"Comeliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their ways henceforth must be apart—that scene for truth and power is one of the master-strokes. The reader finds that Jeanie Deans somehow grows steadily in his belief and affection: quietly but surely, a sense of her comeliness, her truthful love, her quaint touch of Scotch canniness, her daughterly duteousness and her stanch principle intensifies until it is a pang to bid her farewell, and the mind harks back to her with ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... the great "sea-cucumber," or BCHE-DE-MER, family is especially noticeable because it is decorated with colours of which a gaily plumaged bird might be envious, though it has no other claim to comeliness. Most primitive in form—merely a flattened sac, oval and four inches long by three inches broad, with a purple and white mouth puckered as if contracted by a drawn string. Its general tint is grey; longitudinal bands of scarlet, green, violet, and purple radiate from ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... heard the voice, and saw the awful apparition of her uncle (for a year's sojourn in purgatory had not increased the comeliness of his appearance), she started, screamed, and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... impulse, this statue proves the energy of Michelangelo's imagination. The physical beauty of his adolescent model in the limbs and body redeems the grossness of the motive by the inalienable charm of health and carnal comeliness. Finally, the technical merits of the work cannot too strongly be insisted on. The modelling of the thorax, the exquisite roundness and fleshiness of the thighs and arms and belly, the smooth skin-surface ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... months, working harder than any people in the parish, and enjoying themselves more. I would match them for labour and laughter against any family in England. She is a blithe, jolly dame, whose beauty has amplified into comeliness; he is tall, and thin, and bony, with sinews like whipcord, a strong lively voice, a sharp weather-beaten face, and eyes and lips that smile and brighten when he speaks into a most contagious hilarity. They are very poor, and I often wish ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... palaces of Europe to open the mouths of sovereigns and princes as freely as the jockeys look into those of horses and colts. Bad teeth, too common among us, help to breed good dentists, no doubt; but besides this there is an absolute demand for a certain comeliness of person throughout all the decent classes of our society. It is the same standard of propriety in appearances which lays us open to the reproach of caring too much for dress. If the national ear for music ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... far spent, and the numerous forces of the Moderns half inclining to a retreat, there issued forth, from a squadron of their heavy-armed foot, a captain whose name was Bentley, the most deformed of all the Moderns; tall, but without shape or comeliness; large, but without strength or proportion. His armour was patched up of a thousand incoherent pieces, and the sound of it, as he marched, was loud and dry, like that made by the fall of a sheet of lead, which an Etesian wind blows suddenly down from the ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... were neither of the town nor of the country, and suffered the disabilities of the hybrid. There were few keen or beautiful faces, and if there were fine bodies they were hidden under clumsy clothes. Helen wanted to strip them all, and straighten them, and force them into health and comeliness, and though she would not have her moor peopled by them, she wished they might all have ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... But, alas! its comeliness was destined for a time to be destroyed. Mr. Webb's fire passed directly under the tails of his coat; the ball just traversed along his trousers about a foot beneath the waistband, cutting them and his drawers and shirt, as it ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... King, most Holy Father, that this Lady, His spouse, sends her children whom you see here, who are not of a lower condition than those who came long before them. They do not degenerate; they have the comeliness both of their Father and their mother, since they make profession of the most perfect poverty. There is, therefore, no fear of their dying of poverty, being the children and heirs of the Immortal King, born of a poor mother, of the image of Jesus Christ, by the virtue of the Holy ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... white, and she knew it, while Herdegen had taken blue for his color; and behold she wore both, for love per chance of both brothers. Never had I seen her fairer than at this minute and she had likewise waxed of a buxom comeliness, and how sweet were her red cheeks, and swan-white skin, and ebony-black hair, which flowed out from beneath her little hat in long plaits twined with white and sapphire-blue ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... careful that the firewood is not unusually speckled or dirty, as the child that is to come might be lacking in due comeliness. I have seen many a husband assiduously peeling off the bark from ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... crumbling around and above him. He laid himself to rest, and tossed upon his pillow for a long time in vain. At length he fell asleep, but it was only to dream of his patron,—now, as he had last seen him, with the paleness of death upon his features, then again transformed into all the vigour and comeliness of youth, approaching to expel him from the mansion-house of his fathers. Then he dreamed, that after wandering long over a wild heath, he came at length to an inn, from which sounded the voice of revelry; and that when he entered, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... pay And Queen of Beauty she is hight, And Sainte Marie the world doth sway In cerule napery bedight. My wonderment these twain invite, Their comeliness it is divine, And yet I say in their despite, No lady ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... the girl in Fidelis whose comeliness so nearly drew the hero from his old allegiance, has 'a strong and good, rather than a pretty, face,' with a 'large and substantial figure.' Adam Drewe concluded on first sight of her that she was a nice woman. Later on he finds her 'looking the very incarnation of home, with ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... not very light, there being only one window and the doors, but Duane could see plainly enough. Mrs. Laramie lay, hollow-checked and haggard, on a bed. Once she had evidently been a woman of some comeliness. The ravages of trouble and grief were there to read in her worn face; it had not, however, any of the hard and bitter lines that had ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... themselves, together with a Sir Peter Lely and a Sir Godfrey Kneller flavour about all the more prominent quarters of the palace. The likenesses of Mary and Anne occur as they must have appeared before they lost the comeliness of youth, when St. James's was their home, the house of their father, the Duke of York and Anne his Duchess, where the two sisters wedded in turn a princely hero ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... widow early in life, this old lady; and all the interest and sympathy she gained by her comeliness and charm she tried to turn into a source of profit for herself and her two sons, the elder of whom was now lying here in his coffin. They were the only beings on earth she loved, and love them she did with a passionate frenzy of which the lads ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... commingle In one excellence of garden mould. Soul transfusing comeliness or blemish Can alone lend beauty to ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... Their persons are so superiorly charming and preferable in whatever can recommend them to be notice of mankind, that the German youth often visit Saxony in quest of companions for life. Exclusive of their beauty and comeliness of appearance, they are brought up in a knowledge of all those arts, both useful and ornamental, which are so brilliant an addition to their native attractions. But what chiefly enhances their value, and gives it reality and duration, is a sweetness of temper and festivity of disposition, ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... moment of his birth, Larry and Sheelah were seldom known to have a dispute. Their whole future life was, with few exceptions, one unchanging honeymoon. Had Phelim been deficient in comeliness, it would have mattered not a crona baun. Phelim, on the contrary, promised to be a beauty; both, his parents thought it, felt it, asserted it; and who had a better right to be acquainted, as Larry said, "wid the outs an' ins, the ups an' downs of ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... I shall not disoblige my Reader, if I here enlarge into a further character of his person and temper. As first, that he was moderately tall: his behaviour had in it much of a plain comeliness, and very little, yet enough, of ceremony or courtship; his looks and motion manifested affability and mildness, and yet he had with these a calm, but so matchless a fortitude, as secured him from complying with any of those many Parliament ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... upon it in the doing? While the timber lies in one part, and the stones in another, is that a perfect building? When ye see one arm here, another there, and a leg scattered beside them, hath that image any comeliness? Certainly no; but look upon these united, and then they are perfect. Letters and syllables make no sense, till ye conjoin them in words, and words in sentences. Even so is it here; if ye look on the day alone, the light of it being perpetual would weary us, the night alone would be more so; but ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... two other coachmen, Col. Lloyd owned one named William, who, strangely enough, was often called by his surname, Wilks, by white and colored people on the home plantation. Wilks was a very fine looking man. He was about as white as anybody on the plantation; and in manliness of form, and comeliness of features, he bore a very striking resemblance to Mr. Murray Lloyd. It was whispered, and pretty generally admitted as a fact, that William Wilks was a son of Col. Lloyd, by a highly favored slave-woman, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... returned anon with a slender lad of unusual comeliness—an earthquake orphan. "This big one," he explained, "walks wherever you please and carries whatever you give him. And you will pay him nothing at all, unless he deserves it. Such is the arrangement. Are ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... what else could one expect? With such comeliness of person, endless wealth, unlimited advantages—the only wonder was he was not completely ruined." And he was compassionated and pitied for being obliged to remain in so old-fashioned and out-of-the-way ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... and comeliness. At first the little boy was short and fat and the little girl was long and thin, then the little girl became round and chubby while the little boy grew lanky and wiry. This was because the little girl used to sit very quiet and ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... boasting again! But I say, Congrio, yon homunculus—yon pigmy assailant of my cranes—yon pert-tongued neophyte of the kitchen, was there aught but insolence on his tongue when he maligned the comeliness of my sweetmeat shapes? I would not be out of ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... and Wotton," in "The Battle of the Books," is conceived with all the caustic imagination of the first of our prose satirists. There Bentley's great qualities are represented as "tall, without shape or comeliness; large, without strength or proportion." His various erudition, as "armour patched up of a thousand incoherent pieces;" his book, as "the sound" of that armour, "loud and dry, like that made by the fall of a sheet of lead from the roof of some steeple;" his haughty ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... others. At a certain point her firmness even moves a measure of enthusiasm. If the New Heloisa could be said to have any moral intention, it is here where women learn from the example of Julie's energetic return to duty, the possibility and the satisfaction of bending character back to comeliness and honour. Excellent as this is from a moral point of view, the reader may wish that Julie had been less of a preacher, as well as less of a sinner. And even as sinner, she would have been more readily forgiven if she had been less ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... eat, and forget the Hand that feeds us. We wear, and heed not the Adorner of our persons. We admire our bodies, and offer not an emotion of praise to the grand Architect of the universe and its beauty. We rejoice in our strength and comeliness, scarcely thinking that we owe it all to the Divine love. We delight in our domestic relations and affections, and often grow eloquent in praise of the sweet emotions of delicious joy which rise ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... day. Now, when the family was up, Christiana bid her son James that he should read a chapter; so he read the fifty-third of Isaiah. When he had done, Mr. Honest asked, why it was said that the Saviour is said to come 'out of a dry ground'; and also, that 'He had no form or comeliness in him?' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... conclusion from the principles of our opposites; for the most learned among them will not refuse to subscribe to it. Hooker teacheth us,(482) that the service of God, in places not sanctified as churches are, hath not in itself (mark in itself) such perfection of grace and comeliness, as when the dignity of the place which it wisheth for, doth concur; and that the very majesty and holiness of the place where God is worshipped, bettereth even our holiest and best actions. How much more soundly do we hold with J. Rainolds,(483) ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... and misery, none of these two exists uninterruptedly. Ye men of little understanding, whither would ye go, casting off on the bare ground this child of so much beauty, this son that is an ornament of your race. Verily, I cannot dispel the idea from my mind that this child endued with comeliness and youth and blazing with beauty is alive. It is not meet that he should die.[453] It seems that ye are sure to obtain happiness. Ye that are afflicted with grief on account of the death of this child will surely have good luck today. Anticipating the probability of inconvenience ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... said, when he was not present, than was deserved by a mere freight engineer, very recently elevated from the post of fireman. Perhaps, also, the petty malevolence of the women was due to the wife's superior comeliness. Be that as it may, each afternoon at half-past four or thereabouts, when Tom's whistle was blown at the crossing by the planing-mill, loungers in the grocery store and wives in their kitchens ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... at the lower house excelled, but somehow her attempts turned out failures. She lacked lightness of touch and originality of fancy, and the results were apt to be what Elsie privately stigmatized as "wapses of red flannel and burlaps without form or comeliness," at which Lionel jeered, while visitors discreetly averted their eyes lest they should be forced to express an opinion ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... head proudly—a smart-looking, witty, well spoken girl but not especially handsome. She was most agreeable to the young men. Honest Abe was deeply impressed by her talk and fine manners and general comeliness. He felt her grace and charm and spoke of it, with enthusiasm. But to him and to her there seemed to be an impassable gulf between them. She changed her mind about that, however, when she heard him speak and felt the power of his personality and saw his face lighted ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... wanted to destroy anything which kept her away from him: her lover, if she had one; her pride, her modesty, her honor, if she were fancy-free. Aware of Sleeny's good looks, if not of his own ugliness, he hated them both for the comeliness that seemed to make them natural mates for each other. But it was not in his methods to proceed rashly with either. He treated Maud with distant respect, and increased his intimacy with Sleeny until he found, to his delight, that he was ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... for an answer, nor did she look at him closely till she had put food before him. Then she sat down beside him. He, too, was remarkable-looking. He had no remains of the pleasant comeliness of youth as she had, but there were the same lines of patience and courage in his face. He was closely shaven, with large, marked features and dark, piercing eyes. It was a strong face, good and true, but still it was a hard face, and it was a true index of his character. He ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... she could not understand; and he pillaged an infinity of Genoese and Venetian ships—which were notoriously the richest laden—of jewels, veils, silks, furs, embroideries and figured stuffs, wherewith to enhance the comeliness of Melicent. It seemed an all-engulfing madness with this despot daily to aggravate his fierce desire of her, to nurture his obsession, so that he might glory in the consciousness of ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... flowers like a beautiful picture, if any fair ladies, going in a troop together, met him in the way, they never failed to say the one to the other with a blush: "See, yonder is Messer Guido, son of the Lord Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti. 'Tis a very St. George for comeliness, pardi!" And men report that Madonna Gemma, wife of Sandro Bujamonte, one day sent her Nurse to let him know how she loved him with all her soul, and was like to die of longing. Nor less ardently was he invited to join the Companies the young Florentine ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... self-complacency. He was very pleasant to look upon, with an air of having always been popular with his fellows, and the favourite of women; this, too, was borne out by his history. Not a beautiful man, by any means, but the best type of English comeliness: ruddy-coloured, straight, and healthy; muscular, but without a suggestion of brutality. His yellow moustache, a shade lighter than his hair—which, although he wore it cropped, showed a tendency to be curling—concealed a mouth that was his only questionable feature. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... a man famous for his personal strength and comeliness, vigor of mind, valor, adventures, and sufferings. A prominent actor in the stirring scenes of Elizabeth's reign, he was high in the favor of the queen. Accused of high treason on the accession of James I., and imprisoned under sentence of death, an unsuccessful ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... thwarted with a branching mustache, and slender of figure, on whom his clothes, lustrous from much sitting down and leaning up, grew like the bark on a tree, and who moved slowly and gently about, and spoke with a low, kind voice. In his young comeliness he was like a god, as the gods were fancied in the elder world: a chewing and a spitting god, indeed, but ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... intellect, it was intellectually that he mastered and developed them. Like Sidonia he moves among them not to feel with them but to understand and learn from them. Such sympathy as he had was either purely sensuous, as for youth and beauty and all kinds of comeliness; or purely intellectual, as for intelligence, artificiality, servility, meanness. And as his essence was satirical, as he was naturally irreverent and contemptuous, it follows that he is best and strongest in the act of punishment not ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... also—the bright and beautiful moon. To a people addicted to the idolatry of perfect form and comeliness, no object could be more attractive than the queen of the night. When Socrates was accused of innovating upon the Greek religion, and of ridiculing the Athenian deities, he replied on his trial, "You strange man, Meletus, are you seriously affirming that I do not think Helios and Selene ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... interesting, and, considering how little St. Bernard and other mediaeval saints and doctors had led them to expect, singularly beautiful. A new feeling arose that mere living was a big part of life, and with it came a new passion, the passion for beauty, for grace, and for comeliness. ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... more wondrous and more awful than all else in the land of Egypt, there sits the lonely Sphinx. Comely the creature is, but the comeliness is not of this world; the once worshiped beast is a deformity and a monster to this generation, and yet you can see that those lips, so thick and heavy, were fashioned according to some ancient mold of beauty—some mold of beauty now forgotten—forgotten because ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... followers. He was in the 55th year of his age and the 13th of his reign, and in some traits of character reminded men of his grandfather, the devout Nial "of the Showers." The Bards have celebrated the justice of his judgments, the goodness of his heart, and the comeliness of his "brunette-bright face." He left a son of age to succeed him, (and who ultimately did become Ard-Righ,) yet the present popularity of Melaghlin of Meath triumphed over every other interest, and he was raised to the monarchy—the first of his family ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... him. "Please don't," she said, and seeing that she stood her ground, he made no further attempt to touch her. The austerity of her grey nurse's uniform gave a touch of pathos to her childish, blue-eyed comeliness and her pretty ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... proportions. Then two Sundays at least were required to compare notes in the little summer house in Mr. Whittingham's garden at Chiswick. Here they would discuss size and quality of paper, the shape of the printed page, the number of lines, the size of the type, the form and comeliness of the title-page.[2] In all technical details the Edinburgh edition of R. L. Stevenson's works is satisfying. Here are more 'lines of beauty' than in almost any other modern printed book. As we handle it we feel satisfied that it ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... desires. A man hath a body, and that body is confined to a place; but where friendship is, all offices of life are as it were granted to him, and his deputy. For he may exercise them by his friend. How many things are there which a man cannot, with any face or comeliness, say or do himself? A man can scarce allege his own merits with modesty, much less extol them; a man cannot sometimes brook to supplicate or beg; and a number of the like. But all these things are graceful, in a friend's mouth, which are blushing in a man's own. So again, a man's person ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... voice than in words; more in thought than in action; more in atmosphere than in conscious life. It is a spiritual quality, and is felt more than it is seen. It is not a matter of size, nor bodily attitude, nor attire, nor personal comeliness: it is a state of inward being, and of knowing your cause is just. And so you see it is a great and profound subject after all, great in its ramifications, limitless in extent, implying the entire science of right living. I once met a man who was deformed in body and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... I suddenly grew tall, and something like comeliness appeared on a Sunday, when I had time to wash my face, and put on clean clothes. My master had once or twice caught hold of me in the passage; but I instinctively avoided his disgusting caresses. One day however, when the family were at a methodist meeting, he contrived to be alone in the ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... of Marie Louise. The gentlest influence her beauty exerted upon him was a beastly desire. He praised her grace because it tortured his wife. But even fiercer than his animal impulse was his rage of hatred at the look of cleanliness and comeliness, the environment of luxury only emphasized by her ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... had sickened and grown strange, could only be soothed by Saracen cards painted with the images of Love and Death and Madness; and, in his trimmed jerkin and jewelled cap and acanthus-like curls, Grifonetto Baglioni, who slew Astorre with his bride, and Simonetto with his page, and whose comeliness was such that, as he lay dying in the yellow piazza of Perugia, those who had hated him could not choose but weep, and Atalanta, who had ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... vigor to the life. The blood is allowed to grow stagnant. The life of the woman, even as mere animal, becomes poor and morbid and artificial. By dint of much attention and many devices, the outside of the body is maintained comely in the eyes of people whose notions of comeliness are thoroughly artificial and sophisticated. But how can there be any health with high eating, little exercise, above all, with the mind left absolutely vacant of all interests? The Belgravian mother does not even understand the miserable trade she has chosen. ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... of place, it could not be blinked; and that she was so visible, in her able-bodied comeliness, her supremacy of dimples, her extremely good corset, increased the offense. So did also the native assurance of her eye—which had something at all times of a jovial sea-captain, with his foot ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... toodle over Windsor-bridge on a market-day within the last fifteen years, her parents being market gardeners in the neighbourhood; and her two unmarried sisters, both fine girls, are equally celebrated with the Bath orange-women for the neatness of their dress and comeliness of their persons. There is a sprightliness and good-humour about the Comic Muse that turns aside the shafts of ill-nature; and had she made her selection more in accordance with propriety, and her own age, she might have ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... shun it—the garish light disturbed me. The morning sun, which had ever been my delight, seemed now a mocking imp of curiosity; the house and grounds looked bare and desolate; a blight had fallen upon their former comeliness. ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... burden merely on the senator's fortune; the commissioner of the public corn supply was once a personage—now what is more contemptible than this office? For, as we said just now, that which hath no true comeliness of its own now receives, now loses, lustre at the caprice of those who have to do with it. So, then, if dignities cannot win men reverence, if they are actually sullied by the contamination of the wicked, ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... to town Puts us all to shame; Walking in with noiseless feet, Very light and very fleet, Over-night she came. Not a beauty in the land, Though she knew no peer Both for comeliness and grace, But must take a second place— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... meditatively; it was marked by a day's more growth than on the previous morning, which did not enhance his comeliness or lessen his state of vagabondage. There was something about his appearance that made him out less a fool and more an uncouth rascal; one might easily have trusted him as well as pitied him yesterday—but to-day—Patsy's gaze was critical and ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... Pyramids, more wondrous and more awful than all else in the land of Egypt, there sits the lonely Sphinx. Comely the creature is; but the comeliness is not of this world; the once worshipped beast is a deformity and a monster to this generation; and yet you can see that those lips, so thick and heavy, were fashioned according to some ancient mould of beauty, now forgotten,—forgotten because that Greece drew forth Cytherea from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... here?" So saying, he gave him a kick and he moved; whereupon quoth the Fireman, "Some one of you who hath eaten a bit of Hashish and hath thrown himself down in whatso place it be!" Then he looked at his face and saw his hairless cheeks and his grace and comeliness; so he took pity on him and knew that he was sick and a stranger in the land. And he cried, "There is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah! verily, I have sinned against this youth, for indeed the Prophet (whom Allah bless and keep!) enjoineth honour to the stranger, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... a grey riding-dress with a little silver lace about it, and looked wonderfully plump and well, full of importance and complacency, and with such a return of comeliness that Aurelia would hardly have recognised the lean, haggard, fretful Harriet of the previous year. Her sentiment and romance, her soft melancholy and little affectations had departed, and she was ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... face distinguished by considerable comeliness. The forehead, however, overhung the features beneath it and gave to a mouth and chin, which would otherwise have aroused no criticism, an appearance of irresolution. The one noticeable difference in Mallinson was the addition of an air of constraint. It was due partly to a ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... sound health, intelligence, good feelings and peace of mind. All are aware that uneasy feelings, existing habitually in the breast, speedily exhibit their signature on the countenance, and that bitter thoughts or a bad temper spoil the human expression of its comeliness ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... the sisters of Saint Bridget," said the abbot, "most of whom have been either sorely misused by time, or their comeliness destroyed by some mishap previously to their being received into ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... "Bouncing Bet." It is a common and in places a troublesome weed in this valley. Bouncing Bet is, perhaps, its English name, as the pink-white complexion of its flowers with their perfume and the coarse, robust character of the plant really give it a kind of English feminine comeliness and bounce. It looks like a Yorkshire housemaid. Still another plant in my section, which I notice has been widely distributed by the agency of water, is the spiked loosestrife. It first appeared many years ago along the Wallkill; now it may be seen upon ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... there are matters in connection with Christianity to try the faith of men. Like its great Author, when it first made its appearance, it had "neither form nor comeliness" in the eyes of many. It neither met the expectations of the selfish, proud, ambitious Jew, nor of the disputatious, philosophic Greek. To the one "it was a stumbling-block," and to the other "foolishness." And there have been ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... than half the truth, for the girl was extravagantly, bewitchingly attractive. Her face and form would have been noticeable anywhere and under any circumstances; but now in contrast with the unmodified homeliness of her parents and brother her comeliness was almost startling. The others seemed to harmonize with their drab surroundings, with the dull, unattractive house and its furnishings, but Lorelei was in violent opposition to everything about her. She wore her beauty unconsciously, too, as a ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... to commend your good qualities; as the sweetness of your humour, the comeliness of your person, your good mein, your valour; ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... a graceful flowing style of motion. The elder sister, Lactimel, was of a different form, but yet hardly more fit to shine in the mazes of the dance than her sister. She had her charms, nevertheless, which consisted of a somewhat stumpy dumpy comeliness. She was altogether short in stature, and very short below the knee. She had fair hair and a fair skin, small bones and copious soft flesh. She had a trick of sighing gently in the evolutions of the waltz, which young men attributed to her softness of heart, and old ladies ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... is losing ground. He daily grows less likely to attract the favorable notice of Esther Lockwin, or any other woman of consequence. His face has not only lost comeliness, but character. It would seem that the carmen fimbrications just under the skin of his cheeks flame forth with renewed anger. The difficulty in his throat increases. He relies ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... prettier, with its carved posts and the tester frame from which depended white curtains. Some of the other furniture was changed and it made a very pretty room, so Eunice came back to it very much pleased, though not quite sure so much comeliness was ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... can see any Virtue or Comeliness in a Charles Stuart," says Father, "can hardly be expected to acknowledge the rugged Merits ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... assumes a goodly and gigantic frame. The next moment he transforms himself into one of emaciated limbs, and dressed in rags. Sometimes he becomes fair, sometimes darkish, sometimes dark of complexion. Sometimes he becomes ugly and sometimes as possessed of great comeliness of person. Sometimes he shows himself as young and sometimes as old Sometimes he appears as a Brahmana, sometimes as a Kshatriya, sometimes as a Vaisya, and sometimes as a Sudra. Verily, he of a hundred sacrifices appears at times as a person born of impure order, that is as the son of a superior ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... demand the effects without the means of producing them. Is the case then so? Are we ready to adopt the language of the avowed enemies of our adorable Saviour; and again to say of him "in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily," that "he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him[31]?" Is it no obligation, that he who "thought it not robbery to be equal with God," should yet for our sakes "make himself of no reputation, and take upon him the form of a servant, and be made in the likeness ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... my bride, to me, "I will behold no spot in thee." What mighty wonders love performs, And puts a comeliness ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... daintiest of white silk kerchiefs, fringed sparsely and brocaded abundantly with red roses. Albeit their arms are red and coarse with the combined effect of iron-water, hot sun, and exposure to the air, their faces make ample amends in their innocent, good-tempered comeliness. They greet you with a kindly "Guten Tag" or "Guten Abend," and, in the case of a lady, seldom omit the pretty "Gnaedige Frau," for which our "Ma'am" is but a ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... small and trembling, her eyes sunk into her head with continual blubbering: and moreover, they might see the most part of her stomach torn in sunder. To be short, her body was not much better than her mind: yet her good grace and comeliness and the force of her beauty was not altogether defaced. But notwithstanding this ugly and pitiful state of hers, yet she shewed herself within, by her outward looks and countenance. When Caesar had made her lie down again, and sat by her bedside, Cleopatra ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... this hurry. Look at that fish! He rose almost to the surface after my hook, and yet wouldn't take it. Oh, my poor fly! my poor bait! See it, master! All faded and worn and torn, no painting or patching can renew its comeliness! And there sticks out the hook, plain to view; a blind fish might see it! Oh, my poor fly, that couldn't conceal the hook any longer! Mr. Piscator, lend me your knife, while I cut the bait from the line, rags, paint, iron and all, and throw it back into the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... what authority shall these be pretty masters? Look well, and nothing have they invented—nothing put together for comeliness' sake. ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... in bloom, the flowing fountains, and the cooling rills; all these he gazed upon—then passing on, he entered the city of the five peaks, calm and peaceful, as one come down from heaven. The country folk, seeing the royal prince, his comeliness and his excessive grace, though young in years, yet glorious in his person, incomparable as the appearance of a great master, seeing him thus, strange thoughts affected them, as if they gazed upon the ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... eliminated from the discussion all difficulties surrounding their settlement—save the impossible effacement of race or color. All have admitted that the bronzed American may have character, intellect, capacity, wealth, industry and comeliness—yet he is a social "Pariah" because of his social identification. A problem that otherwise would be simple is thus converted into a perpetual issue by reason of race, and hence we have a "race problem." The ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... youth more sincerely and more beautifully, and, with Ronsard, regret for the lost wonder of his own youth was perhaps the acutest emotion he ever knew. He was himself, in his early years, one of those glorious youths who have the genius of charm and comeliness, of grace and strength and the arts. He excelled at football as in lute-playing. He danced, fenced, and rode better than the best; and, with his noble countenance, his strong limbs, his fair beard, and his ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... the room brightens and begins to look as it ought to look, on the entrance of youth, grace, health and comeliness! You do not want them for yourself, perhaps not even for your son, but you look on smiling; and when you recall their images—again it is with a smile. I defy you to see or think of them and not smile with an infinite and intimate ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... glaringly cursory and inconsiderate toward their elders; but a few of them—one now and then, at long intervals—he would have enjoyed knowing, and knowing intimately. On these infrequent occasions would come a union of frankness, comeliness and elan, and the rudiments of good manners. But no one in all the long-drawn procession had stopped to look at him a second time. And now he was turning gray; he was tragically threatened with what might in time become a paunch. ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... regarded with much more pleasure by the nephew than by the aunt, to whose flame they were fuel only; and this was increased by the addition of dress, which was indeed not wanted to set off the lively colours in which Nature had drawn health, strength, comeliness, and youth. In the afternoon Joseph, at their request, entertained them with an account of his adventures: nor could Lady Booby conceal her dissatisfaction at those parts in which Fanny was concerned, especially when Mr Booby launched forth into such rapturous praises of her beauty. She said, ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... returned Caroline; "there is so much more intellect in them-raising them out of the regular Kencroft comeliness. True, the great charm of the stalwart Friar, as we call him, is-what his father has in some degree-that quiet composed way that gives one a sense of protection. I think his patients will feel entire trust in his hands. ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a tall, sweet-looking girl of two-and-twenty,—not pretty, except in her brother's opinion, but possessing a soft, fair comeliness that made her pleasant to look upon. In voice and manner she was extremely quiet,—almost grave; and only those who lived with her had any idea of the repressed strength and energy of her character, and the almost masculine clearness of intellect ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... can force men to endure. She was lithe, and active, and bright,—and was at this moment of her life at her best. Her growing charms had as yet hardly reached the limits of full feminine loveliness,—which, when reached, have been surpassed. Luxuriant beauty had with her not as yet become comeliness; nor had age or the good things of the world added a pound to the fairy lightness of her footstep. All this had been tendered to Frank,—and with it that worldly wealth which was so absolutely necessary to his career. For though Greystock would not have said to any man or woman ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... know, said I, if it be in my power to comfort you, or if my assistance can be any way useful to you. Instead of returning a direct answer, Would to God, said they, we had never seen nor known you. Several gentlemen have honoured us with their company before you, but never one of them had that comeliness, that sweetness, that pleasantness of humour, and merit, which you have; we know not how to live without you. After they had spoken these words, they began to weep bitterly. My dear ladies, said I, be ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... and the Great.... And there shall be amongst them exemplars of this virtue and that one singly; and at intervals through the centuries standards for emulation among the many, a few, in whom all the excellences shall be blent in indivisible comeliness.' ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; this will lead him on to consider that the beauty of the mind is more honorable than the beauty of the outward form. So that if a virtuous soul have but a little comeliness, he will be content to love and tend it, and will search out and bring to the birth thoughts which may improve the young, until his beloved is compelled to contemplate and see the beauty of institutions and laws, and understand that ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... when the merchants saw Taj al-Muluk's beauty and grace, they were confounded and went about saying, "Of a truth Rizwan[FN14] hath opened the gates of Paradise and left them unguarded, so that this youth of passing comeliness hath come forth." And others, "Peradventure this is one of the angels." Now when they went in among the traders they asked for the shop of the Overseer of the market and the merchants directed them thereto. So they delayed not to repair thither and to salute him, and he and those ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... — N. beauty, the beautiful, [Grk], le beau ideal. [Science of the perception of beauty] aesthetics, callaesthetics|!. [of people] pulchritude, form elegance, grace, beauty unadorned, natural beauty; symmetry &c. 242; comeliness, fairness &c. adj.; polish, gloss; good effect, good looks; belle tournure[obs3]; trigness[obs3]; bloom, brilliancy, radiance, splendor, gorgeousness, magnificence; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... her, half covered with their matutinal bread and milk, was mild-eyed and soft as ever. Hers was a nature in which softness would ever prevail;—softness, and that tenderness of heart, always leaning, and sometimes almost crouching, of which a mild eye is the outward sign. But her comeliness and prettiness were gone. Female beauty of the sterner, grander sort may support the burden of sixteen children, all living,—and still survive. I have known it to do so, and to survive with much of its youthful glory. But that mild-eyed, soft, round, plumpy prettiness gives way beneath such ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... would tell you over their wine of some rare woman whom they had known in their youth, and who was still their standard of all that was gentle and gracious, and for whom they would claim a charm of manner and stately comeliness that—"my dear sir, not only illumined her drawing-room but ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... I behold What beauty doth adorn me, Or in a glath when I behold How thweetly God did form me. Hath God thuch comeliness bethowed And on me made to dwell?— What pity thuch a pretty maid Ath I ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... do what we can for her," said Storms. "With the material which I have on hand we can construct garments that will keep her clad with comeliness, though she may not be in the fashion; and yet I don't know but what she will," he added, with a smile, "for we may strike some of the vagaries without knowing it. Then, too, she must ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... brave feared that the comeliness of his dear captive would cause her to be coveted by the chiefs of the land. His soul yearned to keep her all to himself. He said: "Let us go to the clear waters of Kalulu. There we will fish together for the kala and the aku, and there I will ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... sister; younger than she, too, and still vigorous. Unlike her, also, he was a handsome man; had been very handsome in his young days; and, as Mrs. Barclay's eye roved over the table, she thought few could show a better assemblage of comeliness than was gathered round this one. Madge was strikingly handsome in her well-fitting black dress; Lois made a very plain brown stuff seem resplendent; she had a little fleecy white woollen shawl ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... the exuberance of youth, were exaggerated until they were transformed from very venial offences into the most mortal of sins, while in the same way the delight manifested by Princess Charlotte at the admiration and homage to which her comeliness gave rise—a very natural feeling when one recalls the snubbings and humiliations to which she had been subjected until then—were construed into frivolity and deep-dyed coquetry, altogether unworthy of a royal princess. ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... must console ourselves—if not with Mr. Hardy's statement that 'ideal physical beauty is incompatible with mental development, and a full recognition of the evil of things'—at least with the pictures of those who had some comeliness, and grace, and charm. Dr. Grosart says of a miniature of Edmund Spenser, 'It is an exquisitely beautiful face. The brow is ample, the lips thin but mobile, the eyes a grayish-blue, the hair and beard a golden red ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... a more comfortable sort; if my son were my husband, I should freelier rejoice in that absence wherein he won honour than in the embracements of his bed where he would show most love. When yet he was but tender-bodied, and the only son of my womb; when youth with comeliness pluck'd all gaze his way; when, for a day of kings' entreaties, a mother should not sell him an hour from her beholding; I,—considering how honour would become such a person; that it was no better ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... of the most dressy and particular men in the whole college. I was so utterly surprised that for a moment I almost doubted the evidence of my own senses; but there was no mistaking those features, which, though bloated with drink, still retained something of their former comeliness. I was determined to rescue him, for one night at least, from the company into which he ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for the day, and by times appeared before old Sylvester in proud array of little hats, new-brightened shoes and shining locks, span new as though they had just come from the mint; anxious to have his grandfatherly approval of their comeliness? Shortly after, the horses caught in the distant pastures, the Captain and Farmer Oliver having charge of them, were brought in and tied under the ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... oftentimes how vulgarly one's features come out when the impartial sun portrays them. As with the contradictory critiques about one's writings, so also is it with the conflicting apparitions of comeliness or ugliness in the heliotyped exploits of different—some of them indifferent—photographers. Several, however, have succeeded well with me; as Sarony in New York, Elliott & Fry of Baker Street and Brighton, Negretti & Zambra at the Crystal Palace, and divers ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... and He shall deliver you from the power and hand of the enemies. I sent you out with mourning and weeping: but God will give you to me again with joy and gladness for ever. Put off, O Jerusalem, the garment of thy mourning and affliction, and put on the comeliness of the glory that cometh from God for ever; for behold, thy children gathereth from the west and from the east and return ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... long breath, "Nature, you have turned out a com-plete article this time, I reckon." Then, as Severne laughed merrily at this, she turned her candle and her eyes full on him very briskly. She looked at him for a moment, with a gratified eye at his comeliness; then she started. "Oh!" ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... whom I entirely love, Th' immortal gods her birth-rites forth to grace, Descending from their glorious seat above, They did on her these several virtues place: First Saturn gave to her sobriety, Jove then indued her with comeliness, And Sol with wisdom did her beautify, Mercury with wit and knowledge did her bless, Venus with beauty did all parts bedeck, Luna therewith did modesty combine, Diana chaste all loose desires did check, And like a lamp ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... Alce for seven years? Was it just because Alce had red whiskers and red hands and red hair on his hands, while Socknersh was dark and sweet of face and limb? It was terrible to think that mere youth and comeliness and virility should blind her judgment and strip her of common sense. Yet this was obviously the lesson she must learn ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... which is taken heereby cannot be but verie good and honest, for they admonish and stir up a man to that which is comely and honest. For flowers, through their beautie, varietie of colour, and exquisite forme, do bring to a liberall and gentle manly minde the remembrance of honestie, comeliness, and all kinds of vertues. For it would be an unseemely and filthie thing, as a certain wise man saith, for him that doth looke upon and handle faire and beautiful things, and who frequenteth and is conversant in faire and beautiful places, to have ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... was already well-advanced in years. He had entered upon the winter of life, that sprinkles the head with snow that never melts, but he was still hale, ruddy, and active. Nature had, indeed, moulded him in an unpropitious hour for personal comeliness, but in compensation had seated a great heart and a graceful mind in a body low of stature, and marked by a slight deformity. His piercing eyes, luminous with intelligence and full of sympathy for everything noble and elevated, overpowered with their fascination the blemishes that a too curious ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... slowly. He felt himself coming to a better adjustment with her mature and massive comeliness, her rich and elaborate attire, her full-toned and friendly fluency. "We are always busy, and are expecting to be busier still; but we are never too busy for a call like this." He considered that that was doing pretty fairly for an old man who was immersed in affairs and altogether alien ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... out, Delaware; you're not so much out. Old Hutter is decaying, of a sartainty, though many solid blocks might be hewn out of his trunk yet, and, as for Hurry Harry, so far as height and strength and comeliness go, he may be called the pride of the human forest. Were the men bound, or in any manner suffering torture? I ask on account of the young women, who, I dare to say, would be glad ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... possess a talent for love-letters." He will always bear in mind that in love-affairs success is less the Ultima Thule of desire than its coup de grace, and he will be careful never to admit the fact, especially to himself. He will value ceremony, but rather for its comeliness than for its utility, as one esteeming the lily, say, to be a more applaudable bulb than the onion. He will prink; and he will be at his best after sunset. He will dare to acknowledge the shapeliness of a thief's leg, to contend that the commission of murder does ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... admirer, and Tommy from Riverside come to admire Miss Peck. The biscuit-shooter might pass for twenty-seven, certainly. Something had agreed with her—whether the medicine, or the mountain air, or so much masculine company; whatever had done it, she had bloomed into brutal comeliness. Her hair looked curlier, her figure was shapelier, her teeth shone whiter, and her cheeks were a lusty, overbearing red. And there sat Molly Wood talking sweetly to her big, grave Virginian; to look at them, there was no doubt that he had been "raised ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... important, Elder,' said my foster mother. You should teach your people the duty of comeliness. They honour their Maker when they look ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... stock of enthusiasms was run low, she could enjoy thoroughly Margaret's young enchantment in all that was exquisite. She was a plain woman; but there was no envy in her, and she took the keenest pleasure in Margaret's comeliness. It was almost with maternal pride that she watched each year add a new grace to that exceeding beauty. But her common sense was sound, and she took care by good-natured banter to temper the praises which ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... attend to this duty at once. The Colchester had been a rough, flat-bottomed craft, with neither shape nor comeliness about her. Whatever first-class sailboats the members of the club had seen had been only at a distance; and consequently their ideal of beauty, symmetry, comfort, and convenience in a boat was not very high. The Goldwing was perfection itself ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... not as a rule a judge of good looks; and no doubt 'tis unreason in me to pity her the more for her comeliness. But as a ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... castle, and there he saw the chamber; and when he had entered the chamber, he beheld the maidens working at satin embroidery, in chains of gold. Their beauty and their comeliness seemed to Owain far greater than Kynon had represented to him. They arose to wait upon Owain, as they had done to Kynon, and the meal which they set before him gave even more satisfaction to Owain than it had done ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... manner of all good boys to be careless of apparel, and take no pride in adornment. Good lack, if I see a boy make to do about the fit of his crumpler, and the creasing of his breeches, and desire to be shod for comeliness rather than for use, I cannot 'scape the mark that God took thought to make a girl of him. Not so when they grow older, and court the regard of the maidens; then may the bravery pass from the inside to the outside of them; and no bigger fools are they, even then, than their fathers were before ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... She lifted a gently disapproving face, in a movement which showed anew the large comeliness of head ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it dropped to a low, meditative theme, and Dave began to fear it would stop altogether. But no; a young woman was standing up in the choir; she was pretty, with quite a different air and a finer comeliness than that of the theatre girls of the night before. In some vague way she seemed reminiscent of Reenie Hardy. Dave's introspection was not deep enough to know that any fine girl would remind ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... hospitably housed in Eaten Place by Mr. Whitbread, the head of the renowned firm. After my recovery I had the good fortune to meet there Lady Morgan, the once famous authoress of the 'Wild Irish Girl.' She still bore traces of her former comeliness, and had probably lost little of her sparkling vivacity. She was known to like the company of young people, as she said they made her feel young; so, being the youngest of the party, I had the honour of sitting next her at dinner. When I recall her conversation and her pleasing ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... interpretative arts) years of training are necessary. This premise is full of holes; nevertheless George Moore, and Messrs. Nathan and Sherwin all cling to it. It is true that almost any young girl, moderately gifted with charm or comeliness, may make an instantaneous impression on our stage, especially in the namby-pamby roles which our playwrights usually give her to play. But she is soon found out. She may still attract audiences (as George ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... independently of sex or comeliness, arouse an instant curiosity concerning themselves. The tribe is small, but its members unmistakable. They may possess neither fortune, good looks, nor that adroitness of advance-vision which the stupid ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... "I am going to see the thing through." And the others endorsed his words. When the clergyman came, and looked at the face of this Magdalene, he was struck by its comeliness and quiet. All else seemed to have been washed away. On her breast lay a knot of white roses—white ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not tell if she loved him. Poor pantaloon, he was not an object to excite love, but the smile in her eyes was affectionate, and it was possible that her reserve concealed a very deep feeling. She was not the ravishing creature that his love-sick fancy saw, but she had a grave comeliness. She was rather tall, and her gray dress, simple and quite well-cut, did not hide the fact that her figure was beautiful. It was a figure that might have appealed more to the sculptor than to the costumier. Her hair, brown and abundant, was ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... Highness, the great Duchess Bianca Capello,(449) is arrived safe at a palace lately taken for her in Arlington Street. She has been much visited by the quality and gentry, and pleases universally by the graces of her person and comeliness of her deportment—my dear child, this is the least that the newspapers would say of the charming Bianca. I, who feel all the agreeableness of your manner, must say a great deal more, or should say a great deal more, but I can only ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... came from Constantinople, bringing with them numbers of manuscripts and systems of thought wholly new to the Florentines, was one Georgius Gemisthos, a Greek philosopher of much personal charm and comeliness, who talked a bland and beautiful Platonism that was extremely alluring not only to his youthful listeners but also to Cosimo himself. Gemisthos was, however, a Greek, and Cosimo was too busy a man in a city of enemies, or at any rate of the envious, ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... thee, saith the Lord God, and thou becamest Mine." "And thou wast exceeding beautiful, and thou didst prosper into a kingdom. And thy renown went forth among the heathen for thy beauty: for it was perfect through My comeliness, which I had put upon thee.... But thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and playedst the harlot because of thy renown." "As a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with Me, O house of Israel, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... at Tenggaroeng a delegation of Dyaks from one of the tribes of the far interior appeared at the palace to lay some tribal dispute before the Regent for his adjudication. There were about a score of them, including a rather comely young woman, whose comeliness was somewhat marred, however, according to European standards at least, by the lobes of her ears being stretched until they touched her shoulders by the great weight of the brass earrings which depended from them. The warriors were ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... Hellenes made him blind to the merits of those potent divinities. At first Atta resisted. There was Attic blood in his wife, and he strove to argue with her unorthodox craving. But the woman persisted, and a Lemnian wife, as she is beyond other wives in virtue and comeliness, excels them in stubbornness of temper. A second time she was with child, and nothing would content her but that Atta should make his prayers to the stronger gods. Dodona was far away, and long ere he reached it his throat would be cut ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... all along the course of His earthly life He chose constant lowliness and to be 'despised and rejected of men.' It was the result moment by moment of His own will that to the eyes of men He presented 'no form nor comeliness,' and that will was moment by moment steadied in its unmoved humility, because He perpetually looked 'not on His own things, but on the things of others.' The guise He presented to the eyes of men was ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... my beatitude, Albeit scorned as none was scorned, Adorn her as was none adorned. I make this maiden an ensample To Nature, through her kingdoms ample, Whereby to model newer races, Statelier forms and fairer faces; To carry man to new degrees Of power and of comeliness. These presents be the hostages Which I pawn for my release. See to thyself, O Universe! Thou art better, and not worse.'— And the god, having given all, Is freed ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Johannes Olivier, a youth with hair like an Irishman—all red. I had known her somewhat, and she was just that kind of girl in whom one feels the thrust of a fate. She was thin, for one thing, and without any of the comfortable comeliness that makes young men doubtful and old men sure. She had a face that was always rapt, lips that parted of themselves as if in wonder at great things newly seen, and big troubled eyes that spoke, despite her leanness and long legs, of a spring of hot blood crouching within her. ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... exact frame of the body, challenges any one, upon a hundred years' study, to find out how any the least fiber, or most minute particle, might be more commodiously placed, either for the advantage of use or comeliness. His stature erect, and tending upward to his center; his countenance majestic and comely, with the luster of a native beauty that scorned the poor assistance of art or the attempts of imitation; His body of so much quickness and agility that it did not only ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... seeing Him, you begin to be caught all anew with how lovable He is. This takes great hold of you. I overheard a once-drunken, now thoroughly changed man, up in Scotland, as he was fairly pouring out his heart in prayer in his sweet, broad Scotch,—"Once Thou didst have no form or comeliness to me, but now"—and it seemed as if all the pent-up feelings within rushed at once to flood-tide—"now Thou art the chiefest among ten thousand, and the One altogether lovely." And the high-water mark of the flood was ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... Col. iii. 12, 13. 6. I love you with a warm and fervent love: so do you love one another. 7. I love with a holy, spiritual love, as new men who have my image stamped on, and my holy nature in you, and as you are made perfect by the comeliness and beauty I have put on you: so do you love one another, because you are a lovely and holy people unto me. 8. I love you with a constant and unchangeable love; notwithstanding of all your weaknesses, yea, unkindness too, and unworthy walkings ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... features, besides their kindly and benevolent expression, were extremely pleasing, and must, some years ago, have been beautiful. Even now, what with her fresh complexion, her white teeth, and plump figure, she made no slight pretensions to comeliness. She possessed the same good sense and integrity of character as her brother, together with his strong religious feeling, but entirely ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Affairs, yet no one so remarkably distinguished himself on this Occasion, to the Amazement of both Armies, as Isadas the Son of Phoebidas, who was at that time in the Bloom of his Youth, and very remarkable for the Comeliness of his Person. He was coming out of the Bath when the Alarm was given, so that he had not time to put on his Cloaths, much less his Armour; however transported with a Desire to serve his Country in so ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... that it seemed as if God had ordained it for man's love. Angeline's dress was usually of plain blue homespun, woven by her own hands, and with her cap and apron of snowy whiteness she presented a picture of neatness and comeliness not seen in ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... and fill thy streams with water from thy springs, and urge on all thy torrents, and raise up a great wave, and stir huge roaring of tree-stumps and stones, that we may stay the fierce man who now is lording it, and deeming himself match for gods. For neither, I ween, will strength avail him nor comeliness anywise, nor that armour beautiful, which deep beneath the flood shall be o'erlaid with slime, and himself I will wrap him in my sands and pour round him countless shingle without stint, nor shall the Achaians know where to gather his bones, so vast ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... Gazette; he disseminated frugality, thrift, industry, and the cheerful virtues in "Poor Richard's Almanack," he was the benefactor and the blessing of the city of his adoption. He founded her famous library; he devoted the results of his scientific studies to her comfort, welfare, and comeliness; he maintained her defences as a military engineer, and was prepared to serve her gallantly in the field against the Indians as a colonel of Militia of his own raising. No man ever lived a fuller life or did so many things with ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... A stain is properly ascribed to corporeal things, when a comely body loses its comeliness through contact with another body, e.g. a garment, gold or silver, or the like. Accordingly a stain is ascribed to spiritual things in like manner. Now man's soul has a twofold comeliness; one from the refulgence of the natural light of reason, whereby he is directed in his actions; the other, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... when she walketh apace for her pleasure, or to catch her a heat in the cold mornings. Nevertheless it is not so decent in a meaner person, as I have discerned in some counterfeit ladies of the country, which use it much to their own derision. This comeliness was wanting in queen Mary, otherwise a very good and honorable princess. And was some blemish to the emperor Ferdinando, a most noble-minded man, yet so careless and forgetful of himself in that behalf, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... gone into Egypt, as they were commanded, ordered the whole of the children then in Bethlehem to be massacred. Archelaus succeeded Herod, and was succeeded himself by another Herod. The child grew up like all other men, and was a man without comeliness, and inglorious, working as a carpenter, making ploughs and yokes, and when he was thirty years of age, more or less, he went to Jordan to be baptised by John, who was the herald of his approach. When ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... by side, and the warriors gazed on them. What these had heard tell they saw with their eyes, that none surpassed those two women in beauty, neither was any blemish found in them. They that esteem women for the comeliness of the body and what the eye beholdeth, extolled King Gunther's wife, but the wise that look deeper said, "Praised shall Kriemhild be before Brunhild." And the bright-attired women drew together ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... this woman, and that any one looking at the two would pick Mrs. Vance for her raiment alone. It was a trying, though rather unjust thought, for Carrie had now developed an equally pleasing figure, and had grown in comeliness until she was a thoroughly attractive type of her colour of beauty. There was some difference in the clothing of the two, both of quality and age, but this difference was not especially noticeable. It served, however, to augment Carrie's ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... one of the trials of our mortal state, one of the disciplines of our virtue, that the world's benefactors and reformers are so often without form or comeliness. The very force necessary to sustain the conflict makes them appear unlovely; they "tread the wine press alone, and of the people there is none with them." The shrieks, and groans, and agonies of men wrestling in mortal combat are often not graceful or gracious; but the ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... were soon in readiness, and running upon the enemy, as soon as it was perceived by Masistius, who commanded the cavalry of the barbarians, a man of wonderful courage and of extraordinary bulk and comeliness of person, he turned his steed and made towards them. They sustained the shock and joined battle with him, as though by this encounter they were to try the success of the whole war. But after Masistius's horse received a wound, and flung him, and he falling, could hardly raise himself ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... the slouching thick-set form beside him, his pale intensity of look giving a rare dignity and beauty to the face which owed so little of its attractiveness to comeliness of feature. He had the makings of a true shepherd of men, and his mind as he spoke was crossed by a hundred different currents of feeling—bitterness, pain, and yearning unspeakable. No man could feel the wrench that lay before him ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shine upon her through the flickering leaves or the wiry spray of the elms I remember from my childhood, they will glorify her into the aspect she wore when President Holyoke, father of our long since dead centenarian, looked upon her in her youthful comeliness. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist) |
