"Beholder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a picture without its bright spots; and the steady contemplation of what is bright in others, has a reflex influence upon the beholder. It reproduces what it reflects. Nay, it seems to leave an impress even upon the countenance. The feature, from having a dark, sinister aspect, becomes open, serene, and sunny. A countenance so impressed, has neither the vacant stare of the idiot, nor ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... the comely forms of those before them. Among these smiling countenances might have been seen three individuals—a father, mother and daughter—who smiled, indeed, but whose smiles would never have convinced the beholder that they were an index to noble ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... fan. A clumsy woman makes an implement of this plaything, flourishing it to emphasize her talk, or, what is worse, pointing with it like an instructor before a blackboard. But in graceful hands it is unobtrusive, a mere bit of decoration that teases and fascinates the beholder's eye. ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... the next bed to mine, and among the many death-bed scenes I witnessed while in prison, I never saw one where the fear of death was so apparent, or the state of mind so appalling to the beholder. ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... Two rather striking blemishes on the older woman's beauty, a wandering eye and a scar on the soft cheek, she took her own peculiar method of ignoring, thus completely and effectively discounting any unfavorable opinion in the mind of the beholder. Consequently, she frequently referred to them, never as blemishes, but as slight but significant evidences of a distinctive and ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... another stem, and creeping from mangrove to myrtle, from magnesia to papaw, from papaw to the tulip-tree, form one vast and interminable bower. The broad belt of land, in the centre of which the waters of the Natchez flow, presents to the beholder a waving and luxuriant field of rustling palmettos, extending from the forest a full half mile to the stream, in whose waters the mangrove and cypress dip their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... how we condescended; and, therefore, in the case of the triumphal arch, or the hereditary palace, if we are the builders, we desire stability; if the beholders, we are offended with novelty: but in the case of the villa, the builder desires only a correspondence with his humor; the beholder, evidence of such correspondence; for he feels that the villa is most beautiful when it ministers most to pleasure; that it cannot minister to pleasure without perpetual change, so as to suit the varying ideas, and humors, and imaginations of its inhabitant, and that it cannot possess ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... the Chief Justice suggested strange thoughts to the beholder. He had been summoned but the day before to try Jefferson Davis for the treason of declaring the Southern States out of the Union. To-day he sat down to try the President of the United States for declaring them to be in the Union! He had protested with warmth that he could not conduct ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... obtain but unequal results as to their respective origins. The bridge, built by human hands, is, indeed, a triumph of the perfection of skilful contrivance; the strength and beauty of the arch are among the most simple yet exquisite results of science, wonderful as they may appear to the untaught beholder: but how shall we explain the formation of stupendous rock-arches across deep ravines and rolling torrents, in countries where none but the wild and picturesque forms of nature rise to gladden the eye and heart of the inquiring traveller? Of the latter description are the natural bridges ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... loaded almost to the top! Like Injun-slaying youngsters in America, the doughty Afghan warriors seem to delight in having their weapons loaded, their sidearms sharp, and their bayonets fixed, and seem anxious to impress the beholder with the fact that they are real warriors, and not mere make-believe soldiers. The colonel wears a dark-brown uniform profusely trimmed with braid, a Kashgarian military hat, and English army shoes. In matters pertaining to his wardrobe it is very evident ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... kitchen-gardens, the Rosenthal, Golis, Raschwitz, and Konnewitz, would be the oddest ground to beat up poetical game in. And yet I was often induced by that motive to contrive that my walk should be solitary; and because many objects neither beautiful nor sublime met the eye of the beholder, and, in the truly splendid Rosenthal, the gnats, in the best season of the year, allowed no tender thoughts to arise, so did I, by unwearied, persevering endeavor, become extremely attentive to the small life of nature (I would use this word after the analogy of ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... resembling that love-sick nymph's own pair of bimba lips, mirrored[17] in the clear black water, and dying to be kissed by others like themselves. But wonderful! the Creator had put into his face some ingredient of recollection, so that without knowing why, every beholder found himself plunged, as it were, into the agitation of dreamy reminiscence, and said within himself: Ha! now, somewhere or other, in this birth or another, I have seen that miracle of a face before. And each went away with a heart that was unwilling to depart, haunted as ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... chair. A small table, another chair, a footstool, and two or three simple pictures on the walls, along with wash-stand and bureau, completed the furnishing of a room that instantly attracted and delighted the beholder. But the impression above all others that the room gave was of perfect purity and sweetness and health; and this was due to the beautiful tidiness and cleanliness everywhere apparent. Wash-stand and bureau were in perfect order, with their white mats, clean towels, and every accessory of a refined ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... darkening sky swept a rosy pencil of living light; that utterly strange, pure beam whose coming never fails to clutch the throat of the beholder with the hand of ecstasy, the ray which the Tibetans name the Ting-Pa. For a moment this rosy finger pointed to the east, then arched itself, divided slowly into six shining, rosy bands; began to creep downward toward the eastern ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... first sculptor of the age, and his works are still greatly admired—for their exquisite finishing, and for their near resemblance to real life. They are certainly very attractive, and may be contemplated a considerable time with delight; but they never impose upon the beholder, and never raise in his mind any of those sublime ideas which he invariably experiences while contemplating the works of the ancients, or the modern productions of Michael Angelo Buonarotti. Canova, in fact, though he possessed the grace, the elegance, and the liveliness ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... rarely do, except in women, they should have been the lords of those they met; but as it was they were simply the representatives of one of the suppressed races which, if they joined hands, could girdle the globe under British rule. Somehow they brought the sense of this home to the beholder, as none of the monuments or memorials of England's imperial glory had done, and then, having fulfilled their office, lost themselves in ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... of color, but which make neither the pulse quiver nor the eye wet; and then such a sweeping judgment is arrested by a work like the 'St. Jerome' in the Vatican, from which a spirit comes forth so strong and so exalted, that the beholder, however trained to examine, and compare, and collect, finds himself raised above all recollections of manner by the sudden ascent of talent into the higher world of genius. Essentially a second-rate composer,* Donizetti struck out some ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... corbels,—in short the due opulence of ornament being introduced, and only the due. Genuine sculptors, genuine painters, artists have been busy; and in fact all the suitable fine arts, and all the necessary solid ones, have worked together, with a noticeable fidelity, comfortable to the very beholder to this day. General height is about forty feet; two stories of ample proportions: the Towers overlooking them are sixty feet in height. Extent of outer frontage, if you go all round, and omit the Colonnade, will be five hundred feet and more: this, with the rearward face, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... of an American to see on the sign of a tradesman from Belgium the familiar name of Cox spelled "Kockx;" and the Norwegian patronymic Trondhjemer ("Drontheimer"), though a very mild specimen of the language, has a formidable aspect to the general beholder. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... description. There is much grandeur in its vast, deeply-recessed Romanesque portal, with marble columns in the jambs and numerous archivolts. Then its high, narrow windows, and the low, square towers, pierced with loopholes, give to it that air of the fortress which immediately impresses the beholder. Without doubt it was built like so many other churches of the same stormy and uncertain period, to be used as a place of refuge in case of danger. The entrance to the principal tower is artfully concealed at the back of a chapel at the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... size. He was not only beautiful, but also intelligent-looking. His coat was of dark brown, and smooth as sealskin, showing every muscle of his body. His broad square head and monstrous jaw reminded the beholder of a tiger. His ears were close-cropped, which gave a compactness to his head that brought into prominence his great changeable eyes: eyes that the Davenports afterwards found so fiery sometimes that they reflected red lights; at other times so mildly brown that they beamed ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... within, but as a great spectacle without us, the spectacle of a great visible manifestation of GOD. It is a sight, a picture, a representation, that constitutes the heavenly state, not mere thought and contemplation. The glorified saint of Scripture is especially a beholder; he gazes, he looks, he fixes his eyes upon something before him; he does not merely ruminate within, but his whole mind is carried out towards and upon a great representation. And thus Heaven specially appears in Scripture as the sphere of perfected sight, where ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... look at a perfect palm-tree but that, with a subtlety all its own, it assumes a presence for itself, and makes a poet of the beholder. This is the explanation of the honors it has received, beginning with the artists of the first kings, who could find no form in all the earth to serve them so well as a model for the pillars of their palaces and temples; and ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... yet none with a love of the picturesque can afford to pass it by. Airily, nay, coquettishly perched on its smiling, green eminence, and still possessed of an antique stateliness, in striking contrast with the busy little trim town that has sprung up at his feet, Provins captivates the beholder by virtue alike of its uniqueness and poetic charm; I can think of nothing in my various travels at all like this little Acropolis of Brie and Champagne, whether seen in a distance in the railway, or from the ramparts that still encircle it as in the olden time. It is indeed ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Byzantine mosaic of Torcello, can be seen a last reflection of antique equanimity. Here the main character of the judgment-scene is its grand solemnity; and from this comes the impression of awe left on the beholder; the idea of rule and law predominates, a fatal law against which nothing can prevail; fate seems to preside, as it did in the ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... built into the walls, reflected the waxed floors, the rich Oriental carpets, and the sumptuous paintings that hung against the ivory-tinted paneling, so that in appearance the beauties of the apartment were continued in bewildering vistas upon every side toward which the beholder directed ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... is god of nuptial rites, And crowns with honour Love and his delights, Of Athens was a youth, so sweet a face, That many thought him of the female race; Such quickening brightness did his clear eyes dart, Warm went their beams to his beholder's heart, In such pure leagues his beauties were combin'd, That there your nuptial contracts first were sign'd; For as proportion, white and crimson, meet In beauty's mixture, all right clear and sweet, The eye ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... listened, dazzled, while in the very simplest, baldest phrases he described the curbing of slave-raiders, the winning of populations, the grappling with the desert, the opening out of river highways, whereof in his seven months he had been the fascinated beholder. As to his own exploits, he was ingeniously silent; but she knew them already. A military expedition against two revolted and slave-raiding emirs, holding strong positions on the great river; a few officers borrowed from home to stiffen a local militia; ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the town meeting was Mr. S., a very handsome old gentleman, of venerable and powerful appearance. He had snowy hair and a long white beard, but from under shaggy eyebrows there blazed out great black eyes which warned the beholder that the snow was an ornament and not a sign of decrepitude. The eve of my baptism at length drew near; it was fixed for October 12, almost exactly three weeks after my tenth birthday. I was dressed in old clothes, and a suit of smarter things was packed up in a carpet- bag. ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... Hungarian strain has already done much. The coal-black hair and wild, mutinous eyes set off to perfection the pale face and exquisitely thin lips, the delicate nostrils and beautifully moulded chin. Angel or devil? queries the beholder. Sometimes he is constrained to think that the possessor of such a face has the mingled souls of saint and siren. The light undertone of melancholy which pervades gypsy beauty, gypsy music, gypsy manners, has an extremely remarkable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... idle lives, and to allay or divert the violent passions and perturbations of the greatest and the busiest men. And both these effects are of equal use to human life; for the mind of man is like the sea, which is neither agreeable to the beholder nor the voyager, in a calm or in a storm, but is so to both when a little agitated by gentle gales; and so the mind, when moved by soft and easy passions or affections. I know very well that many who pretend ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Abatement of their Rigour, toward these my unhappy Brethren, the Roman Catholics of Ireland: If no Argument, I say, that is taken from Changes, may avail for the Purpose, I will take one from Permanence and Duration itself, that shall strike Light and Conviction to the Eye of every Beholder; that Power may gainsay, but cannot refute; that Malevolence may dispute, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... will ultimately determine the choice and use of line, the degree of relief and emphasis, for these and the direction of the line itself are the syllables and the words which will convey the purport of the work to the mind of the beholder. ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... which it were vain work to detail, congregated in the richest luxuriance, harmonised with the most exquisite taste, uniting the ancient arts with the modern, amazed and intoxicated the sense of the beholder. It was not so much the cost, nor the luxury, that made the character of the chamber; it was a certain gorgeous and almost sublime phantasy,—so that it seemed rather the fabled retreat of an enchantress, at whose word genii ransacked the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... is divine, which is the abstract of beauty absolute, gives to the beholder a shock of astonishment and delight,—not unmixed with melancholy. Very few works of art give this, because very few approach perfection. But there are marbles and gems which give it, and certain fine studies of them, such as ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... visited also the tomb of Frederick the Great. The remains of this great man are reposing in a wooden coffin, covered with one of copper, and in a vault devoid of drapery, trophies, or any thing that might remind the beholder of his heroic deeds. The emperor has presented the Hotel des Invalides at Paris with the sword of Frederick, with his insignia of the order of the Black Eagle, as well as with the stands of colors used by the king's lifeguards ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... blackamoor. Lady Linlithgow, upon whom Lizzie's beauty could have no effect of that kind, had nevertheless declared her to be very beautiful. And this loveliness was of a nature that was altogether pleasing, if once the beholder of it could get over the idea of falseness which certainly Lizzie's eye was apt to convey to the beholder. There was no unclean horse's tail. There was no get-up of flounces, and padding, and paint, and hair, with a dorsal excrescence appended with the object surely ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... fox, squirrel, or opossum, while dancing to the music of the violin. They jokingly call the skins their muchachitos, and hold them as women carry their babies. At present the only object is to make the beholder laugh; but of course the play is a remnant of some ancient custom, the meaning of which is now forgotten through the new associations with which the missionaries of old imbued the ceremonies and ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... practice to record the minor facts of English life, to serve as a background for the English romance he hoped to write afterwards. "On the mantle-piece," he writes, "are two little glass vases, and over it a looking-glass (not flattering to the beholder), and above hangs a colored view of some lake or seashore, and on each side a cheap colored print of Prince Albert and one of Queen Victoria. And, really, I have seen no picture, bust, or statue of her Majesty which I feel to be so good a likeness as this cheap ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... mystery of state To give the town and country sport. Now enters Bush[2] with new state airs, His lordship's premier minister; And who in all profound affairs, Is held as needful as his clyster.[2] With head reclining on his shoulder, He deals and hears mysterious chat, While every ignorant beholder Asks of his neighbour, who is that? With this he put up to my lord, The courtiers kept their distance due, He twitch'd his sleeve, and stole a word; Then to a corner both withdrew. Imagine now my lord and Bush Whispering in junto most profound, Like good King Phys and good King Ush,[3] While ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... material stimulations from the outer world are such as to force all normally constituted minds to the same series and combinations of perceptive acts; a fact which explains why the artist can transmit the shapes existing in his own mind to the mind of a beholder or hearer by combining certain objective stimulations, say those of pigments on paper or of sound vibrations in time, so as to provoke perceptive activities similar to those which would, ceteris paribus, have been provoked in himself if that shape had not existed ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... which she rejoiced to supply her friends. These friends were in the game that of playing with the disparity between her aspect and her character. Her character was attested by the second movement of her face, which convinced the beholder that her vision of the humours of the world was not supine, not passive. She enjoyed, she needed the warm air of friendship, but the eyes of the American city looked out, somehow, for the opportunity of it, from under the lids of Jerusalem. With her false indolence, in short, her ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... that is infinitely above thee makes himselfe be to thee [visibly] what He is in thee."[73] Christ is the universal revealer of God to all who see Him, just as the portrait of a human face seems to fix and follow the beholder from any position in the room, while at the same time it does the same to all other beholders from whatever angle they ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... a sight worth seeing, that of the Lycosa dragging her treasure after her, never leaving it, day or night, sleeping or waking, and defending it with a courage that strikes the beholder with awe. If I try to take the bag from her, she presses it to her breast in despair, hangs on to my pincers, bites them with her poison-fangs. I can hear the daggers grating on the steel. No, she would not allow herself to be robbed of the wallet ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... hundred years ago, whose lineaments once seen can never be forgotten. The long pointed features, narrow eye, and smirk of the one, so suggestive of merciless treachery; the bill-hook nose, large teeth, and bold eye of the other suggesting arrogance to the point of ferocity, haunt the beholder ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... must remain in Meaux," he answered, as quickly, with flushed face and flashing eyes. The dignity of conscious integrity, and the "fear of fear," a beholder who could discern the tokens might ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... mass of features, which enchain the beholder, is a whole-length portrait of a gentleman (par excellence) seated in a luxuriating, Whitechapel style of ease, the envy, we venture to affirm, of every omnibus cad and coachman, whose loiterings near this spot afford them occasional peeps at him. He is most decidedly the greatest cigar in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the Bagman permissively waved his hand: Then to throw up and catch it he never would fail, As he sat up on end, on his little cock-tail. Never was puppy so bien instruit, Or possess'd of such natural talent as he; And as he grew older, Every beholder Agreed he grew handsomer, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... and staring, he appealed to the beholder as the most helpless thing which the Creator had clothed in ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... ingenious reasonings employed in fortifying this point; and, after quoting from Eichhorn a passage to the effect that the opening chapter in Genesis is much rather a creative picture than a creative history, and from Ammon to the effect that the author of it evidently takes the position of a beholder of creation, the learned German concludes his general statement by remarking, that the scenes of the chapter are prophetic tableaux, each containing a leading phase of the drama of creation. "Before the eye of the seer," he says, "scene after scene ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... refinement, and a noble bearing are the characteristics which strike one in all portraits of Chopin, [FOOTNOTE: See Appendix IV.] and which struck the beholder still more strongly in the real Chopin, where they were reinforced by the gracefulness of his movements, and by manners that made people involuntarily treat him as a prince...[FOOTNOTE: See my description of Chopin, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... bright in a firmament of that most brilliant and transparent blue, which I have witnessed in no other country than America, so pure, so cloudless, so immeasurably distant as it seems from the beholder's eye! There was not a speck of cloud from east to west, from zenith to horizon; not a fleece of vapor on the mountain sides; not a breath of air to ruffle the calm basin of ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... go out and to stand by unable to help, unable to offer comfort or ease mortal agony, is a bitter experience. It brings the beholder close to the abyss of eternity, wherein the world shrinks to a speck of whirling dust and the sun is but a needle-point of light. Then it is that the fleshless face of the unconquerable One leans close and whispers, not to the insensate clay that ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... receding behind us, variegated with furrows, and intersected with roads running in all directions; the whole reduced to a scale of almost graphic minuteness, and from the fleecy vapour that still partially obscured it, impressing the beholder with the idea of a vision of enchantment, which some kindly genius had, for an instant, consented to disclose. Scarcely had we time to snatch a hasty glance, ere we had passed over the spot, and the clouds uniting gradually concealed it from ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... Fullano, of Majorca. One of her contemporaries, Daniel de Barrios, says that "she was an accomplished linguist, wrote delightful letters, composed exquisite verses, played the lute like a maestro, and sang like an angel. Her sparkling black eyes sent piercing darts into every beholder's heart, and she was famed for beauty as well as intellect." She made a noble Spanish translation of Pastor Fido, the most popular Italian drama of the day, and published a volume of poems, also in Spanish. Antonio dos Reys ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... upon art and works of art. Since he had found the gods again, he perceived that the Muse had confided to him a sacerdotal office. He intended to perform its duties, and not only attract and please the beholder's eyes through his works, but elevate his heart and mind, as beauty, truth, grandeur, and eternity uplifted his own soul. He recognised in the tireless creative power which keeps Nature ever new, fresh, and bewitching, the presence of the same deity ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... I rest so composedly, Now, in my bed, That any beholder Might fancy me dead— Might start at beholding me, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... home. Add to this, the half-dirty attire—the unshaven beard of the men, and the unkempt locks of the women—produce further revolting sensations. It is not till past mid-day that the noise of labour ceases, and that the toilette is put into a complete state for the captivation of the beholder. By four or five o'clock the streets become half thinned. On a Sunday, every body rushes into the country. The tradesman has his little villa, and the gentleman and man of fortune his more capacious rural domain; and those, who aspire ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... primitive delicacy and beauty unequaled elsewhere; the fruits are fabulously abundant and of the most perfect flavor; the water bubbles forth from springs of crystal purity, and the flora is so lovely as to inspire the most indifferent beholder with delight. "It is called the Garden of Cuba," said the American Consul of Cienfuegos, "but many go further, and declare it to be the location of the original Paradise." Certain it is that the few Americans who have sought this so highly praised region, though compelled to deny ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... in a nation virtually spirituelle must not be trifled with. The tree torn up by the roots dies for want of nourishment; but, on the contrary, when lopped carefully only of its branches the pruning makes it more valuable to the cultivator and more pleasing to the beholder. So it is with national prejudices, which are often but the excrescences of national virtues. Root them out and you root out virtue and all. They must only be: pruned and turned to profit. A Frenchman is more easily ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of him. I examined some of the earth found in the pit below this trap; it was a compost of common earth, rottenness, ashes, and human hair, fetid to the smell, and horrible to the sight and to the thought of the beholder. ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... certain of the stunning customs of the court with more modest innovations, nevertheless he rarely went abroad without extravagant display, especially in his annual visitations to the temples. These were performed in a style studiously contrived to strike the beholder ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... feeling, which had flung the man to his knees, and driven him to the haven of her breast; the yearning to soothe, and give, and content;—all these were blended into a look of such exquisite sweetness, that it brought tears to the eyes of the beholder. ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... expression, combined with that majesty which seems to come from consciousness of power and the freedom of all terror, physical or moral. It is that very sweetness, combined with that majesty, which inspired in a beholder like myself, accustomed to strive with the passions of mankind, a sentiment of humiliation, of awe, of dread. It is such an expression as a painter might give to a demi-god, a genius, an angel. The males of the Vril-ya are entirely beardless; the Gy-ei sometimes, ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... away with such loving, tender pain? Flora Valcour! Oh, see, see! Ah, death in life! what does she see? As by the glare of a bursting midnight shell all the empty gossip of two years justified—made real—in one flash of staring view. With a long moan the beholder cast her arms aloft and sank in a heap, not knowing that the act had caught Hilary's eye, but willingly aware that her voice had perished in a roar of artillery from the farther brink of the ravine, in a crackle and fall of tree-tops, and in the ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... eye—answer he gave none. I spit upon such a city—I cast out my shoe upon it! I who have dwelt at Rome, Carthage, Antioch, and Palmyra, may be allowed to despise a place like this. There are but two things that impress the beholder—the Palace of Sapor, and the Temple of Mithras, near it. These truly would be noted even in Palmyra. Not that in the building any rule or order of art is observed, but that the congregation of strange and fantastic trickery—some whereof, it cannot be gainsaid, is of rare beauty—is so vast ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... Shoshone treats his horse as a friend, always petting him, cleaning him, never forcing or abusing him, the animal is always in excellent condition, and his proud eyes and majestic bearing present to the beholder the beau ideal of the graceful and the beautiful. The elegant dress and graceful form of the Shoshone cavalier, harmonises admirably with the wild and haughty ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... grave. Her dress, thanks to Aunt Keery and the minister's wife, (who looked after her for her mother's sake,) was always well provided and neat, but no way calculated to cultivate her taste or to gratify the beholder. A district school provided her with such education as it could give; and the library, that was her resort at all hours of the day, furthered her knowledge in a singular and varied way, since its lightest contents were histories of all kinds and sorts, unless one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... life and gaiety, stood a low, brown cottage in a barren spot, upon the brow of a hill. No trees sheltered it, giving that air of protection which ever sends delight to the beholder. No indication of taste or culture met the sight; naught but a bare existence, and every-day toil to sustain it, impressed ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... clustering about King Arthur, Tennyson has patently purposed painting the figure of a perfect man. How well he has executed his design depends on himself much, on the beholder much. Onlookers differ in opinion. Painters have their clientage. Poets are not omniscient; neither are we, a thing we are prone to forget. For myself, I confess not to see with those who deride the king, nor yet with those who think him statuesque, as if shaped, not out of flesh, but ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... poisons upon him; they had tortured him hideously, they had burned him up as with vitriol. As a public force he was no longer a human being at all—he was a deformity, a spectre conjured up to bring fright to the beholder. And through it all he was utterly helpless—as much at their mercy as an infant in the hands of savages. And what had he done? Why had the ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... stranger in Hellas would have remembered long. The haven of Troezene, noblest in Peloponnesus, girt by its two mountain promontories, Methana and the holy hill Calauria, opened its bright blue into the deeper blue of the Saronic bay. Under the eye of the beholder AEgina and the coasts of Attica stood forth, a fit frame to the far horizon. Sun, sea, hills, and shore wrought together to make one glorious harmony, endless variety, yet ordered and fashioned into a divine whole. "Euopis," "The Fair-Faced," the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... fossiferous limestone formation. Elevated a few feet only above the sea, on the coasts, it gradually raises toward the interior, to a maximum height of above 70 feet. A bird's-eye view, from a lofty building, impresses the beholder with the idea that he is looking on an immense sea of verdure, having the horizon for boundary; without a hill, not even a hillock, to break the monotony of the landscape. Here and there clusters of palm trees, or artificial mounds, ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... bould stoutnesse. And as for Titian, he hath worthely purchased the name of a great painter in this matter, as his pictures do sufficiently witness; in each whereof there shineth a certain mooving vertue, seeming to incite the beholder unto the imitation thereof. Of whom this saying may well be verified, that he was beloved of the world and envied ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... Messer Severo most spoke of was the strange delicacy of the physical nature and composition of Beatrice. Never, he declared, in all his long experience as a physician, had he met with any case like to hers. Although she seemed to the beholder to carry the colors of health in her cheeks and the form of health on her body, he asserted that she was of so ethereal a creation that the vital essence was barely housed by its tenement of flesh, and could, as he fancied, set itself free from its trammels with well-nigh unearthly ease. ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... have justly made odious. To the arguments of abuse I will after answer; only thus much now is to be said, that the comedy is an imitation of the common errors of our life, which he representeth in the most ridiculous and scornful sort that may be; so as it is impossible that any beholder can be content to be such a one. Now, as in geometry, the oblique must be known as well as the right, and in arithmetic, the odd as well as the even; so in the actions of our life, who seeth not the filthiness of evil, wanteth a great foil to perceive the beauty ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... The cottages nestling under the banks, its parti-coloured gardens, with enclosing pebble walls, its boats and crab-pots, with the distant cliffs in succession, all combine in a composition that strikes the beholder with a ...
— Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight • Various
... stoop, fell over and hid from view her lovely bosom. Gazing into the depths of her strange blue eyes, when she was in a contemplative mood, they seemed most placid yet unfathomable; but when illuminated by some lively emotion, they beamed upon the beholder like stars. The hands of Fayaway were as soft and delicate as those of any countess; for an entire exemption from rude labour marks the girlhood and even prime of a Typee woman's life. Her feet, though wholly exposed, were as diminutive and fairly shaped as those which peep ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... hills and dipping into valleys, from Lake Champlain to Lake Ontario. The air was cold but full of magic sun-fire. All things were aglow—the frosty roadway, the white fields, the hoary forest, and the mind of the beholder. Trove halted, looking off at the far hills. Then he heard a step behind him and, as he turned, saw a tall man approaching at a quick pace. The latter had no overcoat. A knit muffler covered his throat, and a satchel hung from a strap on ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... possess the property of producing and supporting their verdant clothing. The flat land which bounds those hills toward the sea, and the interjacent valleys also, teem with various productions that grow with the most exuberant vigour, and at once fill the mind of the beholder with the idea, that no place upon earth can out-do this, in the strength and beauty of vegetation. Nature has been no less liberal in distributing rivulets, which are found in every valley; and as they approach the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... richly dressed and with a certain air of the world investing him, but with a face—although possessing great natural beauty—so wretched and full of remorse, so lined and seamed with soul-anguish, that the heart of every beholder was instantly moved to ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... ornaments only in the phraseology of trade catalogues; and the mixture of stone with brick shows results in flaring contrasts, producing harsh dissonance in the effect. The facades of such buildings show that this is brick, this is stone, or this is cast iron; but they always fail to impress the beholder with the idea of harmonious design. The use of finer varieties of clay in terra cotta figures laid among the brickwork furnishes a field of architectural design hardly appreciated. The heavy mass of brick, divided by regular lines of demarkation, serves as the groundwork of such ornamentation, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... mossy boulder, See an ivory shoulder, Dazzling the beholder, Rises o'er the blue; But a moment's thinking, Sends the Naiad sinking, With a modest shrinking, From the ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... most beautiful flowers; silver lamps containing fragrant oil illuminated doors whose panels were wonderfully decorated, and walls adorned with pictures in which such figures were formed that on seeing them the beholder was enchanted. On one side of the room stood a bed of flowers and a couch covered with brocade of gold, and strewed with freshly-culled jasmine flowers. On the other side, arranged in proper order, were attar holders, betel-boxes, ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... foundation and erected a building thereon, and in the natural progressive order of things other inventors of more or less fame have laid substructures or added a wing here and a story there until the resultant great structure has attained such proportions as to evoke the admiration of the beholder; but the old foundation and the fundamental building still remain to support other parts. In other words, Edison created the incandescent electric lamp, and invented certain broad and fundamental systems of distribution of current, with all the essential devices of detail ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... before it "like showers of steel," and at last, down upon the shore and by the surf among the turmoil of the blinding wind, the flying stones and sand, "the tremendous sea itself," that came rolling in with an awful noise absolutely confounding to the beholder! In all fiction there is no grander description than that of one of the sublimest spectacles in nature. The merest fragments of it conjured up the entire scene—aided as those fragments were by the look, the tones, the whole manner of the Reader. The listener was there with him ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... interior nature is in itself the crown of regal power, of which earthly rulers are symbolical. The spiritual body through this union becomes radiant; luminous; and shines with such splendor that it dazzles the eyes of the beholder. What constitutes the beauty and the value of gems—diamonds; rubies; sapphires; ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... without,—giving substance to shadows, and throwing a mist over all commonplace actualities. It is the nature of thought to be indefinite;—definiteness belongs to external imagery alone. Hence it is that the sense of sublimity arises, not from the sight of an outward object, but from the beholder's reflection upon it;—not from the sensuous impression, but from the imaginative reflex. Few have seen a celebrated waterfall without feeling something akin to disappointment: it is only subsequently that the image comes back full into the ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... else marvellously tutored by some experienced whaleman. The French are the lads for painting action. Go and gaze upon all the paintings of Europe, and where will you find such a gallery of living and breathing commotion on canvas, as in that triumphal hall at Versailles; where the beholder fights his way, pell-mell, through the consecutive great battles of France; where every sword seems a flash of the Northern Lights, and the successive armed kings and Emperors dash by, like a charge of crowned centaurs? Not wholly unworthy of a place in that gallery, are ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... shining ringlets adown her snowy neck. The contour of her face was oval; her forehead remarkably high; her complexion clean and delicate, though not florid; and her eyes were so piercing, as to strike the soul of every beholder. Yet, upon this occasion, one half of their vivacity was eclipsed by a languishing air of melancholy concern; which, while it in a manner sheathed the edge of her beauty, added a most engaging sweetness to her looks. In short, every feature was elegantly perfect; and ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... priceless brocade and satins ablaze with diamonds and gems, snowy silks studded with pearls, velvet robes lined with costly furs and covered with lace at a fabulous price and texture, coronets of jewels, necklaces, bracelets, and beautiful trinkets, made the suggestion to a beholder that Heaven had showered down her radiation of delight by bestowing upon these jewels a reflection scarce less than that of her own upon the scene above. Among the throng none were more eagerly sought than Lady Rosamond; her quiet and easy dignity had won the regard and esteem of all those with ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... stout, old gentleman, opening a door behind Gotthold, received them fairly in the face. With his parrot's beak for a nose, his pursed mouth, his little goggling eyes, he was the picture of formality; and in ordinary circumstances, strutting behind the drum of his corporation, he impressed the beholder with a certain air of frozen dignity and wisdom. But at the smallest contrariety, his trembling hands and disconnected gestures betrayed the weakness at the root. And now, when he was thus surprisingly received in that library of Mittwalden ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... material used in the construction of these edifices was very great and surprises the beholder. It is explained in part by the thickness of the walls. We measured a number of them. They were two feet four inches, two feet six inches, two feet nine inches, three feet, and in rare cases three feet six inches thick. None measured less ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... of sunlight which followed her through the door became the young wife well. It illuminated her as her presence illuminated the heath. In her movements, in her gaze, she reminded the beholder of the feathered creatures who lived around her home. All similes and allegories concerning her began and ended with birds. There was as much variety in her motions as in their flight. When she was musing ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... one of these stands to examine it more curiously, I discovered that there were two projections from the top, resembling eye-pieces, as though inviting the beholder to gaze into the inside of the stand. Then I thought I heard a faint metallic click above my head. Raising my eyes swiftly, I read a few words written, as it were, against the dark velvet of the heavy curtains in dots of flame that flowed ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... represents. Were this not true, all statues of Apollo or Venus would have the same art-value; and you or I, if we could find a tree and a hill that Corot had painted, would be able to produce a picture as charming to the beholder as his. ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... have this intrinsic utility, in the apprehension of the performer and the beholder alike, this sense of the intrinsic rightness of decorum is only the proximate ground of the vogue of manners and breeding. Their ulterior, economic ground is to be sought in the honorific character of that leisure or non-productive employment of time and effort without which good manners ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... young, and his now dying picture were at this time set together, every beholder might say, "Lord! how much is Dr. Donne already changed, before he is changed!" And the view of them might give my reader occasion to ask himself with some amazement, "Lord! how much may I also, that am now in health, be changed before I am changed; before this vile, this changeable body ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... eyes were deep and troubled, but Tharon's were beginning to glow with the old fire that all the Holding knew, the leaping flame that rose and died and rose again, exciting to the beholder, ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... without the charm of dress, beauty, even that of expression, does not really do itself justice. How many lovely and lovable faces there are, for instance, among the working classes, which, if they had but the advantages which ladies possess, might create delight, respect, chivalrous worship in the beholder—but are now never appreciated, because they have not the same fair means of displaying themselves which even the savage girl of the ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... the party, consisting of his father, sister, and the supposed page, seated by the breakfast-table, at which he also took his place. He was a pensive and anxious beholder of what passed, while the page, who had already completely gained the heart of the good old cavalier, by mimicking the manner in which the Scottish divines preached in favour of Ma gude Lord Marquis of Argyle and the Solemn League and Covenant, was now endeavouring to interest the fair Alice ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... away from where Wagner had disappeared over the side of the wall and faced my captors, the Zards. Chief among them was the King, he being a foot or two taller than the others, with a graceful and powerful pose that struck awe into the eyes of the beholder with its innate command and dignity, both of which flowed from it as naturally as water from a well. There were about twenty guards in the squadron that protected the King, but it was not so much from the terror of them that the Canitaurs fled, nor was it because of the guards that patrolled the ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... up, and red, white, and blue streamers had been attached to the bridles, so that the whole outfit presented a very gorgeous appearance, and one intended to impress the beholder with the ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... lost their youthful fire, retained a lustre that evinced their primeval brilliancy, and the fine symmetry of her features, still uninjured by the siege of time, not only indicated the perfection of her juvenile beauty, but still laid claim to admiration in every beholder. Her carriage was lofty and commanding; but the dignity to which high birth and conscious superiority gave rise, was so judiciously regulated by good sense, and so happily blended with politeness, that though the world at large envied or hated ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... singly, any of them might be pronounced comely. And yet the tout ensemble is not pleasing. Despite physical beauty, there is something in the man's face that appears repulsive, and causes shrinking in the heart of the beholder. Chiefly is it his eyes that seem to produce this effect; their glance inspiring fear, such as one feels while being gazed at ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... more to be endured, Her teaching is not so obscured By errors and perversities, That no truth shines athwart the lies: And he, whose eye detects a spark Even where, to man's the whole seems dark, May well see flame where each beholder Acknowledges the embers smoulder. But I, a mere man, fear to quit The clue God gave me as most fit To guide my footsteps through life's maze, Because himself discerns all ways Open to reach him: I, a man Able to mark where faith began To swerve aside, till from ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... him joyful, well-pleased, fully content, and satisfied; on the other side, the angel of perdition, that wicked, devilish, and malignant spirit, at his appearance unto any person in the beginning cheereth up the heart of his beholder, but at last forsakes him, and leaves him troubled, angry, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... engaged in these acts of courtesy, his graceful manner, expressive features, and dignity of deportment, made a singular contrast with the coarseness and meanness of his dress. Montrose possessed that sort of form and face, in which the beholder, at the first glance, sees nothing extraordinary, but of which the interest becomes more impressive the longer we gaze upon them. His stature was very little above the middle size, but in person he was uncommonly well-built, and capable both of exerting great ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... golden girdle. In all the treatment Fra Angelico maintains his assertion of the authority of abstract imagination, which, depriving his subject of all material or actual being, contemplates it as retaining qualities eternal only—adorned by incorporeal splendor. The eyes of the beholder are supernaturally unsealed: and to this miraculous vision whatever is of the earth vanishes, and all things are seen endowed with an harmonious glory—the garments falling with strange, visionary grace, glowing with indefinite gold—the walls of the chamber dazzling ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... sea, and was very sensitive to its associations with the toils and triumphs of mankind. Born beside the Thames, he grew up among boats and fraternized with sailors all his life. It was impossible for him to be the beholder of such a scene as the Temeraire's approach to her last moorings, save as a poet-painter; and stirred to the putting forth of all his powers, this Fighting ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... galleries of Europe, and see the masterpieces of each master, I still should return to the memory of Allston's works as to something most precious and unique in Art. I have also, since that time, come to believe, that, while every sensitive beholder must feel the charm of Allston's style, its intellectual ripeness can be fully appreciated only by the aid of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... his nose; and on a third he would shine forth in Mrs. Major-General Flareup's cockaded one, with a worsted shoulder-knot, and a much over-daubed light drab livery coat, with crimson inexpressibles, so tight as to astonish a beholder how he ever got into them. Humiliation, however, has its limits as well as other things; and Peter having been invited to descend from his box—alas! a regular country patent leather one, and invest himself in a Quaker-collared blue coat, with a red vest, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... rather above the common size, his frame was robust, and his constitution vigorous—capable of enduring great fatigue, and requiring a considerable degree of exercise for the preservation of his health. His exterior created in the beholder the idea of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... the unconscious possessor of much skill in physiognomy, and it would have deterred him in other circumstances from attempting to make a friend of this boy. The countenance of the latter immediately impressed a beholder disagreeably, but it required some examination to discover that the cause was a very slight distortion of the mouth and the irregular, broken line and near approach of the eyebrows. Analogous, perhaps, to these trifling deformities was an almost imperceptible ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... side, and surrounded by minor edifices of nondescript shapes. The magnitude of these buildings forms their sole claim to admiration; they are profusely decorated with sculpture, but of so rude a description as to afford no satisfaction to the beholder. The great temple of Juggernaut was erected in the twelfth century. The idols are of huge size and hideous shape. Krishna, the chief, in intended as a mystic representation of the supreme power; for the Hindoos assert that they ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... person and manners of Denbigh that insensibly attracted those whom chance threw in his way. His face was not strikingly handsome, but it was noble; and when he smiled, or was much animated, it invariably communicated a spark of his own enthusiasm to the beholder. His figure was faultless; his air and manner, if less easy than those of Colonel Egerton, were more sincere and ingenuous; his breeding was clearly higher; his respect for others rather bordering on the ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... situation above described, the objects we chance to view amid these changing spectra in the eye, must seem to move in a contrary direction; as the moon sometimes appears to move retrograde, when swift-gliding clouds are passing forwards so much nearer the eye of the beholder. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... picks up a good education in the odds and ends of time which other boys throw away. From the same material, one man builds a palace and another a hovel. From the same rough piece of marble, one man calls out an angel of beauty which delights every beholder, another a hideous monster which demoralizes every one who ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... appearance from all the others, and of frightful mien. His height was so great, it would have taken five hundred years to cover a distance equal to it, and from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet he was studded with glaring eyes, at the sight of which the beholder fell prostrate in awe. "This one," said Metatron, addressing Moses, "is Samael, who takes the soul away from man." "Whither goes he now?" asked Moses, and Metatron replied, "To fetch the soul of Job the pious." Thereupon Moses prayed to God in these ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... an air of refinement that fitted her like a garment. Her heavy dark hair, coiled high on her shapely head, was just slightly silvered with gray and seemed to be a fitting foil to her large melancholy black eyes—eyes that from their slumbering depths seemed to impress the beholder with suggestions of some mysterious power, gleaming messages, like beacon flashes, from her inner life. With her becoming dress of rich, dark cloth, gloves and parasol to match, she looked the cultured ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... excitement was intense. The London Times next morning said: "The 'Novelty' was the lightest and most elegant carriage on the road yesterday, and the velocity with which it moved surprised and amazed every beholder. It shot along the line at the amazing rate of thirty miles an hour! It seemed, indeed, to fly; presenting one of the most sublime spectacles of human ingenuity and human daring the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... on account of the luxuriant foliage of every hue with which its noble banks are covered, but chiefly from the resemblance it bears in many places to the scenery of England, recalling to mind the grassy lawns and verdant banks of Britain's streams, and transporting the beholder from the wild scenes of the western world to his native home. The trees along its banks were larger and more varied than any we had hitherto seen—ash, poplar, cedar, red and white pines, oak, and birch being abundant, whilst flowers of gaudy hues enhanced the beauty of the scene. Towards noon ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... receive only a faint and subdued gleam. The silvery effulgence of the moon, the sombre and deserted look of the buildings around, and the general stillness that pervades every object, save the scene of action, might inspire the mind of a Rembrandt, or introduce to the mere casual beholder feelings at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various
... one of thrilling interest. To the apiarian the prospect of an increase of stocks is sufficient to create some interest, even when the phenomenon of swarming would fail to awaken it. But to the naturalist this season has charms that the indifferent beholder can ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... Never did Nature provide a more convenient resting-place for twin-glasses, than the ridge of Miss Thusa's nose, which rose with a sudden, majestic elevation, suggesting the idea of unexpectedness in the mind of the beholder. Every thing was harsh about her face, except the eyes, which had a soft, solemn, misty look, a look of prophecy, mingled with kindness and compassion, as if she pitied the evils her far-reaching vision beheld, but which she had not the power to avert. Those soft, solemn, prophetic eyes ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... then, no sentimentalist, no devotee of the god Wish, have we here; but an imperturbable beholder, whose dauntless and relentless eyeballs, telescopic and microscopic by turns, can and will see what the fact is. If the universe be bad, as some dream, he will see how bad; if good, he will perceive and respect ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... his canvas touches of none but the seven colours juxtaposed [Claude Monet has added black and white] and leave the individual rays of each of these colours to blend at a certain distance, so as to act like sunlight upon the eye of the beholder." This is called dissociation of tones; and here is a new convention; why banish all save the spectrum? We paint nature, not ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... Lake to supply water to many thousands of homes and the quietude of its shores and water breathes a kind of cleanliness and purity, which imparts to the lake a character quite its own. An unique feature of it is the causeway which bisects it, forming twin lakes, as it seems to the nearby beholder. But from a distant elevation this straight clean roadway across the very center of the lake stands out in bold relief, having none of the appearance of a bridge nor yet of a dam. From this causeway people are permitted to fish ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... discussed in the press and periodicals of the day. It is a bonmot of contemporary studio life that Hawthorne rather than Story created the "Cleopatra," and one ingenious spirit suggests that as Mr. Story put nothing of expression or significance into his statues, the beholder could read into them anything he pleased; finding an empty mould, so to speak, into which to pour whatever image or embodiment he might conjure up from the infinite realm of imagination. One of the latest of these contemporary critics declares ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... is still more pleased the more it finds of these perfections in the same object, so it is capable of receiving a new satisfaction by the assistance of another sense. Thus any continued sound, as the music of birds, or a fall of waters, awakens every moment the mind of the beholder, and makes him more attentive to the several beauties of the place, that lie before him. Thus if there arises a fragrancy of smells or perfumes, they heighten the pleasure of the imagination, and make even the colours and verdure of the landschape ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... doomed to an early death. But the longer you examined him, the more his features seemed to breathe vitality and spirit, and the firmer grew the conviction that this was an exceptional being—a rare and strange phenomenon. Once accustomed to his apparent pale and sickly homeliness, the beholder soon saw it transformed into a fascinating beauty such as we admire on the antique Roman cameos and old imperial coins. His classical and regular profile seemed to be modelled after these antique coins; his forehead, ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... projected; and a million wrinkles were carved upon the deep-seamed brow and corrugated cheeks. Over that hideous face the gray hair wandered. Bob's blood seemed to freeze within his veins. The old fable tells of the Gorgon, whose face inspired such horror that the beholder stiffened into stone. So here. Bob beheld a Gorgon face. He felt petrified ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... the last of the rapids two immense rocks appear, which look like two ancient stately towers of some Gothic potentate, rearing their heads above the surrounding trees. From their situation and their shape, they strike the beholder with an idea of antiquated grandeur, which he will never forget. He may travel far and wide and see nothing like them. The Indians have it that they are the abode of an evil genius, and they pass in the river below, with ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... edge, islands of all sizes and of all forms, gently rising out of the limpid rippling stream, or boldly standing forth from the deep blue water, presenting a rugged, rocky moss-clad front to the wonderstruck beholder. On the 20th of July, some cruisers from Sackett's Harbour, succeeded in surprising and capturing, at daybreak, a brigade of batteaux laden with provisions, under convoy of a gun-boat. They made off with their prize to Goose Creek, which is not far from Gananoque. ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... Overpowered by the contemplation of an immense solitude, of a profound and inexpressible stillness, it is, doubtless, impossible at once to perceive all its divine characteristics; but the feeling of its vastness and grandeur cannot fail to arouse in the mind of the beholder the thrilling emotions of a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... how of nothing love is fashioned, How it is but a movement of the mind, Bidding Celia mark That light skirts fluttering in the wind, Or white flowers stuck in dark Glistening hair, have fired the dull beholder, Or telling Anais That faint indifference ere now hath bred a kiss Denied to flaunted ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... Europe by the Argonauts. The pheasant is one of the most beautiful of all fowls, and can only be rivalled by the peacock. The shifting hues upon his neck, and the brilliant scarlet and black around his head, strike every beholder with admiration. Pheasants are very good to eat, but sportsmen are not allowed to shoot them until the 1st of October, in order that they may have time to rear their young. In ancient times the pheasant was ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... God is seen in every part of creation, and especially in the different kinds of birds. The beauty displayed in their graceful forms and varied colors strikes every beholder, while the adaptation of their organs for the purposes of flight, their peculiar habits and modes of living, are a constant source of admiration ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... astronomy, has passed through successive stages. It began at zero. An unexpected event in the heavens was accounted portentous, because it was unexpected, and it was interpreted in a good or bad sense according to the state of mind of the beholder. There can have been at first no system, no order, no linking up of one specific kind of prediction with one kind of astronomical event. It can have been originally nothing but a crude jumble of omens, just on a level with the superstitions ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... domestic life of the Virgin and the infancy of the Saviour, which, in all their endless variety, pass under the general title of THE HOLY FAMILY—the beautiful title of a beautiful subject, addressed in the loveliest and most familiar form at once to the piety and the affections of the beholder. ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... Island side, a white staff displayed a pale yellow flag, denoting the habitation of the quarantine officer; for as if to symbolize the yellow fever itself, and strike a panic and premonition of the black vomit into every beholder, all quarantines all over the world, taint the air with the streamings of ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... no more, but she walked up from the field holding tightly to her father's poor, worn hand, and her heart was in a tumult. To behold any convulsion of nature is no light experience, and when it is a storm of the spirit in one beloved the beholder is swept along with it in greater or less measure. Ellen trembled as she walked. Her father kept looking at her anxiously and remorsefully. Once he reached around his other hand and chucked her playfully under the chin. "Scared most to death, was ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... after an absence that appeared of endless duration, the two ambassadors re-entered Rome. Neither of them spoke as they hurriedly passed through the ranks of the people; but their looks of terror and despair were all-eloquent to every beholder—their ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... feel an impulse I can scarcely explain—a longing to tear it from the canvas as if it were a breathing form, and clasp it to my heart in a glow of passionate love. What a sublime inspiration Raphael must have felt when he painted it! Judging from its effect on the beholder, I can conceive of no higher mental excitement than that ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... deference from pupils. The general cast of her countenance was serious, to a degree bordering upon severity; but when she did unbend, the cheerfulness that beamed in her features, and the benevolent expression of her dark and pleasing eyes, invited confidence and regard from every beholder. She had been a widow several years, and was going to commence a school patronized by respectable friends. I shall not attempt to describe her daughters, for beauty is of so perishable a nature, and of so little value without good qualities, it is but time wasted dwelling on the subject. ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... sort of mystic meaning no doubt, although I did not understand it; but what I did understand was that the whole arrangement was designed to produce a sort of mesmerism in the beholder. ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... his opposite a charity boy? Why should a tall life-guardsman have something in him essentially absurd? Why are short breeches more ridiculous than long? What is there particularly jocose about a pump, and wherefore does a long nose always provoke the beholder to laughter? These points may be metaphysically elucidated by those who list. It is probable that Mr. Cruikshank could not give an accurate definition of that which is ridiculous in these objects, but his instinct has told him that fun lurks in them, and cold must be the heart that ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray |
