"Elegancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on to find Miss O'Day. Their acquaintance had not gone beyond that of class-room meetings and hall chats. She had never visited the girl's rooms. She was surprised at their beauty and elegance. All the Exeter girls had comfortable apartments, but this surpassed anything else at the Hall. The draperies between the doors were of imported India material; her tea-table showed many pieces of Royal Worcester; her extra chairs were of fine cabinet woods. The occupant of the room was seated ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... Evadne of hypocrisy or a wish to deceive her lover; but the first letter that I saw of hers convinced me that she did not love him; it was written with elegance, and, foreigner as she was, with great command of language. The hand-writing itself was exquisitely beautiful; there was something in her very paper and its folds, which even I, who did not love, and was withal unskilled in ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... I had noticed her bright eyes flit from the elegance of my garments to the ruin of Anthony's; at last ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... sea-green hue, which was draped round her figure very gracefully, but entirely concealed her arms. Her full trowsers of rose-colored calico descended nearly to her ankles. The costume of the elder sister was marked by greater elegance. Her shawl was dark red, but of less size and thinner texture than that worn by her sister. After we had been a few minutes together, we became quite familiar friends, and the young ladies permitted me to have a minute inspection of their dresses. They conducted us ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... the youngest of her three dolls; that is to say, Anna was smaller than either Sara or Margaret. It seemed to Juliet that to be without a parlor was to lack elegance. Mr. Jeminy rubbed his chin. "Isn't Anna very young," he asked, "to keep company in ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... at a leading and fashionable resort, which entailed a letter every day, but which did not entail, let us say, the chronicling of the details of hops and evening assemblies, after a manner somewhat scandalously prevalent, with descriptions of the "charming dress worn by Miss A——," the "elegance and grace of the accomplished Miss B——," and all the other disgusting and indecent Jenkinsism of the initials, together with fulsome laudations of the table and even the laundry of the hotel, leading to the impression that the correspondent is upon free board ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... gratified at the admiration which I freely expressed, especially for the noble array of charts and nautical instruments; these, to be quite candid, appealing to me even more strongly than the sumptuous elegance of the drawing and dining-rooms. She smiled brightly as I expatiated with enthusiasm upon these matters, and when at length I ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... shabby inn sitting-room. Hotel accommodation is a blot on the civilization of Paris; for with all its pretensions to elegance, the city as yet does not boast a single inn where a well-to-do traveler can find the surroundings to which he is accustomed at home. To Lucien's just-awakened, sleep-dimmed eyes, Louise was hardly recognizable in this cheerless, sunless room, with the shabby window-curtains, the comfortless ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... continued to eat her porridge with studied elegance, and in gently reproachful tones remarked, "Tony ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... Leslie, the pioneer of pictorial journalism in America, died. I met him only once, when he took me through his immense establishment. I was impressed with him then, as a man of much elegance of manner and suavity of feeling. He was very much beloved by his employees, which, in those days of discord between capital and labour, was ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... difficultie it will admit of a reference to all the rest. For in conclusion, to reduce all to the most refin'd, and polite Language, is not what I pretend to; the Barbarous stile of the ancient Romans will do me as much service, as the quaintnesse, and elegance of Cicero; the Latin of the declining Empire, since the irruptions of the Northern Nations, may be admitted into this designe to as good purpose, as the language of Augustus his time; any sense is the same of that of the Sciences, ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier
... Mrs. Chatterton, startled out of her elegance, and not pausing to adjust the glass, but using her two good eyes ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... many elegances of his own, while he scoffed at conventional elegance. Thus, he could not bear to hear the sound of his own steps, the grit of gravel; and therefore never willingly walked in the road, but in the grass, on mountains and in woods. His senses were acute, and he remarked that by night every dwelling-house ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... curious property of encrusting themselves with a sheath, or shell, of pure silica. These shells remain after the death of the plant, and are as indestructible as flint. They are marvellous objects, both as respects the elegance of their forms and the beauty of their markings. So great is the accumulation of these shells at the bottom of the sea, that they have formed an immense bank 400 miles in length by 120 in breadth, between the 76th and 78th degrees of south latitude. One portion of this bank rests on the coast at ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... at home. He had taken Easter to New York. How brilliant the light! what warmth and luxury! There stood his father, there his mother. What gracious dignity they had! Here was his sister-what beauty and elegance and grace of manner! But Easter! Wherever she was placed the other figures needed readjustment. There was something irritably incongruous-Ah! now he had it-his ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... Dryfooses; he did so few of the things he proposed that he went upon the theory that others must be as faithless. Still, he had a cruel amusement in figuring the possible encounter between Margaret Vance, with her intellectual elegance, her eager sympathies and generous ideals, and those girls with their rude past, their false and distorted perspective, their sordid and hungry selfishness, and their faith in the omnipotence of their ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of the genius of more than one race. The pure and placid but often cold imagination of the Aryan has been at work on some. In others we trace the more picturesque fancy, the fierceness and sensuality, the greater sense of artistic elegance belonging to races whom the Aryan, in spite of his occasional faults of hardness and coarseness, has, on the whole, left behind him. But as the greatest results in the realm of the highest art have always ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... were remarkable only for rhetorical flourishes—we would not be apt to estimate these flourishes at more than their due value. We would not agree with the doctrines of the essayist on account of the elegance with which they were urged. On the contrary, we would be inclined to disbelief. But when all ornament save that of simplicity is disclaimed—when we are attacked by precision of language, by perfect accuracy of expression, by directness and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... were no longer content with their coarse woolen robes," went on Monsieur le Cure. "They had seen silk and they wanted it. They were a luxury loving people who eagerly caught up every form of elegance that came in their way. Many of the rich had enjoyed the splendor and comfort of silken garments and they were not to be deterred from possessing them. Persian traders who possibly got their silk thread from China, and who held the monopoly of the woven fabrics, began sending their goods to Rome, ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
... wasn't Douglas who held his eye. It was the two Lani who followed him into the room. Every line of their bodies was perfection that spoke volumes about generations of breeding for physical elegance. They moved with a co-ordinated grace that made Douglas look even more clumsy by contrast. And they were identical, twin cream-and-gold works of art. They were completely nude—and Kennon for the first time in his life fully ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... department of the national library. About 1803 he began the study of Sanskrit, though he possessed neither grammar nor dictionary, and by great labour he obtained sufficient knowledge of the language to be able to compose in it verses said to possess great elegance. He was the first professor of Sanskrit appointed in the College de France (1815), a chevalier of the Legion of Honour, and a member of the Academie des Inscriptions. He died in 1832. Among his works were Medjouin et Leila (1807), from the Persian; Yadjanadatta Badha (1814) ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... social life of these people, to which Madame Tiphaine had given a certain tone of elegance, all was homogeneous; the component parts understood each other, knew each other's characters, and behaved and conversed in a manner that was agreeable to all. The Rogrons flattered themselves that being received by Monsieur Garceland, the mayor, they would soon be on good terms with all ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... hurried through the gallery of marbles, but looked longer at the pictures, which I understand and taste better; saw the gardens and the stud, and then came here; went directly to the Cathedral, with which I was exceedingly delighted, having seen nothing like it for extent, lightness, and elegance. There is one modern tomb by Chantrey which is very fine, that of Lord Malmesbury, erected by his sister; but, however skilfully executed or admirably designed, I do not like such monuments so well, nor think them so appropriate to our cathedrals, as the rude ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... however, by the universally prevailing law of contrast, may have induced in them a fondness for sad and doleful legends; and we confess, for our own part, that while we from our hearts admire the poetical beauty and elegance of their various fables, we do not a little disrelish the constant vein of melancholy which pervades them all. Not the least sad of their fictions is that which relates to the nightingale; a story that has found its way—and even more universally the opinion of the bird's music which it implied—amongst ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... elegance of form, and simplicity of detail, Greek architecture and ornament has probably never been surpassed. These qualities are admirably displayed in the Parthenon, a temple in Athens, dedicated to Venus. Though in ruins, it is still one of the greatest ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... umpire in the division of the spoils. The office of Mukhia or leader was hereditary in the caste, and in default of male issue descended to females. If among the booty there happened to be any object of peculiar elegance or value, it was ceremoniously presented to the chief of the state. They say that their ancestors were two Sanadhya Brahmans of the village of Ramra in Datia State. They were both highly accomplished men, and one had the gift of prophecy, while the other could ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... of the chandeliers and the critical eye and ear of people trained to know a staring shade in a ribbon, a false light in a jewel, an ill-bred tone, an angular movement, everything that betrays a coarse fibre and cheap training. As a general thing, you do not get elegance short of two or three removes from the soil, out of which our best blood doubtless comes,—quite as good, no doubt, as if it came from those old prize-fighters with iron pots on their heads, to whom some great people are so fond of tracing their descent through ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... at the table of the British governor that a regiment, just landed from England, contained among its officers some of the finest specimens of martial elegance in his Majesty's service; in fact, the most superb-looking fellows ever landed upon the shores of the new World. 'I wager your excellency a pair of gloves,' said Mrs. Morris, an American lady, 'that I will show you a finer man in the procession to-morrow than your excellency can ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... see that the proprietor is not a hermit; for everywhere you discern unostentatious traces of that elegance and refinement that belong to social and cultivated life; nothing rude and rough-hewn, yet nothing prim and precise. Snails and spiders are taught to keep their own places; and among the flowers of that hanging garden on a sunny slope, not a weed is ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... can say, General," said he with a pleasant elegance of expression and intonation that obliged one to listen to each deliberately spoken word. It was evident that Kutuzov himself listened with pleasure to his own voice. "All I can say, General, is that if the matter depended on my personal wishes, the will of ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... women who write, and I shall not attempt to say why Miss Chopin has devoted so exquisite and sensitive, well-governed a style to so trite and sordid a theme. She writes much better than it is ever given to most people to write, and hers is a genuinely literary style; of no great elegance or solidity; but light, flexible, subtle and capable of producing telling effects directly and simply. The story she has to tell in the present instance is new neither in matter nor treatment. "Edna Pontellier," a Kentucky girl, who, like "Emma Bovary," had been in ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... is now in our readers' hands, and should be read with a candid spirit. They will admire the elegance and gracefully-used learning of the "Epistle to Halifax." They will not be astonished at the "Campaign," but they will regard it with interest as the lever which first lifted Addison into his true place in society and letters. They will ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... vision! Blue eyes, yellow ringlets framing most kissable features, dainty form, twinkling feet, flower-like elegance—a rustic Psyche far more to be desired than the ladies of the Court! The Marquis hardly looked twice at the blind girl. All his ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... rush, and the retreat, of the outer world, to the scene of domestic security we found within the Nest, embellished, as was the last, by woman's loveliness and graces, and, in many respects, by woman's elegance. Anneke and her friend received us in a bright, cheerful, comfortable apartment, that was rendered so much the more attractive by their tears and their smiles, neither of which were spared. I could see that both had been dreadfully agitated; but joy restored ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... Christmas dinner with us to-morrow. We live in the plainest way, and cannot entertain in the ordinary acceptation of the term. We only ask you to our ordinary home-dinner," he added, with a sudden sense of the incongruity between the atmosphere of refined elegance which pervaded Mercy's simple, little room, and the expression which all his efforts had never been able to banish from his ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Hilda, I have taken a fancy to try my hand at it," said Zillah, laughingly, full of delight at the ease with which she had gained her desire. "You see," she went on, with unusual sprightliness of manner, "I got hold of a 'Complete Letter-Writer' this morning; and the beauty, elegance, and even eloquence of those amazing compositions have so excited me that I want to emulate them. Now it happens that Guy is the only correspondent that I have, and so he must ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... how much elegance there was in every movement of hers! I could not succeed in learning enough from her. When, after eating, she wiped her lips with the napkin, it was as if spirits were exchanging kisses with the mist. Oh, how interminably silly and clumsy I was beside her! My ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... Laura had always admired her, thought her the prettiest woman in London, the beauty with the finest points; and now these points were so vivid (especially her finished slenderness and the grace, the natural elegance of every turn—the fall of her shoulders had never looked so perfect) that the girl almost detested them: they appeared to her a kind of advertisement of danger and even ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... facts; from chymists complete processes; from divines striking exhortations; and from poets beautiful descriptions. Such is design, while it is yet at a distance from execution. When the time called upon me to range this accumulation of elegance and wisdom into an alphabetical series, I soon discovered that the bulk of my volumes would fright away the student, and was forced to depart from my scheme of including all that was pleasing or useful in English literature, and reduce my ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... breakfast parlor he found Bee, the busy little house-keeper, fluttering softly around the breakfast table, and adding a few finishing touches to its simple elegance. ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Then give me thine. I starve for sympathy. I shall go mad. I saw my baby die And all around me were my husband's friends Who spoke in terms of polished elegance. With formal platitudes and commonplace Regarding me as something curious, A vulgar, noisy creature, lacking taste And proper self-control. While on its bier Lay all the joy that life in promise held. Dead, and my heart within it. (Weeps) (Shylock ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... I might come to enjoy a change of suits every day if only some one would provide them for me; but, if I must earn them myself, the case is different. I'd like to have some one bestow upon me a beautiful Greek suit for Monday, with its elegance, grace, and dignity, a Roman suit for Tuesday, a science suit for Wednesday, a suit of poetry for Thursday, and so on, day after day. But when I must read all of Homer before I can have the Greek suit, the price seems a bit stiff, and I'm not so avid ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... Italian poet Petrarch, who lived some two centuries before Shakespeare. As written by him it was characterized by a complicated rime scheme,[5] {65} which gave each one of these short poems an atmosphere of unusual elegance and polish. ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... the cabin was like the others on the plantation, the interior had a rude, grotesque elegance about it far in advance of any negro hut I had ever seen. The logs were chinked with clay, and the one window, though destitute of glass, and ornamented with the inevitable board-shutter, had a green moreen curtain, which kept out the wind and the rain. A worn but neat ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... height and suppleness. Its charms were scarcely concealed by the clothing she wore, made as it was in the suggestive fashion of the day, with no support to the form but a belt, and as scanty about her shoulders as it was about her shapely feet. It appears to have been her elegance and her manners, as well as her sensuality, which overpowered Buonaparte; for he described her as having "the calm and dignified demeanor which ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... shield is the object of his care, and this he decorates with the liveliest colours. Breastplates are uncommon. In a whole army you will not see more than one or two helmets. Their horses have neither swiftness nor elegance, nor are they trained to the various evolutions of the Roman cavalry. To advance in a direct line, or wheel suddenly to the right, is the whole of their skill, and this they perform in so compact ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... decade of the twentieth century, and Oliver had bought it at a prodigious price a few years after his dramatic success had lifted him from poverty into comfort. The girls, charmed to have made the momentous passage into Sycamore Street, were delighted with the space and elegance of their new home, but Virginia had always felt somehow as if she were visiting. The drawing-room, and especially the butler's pantry, awed her. She had not dared to wash those august shelves with soda, nor to fasten her favourite strips ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... vegetables and cracker boxes. The only point in favor of a life at the grocery was that I would have been nearer to the woods; but if I could not be in the woods, of what avail was that? The Morrises were people of elegance and refinement, and their home expressed their culture. I had made a pleasant exchange, and I felt it was wise to ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... as one of no common order. There was about her an air of aristocratic grace which inspired involuntary respect; an elegance of manner and complete self-possession which marked perfect breeding. Added to this, her face had something which is greater even than beauty—or at least something without which beauty itself is feeble—namely, character and expression. Her soul spoke out in every lineament ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... actually sitting beside her, breathing the same air, listening to her voice. She exhaled a delicate perfume such as incorporates itself in persons of high degree and becomes a natural emanation, an incense vague and indescribable. He felt that he was gazing on the culmination of youth, beauty, and elegance... Yes, Fitzgerald was right. To beggar one's self for love; honor and life, and all to the winds if ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... answered Burke; "am I obliged to prove judicially the virtues of all those I shall see suffering every kind of wrong and contumely and risk of life, before I endeavour to interest others in their sufferings?... Are not high rank, great splendour of descent, great personal elegance and outward accomplishments ingredients of moment in forming the interest we take in the misfortunes of men?... I tell you again that the recollection of the manner in which I saw the queen of France ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... a rather handsome young man standing at the little wicket of her garden, with his gloved hand on the latch. A man of fashion—a town man—his dress bespoke him: smooth cheeks, light brown curling moustache, and eyes very peculiar both in shape and colour, and something of elegance of finish in his other features, and of general grace in the coup d'oeil, struck one at a glance. He was smiling silently and slily on Rachel, who, with a little cry ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... habits and constitution of mind, was the costly one of seeking her chief intellectual excitement in architectural creations. She individually might be said to have built Greenhay; since to her views of domestic elegance and propriety my father had resigned almost everything. This was her coup- d'essai; secondly, she built the complement to the Priory in Cheshire, which cost about one thousand pounds; thirdly, Westhay, in Somersetshire, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... stage as are frequent in the first ranks of Italian society, they would be hissed by those who paid only a shilling for their entrance: so that affectation and a forced refinement may be considered as the bad leaden statues still left in our delicately-neat and highly-ornamented gardens; of which elegance and science are the white and red roses: but to be possessed of their sweets, one must venture a little through the thorns.—Thorns, though figurative, remind one of the cicala, a creature which leaves nothing else untouched here. Surely their clamours and depredations have no equal. I used ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... pocket-book in its receptacle in my coat, the driver had absolutely vanished! I could not see him anywhere. I was the more annoyed at this, as I found that (by mistake) I had given him notes on the Bank of Elegance, which everyone knows are of less value than notes on the Bank of England. However, it was too late to search for the vendor, and I walked away as I could, leading by the bridle the steed ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... and J.A., and several ladies, past masters in the craft of crossing a country with the maximum of elegance and skill and the minimum of risk to their horses, themselves, or their friends. Though the hounds are travelling at their greatest possible pace, they ride alongside them, looking as cool as cucumbers (too cool, I think, for their ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... if beginning with a consonant thus, "won." The rule of adding or omitting the final "n," according as the following word commences with a vowel or a consonant, was meant, I conceive, entirely for elegance in speaking, to avoid the jar on the ear which would otherwise be occasioned, and has no reference to writing, or the appearance on paper of the words. I consider, therefore, that an exception must ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... the utmost privacy to the dwellers of the populous camp; while the elephants, who have trodden out the ground, and smoothed it for the chief's or master's tent, retire to their bivouac. Not only comfort, but even elegance is imparted to these temporary abodes, fitted up with such rapidity in the midst of the wildest jungle. Gay-coloured shawls form the roof and sides, rich carpets the floor, and soft couches run round the walls of ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... however. How could she help it, when Mrs. Garner bore such a striking resemblance to her fair-haired, handsome son? But she could not understand it; it almost seemed as if she was in a dream to find Mrs. Garner here surrounded by such elegance ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... a distraction, will never truly succeed either in acquiring the accomplishment or in using it half-acquired as a distraction; though the one is the most perfect of distractions, and though the other is unsurpassed by any other accomplishment in elegance or in power to impress the universal snobbery of civilised mankind. Literature, instead of being an accessory, is the fundamental *sine qua non* of complete living. I am extremely anxious to avoid rhetorical exaggerations. ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... with downcast eyes. The hair which hung down over her shoulders was dark brown, her eye-brows strongly marked, the eyes themselves rather deep-set. She wore a pretty plum-coloured dress, with a dainty little apron in front; her whole appearance bespeaking a certain taste and love of elegance in the person who ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... that felicitous simplicity and elegance of diction which characterize all Mr. Woodworth's efforts for the ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... body, and stretch its stomach to corresponding dimensions, must indeed be "a triton among the minnows;" and a very terrific one too. Yet is this ferocious creature one of the most delicate and graceful of the inhabitants of the ocean—a very model of tenderness and elegance.' ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... abilities or ingenuity, while they abound in the words of others, have little cause to boast of their own inventions. For the composers of that polished language, in which such various cases as occur in the great body of law are treated with such an appropriate elegance of style, must ever stand forward in the first ranks of praise. I should indeed have said, that the authors of refined language, not the hearers only, the inventors, not the reciters, are most worthy of commendation. You will find, however, that the practices of the court and of the schools ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... curtain rises upon Monsieur Mafflu. He is a man of about fifty, dressed for ease rather than elegance, and a little vulgar. He turns over the papers on the tables, studies himself in the mirror, and readjusts his tie. Madame Nerisse then comes in. She has Monsieur Mafflu's visiting card in her hand. They bow to ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... of holes, our trousers hardly deserved the name, and we limped disgracefully. It was the popular impression in Puerto Rico that every American soldier was a full-fledged millionaire, but even they expressed some disappointment at our evident disregard for the external superfluities of elegance. But, when you stop to consider it, we did not go to the Antilles to make love to the pretty girls. We were quite sufficiently clothed and fed to march through tropical underbrush, take several cities, and put our more gaudily equipped enemies to ignominious ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman
... clay-faced pirate looming so high and so huge in the doorway that he filled it altogether, his clothes torn, filthy and stained from the battle and from careless weeks at sea. His companion was a travesty of his onetime elegance, dirty lace ruffles spotted by forgotten meals, his velvet coat marked by chairbacks and soiled from months of constant wear, his hair unwashed and sleazily caught back, no longer curled with a fine exactitude. Both men had been housed together for too long. Long ago ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... the time when the Spaniards arrived in the country, Montezuma II. was on the throne, one of the most extravagant of voluptuaries. According to the accounts of the early Spanish chroniclers, the ornaments worn by him must have been equal in elegance and value to the crown-jewels of any imperial family of Europe. Asiatic pomp and luxury could not go to greater extremes than these writers attribute to the Aztec court and its emperor. Cortez eagerly and unscrupulously ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... It was my good fortune to obtain instruction from an unrivalled teacher of French, M. Perrault, a Frenchman by birth, who still, even though an old man, diligently worked at the study of his mother tongue, and who at the same time wrote and spoke German with elegance. I pursued the study with ardour, taking two lessons a day, because I desired to reach a certain proficiency by a given time. Slow, however, were my steps, for I was far from having a sufficient knowledge of my own tongue whereon to build a bridge that might carry me into French. ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... special American manner of smoking and such a thing as smoking with a foreign accent. I came to the conclusion that the dignity of smoking a cigar lasted only while the cigar was still long and fresh. There seemed to be special elegance in a smoker taking a newly lighted cigar out of his mouth and throwing a glance at its glowing end to see ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... onyx—bewilder strangers. Does successful Mr. Brown, who, having doffed the apron of trade, considers it due to himself to become—so far as money can operate the strange transformation—a fine fleur; does he desire also to make of plain, homely Mrs. Brown a leader of fashion and a model of expensive elegance?—here are all the appliances and means in abundance. Within these enchanted lines Madame B. may be made "beautiful for ever!" Every appetite, every variety of whim, the cravings of the gourmet and the dreams of the sybarite, may be gratified to the utmost. A spendthrift might ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... full of pretty girls who doted on uniforms, and there were hops, and balls, and flirtations galore. The "beasts" of the fourth class were shut out from this paradise, but they could not help seeing it, and Sam used his eyes with the rest of them. He had never before seen even at a distance such elegance and luxury. The young women especially, in their gay summer gowns, drew his attention away sometimes even from military affairs. There was a weak spot in his make-up of which he had never before ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... ladyship, an only son, nearly of age, and two daughters; the eldest, Lady Jane, had the reputation of being extremely beautiful; and I remembered when she came out in London, only the year before, hearing nothing but praises of the grace and elegance of her manner, united to the most classic beauty of her face and figure. The second daughter was some years younger, and said to be also very handsome; but as yet she had not been brought into society. Of the son, Lord Kilkee, I only heard that he had been a very gay fellow at Oxford, where he ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... complement of shade trees. It is really a most delightful resort after the trying heat of the day, when the cooling influence of the twilight commences; in short it is the Indian Hyde Park, or Bengal Champs Elysees. The variety, elegance, and costliness of the equipages in grand livery that crowd the Maidan during the fashionable hour was a surprise, the whole scene enlivened by the brilliant dresses of the ladies, the dashing costumes, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... piece. Never a harsh word fell from him, never a sneer showed upon his lip. He had laid aside even his cutting English accent, and spoke with the kindly Scots tongue, that set a value on affectionate words; and though his manners had a graceful elegance mighty foreign to our ways in Durrisdeer, it was still a homely courtliness, that did not shame but flattered us. All that he did throughout the meal, indeed, drinking wine with me with a notable respect, turning about for a pleasant word with John, fondling his father's hand, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and long gray drooping moustache lent a distinguishing grace to this survival of a bygone fashion, and over-rode any irreverent comment. Even his slight limp seemed to give a peculiar character to his massive gold-headed stick, and made it a part of his formal elegance. ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... one tree-trunk hollowed out by fire— I was quickly paddled by three naked Indians up a narrow creek, which was almost covered with lotus. The savages, standing in the canoe, worked the paddles with a grace and elegance which the civilized man would fail to acquire, and the narrow craft shot through the water at great speed. The chief sat in silence at the stern. I occupied a palm-fibre mat spread for me amidships. The very few words ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... the Captain was arranged with much elegance. Hothouse flowers and fruits; wines with the icedew sparkling on the dark glass; chickens and tongue, idealized by the confectioner's art, and scarcely recognizable beneath rich glazings and embellishments of jellies and forcemeats; the airiest and least earthly of lobster salads, and a pyramid ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... which would undoubtedly show itself under unnecessary restraints, is converted into a motive of obedience, and thus even a moral influence is produced, by what would appear a mere childish play. They may all be gone through with elegance and propriety: and no rude or indelicate action should be allowed. Many masters are too free in making a show of these exercises to visitors, who are perhaps amused with them, but this is to divert them from their proper use. They were only invented to be introduced ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... frugality enough to find the charm of continual surprise in that delicate new Athens, draws, as he goes, the full savour of its novelties; the marbles, the space and finish, the busy gaiety of its streets, the elegance of life there, contrasting with while it adds some mysterious endearment to the thought of his own rude home. Without envy, in hope only one day to share, to win them by kindness, he gazes on the motley garden-plots, the soft bedding, the showy ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... impressive face. If you could fancy some mighty serpent transformed into a man, preserving in the human lineaments the old serpent type, you would have a better idea of that countenance than long descriptions can convey; the width and flatness of frontal—the tapering elegance of contour disguising the strength of the deadly jaw—the long, large, terrible eye, glittering and green as the emerald—and withal a certain ruthless calm, as if from the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... is there!" cried Bianca in a voice of alarm, starting to her feet as she spoke with a bound, that none but so skilled an artist and so perfect a figure could have executed with the faultless elegance with which ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... advance. He wrote out explanations (or "Resolutions") of his Theses, and sent them, with a letter, to the pope. With great confidence, point, and elegance, but with equal submissiveness and humility, he spoke of the completeness of Christ for the salvation of every true believer, without room or need for penances and other satisfactions; of the evilness of the times, and the pressing necessity for a general ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... said before, is the extraordinary earnestness and good faith with which he executes all he attempts—the ludicrous, the polite, the low, the terrible. In the second of these he often, in our fancy, fails, his figures lacking elegance and descending to caricature; but there is something fine in this too: it is good that he SHOULD fail, that he should have these honest naive notions regarding the beau monde, the characteristics of ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... humanists had, to some extent, monopolized the treasures of classic culture, in order to parade their knowledge of which the multitude remained destitute, and so to become strange prodigies of learning and elegance. With his irresistible need of teaching and his sincere love for humanity and its general culture, Erasmus introduced the classic spirit, in so far as it could be reflected in the soul of a sixteenth-century Christian, among the people. Not he alone; but none more ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... hand, to love and prefer Racine, ah! that is, no doubt, to love above all things, elegance, grace, what is natural and true (at least relatively), sensibility, touching and charming passion; but at the same time is it not also, to allow your taste and your mind to be too much taken with certain conventional ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... girl, with a pair of fine, roguish eyes, came up, and, as usual, offered to tell our fortunes. I could not but admire a certain degree of slattern elegance about the baggage. Her long black silken hair was curiously plaited in numerous small braids, and negligently put up in a picturesque style that a painter might have been proud to ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... to accommodate the whole of our large family, and an almost unlimited number of guests, who, on grand occasions, were stowed away in them, crop and heels. The less said about the elegance of the furniture the better; or of the tea and breakfast services, which might once have been uniform, but, as most of the various pieces had gone the way of all crockery, others of every description ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... principal front has a handsome pediment supported by four columns of the Corinthian order. A bold cornice extends on all sides, which are decorated at the angles with Corinthian pilasters. The whole has an air of substantial elegance, and is in extremely good taste, if we except the door and window cases, which we are disposed to think rather too small. The Piccadilly front is enclosed with a rich bronzed palisade between leaved pillars, being in continuation of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... bundle of fire-wood, and half a dozen odds and ends had to find space about his person; the Q.M.S., too, usually had something to add to this load. A heavy summer shower did not improve matters, and made the descent of the steep clay paths one of speed rather than elegance. Once started with so heavy a load, it was impossible to pull up. So the descent of his regiment that afternoon from the plateau above was a weird and wonderful sight, and resembled nothing more than a mixed avalanche of perspiring ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... unfold the mysteries by which she finds herself surrounded! No sooner had I entered this battlemented mansion than a cold chill struck through me, as with a sense of some brooding terror. All, indeed, was elegance, all splendour! The arches were hung with Tyrian-dyed curtains. The ornaments on the pale Parian mantelpiece were of red Bohemian glass. Everywhere were crimson couches and sofas. The housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax, pointed out to my notice some vases of fine purple spar, and on all sides were Turkey ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... reaching the plainest sort of people, he began to employ the popular language, not recoiling before a solecism, when the solecism appeared to him indispensable to explain his thought. This must have been a cruel mortification for him. In his very latest writings he made a point of shewing that no elegance of language was unknown to him. But his real originality is not in that. When he writes the fine style, his period is heavy, entangled, often obscure. On the other hand, nothing is more lively, clear and coloured, and, as we say to-day, more direct, than the familiar ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... overruns the scent. Sir Bellingharn Graham has been frequently heard to say, that if his kennels would have afforded it, he would never have taken a dog-hound into the field. That in the canine race the female has more of elegance and symmetry of form, consequently more of speed, than the male, is evident to a common observer; but there is nothing to lead to the conclusion that, in the natural endowments of the senses, any superiority ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... feeble that the collector dare not take them in his fingers for fear of crushing them. There are some clad in velvet so extraordinarily delicate that the least touch rubs it off. They are fluffs of down almost as frail, in their soft elegance, as the crystalline edifice of a snowflake before it touches ground. They ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... English officers, aviators-recognizable afar by their slim elegance and their decorations—soldiers who are parading their scraped clothes and scrubbed skins and the solitary ornament of their engraved identity discs, flashing in the sunshine on their greatcoats; and these last risk themselves carefully ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... be no longer able to bear fatigues or hardships, if any epidemical weakness of body should be diffused among them, our power must be at an end, our mines would be an useless treasure, and would no longer afford us either the weapons of war, or the ornaments of domestick elegance; we should no longer give law to mankind by our naval power, nor send out armies to fight for the liberty of distant nations; we should no longer supply the markets of the continent with our commodities, or ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... There were churches too, which we discovered to be such by their construction and the massiveness of their walls; many of them of considerable size, and built of well-burnt bricks. Altogether we were struck by the elegance and substantial appearance of the different buildings, so superior to those of modern architecture, and which convinced us that we were standing in the midst of a once magnificent and wealthy city. Its wealth had proved ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... The elegance and refinement of the same editorial from the Whig, appears from the following. A portion, which we omit, is too foully ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... to give the least attention to this compliment. The moment he cast his eyes on the forty trays, full of the most precious, brilliant, and beautiful jewels he had ever seen, and the fourscore slaves, who appeared by the elegance of their persons, and the richness and magnificence of their dress, like so many princes, he was so struck, that he could not recover from his admiration. Instead of answering the compliment of Alla ad Deen's mother, he addressed ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... his profession; his glee of "Here, in cool grot and mossy cell," has no rival in English composition for the exquisite feeling of the music, the fine adaptation of its harmony to the language, and the general beauty, elegance, and power of expression. He died on ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... perfectly honorable political career, both as deputy and prefect. My wife herself had been better educated than most girls at that time, and both spoke and wrote her own language not only correctly, but with more than ordinary elegance,—a taste she inherited from her father. As to her person, she dressed simply, but always with irreproachable neatness, and a scrupulous cleanliness that richer women might sometimes imitate with advantage. These were the plain ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... with the microscope of criticism, and employ their whole attention upon minute elegance, or faults scarcely visible to common observation. The dissonance of a syllable, the recurrence of the same sound, the repetition of a particle, the smallest deviation from propriety, the slightest defect in construction or arrangement, swell before their eyes ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... here, now there, again seemed to him fairly instinct with life; and he, who deemed perfection of form of so much value, found it difficult to avert his eyes from her marvellous symmetry. And her whole figure! What lines, what genuine aristocratic elegance, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Anna Lewis, who had been a guest, wrote thus: "Her furniture was plain and simple, and there was a frank simplicity corresponding therewith which made me believe she chose to have it so. It looked natural for her. I think I should have been disappointed had I found her rooms fitted up with undue elegance." ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... was in health he beheld, with extreme delight, his accomplished daughter, without one fault which taste or elegance could have imputed to her; nor ever enquired what might be her other failings. But, cast on a bed of sickness, and upon the point of leaving her to her fate, those failings at once rushed on his thought—and all the pride, the fond enjoyment he had taken in beholding her open the ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... BRAZIL, Feb. 29th. — The day has passed delightfully. Delight itself, however, is a weak term to express the feelings of a naturalist who, for the first time, has wandered by himself in a Brazilian forest. The elegance of the grasses, the novelty of the parasitical plants, the beauty of the flowers, the glossy green of the foliage, but above all the general luxuriance of the vegetation, filled me with admiration. A most paradoxical mixture of sound ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Numidian Crane, or Demoiselle, from the elegance of its appearance, and its singular carriage, is called the Demoiselle, which means the Young Lady; for this bird walks very gracefully, and sometimes skips and leaps, as though it were ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... the Duchess of Abrants, "at that time radiant with a sort of glory which women seek as eagerly as men do theirs, that of elegance and beauty. Among the young women composing the court of the Empress and that of the Princesses it would have been hard to find a single ill-favored woman, and there were very many whose beauty made, with no exaggeration, the greatest ornament of the festivities ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... and elegantly illuminated missal. In the "Adoration" the Virgin displays the same defects of proportion, but among the figures of the three Kings and the personages accompanying them, are some of exceptional elegance and exquisite beauty. On the whole the scene may be classed among the finest and most graceful of the works which Fra Angelico ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... striking-looking man imaginable, tall and slight, with deep-set eyes, long iron-gray hair, and shaggy eyebrows. His mouth turns up at the corners, which gives him a most crafty and Mephistophelian expression when he smiles, and his whole appearance and manner have a sort of Jesuitical elegance and ease. His hands are very narrow, with long and slender fingers that look as if they had twice as many joints as other people's. They are so flexible and supple that it makes you nervous to look at them. Anything like the polish of his manner I never saw. When ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... the tangle of syringa and snowball bushes; and as he flies into the laburnum with its golden chain of blossoms that pale before the yellow of his throat and breast, you are so impressed with his grace and elegance that you follow too audaciously, he thinks, and off he goes. And yet this is a bird that seems to delight in being pursued. It never goes so far away that you are not tempted to follow it, though it be through dense undergrowth and ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... themselves go; they assumed that every pleasure was guilty until it was proved innocent, thus transgressing the fundamental principle of English justice; their watchful eyes seemed to be continually saying: 'Touch me—and I shall scream for help!' In costume, any elegance, any elaboration, any coquetry, was eschewed by them as akin to wantonness. Now Geraldine reversed all that. Her frock was candidly ornate. She told him she had made it herself, but it appeared to him that there were more stitches in it than ten women ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... he cared for nothing but the satisfaction of bodily desires. Yet he was twenty-two months old, and occupied a commanding situation in a high chair! His father and mother were aged thirty-two and twenty-eight respectively. They both had pale, intellectual faces; they were dressed with elegance, and their gestures were the gestures of people accustomed to be waited upon and to consider luxuries as necessaries. There was silver upon the table, and the room, though small and somewhat disordered, had in it beautiful things which had cost money. Through a doorway half-screened ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... am not going to believe," she said, affecting gayety to conceal her emotion. "So soon? Don't begin to make protestations already. See, Pepe, I am only a country girl, I can talk only about common things; I don't know French; I don't dress with elegance; all I know is how ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos |
