"Seductive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the office of the Gospel of Christ. He contrasts the glory and power of the latter with those of the former, which, it is true, is also the Word of God. In this manner he endeavors to defeat the teachings and pretensions of those seductive spirits who, as he but lately foretold, pervert God's Word, in that they greatly extol the Law of God, yet at best do not teach its right use, but, instead of making it tributary to faith in Christ, misuse ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... of liquor," resumed Baba, "is a trifling thing, and it is very easy, you think, to cast it into the gutter. But I tell you, whoever and whatever you are, that this sparkling and seductive drink is the pygmy that binds the giant to the post with a thread, and lashes ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... necessarily be constructed at Hang Tree, because the people at the other end didn't know enough to do it, and hadn't any blacksmith. The benefit to our place was indisputable; it constituted the most seductive charm of the scheme. After six months of conscientious lying, the company was incorporated, and the first shovelful of alkali turned up and preserved in a museum, when suddenly the devil put it into ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... woman always more simple, more beautiful there than she was before the world; a woman just refreshed in water, whose only artifice consisted in being whiter than her muslins, sweeter than all perfumes, more seductive than any siren, always loving and therefore always loved. This admirable understanding of a wife's business was the secret of Josephine's charm for Napoleon, as in former times it was that of Caesonia for Caius Caligula, ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... defined. It was an object that each of the groups should be illustrated by carefully-selected specimens, and, until this could be attained, other acquisitions need not be sought for. In making purchases, such an object, steadily kept in view, exercises a powerful influence against the seductive attractions of 'great bargains,' which often turn out to be great misfortunes to a museum. Moreover, in accepting donations, it is sometimes convenient to be able to refer to a fixed plan. Where room is scanty, as in most museums, nothing is more subversive of order, or more fatal to ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... soldier came to Paris, resolved to win in an administrative career a position to command respect, bury in oblivion the quartermaster of the 6th of the line, and secure for Madame Diard a noble title. His passion for that seductive creature enabled him to divine her most secret wishes. Juana expressed nothing, but he understood her. He was not loved as a lover dreams of being loved; he knew this, and he strove to make himself ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... some of Tully's Orations, a very few books of Seneca, some things of the poets, and such few volumes of his own sect as were written in Latin and neatly, and was daily practised in speaking, he acquired a certain eloquence, which proved the more pleasing and seductive because under the guidance of a good wit, and with a kind of natural gracefulness. Is it not thus, as I recall it, O Lord my God, Thou judge of my conscience? before Thee is my heart, and my remembrance, Who didst at ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... Tavern till further notice. Coffee and Tea at any hour of the day." There is no record of the Widow Evans ever recovering her former "Liberty," and hence the necessity of continuing the place as a tavern merely, with its seductive offer of "coffee and tea at any hour." Even without a license, however, a concert was announced for the night of August 30th, 1759, the law being evaded by the statement that the vocal and instrumental programme was to be given by "a select number of gentlemen for their own private diversion." ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... given to man, if its general effects are so decidedly evil?" The question presupposes design in creation. Without subscribing to this theory, or pretending to have solved the mystery of the presence of evil in the world, the answer may be suggested that the overcoming of many seductive evils becomes to man a means of his progressive higher development. Of one thing I am convinced, that the physical development and welfare of man is interfered with in strict sequence to his consumption of substances that are unnecessary ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... persuaded to keep up appearances a little more, is a part of the same scatter-brained conception. Yet, unless her great neighbors are prosperous and orderly, Poland is an economic impossibility with no industry but Jew-baiting. And when Poland finds that the seductive policy of France is pure rhodomontade and that there is no money in it whatever, nor glory either, she will fall, as promptly as possible, into the arms ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... by the Devil himself; although, as we shall explain in another Romance entitled "The Bible Devil," the book of Genesis makes not even the remotest allusion to such a personage. If, however, the tempter was the Devil, what chance had the poor woman against his seductive wiles? And even if he was only a serpent, he was very "subtil" as we are told, and able to talk like a book, and we know that these creatures have fatal powers of fascination. Surely Mother Eve was heavily handicapped. God might have given her fair play, and ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... friends that she considered Miss Sanford to be the most soi-disant creature she had ever met, and went on to explain for the benefit of those to whom her French was an impenetrable mystery,—"fascinating, or, as they say, seductive." But when she soon thereafter referred to the general's magnanimity in not remanding to the guard-house an inebriated soldier, who had dropped and broken a valuable lamp, because "he knew it was only a lapsus linguae," ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... were, tried each to rob the other of him. Both courted him: Myrrha with ceremonious manners, sly looks, as she rubbed her leg against his under the table—Ada, openly making play with her fine eyes, her pretty mouth, and all the seductive resources at her command. Such coquetry in its almost coarseness incommoded and distressed Christophe. These two bold young women were a change from the unkindly faces he was accustomed to at home. Myrrha interested him, he guessed her to be more intelligent than Ada: but her obsequious ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... his fancy, and are not prone to censure, and Veronese, with the bridle on his neck, so to speak, uses his opportunities fully, yet never exceeds the limits of good taste. He is not gross and sensual like Rubens, but proud, grave and sweet, seductive, but never suggestive or vulgar. After having placed single figures wherever he can find a nook, he assembles all the gods of Olympia at a supper in the cupola. Immortality is a beautiful young woman seated on a cloud. Mercury gazes at her, caduceus in hand; Diana caresses ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... great as a man's can be. I shall not let myself go with you unless you tempt me beyond endurance; for as I said before, if I find that I am not strong enough, I shall leave you. You are a beautiful and seductive woman, and your power if you chose to exert it would madden any man. Will you forget it? Will ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... invitation to the feast. In fact, by our standards a complete rogue, yet the most joyous I have known. Were you to visit him and make his acquaintance, you would thank me for the introduction to so charming a character. I never knew a man with so seductive a smile. Many a time it has driven the virtuously indignant heart out of me. An Oriental smile, you know, is not an affair of a swift moment. It has a birth and a beginning. It awakens, hesitates, grows, and at last from the sad chrysalis emerges the butterfly. A Chinese smile ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... voice which said that. It was Mrs. Armine's voice, gentle, melodious, and seductive. And he thought of the hoarse and hideous sound which that morning he had ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... apartment was dining-room or sitting-room, and was used as general waiting-room for the passengers. It was not a refreshment station, and there was no "bar." But a mysterious command from the omnipotent Bill produced a demijohn of whiskey, with which he hospitably treated the company. The seductive influence of the liquor loosened the tongue of the gallant Judge Thompson. He admitted to having struck a match to enable the fair Pike Countian to find her ring, which, however, proved to have fallen in her lap. She was "a fine, healthy young woman—a ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... however, were not misled by the seductive cry of the Whigs. They proceeded to capture as many seats as possible. Everywhere they instructed their candidates to vote against banks. When the returns were all in it was found that they had elected more than two-thirds of the whole number ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh
... anticipated that the liaison would have endured so long. Henry, however, profited by this mistake; and while the Queen was still jealously watching the proceedings of Madame de Moret, he renewed with less secrecy his commerce with the witty and seductive Marquise, unconscious that she was at that period encouraging the addresses of the Due de Guise. Nor did this partial desertion tend to wound the vanity of Madame de Moret, or to excite her ire against her ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... I have called the doctrine Critical Empiricism. I warn the reader against the seductive title, and advise him not to allow it to influence him unduly in his judgment ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... endanger him, or injure him in others' opinion; or else it encourages him to do what he is glad to do, but has hitherto refrained from doing from fear of danger or shame; this is example of the seductive kind. Finally, example may bring a man to do what he would have otherwise never thought of doing. It is obvious that in this last case example works in the main only on the intellect; its effect on the will is secondary, and if it has any such effect, it is by the interposition of the ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... soldiers was very small. The private had only threepence a day. One half only of this pittance was ever given him in money; and that half was often in arrear. But a far more seductive bait than his miserable stipend was the prospect of boundless license. If the government allowed him less than sufficed for his wants, it was not extreme to mark the means by which he supplied the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... or in mockery, wert thou made? Who was thy creator? Who gave thee thy short and mobile life, and taught thee such seductive magic, that thou seemst to glitter for a moment like an angel before thou sinkest into clay, to creep like a worm, and be ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... light lady who, weary of her conquests over her fashionable admirers, had tried her fascinations on the great orator. He had escaped complete subjugation, but he had been flattered by the attention of the seductive beauty, and was ready to help her brother out of his difficulty. Clodius was not yet the dangerous desperado which he afterward became; and immorality, though seasoned with impiety, might easily, it was thought, be made too much of. Caesar himself did not ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... In the gentlest and most poetic sense they were indeed the sirens of this land, where it seemed "always afternoon"—a momentary triumph of an Arcadian over a Christian civilization, so beautiful and so seductive that it became the subject of special chapters by writers of the day more original than correct as ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... impressive in the spectacle. Here were two poor men, working hard perhaps for their daily bread with little hillocks of seductive gold piled up all around them, gold of which everyone is enamoured in the earth above them, gold for which so many men gladly give up everything, even ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... Finn! Jump, then, Finn!" The gate was less than five feet high, and the seductive odour of this peculiar meat floated just beyond it in the still night air. Finn drew back a pace or two, and then, with a beautiful spring, cleared the gate easily. While giving Finn the piece of meat he had been holding, the man slipped a swivel on to the ring of the handsome green ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... the wine cup, the myrtle branch and the lute went round, and songs were warbled by sweet voices, full of seductive thoughts and words of passion. At length the lamps were lighted, and the women arose to quit the hall, leaving the ruder sex to prolong the revel; but as Lucia rose, she again pressed the fingers of Arvina, and whispered a request that he would see her once ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... before his coming. With his water rights a man might work modern magic; far back in the hills he had found the natural site for his storage dams; slightly lower in a nest of hills there would be some day a pygmy lake whose seductive beauty to him who dwells on desert lands calls like the soft beauty of a woman; upon a knoll where now was nothing there would come to be a comfortable, roomy, hospitable ranch-house to displace forever the shacks which ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... with a seductive smirk, asked, "what he was going to give them?" The poet replied, "a little thing of his own—'Rosalie; or, the Broken Heart,'—sentimental, but ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... and all his soldiers, his own loss amounting to but two men. The conqueror treated the vanquished well, and gave them the choice between returning to Cuba, or remaining to share his fortune. This latter proposal, backed up as it was by gifts and promises, appeared so seductive to the new arrivals, that Cortes found himself at the head of 1000 soldiers, the day after he had been in danger of falling into the hands of Narvaez. This rapid change of fortune was turned to ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... hard to say which, so changeful were their lights and shades; and her other features, however unclassic in mould, if criticised separately, taken as a whole, formed a picture of surpassing fascination. If her eyes and cleft chin meant mischief, her mouth engaged to make amends by smiles and seductive words, more sweet than honey, because their flavor would never clog upon him who tasted thereof. Her attire was striking—it would have been bizarre upon any other lady in the room, but it enhanced the small stranger's beauty. A black robe—India ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... The Father-god, 'lord of beings,' or simply 'the father,' is the chief god. The last thought of the Rig Veda is the first thought of the Yajur Veda. Other changes have taken place. The demigods of the older period, the water-nymphs of the Rik, here become seductive goddesses, whose increase of power in this art agrees with the decline of the warrior spirit that is shown too in the whole mode of thinking. Most important is the gradual rise of Vishnu and the first appearance of Civa. Here brahma, which in the Rik has the meaning 'prayer' alone, is no longer ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... bows like those on the dress, showed the great beauty of her shape. Her throat, of a pure white, was charming in tone against the blue,—the right color for a fair skin. A long blue sash with floating ends defined a slender waist which seemed flexible,—a most seductive charm in women. She wore a rice-straw bonnet, modestly trimmed with ribbons like those of the gown, the strings of which were tied under her chin, setting off the whiteness of the straw and doing no despite to ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... private life of Issachar the Jew,—and that Jew Mr. BEERBOHM TREE, so artistically made up as to be absolutely unrecognisable by those who know him best,—the action is decidedly interesting up to the end of the Third Act. After that, all is tumult. The gay and seductive Orestes, Prefect of Alexandria (carefully played by Mr. LEWIS WALLER) is slain, anyhow, all higgledy-piggledy, by the Jew, Issachar, whose seductive daughter Ruth (sweetly and gently represented by Miss OLGA ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... narrative of the rhymer put each of us in a delectable mood. The notes of a harp and violins came from the lower deck in the form of a seductive Italian melody. White sails ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the exigencies of society between the two heads of Order and Progress (in the phraseology of French thinkers); Permanence and Progression, in the words of Coleridge. This division is plausible and seductive, from the apparently clean-cut opposition between its two members, and the remarkable difference between the sentiments to which they appeal. But I apprehend that (however admissible for purposes of popular discourse) the distinction between Order, or Permanence and Progress, employed to define ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... Brazen decided to take a turn or two round deck before going to his bunk, to drink in a potion of this intoxicating, winelike night. The wheel of fortune might whirl many times before he was again sailing this most seductive of oceans. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... excited much opposition and angry comment, it had also made a powerful impression by its eloquence and originality. To this may be partly due the fact that about this time he was strongly urged from various quarters to leave Neuchatel for some larger field. One of the most seductive of these invitations, owing to the affectionate spirit in which it was offered, came through Monsieur de la ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... at last, the seductive, persuasive pests! (to sisters) Well now? See here, are you going to give us back our sons and servant? Or shall I try more ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... in case Balder should pick it up, it might become the means of identifying its owner and obstructing his plans. But these were mere contingencies. The probability was that young Helwyse would ultimately appear at his uncle's house, and would there be ensnared in the seductive meshes of Manetho's web. The ring was most likely at the bottom of the Sound. So, smiling his subtle feminine smile, the Egyptian fell asleep, to dream of the cordial welcome he would ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... were concerned. She had dreamt of a court; she was condemned to the country. She loved gayety; she was relegated to dulness. Moreover the Lord of Stoke was strong rather than attractive, imposing rather than seductive, and he had never dreamed of that small coin of flattery which greedy and dissatisfied natures require at all costs when their real longings are unfed. It is their nature to give little; it is their nature and their delight to ask ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... the one, and not much about the other, whatever you yourself might say, but that annoys me exceedingly, and disgusts me, and I dare not do so with you. You might, however, have been my ambassadress, see what it is to be so seductive, so graceful, so pretty, so kind and gentle. Just fancy, dearest, that I have not answered Madame Rudiger. I must really do so to-day. She is a person one must be ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... beautiful nor pretty, but he kept on looking. Her arms were bare, her dress cut very low. Her face offered vivid contrast to the carmine on her lips. It was a round, soft face, with narrow eyes, dark, seductive, bold. She tilted her head to one side and suddenly smiled at Neale. It startled him. It was a smile with the shock of a bullet. It held Neale, so that when she crossed to him he could not move. He felt rather than saw Hough return to his side. The girl took hold of the lapels of Neale's ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... cannot teach such people anything, and if it cannot, how can the physician? Such people pursue their personal and sexual pleasure, marry, spread disaster around them, and outlive it all, perhaps brazenly to acknowledge the fact. Others, suave, attractive, agreeable, seductive, often masquerade as respectability, or constitute the perfumed, the romantic, the elegant carriers of disease. The proportion of ignorant to wilful irresponsibility can scarcely be estimated. But there is little choice between the two except on the score of ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... Foreign Minister Count de Vergennes, a diplomat of some experience, who warmly urged supporting the cause of the American Colonists. He had for accomplice Beaumarchais, a nimble-witted playwright and seductive man of the world who talked very persuasively to the young ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... and befouled the doctrine thereof by the vagary of transubstantiation;[1512] she assumed to apply the merits of the righteous to the forgiveness of the sinner in the unscriptural and wholly repellent dogma of supererogation; she promoted idolatry in most seductive and pernicious forms; she penalized the study of the holy scriptures by the people at large; she enjoined an unnatural state of celibacy upon her clergy; she revelled in unholy union with the theories and sophistries ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... which, starting out from principles, evident of themselves, develops science by way of conclusions drawn, after the manner of the geometricians. The apparent severity and simplicity of this method are very seductive, and very dangerous, when we have to deal not with figures, but with men; when the varied, complex and delicate exigencies which accumulate when human nature comes into play do not exactly square with the formula; and, when instead of dealing with abstractions, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... to maintain a great principle. They will sacrifice all personal considerations to secure the rights of the Colonies. Parliament proposes to tax this country without our having a voice in the matter. It is a seductive and insidious proposition—this export duty. I suppose they think we are simpletons, and will be caught in the trap they are setting. They think we are so fond of tea we shall continue to purchase it, but the time ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... herself to Sanin. And at the same time this 'good fellow' walked by his side with feline grace, slightly bending towards him, and peeping into his face; and this 'good fellow' walked in the form of a young feminine creature, full of the tormenting, fiery, soft and seductive charm, of which—for the undoing of us poor weak sinful men—only Slav natures are possessed, and but few of them, and those never of pure Slav blood, with no foreign alloy. Sanin's walk with Maria Nikolaevna, Sanin's talk with Maria Nikolaevna ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... lacked none of the appearance of frivolity, coiffed in curls, draped in lace and soft silks, but her mind was deeply occupied with the signs of the times. All the elegance of the chateau, all the seductive beauty of terrace, garden, and bosquet, all the piquant surprises of play and pyrotechnics, what were they? Simply the disinterested effort of a subject to give pleasure to His Majesty, ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... between them. He only realized that delight which comes from working with another for a cherished cause, the goal of one's life, which has such deeper significance when the partner in the struggle is a woman. They both experienced that most seductive of all influences, a secret knowledge and a pact ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... I find myself still dwelling in the offspring of a mortal shadow, where whole millions of spirits tempt me and employ all their ability and strength to hinder and hold me back from the high and noble exaltation and aspiration, [The seductive and restraining voices in the circuitous way or on the way to the Lodge according to the eclectic ritual. The band corresponds to the mortal shadow.] while I, alone and seeing the receptacle and fire before ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... which has no significance abstracted from the nature of man. It appears absurd to say that man ought to do what it is not in man, under any conceivable circumstances, to do. And, like other forms of intuitionism, it has the merit of avoiding that short-circuiting which may easily prove seductive to the egoist or the utilitarian. He who accepts as his end either his own happiness or that of men generally may easily be induced to take short cuts to that end, and pay little attention to moral maxims as ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... not afford to succumb to her. I wanted to follow my own leading, to see things clearly, and this reassuring pose of a high destiny, of an almost terribly efficient pursuit of a fixed end when as a matter of fact I had a very doubtful end and an aim as yet by no means fixed, was all too seductive for dalliance.... ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... bed itself was beautifully dressed; the dressing-table was decked with all manner of scent-bottles, mirrors, and trays, together with every conceivable toilet implement in tortoise-shell with a silver-inlay monogram—apparently A-M-S; the rugs were silken, princely, priceless; elusive wraiths of seductive perfumes haunted the air like ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... debasement in the 'poor trash'—that some occult influence of climate has advanced an entire community at the North far above the position of its progenitors—that while the gentle Cavalier has been overcome by the seductive charms of luxury and repose, the ignoble Puritan has thrown off his degrading antecedents, and has obtained the control of the allied races. The servant has become the master, the scum of all nations has overpowered the choicest offspring of that race which Macaulay ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to the appeal of romance, and to dissolute honesty in the person of Miss Gay d'Oliva, to injured innocence as represented by Jeanne de Valois. That class of rogues suits a gay people, while we are well mated with such a seductive divine as Dr. Oates. ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... conscious: The deceit, the abuses that have poisoned our civil as well as our religious life must be put down. In such moments, the feeling of deliverance was awakened in every heart: nobler powers, intellectual activities were stirred up; but mingled at the same time with hereditary weakness, seductive vices and passions, whose charms he, who is born of earth, can not wholly resist; and the brave man, who called the movement into life, had soon to contend less with old enemies, already half conquered, than with the new ones ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... spiritual supplies: one, a pile of doubts, questionings, and mysteries; and the other, a much smaller pile of positive conclusions. There is a great temptation to expatiate upon the former subjects, for negative and critical statements have a seductive appearance of depth and much more of a flavour of wisdom than clear and succinct declarations. But I will endeavour to resist this temptation, and will set down, as concisely as I can, some of the positive ...
— 21 • Frank Crane
... there may be truth in this," I returned, scarcely knowing how best to speak at such a time, marking the agitation of her breathing. "Naladi is a fair woman, softly spoken and seductive when it is her purpose to please. There are not many men who could resist her wiles. Yet possibly, Madame, were you to have converse with the Chevalier your plea might break ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... of the seductive powers which European civilization exercised upon Russia, the Russians perceived its weak sides, which they studied by the light of the ideal which they promised themselves to attain in some indefinite future, a future which they nevertheless ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... from my youth up—in good report and evil report, in prosperity and in adversity, and without fee or reward. And, with great deference to the opinions of others, I would inquire what has any old-line Whig to gain, either for his country or himself, by listening to the seductive flatteries of Democracy, as he looks upon the dismembered fragments of the Whig party, or sits, like Marius, amid the ruins of Carthage? What party is it that has brought about the desolation you behold? To whose strategy was it owing that the once impregnable city was betrayed ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... back to the dancers. It was a pretty scene. To the rhythm of a particularly seductive waltz, the guests were gliding about the floor. I noted the gay colors of the ladies' gowns, the flowers, ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... down the trench was playing a mouth organ. It was merely a thin stream of sound, but it had a soft seductive note. The tune was American, a popular air. It was glorified so far away and in such terrible places, and John suddenly grew sick for home and the pleasant people in the sane republic beyond the seas. But he crushed the emotion and listened in silence ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... while showed less inclination to speak herself, though she did not fail to watch him, and that intently. But she did not watch him any more closely than I did her, though I little thought at the time what would come of my espionage. She wore a white dress and white shoes, and was as coquettish and seductive as the evil one makes them. Suddenly I missed her. She was in the middle of the dance one minute and entirely out of it the next. Naturally I supposed her to have slipped aside with Frederick Sutherland, but he was still in sight, looking ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... pictures in water-colour. The floor was covered with a very rich and handsome Turkey carpet, into which one sank almost to the ankles, as into a thick bed of soft moss; chairs, couches, and divans of exquisite shape and seductive capacity were scattered here and there about the apartment, and at its fore or wider end stood, close together, a grand piano and a chamber organ, both in superbly modelled aethereum cases, and both, it need scarcely be said, of the finest quality and workmanship obtainable; ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... that cheers the soul of man, With subtle and seductive flow; It warms the heart, as naught else can, And banishes ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... country of three seasons. From June on to November it lies hot, still, and unbearable, sick with violent unrelieving storms; then on until April, chill, quiescent, drinking its scant rain and scanter snows; from April to the hot season again, blossoming, radiant, and seductive. These months are only approximate; later or earlier the rain-laden wind may drift up the water gate of the Colorado from the Gulf, and the land sets ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... I would make myself a child, and adore her, and sell my soul for her caresses; and make my brain the tool of my infatuation by yielding to her false, fatal sophistry, because that sophistry would be uttered by red lips, and would become truth in the dazzling light of her seductive smiles. Do you expect me, because I know it is all a lie, to resist sighs and murmurs, and those languid glances, which women employ to gain their ends? If you wish me to resist them, give me a lump of ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... Russian educated classes, in spite of the severe northern climate which is supposed to make the blood circulate slowly, are extremely impulsive. They are fettered by no venerable historical prejudices, and are wonderfully sensitive to the seductive influence of grandiose projects, especially when these excite the patriotic feelings. Then there was the simple force of reaction—the rebound which naturally followed the terrific compression of ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... reach the dancers. Mephistopheles is here in his element and joins in the dances with eagerness, bandying jokes with the old hags and flirting with the younger witches. Nor does Faust seem at all disinclined to follow suit. He however desists dismayed when, as he is dancing with a witch of seductive loveliness, a red mouse jumps ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... triumph, and I speak Of it with utter penitence and shame. I knew that he would come again; I knew His feet would bring him, though his soul rebelled; I knew that cheated heart of his would toy With the seductive chains that gave it thrall, And strive to reconcile its perjury With its own conscience of the better way, By fabrication of apologies It ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... one—Madam Wetherill was quite at middle life—she herself was surely younger and might outlive the other. But at eighteen the child could choose, and she would be likely to choose the ways of the world, so seductive to youth. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... and to detach venal powers from the coalition, and to foment revolutionary symptoms in Belgium. Dumouriez alone knew the channels by which this money was to flow. His exhausted personal fortune, his costly tastes, his attachment to a seductive woman, Madame de Beauvert, sister to Rivarol; his intimacy with men of unprincipled character and irregular habits,—reports of extortion charged on his ministry, and falling, if not on him on those he trusted, tarnished his character in the eyes of Madame Roland ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... place her virtue, any more than his, under the shelter of prejudice, ignorance, and fear. It would seem that in Europe, where man so easily submits to the despotic sway of women, they are nevertheless curtailed of some of the greatest qualities of the human species, and considered as seductive but imperfect beings; and (what may well provoke astonishment) women ultimately look upon themselves in the same light, and almost consider it as a privilege that they are entitled to show themselves futile, feeble, and timid. The women of America ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... a moment. Hearing no further sound, once more he raised his trumpet, this time giving a low, seductive call. The effect was immediate and unexpected. A short distance back in the forest there came the crash of trampled undergrowth and, the next moment, a huge black bulk detached itself from the dark background and stood forth in ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... would think so—it's only human nature. But Otto is a handsome man and has a fine seductive voice; and mind you, music has charms to soothe the breast, savage or otherwise; as for your prospects, you may apply to me for a testimonial of ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... to the town to attend a circus one day, and concluded I'd celebrate the day with eclat by getting my hair cut. At the conclusion of this ceremony the tonsorial Beau Brummel, in the most seductive tones, suggested a shampoo. I just couldn't resist his blandishments, and so consented. Then he suggested tonic, and grew quite eloquent in recounting the benefits to the scalp, and I took tonic. I felt quite a fellow, till ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... workmanship. People who wander there pick up bits of marble, serpentine, and malachite,—remains of the palaces that long ago fell into the sea, and have not left even the names of their owners and builders,-the ancient loafers who idled away their days as everybody must in this seductive spot. Not far from here, they point out the veritable caves of the Sirens, who have now shut up house, and gone away, like the rest of the nobility. If I had been a mariner in their day, I should have made no effort to sail by and away from ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... this mysterious struggle with these mysterious persons. His secret passion for that woman grew by reason of all these obstacles. Madame Jules was ever there, erect, in the midst of his thoughts, in the centre of his heart, more seductive by her presumable vices than by the positive virtues for which he had ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... fled and come over here and settled in Kentucky, and commenced makin' whiskey, payin' a tax of $2.00 per gallon, and sellin' the seductive flooid for $1.50 per gallon, gettin' rich at that, which may surprise you, altho' it doesen't our Eternal Revenoo Offisers, who, as Mr. ANTONY remarked of H. BEECHER STOW when she stabbed Lord Byron, "are all ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... last words in a tone so soft and so seductive that it was like honey and the honeycomb, and then stood with his eyes fixed dreamily upon the children, who had been getting decidedly red and fidgety, unaccustomed to be directly addressed, and in so fantastic a manner. The relief ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... amazed, then angry, how angry she scarcely knew even herself. She had been a spoilt child, she had grown into a spoilt woman. Men, at least, had been ready enough to do her bidding all her life. Her beauty was of that peculiar kind, half seductive, half pathetic, wholly irresistible. And now there had come this strange, almost impossible person, against the armor of whose indifference she had spent herself in vain. Her eyes filled with tears once more as she looked at him, and Tavernake became uneasy. He glanced at the clock ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... kisses on her ripe mouth, win her back to him by force, as he had won all life's battles. He would not, could not, let this prize escape him now. A wave of desire surged through his being. He took a step toward her, his trembling arms open to seize her lithe, seductive body. But she, retreating, held him away ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... will help its publications, and which possesses the requisite skill to lay its wares before the public advantageously. The success of many a book has depended more on the shrewdness of the publisher in laying it before the public in attractive and seductive guise than either the public or the ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... Molly, that Mrs. Dupont, and those connected with her, think otherwise. They are presuming on Gaskins' being in love with you. Mrs. Dupont can be very seductive. Little by little she has drawn the Lieutenant into her net. Believing him engaged to you, they have him now where he must either pay money for silence or be exposed. Just how it was worked, I do not know. ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... though the aspect of human kind moved them to lofty contempt. And in their magnificent desolation they offer a fit environment for the exploits of Byronic heroes. The handsome villain of romance, seductive by the complexity of his emotions, by the persistence of his mysterious grief, would find himself in that theatrical scene most thoroughly at home; nor did Prosper Merimee fail to seize the opportunity, for the mountains of Ronda were the very ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... shallowness of his thought, by striking images and flowery metaphors, and by all the phraseology of rhetoric in which the versatile French nature is so superior to our sober German one. It is all the more important that we should not let ourselves be dazzled by these seductive tricks, and particularly by adduced facts which bear upon the most important and fundamental questions of human science, but that we should extract the hard kernel from the savoury and fragrant fruit. In the preface to my "Evolution of ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... introduction to the general subject, of the importance of trees, as an adjunct to the progress, welfare and civilization of mankind. I wish to relate to you the story of my first great lesson in the seductive lore ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... With that first seductive kiss the soul-stirring melody was full born within her, as a world is called into the firmament by one spoken word of God. And as she played, Theodore moved silently toward her, for the fiddle was flashing out the fervor of the kisses she ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... all sorts of lofty concepts in his hand (—and not only in his hand!); he launches them with benevolent contempt against "understanding," "the senses," "honor," "good living," "science"; he sees such things as beneath him, as pernicious and seductive forces, on which "the soul" soars as a pure thing-in-itself—as if humility, chastity, poverty, in a word, holiness, had not already done much more damage to life than all imaginable horrors and vices.... The pure soul is ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... that learned tribunal pronounced its verdict upon each. The length of the proceedings makes it impossible to reproduce these. First as to the early revelations given to Jeanne, described in the first and second articles, they are denounced as "murderous, seductive, and pernicious fictions," the apparitions those of "malignant spirits and devils, Belial, Satan, and Behemoth." The third article, which concerned her recognition of the saints, was described more mildly as containing errors in faith; the fourth, as to her knowledge of future events, was ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... the Normans: "Bohemond was affectionate and true to father, wife, and children, pleasant, affable, and courteous: yet wrapped up in selfishness, possessed by insatiate ambition and almost diabolical cruelty, proud and faithless, but in spite of all these vices so seductive as to command the admiration even of those who knew him to be a heartless demon."—History Vol. IV. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... combat many of the identical doctrines that I once accepted as Heavenly truths." "I enter the arena," says he "as the champion of common sense, against what in my soul I believe to be the most tremendous enemy of God, morals and religion, that ever found foothold on the earth—the most seductive, hence most dangerous form of sensualism that ever cursed a nation, age or people." If Dr. Randolph had been brought from spirits of delusion on our ground, he would have assisted us to open the door for the New Era. ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... curiosity, like and dislike. It could not well be otherwise, where there was so much beauty to inspire admiration or jealousy and where there were sentiments known to be different from those of all the others present. A mystery as tantalizing as it was seductive, together with a faint touch of scandal which some had contrived to blow upon her name, though not enough really to injure her as yet, sufficed to give a spice to the conversation when she ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... muttered again as he suppressed a seductive desire to throw something at the Irishman's head, silhouetted against the sky as he limped past the entrance. Six weeks had elapsed since the battle of San Juan, in which Hamilton and Kelly had been among the many grievously hurt. Kelly, witness this needless ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... born in 1687. All we know of his earlier years is to be found in a single sparkling page of d'Alembert, who makes Moncrif float out of obscurity like the most elegant of iridescent bubbles. He was handsome and seductive, turned a copy of verses with the best of gentlemen, but was particularly distinguished by the art with which he purveyed little dramas for the amateur stage, then so much in fashion in France. Somebody said of him, when he was famous as the laureate ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... Leon was of opinion that those who violate poetry, using it for purposes of a meretricious kind, deserved punishment as public corrupters of two most sacred things: poetry and morals. It is one of the curious ironies of art that the measure which the seductive Garcilasso used for amatory purposes should have appealed to Luis de Leon as the vehicle most suited to enraptured chants and hymns of ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... fratras; La Harpe called it an infamous book, "un amas de btises qu'on ose appeler philosophie, inconcevables inepties, un immense chafaudage de mensonge et d'invective"; M. Villemain is much more calm and fair; Lord Brougham, like Damiron, Buzonnire, and many others, found it seductive but full of false reasoning; Lerminier was so severe that St.-Beuve was moved to defend Holbach against him. Samuel Wilkinson, the English translator of 1820, is one of the few whose criticism is at all favorable. ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... Seductive as is Le Vigan by virtue of site and surroundings, I am sorry to have to say that the town is badly kept. Its aediles are terribly wanting in a sense of what is due to public health and enjoyment. The streets look as ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... chamber organ, both in superbly modelled aethereum cases, occupied opposite sides of the apartment; a very handsome clock, with a set of silvery chimes for the quarters and a deep rich-toned gong for the hours, occupied a conspicuous position on a wall bracket; chairs, couches, and divans of seductive shape and ample capacity were dotted here and there about the rich carpet; and a handsome table occupied the centre of the room, supporting and reflecting in the silvery depths of its undraped top a noble epergne ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... dalal's pious and seductive tongue could urge him further the Turk sat down again ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... great triumvirate of the Greek tragic poets, was born at Athens, B.C. 485. He had not the sublimity of Aeschylus, nor the touching pathos of Sophocles, but, in seductive beauty and successful appeal to passion, was superior to both. Nor had he their stern simplicity. In his tragedies the passion of love predominates, nor does it breathe the purity of sentiment. It approaches rather to the tone of the modern ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... just la, la!" and she started the melody. There were two long paths of moonlight through the wide-open shutters. Moonlight and sunshine were welcome visitors. She held out her hands. Just that way she had charmed others, and he yielded to the seductive influence. For, oh, she was ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... with such an ensnaring past to reproach and retard him, within these few years learning such advanced lessons in renunciation: burning his manuscript novel, giving up the girl he loved, turning his back on the seductive prospect of ease and wealth, to accept self-denial for God, cutting loose from dependence on his father and then refusing all stated salary lest his liberty of witness be curtailed, and choosing a simple expository mode of preaching, ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... judiciously. He made a detailed appraisal of the mirror image of the slim, green, backless, half-thigh-length sheath which had looked so breath-taking and seductive in a Ceyce display window. Trigger's eyes narrowed a little. The major had appraised the dress ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... with an outward thrust.) Later the multimillionaire, Meldrum Strange, hires them to fight evil. Then, Athelbert King, a hero of novels in his own right, joins up, making a quartet. Other characters from Mundy's novels appear—the seductive and dangerous Princess Yasmini; Cotswold Ommony, the forester of India; the Babu, Chullunder Ghose; the ...
— Materials Toward A Bibliography Of The Works Of Talbot Mundy • Bradford M. Day, Editor
... that of the apostles of the faith of Mohammed. And it was really a religion that the bourgeois of the first Assembly thought to found. They thought to have destroyed an old world, and to have built a new one upon its ruins. Never did illusion more seductive fire the hearts of men. Equality and fraternity, proclaimed by the new dogmas, were to bring the reign of eternal happiness to all the peoples. Man had broken for ever with a past of barbarity and darkness. The regenerated world would in future be illuminated by the lucid radiance ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... time-deodorised dunghill by the roadside, not beautiful, but negligible. Of the other part of this kind—the "naughty" part which is not nasty and may be somewhat nice—there is, when you come to consider it dispassionately, not really so very much, and it is seldom used in a seductive fashion. It may tickle, but it does not excite; may create laughter, but never passion or even desire. Therefore it cannot be this which "holds" any reader but a mere novice or a ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... he delivered the command to Trebellius Maximus. [76] Trebellius, indolent, and inexperienced in military affairs, maintained the tranquillity of the province by popular manners; for even the barbarians had now learned to pardon under the seductive influence of vices; and the intervention of the civil wars afforded a legitimate excuse for his inactivity. Sedition however infected the soldiers, who, instead of their usual military services, were rioting in idleness. Trebellius, after escaping ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... these faculties? The boy who will be great is always discontented with his work, ready to rub out and begin again. He follows a bee, and never quite touches that which drew him on. Plainly, the mere ability to do is a dry straw, but through it our seeker tastes an intoxicating, seductive liquor, from which he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... dusky brown, under which you can see the blood warming her dimpling cheeks. Her figure is perfection's self, ripe and round and full, while every movement shows some new grace and more seductive curve. Her rich brown hair reaches far below her slender waist, and when it is dressed with crimson pohutakawa blossoms, the orange flowers of the kowhaingutu kaka, or the soft downy white feathers that the Maoris prize, then it would compel the admiration of any London drawing-room. And ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... half-full glasses. On seeing me, my revered preceptor got up, and, waving his arms and stammering, presented me to the honourable company, who all promptly offered me a glass of punch. This agreeable spectacle had a most illuminating effect on my intelligence; my future rose before me in the most seductive images. And, as a fact, from that memorable day I enjoyed unbounded freedom, and all but worried my preceptor to death. He had a wife who always smelt of smoke and pickled cucumbers; she was still youngish, but had ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... when you were crossing the Atlantic?" says the master, turning to Pat with a seductive air, and leading into the "full and true account" (for Pat had thought fit to visit North Amerikay, for "a raison he had," in the autumn of the ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... were also other devices, other soft, seductive under strappings. I know them all to their last most intimate detail. I feel that now I could join a woman's sewing circle and talk with as much authority and wisdom as the most veteraned corset wearer present. My views would be radical perhaps but at least ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... purse uninjured, only bananared. I reach Winter street, where I must turn my back on the Common pleasures of Boston life—but yet, one glance at that seductive window of the corner store, which, indeed, is nearly all window. Flowers are there, of course,—flowers from January to January; any poor devil can have a temporary conservatory at that window, 'all for nothing;' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... time when he had held that lovely, throbbing, responsive body close in his arms, to the time when he had kissed those, sensitive lips and had found warmth and passion in them, to the time when he had drunk in the delicate perfume of her hair and the seductive fragrance of her body. That same slender, adorable body had been pressed close to his, and he had trembled ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... obscurely, coquetting as only you can without showing it to others. Little by little you conquered me with looks, with smiles, with pressures of the hand, without compromising yourself, without pledging yourself, without revealing yourself. You have been horribly upright—and seductive. I have loved you with all my soul, yes, sincerely and loyally, and to-day I do not know what feeling you have in the depths of your heart, what thoughts you have hidden in your brain; in fact, I know-I know nothing. I look at you, and I see a woman who seems to have chosen me, ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... how unwise it is to allow children yet in their teens to wander so far from home. It more especially illustrates the folly of giving them long holidays in a foreign land, full of seductive dissipation. Port for men, claret for boys, cried Dr. Johnson. Even so, men only should drink the strong drink of travel; boys should still be kept on milk and water at home. Middies! you may despise your mother's leading-strings, but they are the man-ropes my lads, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... plains is there not room For man and bison, that he seals its doom? What pleasure lies and what seductive charm In slaying with no purpose but to harm? Alas, that man, unable to create, Should thirst forever to exterminate, And in destruction find his fiercest joy. The gods alone create, gods ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... give any, even the weakest idea of how he narrated that incident,—the struggle that he portrayed between duty and temptation, and the apologetic tone of his voice in which he explained that the frame of mind that succeeds to any yielding to seductive influences, is often, in the main, more profitable to a man than is the vain-glorious sense of having resisted a temptation. "Meekness is the mother of all the virtues," said he, "and there is no being meek without frailty." The story, told as he told it, was too much ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... shops, solicited the custom of the passers-by; these manners, stamped with a sort of respectful familiarity, seemed to belong to another age. Scarcely had Miss Dimpleton and her companion appeared in the long passage occupied by those who sold bedding, than they were surrounded by the most seductive offers. ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue |
