"Delicate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the best possible explanation of your conduct. I probably have put the question too abruptly; but, in the meantime, you will have the goodness, either to go on before me, or to fall back, as I presume, you will grant that it is neither delicate nor becoming for me, who wear no disguise and am known, to be seen at such an hour ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... banquet. Sheffield has extensive markets and parks, and the Duke of Norfolk is conspicuous in his gifts of this character to the city; but overtopping all else are the enormous works, which make everything into which iron and steel can be converted, from armor-plating and railway-rails down to the most delicate springs and highly-tempered cutlery. Their products go to every part of the world, and are of ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... your reasoning," Berrington replied. "Let me tell you that I should have said nothing—for the present, at any rate—had I not betrayed myself. Look here, Field, I might just as well inform you that we are treading on very delicate ground here. As soon as I begin to speak, Sir Charles's daughter comes into ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... wines—well, he can tell the vineyard and the vintage of a claret by the scent alone. I verily believe that were he to be served with a corked wine, the result would be instant dissolution between his gastronomic soul and body. Naturally I had to make some preparations, in order that such delicate susceptibilities should not be offended. In addition, I had a special reason for seeking to please him. Colonel Maitland ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... a machine to make visible the growth of plants and the action of the sunlight, a very delicate contrivance, enclosed in glass. Besides this I invented a barometer and a lot of novel scientific apparatus. My room was regarded as a sort of show place by the professors, who oftentimes brought visitors to it on Saturdays and holidays. And when, ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... face raised to his was beautiful. Now, the delicate lips, like those of a child before it breaks into sobs, were trembling, the eyes, lifted appealingly, were eloquent ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... was seventeen years older than myself, and as bad in health as she was in temper, how was I to know that the grim king of terrors might not carry her off before she became mine? With the tenderest warmth, then, and most delicate ardor, I continued to press my suit. The happy day was fixed—the ever memorable 10th of May, 1792. The wedding-clothes were ordered; and, to make things secure, I penned a little paragraph for the county paper to this effect:—"Marriage in High ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... powder, so Ferdinand in Bohemia summoned his subjects to rally round his standard at Leitmeritz and defend the kingdom and the throne against the Protestant rebels. For the first time in their history the Bohemian Brethren were ordered to take sides in a civil war. The situation was delicate. If they fought for Ferdinand they would be untrue to their faith; if they fought against him they would be disloyal to their country. In this dilemma they did the ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... been very kind, and would have shared in every fatigue, I am sure; but I did not think it right for either of them. Kitty is slight and delicate; and Mary studies so much, that her hours of repose should not be broken in on. My aunt Phillips came to Longbourn on Tuesday, after my father went away; and was so good as to stay till Thursday with me. She was of great use and comfort to us all. And Lady Lucas has been very kind; she ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... seemed a more difficult and delicate question what course should be pursued with reference to the possible event of the King dying while the Queen, his widow, was expecting to become a mother. As has been said above, no precedent was to be found in any former bill; yet it seemed to be determined ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... its enemy, science is easily seen to be its most romantic servant; for all its strenuous and delicate learning it brings to the feet of love for a plaything. Not only will it carry the voice of love across space and time, but it will even bring it back to you from eternity. It will not only carry to your ears the voices of the living, ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... work appear to the scientific world, that for a long time the question was looked upon as closed, and not until thirty-five years later was there any dissent. Then the Italian physicist, MELLONI, with instrumental means a thousand times more delicate than that of HERSCHEL, and with a far larger store of cognate phenomena, collected during the generation which had elapsed, to serve as a guide, discovered the true law. This, as we have seen, was at first ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... have a large lace or embroidered doily in the center of the table, and smaller ones indicating the position of the guests. A centerpiece of glass, china, silver, is usually used, over the doily or without it, and on top of this, flowers. Delicate ferns are sometimes used instead of flowers, although roses (hot-house roses when no others are obtainable) are always the favorite ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... Wuertemberg. Father an officer in the duke's army, mother something of a virago, both very poor. Kepler was utilized as a tavern pot-boy, but ultimately sent to a charity school, and thence to the University of Tuebingen. Health extremely delicate; he was liable to violent attacks all his life. Studied mathematics, and accepted an astronomical lectureship at Graz as the first post which offered. Endeavoured to discover some connection between the number of the planets, their times of revolution, and their ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... had been their great strength, was decreasing, and that in spite of their admirable horsemastership their supply of remounts was becoming exhausted. An increasing number of the burghers were volunteering for service against their own people, and it was found that all fears as to this delicate experiment were misplaced, and that in the whole army there were no keener and more ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... member of his family gives a most pleasing and interesting picture, from his own recollections and from what his mother told him, of the childhood which was to develop into such rich maturity. The boy was rather delicate in organization, and not much given to outdoor amusements, except skating and swimming, of which last exercise he was very fond in his young days, and in which he excelled. He was a great reader, ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... after they reached their position, and generally all the duties pertaining to his office of chief engineer. During the night General Morgan L. Smith's division was marched to the point where the pontoons were, and the brigade of Giles A. Smith was selected for the delicate duty of manning the boats and surprising the enemy's pickets on the south bank of the river. During this night also General J. M. Brannan, chief of artillery, moved forty pieces of artillery, belonging to the Army of the Cumberland, and placed them on ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... ached from the glare of the vast stretch of silvery gray. The latter was, however, relieved by stronger color in front of the party, for blazing gold on the dazzling stubble, the oat sheaves rolled away in long rows that diminished and melted into each other, until they cut the blue of the sky in a delicate filigree. Oats had moved up in value in sympathy with wheat, and the good soil had most abundantly redeemed its promise that year. Colonel Barrington, however, sighed a little as he looked at them, and remembered that such a harvest ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... and again, "the use of the true comedy is to awaken thoughtful laughter." "Men's future upon earth does not attract it; their honesty and shapeliness in the present does; and whenever they wax out of proportion, overblown, affected, pretentious, bombastical, hypocritical, pedantic, fantastically delicate; whenever it sees them self-deceived or hoodwinked, given to run riot in idolatries, drifting into vanities, congregating in absurdities, planning shortsightedly, plotting dementedly; whenever they are at variance with their ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... Asparagus.—Although this delicate and luscious vegetable is of the easiest culture, and grows readily along the coast, yet to our shame be it said that it is usually too much of a luxury for ordinary mortal, to afford. Now, it is for the most part such a general favourite that one ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... additional by the sale of bonds. As to the kind of bonds that I would sell, and as to how I would sell them, etc., I ought not to say anything on that subject at present, because you ought to allow me, as an executive officer, in the exercise of a very delicate discretion, free power to act as I think right at the moment, holding me responsible for my action afterward. As to what bonds I will sell, or where I will sell them, or how I will sell them, as that is a discretionary power left with the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... same general character, but is more elongated in the occipital region, and of more delicate proportions throughout.[5-*] ...
— Some Observations on the Ethnography and Archaeology of the American Aborigines • Samuel George Morton
... House of Merrilees" it is now an open secret that very much the same point of view was taken in more than one instance. Mr. Marshall's "Peter Binney, Undergraduate," had been and is still decidedly popular, but his new book was more ambitious, possessing such a plot as to require peculiarly delicate handling. Had it been handled in a way that combined a really high literary standard with more stirring qualities? The question requires no answer now, for the triumph which the publisher at once foretold ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... contemptuous whistle, and pointing to Mary's feet, said, "Ain't they delicate? Most as small ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... difficult as well as delicate, and Carl shrank back from it. "Is it not sufficient to return the money?" ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... the home of his fiancee; the curate arrived at the same moment. The house was a delicious little nest among orange-trees and ylang-ylang. They found Maria by an open window, overlooking the lake, surrounded by the fresh foliage and delicate ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... was vivid as green light; and the languid dock water, the colour of jade, glinting round her hull, was lambent with hues not its own. You could believe there was a soft radiation from that ship's sides which fired the water about her, but faded when far from her sides, a delicate and faery ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... firmness, combined with a sort of womanish coming-in-pieces, which the same cod's head & shoulders hath, where the whole is easily separable, pliant to a knife or a spoon, but each individual flake presents a pleasing resistance to the opposed tooth. You understand me—these delicate subjects are necessarily obscure. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... at the table d'hote, but preferred the restaurant connected with and within the hotel. All the dishes were very delicate, and a vast change from the simple English system, with its joints, shoulders, beefsteaks, and chops; but I doubt whether English cookery, for the very reason that it is so simple, is not better for men's moral and spiritual nature ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... John Effingham, both bad avoided any farther allusions to Mr. Sharp, or to his supposed attachment to Eve. Both were confident of its existence, and this perhaps was one reason why neither felt any necessity to advert to it: for it was a delicate subject, and one, under the circumstances, that they would mutually wish to forget in their cooler moments. The conversation then took a more general character, and for several hours that day, while the rest of the passengers were kept below by ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... were men of splendid wit and polished taste. Unhappily, they made all their characters in their own likeness. Their works bear the same relation to the legitimate drama which a transparency bears to a painting. There are no delicate touches, no hues imperceptibly fading into each other: the whole is lighted up with an universal glare. Outlines and tints are forgotten in the common blaze which illuminates all. The flowers and fruits of the intellect abound; but it is the abundance ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... deeply concerned about religious questions, but "there were limits." The problem was how to rouse the Lord without rousing O'Flynn—a piece of negotiation so delicate, calling for a skill in pious invective so infinitely absorbing to Mac's particular cast of mind, that he was quickly stone-blind and deaf to ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... or a sweet smile in another; and the admiring glance which with reluctance I withdrew from a graceful figure was arrested by a well-shaped head or a rosy cheek. One was almost a beauty, with her light curls and delicate pink cheeks; another was quite such: her smile was bewitching, and her eyes were roguish. But I soon found that there were other things to be attended to besides picking out the prettiest flowers in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... watch for side dishes, and the valets suggested hair brushes and hot water. Cooks trailed black silk dresses adorned with wide collars, and fastened with gold brooches containing portraits of their late husbands; and the fine shirt fronts set off with rich pearls, the lavender-gloved hands, the delicate faces, expressive of ease and leisure, made Ginger's two friends—young Mr. Preston and young Mr. Northcote —noticeable among this menial, work-a-day crowd. Ginger loved the upper circles, and now he romped the polka in the most approved London fashion, ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... involuntary crimes, which are committed by some positive act. But what about involuntary crimes of omission? In a railway station, where the movements of trains represent the daily whirl of traffic in men, things, and ideas, every switch is a delicate instrument which may cause a derailment. The railway management places a switchman on duty at this delicate post. But in a moment of fatigue, or because he had to work inhumanly long hours of work, which exhausted all his nervous elasticity, or for other reasons, ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... dear cot, and mount sublime! I was constrained to quit you. Was it right, While my unnumbered brethren toiled and bled, That I should dream away th' entrusted hours On rose-leaf beds pampering the coward heart With feelings all too delicate for use? * * * * * I therefore go, and join head, heart and hand Active and firm, to fight the bloodless fight Of science, freedom, and ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... Wright and his brother, Welcome, both her seniors by several years, were her awe-bound slaves; and the twin daughters of Zebedee Bloom obeyed her least whim without question, even when it involved them in situations more or less delicate. With her quick ear for rhythm she had been at once impressed by their names—impressed to a degree that savoured of fascination. She would seat the two before her, range the other children beside them, and then lead the chorus in a spirited ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... and war; yet the stars on the flag always make me happy and confident. Do you see the constellations swinging above us, such unimaginable vastnesses, not roving or crashing through the illimitable at haphazard, but moving in more excellent measure, and to a finer rhythm, than the most delicate clockwork man ever made? The great ocean-lines mark our seas with their paths through the water; the fine brains of the earth are behind the ships that sail from port to port, yet how awry the system goes! When does a ship come to her harbor at an hour determined when she sailed? ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... this island," says the narrative, "is dry and somewhat sandy, which makes the verdure of the meadows and woods more delicate and more uniform than is usually the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... in carving and distributing the delicate morsels of the dish, have been many a man's passport into popularity. Nor is this accomplishment unworthy of cultivation in the elegant woman; affording a pretext, too, for that assistance of some favoured neighbour which men love to offer to ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... slim, muscular figure of the stranger was clearly visible, it seemed too soft for a man's. His hands as they grasped the beaker seemed white and delicate. ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... together, you and I, Along a white and lonely road, that went I know not where . . . and we were well content. Our laughter was untroubled as the sky, And all our talk was delicate and shy, Though in that cage of words wild thoughts were pent Like prisoned birds that some sweet accident Might yet release to sing again, and fly. We passed between long lines of poplar trees . . . Where, summer comrades gay and debonair, The south wind and the ...
— The Inn of Dreams • Olive Custance
... with both the princes. And Teribazus, in great honor and distinction, set out homewards in the company of the king; who, indeed, upon this journey made it appear plainly that cowardice and effeminacy are the effects, not of delicate and sumptuous living, as many suppose, but of a base and vicious nature, actuated by false and bad opinions. For notwithstanding his golden ornaments, his robe of state, and the rest of that costly attire, worth no less than twelve thousand ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... and even if I sold it to him at a good price I might get inconvenienced in the delivery of goods if the current owner got wind of the transaction, and in the second I was, well—undischarged. It was clearly a business that required delicate handling. Moreover, the possibility of his being in pursuit of some valuable invention also interested me. It occurred to me that I would like to know more of this research, not with any dishonest intention, but simply with an idea that to know ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... should have known the man, nor guessed at him, but for his eyes, he was so altered in every way,—so rough and strong-looking, with his complexion tanned and weather-beaten; and he had always been such a delicate, curled darling of indulgent parents! However, he looked twice the man he was before, Mrs. Lunt whispered me; and Percy could not take her eyes off him, he looked so strong and noble, and his face ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... imagery as that of the poem To a Snowflake—the delicate silver filigree of verse—rank him among the most privileged of the ministrants in Nature's temple, standing very close to the shrine. Yet here again there is repulse for the flying soul. This fellowship, like that of the children, is indeed fair and sheltering, ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... trusts itself. Each race that claims A northern birth, unconquered in the fray Claims but the warrior's death; but as the sky Slopes towards the eastern tracts and gentler climes So are the nations. There in flowing robes And garments delicate are men arrayed. True that the Parthian in Sarmatia's plains, Where Tigris spreads across the level meads, Contends invincible; for flight is his Unbounded; but should uplands bar his path He scales them not; nor through the night of war Shall his weak bow uncertain in its ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... thousand pounds. And when I expressed (in excusing myself for not accompanying her, uninvited, to the dinner-party) a perfectly rational doubt whether I might prove to be a welcome guest, Mrs. Roylake held up her delicate little hands in unutterable astonishment. "My dear Gerard, in your position!" She appeared to think that this settled the question. I submitted in silence; the truth is, I was beginning already to despair of my prospects. Kind as my stepmother ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... board some boats which good fortune had brought thither in numbers, and passed as secretly as he could down the stream, escaping notice the more because his habits of endurance and fortitude had made him indifferent to delicate food; so that, being contented with meagre and poor fare, he did not care to approach their towns or camps, forming his conduct in this respect according to the celebrated saying of the ancient Cyrus, who, when he was introduced ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... details and secondary characteristics are lost; as the outlines of mountains remain, or are even more clearly seen, when distance subdues the details of their structure, and evening mists throw them into flat planes one behind the other, and leave nothing but the delicate lines of their edges to tell their character. We feel the beauty and simplicity of such effects in nature. We feel that the mind, through the eye resting upon these quiet planes and delicate lines, receives a sense of repose and poetic suggestion which is lost in the bright ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... the gardens. We turned down a broad walk bordered by high yew hedges, at the bottom of which was a little gate leading into the park. The air was fragrant with the perfume of violets, and early stocks and hyacinths, mingled every now and then with a more delicate perfume from the greenhouses on the other side of the red-brick wall. How beautiful it all seemed, in that sweet, dancing sunlight!—the songs of the birds, the blossoming fruit-trees, and pink-budded chestnuts, the scents which floated about on the soft west ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... same kind of work, nominal equality of labor would be so great a real inequality that the feeling of justice would revolt against its being enforced. All persons are not equally fit for all labor; and the same quantity of labor is an unequal burden on the weak and the strong, the hardy and the delicate, the quick and the slow, the dull ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... from him Helbeck's look followed her. She was in a dress of black serge, which followed the delicate girlish frame with perfect simplicity, and was relieved at the neck and wrists with the plainest of white collars and cuffs. But there was something so brilliant in the hair, so fawnlike in the carriage of the head, that she seemed to Helbeck to be all elegance; had he been asked to describe ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is expressible only in the aggregate of the savings of labor consumed in idleness, of the loss to the productivity of the country, of the disturbance of the whole mechanism of exchange, and of the injury wrought upon the delicate social organization by the strain thus placed upon it. The famous Pittsburgh strike is estimated to have cost the country ten millions of dollars. When so costly a weapon is found to miss far more often than it hits, it is altogether ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... that those faculties are gradually developed in each individual; that every animal and every human being which is born into the world, has built up, unconsciously, involuntarily, and as it were out of nothing, those delicate and complex organs, by which he afterwards learns to see, hear, and utter sounds. Is not the wonder, that he should, in the majority of cases, succeed without any effort ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... characteristic of Baldovinetti; two, those at the Louvre and in the Andre collection, are distinguished by beautiful landscape backgrounds; and all, but especially the example in the Louvre, add a peculiar and delicate charm to the quality of grave majesty which Alessio's works share with those of Piero della Francesca and others of Domenico Veneziano's following. They probably belong to the years 1460-1465. In the later of his preserved works, while there is no abatement of precise and laborious finish, we find ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... white-washed corridors do not present such attractions as the glorious garden with its famous pergola and its views of the Bay. Here even in Christmas week we found quantities of plants in full bloom: the delicate yellow blossoms of the Soffrana rose; trailing ivy-leaved geraniums with gay heads of carmine flowers; the honey-scented budleia with its little globes of dark yellow flowerets: clumps of gorgeous scarlet salvia; and straggling masses of the pretty ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... he has his next involuntary bath in another flower, as he crawls out, the pollen attached to him comes in contact with the stigma of that second flower and fertilises it. In the other example (catasetum), when a bee gnaws a certain part of the flower, he inevitably touches a long delicate projection which Mr. Darwin calls the 'antenna.' 'This antenna transmits a vibration to a membrane which is instantly ruptured; this sets free a spring by which the pollen mass is shot forth like an arrow in the right direction, and adheres ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... 17,000 lines. In the prologue, itself a poem of great merit, the poet draws up the curtain from a scene of life and manners which has not been surpassed in subsequent literature, a picture whose figures have been studied with the truest observation, and are outlined with the firmest, yet most delicate pencil. The vein of sentiment in these tales is always unaffected, cheerful, and manly, the most touching seriousness varying with the keenest humor. In some the tone rises to the highest flight of heroic, reflective, and even religious ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... friendliness to the Philistine. And in his drawings in Punch his satire is aimed in the same direction as Thackeray's always was. Like Thackeray, he was most at home on the plane where a social art, a delicate art of life is able to flourish. Of the concealed romanticist in du Maurier we have more than once already spoken. A Romanticist always turns to the past. Thackeray, in his lectures, also in the house he built for himself, and in a proposed but never finished history, ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... think I rather admired her. Her rolling eyes, the black hair plastered low upon her forehead,—the colour high, but never changeable or delicate—the amplitude and rustle of her skirts, the impressiveness of her manner, her very positive matureness, were just what the crude taste of childhood is apt to be fascinated by. She was the sister of my father's man of business; and she and her ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... faded; but presently it came back. He noticed now that the slightly foreign-looking young woman was pretty, and even interesting-looking; that besides its delicate modelling and its warm, rather Southern colouring, there was character in her face, personality; that there were intelligence, humour, vivacity; that she looked as if she would have something to say. He noticed, too, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... dark interior beyond. Fearlessly, Tarzan followed the trail. On hands and knees, he crawled through the small aperture. Within the hut his nostrils were assailed by many odors; but clear and distinct among them was one that half aroused a latent memory of the past—it was the faint and delicate odor of a woman. With the cognizance of it there rose in the breast of the ape-man a strange uneasiness—the result of an irresistible force which he was destined to become acquainted with anew—the instinct which draws the ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Mr. Hastings's opposition. But these he totally abandons, and holds fast to the pecuniary department. Now, as it is notorious that most of the abuses of India grow out of money-dealing, it was peculiarly unfit for a servant, delicate with regard to his reputation, to require a personal and confidential agent in a situation merely official, in which secrecy and personal connections could be of no possible use, and could only serve to excite distrust. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... all his life, his ancestors before him, and here it was that Valmai had found a home as companion to the delicate eldest daughter of the family, who was delighted to find in her so congenial a friend. Her beauty had made a great impression upon the whole amiable family, as good looks often do upon people who cannot boast of the same advantages. It was a good thing that the ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... answerable to no one save to the Emperor alone. His work was of so delicate, so confidential a nature, that he rendered an account of his services only to his Imperial master. There was none to stay his hand, to check him in his courses, save only this neurotic, capricious cripple who ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... pursued a line of policy happily adapted to the delicate nature of his position. Unwilling to excite the anger or wound the pride of the chiefs, by any outward manifestation of distrust, he affected to confide in the sincerity of their professions, and, by inducing his officers to mix occasionally in their councils, and his men in ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... its scenes, and its interests, distract the mind, deprave the taste, corrupt the heart, and love cannot exist in a heart that has lost the meek dignity of innocence. Virtue and taste are nearly the same, for virtue is little more than active taste, and the most delicate affections of each combine in real love. How then are we to look for love in great cities, where selfishness, dissipation, and insincerity supply the place of ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... to put on Aisse? You told me it was a thing of distinction, delicate like all that HE did, and I hear that the public of the theatres is more THICKHEADED than ever. You would do well to see two or three plays, no matter which, in order to appreciate the literary condition of the Parisian. The provinces ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... these stories is happily called after some flower that plays a part in its development. I am aware of the primly Victorian sound of such a description applied to art so modern as that of Miss SEDGWICK. You know already (I hope) how wonderfully delicate is her almost passionate sensibility to the finer shades of a situation. It is, I suppose, this quality in her writing that makes me still have reminiscent shivers when I think about that horrible little bogie-tale, The Third Window; and these "Flower Pieces" (as 1860 might have called ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... folly of making threats. When I was teaching school I recall that a number of slate pencils had been dropped on the floor one afternoon. Thoughtlessly I threatened, "Now the next child that drops a pencil will remain after school and receive punishment!" My fate! The weakest, most delicate girl in the room was the next to drop her pencil, and she was a pupil with a perfect record in deportment. The reader can imagine my embarrassment. I had threatened punishment, and so had to get out of the predicament as best I could. This ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... caravan bound for Persia. Passing the river Euphrates, the chiefest of the rivers which irrigated the terrestrial paradise, when about four days journey from Aleppo, I entered into Mesopotamia, or Chaldea. Hence, in two days journey, I reached Ur of the Chaldees, where Abraham was born, a very delicate and pleasant city.[246] I remained here four days; and in other four days journey reached the Tigris, which I also passed, at a place where it was so shallow that it only reached to the calf of my leg, so that I waded over a-foot. I then entered into the greater Armenia; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... situation was delicate, Anne halted awhile apart from them. The trumpet-major, quite ignorant of how his cause was entered into by the white-coated man in the distance (for his father had not yet told him of his designs upon Mrs. Garland), did not advance, but stood still by ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... sun, by a melon-seller, by an eagle flying in the sky, by a man tilling a plot of ground. It is this spirit of grotesque allegory which really characterises Browning among all other poets. Other poets might possibly have hit upon the same philosophical idea—some idea as deep, as delicate, and as spiritual. But it may be safely asserted that no other poet, having thought of a deep, delicate, and spiritual idea, would call it "A Bean ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... boy, a singularly interesting and beautiful boy, fair-haired and blue-eyed, and delicate in color. When this boy saw the stranger approach he turned as pale as marble, slid away from the brigade commander's side, and disappeared behind a group of staff officers and orderlies. The new-comer also became deathly white as he glanced after the retreating youth. Then ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... observed, that the administrative tribunal, which is called the court of sessions, has no right of inspection over the town officers. It can only interfere when the conduct of a magistrate is specially brought under its notice; and this is the delicate part of the system. The Americans of New England are unacquainted with the office of public prosecutor in the court of sessions,[91] and it may readily be perceived that it could not have been established without difficulty. If an accusing ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... delicate; and the harassing care and endless fatigue incident to his position, in a town like Dundee, seemed unsuitable to his spirit. This belief led to another attempt to remove him to a country sphere. In the summer of this same year (1837) he was strongly urged to preach as a ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... Jones would be a tall, gaunt, swarthy, raw-boned, swearing man of the sea. He was a sleek, silent, modest little man, with delicate hands and features. He wished to be alone with the Doctor, and so I did not hear their talk. I know that he needed money and that Franklin, having no funds, provided the sea fighter from ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... called maize, of the bigness of one of our halfpenny loaves, which bread is named in the Indian tongue clashacally. This bread was very sweet and pleasant to us, for we had not eaten any for a long time before; and what is it that hunger doth not make to have a savoury and delicate taste? Having thus imparted the bread amongst us, those which were men they sent afore to the town, having also many Indians, inhabitants of that place, to guard them. They which were young, as boys, ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt
... East at its best has been strong in a type of life wanting in the West; the East has been rich in patience and gentleness and in consideration for every kind of life, even the ant in the dust or the beast in the jungle. The East at its best has weighed conduct in delicate balances and traced the play of cause and effect in character far, far beyond the West; it has been content with simple things and found its true wealth in the inner life. It has willingly, for the sake of truth and goodness, subjected itself to disciplines, ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... sympathies of the plebeians and the selfishness of the rich patricians prevented the republic from asserting itself. On this meagre basis of personal cupidity the Medici sustained themselves. What made the situation still more delicate, and at the same time protracted the feeble rule of Clement, was that neither the Florentines nor the Medici had any army. Face to face with a potentate so considerable as the Pope, a free State could not be established without ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... Russian minister, he was ever ready and willing, had the opportunity offered, to employ his good offices in restoring peace between the parties. It is but an act of simple justice, both to our present minister and his predecessor, to state that they have proved fully equal to the delicate, trying, and responsible positions in which they have ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... style possible. I do not know what changed the captain's mind, perhaps he was a Mason. Uncle met us, and our things were soon on his wagon. Now, our journey lay over a rough, hilly country, and I remember it was very cold. I think we passed over some of the smaller Catskill Mountains. My delicate mother, wrapt as best she could be, with my little sister (not then a year old) in her arms, also the other children, rode. Father and I walked some of the way, as the snow was quite deep on the mountains. He carried his rifle, and I my shot-gun on our shoulders. Our ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... took the form of a constitutional amendment which provided that presidential electors should designate on distinct ballots the persons voted for as President and Vice-President. To change the Constitution in this wise was a delicate matter. No part of the work of the Federal Convention had been more difficult than to reconcile the small-State party to the mode provided for the election of a President. The final settlement had been accepted only in the expectation that in most cases the electoral college ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... of the stairs was huddled a fine-looking old man, whose rich silken kilt and jacket of delicate muslin showed that he was a person of consequence. He had received a severe cut from a dah on the left shoulder, and while Me Dain skilfully bound up the wound, he talked with the old man and learned the story ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... sent up north to act as interpreter between the British and French troops. He stood this for a few months, and Madame Lyon breathed freely, but there came a time when M. Lyon, although a lawyer in times of peace, could not stand the tame life of interpreter. He might be still delicate, but, he argued, there were officers at the front who had only one arm. At the present moment he is in the stiffest ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... on top of the great rock while the five gold seekers crowded around it eagerly. The delicate indicator fluttered excitedly for some moments, then its fluctuations gradually became less and less. At last it stopped entirely, the tiny needle ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... "The lean and wrinkled Cassius" venting his spite at Caesar, by ridiculing his liability to sickness and death, is charmingly characteristic. The mighty Caesar, with all his electric energy of mind and will, was of a rather fragile and delicate make; and his countenance, as we have it in authentic busts, is of almost feminine beauty. Cicero, who did not love him at all, in one of his Letters applies to him the Greek word that is used for 'miracle' or 'wonder' in the New Testament; the ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... was bright with tints Of blossoming peach and quince, And a million flowers whose like has not been seen before or since; And set 'mid delicate odors Were cute little toy pagodas, That looked exactly as if you might go in ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... a recent graduate of the Episcopal College at Geneva on Seneca Lake—Henry Gregory. His seemed to be a soul which by some mistake had escaped out of the thirteenth century into the nineteenth. He was slight in build, delicate in health, and ascetic in habits, his one interest in the world being the upbuilding of the kingdom of God—as he understood it. It was the time when Pusey, Newman, Keble, and their compeers were ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... insensibly be led to rely too much on it, to give it too free a rein, and to find the mirrors in it too fascinating. This organ, this outgrowth, this new part of them, will grow over-active, and its many fears and fancies will naturally injure the body. The interadjustment is delicate and intimate, the strain is continuous. When the brain fails to act with the body, or, worse, works against it, the body will sicken no matter what cures ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... absolutely not! Look here." Reggie hesitated. The subject was delicate. But, once started, it might as well be proceeded with to some conclusion. A fellow couldn't go on talking about his iron-shots after this just as if nothing had happened. This was the time for the laying down of cards, the opening of hearts. "I say, you know," he went on, feeling his way, ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... prettiest hand in the world—on the ledge of the open window, and her little finger provokingly and pertly tilted up, as if it wondered why Joe didn't squeeze or kiss it! To think how well one or two of the modest snowdrops would have become that delicate bodice, and how they were lying neglected outside the parlour window! To see how Miggs looked on with a face expressive of knowing how all this loveliness was got up, and of being in the secret of every string and pin and hook and eye, and of saying it ain't half as real as you think, and ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... found the same Needle agree with itself for several Trials made immediately one after another.* (* These discrepancies result from imperfections in the suspension and mounting of the needles, and are only absent in instruments too delicate for ordinary sea service.) However, all this is of no sort of consequence to Navigation, as the Variation of the Compass can always be found to a degree of accuracy more than sufficient ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... keeping a cigarette in his mouth all the evening. Then there is Jadvyga Marcinkus, who is also beautiful, but humble. Jadvyga likewise paints cans, but then she has an invalid mother and three little sisters to support by it, and so she does not spend her wages for shirtwaists. Jadvyga is small and delicate, with jet-black eyes and hair, the latter twisted into a little knot and tied on the top of her head. She wears an old white dress which she has made herself and worn to parties for the past five years; it is high-waisted—almost under her arms, and not very becoming,—but ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... the man's natural delicacy for her feelings, which he considered must have been cruelly harrowed by all she had lately suffered. Just now, there was no room in her world for the more delicate susceptibilities of emotion. She wholly misjudged him, and the more she thought of it, the more she believed that his letter was dictated by pity rather than love. This pity irked her pride and made her disinclined to ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... higher elevations. From his various observations he found that the effect of high elevation is different upon the same individuals at different times, and believed that, up to heights less than three miles—to which persons of ordinary self-possession might ascend—delicate and accurate scientific observations might be made with ease, but at heights approaching to four miles, such observations could not be made so well, because of the personal distress of the observer, and on approaching to five miles above the earth ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... as a masterly achievement of an arduous task, the difficulties of which are only the less appreciated because of the very excellence of the performance. It contrasts most strikingly with its clumsy predecessor in its approximation to Sterne's deftness of touch, his delicate turns of phrase, his seemingly obvious and facile, but really delicate and accurate choice of expression. Zckert was heavy, commonplace, uncompromisingly literal and bristling with inaccuracies. Bode's work was unfortunately ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... as that with which an artist would group the figures on a landscape. Rocks and vines and wild flowers were scattered over the garden very much as they would be found in the fields; stately roses and dahlias, delicate heliotrope and aristocratic fuchsias, would grow, side by side, with daisies and buttercups. But, best of all, Gypsy liked the corner where the golden russet stood. A bit of a brook ran across it, ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... window in East Lane Chapel, given by the widow of a leading official. The baptismal name of the deceased had been Jacob; and the window showed forth Jacob's Dream, as a delicate compliment to the departed. Elisabeth delighted in this window, it was so realistic. The patriarch lay asleep, with his head on a little white tombstone at the foot of a solid oak staircase, which was covered ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... the sleeper's hair and the hair of Arthur Carr was perfect! Both were of the same light brown color, and both had running through that color the same delicate golden tinge, brightly visible in the light, hardly to be detected at all in ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... my breakfast there in the thick growth, packing my hungry mouth with parched corn and topping off with a promise of turkey, once I drew beyond the danger-belt. Trying to make myself believe my appetite was satisfied, I began the delicate task of leaving cover without leaving any signs. My horse was a fourth of a mile from my tree, so that in finding him the Indians would ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... What a shouting crowd there was! I obviously got a firework in each eye. The king looked very magnificent, to be sure; and that great hall where we feasted on seven hundred delicate foods, and drank fifty royal wines—quel coup d'oeil! but was it not overdone, even for a coronation—almost a vulgar luxury? And eleven is certainly too late to begin dinner. (It was really 6.30 instead ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... so." So she stretched out her hand and said, "O servant of the saddle bags, by the virtue of the Names which command thee, bring me stuffed ribs." Then she thrust in her hand and found a dish containing delicate stuffed ribs of lamb. So she took it out, and called for bread and what else she had a mind to: after which Judar said to her, "O my mother, when thou hast made an end of eating, empty what is left of the food into dishes other than ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... be distinctly separated from the capitulum; it is much compressed; it is composed of unusually thin and delicate membrane, transversely wrinkled and thickly clothed with long cylindrical horns or spines of chitine. These horns (fig. 8 c') are not the analogues of the spines which are articulated on the external ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... the atomic explosions with a velocity about equal to that of light, and it's the recoil that deflects and swings the plate. The amount of uranium decomposed in this experiment couldn't be detected by the most delicate balance—small mass, but ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... by the early French explorers, because of their peculiar shape. I think that the man who gave them this name must have seen them from a great distance; for as we approach them, the graceful curvilinear lines which obtained for them this delicate appellation appear angular and ragged. From our present point of view the name seems a misnomer. If there were twelve of them instead of three, they might better be called the "Titans," to illustrate their relation to ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... while she longs, yet is terribly afraid, to tread. And now then will I bait the hook with flattery, and we shall see whether this golden fish will not swallow it as greedily as all her silver sisters, resembling as they do delicate and fragile foolish ware that sells itself in a market created by its own vanity, where false coin passes easily without detection, and is even more potent and valuable than true. And yet in her case, flattery is very easy, for the grossest ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... maneuver, which began early in an easterly direction, developed into a movement toward the south. The object as stated in the official communique was to clear the interior of the angle of the Somme and to cover the right of the French troops operating north of the river. This delicate maneuver involved great difficulty and risk, inasmuch as the French right flank became the target for an enfilading fire from the south. By consulting the map it will be seen that the artillery positions south of Villers direct ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... giggling convulsively; "but the fact is I've got a couple of dozen tickets in the Cambridgeshire Sweepstake, an' a dear pal of mine—chap named Goldfinder, a rare and delicate bird—has sworn to wire me if I've drawn a horse. D'ye think ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... she reveals herself in Tom's random diaries. As in the printing of a photograph the lights and darks come sparsely out, and unawares the delicate outline, so by a word here, a phrase elsewhere, we realise the presence of a sweet-natured, sound-minded girl, and more than that, of a girl with character. After a spell of Brompton lodgings Tom took her to Kegworth in Leicestershire, where he was to have the neighbourhood and countenance ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... Library and the Oakland Free Library, and decided upon the latter because Ruth lived in Oakland. Who could tell?—a library was a most likely place for her, and he might see her there. He did not know the way of libraries, and he wandered through endless rows of fiction, till the delicate-featured French-looking girl who seemed in charge, told him that the reference department was upstairs. He did not know enough to ask the man at the desk, and began his adventures in the philosophy alcove. He had heard of book philosophy, but had not imagined there ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... did it,'" quoted Lord Mallow. "I entirely appreciate your feelings. Publicity of that sort must be revolting to a delicate mind. I should think Byron would have enjoyed life a great deal better if he had never been known as the author of 'Childe Harold.' He reduced himself to a social play-actor—and always had to pose in his particular role—the Noble Poet. If Bacon really wrote ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... complications. Don't want to offend the Maderists, or be criticized by jealous foreign nations. It's a delicate situation, Dick. The Washington officials know the gravity of it, you can bet. But the United States in general is in the dark, and the army—well, you ought to hear the inside talk back at San Antonio. We're patrolling the boundary line. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... hand, white to transparency, showing the delicate tracing of blue veins, and pressed his lips upon it in chivalrous worship of age ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... and presented so venerable an appearance that we gave him the name of Abou ben Adhem. Mr. Corpse was troubled with a scruple; the man from Little Makin was his adopted brother; in such a case it was not very delicate to appear at all, to strike the blow (which it seems was otherwise expected of him) would be worse than awkward. "I will strike the blow," said the venerable Abou; and Mr. Corpse (surely with a sigh) accepted the compromise. The ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it the name six hundred years ago, when it was built by the great Madoc for the Cistercian monks. The ruins in some parts are now availed of for farm-houses. Fine ash trees bend over the ruined arches, ivy climbs the clustered columns, and the lancet windows with their delicate tracery are much admired. The remains consist of the church, abbot's lodgings, refectory, and dormitory. The church was cruciform, and is now nearly roofless, though the east and west ends and the southern transept are tolerably perfect, so ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... George, Frederick's eldest son, who was born in London on June 4, 1738, and was now, therefore, in his thirteenth year. Frederick's wife had already given birth to eight children, and was expected very soon to bring forth another. George was a seven-months' child. His health was so miserably delicate that it was believed he could not live. It was doubted at first whether it would be physically possible to rear him; and it would not have been possible if the ordinary Court customs were to be followed. But the infant George was wisely handed over to the charge of a robust and healthy young peasant ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... scheme for a central government, there was the double necessity of creating a government strong enough to perform the duties for which it was established, and yet not so strong as to endanger the free self-government of the States. The delicate point to be adjusted was to give to the Federal Government only such powers as were necessary for the establishment of an effective National Government, and, as far as possible, to retain in the States their full ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... the hair is very beautiful, and each hair is contained in a delicate sheath which fits into a slight depression in the skin called the follicle, and around the base of the hair nature has provided glands to secrete oily matter, the purpose of which is to ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... and another, which will indicate a sp. g. between 0.700 and 1.000. The range depends on the size of the instrument. For special work, in which variations within narrow limits are to be determined, more delicate instruments with a narrower range ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... whole group, and in the more advanced genera the developmental stages clearly indicate the ancestral genera of the series, the succession of adult forms in time corresponding to the order of the ontogenetic stages. The transformation of the delicate calcareous supports of the arms, often exquisitely preserved, are extremely interesting. Many of the Palaeozoic genera had these supports coiled like a pair of spiral springs, and it has been shown that ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... me the charge of this most delicate case. Hitherto I have conducted it with success. It is not my habit to fail. I have succeeded in convincing Count Nobili's lawyer, and through him Count Nobili himself, that it would be suicidal to his interests should he not ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... that as Ralph failed to comprehend him, he must be deaf. 'When a boy gets weak and ill and don't relish his meals, we give him a change of diet—turn him out, for an hour or so every day, into a neighbour's turnip field, or sometimes, if it's a delicate case, a turnip field and a piece of carrots alternately, and let him eat as many as he likes. There an't better land in the country than this perwerse lad grazed on, and yet he goes and catches cold and ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... Mr. Hay was successful in carrying to a triumphant conclusion our Far Eastern diplomacy. For years the situation in the Far East, and especially in China, had been delicate and critical to an extreme. The acquisition of Hawaii and the Philippines gave to the United States an extraordinary interest in events occurring in the Orient. The United States stood for the "open door" in China; and as the result of the diplomacy and influence ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... employer sent him to escort her son to the house of a relative living in Lawrenceburg, a village a few miles up the river from Pittsburgh. She warned Paul to be careful of her little boy, who was a delicate child about his own age and gave him street car fare to pay his way up and down. Her last instructions were to leave Harvey at his aunt's and return as soon as possible. When Paul was about to take the car back, he thought of a pleasanter way, one in which he could save his car ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... gone. The purple of the lesser hills, usually so delicate in their gradings, were lost in one monotony of dull red light. The nearer distance was a mere world of ghostly shadows tinged with the same threatening hue, and only the immediate neighborhood was ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... vestibule, through which so many royal visitors had passed. Its blackened walls and broken and prostrate marbles are overspread by a wild natural growth—a green shroud wrapping the ghastly ruin;—or rather, it was like an incursion of a mob of rough vegetation, for there were neither delicate ferns, nor poetic ivy, but democratic grass and republican groundsel and communistic thistles and nettles. In place of the splendid Cent-Guardes stood tall, impudent weeds; in place of courtiers, the supple and bending briar; while up the steps, which the Queen and Empress and ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... primal truth, if Purity Itself and Love Itself could make so amazing a courtship of the human soul, how dared anyone despise what was so honoured of the King? No, under all the self-seeking, the impure motives, the horrid cruelties of life, he must never lose sight of the delicate loveliness, the pathetic aspiration, the exquisite powers of love that are never completely extinguished. He must see with God's eyes, if he were to do God's work. And in the thought that it was, after all, God's work and not his own, Mark found comfort. He had come into the church feeling ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... the dearest little pair of children that can be imagined. Clover's boy of three was as big as most people's boys of five, a splendid sturdy little Englishman in build, but with his mother's lovely eyes and skin. Phillida, whose real name was Philippa, was of a more delicate and slender make, with dark brown eyes and a mane of ruddy gold which repeated something of the tawny tints of her father's hair and beard. Down they came hand in hand, little Phil holding tightly to the polished baluster, chattering as they went, ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... in rank, for he was but a lieutenant; rich in honour, for he bore many scars; was young of days—he was only nineteen—and had seen more combats and sieges than he could count years. So slight in person and of such surpassing and delicate beauty that the Spaniards often thought him a girl disguised in man's clothing; he was yet so vigorous, so active, so brave, that the most daring and experienced veterans watched his looks on the field of battle, and, implicitly following where he led, would, ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... noble lord, called Walter {134} Especke, had founded a monastery in 1122. At the age of twenty-four, in 1133, he became a monk under the first abbot, William, a disciple of St. Bernard. Fervor adding strength to his tender delicate body, he set himself cheerfully about practising the greatest austerities, and employed much of his time in prayer and the reading of pious books. He converted his heart with great ardor to the love of God, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... our eyes, handling it gingerly, for it was still damp, and we saw it was a small handkerchief—a woman's handkerchief—of delicate texture. It was fairly soaked with blood, and yet in a peculiar manner, for two of the corners were much crumpled but ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... is immediately replaced, to remain on for two more weeks. When the bags are finally taken off, the branches should be marked to indicate that the nuts will be hybrids. Before receiving pollen, each pistillate blossom has, emerging from its bud tip, a few delicate red or pink spikes which are sticky enough to make pollen adhere to them. Within a few days after receiving pollen, these spikes may dry up and turn black, a fair indication that the pollen has been effective. ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... are now coming in; the former, at least those I have seen, have pale pulp, and are not superior. The grapes first ripe are the ordinary black sort: we tasted yesterday some very good ones in the Moolla's garden. The Kismiss are especially delicate, and another large sort of very fine rich flavour, both were rather unripe. Those for packing are still unripe. The trenches in this garden are very deep: the vines are planted ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... and delicate she stood, her beauty rendered, perhaps, the more appealing by virtue of the fear reflected on her countenance. Her blue eyes were veiled behind their long black lashes, her lips were tremulous, and her hands ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... had Rochester done? He seemed mad enough to have done anything, plum crazy—would he, Jones, be held accountable for Rochester's deeds? He was fighting with this question when a clock began to strike in the darkness and close to the bed, nine delicate and silvery strokes, that brought a sudden sweat upon ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... jelly-like substance sometimes strewn in thousands along the beaches after a storm. To very few does this term recall either the large Discophore, with its purple disk and its long streamers floating perhaps twenty or thirty feet behind it as it swims,—or the Ctenophore, with its more delicate, transparent structure, and almost invisible fringes in parallel rows upon the body, which decompose the rays of light as the creature moves through the water, so that hues of ruby-red and emerald-green, blue, purple, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... very well to talk about two hearts beating as one, and in the accepted poetical sense of the words, of course Genevieve's and George's did. But as a matter of physiological fact, they didn't. At the end of twenty minutes or so George began turning a delicate blue and a clatter as of distant castanets provided an obligato when he spoke, the same ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... occupy her at the table, and then, when she would have gone, Miss Pratt detained her by a roguish appeal to make Mr. Bullitt and Mr. Watson behave. Both refused all nourishment except such as was placed in their mouths by the delicate hand of one of the Noblest, and the latter said that really she wanted to eat a little tweetie now and then herself, and not to spend her whole time feeding the Men. For Miss Pratt had the same playfulness ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... proceeded the Marquis, "rose with her trials. It was astonishing to see so delicate and beautiful a being buffet so resolutely with hardships. She determined on a desperate means of escape. One dark unruly night, she issued secretly out of a small postern gate of the castle, which the enemy had neglected to guard. She was followed ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... anxiety for my return, her fears for me may oppress her gentle temper: and for her health, does not every hour bring me cause to be alarmed? If it rains, some shower may even then have chilled her delicate frame! If the wind be keen, some rude blast may have affected her! The heat of noon, the dews of the evening, may endanger the life of her, for whom only I value mine. O Jack! when delicate and feeling ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... between the forces from a German man-of-war stationed in Samoan waters and a body of natives rendered the situation so delicate and critical that the war ship Trenton, under the immediate command of Admiral Kimberly, was ordered to join the Nipsic, already at Samoa, for the better protection of the persons and property of our citizens and in ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... assure you, down to the ground. But you can't do it always; no one can do that for another, don't you see, in every case. There are exceptions, particular cases that turn up and that are awfully delicate. It would be too easy if I could shift it all off on you: it would be allowing you to incur an amount of responsibility that I should simply become quite ashamed of. You'll find, I'm sure, that you'll have ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... learned without a teacher."] There was no room for such reflections at present. Conscious of mutual sincerity, by a sort of intellectual communication, through which individuals are led to understand each other better, perhaps, in delicate circumstances, than by words, reserve and simulation appeared to be now banished from the intercourse between the King and Alice. With manly frankness, and, at the same time, with princely condescension, he requested her, exhausted as she was, to accept of his arm on the way homeward, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... wish that I might get an exact idea of the charming person both of us prized so ardently and he had known so intimately. Speaking of Lamb's habits, he said he had never known his friend to drink immoderately except upon one occasion, and he observed that "Elia," like Dickens, was a small and delicate eater. With faltering voice he told me of Lamb's "givings away" to needy, impoverished friends whose necessities were yet greater than his own. His secret charities were constant and unfailing, and no one ever suffered hunger when he was by. He could not endure to see ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... sleighs, and is one of great severity and privation, especially for women. At Yakutsk reindeer-sledge conveys the ill-assorted pair ever northwards for another six hundred miles to Verkhoyansk. The reader has seen the difficulties which we experienced crossing the mountains, where delicate women on their way to exile are compelled to clamber unassisted over giddy places that would try the nerves of an experienced mountaineer. I should add that women never travel alone with a Cossack, but are always accompanied on the journey by another exile, either a man or one of their own sex. ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... the spring of light bursting out on the hill-top, she rose and walked through the long shadows of the graves down to the river and through the long shadows of the stubble down the side of the river, which shone in the morning light like a flowing crystal of delicate brown—and so to Clippenstrae, where she found her aunt still in her night-cap. She was standing at the door, however, shading her eyes with her hand, looking abroad as if for some one that might be crossing hitherward from the east. She did not see ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald |
