"Fastidiously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heard the cry of a young child; she left the table hastily, to come back in a moment with an apology, which she made to Cousin Charles rather than to us. I had never seen a table so well arranged, so fastidiously neat; it glittered with glass and French china. Cousin Charles sent away a glass and a plate, frowning at the girl who waited; there must have been a speck or a flaw in them. The viands were as pretty as the dishes, the lamb chops were fragile; the bread was delicious, but ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... pushed his way through the crowd—the surgeon, one of the posse, accompanied by a younger man fastidiously dressed. The former bent over the unconscious prisoner, and tore open his shirt; the latter followed his movements with a flush of anxious inquiry in his handsome, careless face. After a moment's pause the surgeon, without looking up, answered the young man's ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... the conditions in those years. Let it not, however, be supposed that the traders, bankers and landowners were impervious to their own brand of sensibilities. They dressed fastidiously, went to church, uttered hallelujahs, gave dainty receptions, formed associations to dole out alms and—kept up prices and rents. Notwithstanding the general distress, rents in New York City were greater than were paid in any other city or village ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... manhood, the society into which they are thrown is a mere moral wilderness. They are to make such way through it as they can, with egotism for their only trusty instrument. This egotism may either be a bludgeon, as with the most part, or it may be a delicately adjusted and fastidiously decorated compass, as with an Emilius. In either case is no perception that the gross outer contact of men with another is transformed by worthiness of common aim and loyal faith in common excellences, into a thing beautiful ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... a strikingly handsome man. His features were good and clearly cut; his hair and moustache were dark, thick, short and glossy; his dark eyes were quick and bright; his figure was well-made, and better developed; his shapely hands were not only clean, they were fastidiously trimmed about the nails (a daintiness common below the rank of sergeant, especially among men acting as clerks); and if the stone in his signet ring was not a real onyx, it looked quite as well at a distance, and the absence of a crest was not conspicuous. He spoke with a very good ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... having circled the carcass, turned his attention to the dusty floor again. If there had been any trail there, it was now muddled past their reading, for remnants of the grisly meal had been dragged back and forth. The alien picked his way fastidiously through the noxious debris to the end of the long room. Raf, with the same care, toured the edge of the chamber ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... management of her affairs, and insisted on carrying her off; but her gratitude was strangely confused with her new railway experiences and her anxieties about her parcels. I felt as if I had drifted a little bit farther from old times, when we held our heads rather fastidiously high above "odd people." ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sign was, that, though hitherto fastidiously expensive in dress and appointments, he now grudged himself all that was not absolutely necessary, in the endeavour to leave as large a sum as possible with Mrs. Murrell. Even in the tempting article ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Barbados printed in blue instead of black; but this latter error was, according to Messrs. Hardy and Bacon, so promptly discovered, that it is doubtful if any of the wrong colour were issued for postal use. In 1896 the fastidiously careful firm of De la Rue and Co. printed off and despatched to Tobago a supply of 6,000 one shilling stamps in the colour of the sixpenny, i.e. in orange-brown instead of olive-yellow. Several are said to have been issued to the public before the error had been noticed. Indeed, the firm ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... wholesome fear was mingled. It is certain that the two best places in the stage were given up to them without protest, and that a careless, almost supercilious invitation to drink from Flynn was responded to with singular alacrity by all, including even two fastidiously dressed and previously reserved passengers. I am afraid that Clarence enjoyed this proof of his friend's singular dominance with a boyish pride, and, conscious of the curious eyes of the passengers, directed occasionally to himself, ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... he likely to be content with the mere fact of the child's death, apart from the process and leisurely expansion of its mental agony—in that case there would be no hope. But, because our present murderer is fastidiously finical in his exactions—a sort of martinet in the scenical grouping and draping of the circumstances in his murders—therefore it is that hope becomes reasonable, since all such refinements of preparation demand time. Murders of mere necessity Williams was obliged to hurry; ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... came somehow to the knowledge of the French Comrades, and he suffered accordingly. Although careless and shaggy enough in appearance in all conscience, Kosinski happened to be fastidiously clean about his person. I doubt whether he was ever without a certain small manicure set in his pocket, and an old joke among his Russian friends was that he had failed to put in an appearance on some important occasion—the rescue of a Nihilist from prison, I believe —because he had forgotten ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... and vanish, like the cares which breathe over the smooth glass of wisdom, but may not linger to dim it, it was not difficult to invest the place, humble as it was, with a classic interest, or to recall the loved retreats of the Roman bards, without smiling too fastidiously at the contrast. ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he had hitherto been unable to use in her presence through lack of words and training. He was just beginning to orientate himself and to feel that he was not wholly an intruder. But he was very tentative, fastidiously so, letting Ruth set the pace of sprightliness and fancy, keeping up with her but never ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... their responsive minds, the "home children" for whom everything centres in their own home-world, and who have in them the making of another one in the future; the critics, standing aloof, a little peevish and very self-conscious, hardly capable of deep friendship and fastidiously dissatisfied with people and things in general; the cheerful and helpful souls who have no interests of their own but can devote themselves to help anyone; the opposite class whose life is in their own moods and feelings. Many others might be added, each observer's experience ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... before the tardy daylight could creep into the darkened room, old Oliver was up and busy. He had been in the habit of doing for himself, as he called it, ever since his daughter had forsaken him, and he was by nature fastidiously clean and neat. But now there would be additional duties for him during the next three days; for there would be Dolly to wash, and dress, and provide breakfast for. Every few minutes he stole a look at her lying ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... the heroine has done well for herself from a social point of view. If social conditions are indeed a barrier, let them be treated with a sort of noble shame, as the love of the keeper Tregarva for the squire's daughter Honoria is treated in Yeast; let them not be fastidiously ignored over the tea-cups ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... never find fault with any dish placed before him, and to appear to question the quality or freshness of the viands by smelling or fastidiously tasting them, is a positive insult to the gentleman who has invited him to ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... instinctively shun approach to the dirty, the squalid, and the diseased, and use no garment that may have been worn by another. We open sewers for matters that offend the sight or the smell, and contaminate the air. We carefully remove impurities from what we eat and drink, filter turbid water, and fastidiously avoid drinking from a cup that may have been pressed to the lips of a friend. On the other hand, we resort to places of assembly, and draw into our mouths air loaded with effluvia from the lungs, skin, and clothing ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... personally, and, though a somewhat independent young woman, she was glad that the opportunity of informing Torrance of her intention was not afforded her, since he had ridden off somewhere earlier in the day. It also happened that although the days were growing colder she arrayed herself fastidiously in a long, light skirt, which she had not worn since she left Cedar, and which with the white hat that matched it became her better than the conventional riding attire. Miss Schuyler naturally ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... of fondness she received from her father. Her exquisite beauty and the gentle softness of her manners made her such a contrast to her sisters as constantly excited their ill-will. Unlike them all, she was fastidiously neat in her personal habits, and orderly in all the little arrangements ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Were I fastidiously anxious for the symmetry of this book, it would close with the notes. But the times are such that patriotism—not free from solicitude—urges a claim overriding ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... fastidiously wiping his hands on a wisp of grass, placed his hunting knife in his belt and his rifle in its saddle sheath. He next picked up his pistol, but after a single glance at the side plate, smashed in by Gowan's first shot, he dropped the ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... said Sarah, and fastidiously cleared her throat. "Talking of friends, I wonder now what has become of one of those young gentlemen I met at your wedding. He was ... let me see ... why, I declare if ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... to be daunted. Still plucking little twigs and delicate buds and knocking them carefully and fastidiously against her forelegs in order to shake off any little fragment of dust that might have stuck there, she made her way steadily towards him, and as Rataplan, even then, took not the slightest notice ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin |
