"Unctuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hand, A common ewer, patera, and bowl; Campania's potteries produced the whole. To sleep then I.... I keep my couch till ten, then walk awhile, Or having read or writ what may beguile A quiet after-hour, anoint my limbs With oil, not such as filthy Natta skims From lamps defrauded of their unctuous fare. And when the sunbeams, grown too hot to bear, Warn me to quit the field, and hand-ball play, The bath takes all my weariness away. Then, having lightly dined, just to appease The sense of emptiness, I take mine ease, Enjoying all home's simple luxury. This is the life ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... to the Doctor's door, I confess that I threw it down, and went hastily to bed. It is the most gruesome of all his writings, and so perfect that one can complain only of the slightly too obvious moral; and, again, that really Mr. Hyde was more of a gentleman than the unctuous Dr. Jekyll, with ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... unctuous laugh that came from the very depths of the man's chest. It was a laugh with no trace of merely superficial joy. He who uttered it laughed because his heart and soul were in it. It was a laugh of mirth, relief and triumph, all ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... ruined myself—that is all. Nor is there anything with which I can compare myself; there is no moral which it would be of any use for you to read to me. At the present moment nothing could well be more incongruous than a moral. Oh, you self-satisfied persons who, in your unctuous pride, are forever ready to mouth your maxims—if only you knew how fully I myself comprehend the sordidness of my present state, you would not trouble to wag your tongues at me! What could you say to me that I do not already know? Well, wherein lies ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... slender and sinewy. Both bride and bridegroom looked uncomfortable in their clothes. The light that fell upon them in the church was dull and leaden. The ceremony, which was very hurriedly performed by an unctuous priest, did not appear to impress either of them. Nobody in the bridal party, crowding together on both sides of the altar, looked as though the service was of the slightest interest and moment. Indeed, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... much improved by the addition of a mordant applied after they are dry; this will greatly assist in modifying and fixing the tints and shades which the dyes impart. The best thing for the purpose, in the writer's opinion, is clear ox-gall, which, besides being useful as a mordant, will destroy all unctuous matter. ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead
... observing his customers with shrewd unfriendly eyes, set out the glasses and the accompanying bottles—he never needed to inquire what these men would take; he knew the tipple of every soul in Barnriff by heart—Abe opened out. He was unctuous and careful of his diction. He was Barnriff's lay-preacher, and felt that this ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... devout gentleman I (replied Harrington), how unctuous you are! Forgive my laughing; but it does so remind me of Douce Davie Deans. I will make you professor of spiritual ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... barked. "One move and it will be your last." Gone was the smooth unctuous speech of former times. His ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... authority. He was very fond of the Voltairean chevalier. Those two majestic relics of the nobility and clergy, though of very different habits and morals, recognized each other by their generous traits. Besides, the chevalier was as unctuous with the abbe as he was ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... that you've asked for anything but daily rations, Sister Halsey; glad to see you plucking up heart. The living God giveth us all things richly to enjoy." He repeated the last words in an unctuous drawl while he was looking for the paper, "richly to—enjoy. Well now, I was thinking we had some with a black border on it, but you're more than welcome to such as ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... The curiously unctuous gesture grew menacing, brutal. Don Anastasio twitched and trembled before it. Under the towering and prismatic Fra Diavolo he cowered, an insignificant figure. The unrelieved black of his attire accorded with his meagre frame. It was secretive, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... {once} calmed, the caverns will become cool; or, if the bituminous qualities take fire, or yellow sulphur is being dried up with a smouldering smoke, still, when the earth shall no longer give food and unctuous fuel to the flame, its energies being exhausted in length of time, and when nutriment shall be wanting to its devouring nature, it will not {be able to} endure hunger, and left destitute, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don So-and-so, Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Saint Jerome, and Cicero; "And, moreover" (the sonnet goes rhyming), "the skirts of Saint Paul has reached, Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than 50 ever he preached." Noon strikes—here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and smart With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart! Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife; No keeping one's haunches still; it's the greatest ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... recognized the rector's foot on the resounding steps of the portico. He bowed respectfully to the three occupants of the room, and addressed them in phrases of that unctuous civility which priests are accustomed to use. To the rather absent-minded greeting of the mistress of the house, he replied ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... she press'd; To different tasks their toil the nymphs address'd: The golden goblets some, and some restored From stains of luxury the polish'd board: These to remove the expiring embers came, While those with unctuous fir foment ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... XV. abbe, he is a sort of privileged person, who by the mere force of impudence has made his way in the world. Most English girls in their teens fall in love with a curate and a cavalry officer. Monseigneur Bauer, who combines in himself the unctuous curate and the dashing dragoon, is adored by the fair sex in Paris. He knows how to adapt his conversation to the most opposite kind of persons, and I should not be surprised if he becomes a ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... His sagacity had been caricatured as cunning; his presence of mind taken for vulgar audacity; he was held up as a half-educated debater, filled with a miserable self-sufficiency. He was attacked as a demagogue. The East held itself aloof from him in unctuous self-righteousness, because of his stand in the Mexican War. His fight for Oregon had aligned against him the friends of England in America. Yet men were in power because of him. A Whig had been elected President upon a war record of a fight for Texas. Who wished to part with Texas, New Mexico, ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... personally thanked him for his good offices in settling the strike. Both sorts were there—the kind and the unkind, the gentleman and the churl—but all alike united in grateful praise for the mediation which Angus had accomplished. Many unctuous things were said, but when one tyrant arose to speak his gratitude, Angus's face bore a look ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... cruel monster, fierce and strange, Through his wide threefold throat barks as a dog ... His eyes glare crimson, black his unctuous beard, His belly large, and clawed the hands with which He tears the spirits, flays them, and their ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... in this crisis enables us to know the real man. For a few days he kept aloof, unapproachable, overcome by the ruin of his work. He made no attempt to conciliate opinion: in moments of bitterness he scoffed at the 'unctuous rectitude' of certain politicians who were improving the occasion. But he spoke frankly to those who had the right to question him. He went to London in February and saw Mr. Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, and his Directors. He admitted that he was at fault. ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... living for his family than to help a rich man make more profit for his company. This principle was too sound to be fought openly. It is the kind of principle to which politicians delight to pay unctuous homage in words. But we translated the words into deeds; and when they found that this was the case, many rich men, especially sheep owners, were stirred to hostility, and they used the Congressmen they controlled to assault us—getting most aid from certain demagogues, who were ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... at last, did you? Glad to hear it. Can't keep a good man down, as the whale said to Jonah," said Mitchell heartily. "'But with all thy getting, get understanding,'" he quoted with unctuous benevolence. "The city is full of traps for the unwary. You can't be too careful, young man. Don't be drawn into gambling, or drinking, or fast company, or you'll be robbed before you know it. Watch out for pickpockets, and, above all, be chary of making acquaintance with ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... by which a young man from Homerton was then developed into the influential and highly esteemed pastor of an important flock. Things may be, and probably are, differently managed now-a-days. Mr. Beecham had unbounded fluency and an unctuous manner of treating his subjects. It was eloquence of a kind, though not of an elevated kind. Never to be at a loss for what you have to say is a prodigious advantage to all men in all positions, but doubly so to a popular minister. He had an unbounded ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... I have never heard another word upon the subject from that day to this proves conclusively that the authorities, although doubtless profuse in their apologies and regrets to the Ambassador over the delay, and unctuous in their promises to settle the issue immediately, never really intended to stir another finger in this direction. No one disturbed the official serenity and forthwith the whole question was permitted to slide and to be forgotten in accordance with ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... you, Mr. Vancouver," said his host, whose extremely Celtic appearance was not belied by unctuous modulation of his voice, and the pleasant roll of his ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... can never read far in Spenser without taking a rest—as we farmers lean upon our spades, when the digging is in unctuous fat soil ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... work. It's easy enough to recall that in 1870 Fantin Latour shut himself up and painted fruit and flowers, and by emulation, buoyed up perhaps by this precedent, you sit down and sketch a still life. What greater joy than to seek out a harmony, find the delicate suave tones, and paint it in an unctuous medium. Yes, it's a joy, but only when head and heart are both in it! The museums too, used to be a source of untold pleasure, but even if they were open you wouldn't go, because the head and the heart are 'Out there' where that wondrous youth is being ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... write about Tolstoy as old women talk about a crazy saint, all sorts of unctuous nonsense; it's a mistake for him to ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... the poisoning of an old, impotent husband by his young wife. The latter was not suspected by anybody, but at her examination drew suspicion to herself by her unctuous, pious appearance. She was permitted to express herself at length on religious themes and showed so very great a love of saints and religious secrets that it was impossible to doubt that a glowing sensuality ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... purely comic is wide; with an inflection of the voice, a bend of that curious long thin body which seems to be embodied gesture, she can suggest, she can portray, the humour that is dry, ironical, coarse (I will admit), unctuous even. Her voice can be sweet or harsh; it can chirp, lilt, chuckle, stutter; it can moan or laugh, be tipsy or distinguished. Nowhere is she conventional; nowhere does she resemble any other French singer. Voice, face, gestures, pantomime, all ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... counteracted by the extra supplies of manure which are afforded by the metropolis. Other phenomena are produced by its union with fogs, rendering them nearly opaque, and shutting out the light of the sun; it blackens the mud of the streets by its deposit of tar, while the unctuous mixture renders the foot-pavement slippery; and it produces a solemn gloom whenever a sudden change of wind returns over the town the volume that was previously on its passage into the country. One of the improvements of this age, by which the next is likely to benefit, has been its ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... interfere in his behalf. He had been anxious to get back to the hospital, but he would have infinitely sooner resigned all pretensions to the place, than have owned in any manner to Mr Slope's influence in his favour. Then he thoroughly disliked the tone of Mr Slope's letter; it was unctuous, false, and unwholesome, like the man. He saw, which Eleanor had failed to see, that much more had been intended than was expressed. The appeal to Eleanor's pious labours as separate from his own grated sadly against his feelings ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... travelled. This circumstance, which was accidentally noticed by an engineer at Odessa,(4*) suggests the plan of keeping, in countries subject to earthquakes, glass vessels partly filled with treacle, or some unctuous fluid, so that when any lateral motion is communicated to them from the earth, the adhesion of the liquid to the glass shall enable the observer, after some interval of time, to determine the direction ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... his mind in boiling, chaotic waves of frustration. What was the good of his work, all this great installation, all the gleaming expensive equipment in the lab around him? He was alone. None of them seemed to share his problem, the unctuous, always correct Gordon, the easy-mannered, unbearable Mason, all of them gave him a ...
— Security • Ernest M. Kenyon
... of a real spiritual teacher. Archbishop Thomson will never get within a million miles of their meaning; nor will anybody be deceived, by the unctuous "Oh that" with which he concludes his discourse, like a mental rolling of ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... that I felt at finding that the carcase of the harpooner was in my possession. I surveyed my treasure over and over again with delight. I could now cook my French dishes. He was soon dissected, and all his unctuous parts carefully melted down, and I found that I had a stock which would last me as long as the bodies which I had remaining to exercise my skill upon. The first day I succeeded admirably—I cooked my dishes; and when they were ready I took off my night-cap and apron, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... in the cabin, and we sat down to dinner by candle-light, at three o'clock. Swedish customs already appeared, in a preliminary decanter of lemon-colored brandy, a thimbleful of which was taken with a piece of bread and sausage, before the soup appeared. The taste of the liquor was sweet, unctuous and not agreeable. Our party consisted of the captain, the chief officer, who was his brother-in-law, the Pole, who was a second-cousin of Kosciusko, and had a name consisting of eight consonants and two vowels, a grave young Swede with a fresh Norse complexion, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... was a teaspoonful of flour spilled upon her biscuit board. Her gingham cuffs were always starched and stiff, her colourless hair smooth. She was a silent, dun-coloured creature, whose most violent expression was an occasional deep, unctuous ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... His unctuous laughter made the seat tremble. "Not a blue one, mind you. Blue? Not a bit of it. Why, bless you, when I became a Christian, all the blue went out of my heart ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... at dinner had not brightened things, and she had had an insane desire to turn cartwheels round the room, so implacable and highly strained was the attitude of the master of the house, so unctuous was the grace and the thanksgiving before and after the meal. Abel Baragar had stored up his anger and his righteous antipathy for years, and this was the first chance he had had of visiting his displeasure on the woman who had "ruined" George, and who had ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... his own reasons for complying with his father's request. He hated the Colemans and George with as much active malignity as was possible to his heavy unctuous nature. Why he should hate the Colemans is intelligible, and his hatred to George can also be explained, partly through sympathy between father and son, and partly because the hatred of a person like Thomas Broad to a person like George Allen ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... his manners were unctuous and soft outwardly, Monsieur Grandet's nature was of iron. His dress never varied; and those who saw him to-day saw him such as he had been since 1791. His stout shoes were tied with leathern thongs; he wore, ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... doubtfully, and there, sure enough, on the roof of the sepulchre, was a peculiarly unctuous and sooty mark, three feet or more across. Doubtless it had in the course of years been rubbed off the sides of the little cave, but on the roof it remained, and there ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... creaking, and excessively deliberate carts that dropped a trail of small coal, or huge barrels on wheels that dripped something like the finest Devonshire cream, or brewer's drays that left nothing behind them save a luscious odour of malt. It was a breathless slither over unctuous black mud through a long winding canon of brown-red houses and shops, with a glimpse here and there of a grey-green park, a canal, or ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... nightingales, With unctuous fat of snails, Between two cockles stewed, Is meat that's easily chewed; Tails of worms, and marrow of mice, Do make ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... Power When he spreads the vernal feast. Then bleeds the kid, in lucky hour, From the hungry wolf releas'd[4]; Then round the primal lamb's sweet flesh is seen The crisp salubrious herbage of the green; And, from loaded boughs descending, Unctuous olives richly blending;— These form the dainties of his festal day, When every heart expands, and every ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... examples, and many others, which we might produce to this purpose, we may gather, that, when we grind and stir the Cacao, the divers parts, which Nature hath given it, doe artificially, and intimately mixe themselves one with another; and so the unctuous, warme, and moist parts, mingled with the earthy (as we have said of the steele) represses, and leaves them not so binding, as they were before; but rather with a mediocritie, more inclining to the warme, and moist temper ...
— Chocolate: or, An Indian Drinke • Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma
... beheld hesitant upon the threshold a rather rotund figure of medium height, clad in an expressionless gray lounge suit, with a brown "bowler" hat held tentatively in one hand, an umbrella weeping in the other. A voice, which was unctuous and insinuative, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... The ditches were overflowed, the fords of the Fork impassable, the sluicing adrift, and the trails and wagon roads to Rough and Ready knee-deep in mud. The stage-coach from Sacramento, entering the settlement by the mountain highway, its wheels and panels clogged and crusted with an unctuous pigment like mud and blood, passed out of it through the overflowed and dangerous ford, and emerged in spotless purity, leaving its stains behind with Rough and Ready. A week of enforced idleness on the river "Bar" had driven the miners to the more comfortable recreation of the saloon bar, its mirrors, ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... his engine with an unctuous glee. He was boyishly happy because he and the Home Secretary had done them out of the Car of Victory and the ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... rheumatic pains, particularly those of the fixed kind, and which were seated deep. In these cases I have given from ten grains to a scruple of the fresh root twice or thrice a day, made into a bolus or emulsion with unctuous and mucilaginous substances, which cover its pungency, and prevent its making any painful impression on the tongue. It generally excited a slight tingling sensation through the whole habit, and, when the patient was kept warm in ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... frank and sincere, he met them halfway; he was so patient and considerate, so entirely devoted to pleasing the critical trout, and so successful in his efforts,—surely his heart was upon his hook, and it was a tender, unctuous heart, too, as that of every angler is. How nicely he would measure the distance! how dexterously he would avoid an overhanging limb or bush and drop the line exactly in the right spot! Of course there was a pulse of feeling and sympathy to the extremity of that line. If your heart is a stone, ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... haziness and dimness, before twelve. N. B.—My single affection is not so singly wedded to snipes; but the curious and epicurean eye would also take a pleasure in beholding a delicate and well-chosen assortment of teals, ortolans, the unctuous and palate-soothing flesh, of geese wild and tame, nightingales' brains, the sensorium of a young sucking-pig, or any other Christmas dish, which I leave to the judgment of you ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... dominion. He could send Alva to browbeat the Pope, as well as to oppress the Netherlanders. He could compass the destruction of the orthodox Egmont and Farnese, as well as of the heretical William. His unctuous piety only adds to the abhorrence with which we regard him; and his humility in face of death is neither better nor worse than the assumed humility which had become second nature to Uriah Heep. In short, take him ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... if, like a swarm of bees inadvertently wakened, the blessings of the Bible were actually rushing after me. From the hot, remote, passionate past of Hebrew history, out of the Oriental climate and unctuous lives of that infuriate people, gross good things were coming to overwhelm me with benedictions for which I had not bargained. Great oxen and camels and concubines were panting close behind me, he-goats and she-goats and rams of the breed of Bashan. ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... Madgwick was remarking in her unctuous voice. "I always felt there was something just a little—well, what shall I call it?—second-rate about the girl. Mr. Rose being a gentleman in every sense of the word makes the whole ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... and to the gates adjoined A spacious garden lay, fenced all around, Secure, four acres measuring complete, There grew luxuriant many a lofty tree, Pomgranate, pear, the apple blushing bright, The honeyed fig, and unctuous olive smooth. Those fruits, nor winter's cold nor summer's heat Fear ever, fail not, wither not, but hang Perennial, while unceasing zephyr breathes Gently on all, enlarging these, and those Maturing genial; in an endless course. Pears after pears to full dimensions swell, ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... marked abdominal prominence, showed that she was gaining part of what she played for. Wise youths who buy their loves, are not unwilling, when opportunity offers, to try and obtain the commodity for nothing. Examinations of her hand, as for some occult purpose, and unctuous pattings of the same, were not infrequent. Adrian waxed now and then Anacreontic in his compliments. Lucy would say: "That's worse ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which it grew. The truth was, nevertheless, that it had been planted by Alice Pyncheon,—she was Phoebe's great-great-grand-aunt,—in soil which, reckoning only its cultivation as a garden-plat, was now unctuous with nearly two hundred years of vegetable decay. Growing as they did, however, out of the old earth, the flowers still sent a fresh and sweet incense up to their Creator; nor could it have been the less pure and acceptable because Phoebe's young breath mingled with it, as the fragrance floated ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... greasy. On this subject of grease, however, we could wish that a sense of right would enable us to announce its utter extinction in the American kitchen; or, if not absolutely its extinction, such a subjection of the unctuous properties, as to bring them within the limits of a reasonably accurate and healthful taste. To be frank, Dorothy carried a somewhat heavy hand, in this respect; but pretty Margery was much her superior. How this difference in domestic discipline occurred, is more than we can ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... generations! To be exact, it took these generations eighteen centuries to discover and to appreciate the heritage that was theirs, buried at the foot of Vesuvius. During these long dark and dusky centuries charming goat herds had rested unctuous shocks of hair upon mysterious columns that, like young giant asparagus, stuck their magnificent heads out of the ground. Blinking drowsily at yonder villainous mountain, the summit of which is eternally crowned ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... her before her noble purpose could do so, and Genevieve Maud, left to her own resources, made unctuous mud pies and fed them to her family. Grace Margaret and Helen Adeline returned in triumph within the hour and laid at the feet of their small victim modest offerings consisting of one armless rubber doll, one dirty and badly torn picture-book, and ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... down to the store," he said taking her proposal as an invitation to dine, and turning to expectorate a mouth full of tobacco juice before continuing. "Capital sardines them air," passing his hand over his mouth and beard in unctuous remembrance of the ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... this river they found deposits of unctuous earth, having quite brilliantly the colors of red, purple, and violet. Father Hennepin rubbed some of the red upon his paddle. The constant use of that paddle in the water, for fifteen days, did not efface the color. This was a favorite resort of the Indians to obtain materials ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... of the girl's apprenticeship, if the parents complained of her want of proficiency, the pious Sweater would attribute it to idleness or incapacity, and as the people were generally poor he seldom or never had any trouble with them. This was how he fulfilled the unctuous promise made to the confiding parents at the time the girl was handed over to his tender mercy—that he would ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... consist of unctuous remedies, such as cerates and ointments, and any materials that combine heat with moisture,—poultices of bread, bran, linseed meal, carrots, and turnips. (See ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... self-made man. And with him the commercial spirit of the age. Enter the clink of coin and the unctuous corpulence of a roll of bills. Enter the essence of self-satisfaction, the glorious spectacle of a man who spells "myself" with ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... "These slings consisted of a slender round cord, no thicker than a packthread, which had a tassel at one end, and a loop at the other end and in the middle. The stones which they used were oblong, and pointed at each end, being made of a soft and unctuous soap-rock (smectitis), which could easily be rubbed into that shape. These exactly fitted the loop in the middle of the sling, and were kept in a wallet or pocket of coarse cloth, strongly woven, of a kind of grass, which was tied on about the middle. Their shape gives them a striking resemblance ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... victims are to be found for the Elder's present purposes. Now he is constrained to resort to the refuse of human property (those afflicted with what are called ordinary diseases), to keep alive the Christian motive of his unctuous business. To speak plainly, he must content himself with the purchase of such infirmity as can be picked up here ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... tobacco firms, to where they had a distant view of a tenement house next door to a kerosene factory, where, as he vivaciously told them, in the event of a fire, at least one hundred human beings would be slowly done to a turn. After which all three returned from their walk, firmly convinced that an unctuous vein of humor had been conscientiously worked, and abstractedly wishing ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 29, October 15, 1870 • Various
... discuss my financial difficulties," said the poet, lifting his plump white hand and waving it in unctuous waves about the veranda, "let me show you our home, ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... mixing of several bodies, whether fluid or solid, with saline or other Liquors, might not partly be attributed to this Principle of the congruity of those bodies and their dissolvents? As of Salt in Water, Metals in several Menstruums, Unctuous Gums in Oyls, the mixing of Wine and Water, &c. And whether precipitation be not partly made from the same Principle of Incongruity? I say partly, because there are in some ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... naturalists, is here meant, which is an indigenous animal of the warmer parts of America, and is found in one of the West India islands. It has no tail, and is particularly distinguished by an open glandular orifice on the hinder part of the back, which discharges a fetid unctuous liquid; and which orifice has been vulgarly mistaken for ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... sooner sat down than the doctor started the conversation by asking, in an unctuous tone of voice, several questions about my trip—"Whether, ah, it was really true that I had, ah, travelled all the way to Mars and back again in, ah, a vessel ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... succulent and unctuous, robust and yet delicate, flavoured as it was with the broth of a whole flock of boiled chickens. The diners were silent now, their noses in their plates, their faces brightened by steam from the savoury soup, soup, two selected dishes, ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... as it might, always came back to two subjects. They seemed never to tire of them. Three talked of their daughters-in-law, and bitterness rasped their throats. One talked of her son, and her voice was unctuous ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... panting for breath, and then ventured to draw back the curtains of the bed—my mother was not there! but there appeared to be a black mass in the centre of the bed. I put my hand fearfully upon it—it was a sort of unctuous, pitchy cinder. I screamed with horror—my little senses reeled—I staggered from the cabin and fell down on the deck in a state amounting almost to insanity: it was followed by a sort of stupor, which ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... willing to cajole it with the idea that you are a believer in the New Testament, while you in fact reject it, or one of the most barren uninventive of all human beings, or fanatically fond of mystical language,—do not, I say, affect this very unctuous way of talking. And, for another reason, do not. I beseech you, adopt the phraseology of men who, according to your view, must surely have been either the most miserable fanatics or the most abominable impostors; ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... more common in the ox in connection with the comparative inactivity of the parts. The sheath has a very small external opening, the mucous membrane of which is studded with sebaceous glands secreting a thick, unctuous matter of a strong, heavy odor. Behind this orifice is a distinct pouch, in which this unctuous matter is liable to accumulate when the penis is habitually drawn back. Moreover, the sheath has two muscles (protractors) ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... Amen that lasted five minutes; and the priest, in an unctuous voice, murmured some Latin words, of which one could hear only the sonorous endings. He then walked round the boat, sprinkling it with holy water, and next began to murmur the "Oremus," standing alongside the boat opposite the sponsors, who ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... and a half-melancholy, half-mocking expression played on his face. He was thinking of his grandfather, old Iron Christian, brought into relation with his mother's father, Capt. Billy Ballure, of the dainty gentility of Auntie Nan and the unctuous vulgarity of ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... Her features were as ill-suited for the expression of grief as a circus clown's. She had not even a channel in her plump cheeks to drain the tears from the corners of her eyes; and the slow drops, large and unctuous, trickled down her round jowl and soaked into her bonnet-strings, leaving her cheeks as fresh and as ruddy in the sunlight as if they had been merely wet with perspiration. Her eyes stared, unpuckered, apparently ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... here, gentlemen," he said in an unctuous, make-everything-easy voice. "I fancy that you have been misdirected. Possibly if you tried farther ...
— The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax • Arthur Conan Doyle
... convulsive struggle sufficed, and he stepped out, exhausted and trembling, into the gathering dusk, a lowering assemblage of darkling mountains, and at a little distance the shacks of the construction gang. The doors were aflare with flickering lights from within, and the unctuous smell of frying pork was on the air. It was well for his enterprise that at the critical moment the camp was discussing its well-earned supper and had scant attention to ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... note of the muffin-bell strikes agreeably upon the ear, suggestive of fragrant souchong and bottom-crusts hot, crackling, and unctuous. Now ensues a delicate savour in the atmosphere of the terrace kitchens, and it is just at its height when Smith, Brown, Jones, and Robinson are seen walking briskly up the terrace. They all go in at Smith's, where the muffin-man went in about half an hour before, and left half his ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... status until we finally landed behind the iron doors. Without doubt Maastricht authorities were waiting for us even as we stepped off the train, showing that we were doomed from the time we left the border. Our captor, an unctuous, pink-cheeked politzei, made his appearance not far from the internment camp. Where were ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... and Joy Brightens his Crest; as when a wandering Fire, Compact of unctuous Vapour, which the Night Condenses, and the Cold invirons round, Kindled through Agitation to a Flame, (Which oft, they say, some evil Spirit attends) Hovering and blazing with delusive Light, Misleads th' amaz'd Night-wanderer from his Way ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... mentally summed up as, "Po' white trash"; but the Yiddish shopman could not place his prospective customer under any head or type with which he was familiar. He was neither "kike," "wop," "rough-neck," nor beggar, and, as the proprietor laid out his wares with unctuous solicitude, he was, also, studying his unresponsive and early visitor. When Samson, for the purpose of trying on a coat and vest, took off his own outer garments, and displayed, without apology or explanation, a huge and murderous-looking ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... around her. Then suddenly, as though she had pushed open a door and gone through, she was back in the world again, a flood of sound was about her ears, and in front of her the red face of Mrs. Smith, her mouth wide open, like the mouth of an eager fish, singing about "the Blood of the Lamb" with unctuous satisfaction ... ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... that is not usual) distilled per se in close Vessels. Thus having, for Tryals sake, kindled Camphire, and catcht the Smoak that copiously ascended out of the Flame, it condens'd into a Black and unctuous Soot, which would not have been guess'd by the Smell or other Properties to have proceeded from Camphire: whereas having (as I shall otherwhere more fully declare) expos'd a quantity of that Fugitive Concrete to a gentle ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... again; and the other stretched out his hand to a paper on the table. "Here, comrade," he said, with a laugh, "here is a place for you to begin. A bishop whose wife has just been robbed of fifty thousand dollars' worth of diamonds! And a most unctuous and oily of bishops! An eminent and scholarly bishop! A philanthropist and friend of labor bishop—a Civic Federation decoy duck for ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... fat, comely-looking, somewhat unctuous gentleman, with excellent teeth and snow-white hands, symmetrical and dimpled like a woman's. He saw the patient, questioned him slightly, and divined without waiting for it what the answer should be; he was ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... please don't," cried Macey, earnestly. "Look here; I've got a tip from home by this morning's post, and I'll be a good feed to set all square. Come: that's enough." Then, imitating the rector's thick, unctuous voice, "Hum—ha!—silence, ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... dining-room, owing to the recent arrival of two steamers, all the tables were engaged. There was one in the corridor, he was told, if he did not mind another gentleman. He did mind; he much preferred a table alone, but he also wanted his luncheon. He followed the unctuous head waiter the length of the big dining-room, winding in and out among the small tables, only to emerge finally into the corridor and find himself face to face with his ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... Htel des Bains and the Restaurant Parisien. A cabine (bathing-house), including costume and linen, costs 1 fr. Leave the train at the Plage station. 3m. from Montpellier, in the retired valley of the Mosson, is the mineral water establishment of Foncaude. Water saline, unctuous, and sedative. Good for indigestion and nervous disorders. 12m. north from Montpellier is the Pic du Loup, rising from the village St. Mathieu (pop. 500) to the height of 680 ft., commanding an extensive view, and having on the top ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... Minerva's self endow'd With richest fancy and superior skill. Without the court, and to the gates adjoin'd A spacious garden lay, fenced all around Secure, four acres measuring complete. There grew luxuriant many a lofty tree, Pomegranate, pear, the apple blushing bright, The honied fig, and unctuous olive smooth. Those fruits, nor winter's cold nor summer's heat 140 Fear ever, fail not, wither not, but hang Perennial, whose unceasing zephyr breathes Gently on all, enlarging these, and those Maturing genial; in an endless course Pears after pears to full dimensions ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... Fiction. But when Mr. Cushing speaks with exultation of the past and with confidence of the future of the Original Democratic Party, we can think of nothing like it but Charles II. taking the Solemn League and Covenant, with an unctuous allusion to the persecutions WE Covenanters have undergone, and the triumphs of vital piety to which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... redolent with some rare effluvium; pomatum-laden winds breathe across the daffadown dillies from the warm chambers of the south. A cloud crosses His Honour's face, a summer cloud dissolving into sunshine. "It is the pomade of Saul:—but it is our own glorious David whose unctuous curls carry the Elysian fragrance." Then taking up his harp and dancing an ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... with an unusually good cup of chocolate, just right in warmth, sweetly smelling, and with the play of light on watered silk upon its unctuous surface, and with succulent grilled steak flavored with anise-seed, which would set Sancho-Tartarin off on the broad grin, and into a laugh that drowned the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... those debts which had since been constantly increasing. He was then released, but was not for some two years permitted to approach the Court. Meantime, men of not half his descent, but with an unblushing brow and unctuous tongue, had become the favourites at the palace of the Prince, who, as said before, was not bad, but the ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... suppose that Christian love is mere sentiment. I shall have to speak a word or two about that presently, but I would fain lift the whole subject, if I can, out of the region of mere unctuous words and gush of half-feigned emotion, which mean nothing, and would make you feel that it is a very practical commandment, gripping us hard, when our Lord says ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... "Whether they unctuous exhalations are Fired by the sun, or seeming so alone, Or each some more remote and slippery star Which loses footing when ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... "inhumanly arrogant." Does anybody—not being a Wordsworthian and therefore out of reach of reason—doubt that Wordsworth's arrogance was inhuman? He, not unprovoked by scant gratitude on Coleridge's part for very solid services, and by a doubtless sincere but rather unctuous protest of his brother in opium-eating against the Confessions, told some home truths against that magnificent genius but most unsatisfactory man. A sort of foolish folk has recently arisen which tells us that because ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... place as New York and Manhattan Island was occupied mostly by woods, and had a funny little Dutch town, known as New Amsterdam, sprouting out of the southern end of it. Those were the days of solid comfort, of mighty pipes, and unctuous doughnuts. Winter had not yet been so much affected by artificiality as he is now-a-days, and was contented to be what he is, not trying to pass himself off for Spring; and Christmas—well, it was Christmas. Do you know why? Because in those times Santa Claus used to live in a great old house ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... contingency; and, by not over-weighting the lesser surface for vibration, I give it a freedom otherwise somewhat retarded, even though infinitesimally. And you will wonder why I place it so much nearer the broad end than the narrow—against the laws laid down by the unctuous law-makers of no matter what nationality? Well, it is because I look upon it as a vibrator and as a pendulum; and surely you would never look for the true action of a pendulum, had it a tendency either to one side or another? No, it must work truly ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... they are. They're crazy over it," said Clown with an unctuous smile. Strange that whatever Clown says, it makes me itching mad. "But, if you don't look out, there is ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... always mean right! There were tyrants of souls as well as tyrants of sword. Prayers were uttered that were fitter for hearing in hell than in Heaven. Good men could deceive themselves into crime cloaking spiritual malice, sect jealousy, race hatred with an unctuous text. Here, in New England, where men had come for freedom, was tyranny masking in the guise of religion. Preachers as jealous of the power slipping from their hands as ever was primate of England! A poor gentleman hounded to his death because he practised the sciences! Millions of victims ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... Carol,' and the political aim that of sentimental socialism. Thus, though all three candidates promised to support Mr. Gladstone's Government, one of Fitzjames's rivals represented the stolid middle-class prejudices, and a second the unctuous philanthropic enthusiasm, which he had denounced with his whole force in 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.' No combination could have been contrived which would have set before him more clearly the characteristics ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... He does not discuss marriage; he does not complain of it; he does not insist, in printed Utopian dreams, on the mutual consent and bond of souls which can never become general; he pairs with a vehemence of which the bonds are constantly riveted by the hammer of necessity. Modern innovators write unctuous theories, long drawn, and nebulous or philanthropical romances; but the thief acts. He is as clear as a fact, as logical as a blow; and then ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... eyes were small, and seemed to express inordinate greed, when they were not, as was usually the case, lifted to the sky in pious self-assurance, yet with feigned humility. Pastor Mueller was at once unctuous and insolent, a combination of contending characteristics which is often the possession of those who patronise God Almighty with their approval, and use His Name as a convenient adjunct in their homilies against all things human. His health, he was wont to declare, had suffered ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... Fontanes was presented to Bonaparte, who, recognizing his supple nature and the unctuous flattery of his eloquence, chose him to deliver the eulogy on Washington, and perhaps something of his own ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... Nancy but with stress of unctuous generosity. This, if his hearers knew what he had suffered at her hands, must tell greatly to his credit; if they were not aware of the circumstances, such a tone would become him as the young lady's ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... fair definition of intuition, but there was something in the unctuous roll of Mr. Monroe's words that made me positive he was quoting his somewhat erudite speech, and had not himself a perfectly clear ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... current of the political parties of the proletariat, and hoped to find his profit where, in a half-hearted way, his convictions lay. He exhibited a rebel's front to the middle-classes, and held out a hand of unctuous fellowship to the toiler. He knew how to make his way! Many an insignificant shop-keeper had been known to exchange his musty rooms for a villa in the suburbs, to furnish it pretentiously, and to send his ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... resumed, with an unctuous air of patient kindness—"your ideas of love and mine are totally different. You want to live in a paradise of romance and tenderness—I want nothing of the sort. Of course, with a sweet caressable creature like you it's very pleasant ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... often take possession of me; sometimes at church especially where the gray light fell upon me and chilled me I felt it most. The awful tediousness of some of the Sunday sermons; the emptiness of the prayers, written in advance and spoken with conventional unctuous voice, and gestures to suit; and the apathy of the people who, dressed out in their best, came to listen,—how early I divined its hollowness,—and how deep was my disappointment, and how cruel the disillusionment—oh! the disheartening formalism of it ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... that he had something up against him that could beat his best, what did he do? Admit defeat? Not John! If the mare won in the coming struggle he claimed her as his own with tears of unctuous joy. If she was beaten—well, what else did ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... was answered by a slow, unctuous chuckle, as of a fat and wheezy person; then a door ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... old customs have not much altered, the milker sits down in the morning to his cow with the stars still visible overhead, punching his hat well into her side—a hat well battered and thickly coated with grease, for the skin of the cow exudes an unctuous substance. This hat he keeps for the purpose. A couple of milking pails—they are of large size—form a heavy load when filled. The milker, as he walks back to the farmhouse, bends his head under the yoke—whence so many men are round-shouldered—and steps slowly with a peculiar ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... Reedy agreed with unctuous righteousness in his plump face. "And to think of that scalawag, making a loan right in your face, after ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... said Mrs. Page, with her unctuous laugh. "Remember the party over to Tiverton t' other night, an' them tarts? You see, Rosanna Maria Pike asked us all over; an' you know how flaky her pie-crust is. Well, the minister was stan'in' side ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... German doctor whom we had left behind to look after German wounded. Not that the Oberstabsarzt did not deserve them, but it was so gratuitously beastly to say them to me, an enemy. He deplored, too, with such unctuous phrases, the fact that war should ever have occurred in East Africa. How it would spoil the years of toil, toward Christianity, of many mission stations! How the simple native had been taught in this war to kill white men; hitherto, of course, the vilest of crimes. How the march of civilisation ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... reminds me how surely the old English unctuous and sympathetic humor is dying out or has died out of our literature. Our first notable crop of authors had it,— Paulding, Cooper, Irving, and in a measure Hawthorne,—but our later humorists have it not at all, but in its stead an intellectual quickness ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... senators seldom mingled in such a crowd, except at guarded distances, to make a pageant for it; it was picturesque, shabby, malodorous, composed chiefly of young women with bright-eyed babies and baskets emitting unctuous savors of frittola and garlic; now and then an old peasant who could not be tranquil until she had heard Fra Paolo speak was escorted by a rebellious grandson, bribed to quiet by the promise of ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... a man smoking a peculiarly mellow and unctuous cigar on deck when I got there. I don't believe he smoked it because he enjoyed it. He did not look as if he enjoyed it. I believe he smoked it merely to show how well he was feeling, and to irritate people who ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... come to the pulpit with a broadsword belted below his Geneva gown. Savagery, savagery, rank and stinking! I'll say it to his face in another world, and a poor evangel and ensample truly for the quarrelsome landward folk of this parish, that even now, in the more unctuous times of God's grace, doff steel weapons so reluctantly. I found a man with a dirk at his hip sitting before the ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... life-like—of the shop and the farm. He describes the temptations which lead the small tradesman to adulterate his goods, or the parish clerk to embezzle the money subscribed in the village church, and the evil influence of dissenting families in fostering a spiritual pride which leads to more unctuous hypocrisy; for, though he says ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... be shortened by omitting all reference to German philosophy, and the account of the schoolmen is cursory. It is easy to see why the suave and amiable Mackintosh appeared to Mill to be a 'dandy' philosopher, an unctuous spinner of platitudes to impose upon the frequenters of Holland House, and hopelessly confused in the attempt to make compromises between contradictory theories. It is equally easy to see why to Mackintosh the thoroughgoing ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... which do not help us much in imagining their artistic qualities. As regards technique, it seems likely that both of them practiced principally "tempera" painting, in which the colors are mixed with yolk of eggs or some other sticky non-unctuous medium. [Footnote: Oil painting was unknown in ancient times.] Both Apelles and Protogenes are said to have written technical ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... always. "Wake up, Davy! Do something; be somebody; get out of the valley." Here was my shibboleth. I must do something; I must be somebody; I must get out of the valley! And then I should go to Penelope Blight, and a hundred urbane, unctuous uncles could not defraud me of my right ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... to the great Author of design and the source of all beauty,—that small and light body, capable of being suspended for a great length of time in the air by those broad wings, so that, as a bird of prey, it should watch for its food without the aid of a perch; the feathers, supplied by an unctuous substance, to enable them to throw off the water and keep the body dry; the web-feet for swimming; and the long legs, which it uses as a kind of stay, by turning them towards the head when it bends the neck, to apply the beak—that beak, too, so admirably formed—for taking up entire, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... Dromanus) whose litter I was escorting. I was rather tickled that they took me for my own intendant. I judged we must be approaching the entrance to Villa Satronia and that they were people from there. I assumed an exaggerated imitation of Dromanus' most grandiloquent manner and in his orotund unctuous delivery ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... consolation. He discreetly cleared his throat a second time, and maintained a masterly silence. But the garrulous old man at his side needed no encouragement. He quickly resumed his discourse, with a certain unctuous enjoyment, distinctly ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... unctuous gossip of the devout—President Roosevelt saw the true answer to his own desire to know what was to become of his mighty personality after this world should have fallen away from him! He saw, in this faith, a possible ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... Hear ye! Hear ye! All persons having any business to do with the District Court of the United States draw near, give your attention and you will be heard," he intoned with unctuous authority. ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... sir,' said a voice that was at once strident and unctuous. Owing to the almond shape of her sparkling black eyes and the flatness of her nose, the bridge of which had been broken (most likely in childhood), she looked absurdly like a Japanese woman, save that upon her quaintly-cut ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... doom to the cautious old tenants of the Hanover aviary. If there were any drops of false or questionable doctrine in the silver shower of eloquence under which they had been sitting, the plumage of orthodoxy glistened with unctuous repellents, and a shake or two on coming out of church left the sturdy old ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... with slate stones, bounded by a ruinous brick wall, and having an entrance through a dilapidated gateway. One or two melancholy-looking cows were feeding on the rank herbage that sprang from the unctuous soil, spurning many a hic jacet with their cloven hoofs. But afar, in the most distant part of the field, I espied the figure of a man who was busily occupied in digging a grave. There was something within that impelled me to stroll forth and accost him. I dressed, descended, and ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... just here of the injunction against throwing pearls before swine, and so turned to Humphreys, who made his heart glad by witnessing a good confession, in soft and unctuous tones, and couched in the regulation phrases which have worn ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... good ladies next door, and that nice gentleman opposite, all to kinder rise up and say, 'Oh, what a dear good little girl Sarah Walker is?'" The interpolation of a smacking sound of lips, as if in unctuous anticipation of Sarah Walker's virtue, here ensued—"Oh, what a dear, good, sw-e-et, lovely ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... approval went round the assembly, and a few open "amens" broke forth as the unctuous old ecclesiastic sat down. It sounded to the ears of the young preacher like the breaking of waves on a far-off shore; and then the meaning of all that had happened sifted through his benumbed intellect, and he strove to rise. He would refuse to act. He ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... been carved and helped so long before he sat down to it, that the stagnant gravy was chilled and congealed into patches of greasy white. He managed to swallow it with many pauses of invincible disgust—only to find it replaced by a solid slab of pale brown suet pudding, sparsely bedewed with unctuous black treacle. ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... A whitish, flaky, unctuous substance, prepared from an oil of the same name, drawn from a particular kind of whale, distinguished from the common whale by having teeth, and a ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... fettered her hands behind her back. A swarthy and exuberantly bearded fellow, attired in green-and-russet, stood beside them, displaying magnificent teeth in exactly the grin which hieratic art imputes to devils. Yet farther off a Dominican Friar sat upon a stone and displayed rather more unctuous amusement. Three horses and a mule diversified the background. All in all, a thought larger than life, a shade too obviously posed, a sign-painter's notion of a heroic picture, was John Bulmer's verdict. From his holster ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... market-place; the echo in the cathedral to which the gaping tripper listens with astonishment leaves me unmoved; and in the church of Santa Catalina, which contains the last work of Murillo, upon which he was engaged at his death, I am more interested in the tall stout priest, unctuous and astute, who shows me his treasure, than in the picture itself. I am relieved now and again to visit a place that has no obvious claims on my admiration; it throws me back on the peculiarities of the people, ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... at the office was quiet, but none the less thrilling on that account. Mr. Raider received her cordially, and with a great deal of unctuous fatherly advice. He took her into his office, which was one corner of the press room glassed in by itself, and talked over her duties, which, as far as Lark could gather from his discourse, appeared to consist in doing ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... glazed-hatted policemen from the station, Irish labourers and their wives, errand-boys with notes and packages, orange-girls with empty baskets, working-men out for a mouthful of air, and idle boys out for a 'spree'—men with burdens to carry, and men with hardly a rag to cover them; unctuous Jews, jabbering Frenchmen, and drowsy-looking Germans—on they flock, squeezing through the gangway, or clambering over the bulwarks, while the little vessel rolls and lurches till the water laves ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... glad the fellow has gone. I hate his supercilious manner, his superior tone, and his unctuous bearing. He's ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... the Arabs. A contagious disease; the skin is thickened, wrinkled, rough, unctuous, destitute of hair, without any sensation of touch in the extremities of the limbs; the face deformed with tubercles; the voice hoarse, and with a nasal ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin |
