"Unctuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... any other that they had ever seen. His name was Cornelius Heemskerk. Holland was his birthplace, but America was his nation. He was short and extremely fat, but he had an agility that amazed the five when they first saw it displayed. He talked much, and his words sounded like grumbles, but the unctuous tone and the smile that accompanied them indicated to the contrary. He formed for Shif'less Sol an inexhaustible and entertaining study ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Enter the self-made man. And with him the commercial spirit of the age. Enter the clink of coin and the unctuous corpulence of a roll of bills. Enter the essence of self-satisfaction, the glorious spectacle of a man who spells "myself" with a ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... even a necktie or collar has all the effect of an indecent exposure. The Hon. Mr. Gashwiler, in his trousers and shirt, was a sight to be avoided by the modest eye. There were such palpable suggestions of vast extents of unctuous flesh in the slight glimpse offered by his open throat that his dishabille should have been as private as his business. Nevertheless, when there was a knock at his door he unhesitatingly said, "Come in!"—pushing away a goblet crowned with ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... the carriage drove up, and uncle and aunt were welcomed to our house. My uncle was a tall, portly, unctuous-looking clergyman, quite a gentleman in his manners, and with a very agreeable voice. My aunt, who was some fifteen years my uncle's junior, was very tall for her sex, a fine portly figure, broad shouldered, large bubbies well apart, a small waist for her size, immense hips and evidently buttocks ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... sincere, he met them halfway; he was so patient and considerate, so entirely devoted to pleasing the critical trout, and so successful in his efforts,—surely his heart was upon his hook, and it was a tender, unctuous heart, too, as that of every angler is. How nicely he would measure the distance! how dexterously he would avoid an overhanging limb or bush and drop the line exactly in the right spot! Of course there was a pulse of feeling and sympathy to the extremity ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... laughing, as he said, fit to break his jaws. And he was no longer the timid little unctuous and obsequious provincial usher, but a well-set-up fellow, who, after reciting and mimicking the whole scene with impressive ardour, was now laughing with a shrill laughter the sound of which made ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... length, should do so distinctly, and provoke the observer to take pleasure in seeing how completely the workman is master of the particular material he has used, and how beautiful and desirable a substance it was, for work of that kind. In oil painting, its unctuous quality is to be delighted in; in fresco, its chalky quality; in glass, its transparency; in wood, its grain; in marble, its softness; in porphyry, its hardness; in iron, its toughness. In a flint country, one should feel the delightfulness of having flints to pick up, and ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... stinging of bees and of wasps, and do away all swellings, and keep books and clothes there it is among from moths and other worms, and save them fro fretting and gnawing. The fruit of laurel trees are called bays, and are brown or red without, and white within and unctuous. ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... Tartar they were Praecipitated with Oyl of Vitriol, or with another Liquor I could Name. Nay, that Black Mineral Antimony it self, being reduc'd by and with the Salts that concurr to the Composition of common Sublimate, into that Cleer though Unctuous Liquor that Chymists commonly call Rectifi'd Butter of Antimony, will by the bare affusion of store of Fair Water be struck down into that Snow-white Powder, which when the adhering Saltness is well wash'd off, Chymists ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... huge black cross. It reached its elevation, and was made fast in almost less time than it has taken to relate it, and instantly a pile of faggots which had been raised a short distance in front if it, and steeped in oil or some other unctuous ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... mother. I'm heartily glad the fellow has gone. I hate his supercilious manner, his superior tone, and his unctuous bearing. He's ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... to the hospital, but he would have infinitely sooner resigned all pretensions to the place than have owed it in any manner to Mr. Slope's influence in his favour. Then he thoroughly disliked the tone of Mr. Slope's letter; it was unctuous, false, and unwholesome, like the man. He saw, which Eleanor had failed to see, that much more had been intended than was expressed. The appeal to Eleanor's pious labours as separate from his own grated sadly against his feelings ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... talk back. It's them that just takes things as they come, and lets bygones be bygones, that get the good checks at the end of the week. Some of them fight more 'n they work, but I guess you won't be that kind," she concluded, with an unctuous smile, displaying two rows of false teeth. Then, with a quick, nervous, jerky gait, she hopped up the flight of rough plank stairs, threw open a door, and ushered me into the bedlam noises of the "loft," where, amid the roar of ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... letters reached her. One of them contained the news that Marshall Wace, surmounting his religious doubts and scruples—by precisely what process remained undeclared—had at last taken Holy Orders. Concerning this joyful consummation Henrietta waxed positively unctuous. "He had gone through so much"—the old cry!—to which now was added conviction that his own trials fitted him to minister the more successfully to his brethren ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... devoid of meaning. "Really," and Olive felt as if she were a young child and he were offering her a stick of candy; "it was a very smart little tap. Yes, as you say, a Mamie is an anticlimax to one's best endeavours. Now, if all the ladies," Olive had a momentary longing to hurl a plate in his unctuous direction; "only were blessed with names like yours, we poor novelists would never be devoid of sources for ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... unctuousness &c adj.; unctuosity^, lubricity; ointment &c (oil) 356; anointment; lubrication &c 332. V. oil &c (lubricate) 332. Adj. unctuous, oily, oleaginous, adipose, sebaceous; unguinous^; fat, fatty, greasy; waxy, butyraceous, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... but with stress of unctuous generosity. This, if his hearers knew what he had suffered at her hands, must tell greatly to his credit; if they were not aware of the circumstances, such a tone would become him as the ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... Madgwick was remarking in her unctuous voice. "I always felt there was something just a little—well, what shall I call it?—second-rate about the girl. Mr. Rose being a gentleman in every sense of the word makes the whole ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... and many others, which we might produce to this purpose, we may gather, that, when we grind and stir the Cacao, the divers parts, which Nature hath given it, doe artificially, and intimately mixe themselves one with another; and so the unctuous, warme, and moist parts, mingled with the earthy (as we have said of the steele) represses, and leaves them not so binding, as they were before; but rather with a mediocritie, more inclining to the warme, and moist temper of ...
— Chocolate: or, An Indian Drinke • Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma
... foam to M. Fortunat's lips, and any one seeing him then would subsequently have had but little confidence in his customary good-natured air and unctuous politeness. "And yet the marquis is as much to be pitied as I am," he continued. "He loses as much, even more! And such a sure thing it seemed, too! What speculation can a fellow engage in after this? And a man must put ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... things would often take possession of me; sometimes at church especially where the gray light fell upon me and chilled me I felt it most. The awful tediousness of some of the Sunday sermons; the emptiness of the prayers, written in advance and spoken with conventional unctuous voice, and gestures to suit; and the apathy of the people who, dressed out in their best, came to listen,—how early I divined its hollowness,—and how deep was my disappointment, and how cruel the disillusionment—oh! the disheartening formalism of it all! The very appearance ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... "Mother!" I remained more than a minute panting for breath, and then ventured to draw back the curtains of the bed—my mother was not there! but there appeared to be a black mass in the centre of the bed. I put my hand fearfully upon it—it was a sort of unctuous, pitchy cinder. I screamed with horror—my little senses reeled—I staggered from the cabin and fell down on the deck in a state amounting almost to insanity: it was followed by a sort of stupor, which lasted for ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... they believed it not." "His very countenance carried the force of a sermon with it." [Footnote: Parentator, p. 40.] He kept a strict account of his mental condition, and always was pleased when able to enter in his diary at the end of the day, "heart serious." He was unctuous in his preaching, and wept much in the pulpit; he often mentions being "quickened at the Lord's table [during which] tears gushed from me before the Lord," [Footnote: Parentator, p. 48.] but of his self-sacrifice, his mercy, and his truth, his own acts and words are the ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... Trevarthen held her cottage on a quarterly tenancy, and could neither have her rent raised nor be evicted before Michaelmas. Hester would have been puzzled to say precisely what sealed her lips from inquiry. Partly, no doubt, she shrank from discovering a fresh obligation to Mr. Sam, whose unctuous handshake she was learning to detest. Tom Trevarthen had disappeared. His mother kept house unmolested. Why not let sleeping dogs lie? For the rest, the school absorbed most of her thoughts, and paid back interest in cheerfulness. The children were beginning to show signs of loyalty, and a ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hole at the other side. But Bernard did a better thing. The only emigrant in his party was Leonora, and I like to think they lived happily ever after on his little orange-farm. I can only hope that his rival, Pike-Sarpe, a horrible little unctuous cad of a solicitor, will shortly do something to attract the official ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... singing all the same, dragged on their standard-bearers, the banners now hanging over their shoulders; and the good, fat priests, red and panting, shoving their vast overworked bellies before them, still found strength to shout into the very ear of the mules, in an unctuous, effusive voice, "Long live our noble Bey!" The rain on all this, the rain falling in buckets, discolouring the pink coaches, precipitating the disorder, giving the appearance of a rout to this triumphal ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... contrived to charm all but a few cross-grained critics. His good humour seemed inexhaustible; and those who saw his cherubic face beaming sweetly on the company at banquets or assemblies fancied that so delightful a man was never known before. But this suave, unctuous gentleman, who fascinated every one, from Queen to cottager, spent a pretty fair share of his life in writing vicious witticisms and scandals concerning the folk with whom he seemed to be on affectionate terms. At nights, after spending his days in working and bowing ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... Wordsworthian and therefore out of reach of reason—doubt that Wordsworth's arrogance was inhuman? He, not unprovoked by scant gratitude on Coleridge's part for very solid services, and by a doubtless sincere but rather unctuous protest of his brother in opium-eating against the Confessions, told some home truths against that magnificent genius but most unsatisfactory man. A sort of foolish folk has recently arisen which tells us that because Coleridge wrote "The Ancient Mariner" and "Kubla Khan," he was quite entitled ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... on this question. With a courteous wave of one dusky hand, he motioned us gracefully into somebody else's deck chairs, and then sat down on another beside us, while the gorgeous suite stood by in respectful silence—unctuous gentlemen in pink-and-gold brocade—forming a court all round us. Elsie and I, unaccustomed to be so observed, grew conscious of our hands, our skirts, our postures. But the Maharajah posed himself with perfect unconcern, like one well used to the fierce light ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... resorted to, of course, by Roswell's orders. Lamps were burned with great freedom; not little vessels invented to give light, but such torches as one sees at the lighting up of a princely court-yard on the occasion of a fete, in which wicks are made by the pound, and unctuous matter is used by the gallon. Old canvass and elephants' oil supplied the materials; and the spare camboose, which had been brought over to the house to be set up there, while the other galley was being placed on board, very well answered the purpose of a lamp. ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Haste to discover all that may be known About the situation in Cologne; Or, like Sir WILLIAM BEVERIDGE, to appease The clamourings of esurient Viennese— In none of these things Fortune waits for me, Nor Knighthood cheap, nor unctuous O.B.E. Ah, not for me to note with facile pen Successive stages of the L. of N. With calorimetric and statistic arts Administer the prog of Foreign Parts, Or, eager not to do the thing by halves, To reconcile the Czechs and Jugo-Slavs— I will, resigning honours, kudos, pelf, Administer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... respect she may still have felt for him. She found that he was in the habit of examining her private papers in her absence, and that he had opened her letters and resealed them. His manner to her was unctuous as a rule; but she knew he lied to her without hesitation if it suited his purpose—and that alone would have been enough to destroy her liking for him, for it is not in the nature of such a woman to love a man who has looked her in the face and ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... Mrs. Errington upon her death-bed. Possibly, as her end drew near she had perceived herself tower to camel size, the entrance to Paradise shrink to the circumference which refuses to receive a thread manipulated by an unsteady hand. Yes, yes; they began to expand in unctuous conjecture that merged into deliberate assertion, when some one remarked that Mrs. Errington had died in exactly three minutes of the rupture of a blood-vessel on the brain. So this comfortable theory was exploded. And ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... senators seldom mingled in such a crowd, except at guarded distances, to make a pageant for it; it was picturesque, shabby, malodorous, composed chiefly of young women with bright-eyed babies and baskets emitting unctuous savors of frittola and garlic; now and then an old peasant who could not be tranquil until she had heard Fra Paolo speak was escorted by a rebellious grandson, bribed to quiet by the promise of a soldo ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... rector's foot on the resounding steps of the portico. He bowed respectfully to the three occupants of the room, and addressed them in phrases of that unctuous civility which priests are accustomed to use. To the rather absent-minded greeting of the mistress of the house, he replied ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... Davis wrote dialect poetry at the time when Dunbar was writing. He gained great popularity, but it did not spread beyond his own race. Davis had unctuous humor, but he was crude. For illustration, note the vast stretch between his "Hog Meat" and Dunbar's "When de Co'n Pone's Hot," both of them poems on the traditional ecstasy of the Negro in contemplation ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... not for its poetical value and significance, but rather as an example of a song which the trained Hawaiian singer delights to roll out with an unctuous gusto that ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... and to Esther those of a lady of Guermantes whose lover he had been); their colours had melted into one another, so as to add expression, relief, light to the pictures. A touch of red over the lips of Esther had strayed beyond their outline; the yellow on her dress was spread with such unctuous plumpness as to have acquired a kind of solidity, and stood boldly out from the receding atmosphere; while the green of the trees, which was still bright in Silk and wool among the lower parts of the panel, but had ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... rebellion, in Carlyle its outcome is reverence, a noble mood, which is one of the highest predispositions of the English character. The instincts of sanctification rooted in Teutonic races, and which in the corrupt and unctuous forms of a mechanical religious profession are so revolting, were mocked and outraged, where they were not superciliously ignored, in every line of the one, while in the other they were enthroned under the name of Worship, as the ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... the mineral called talc, unctuous to the touch, of a greenish color, glossy, soft, and easily scratched, and leaving a silvery line, when drawn on paper. It is used for marking on ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... enormous, and quite beyond the belief of men accustomed to the appetites of temperate zones; but we beg them to remember that arctic frosts require to be met with arctic stimulants, and of these an immense quantity of unctuous food is the best. ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... fond of the Voltairean chevalier. Those two majestic relics of the nobility and clergy, though of very different habits and morals, recognized each other by their generous traits. Besides, the chevalier was as unctuous with the abbe as he ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... pine-trees left standing in the ground, hard outside but soft within, where the wood is as pliable as tinder. In this yielding substance, which has a resinous aroma, the larvae spend their life. For the metamorphosis they leave the unctuous regions of the centre and penetrate the hard wood, where they hollow out oval recesses, slightly flattened, measuring from twenty-five to thirty millimetres[1] in length. The major axis of these cells is always vertical. They are continued by a wide exit-path, sometimes straight, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... study—the most interesting in the world. The genuineness of the courtesy, the real kindness and the hospitality of the English are beyond praise and without limit. In this they show a strange contradiction to their dickering habits in trade and their "unctuous rectitude" in stealing continents. I know a place in the world now where they are steadily moving their boundary line into other people's territory. I guess they really believe that the earth ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... Miro barked. "One move and it will be your last." Gone was the smooth unctuous speech of former times. His tone now ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... an Amen that lasted five minutes; and the priest, in an unctuous voice, murmured some Latin words, of which one could hear only the sonorous endings. He then walked round the boat, sprinkling it with holy water, and next began to murmur the "Oremus," standing alongside the boat opposite the sponsors, who ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... entirely because the whale is so excessively unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence; that appears to result, in some way, from the consideration before mentioned: i.e. that a man should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea, and eat it too by its own light. But ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... away. "You're excited, Miss. You go home an' think it over reasonable. You'll be sorry you talked this away to me," he said with unctuous virtue. Then, swiftly, he turned and went straddling down the walk, his spurs jingling music as ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... venison was found to be more savory; the cakes were lighter; and the pork less greasy. On this subject of grease, however, we could wish that a sense of right would enable us to announce its utter extinction in the American kitchen; or, if not absolutely its extinction, such a subjection of the unctuous properties, as to bring them within the limits of a reasonably accurate and healthful taste. To be frank, Dorothy carried a somewhat heavy hand, in this respect; but pretty Margery was much her superior. ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... read far in Spenser without taking a rest—as we farmers lean upon our spades, when the digging is in unctuous fat soil ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... was quiet, but none the less thrilling on that account. Mr. Raider received her cordially, and with a great deal of unctuous fatherly advice. He took her into his office, which was one corner of the press room glassed in by itself, and talked over her duties, which, as far as Lark could gather from his discourse, appeared to consist in ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... monsters, whom thy upward face Hath to the marbled mansion all above Never presented! O! a root; dear thanks: Dry up thy marrows, vines and plough-torn leas; Whereof ingrateful man, with liquorish draughts And morsels unctuous, greases his pure mind, That from it all ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... streets. The Italians are a plump race, with well-developed muscles, and their vocal chords share in the general muscular health and development; so that the average voice in Italy has a much wider compass than in most other countries; and an unctuous ease of execution is readily acquired. Their language, again, favors Italian singers quite as much as their climate. It abounds in the most sonorous of the vowels, while generally avoiding the difficult U, and the mixed vowels Oe and Ue, as well as the harsh consonants, which are ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... smiled faintly in decorous response, and bowed in silence; but his wife resented the unctuous beaming of content on the other's wide countenance, and could not ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... during the night. I cannot express to your highness the satisfaction that I felt at finding that the carcase of the harpooner was in my possession. I surveyed my treasure over and over again with delight. I could now cook my French dishes. He was soon dissected, and all his unctuous parts carefully melted down, and I found that I had a stock which would last me as long as the bodies which I had remaining to exercise my skill upon. The first day I succeeded admirably—I cooked ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... country supplied animal and vegetable "delicacies" which a white man would pass unnoticed. Many a time, when I was as hungry as a wolf, I found my vagabonds in a nook of the woods, luxuriating over a mess with the unctuous lips of aldermen; but when I came to analyze the stew, I generally found it to consist of a "witch's cauldron," copiously filled with snails, lizards, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... Baptists have been not a little troublesome in their day, and in East Anglia they were more numerous than in London. It may be that they have helped to weaken Dissent in that part of the world. Men of independent intellect must have been not a little shocked by that unctuous familiarity with God and the devil which is the characteristic of that class. On a Sunday morning Jemmy Wells, as his admirers called him, would describe in the most graphic manner what the devil had said to him in ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... doctrine, alternating helplessly between tenderness and truculence, the charity of a Fry and the tragic atrocity of Medea. After this dismal ruler, Trinidad, by the grace of the Colonial Office, was subjected to the manipulation of an unctuous dandy. This successor of Gordon, of Elliot, and of Cairns, durst not oppose high-placed official malfeasants, but [72] was inexorable with regard to minor delinquents. In the above retrospect we have ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... to adopt the habit against which Matthew Arnold directed one of his witty essays, the habit of expressing a too unctuous satisfaction with the age and time in which we are living. That was the intellectual error of the Eighteenth Century. There are problems of poverty, injustice, disease, and unhappiness, which should make the most ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... period of profound introspection followed, and then he broke forth: "Well, I 'll be hanged!" emphasizing each word with a slow nod. Then he began to laugh,—not noisily; scarcely audibly, indeed; but with the deep, unctuous chuckle of one who gloats over some exquisitely absurd situation, some jest of many facets, each contributing ...
— A Love Story Reversed - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... a tall, distingue woman, with powdered hair and imposing presence, who presented a striking contrast to the meagre personage engaged in conversation with her. The Duke de Riancourt was a small, nervous man of thirty years or thereabouts, with a sanctimonious, unctuous mien, shifting eyes and long, smooth hair, carefully parted near the middle of the forehead, and a rigidity of movement that showed great ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... fruit and flowers, and by emulation, buoyed up perhaps by this precedent, you sit down and sketch a still life. What greater joy than to seek out a harmony, find the delicate suave tones, and paint it in an unctuous medium. Yes, it's a joy, but only when head and heart are both in it! The museums too, used to be a source of untold pleasure, but even if they were open you wouldn't go, because the head and the heart are 'Out there' where that wondrous youth is being mowed down—'Out there' where lies our ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... tractile power. It seems strange that this error should have diffused itself very extensively, when it is remembered that a certain degree of roughness is essential to frictional resistance. The smoothness of the ordinary railway track is roughness compared to that of an oiled or unctuous metallic surface; and it has been amply demonstrated that the resistance of friction, of two bearing surfaces depends, not upon their extent, but upon the pressure with which they are forced together. A traction wheel, of given weight, resting upon two ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... was holding, Trotty made no pause in his attack upon the savory meat before him, but cut and ate, and cut and drank, and cut and chewed, and dodged about, from tripe to hot potato, and from hot potato back again to tripe, with an unctuous and unflagging relish. But happening now to look all round the street—in case anybody should be beckoning from any door or window, for a porter—his eyes, in coming back again, encountered Meg: sitting opposite to him, with her arms folded; ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... and South America. The seeds are surrounded with a thin coating of a waxy pulp, which is separated from them by washing in water, passing the liquid through a sieve and allowing the suspended pulp to deposit. The water is then drained away and the paste dried, till it is a thick, stiff, unctuous mass. In this state it has a dark orange-red colour and is known as "roll'' or "flag'' arnotto, according to the form in which it is put up, but when further dried it is called "cake'' arnotto. Arnotto is much used by South American Indians for painting ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and camels, and when violently pressed by hunger, men. The Somal declare the Waraba to be a hermaphrodite; so the ancients supposed the hyaena to be of both sexes, an error arising from the peculiar appearance of an orifice situated near two glands which secrete an unctuous fluid. ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... right," answered Claudius. "And I thank you for the kind thought of help. It is very good of you." He turned towards her, and leaned upon his hand as he sat. Still the fog rolled up, and the lifeless sea seemed overshed with an unctuous calm. They were almost in the dark on their strip of beach, and the moisture was already clinging in great, thick drops to their clothes, and to the rocks where they sat. Still Claudius looked at Margaret, and Margaret looked at the narrow band of oily ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... of Buenavista that the gneiss manifests a tendency to pass into eurite.) The primitive limestone often simply covers this latter rock in concordant stratification. Very near the Hato the talcose slate becomes entirely white, and contains small layers of soft and unctuous graphic ampelite.* (* Zeichenschiefer.) Some pieces, destitute of veins of quartz, are real granular plumbago, which might be of use in the arts. The aspect of the rock is very singular in those places ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... tinkling note of the muffin-bell strikes agreeably upon the ear, suggestive of fragrant souchong and bottom-crusts hot, crackling, and unctuous. Now ensues a delicate savour in the atmosphere of the terrace kitchens, and it is just at its height when Smith, Brown, Jones, and Robinson are seen walking briskly up the terrace. They all go in at Smith's, where the muffin-man went in about half an hour before, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... government laboratories seemed to close in on his mind in boiling, chaotic waves of frustration. What was the good of his work, all this great installation, all the gleaming expensive equipment in the lab around him? He was alone. None of them seemed to share his problem, the unctuous, always correct Gordon, the easy-mannered, unbearable Mason, all of them gave him a feeling of ...
— Security • Ernest M. Kenyon
... owners at all," returned Penfield coolly, "I mean just what I said—the owner. Ah," the most unctuous satisfaction in his voice, "for all your non-committal manner I don't believe you know as ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... upon the arms of his chair, and matched his hands together by the thumbs and by the forefingers, and by the other fingers, one by one; and little by little the musical, false voice of his lady, and the singularly gentle and unctuous tones of his host, Arnold de Curboil, blended together and lost themselves, just as the gates of dreamland softly ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... conservative ethical reaction. He upholds Catholicism and the sacredness of the "home." He is a master in plot and has a clear, vigorous and appealing style. A gravely portentous sentiment sometimes spoils his tragic effects; but every lover of Paris will enjoy the unctuous elaboration of the "backgrounds" of his stories, touched often with the most delicate and mellow evocations of ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... that the brain was pregnant. To what purpose doth the Pia Mater lie in so dully in her white formalities; sure she hath had hard labour, for the brows have squeezed for it, as you may perceive by his buttered bon-grace that film of a demicastor; 'tis so thin and unctuous that the sunbeams mistake it for a vapour, and are like to cap him; so it is right heliotrope, it creaks in the shine and flaps in the shade; whatever it be I wish it were able to call in his ears. There's no proportion between that head and appurtenances; ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... to Bonaparte, who, recognizing his supple nature and the unctuous flattery of his eloquence, chose him to deliver the eulogy on Washington, and perhaps something of his own at the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... John Cross, in the simplicity of his nature, never dreamed of this, but, on the contrary, when our adventurer dilated in the fatherly manner already adverted to, be looked upon himself as particularly favored of Heaven, in falling upon a youth, as a pupil, of such unctuous moral delivery. ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... miserably dirty. The promise of a dish of fresh trout from the Golo was a redeeming feature in the aspect of affairs to one who had waited long, and walked far, without his breakfast. But the dish reeked as if the Golo ran oil, and the fish were still floating in the unctuous stream, spite of my injunctions to the weird priestess of the mysteries of the cave beneath—“Senza olio, senza olio,” reversing the phrase in the Baron de Grimm's story of the Frenchman, who, having sacrificed his own goût to his guest's penchant for asparagus ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... temporarily drawn his bank account down to the irreducible minimum and borrowed on his securities up to the insurmountable maximum. It was a bad time for his children to tap him. But here they were—Jno. P., Jerry, and Julia—all very unctuous over the home-coming, and yet all of them evidently ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... there; the roof torn into shapeless rents; the shutters hanging about the windows in rags of rotten wood; before its gate, the stream which had gladdened it now soaking slowly by, black as ebony, and thick with curdling scum; the bank above it trodden into unctuous, sooty slime: far in front of it, between it and the old hills, the furnaces of the city foaming forth perpetual plague of sulphurous darkness; the volumes of their storm clouds coiling low over a waste of grassless fields, fenced from each other, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... in news of local high life. Its chief item, to-day, was the announcement of a dance she was to give shortly—at the club, as usual—and she had just finished for the second time the commentator's glib and unctuous phrasing. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... human face; the Beast is everywhere growing more and more out of the thing that had been Man. And John Burley, still unconquered, but clean lost to his senses, fancies himself a preacher, and drawls forth the most lugubrious sermon upon the brevity of life that mortal ever beard, accompanied with unctuous sobs; and now and then in the midst of balderdash gleams out a gorgeous sentence, that Jeremy Taylor might have envied, drivelling away again into a cadence below the rhetoric of a Muggletonian. And the waiters choked up the doorway, listening and laughing, and prepared to call cabs and coaches; ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... exclusively confined to the dull, staid world of Philadelphia, with its sweet refinement in sections, its pretensions to American social supremacy, its cool arrogation of traditional leadership in commercial life, its history, conservative wealth, unctuous respectability, and all the tastes and avocations which these imply. He had, as he recalled, almost mastered that pretty world and made its sacred precincts his own when the crash came. Practically he had been admitted. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... smouldering in a grin—it burst out the next instant in a long-drawn "haw, haw!" followed by a sudden collapse into utter gravity, as the knife and fork darted down on the prey. Martin Poyser's large person shook with his silent unctuous laugh. He turned towards Mrs. Poyser to see if she too had been observant of Tom, and the eyes of husband and wife met in a ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... as a whole— Are careless on the score of grace; And hence you needn't comb your poll Or decorate your unctuous face. ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... dominion. He could send Alva to browbeat the Pope, as well as to oppress the Netherlanders. He could compass the destruction of the orthodox Egmont and Farnese, as well as of the heretical William. His unctuous piety only adds to the abhorrence with which we regard him; and his humility in face of death is neither better nor worse than the assumed humility which had become second nature to Uriah Heep. In short, take ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... his engine with an unctuous glee. He was boyishly happy because he and the Home Secretary had done them out of the Car of Victory and ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... Davy! Do something; be somebody; get out of the valley." Here was my shibboleth. I must do something; I must be somebody; I must get out of the valley! And then I should go to Penelope Blight, and a hundred urbane, unctuous uncles could not defraud me ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... artificial marshallings of names and numbers (xxiii.-xxvii.), in the enumeration of mere subjects without predicates, which simply stand on parade and neither signify nor do anything. The monotony is occasionally broken only by unctuous phrases, but without refreshing the reader. Let the experiment of reading the ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... mice, a newt's stewed thigh, A bloated earwig and a fly; With the red-capp'd worm that's shut Within the concave of a nut, Brown as his tooth. A little moth Late fatten'd in a piece of cloth: With withered cherries, mandrakes' ears, Moles' eyes; to these the slain stag's tears The unctuous dewlaps of a snail, The broke-heart of a nightingale O'ercome in music; with a wine Ne'er ravish'd from the flattering vine, But gently press'd from the soft side Of the most sweet and dainty bride, Brought in a dainty daisy, which He fully quaffs up ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... his lion, some little new law of the Duke's! Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don So-and-so, Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Saint Jerome, and Cicero; "And, moreover" (the sonnet goes rhyming), "the skirts of Saint Paul has reached, Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than 50 ever he preached." Noon strikes—here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and smart With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart! Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife; No keeping one's haunches still; ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... had to be shortened by omitting all reference to German philosophy, and the account of the schoolmen is cursory. It is easy to see why the suave and amiable Mackintosh appeared to Mill to be a 'dandy' philosopher, an unctuous spinner of platitudes to impose upon the frequenters of Holland House, and hopelessly confused in the attempt to make compromises between contradictory theories. It is equally easy to see why to Mackintosh the thoroughgoing and strenuous Mill appeared to be a one-sided fanatic, blind ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... including costume and linen, costs 1 fr. Leave the train at the Plage station. 3m. from Montpellier, in the retired valley of the Mosson, is the mineral water establishment of Foncaude. Water saline, unctuous, and sedative. Good for indigestion and nervous disorders. 12m. north from Montpellier is the Pic du Loup, rising from the village St. Mathieu (pop. 500) to the height of 680 ft., commanding an extensive view, and having on the top a ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... contract. Subject to this, he evidently thought himself neglectful of his rightful interests if he did not make the most out of every transaction, and he piously invokes the blessing of Heaven upon the unsavoury business, as, with unctuous complacency, he counts up his gains. But, however such things may be condoned by the prevailing practice they have an ugly appearance when exposed to the public gaze, and Pepys was sorely alarmed both for ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... the world think you a hypocrite, willing to cajole it with the idea that you are a believer in the New Testament, while you in fact reject it, or one of the most barren uninventive of all human beings, or fanatically fond of mystical language,—do not, I say, affect this very unctuous way of talking. And, for another reason, do not. I beseech you, adopt the phraseology of men who, according to your view, must surely have been either the most miserable fanatics or the most abominable impostors; for if they believed all that system of miracle and doctrine they professed, ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... or of vulgarity for the best of men. St. Augus-tine is not always clear of offence, and John Bunyan himself exaggerates venial peccadilloes into heinous sins. But Marcus Aurelius is neither vulgar nor unctuous; he extenuates nothing, but nothing sets down in malice. He never poses before an audience; he may not be profound, he is always sincere. And it is a lofty and serene soul which is here disclosed before us. Vulgar vices ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... but black as jet, with the cups of acorns, and with twigs of birch that still retained almost unchanged their silvery outer crust of bark, but whose ligneous interior existed as a mere pulp. I have even laid open, in layers of a sort of unctuous clay, resembling fuller's earth, leaves of oak, birch, and hazel, that had fluttered in the wind thousands of years before; and there was one happy day in which I succeeded in digging from out the very bottom of the excavation ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Boccaccio, deg. Petrarca, deg. St. Jerome deg. and Cicero, deg. deg.48 "And moreover" (the sonnet goes rhyming), "the skirts of St. Paul has reached, deg. deg.49 Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than ever he preached." 50 Noon strikes,—here sweeps the procession! our Lady deg. borne smiling and smart. deg.51 With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords deg. stuck in her heart! deg.52 Bang-whang-whang ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... demanded, and his voice rumbled thickly forth from his capacious chest. The very sound was sleek and unctuous. ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... solemn hush. The evangelist's "amen" was not spoken with his usual unctuous fervor, but very gently and reverently. In spite of his coarse fiber, he could appreciate the nobility behind such a confession as this, and the deeps ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... great green prairie, the monotony of whose surface is scarcely broken by the rivers which cross it here and there, and the great lines of railroad that serve as causeways through the desperate mud of spring and winter. A scattered people, who till the unctuous black soil only too easily, and leave as much of the crop rotting on the ground through neglect as would support the entire population; rude though thriving towns, where the grocery and the tavern, the ball room and the race course are ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... audience. While Rocket, observing his customers with shrewd unfriendly eyes, set out the glasses and the accompanying bottles—he never needed to inquire what these men would take; he knew the tipple of every soul in Barnriff by heart—Abe opened out. He was unctuous and careful of his diction. He was Barnriff's lay-preacher, and felt that this attitude was "up ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... her cruel enemy's unctuous voice close to her ear, "that we have tried our humble best to make your brief sojourn here as agreeable as possible. May I express a hope that you will be quite comfortable in this room, until the time when Sir Percy will be ready to accompany you ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... hung a string of black ebony beads, hooked on to a heavy gold cross, which rested on his capacious breast, and which the wearer was continually feeling, and occasionally pressing to his lips. His face was dark and sensual—thick, unctuous lips, a flat nose, and large black eyes—while a glossy fringe of raven hair went like a thick curtain all around his head, only leaving a bluish-white round patch on the shaved crown. This individual ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... heard his plaint and meant to crush him with their answer, the telephone bell sounded at his elbow. Mechanically, he lifted the receiver off its hook, and immediately became aware of Tomlinson's voice, with some element of flurry and distress in its unctuous accents. ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... can compare myself; there is no moral which it would be of any use for you to read to me. At the present moment nothing could well be more incongruous than a moral. Oh, you self-satisfied persons who, in your unctuous pride, are forever ready to mouth your maxims—if only you knew how fully I myself comprehend the sordidness of my present state, you would not trouble to wag your tongues at me! What could you say to me that I do not already know? Well, wherein lies my difficulty? ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the pillow of his pious sentiment—a piece of cant, because he did not feel what he was saying—to deaden the cannon-ball of Christ's word, is only a pattern of a good many of us who think that to say, 'Blessed is he that eateth bread in the Kingdom of God,' with the proper unctuous roll of the voice, is pretty nearly as good as to take the bread that is offered to us. There are no more difficult people to get at than the people, of whom I am sure I have some specimens before me ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... ye! All persons having any business to do with the District Court of the United States draw near, give your attention and you will be heard," he intoned with unctuous authority. ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... midnight air stream'd down amain: Stank all the land whereon that tempest fell. Cerberus, cruel monster, fierce and strange, Through his wide threefold throat barks as a dog Over the multitude immers'd beneath. His eyes glare crimson, black his unctuous beard, His belly large, and claw'd the hands, with which He tears the spirits, flays them, and their limbs Piecemeal disparts. Howling there spread, as curs, Under the rainy deluge, with one side The other screening, oft they ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... given five years in the penitentiary. He was a demoralizing influence there, already a socialist with anarchical tendencies, and with the gift of influencing men. A fluent, sneering youth, who lashed the guards to fury with his unctuous, diabolical tongue. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Pendennis, when I saw you I was on the Tom and Jerry Weekly Paper; I have now the honour to be sub-editor of the Dawn, one of the best-written papers of the empire"—and he bowed very slightly to Mr. Warrington. His speech was unctuous and measured, his courtesy oriental, his tone, when talking with the two Englishmen, quite different to that with which he spoke ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he whispered. "Did you not get my letter? The price is no object. I can show you the order." He had reached the easel now and was standing with bent head, an unctuous smile playing ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... employed by that gentleman constructed for them a canoe twenty feet long, four feet wide, and eighteen inches deep. The frame was of poles and willow twigs, on which were stretched five elk and buffalo hides, sewed together with sinews, and the seams payed with unctuous mud. In this they embarked at an early hour on the 16th of April, and drifted down ten miles with the stream, when the wind being high they encamped, and set to work to make oars, which they had not been able to procure at the ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... Some apples are coarse-grained and some are fine; some are thinskinned and some are thick. One variety is quick and vigorous beneath the touch, another gentle and yielding. The pinnock has a thick skin with a spongy lining; a bruise in it becomes like a piece of cork. The tallow apple has an unctuous feel, as its name suggests. It sheds water like a duck. What apple is that with a fat curved stem that blends so prettily with its own flesh,—the wine apple? Some varieties impress me as masculine,—weatherstained, freckled, lasting, and rugged; others are indeed lady apples, fair, delicate, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... in the triumph was fairly unctuous. His jaw seemed to oscillate in oil as he mouthed ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... to execution. There were 600 slayn." After this exploit, "Grey's faith"—Graia fides—became proverbial even on the Continent. Grey appears to have a touch of the Puritan (by anticipation) in his composition, for we find him using very unctuous language about one John Cheeke, who "so wrought in him God's Spirit, plainlie declairing him a child of His elected;" and he calls the Pope "a detestable shaveling." Raleigh is said to have had the ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... it had been brought from Eden that very summer, together with the mould in which it grew. The truth was, nevertheless, that it had been planted by Alice Pyncheon,—she was Phoebe's great-great-grand-aunt,—in soil which, reckoning only its cultivation as a garden-plat, was now unctuous with nearly two hundred years of vegetable decay. Growing as they did, however, out of the old earth, the flowers still sent a fresh and sweet incense up to their Creator; nor could it have been the less pure and acceptable because ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hands behind her back. A swarthy and exuberantly bearded fellow, attired in green-and-russet, stood beside them, displaying magnificent teeth in exactly the grin which hieratic art imputes to devils. Yet farther off a Dominican Friar sat upon a stone and displayed rather more unctuous amusement. Three horses and a mule diversified the background. All in all, a thought larger than life, a shade too obviously posed, a sign-painter's notion of a heroic picture, was John Bulmer's verdict. From his holster he ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... dining-room, owing to the recent arrival of two steamers, all the tables were engaged. There was one in the corridor, he was told, if he did not mind another gentleman. He did mind; he much preferred a table alone, but he also wanted his luncheon. He followed the unctuous head waiter the length of the big dining-room, winding in and out among the small tables, only to emerge finally into the corridor and find himself face to face with ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... of reducing friction is to apply oil, or some other unctuous substance, to the parts which move upon each other. Some disadvantages attend this expedient, but till a better is suggested they have to be endured. The cost of the oil expended in maintaining in proper condition the axles of the machinery in ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... Underhill, whose unctuous piety and profligate life have an important place in Winthrop and other New England historians. With Captain John Mason he had the leading part in the crushing of the Pequots in 1637. Banished from Massachusetts and ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... up their quarters mainly on the ground floor—at the back of the central seats and at the sides. The poor have resting places found for them immediately in front of the pulpit and at the rear of the galleries. Very little of that unctuous spasmodic shouting, which used to characterise Wesleyanism, is heard in Lune-street Chapel. It has become unfashionable to bellow; it is not considered "the thing" to ride the high horse of vehement approval and burst into luminous showers of "Amens" and "Halleleujahs." ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus |
