ran in upon the last occasion, then there would be no change in the action, and no modification or improvement could take place. For ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler

... the noblest and most salutary ends by means which honor and probity condemn. Such men were Lord John Cavendish, Sir George Savile, and others whom we hold in honor as the second founders of the Whig party, as the restorers of its pristine health and energy after half a century ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... well assured that the Divine assistance will never fail, and that still greater victories will be prepared by God for you and for the king your son, until, when all shall have been destroyed, the pristine worship of the Catholic religion shall be restored to that most illustrious realm."[1240] The Duke of Anjou was urged to incite his brother to punish the rebels with great severity, and to be inexorable in refusing the ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... bring the troops of the country into the town, but only in sufficient numbers to ensure order and tranquillity—to open the communication between the interior and the capital—to provide it with necessaries—and to restore navigation and commerce to their pristine state—all this, Sire, was the work of a few days. Grant Heaven, that this noble chief may end the glorious career of his political and military labours with the like felicity and success, and that your ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... then appearing again as large as peas, crowding, and becoming confluent nearly all over the body. At length, the animal being detained too long from its native element, became enfeebled, the colours faded, the spots decreased in size, and all its pristine beauty vanished with the last gasp ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various

... from visiting the presumption with displeasure she bids him love on, not in any hope of marriage, since that is impossible, but in the assurance of her special favour. With that she smiles kindly upon him; like mists before the sunrise his white hairs and wrinkles vanish, his pristine beauty being restored by her genial condescension. Matters hasten to a close. Tellus is willing to marry Corsites, Eumenides wins the consent of sharp-tongued Semele to be his bride, Dipsas and Geron agree to reconciliation, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... pristine valor of the race To guard the nation's life; Thy hardy sons met treason face to face, The foremost ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... moderate enjoyment; but the resurrection of anything half-worn or imperfectly made, the brilliant success, when, after turning, twisting, piecing, contriving, and, by unheard-of inventions of trimming, a dress faded and defaced was restored to more than pristine splendor,—that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... customs, and especially the old method of travelling, may be studied in their pristine purity throughout a great part of the country. Though railway construction has been pushed forward with great energy during the last forty years, there are still vast regions where the ancient solitudes have never ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... entirely climb the mountain, for from its middle distance to the summit it is of fine and slippery sand; but it has this magical virtue, that whoever ascends it, however old he is, grows young again, in proportion as he mounts, and is thus restored to pristine vigor. The happy dwellers around it have, however, no need of its youth restoring power; for in that land no one grows old, nor knows ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... our wars with only the clank and smash of iron, strewing the field with broken engines, but damaging nobody's little finger except by accident. Such is obviously the tendency of modern improvement. But, in the mean while, so long as manhood retains any part of its pristine value, no country can afford to let gallantry like that of Morris and his crew, any more than that of the brave Worden, pass unhonored and unrewarded. If the Government do nothing, let the people take the matter into their own hands, and cities give him swords, gold boxes, festivals of triumph, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... all its pristine beauty. She sincerely wished he could get through the summer. He looked ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... recess in the wall which is so frequently found between the Chapter-House and the door into the church at the end of the east pane of the cloister. In many monastic ruins this recess is still open, and, by a slight effort of imagination, can be restored to its pristine use. Elsewhere it is filled in, having been abandoned by the monks themselves in favour of a fresh contrivance. The recess I am speaking of was called the common press (armarium commune), or common cloister-press (commune armarium ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark

... her mother that she was a meddlesome, stupid old blunderer, and that the fat was in the fire. She snatched the baby from the old lady's arms. The bottle crashed to the tile floor and painted a section of it white, its pristine hue. The infant was too surprised to cry. It maintained an open-mouthed silence even as its mother whisked out of the bath-room and brought the door to with a bang, leaving grandmere in the centre of a pool ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... victorious aborigines had returned from their pursuit of Otermin, dissensions arose among them, and intertribal warfare, in conformity with their pristine condition, set in. The Pecos, aided by the Queres, made a violent onslaught on the Tanos, compelling them to abandon San Cristobal and San Lazaro.[168] This looks very much like an act of retaliation. During that time the Spaniards were not idle. In 1682, Governor ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier

... present inhabits. It used to be Baker Street and Harley Street; it used to be Portland Place, and in more early days Bedford Square, where the Indian magnates flourished; districts which have fallen from their pristine state of splendour now, even as Agra, and Benares, and Lucknow, and Tippoo Sultan's ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... only with my own observations in the field but with the kind of linguistic research above recorded. It would also apparently explain the occurrence of the circular semisubterranean ki wi tsi we, or estufas. These being sacred have retained the pristine form long after the adoption of a modified type of structure for ordinary or secular purposes, according to the well known law of survival in ...
— A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth. • Frank Hamilton Cushing

... as mildew everything it touches; it has destroyed the fairest portions of the earth. Happily, however, it so destroys itself, for it is not desirable for truth and civilization that the sway of the Osmanlis should be restored to its pristine strength. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... last attempt at correspondence, guessing least of all that that tress lay on a heart still living and throbbing for her. All this had made her a little forget her haste to assert her liberty of action by returning to the pedlar; but, behold, when she came back to the hall, it had resumed its pristine soberness, and merely a few lingering figures were to be seen, packing ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... unpunished; for attempting to return homeward toward the sea by way of the Nile, they were set upon while weighed down with wine and sleep, by the country people, and to a man miserably destroyed. But the pious folk, restoring the holy gold to its pristine sanctuary, were not unrewarded: for since that day it grows glorious with ever fresh miracles—as of blind restored to sight, paralytics to strength, demoniacs to sanity—to the honour of the orthodox Catholic Church, and ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... from the rest when seen from below, the secret station, screened as it was by the stone figure of St. Michael and the dragon, and the open tracery around the niche, was completely hid from observation. The private passage, confined to its pristine breadth, had originally continued beyond this seat; but the jealous precautions of the vagabonds who frequented the cave of St. Ruth had caused them to build it carefully up with ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... refreshing as if from Araby the blest. It was just one of those scenes and one of those hours in which all vestiges of the Fall seemed to have been obliterated, and Eden itself again appeared blooming in its pristine beauty. ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott

... pasturage for sheep, voluntarily freed their serfs. The result was that serfdom virtually had disappeared in England before the sixteenth century. In France as early as the fourteenth century the bulk of the serfs had purchased their liberty, although in a few districts serfdom remained in its pristine vigor until ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... Claude, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michel Angelo, Rubens, Rembrandt, and almost all the other great masters, whether French, Italian, Dutch, or whatever else; the earliest drawings of their great pictures, when they had the glory of their pristine idea directly before their minds' eye,— that idea which inevitably became overlaid with their own handling of it in the finished painting. No doubt the painters themselves had often a happiness in these rude, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... a rather long bow at our credulous expense. But in this, as I found later, I did him injustice. His tales were all literally true, and Uncle Jesse had the gift of the born story-teller, whereby "unhappy, far-off things" can be brought vividly before the hearer and made to live again in all their pristine poignancy. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... only a dog-like infatuation that had swept him away from his reason and seated a fatuous, chattering, impotent, lecherous ape where his intellect should have been. And he knew he was a fool. He knew that he was stark mad. Yet what he did not know was that this madness was a culmination, not a pristine passion new born in his heart. For the maggot in his brain had eaten out a rotten place wherein was the memory of many women's yieldings, of many women's tears. One side of his brain worked with rare cunning. He wound the evidence against the men in ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... further attention to it. We resumed our conversation. Driven by the stupid curiosity that prompts all men to question these creatures about their first experiences, to attempt to lift the veil of their first folly, as though to find in them a trace of pristine innocence, to love them, possibly, in a fleeting memory of their candor and modesty of former days, evoked by a word, I insistently asked her ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... line a trail of various algae, among which, nevertheless, the naturalist may haply find somewhat to repay the disappointment of the angler. Yet have I conscientiously endeavoured to adapt myself to the impatient temper of the age, daily degenerating more and more from the high standard of our pristine New England. To the catalogue of lost arts I would mournfully add also that of listening to two-hour sermons. Surely we have been abridged into a race of pigmies. For, truly, in those of the old discourses yet subsisting to us in print, the endless spinal column of ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... his hat to its pristine shape, he had been robbed of his coat. The thief had run with it behind the bed, where he had succeeded in getting into it. The collar enveloped his ears. The skirts dragged upon the floor. He had buttoned it, to make it fit better, but there was still room ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... far, boy?" And the stereotyped answer of encouragement was as always: "No, no; just round the corner." All these water-holes are almost duplicates of each other. I suppose not the echo of a bird now hurts their pristine and awful quietude. ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie

... within three days—ten at the outside—you shall see me call the dead of any century, and they will arise and walk. Walk?—they shall walk forever, and never die again. Walk with all the muscle and spring of their pristine vigor." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... way man has upset his pristine animal mode of living and needs to find scientific ways to restore the equilibrium. Most of the present-day problems of hygiene arise from introducing, uncompensated, the effects of certain devices of civilization. The inventions of civilization have done so much for man that ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk

... bird rode it proudly an' it had been the globe. The portico, of a pointed Gothic, would have seemed heavy, had it not been lightened by glass doors, the vivid colours of which were not of modern date. These admitted to a capacious hall, where, reposing on the wide-spreading antlers of some pristine tenant of the park, gleamed many a piece of armour that in days of yore had ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... Thank you), and at the same time to apologise for the circumstances under which it came into my hands. (Dear me, what a number of pins, to be sure!) I have done what lay in my power with a clothes-brush and emery-powder to restore it to its pristine brilliance. The treatment (That is the last, I think) has not, I am bound to admit, answered my expectations; its result, however, is ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... of improvement into a higher. The theological spirit in its successive forms, the metaphysical in its principal varieties, are honoured by him for the services they rendered in bringing mankind out of pristine savagery into a state in which more advanced modes of belief became possible. His list of heroes and benefactors of mankind includes, not only every important name in the scientific movement, from Thales of Miletus to Fourier the mathematician and Blainville ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill

... me, is reduced to a shadow, I should have been exceedingly delighted to see her now, and every day till the happy one; that I might have the pleasure of observing how sweetly, hour by hour, she will rise to her pristine glories, by means of that state of ease and contentment, which will take place of the stormy past, upon her reconciliation with her ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... scrubbing Apache as energetically as Archie and Athol did Royal and Snowdrift. Flat sticks served as scrapers and bunches of dry grass for cloths. When the animals looked a little less like animated mud pies Beverly turned her attention to her riding skirt. To restore that to its pristine freshness might have daunted a professional scourer. The more she rubbed and scrubbed the worse the result and finally, when she was a sight from alternate streaks of mud and wet splotches, she sprang upon the startled ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... thronging population and all its treasures of wealth, architecture and art, sank in an abyss of flame and blood. It sank to rise no more. Though it has since been partially rebuilt, this ancient capital of the grand princes of Russia, even now presents but the shadow of its pristine splendor. ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... ruthless, intrusive, advent, that lingering relic of the picturesque aspect of Indian life—a relic that, with its emblems and inner garniture of war, bids a scion of the race indulge a prideful retrospect of his sometime grandeur, and pristine might; that has power to invoke stirring recollections of a momentous and a thrilling past; to re-animate and summon before him the shadowy figures of his redoubtable sires, and re-enact their lofty deeds: in view of which, there is wafted to him a breath, laden with moving memories ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... powers of the great man were thus impaired, his mental energies retained their pristine vigour. His spirits were elastic; his good-humour was restored. Even the vexation consequent upon his recent adventure had vanished from his mind; and he could join in the hearty laughter, which any allusion to it excited in Mr. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... ever-increasing rate. Therefore, pari passu, an Empire which is so absolutely autocratic that the monarch is its one mainspring of government, grows weaker as it descends from father to son. Its one chance of conserving some of its pristine strength is to develop a bureaucracy which, if inspired by the ideas and methods of earlier members of the dynasty, may continue to realize them in a crystallized system of administration. This chance the Middle Assyrian Kingdom never was at any ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth

... residence; and here she died in 1608. Charles I. formed a large collection of pictures here; and Charles II. was educated at Richmond. On the restoration, the palace was in a very dismantled state, and having, during the commonwealth, been plundered and defaced, it never recovered its pristine splendour. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various

... mother of art, wished the laurel to encircle the brow of the living, not to be simply the ornament of a tomb. Rome had crowned, in 1341, him who, "cleansing the fount of Helicon from slime and marshy rushes, had restored to the water its pristine limpidity, who had opened Castalia's grotto, obstructed by a network of wild boughs, and destroyed the briers in the laurel grove": the illustrious Francis Petrarch.[478] Though somewhat tardy, the honour was no less great for Dante: public lectures on the "Divine Comedy" were instituted in Florence, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... intellectually speaking, a more charming soiree, and pitied me for being unable to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the dialogue. Truly it is not only the polished European, as was said of a certain travelling notability, that lapses with facility into pristine barbarism. ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... our quack's hands. This degree was to give perfection to human beings, by means of moral and physical regeneration. Of these two the former was to be secured by means of a Pentagon, which removes original sin and renews pristine innocence. The physical kind of regeneration was to be brought about by using the "prime matter" or philosopher's stone, and the "Acacia," which two ingredients will give immortal youth. In this new structure, he assumed the title of the "Grand Cophta" ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... harmony and softness of the odes of Sappho. This minister, to whom Julian communicated, without reserve, his most careless levities, and his most serious counsels, received an extraordinary commission to restore, in its pristine beauty, the temple of Jerusalem; and the diligence of Alypius required and obtained the strenuous support of the governor of Palestine. At the call of their great deliverer, the Jews, from all the provinces of the empire, assembled on the holy mountain ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... together with the firmness and integrity of the Irish bench, "sans peur et sans reproche," will demonstrate to the millions who look on, that the constitutional powers of the state still remain uninjured and unimpaired in all their pristine and legitimate energy and vigour; and that neither in the machinery now set in motion, nor with those who conduct or superintend its action, but with others on whom, in the course of these proceedings, will be thrown the execution of a grave and all-important ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... accurately, that amid the echoes of the insurrection, the proclamations of the peace which had been arranged between Espana and Olanda resounded in Manila. With that the Catholic arms were freed from their chastisement, and all things returned to their pristine quiet. That was not the case with the Moros, who were then and for many years after, the perennial enemies of that afflicted field of Christianity. Barbarously blinded in their treacherous gains as if ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various

... structure gave it a majesty worthy of its rank as the first church of Christendom. St. Paul beyond the Walls (S.Paolo fuori le mura), built in 386 by Theodosius, resembled St. Peter's closely in plan (Figs. 67, 68). Destroyed by fire in 1821, it has been rebuilt with almost its pristine splendor, and is, next to the modern St. Peter's and the Pantheon, the most impressive place of worship in Rome. Santa Maria Maggiore,[15] though smaller in size, is more interesting because it so largely retains its original aspect, its Renaissance ceiling ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... on June 1, Dr. Le Plongeon had the great satisfaction of discovering a monument, a splendid work of art in all its pristine beauty, fresh as when the artist put the finishing touch to it, without blemish, unharmed by time, and not even looked upon by man since it was concealed, ages ago, where Dr. Le Plongeon discovered it through his interpretations of certain inscriptions. It was probably hidden to save it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... and the ghost of the gray past ever become its realities, and the verdure and the freshness merely its faint dream,—then let it pray to be released from earth. It will need the air of heaven to revive its pristine energies. ...
— Buds and Bird Voices (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... to lie warm and soft In well-hung chambers daintily bestowed, Lie here on hemlock-boughs, like Sacs and Sioux, And greet unanimous the joyful change. So fast will Nature acclimate her sons, Though late returning to her pristine ways. Off soundings, seamen do not suffer cold; And, in the forest, delicate clerks, unbrowned, Sleep on the fragrant brush, as on down-beds. Up with the dawn, they fancied the light air That circled freshly in their forest dress Made ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... the earth's history when these northern regions were clothed in a verdure of ferns and trees, nature presenting a far different appearance than at present, men had begun to multiply on the face of the earth and were living in a state of pristine contentment. The necessity for building homes to shelter the people had not yet arrived; the trials and perplexities of the busy world were unknown, and the ambition for riches had not become the absorbing problem of the day. Day ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs

... homage, the delicate, sympathetic attentions, of a woman crowned with every exalting attribute of her sex. He appreciated the prize at its full worth. When nothing else could any longer interest him, her charm retained its pristine power. When beyond his threescore and ten, he writes to her ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... kindness, has asked the Vicar's son to walk with me, and he is always lying in wait,—an Ensign in a transition state between the sheepish schoolboy and the fast man, with an experience of three months of depot. Having roused him from the pristine form, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... put the most excellent virtues of a great prince, on succeeding to the crown of Henry III., restored by his valor the kingly authority which had been as it were cast down and trampled under foot. France recovered her pristine vigor, and let all Europe see that power concentrated in the person of the sovereign is the source of the glory and greatness of monarchies, and the foundation upon which their preservation rests. . . . We, then, have thought it necessary to regulate the administration of justice, and to make ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... regret of antiquarians and lovers of the picturesque, the characteristic outworks and defences of the feudal ages, which surrounded it, have been levelled, and velvet lawns and gravel walks carried to the very door. Scott, who passed a night there in 1793, while it was yet in its pristine condition, comments on the change mournfully, as undoubtedly a true lover of the past would. Albeit the grass plats and the gravel walks, to the eye of sense, are undoubtedly much more agreeable and convenient. Scott says in his Demonology, that he never came any where near ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... of its physical features, its streets, its houses and gardens, some of which still exist in their pristine glory but, alas, many of which have gone the way of so-called progress. In place of the dignified houses of yore, of real architectural beauty, stand rows of cheap dwellings or stores, erected mostly in the seventies and eighties when architecture ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker

... and plaited and smoothed over and over again until the very last glimmer of a curl disappeared. Her dress was whisked, as if for microscopic inspection; her face was washed; and her finger-nails were scrubbed with the hard convent nail-brush, until the disciplined little tips ached with a pristine soreness. And still there were hours to wait, and still the boat added up delays. But she arrived at last, after all, with not more than the usual and expected difference between the actual and the advertised time ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King

... convinced of an extensive early movement of the primitive Malayan from its pristine nest by the presence of institutions similar to the pa-ba-fu'-nan and fa'-wi over a vast territory of the Asiatic mainland as well as the Asiatic Islands and Oceania. That these widespread institutions sprang from the same source will be seen clearly in the quotations appearing in the ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... injured by rubbing down and restoration that we regret what has been lost even more than we enjoy what is left. But the surfaces of the fair and exquisitely modelled neck and bosom have been less cruelly treated; the superb costume retains much of its pristine splendour. With its combination of brownish-purple velvet, peacock-blue brocade, and white lawn, its delicate trimmings of gold, and its further adornment with small knots, having in them, now at any rate, but an effaced note of red, the gown of La Bella has remained the type of what is most beautiful ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... factors of voice-production, the physical and the psychical, should be recognized both by the teacher and by the student in striving to develop the voice, and by the physician who seeks to restore an impaired voice to its pristine quality. The substitution by teachers of various methods, originated by themselves, for the natural physiological method to which the vocal organs become self-adjusted and for the correct processes of auto-suggestion originating within the well-taught singer himself, ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller

... foregone; elapsed, lapsed, preterlapsed[obs3], expired, no more, run out, blown over, has-been, that has been, extinct, antediluvian, antebellum, never to return, gone with the wind, exploded, forgotten, irrecoverable; obsolete &c. (old) 124. former, pristine, quondam, ci-devant[Fr], late; ancestral. foregoing; last, latter; recent, over night; preterperfect[obs3], preterpluperfect[obs3]. looking back &c. v.; retrospective, retroactive; archaeological &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... find them out, and know them for our friends; These men who toiled and wrote only for this, To leave behind such modicum of truth As each perceived and each alone could tell. Silently waiting that from time to time It may be given them to illuminate Dull daily facts with pristine radiance For some long-waited-for affinity Who lingers yet in the deep womb of time. The shifting sun pierces the young green leaves Of elm trees, newly coming into bud, And splashes on the floor and on the books Through old, high, rounded windows, dim with age. The noisy city-sounds of modern ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell

... distant Naples, making the journey without ice, under a broiling Italian sun. Often it came to table so shorn of its pristine freshness that not the hungriest of us could condone its odor. One sultry night everybody's plate went away untouched, save two or three. Flesh and fowl were "high,"—yea, "twice high," as the British gourmet prefers his game. St. John's plate was not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... fair appearances, the rancorous feelings of Mary's heart with respect to her sister were only repressed or disguised, not eradicated; and it was not long before a new subject of jealousy caused them to revive in all their pristine energy. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... in a handsome, baroque, pink-washed shrine in one of those Alpine valleys which to our thinking are all flowers and romance, like the picture in the Tate Gallery. 'Spring in the Austrian Tyrol' is to our minds a vision of pristine loveliness. It contains also this Christ of the heavy body defiled by torture and death, the strong, virile life overcome by physical violence, the eyes still looking back bloodshot in consummate ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence

... our pristine sires repair To umbrageous grot or vale; but when the sun Faintly from western skies his rays oblique Darts sloping, and to Thetis' wat'ry lap Hastens in prone career, with friends select Swiftly we hie to Devil,* young or old, *[Footnote: The Devil's Tavern, Temple ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... top to bottom. Peter Mactavish, however, was a genius by nature, and a mechanical genius by tendency; so that, instead of giving way to despair, he laboriously bound the flute together with waxed thread, which, although it could not restore it to its pristine elegance, enabled him to play with great effect sundry doleful airs, whose influence, when performed at night, usually sent his companions to sleep, or, failing this, drove them ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... these forests have been locked up in eleven national reserves, and set aside for our future needs, or to insure permanent haunts where Nature may always be seen in her full pristine glory—Conservation! Nearly six million acres more are under private ownership. Investigation reveals evidences that their birth occurred very many years ago, possibly five hundred or even six hundred ...
— The Beauties of the State of Washington - A Book for Tourists • Harry F. Giles

... has been brought, by long neglect, to the very verge of ruin. But these tasteless excrescences can easily be removed, the ravages of time reverently repaired, and the grand old edifice restored to its pristine symmetry and magnificence. In a word, it was a general reformation that was contemplated—no radical reconstruction after a novel plan. And the future council, in which all phases of opinion would be freely represented, was to ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, May 15, 1659:—"Most serene and most potent King, and very dear Friend: As it has pleased God, the best and all-powerful, with whom alone are all changes of Kingdoms and Commonwealths, to restore Us to our pristine authority and the supreme administration of English affairs, we have thought it good in the first place to inform your Majesty of the fact, and moreover to signify to you both our high regard for your Majesty, as a most potent Protestant prince, and also our desire to promote to the utmost ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... Smith—again entered the arm-chair of our affections, the fire of our love stirred, like a self-acting poker, the embers of cooling good fellowship, and the strong blaze of resuscitated friendship burst forth with all its pristine warmth. John Smith wore Bluchers but he wore them like an honest man; and he was the only specimen of the genus homo (who sported trowsers) that was above the weakness of tugging up his suspenders and stretching his broadcloth ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various

... those wild, bright birds I used to hear singing in that old wilderness of Scraggiewood, when I called on a quiet evening at that rocky cottage where you were nursed into being; a spot fit to adorn a fairy tale. No wonder you are such a pure-souled, imaginative creature, reared in that pristine solitude of nature. Now you may retire, darling, and don't fail to be down in the morning to pour the old man's coffee, because it is never so sweet as when coming from Annie's little hands." Thus speaking, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... the vices which hereditary bondage always superadds to these. As it is said to take three generations to subdue a freeman completely to a slave, so it may not be possible in a single generation to restore the pristine manhood. One who expects to find in emancipated slaves perfect men and women, or to realize in them some fair dream of an ideal race, will meet disappointment; but there is nothing in their nature or condition to daunt the Christian patriot; rather, there is everything to cheer and fortify ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... religion and agriculture, the earliest attention of Prakrama was directed to the re-establishment of the one, and the encouragement and extension of the other. He rebuilt the temples of Buddha, restored the monuments of religion in more than their pristine splendour, and covered the face of the kingdom with works for irrigation to an extent which would seem incredible did not their existing ruins corroborate the historical narrative ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... new thing under the sun," Said the ancient priest and preacher; What seems now new is only done To quicken some old feature That lies effete, or badly worn, And lacks its pristine rigor, That needs an energizing touch To ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite

... 'Matrimonial Classes,' each with its name, and these are so constituted that a member of the elder generation can never marry a member of the succeeding generation. This rule prevents, of course, marriage between parent and child, but such marriages never do occur in the pristine tribes of the Darling river which have no such classes. The four-class arrangement excludes from intermarriage all persons, whether parents and children or not, who bear the same class name, ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... host, as the saying goes. Chester Hunt did come home to luncheon. She had just put the finishing touch on the sideboard, having rubbed the massive old silver and scrubbed the beautiful Wedgwood pitchers so that the former shone with some of its pristine glory and the latter's little fat cupids and heavy garlands of roses stood out from their lavender background as they had not done for a year or more. She had taken down the dusty lace curtains and washed the dingy windows. The room was no longer dark ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson

... for the same lawyers would probably be unanimous in declaring that, except so far as it was expressly limited and restrained by that statute, the prerogative still remains undiminished and in all its pristine vigour—that Queen Victoria possesses all the power which Henry VIII. enjoyed, saving that of which he was ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... What purpose serves So to be helped by others? Deem I right, Among offenders thy defender stands? Both are thy enemies—both were thy servants! Thus dost thou honour—thus dost thou preserve The mighty boundaries of the glorious empire? And thus to Valour, to thy pristine Valour That swore its faith to thee, thy faith thou keep'st? Go! and divorce thyself from thy old Valiance, And marry Idleness: and midst the blood, The heavy groans and cries of agony, In thy last danger sleep, and seek repose! Sleep, vile Adulteress! the homicidal ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... gained the summit of a high hill, a considerable distance from her master's, the sun offended her by coming forth in all his pristine splendor. She thought it never was so light before; indeed, she thought it much too light. She stopped to look about her, and ascertain if her pursuers were yet in sight. No one appeared, and, for the first time, the question came up for settlement, 'Where, ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth

... most was a fresco by Brusasorci in San Stefano, whither I had been drawn by the report of its antiquity, which is said to be greater than that of any other church in the town, going back to the seventh century. As on many other occasions, I found that a building may be too old, the pristine venerableness having been overbuilt by subsequent ages; but I was consoled for my disappointment by this beautiful fresco—Saint Stephen surrounded by the Holy Innocents. In the church calendar Saint Stephen ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... after a certain time, unless they are renewed or watered with something to revive them and make them ferment again. If the devil had any share in this mischief, the drug would always possess the same virtue, and it would not be necessary to renew it and refresh it to restore it to its pristine power. ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... wooded heights and deep romantic valleys, with streams murmuring amid their shades. Sometimes the hills are cultivated in terraces, on which grow vines and olives, but more often they remain in their pristine condition, clothed with masses ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... Vigevano, recording the many benefactions of this most illustrious duke, who loved his native city so well, and was never tired of heaping benefactions on her people. "By his care not only was this splendid house raised from the ground, and the square of the old Forum restored to its pristine shape, but the course of rivers was turned, and flowing streams of water were brought into this dry and barren land. The desert waste became a green and fertile meadow, "the wilderness rejoiced ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... trees that covered the island rose over beautiful glades and grassy slopes. Too small and too remote to give support to any number of inhabitants, it had never been touched by the hand of man, but stood before them in all that pristine beauty with which nature had first endowed it. It reminded Brandon in some degree of that African island where he had passed some time with Beatrice. The recollection of this brought over him an intolerable melancholy, and made the very beauty of this island painful to him. ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... the sturdy yeomanry of New Jersey and Pennsylvania keep up many usages fading away in ancient Germany; while many an honest, broad-bottomed custom, nearly extinct in venerable Holland, may be found flourishing in pristine vigor and luxuriance in Dutch villages, on the banks of ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... not I, wish you joy on the restoration of popery?(296) I expect soon to see Capuchins tramping about, and Jesuits in high places. We are relapsing fast to our pristine state, and have nothing but our island, and our ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... these proverbial expressions which, I think, has also lost its pristine sense. By "Tread on a worm and it will turn" is usually meant that the very meekest and most helpless persons will, when harshly used, turn on their persecutors. But the poor worm does, and can do, no such thing. I therefore think that the adage arose at the time when ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various

... intangible substance they filled out the rents in the grassy walls and smoothed away the scars of battle. The pale luster, streaming through narrow barbican and mildewed arch, touched the decaying ruin of San Felipe with the wand of enchantment, and restored it to pristine freshness and strength. Through the stillness of night the watery vapor streamed upward from garden and patio, and mingled with the scent of flushing roses and tropical buds in a fragrant mist suffused with ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... free. Really there seems to be something not only simpler in art, but more pathetic, and even morally greater, in the humble submission of the fierce and giant-like spirit to inevitable decree—in the spontaneous return of the pristine fraternal appreciation when death withdraws the disturbing force of rivalry—and in his voluntarily appointing, so far as he ventures to appoint, his brother in arms and his bride to each other's happiness—than in the inventive display of a compunction for which, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... note: a small population and oil and mineral reserves have helped Gabon become one of Africa's wealthier countries; in general, these circumstances have allowed the country to maintain and conserve its pristine rain ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... did these doubts weigh on him, that arrived at this spot where the road enters the hollow way between the hills, he seemed to feel his feet sink into the ground at each step he took. He dragged himself as far as the Well here, which was then in its pristine beauty and full of limpid water, and fell exhausted on the well-head where we are seated at this moment. A long while the man of God remained bent over the mouth of the well. After which, lifting up his head, he said joyfully to Brother Leo: 'What think you, brother Leo, lamb of God, ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France

... and forced to learn it well:—by heart, in all probability. Nor must it fail to stretch his powers of apprehension to their fullest extent. Wherefore, in the early autumn, the giant wheel that is not turned by chance, began to revolve for Ivan, very slowly, without apparent aim in its pristine movements. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... velvet, and, turning the sleeve inside out, he showed his brother that it was lined with a rough-surfaced felt cloth almost of the nature of teasle. This being rubbed briskly upon any dusty garment or fouled armour proved most excellent for restoring its pristine gloss and beauty. The young men, being as it were born to the trade and knowing that their armament must meet their father's inexorable eye, as he passed along their lines with the Earl, rubbed and polished ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... whole season and listen to a score of famous singers, and count oneself fortunate to have heard even one artist who attains this standard of tonal excellence. Singing on the breath is an effect of wondrous tonal beauty; it is simply this, pure beauty, pristine ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor

... remember perfectly the general argument, which was very simple; and also my surprise at its nature. All this sounds a very old story now! And yet it is not such a long time ago. I must conclude that I had still preserved much of my pristine innocence in the year 1907. It seems to me now that even an artless person might have foreseen that some criticisms would be based on the ground of sordid surroundings and the moral squalor ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad

... passing-bell, year after year, booming through the darkness and storm of the November night in a northern land [1] where the pious customs of the best ages of France, transplanted over two centuries ago, flourish still in their pristine ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... instances that can be cited of a less, a much less, sum than Twenty Thousand Dollars having restored to their pristine vigor precarious circumstances, and of making the poor become rich! Let stubborn prejudices be laid aside, and an immediate resort made to that GRAND ANTIPOVERTY CORRECTIVE, CASH, which is now proffered as a sovereign remedy for all the complaints that poverty is heir to:—in asserting the superior ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 1: Curiosities of the Old Lottery • Henry M. Brooks

... equally both Maimoune and Danhasch. Maimoune then changed herself into a flea, and leaped on the prince's neck, where she stung him so smartly, that he awoke, and put up his hand to the place; but Maimoune skipped away as soon as she had done, and resumed her pristine form; which, like those of the two genii, was invisible, the better to observe ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... down, however gently, it yields to the pressure, leaving her surrounded by the portion not pressed, which thus forms a background, and, as it were, a frame to the living picture. When she rises, the elastic cushion resumes its pristine form. The least movement is sufficient to cause the seat to rise or fall, and I have often seen ladies amuse themselves with this ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... marked difference in their state of aggregation. In some few instances, however, there was no such difference, and this appeared to be due to the insects having been caught long ago, so that the glands had recovered their pristine state. In one case, a group of the sessile colourless glands, to which a small fly adhered, presented a peculiar appearance; for they had become purple, owing to purple granular matter coating the cell-walls. I may here mention as a caution that, soon after some of my plants arrived in the ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... evolutionists have not; which does not make it any less a mistake. St. Paul has drawn a vivid picture of the degenerating influence of sin upon the nations under the righteous wrath of God,* [[* Rom. 1, 18-32.]] and the course which the Greek nation and the Roman would have run from their pristine vigor exhibited in the days of Thermopylae and Cannae down to the state of marasmus senilis pictured by Juvenal, a state of rottenness which even the transfusion of German blood into the putrid veins of that degenerate and decaying ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... Wolf Song (1927) are the Mountain Men of Kit Carson's time, and the city of their soul is rollicky Taos. It is a lusty, swift song of the pristine earth. Fergusson's The Blood of the Conquerors (1931) tackles the juxtaposition of Spanish-Mexican and Anglo-American elements in New Mexico, of which state he is a native. Grant of Kingdom (1850) is strong in wisdom life, vitality ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie

... Russian empire, whose tzar reigns over a hundred lands, contains perhaps as many Gypsies, it not being uncommon to find whole villages inhabited by this race; they likewise abound in the suburbs of the towns. In Hungary the feudal system still exists in all its pristine barbarity; in no country does the hard hand of this oppression bear so heavy upon the lower classes - not even in Russia. The peasants of Russia are serfs, it is true, but their condition is enviable compared with that of the same class in the other ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... nailed-up doors and shutters, leaving at their exodus the unlucky district just as it had been at the peril finders' departure; but Nature had been hard at work for her part, toiling as she toils in a rich country to destroy man's work and restore all to its pristine state. ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... uncertain and the red man exhibit a dignity that seems Roman rather than aboriginal. The Daniel Boone of history must have had, we feel, the nobler qualities of Bumpo; how otherwise did he do what it was his destiny to do? In the same way, the Indian of Cooper is the red man in his pristine home before the day of fire-water and Agency methods. It may be that what to us to-day seems a too glorified picture is nearer the fact than we are in a position easily to realize. Cooper worked in the ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... because the canker-worm has eaten into the bud? Even if a main branch were decayed, are there not remedies which, skilfully applied, can save the tree from destruction, and perhaps restore it to its pristine beauty? ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... was attained according to Dante only at the loss of pristine simplicity and virtue. So he apostrophizes his native city: "Rejoice O Florence, since thou art so mighty that thou canst spread thy wings over sea and land and thy name is known throughout Hell." Notorious for crime Florence ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... a rogue is not the greatest of all follies. He arose to notice while I was in the administration, and became, of course, a proper subject of inquiry for me. The inquiry was made with diligence. His declared object was the reformation of his red brethren, and their return to their pristine manner of living. He pretended to be in constant communication with the Great Spirit; that he was instructed by him to make known to the Indians that they were created by him distinct from the whites, of different natures, for different purposes, and placed under different ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... considerable while, for the interview with the cook proved lengthy. Moreover, the Colonel was not a punctual person, or one who set an undue value upon his own or other people's time. At length, just as Morris was growing weary of the pristine but enticing occupation of making ducks and drakes with flat pebbles, his father appeared. After "salutations," as they say in the East, he wasted ten more minutes in abusing the cook, ending up with a direct appeal for his ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard

... and perhaps if Vettius be anything of an amateur gardener, he may comment to his visitors upon the rare plants that fill his diminutive flower-beds. Careful and reverent hands have restored the little garden as near as possible to its pristine plan and appearance. There are still standing the two bronze statues of urchins holding in their chubby arms ducks from whose bills once gushed the limpid water, making a soothing sound amidst the alleys ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... no Lambs, and perhaps no Walpoles or Southeys to raise it, would probably be higher), but because the conditions that call for and develop the epistolary art have largely passed away. With our modern facility of communication, the letter has lost the pristine dignity of its function. The earth has dwindled strangely since the advent of steam and electricity, and in a generation used to Mr. Edison's devices, Puck's girdle presents no difficulties to the imagination. In Charles Lamb's time ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... impressive, notwithstanding the absence of colour and the lack of mystery for which the complete vista obtained at such a cruel cost by Wyatt is insufficient compensation. The whole scheme of decoration in its pristine state must have been extremely beautiful. "If you can imagine it with the walls and piers exhibiting strong contrasts of colour in the dark and polished Purbeck shafts and the lighter freestones, the arches picked ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White

... Man was not comforted by advice of this sort, and was determined to make a kind of war upon the doctrine which seemed to underlie it. He said in effect that if he could not be restored to the pristine condition which he felt to be slipping from him he would as ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... that the evidence of language, and to some extent that of tradition, leads to the conclusion that the course of migration of the Indian tribes has been from the Atlantic coast westward and southward. The Huron-Iroquois tribes had their pristine seat on the lower St. Lawrence. The traditions of the Algonkins seem to point to Hudson's Bay and the coast of Labrador. The Dakota stock had its oldest branch east of the Alleghenies, and possibly (if the Catawba ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale

... as it was. The Volcano, which has covered this city with ashes, has preserved it from the destroying hand of Time. Edifices, exposed to the air, never could have remained so perfect; but this hidden relic of antiquity was found entire. The paintings and bronzes were still in their pristine beauty; and every thing connected with domestic life is fearfully preserved. The amphorae are yet prepared for the festival of the following day; the flour which was to be kneaded is still to be seen; the remains of a woman, are still decorated with those ornaments ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... edifies ruined, her existence as a nation terminated. The site of her vast metropolis may once more become an undulating verdant plain, intersected by a tidal river; and, perhaps, nothing may remain outwardly to show the curious traveller where the ancient city stood. The pristine abode of man upon the earth, may again be thickly peopled, and civilization may have rolled back to the south, its ancient source. Then may history or tradition vaguely tell of powerful nations who once flourished in the north; their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... first they met, to fall on each other's necks and kiss and weep. Goethe, as a young man, had indulged such fervors; but in old age he had lost this effusiveness, or saw fit to restrain himself outwardly, while his kindly nature still glowed with its pristine fires. He wrote to Frau von Stein, "I may truly say that my innermost condition does not correspond to my outward behavior." Hence the charge of coldness. Say that Mount Aetna is cold: do we not see the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... slowly across toward the river, and seated himself where, years before, he had watched the triumphant kingfisher. The place had a peculiar fascination for him, and had by his orders been kept in its pristine wildness. Half a mile away the pulp mill was grinding dully, on the upper reaches of the great bay circular saws were ripping into logs fresh from Baudette's operations on the Magwa River, and seventy miles up the river a large crew was shipping and ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... the words, "Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men." Fresh cedar had been substituted for the yellowed branches left over from the previous Christmas, and fresh diamond dust sprinkled over the grimy cotton to give it its pristine ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston

... county were all poor. There were the A s and the B s, and the C s and the D s. He knew all their names and was proud of their fidelity. To him these faithful ones were really the salt of the earth, who would some day be enabled by their fidelity to restore England to her pristine condition. The bishop had truly said that of many of his neighbours he did not know to what Church they belonged; but Father Barham, though he had not as yet been twelve months in the county, knew the name of nearly every Roman Catholic within ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... that any of the peculiarities of the ancient Egyptian kings marked the dynasty of the Ptolemies. No purely Egyptian customs lingered in the palaces of Alexandria. The old deities of Isis and Osiris gave place to the worship of Jupiter, Minerva, and Venus. The wonders of pristine Egypt were confined to Memphis and Thebes and the dilapidated cities of the Nile. The mysteries of the antique Egyptian temples were no more known to the learned and mercantile citizen of Alexandria than they are to us. The pyramids were as much a wonder then as ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... Street is itself again! A new government has come in, and, as I told the members the other night, I congratulate the Society on the result of their vote, for no longer can it be said that the right man is in the wrong place. No doubt their pristine sense of undisturbed somnolence will again settle upon them after the exasperated mental condition arising from the unnatural strain recently put upon the old ship. Eh? what? ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... Unused; pristine; in a known initial state. "Let's bring up a virgin system and see if it crashes again." (Esp. useful after contracting a {virus} through {SEX}.) Also, by extension, buffers and the like within a program that ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... sure he was her inferior in rank, and she would rather have married a duke. At the same time, to confess all the truth, she was by no means indifferent to the advantages of having for a husband a man with money enough to restore the somewhat tarnished prestige of her own family to its pristine brilliancy. She had never said a word to encourage the scheming of Lady Bellair; neither, on the other hand, had she ever said a word to discourage her hopes, or give her ground for doubting the acceptableness of her cherished project. Hence Lady Bellair had naturally ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... busy pulling back the table, replacing the long row of chairs, and re-sanding the broad centre Sahara of the room to its dreary, pristine aridness, stopped, fairly ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik



Words linked to "Pristine" :   pure, clean



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