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More "Captivate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... purpose; the contrary of what I suppose to be the opinion, according to what I have heard, of the greater number of young and pretty women, who use their eyes as a weapon of offense, or as a sort of electric battery, by means of which to subdue hearts and captivate them. Not like those, indeed, are Pepita's eyes, wherein dwell a peace and a serenity as of heaven. And yet it can not be said that there is anything of coldness in their glance. Her eyes are full of charity ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... society. This, however, is a very pardonable sort of coxcombry; and tho' it appear sometimes pedantic, and occasionally laughable, yet it tends to encourage learning and science, and compels the young men to read in order to shine and captivate the fair. ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... Robespierre never condescended to this, and never sought to obtain ascendency over the people by pandering to their brutality, but by appealing to their reason; and the fanatical tone of his speeches possessed at least that decency that attends great ideas—he ruled by respect, and scorned to captivate them by familiarity. The more he gained the confidence of the lower classes, the more did he affect the philosophical tone and austere demeanour of the statesman. It was plainly perceptible in his most radical propositions, that however he might wish to renew social ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... expectation: they have seen nothing preferable: and, therefore, the merit of the day, whatever it may happen to be, meets their full applause. For even a middling Orator, if he is possessed of any degree of Eloquence, will always captivate the ear; and the order and beauty of a good discourse has an astonishing effect upon the human mind. Accordingly, what common hearer who was present when Q. Scaevola pleaded for M. Coponius, in the cause above- mentioned, ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... all, and everything won his heart. The first to captivate and take his fancy were the pots, out of which he would have very gladly helped himself to a moderate pipkinful; then the wine skins secured his affections; and lastly, the produce of the frying-pans, if, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... increased in order to give her a chance to bargain. But she does not bargain down to the proper price, she bargains down to a sum above the proper price, and she frequently buys unnecessary, or inferior things, simply because the dealer was smart enough to captivate her by allowing reductions. This is indicated in a certain criminal case,[1] in which the huckster-woman asserted that she immediately suspected a customer of passing counterfeit coins ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... ought this Gospel to be received by the guilty, perishing creatures, for whose rescue from perdition it is designed. How should this display of divine compassion melt and captivate the hearts of those, whose sins have been thus expiated, and for whom an offer of free pardon and endless blessedness has been ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2 No. 7 Dec. 1827 • Aaron W. Leland and Elihu W. Baldwin
... she should take I.O.U.'s of mine which were in your possession, and should sue me for the money so as to get me into prison by means of them, if I persisted in claiming an account from you of my property. Now you reproach me for having a weakness for that lady when you yourself incited her to captivate me! She told me so to my face.... She told me the story and laughed at you.... You wanted to put me in prison because you are jealous of me with her, because you'd begun to force your attentions upon her; and I know all about ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... knows?" she went on to say. "It seems to me very possible that the very singularity of such an address might captivate her, and give you a decided advantage over lovers who pressed their ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... note proclaim The lovers triumph, and the fair one's shame. There to the laughing god in flow'rs array'd, The graceful throng their daily homage paid; There in his temple learn'd the fatal art, 30 To please, seduce, and captivate the heart. Young Hope, in flatt'ring smiles for ever gay, To Love's mysterious altar leads the way: The graces round, half veil'd and half in sight, Enticing motion with their voice unite; 35 While Indolence, luxurious laid along, Listless and loit'ring, hears the tender song. There, ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... successful man had nearly every woman of prominence at his feet. The men planned their attacks upon the women whom they desired, and the women connived, posed, and set most ingenious traps and devised most extraordinary means to captivate their hero. As the century wore on and the vices and appetites gradually consumed the healthy tissues, there sprang up a class of monsters, most accomplished roues, consummate leaders of theoretical and practical ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... two priests. On the contrary, when he was apt to indulge in those speculations which they always encouraged, and rewarded by adroit applause, she was often silent, throwing on him only the scrutiny of those violet yes, whose glance was rather fascinating than apt to captivate. And yet he was irresistibly drawn to her, and, once recalling the portrait in the gallery, he ventured to ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... she saw the listening multitudes, with her ears she heard again the words of divine forgiveness; and, the lulab and the citron in her hands, she assisted at the Feast of the Tabernacles, and watched the vain attempt to charm the recalcitrant Temple and captivate the inimical town. ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... natural; she was a beautiful woman, full of talent and animation, brilliant and fascinating, only too anxious to please him in every way, laying herself out to captivate him, and he never could ...
— My Mother's Rival - Everyday Life Library No. 4 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... very beautiful, but hers was a different style of beauty from that of Rose, whose ripe, sensuous charms were fitted to captivate the admiration of the voluptuary, while Sabine was of the most refined and ethereal character. Rose fettered the body with earthly trammels, while Sabine drew the soul heavenward. Her beauty was not of the kind that dazzles, for the air of proud ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... my suspicions and apprehensions, and hated myself for it. Her sweet devotedness to me was sufficient proof of her honesty. I was not wealthy by any means, and I knew that if she chose she could, with her notable beauty, captivate a rich husband without much difficulty. Husbands are only unattainable by the blue-stocking, the flirt ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... characteristic of the ill-fated House of Stuart that, through all their misfortunes, through all their degradations, they have contrived to captivate the imagination and bewitch the hearts of many generations. The Stuart influence upon literature has been astonishing. No cause in the world has rallied to its side so many poets, named or nameless, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... against the mischiefs which attend an early knowledge of their own beauty. If a young woman once thinks herself handsome, she never doubts the truth of any man that tells her he is in love with her; for if she believes herself charming enough to captivate him, 'tis natural to expect the effects ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... find that Mr. Heady (Uncle Juvinell) has produced a very entertaining and instructive volume. It is written in a racy, sprightly style, that cannot fail to captivate the mind. Partaking himself of the buoyancy and good humor of boyhood, the author is able to write for the boys in a manner that is at once attractive and profitable. He has written a live book of one, who, "though ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... arts; she had practised no wiles. She was a sincere, guileless, Christian girl. Shrewd enough she was, indeed, but utterly incapable of scheming for any manner of selfish or sordid end. With her divine endowment of good looks and her consecrated good nature, she could not fail to captivate; and there is small room for wonder that she had made large inroads upon "Cobbler" Horn's ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... her a sort of infamous claim to notice. She was born in Paris in 1651; being daughter of D'Aubrai, lieutenant- civil of Paris, who married her to the Marquis of Brinvilliers. Although possessed of attractions to captivate lovers, she was for some time much attached to her husband, but at length became madly in love with a Gascon officer. Her father imprisoned the officer in the Bastille; and, while there, he learned the art of compounding subtle and most mortal poisons; and, when he was released, he taught ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... think more extraordinary than love of the same kind, pays me many compliments both when I am absent and present, and said many fine things about my accompanying her at sight. Still she does not gain upon me ... Mr. Elliot says, 'She will captivate the Prince of Wales, whose mind is as vulgar as her own, and play a great part in England,'"—a remark which showed shrewd judgment of character, as Nelson afterwards found to his intense disturbance. At Vienna the whole party had been presented at Court, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... "pleasing." It was the aim and object of her life. If I told her that in such a house, in such a street, there lived a man who was not attracted by her, it would have caused her real suffering. She wanted every day to enchant, to captivate, to drive men crazy. The fact that I was in her power and reduced to a complete nonentity before her charms gave her the same sort of satisfaction that victors used to get in tournaments.... She had an extraordinary ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... is its hybridity, not to speak of its pretentious psychology. It is neither flesh nor fowl; and, exception made for some fine passages, more at the beginning than in the rest of the book, it jars and irks, and amazes, but does not captivate or persuade. ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... Mavis made further efforts to captivate Perigal, and persuade him to fulfill the desire of her heart. Now, he was constantly about her on any and every excuse, when he would either kiss her or caress her hair. After dinner, they sat by the fire, where they drank coffee and smoked cigarettes. Presently, Perigal slipped on the ground beside ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... greater power to charm the youthful reader than the conqueror of Peru. Not even King Arthur, or Thaddeus of Warsaw, has the power to captivate the imagination of the growing boy. Mr. Towle has handled his subject in a glowing but truthful manner; and we venture the assertion, that, were our children led to read such books as this, the taste for unwholesome, exciting, wrong-teaching ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... signora's candle. Mrs Bold, too, had been there, and had felt somewhat displeased with the taste, want of taste she called it, shown by Mr Arabin in paying so much attention to Madame Neroni. It was as infallible that Madeline should displease and irritate the women, as that she should charm and captivate the men. The one result followed naturally on the other. It was quite true that Mr Arabin had been charmed. He thought her a very clever and a very handsome woman; he thought also that her peculiar afflictions entitled her to the sympathy ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... seen front-wise, here was occasion to look at them from a contrary direction—a pleasant variety for the ornament of a Camerino." Our worldly-wise painter evidently knew that material allurements as well as supreme art were necessary to captivate Philip. It cannot be alleged, all the same, that this purely sensuous mode of conception was not perfectly in consonance with his own temperament, with his own point of view, at this particular stage in ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... give his mistress the features which captivate him; he is not then master of loving, or not loving the object of his tenderness; he is not master of his imagination or temperament. Whence it evidently follows, that man is not master of his volitions and desires. "But man," you will say, "can resist his ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... feeling which she had ever experienced. And indeed she really was not one of those women who cannot make up their minds to grow old. Long before the hour of curfew—though indeed there had perhaps never been much fire in her to put out—all her coquetry, all her feminine eagerness to captivate and charm, all her aspirations towards fame or fashion or social success had been transferred to the account of her son, this tall, good-looking young fellow in the correct attire of the modern artist, with his ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... minds inspired with noble flame, Attest their origin, and scorn the claim. Beyond the sweets of pleasure and of rest, The joys which captivate the vulgar breast; Beyond the dearer ties of kindred blood; Or Brittle life's too transitory good; The sacred charge of liberty they prize, That last, and noblest, present of ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... are all treeless, and our great heave of masonry comes up to the very edge of our green oases. Even the smaller parks which fill but a block or two, when twilight enfolds them, blurring the harsher outlines and conjuring out the shadows, can captivate the senses. If you chance to wander in Brooklyn—which no self-respecting inhabitant of Manhattan permits himself to do except under compulsing!—you may come upon Fort Greene Park when the evening shadows are stealing ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... you don't find them amusing, those parties; indeed, it's very good of you to go to them!" said Mme. Verdurin, who regarded the President of the Republic only as a 'bore' to be especially dreaded, since he had at his disposal means of seduction, and even of compulsion, which, if employed to captivate her 'faithful,' might easily make them 'fail.' "It seems, he's as deaf as a post; and eats with ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... That Nature gave to South Tyrol Cannot alone explain thy power To captivate both ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... Joconde so much dismay'd; His spirits droop'd, his lilies 'gan to fade; No more he look'd the charmer he had been; And when the court's gay dames his face had seen; They cried, Is this the beauty, we were told, Would captivate each heart, or young or old? Why, he's the jaundice; ev'ry view displays The mien ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... person Henry was still superior to William; and yet the latter had no common share of those attractions which captivate ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... little time altogether alienated from this hope of her family, whom she abandoned to the conduct of his mother, whose province it undoubtedly was to manage the nurture of her own child; while she herself resumed her operations upon the commodore, whom she was resoled at any rate to captivate and enslave. And it must be owned that Mrs. Grizzle's knowledge of the human heart never shone so conspicuous as in the methods she pursued for the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... was not very likely, one would have thought, to captivate an ardent, impulsive boy like Elsmere. Edward Langham, however, notwithstanding undergraduate tales, was a very remarkable person. In the first place, he was possessed of exceptional personal beauty. His colouring ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... church and science really meet on common ground, and it is important to examine objectively whether it is wise and beneficial to encourage the spreading of this tempting enterprise. The movement has reached the large cities between the Atlantic and the Pacific and is beginning to captivate the ministers of the small towns and villages. It seems as if an epoch has come for the church—the church which too long has ministered only to the spiritual needs of the community will at last remember again that Christ healed the sick, that mind and body are one, ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... these things], you have said truly that where pleasure of the body is greater and fuller, there is the exile of the soul; and where luxury reigns there the soul is a wretched and afflicted hand-maid. O Paris! How well-suited art thou to captivate and deceive souls! In thee are the nets of the vices, in thee the arrow of Hell transfixes the hearts of the foolish! This my John has felt and therefore he has named it an exile. Would that you were leaving behind that exile of yours just as it is, and were hastening to your native ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... brilliancy, that glory which is at once patent even to the most ignoble beholder. Thus, certain pictures by Raphael, such as the famous Transfiguration, the Madonna di Foligno, and the frescoes of the Stanze in the Vatican, do not at first captivate our admiration, as do the Violin-player in the Sciarra Palace, the portraits of the Doria family, and the Vision of Ezekiel in the Pitti Gallery, the Christ bearing His Cross in the Borghese collection, and the ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... with him he is in the right road,—but not for greatness. The marks by which Fame has always separated her great martyrs from the rest of mankind are not upon him, and the crown cannot be his. He may dazzle, may captivate the circle, and even the times in which he lives, but he is not ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Octavia had Mr. Poppleton and Mr. Francis Barold upon her hands, and was endeavoring to do her duty as hostess by both of them. If it had been her intention to captivate these gentlemen, she could not have complained that Mr. Poppleton was wary or difficult game. His first fears allayed, his downward path was smooth, and rapid in proportion. When he had taken his departure with the little silk purse in his keeping, ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... nonsense lent an air of romance and mystery that was well adapted to captivate the imagination of a young, ardent, and solitary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... cooling draught our thirsts to quench. There, hand in hand, we'll trace the citron grove, While with the songsters' round I join my voice, To hush thy cares and calm thy ruffl'd soul: Or, on some flow'ry bank reclin'd, my strains Shall captivate the natives of the stream, While on its crystal ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... percent. Bill Gates told the New York Times that Microsoft lost the search wars by doing "a good job on the 80 percent of common queries and ignor[ing] the other stuff. But it's the remaining 20 percent that counts, because that's where the quality perception is." Why did Napster captivate so many of us? Not because it could get us the top-40 tracks that we could hear just by snapping on the radio: it was because 80 percent of the music ever recorded wasn't available for sale anywhere in the world, and in that 80 percent ...
— Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books • Cory Doctorow
... which involve the exercise of the mind as a controlling factor. One may be a great orator, according to the usual acceptation of the term "great," and yet be only a declaimer and a rhetorician. That is to say, he may be able to captivate audiences by his superior action, as Demosthenes defines oratory to be, and at the same time his elocution and rhetoric may be unexceptionable, yet he maybe in fact totally lacking in every element which goes ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... world reckons an equivalent: for, as to my own opinion, you bring me what is infinitely more valuable, an experienced truth, a well-tried virtue, and a wit and behaviour more than equal to the station you will be placed in: To say nothing of this sweet person, that itself might captivate a monarch; and of the meekness of temper, and sweetness of disposition, which make you superior to all the women ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... can't make her out," he often said to himself, "I have an odd instinct which tells me that there is the sleeping lioness or the wild-cat hidden somewhere beneath all that languid, gracious carelessness. Poor little girl! she has managed to captivate us all, but I should not be surprised if she turned out more difficult and troublesome to manage than the whole of my seven ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... evening, and the aurora over the southern sky, now like a row of flaming spears, then changing into a silvery veil, undulating in wavy folds with the wind, every here and there interspersed with red sprays. These wonderful night effects are ever new, and never fail to captivate the soul." ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... artificers of all sorts, artists and artisans, professors of wisdom, (6) philosophers, and poets, with those who exhibit and popularise their works. (7) And next a new train of pleasure-seekers, eager to feast on everything sacred or secular, (8) which may captivate and charm eye and ear. Or once again, where are all those who seek to effect a rapid sale or purchase of a thousand commodities, to find what they want, if ...
— On Revenues • Xenophon
... were safe arrived at Montserrat, and I had got ashore, I forgot my former resolutions.—Alas! how prone is the heart to leave that God it wishes to love! and how strongly do the things of this world strike the senses and captivate the soul!—After our vessel was discharged, we soon got her ready, and took in, as usual, some of the poor oppressed natives of Africa, and other negroes; we then set off again for Georgia and Charlestown. We arrived at Georgia, and, having ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... the heart of India, a mortal so far favored as never to have worn the abominable European costume—those hideous habits, and frightful hats, which render the men so ridiculous, so ugly, that in truth there is not a single good quality to be discovered in them, nor one spark of what can either captivate or attract! There comes to me at last a handsome young prince from the East, where the men are clothed in silk and cashmere. Most assuredly I'll not miss this rare and unique opportunity of exposing myself to a very serious and formidable temptation! No, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... on! say what you please: I will not hate anything yet. Why have you torn up by the root all these little mountain ash-trees? This is the season of their beauty: come, Ternissa, let us make ourselves necklaces and armlets, such as may captivate old Sylvanus and Pan; you shall have your choice. But why have you ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... certain class of women, however, who as a rule are likely to become fretful and ill-tempered as they grow in years: girls who are allowed to grow up with uninformed judgments, who are taught that the chief end and aim of woman is to captivate and please the opposite sex, who are taught to think a pretty face and delicate figure of more importance than good sense or a thorough education. And yet it is a fact worthy of notice, that those who most ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... how sad your fate! The Law's stern coldness comes to freeze Your burning wish to captivate With words you know will always ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... on Cinderilla fair, Whom she instructed with such care. She gave to her such graceful mien, That she, thereby, became a queen. For thus (may ever truth prevail) We draw our moral from this tale. This quality, fair ladies, know Prevails much more (you'll find it so) T'ingage and captivate a heart, Than a fine head dress'd up with art. The fairies' gift of greatest worth Is grace of bearing, not high birth; Without this gift we'll miss the prize; Possession gives ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... been very many pleasanter companions than she will make thee, for she is excessively irritable and passionate. Withal she is so fond of admiration, that I have no doubt she would give chace to the ugliest toad that ever devoured a worm, so she could captivate him. She ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... friend, as it would set people talking about him. But you well know how very tenacious our father is on the subject of birth, and so I fancy is our mother, and they would blame me excessively if you were to captivate Headland and be captivated by him; and Algernon, who, I confess, put me up to speak to you on the subject, says he is certain that they would never give their consent to your marrying my friend, though, to confess the truth, there ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... arm, And kindly stopp'd the unfinish'd charm. But though not changed to owl or bat, Or something more indelicate; Yet, as your tongue has run too fast, Your boasted beauty must not last. No more shall frolic Cupid lie In ambuscade in either eye, From thence to aim his keenest dart To captivate each youthful heart: No more shall envious misses pine At charms now flown, that once were thine No more, since you so ill behave, Shall injured Oberon be ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... sanctuary. Music completes the charm by the most exquisite strains, by the harmony of the choir. These powerful incentives are repeated in a hundred different places; the metropolises, parishes, the numerous religious houses, the simple oratories, sparkle with emulation to captivate all the powers of the religious and devout mind. Thus a taste for the arts becomes general by means of so potent a lever, and artists increase in number and rivalry. Under this influence the celebrated schools of Italy and Flanders flourished; and the finest ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... have been made from the Leopold society, and other sources, chiefly, though by no means exclusively, in favour of this portion of the empire that is to be. These sums are expended in erecting showy churches and colleges, and in sustaining priests and emissaries. Everything is done to captivate, and to liberalise in appearance, a system essentially despotic. The sagacity of the effort is discovered, in avoiding to attack and shock the prejudices of the adult, that they may direct the education of the young. They ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... toilet, and was decorating her head with all the grace she could devise to captivate Matta, at the moment he was denied admittance: she knew nothing of the matter; but her husband knew every particular. He had taken it in dudgeon that the first visit was not paid to him, and as he was ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... eccentric women who desire to play the part of man, she made her appearance before Napoleon in the most absurd, tasteless attire. This woman of genius and folly lacked the wisdom of gauging the taste of Bonaparte, whom she desired to captivate with her sluttish ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... she lacks that prevents men from falling in love with her? Men flock there, and she is more discussed as a mind and a personality than any woman among us; but it is all above the collar. And yet those handsome-ugly women often captivate men." ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Queen, as you do, most excessively, and for her sake, I hope that a due respect will be paid to the K., and while he and she were grudged every luxury in the world, by those mean wretches Burke, Gilbert,(238) and Lansdown, all kind of profusion is not thought of to captivate his R(oyal) H(ighness).(239) In short, I shall be glad, if his Majesty has lost his head, to hear that the P. has found it. I have given him as yet more credit than I would own, for I will not be accused of paying ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... are here!" said the Countess. "But why such an elaborate toilette? Whom do you intend to captivate? What sort of weather is ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... of life, and of taking upon him the title of physician, under which he did not despair of insinuating himself into the pockets of his patients, and into the secrets of private families, so as to acquire a comfortable share of practice, or captivate the heart of some heiress or rich widow, whose fortune would at once ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... in all his mien, Which would so captivate, I ween, Wisdom's own goddess Pallas; That she'd discard her fav'rite owl, And take for pet a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... "Will captivate by its humor, set all the heart strings to vibrating by its pathos, flood one's being in the great surge of patriotism ... a story that vastly enriches American ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... Field could perhaps in this respect be compared to him. A manly energy gave to appropriate passages overpowering effect— energy without roughness (Rohheit); but, on the other hand, he knew how by delicacy—delicacy without affectation—to captivate the hearer. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... her to ride he could make her forget the man who had been teaching her to live, he was not a little mistaken in the woman he desired to captivate. ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... summat about loading and firing, d'ye see, but as for working ship? why, a corporals guard of the Boadishey's marines would back and fill on their quarters in such a manner as to surround and captivate them all in half a glass. As there was no one to deny this assertion, the marines of the Boadicea were held in a ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... of gold. Now, how is it that you don't barter your virtue for gold sometimes? I am a philosopher, Ursula, and like to know everything. You must be every now and then exposed to great temptation, Ursula; for you are of a beauty calculated to captivate all hearts. Come, sit down and tell me how you are enabled to resist such a temptation as ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... to those of the salacious warbler, the wanton lacivious little Moore? She to whom I am pleasing is ever pleasing to me. If she hates both me and my works, I long to give her reason to think differently of both. This fair one walks with grace, her graces captivate me; that sings, and her voice flows like honey from her lips; I pant to kiss the hive from which such honey flows. Her brilliant fingers sweep the chords: Who can but love such well-instructed fingers?—To love in every shape ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... a signally untriumphant; and is not now worth any knowledge but a transient accidental one. Chetardie came hither about Stanislaus and his affairs; tried hard, but in vain, to tempt Friedrich Wilhelm into interference;—is naturally anxious to captivate the Crown-Prince, in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... accompanied by a peculiar play of feature and of voice, and with unique and original gestures, which seemed to excite and captivate his audience. ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... him, certainly, Annette, much to attract a maiden's eye and to captivate her heart but it has occurred to me that the most glittering surface does not always indicate the purest gold beneath. I remember once to have seen a massive chain, wrought from pure ounces, placed beside another that was far inferior in quality, but with a surface of ten ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... with civility, would converse with him, if opportunity favored, and treat him to a disquisition on the nature of government and the "beauty" of nullification, striving to make a lasting impression on his intellect. Clay would rise, extend his hand with that winning grace of his, and instantly captivate him by his all-conquering courtesy. He would call him by name, inquire respecting his health, the town whence he came, how long he had been in Washington, and send him away pleased with himself and enchanted with Henry Clay. And what was his delight to receive a few weeks after, in his ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... and good will in the breasts of the incautious Negroes, the Europeans have, by their bad example, led them into excess of drunkenness, debauchery, and avarice; whereby every passion of corrupt nature being inflamed, they have been easily prevailed upon to make war, and captivate one another; as well to furnish means for the excesses they had been habituated to, as to satisfy the greedy desire of gain in their profligate employers, who to this intent have furnished them with prodigious quantities of arms and ammunition. Thus they have been hurried into confusion, ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... the luxurious fancies of the Arab's mind, for they vividly set forth the love and hate, the craft and hypocrisy, the courage and revenge of his race. Moreover, they portray in a truly dramatic manner the innermost life and thought of the Moslem, while they captivate the senses by a magnificent panorama of exquisite banquets, lovely characters, charming gardens, and ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... now laid down the external pomp of Protector, and, like Cincinnatus, has withdrawn to retirement, but not with the same view. This modesty is to captivate the crowd, who are to call on him to convert the ploughshare into an Imperial sceptre! I have excellent information to this effect, having found means to obtain it from behind the scenes of this ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... be artistic, graceful, charming, and whatever else they said he himself was. If he was aware of not being all that, he was aware also of having tried to be it; of having sought from the beginning to captivate the reader's fancy as well as convince his reason. He had never been satisfied with being plain and direct; he had constantly wished to amuse as well as edify, and following the line of beauty, as that of the least resistance, had been his practice if not his precept. If he counselled ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... glance I am again seized by a mortal fear. I have a presentiment that this man can enchain her, captivate her, subjugate her, and I feel inferior in contrast with his savage masculinity; I am filled with ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... of the lazy and childish Filipinos, who have no needs; and that the cura has infinite advantages over the governor, for his buffets do not offend, his requests oblige, and his love to the village and his disinterestedness captivate and interest these people, and make them as wax. Thus indeed can it be said that the cura is the soul of the village. In any province where its ruler is united with the curas, where the latter honor the alcalde and instruct him of all that happens, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... forgotten British playwrights, Daudet was influenced rather by the virile dramas of Dumas fils and Augier. But in "Fromont and Risler," not only is the plot a trifle stagy, but the heroine herself seems almost a refugee of the footlights; exquisitely presented as Sidonie is, she fails quite to captivate or convince, perhaps because her sisters have been seen so often before in this play and in that. And now and again even in his later novels we discover that Daudet has needlessly achieved the adroit arrangement of events so useful in the theatre and not requisite in ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... merely professed to have attained it by a different route. The innovation for which they claimed credit is a matter of method, of technique. Their deliberate purpose is to surprise us by the fidelity of their studies, to captivate and convince us by an accumulation of exact minutiae: in a word, to prove that truth is more interesting than fiction. So history should be written, and so they wrote it. First and last, whatever form they chose, they remained historians. Alleging the example set by Plutarch and ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... that, if there be in me a single remnant of affection for any human being, it is for you. When I consented to leave you to bear the sentence which should have fallen on myself, sure I am that I was less basely selfish than absurdly vain. I fancied myself so born to good fortune!—so formed to captivate some rich girl!—and that you would return to share wealth with me; that the evening of your days would be happy; that you would be repaid by my splendour for your own disgrace! And when I did marry, and did ultimately ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it is said, a vision of her future, suddenly took to a pretension of virtue and plain sewing; contrived to gain the notice of Justinian, to inflame his passions as she did those of all the world besides, to captivate him into first an alliance, and at length a marriage. The emperor raised her to an equal seat with himself on his throne; and she was worshiped as empress in that city where she had been admired as harlot. And on the throne she was a wise woman, courageous and chaste; and had her palaces on ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to point out to her the true road to happiness in the new condition which she was on the point of adopting. I told her how she ought to behave towards her husband, towards his aunt and his sister, in order to captivate their esteem and their love. The last part of my discourse was pathetic and rather disparaging to myself, for, as I enforced upon her the necessity of being faithful to her husband, I was necessarily led to entreat her pardon for having seduced her. "When ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... candidates was almost pathetic. Senator Douglas was the most brilliant figure in the political life of the day. Winning in personality, fearless as an advocate, magnetic in eloquence, shrewd in political manoeuvring, he had every quality to captivate the public. His resources had never failed him. From his entrance into Illinois politics in 1834, he had been the recipient of every political honor his party had to bestow. For the past eleven years he had been a member of the United States ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... no doubt I shall one day do this; but the plan is not yet ripe. Put that aside, then, and since on the other hand Jeanne de Matel does not captivate me, perhaps I had better think of another abbess even less known, and whose career was one of more tranquil endurance, less wandering and more concentrated, and at ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Justices—Sir Maurice Eustace, the Irish Chancellor; Lord Broghill (created Lord Orrery); and Sir Charles Coote, created Earl of Montrath. The first was a worn-out old man. The second was a dexterous manager, who knew how to captivate friends and how to outwit enemies; the third was "proud, dull, and very avaricious." Both Orrery and Montrath had their own ends to serve, and were bitter enemies; and when Montrath died, as Hyde expresses it, "they who took the ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... heart. He was the best looking of the family, and, except Undy, the youngest. He had not Undy's sharpness, his talent for public matters, or his aptitude for the higher branches of the Civil Service; but he had wit to wear his sash and epaulets with an easy grace, and to captivate the heart, person, and some portion of the purse, of the Widow Golightly. The lady was ten years older than the gentleman; but then she had a thousand a year, and, to make matters more pleasant, the beauteous Clementina had a fortune ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... the seaman's perplexity, for the closet in which he stood, apart from the fact of its being only ten feet long by six broad, had been arranged by the tasteful sisters after the manner of a lady's boudoir, with a view to captivate some poor sister of very limited means, or, perhaps, some humble-minded and possibly undersized young clerk from the country. The bed, besides being rather small, and covered with a snow-white counterpane, was canopied ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... ceased to avail himself of his English, and soon began talking to him in Spanish, as though he had reserved this final touch in order to captivate Ulysses' affection with this ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... you that inhabit the heavenly mansions of Seraphina's countenance, what were the weapons used to captivate the heart of Mr. Jones. First, from two lovely blue eyes, whose bright orbs flashed lightning at their discharge, flew off two pointed ogles; but, happily for our hero, hit only a vast piece of beef, which he was then conveying into his plate. The fair warrior perceived their miscarriage, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... this master of the terpsichorean art, living in this far away Mexican town? Such talent could not remain in obscurity for long. Another great Spanish dancer was about to burst unheralded upon the world. It only remained for her to dance into it—to captivate and ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... young men had borne Miss Greeb to the altar, so that when her mother died the fair Julia almost despaired of attaining to the dignity of wifehood. Nevertheless, she continued to keep boarders, and to make attempts to captivate the hearts of such bachelors as she judged weak ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... should be affected with anything, he did not confide the execution of his design to the languid and precarious operation of our reason; but he endued it with powers and properties that prevent the understanding, and even the will; which, seizing upon the senses and imagination, captivate the soul, before the understanding is ready either to join with them, or to oppose them. It is by a long deduction, and much study, that we discover the adorable wisdom of God in his works: when we discover it the effect ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... O'Neill's Juliet came to captivate London, another idol of the stage was led to the altar by William, first Earl of Craven. Louisa Brunton, for that was the name of Craven's Countess, was cradled, like her successor, on the stage; for her father was well ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... timerous Trout I wait To take, and he devours my bait, How poor a thing sometimes I find Will captivate a greedy mind: And when none bite, I praise the wise, Whom vain alurements ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... Miss Graystone has gone away, and is not coming back any more, for mamma says so! She called her an artful piece, and said she was trying to captivate you with her pretty face. What is captivate, uncle? Is it anything so very dreadful? I know it ain't to be cross and push me away, as mamma does, for Miss Graystone never did that, but only loved me, and told me nice stories. I don't believe ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... people, branded people! Do you not know that there is an end, even to patience, even to devotion? Will you not cease to lend an ear to those orators of mysticism who tell you to pray and to wait, preaching salvation now through religion, now through power, and whose vehement and sonorous words captivate you? Your destiny is an enigma which neither physical force, nor courage of soul, nor the illuminations of enthusiasm, nor the exaltation of any sentiment, can solve. Those who tell you to the contrary deceive you, and all their discourses serve only to postpone the hour of your deliverance, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... of ultimate judges and punishers of heresy. Thus, the several orders of monks became a kind of regular troops or garrisons of the Romish church; and though the temporal interests of society, still more the cause of true piety, were hurt, by their various devices to captivate the populace, they proved the chief supports of that mighty fabric of superstition, and till the revival of true learning, secured it from ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... in art, Charmed and delighted his devoted heart, A gorgeous sunset, and a moonlit sky, Ne'er failed to captivate both ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... enough to know that these will elevate a man under any circumstances. But Fenwick had no decided points in his character. He had limited intelligence, and no energy arising from clear perceptions and strong resolutions. He was a man fit to captivate a young and innocent girl, but not to hold the affection of ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... regret having bought the paper, as he generally regretted every definite step which he took. The glow of romance which had sustained him during the preliminary negotiations had faded entirely. A girl has to be possessed of unusual charm to continue to captivate B, when she makes it plain daily that her heart is the exclusive property of A; and Roland had long since ceased to cherish any delusion that Bessie March was ever likely to feel anything but a mild liking for him. Young Mr. Petheram had obviously staked out an ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... boat was so elegant, so graceful, and so thoroughly finished in every part, that Conrad could not help coveting it. He was not very much to be blamed, for it was one that would captivate the fancy of any boy who was fond ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger
... were monks, who had travelled on our globe from a desire to convert the gentiles. We therefore told them that they did well to shun them, because their intention was, not to teach, but to secure gain and dominion; and that they strive by various means first to captivate men's minds (animi), and afterwards to subject them to themselves as slaves: moreover, that they did well in not suffering their idea concerning God to be disturbed by such spirits. They said further, that these spirits also confuse them by asserting that they ought to have faith, ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... inevitably be the first object of a British expedition. The "march to Paris" had been proclaimed by orators, exhibited in theatres, and chanted in street ballads. All before us was conquest, and distinctions of every kind that can captivate the untried soldier, glittered in all eyes. I was young, ardent, and active. My name was one known to the table at which I seated myself on my introduction to the Guards, and I was immediately on the best footing with the gallant young men of a corps which has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... ceased to please because I am not thirty-six years old. In the eyes of some men youth is thought an inferiority. There is nothing to imagine on an innocent face. I laugh frankly, and that is wrong; to captivate I ought to play off the melancholy half-smile of the fallen angel, who wants to hide her yellowing teeth. A fresh complexion is monotonous; some men prefer their doll's wax made of rouge and spermaceti and cold cream. I am straightforward; but duplicity is more pleasing. I ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... single individual. And I will also add, who can say that what causes durable emotion is unorthodox? It may be at variance with some rules and in harmony with others; and those which move hearts and captivate intellects do not appear to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... sad your fate! The Law's stern coldness comes to freeze Your burning wish to captivate With words you know will always ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... not give his mistress the features which captivate him; he is not then master of loving, or not loving the object of his tenderness; he is not master of his imagination or temperament. Whence it evidently follows, that man is not master of his volitions and desires. ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... order to assist this he joins them in his new faith. In admitting the Indians to be the "right, though guilty," descendants of the sacred tribes, he flatters them with an acknowledgment of their antiquity, the only point on which a white can captivate and even blind the shrewd though untutored man ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... whose animating strains fire us even to madness: how has the shore of Greece echoed with the wildest sounds; the delicious warblings of the Lyre charmed and astonished every ear. The blaze of rhetoric then burst forth; the ancients sought not by false thoughts, and glittering diction, to captivate the ear, but by manly and energetic modes of expression, to rule the heart ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... M. Artaria by some Bavarian Count: and which must have cost that Count very little short of 120 guineas. The shelves of the front repository were almost wholly filled with English books, in the choicest bindings; and dressed out to catch and captivate the susceptible bibliomaniac, in a manner the most adroit imaginable. To the left, on entrance, were two rooms filled with choice paintings; many of them just purchased at the Frankfort fair. Some ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... was how to be artistic, graceful, charming, and whatever else they said he himself was. If he was aware of not being all that, he was aware also of having tried to be it; of having sought from the beginning to captivate the reader's fancy as well as convince his reason. He had never been satisfied with being plain and direct; he had constantly wished to amuse as well as edify, and following the line of beauty, as that of the least resistance, had been his practice ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... I be," thus ran my meditations—"Tish though I be, it is then clear that Zee is not the only Gy whom my appearance can captivate. Evidently I am loved by A PRINCESS, the first maiden of this land, the daughter of the absolute Monarch whose autocracy they so idly seek to disguise by the republican title of chief magistrate. ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... which once captivated thee? This treasure of divine beauty, which Proserpina has entrusted to me for Venus, contains charms which I can make mine own, and their lustre must be extreme, since beauty herself, Venus, requires them to adorn herself. Would it be a great crime to snatch a few? To captivate a god, who has been my lover, to recover his affection, and put an end to my torture, can anything that I may do be unlawful? Let me open it. What vapours cloud my brain? and what do I behold issuing from this open casket? Love, ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... such a blessed beauty in them to that soul that has faith in the things contained in them, that they do take the heart and captivate the soul of him that believeth them into the love and liking of them, believing all things that are written in the law and the prophets, and having hope towards God that there shall be a resurrection of the dead both of ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... precarious power might last, for bettering his low and indigent circumstances. It appeared to him, that the traffic in Indians was the shortest way to riches. He therefore granted commissions to several persons, to assault, trepan and captivate as many Indians as they could, and resolved to turn the profits of such trade to his own private emolument. Not contented with this cruel method of acquiring wealth, he formed a design for engrossing the whole advantages ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... of language, and finish of diction, when even ideas fail, words come to his aid—arranging themselves, as it were, so completely, that they not only captivate, but often deceive us for ideas; and hence the vacuum that would necessarily occur in the address of an ordinary speaker is filled up, presenting the same beautiful harmony as do the lights ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... on the other; it is easy to foresee which will outweigh. Earthly minds, like mud walls, resist the strongest batteries: and though, perhaps, sometimes the force of a clear argument may make some impression, yet they nevertheless stand firm, and keep out the enemy, truth, that would captivate or disturb them. Tell a man passionately in love, that he is jilted; bring a score of witnesses of the falsehood of his mistress, it is ten to one but three kind words of hers shall invalidate all their testimonies. QUOD VOLUMUS, FACILE CREDIMUS; what suits our wishes, is ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... was in this gentleman's company was at a neighbour's christening, where she stood godmother. Here she displayed her whole little stock of knowledge, in order to captivate Mr. Bennet (I suppose, madam, you already guess that to have been his name), and before they parted gave him a very strong ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... neck in great profusion. Her eyes sparkled with vivacity, and even with intelligence. Her dress was elegant and graceful, but not gaudy. It was impossible that such a figure should not have had some tendency to captivate me. Having contemplated her sufficiently at a distance, ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... Mollossia stormed, Though brave Antigonus, with martial band, In pitched field encountered me and mine, Though Pandrassus and his contributories, With all the route of their confederates, Sought to deface our glorious memory And wipe the name of Trojans from the earth, Him did I captivate with this mine arm, And by compulsion forced him to agree To certain articles which there we did propound. From Graecia through the boisterous Hellespont, We came unto the fields of Lestrigon, Whereas our brother ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... reading of this puerile sublime, and we make no doubt but many other readers do the same, as it greatly tends to make our hearts ache by putting us in mind of what our posteriors have suffered for us at school. We shall therefore content ourselves by saying, this lady had charms sufficient to captivate the heart of any man not unsusceptible of love; and they made so deep an impression upon our hero, that they wholly effaced every object which before had created any desire in him, and never permitted any other to raise them afterwards; and, wonderful to tell, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... efforts to captivate Perigal, and persuade him to fulfill the desire of her heart. Now, he was constantly about her on any and every excuse, when he would either kiss her or caress her hair. After dinner, they sat by the fire, where they drank coffee and smoked cigarettes. Presently, Perigal slipped on the ground ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... front-wise, here was occasion to look at them from a contrary direction—a pleasant variety for the ornament of a Camerino." Our worldly-wise painter evidently knew that material allurements as well as supreme art were necessary to captivate Philip. It cannot be alleged, all the same, that this purely sensuous mode of conception was not perfectly in consonance with his own temperament, with his own point of view, at this particular stage in his life ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... plays there has been no greater affront to common sense than the usual presentation of this Fool upon the stage as a boy, except the putting a pretty woman into the part, dressed in such a way as to captivate the eye and divert the attention by the beauty of her figure. It is disturbing enough to see Ariel, sexless, but, like the angels, rather masculine than feminine, represented by a woman dressed below the waist in an inverted gauze saucer, and above the waist ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... beautiful courtesan of her time; reappeared in Constantinople; and, having, it is said, a vision of her future, suddenly took to a pretension of virtue and plain sewing; contrived to gain the notice of Justinian, to inflame his passions as she did those of all the world besides, to captivate him into first an alliance, and at length a marriage. The emperor raised her to an equal seat with himself on his throne; and she was worshiped as empress in that city where she had been admired as harlot. And on the throne she was a wise woman, courageous ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... admiration for poor Nora evident to me? Remember I was a frequent guest at Lansmere Park; and it was so natural that you, with all your brilliant gifts, should captivate her ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the great public have huge amphibious matter for their wonderment. The new curiosity comes to us staggering under the unwieldy name of Hippo-potamus. He is a comely gentleman, fair and beauteous to look upon; and the strange loveliness of his countenance cannot fail to captivate the crowd. His youth, too, gives him a special claim to the consideration of the ladies, for he is a little darling of only three years—a very baby of a hippopotamus in fact, who, only a few months ago, daily sucked his ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... especially in the cantabiles, immense (riesengross), only Field could perhaps in this respect be compared to him. A manly energy gave to appropriate passages overpowering effect— energy without roughness (Rohheit); but, on the other hand, he knew how by delicacy—delicacy without affectation—to captivate the hearer. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... and deep judgment famed, Of a high race, victorious beauty brings To grace our Courts, and captivate our Kings." ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... certainly, Annette, much to attract a maiden's eye and to captivate her heart but it has occurred to me that the most glittering surface does not always indicate the purest gold beneath. I remember once to have seen a massive chain, wrought from pure ounces, placed beside another that was far inferior ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... a trice Of widow Clicquot or Moet A blessed bottle, placed in ice, For the young poet they display. Like Hippocrene it scatters light, Its ebullition foaming white (Like other things I could relate) My heart of old would captivate. The last poor obol I was worth— Was it not so?—for thee I gave, And thy inebriating wave Full many a foolish prank brought forth; And oh! what verses, what delights, Delicious visions, ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... word "able," as I understand it, is applicable to those arts only which involve the exercise of the mind as a controlling factor. One may be a great orator, according to the usual acceptation of the term "great," and yet be only a declaimer and a rhetorician. That is to say, he may be able to captivate audiences by his superior action, as Demosthenes defines oratory to be, and at the same time his elocution and rhetoric may be unexceptionable, yet he maybe in fact totally lacking in every element which goes to make ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... turn the head, magnetize; lobby. persuade; prevail with, prevail upon; overcome, carry; bring round to one's senses, bring to one's senses; draw over, win over, gain over, come over, talk over; procure, enlist, engage; invite, court. tempt, seduce, overpersuade[obs3], entice, allure, captivate, fascinate, bewitch, carry away, charm, conciliate, wheedle, coax, lure; inveigle; tantalize; cajole &c. (deceive) 545. tamper with, bribe, suborn, grease the palm, bait with a silver hook, gild the pill, make things pleasant, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... she exerted herself, as usual, to captivate him, and bring him to her feet. She sang—she played—she liberally displayed the graces of her person, and the charms of her accomplished mind, but still in vain.—There he sat, with folded arms, in deep ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... also a purse full of money, fine silken hose, a velvet doublet, fringed with gold, and an embroidered mantle, which garments set off his figure so well, and showed up his beauties, that the Venetian was certain he would captivate all the ladies. The servants received orders to obey this Gauttier as they would himself, so that they fancied their master had been fishing, and had caught this Frenchman. Then the two friends ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... they see the hook and the string, and the whole apparatus with which they are to be taken, they gorge the bait nevertheless—they must come to it—they must swallow it—and are presently struck and landed gasping. Rawdon saw there was a manifest intention on Mrs. Bute's part to captivate him with Rebecca. He was not very wise; but he was a man about town, and had seen several seasons. A light dawned upon his dusky soul, as he thought, through a speech ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the leaders of society have blunted their finer perceptions by dissipation and immorality, they are incapable of feeling the beauties which come from delicate concords and truly artistic combinations. They verge towards barbarism, and require things that are strange, odd, dazzling, and peculiar to captivate their jaded senses. Such we take to be the condition of Parisian society now. The tone of it is given by women who are essentially impudent and vulgar, who override and overrule, by the mere brute force of opulence and luxury, women of finer ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... princes of immeasurable energy had looked at Draupadi, the God of Desire invaded their hearts and continued to crush all their senses. As the lavishing beauty of Panchali who had been modelled by the Creator himself, was superior to that of all other women on earth, it could captivate the heart of every creature. And Yudhishthira, the son of Kunti, beholding his younger brothers, understood what was passing in their minds. And that bull among men immediately recollected the words of Krishna-Dwaipayana. And the king, then, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... of a dying father was graven upon the heart of a young girl both timid and sensitive. She never forgot it; and it needed the fierce, inexplicable passion which took possession of her soul to captivate her and ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... mischief, and the records of the First Church of Salem contain this quaint entry under date of July 25, 1677: "The Lord having given a Commission to the Indians to take no less than 13 of the Fishing Ketches of Salem and Captivate the men... it struck a great consternation into all the people here. The Pastor moved on the Lord's Day, and the whole people readily consented, to keep the Lecture Day following as a Fast Day, which was accordingly done.... The Lord was pleased to send ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... that Voltaire would prove to him a most admirable publicity agent. And never was publicity agent secured at a lower cost. Those literary influences have continued to our own day to perpetuate the legend of Frederick. Nearly a hundred years after Rossbach Frederick had the strange good fortune to captivate the wayward genius of Carlyle. It is difficult to understand how Carlyle, who all through life hesitated between the Christian Puritanism of John Knox and the Olympian paganism of Goethe, could have been fascinated by the Potsdam cynic. We can only seek for an explanation ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... is, that for all the thought and time one spends in studying master works a great gain comes. On the other hand, everybody's experience with common music is, that while it may please much at first and even captivate us, yet it soon tires us so that we can ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper
... wrong than this can no man do on earth—lead, captivate the soul and body of a gracious and innocent girl, teach her the miracle of love in motherhood, and then desert her for a fairer and ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... warmth of indignation or delight, at the evil or good of others. This, to Anne, was a decided imperfection. Her early impressions were incurable. She prized the frank, the open-hearted, the eager character beyond all others. Warmth and enthusiasm did captivate her still. She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... who, between ourselves, were admitted among the big girls while I still gamboled among the little ones, you whose only sin was pride, you,—at the age of twenty-seven, and with a dowry of two hundred thousand francs,—capture and captivate a truly great man, one of the wittiest men in Paris, one of the two talented men that our ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... who read these lines Has quite a different tale; He says it is the she that shines To captivate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... disputes of men of this profession? I had rather my son should learn in a tap-house to speak, than in the schools to prate. Take a master of arts, and confer with him: why does he not make us sensible of this artificial excellence? and why does he not captivate women and ignoramuses, as we are, with admiration at the steadiness of his reasons and the beauty of his order? why does he not sway and persuade us to what he will? why does a man, who has so much advantage in matter and treatment, mix railing, indiscretion, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... He had made himself agreeable to many fair ladies, acting the part of a gallant attendant, but his heart remained unimpressed, often a source of keen enjoyment to Captain Douglas, who vainly tried to captivate his friend in many ways. Mr. Howe was a distinguished and fine-looking gentleman, remarkably tall and straight, while the keen glance of his dark eye was sufficient to convince one of the powers of penetration forming such weighty proportion ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... of writing. It is probable that nearly the same emotions, but much weaker and far less complex, are felt by birds when the male pours forth his full volume of song, in rivalry with other males, to captivate the female. Love is still the commonest theme of our songs. As Herbert Spencer remarks, "music arouses dormant sentiments of which we had not conceived the possibility, and do not know the meaning; or, as Richter says, tells us of things we have not seen and shall not see." Conversely, when vivid ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... mocking-birds that infest the groves at the foot of Parnassus. Though portions of his songs be wild, fitful, and incoherent, they gush with the force and feeling of a heart loyal to its intuitions, and thus many strains captivate and keep the tuneful ear. Yet such charming lines make conspicuous the want of that high appreciation of form and proportion without which any felicity of touch in the treatment of details will only cause the consummate master to grieve over glorious forms ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... practised no wiles. She was a sincere, guileless, Christian girl. Shrewd enough she was, indeed, but utterly incapable of scheming for any manner of selfish or sordid end. With her divine endowment of good looks and her consecrated good nature, she could not fail to captivate; and there is small room for wonder that she had made large inroads ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... charm. But though not changed to owl or bat, Or something more indelicate; Yet, as your tongue has run too fast, Your boasted beauty must not last. No more shall frolic Cupid lie In ambuscade in either eye, From thence to aim his keenest dart To captivate each youthful heart: No more shall envious misses pine At charms now flown, that once were thine: No more, since you so ill behave, Shall injured Oberon be ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... the Widow Toothaker. Her troubles had come early, and, tedious as they seemed, had passed before all her bloom was fled. She was still fair enough to captivate a bachelor, or, with a widow's cheerful gravity, she might have won a widower, stealing into his heart in the very guise of his dead wife. But the Widow Toothaker had no such projects. By her watchings and ...
— Edward Fane's Rosebud (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... be perfectly intelligible, and for whom a discourse delivered in the speech of their native country would have peculiar charms. But in the worship of the primitive Christians there was no attempt, in the way of embellishment or decoration, to captivate the senses. The Church had no gorgeous temples, no fragrant incense, [218:1] no splendid vestments. For probably the whole of the first century, she celebrated her religious ordinances in private houses, [218:2] and her ministers officiated in their ordinary ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... his literary friends in that city, but also appointed secretary of the great Venetian Academy "Della Fama," with a handsome salary, he sent for his son, took a house in a good situation, and resolved to settle down in the place. There was much to captivate the imagination of the youthful Torquato in this wonderful city of the sea, then in the zenith of its fame, surpassing all the capitals of transalpine Europe in the extent of its commerce, in refinement of manners, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... really amuse herself she perhaps might be saved. Lastly, it would be a service to Lord Warburton, who evidently pleased himself greatly with the charming girl. It was a little "weird" he should—being what he was; but there was no accounting for such impressions. Pansy might captivate any one—any one at least but Lord Warburton. Isabel would have thought her too small, too slight, perhaps even too artificial for that. There was always a little of the doll about her, and that was not what he had been looking for. Still, who could say what men ever were ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... and pretty shops, To fascinate the belles, Its foaming waves, like washing-slops, To captivate the swells. ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... nothing which even the imagination may anticipate, which is not, and will not be, easily attributable to these unseen angels. They are lying spirits; for the fundamental principle on which they are acting is a lie; but they tell enough truth to sway and captivate the minds of men. It matters not how sacred the field in which they tread, nor how hallowed the associations which they invade, they press into every spot where it is possible, by spinning another thread, to strengthen ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... who likes to take a sporting chance. Look at the difficulties of it. Go to a strange town where there are thousands and millions of strange children, locate Mary, isolate her, make friends with her, coax her to the yacht—captivate her, capture her! How are we to do all that, you ask? I reply, the Lord knows. That is where the sport comes in. We are forbidden to use force. We are forbidden to use Mrs. Carstairs or bring her into it in any way. We are forbidden, of course, to let the child know who we are. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... signally untriumphant; and is not now worth any knowledge but a transient accidental one. Chetardie came hither about Stanislaus and his affairs; tried hard, but in vain, to tempt Friedrich Wilhelm into interference;—is naturally anxious to captivate the Crown-Prince, in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... one another: she had grossly insulted him in several proclamations, and he had returned the complement in his bulletins. Their meeting, however, did not display their mutual hatred; Napoleon was respectful and attentive, the queen gracious in her attempts to captivate her former enemy; attempts made all the more determinedly as she was not unaware that the peace treaty created—under the name of the kingdom of Westphalia—a new state, whose territory was to be provided by the electorate of Hesse, and ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... pleased and satisfied, he was capable of profound feeling and of earnest conduct. Moral worth had no abstract charms for him, and he could sympathise with a dazzling reprobate; but virtue in an heroic form, lofty principle, and sovereign duty invested with all the attributes calculated to captivate his rapid and refined perception, exercised over him a resistless and transcendent spell. The deep and disciplined intelligence of Tancred, trained in all the philosophy and cultured with all the knowledge of the West, acted with magnetic power upon a consciousness the bright vivacity of which ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... Why, in their quandary which to begin on, they almost missed the twins altogether as it was. Consider the complexity of young lovers who should pour into the ears of Polly passionate adjectives intended solely to captivate the heart of Molly; and, most important of all, consider the conflict of choice which would have disquieted the soul of Mr. Jacob Tripple and at last driven him to the alternatives ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... any emotion at all in these days; but there is an imperishable element in his humour. And though the circle of his readers may have no tendency to increase, one can hardly suppose that a charm, which those who still feel it feel so keenly, will ever entirely cease to captivate; or that time can have any power over a perfume which so wonderfully retains the pungent freshness of its fragrance after the ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... precepts are impressed upon them by his commanding eloquence. Addison's style, like a light wine, pleases everybody from the first. Johnson's, like a liquor of more body, seems too strong at first, but, by degrees, is highly relished; and such is the melody of his periods, so much do they captivate the ear, and seize upon the attention, that there is scarcely any writer, however inconsiderable, who does not aim, in some degree, at the same species of excellence. But let us not ungratefully undervalue that beautiful style, which has pleasingly conveyed to us much instruction ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... in nature and in art, Charmed and delighted his devoted heart, A gorgeous sunset, and a moonlit sky, Ne'er failed to captivate both ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... the kind men like," sneered Bel, misanthropically. "You expect to captivate (and of course you will) this sincere and saintly young minister. He already thinks that you are by far the best of our party, and has some of the first symptoms that ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... movement of every world around its sun, of every sun around its centre sun—the sun of suns—which informs all with the rays of the spirit, with the light of thought—is generated that perfect harmony of colours, sounds, forms, which strike the sight and captivate and enthrall the intellect. That which in the heavens is harmony becomes, in the individual, morality, and in companies of human beings, law. That which is light in the spheres becomes intelligence and science in the world of ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... Her lord could captivate a reluctant woman's bosom when he was genial. He melted her and made her call up her bitterest pride to perform its recent office. That might have failed; but it had support in a second letter received from the man accounted both by Mrs. Lawrence and by Mr. Weyburn 'dangerous'; and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... situation, to be accounted altogether invincible, or, as they say, impregnable; for I protest t'ye, Sir Duncan, that I have known twenty-five men, by the mere surprise and audacity of the attack, win, at point of pike, as strong a hold as this of Ardenvohr, and put to the sword, captivate, or hold to the ransom, the defenders, being ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... grace. His whole figure was free, fine, and indolent; he was such a boy as might have ripened into life in a Neapolitan vineyard; such a boy as gipsies steal in infancy; such a boy as Murillo often painted, when he went among the poor and outcast, for subjects wherewith to captivate the eyes of rank and wealth; such a boy, as only Andalusian beggars are, full of ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... ourselves as rusty as the wares we deal in without any one asking; the price of our merchandise. But I do not rest my hopes upon this department of my labours only. I propose also to have a corresponding shop for Sentiment, and Dialogues, and Disquisition, which may captivate the fancy of those who have no relish, as the established phrase goes, for pure antiquity—a sort of greengrocer's stall erected in front of my ironmongery wares, garlanding the rusty memorials of ancient times with cresses, cabbages, leeks, and ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... he grow as his aunt reads on that you might have heard a mouse squeak. But for the low, soft tones of Joyce no smallest sound breaks the sweet silence of the day. Miss Kavanagh is beginning to feel distinctly flattered. If one can captivate the flitting fancies of a child by one's eloquent rendering of charming verse, what may one not aspire to? There must be something in her style if it can reduce a boy of seven to such a state of ecstatic attention, considering the subject is hardly such a ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... face"—as Lucrece came before her—"is deep enough. Not deep like a river, but like a snake. I could do well enough with your plain, honest sister; but I love you not, Mistress Lucrece. Enville. Your graceful ways do not captivate me. Ah! it takes a woman to know a woman. And the men, poor silly things! fancy they know us better ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... time Octavia had Mr. Poppleton and Mr. Francis Barold upon her hands, and was endeavoring to do her duty as hostess by both of them. If it had been her intention to captivate these gentlemen, she could not have complained that Mr. Poppleton was wary or difficult game. His first fears allayed, his downward path was smooth, and rapid in proportion. When he had taken his departure with the little silk ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... thinking it fair to my friend, as it would set people talking about him. But you well know how very tenacious our father is on the subject of birth, and so I fancy is our mother, and they would blame me excessively if you were to captivate Headland and be captivated by him; and Algernon, who, I confess, put me up to speak to you on the subject, says he is certain that they would never give their consent to your marrying my friend, though, to confess the truth, there ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... forth the woods of Canady The Frenchmen tooke their way, The people of Schenectady To captivate ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... life is!" resumed she. "I did not want you for a son-in-law, and now you are behaving so well toward me that I am full of remorse. Oh, I see now what a dangerous man you are, if you captivate other women's hearts as you ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... fils and Augier. But in "Fromont and Risler," not only is the plot a trifle stagy, but the heroine herself seems almost a refugee of the footlights; exquisitely presented as Sidonie is, she fails quite to captivate or convince, perhaps because her sisters have been seen so often before in this play and in that. And now and again even in his later novels we discover that Daudet has needlessly achieved the adroit arrangement of events so useful in the theatre and not requisite ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... on this stage, has passed away Its noble author from the gaze of men, No more, alas! to wield his facile pen. In Knebworth's ancient park, across the sea, Lord Lytton sleeps, but not his witchery. The dramatist, romancer, poet, still Can touch our hearts and captivate our will; For laureled genius has the power to brave Death's fell advance, and lives beyond the grave: Bear witness, this grand audience clustered here. Your plaudits cannot reach dead Lytton's ear, But no more sweet libation can you pour To Lytton's memory, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... over their heads, would advance with long tubes like monster bassoons, blowing with all their might, contorting their faces and bodies, and going through the most obscene and ridiculous motions to captivate their simple admirers. This, however, was only the feast; the ball then began, for the pots were no sooner emptied than five drums at once, of different sizes and tones, suspended in a line from a long horizontal bar, were beaten with fury, and all the men, women, and children, singing and ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... of the visit, and she expected with trembling impatience, inspired by a vague hope that he might again prove her deliverer, to see a man who had before rescued her from oppression. He entered with an animation of countenance, formed to captivate an enthusiast; and, hastily turned his eyes from her to the apartment, which he surveyed with apparent emotions of compassionate indignation. Sympathy illuminated his eye, and, taking her hand, he respectfully bowed on it, exclaiming—"This is extraordinary!—again to meet you, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... Georgian, and the French and English the Greek. When they do appear, they are generally disposed of at a high price. [Sidenote: GEORGIAN SLAVE.] This beautiful captive, who proved to be a Georgian, was neither bashful nor timid. She saluted us with smiles, severing her raven locks, and trying to captivate the spectators, by making her beauty appear to the greatest advantage. However, it did not seem to possess any power over the Turks; and as to the Christians, they are not allowed to purchase slaves publicly, though sometimes ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... friends, were tried some years since in England for the murder of their husbands. It appeared that they were in love with the same individual, and had conjointly, at various times, paid sums of money to a Gipsy woman to work charms to captivate his affection. Whatever little effect the charm might produce, they were successful in their principal object, for the person in question carried on for some time a criminal intercourse with both. The matter came to the knowledge of the husbands, who, taking ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... elegant, so graceful, and so thoroughly finished in every part, that Conrad could not help coveting it. He was not very much to be blamed, for it was one that would captivate the fancy of any boy who ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger
... the curious characteristic of the ill-fated House of Stuart that, through all their misfortunes, through all their degradations, they have contrived to captivate the imagination and bewitch the hearts of many generations. The Stuart influence upon literature has been astonishing. No cause in the world has rallied to its side so many poets, named or nameless, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... to have attained it by a different route. The innovation for which they claimed credit is a matter of method, of technique. Their deliberate purpose is to surprise us by the fidelity of their studies, to captivate and convince us by an accumulation of exact minutiae: in a word, to prove that truth is more interesting than fiction. So history should be written, and so they wrote it. First and last, whatever form they chose, they remained historians. Alleging the example set by Plutarch and Saint-Simon, ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... and descended through the streets of Granada the populace greeted their youthful sovereign with shouts, anticipating deeds of prowess that would wither the laurels of his father. The appearance of Boabdil was well calculated to captivate the public eye, if we may judge from the description given by the abbot of Rute in his manuscript history of the House of Cordova. He was mounted on a superb white charger magnificently caparisoned. His corselets were of polished ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... natural love for children had scope for expression, and children themselves had an instinctive confidence in the power and sympathy that irradiated his face and gave his square, rugged features the beauty of wisdom and kindliness. He could captivate them alike by lively fun and excellent nonsense, and by lucid explanations of the wonders of the world about which children love to hear. He fired one small granddaughter with a love of astronomy, and one day a visitor, entering unexpectedly, was startled to find the pair of them kneeling ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... all these particulars be required, cast your eye a little upon the Armies pretended Plea, which came lately a birding to beat the way before them, charm the ears of the Vulgar, and captivate the people; That after all its pseudo-politicks and irreligious principles, is at last constrained to acknowledg your open and prodigious violations, strange and illegal Actions, (as in termes it confesses) of taking up Armes, Raising and Forming Armies ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... ye Graces! you that inhabit the heavenly mansions of Seraphina's countenance; for you are truly divine, are always in her presence, and well know all the arts of charming; say, what were the weapons now used to captivate the heart of ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... degree. Sometimes the invaders showed great audacity. Early in June Colonel Fitch at Albany scrawls a hasty note to Winslow: "Friday, 11 o'clock: Sir, about half an hour since, a party of near fifty French and Indians had the impudence to come down to the river opposite to this city and captivate two men;" and Winslow replies with equal quaintness: "We daily discover the Indians about us; but not yet have been so happy as to obtain ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... chiefly, though by no means exclusively, in favour of this portion of the empire that is to be. These sums are expended in erecting showy churches and colleges, and in sustaining priests and emissaries. Everything is done to captivate, and to liberalise in appearance, a system essentially despotic. The sagacity of the effort is discovered, in avoiding to attack and shock the prejudices of the adult, that they may direct the education of the young. They look to the future; and ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... west, with cattle ranches as a setting, related in such a style as to captivate the ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... powerful will and a depth and subtlety of intellect that made men fear, if they could not love him. Yet when he chose—and it was his usual mood—to exercise his blandishments on men, he rarely failed to captivate them, while his pleasant wit, courtly ways, and natural gallantry towards women, exercised with the polished seductiveness he had learned in the Court of Louis XV., made Francois Bigot the most plausible and dangerous man in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... young officer and a ward of the squire's, a beautiful blushing girl of seventeen. From several shy glances which I had noticed in the course of the evening I suspected there was a little kindness growing up between them; and indeed the young soldier was just the hero to captivate a romantic girl. He was tall, slender, and handsome, and, like most young British officers of late years, had picked up various small accomplishments on the Continent: he could talk French and Italian, draw landscapes, sing very tolerably, dance ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... orators in Tennessee, Ben Hardin, John J. Crittenden and John C. Breckenridge in Kentucky. Tradition still has stories to tell of their exploits and prowess, their wit and eloquence, even their commonplace sayings and doings. They were marked men who never failed to captivate their audiences. The system of stump oratory had many advantages as a public force and was both edifying and educational. There were a few conspicuous writers for the press, such as Ritchie, ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... never worth a pin; But still it suits the superficial mind— The slight observer of the human kind; The airy, fleety, vain, and hollow thing, That only feeds on wily flattering. 'Man owns its powers?' And what will not man own To gain his end—to captivate—dethrone? The truth is this, whatever he may feign, You'll find your greatest loss his greatest gain; For like the bee, he will improve the hour, And all day long he'll hunt from flower to flower, And when he sips the sweetness all away, For aught ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... the most ferocious. The author does not boast, like Abyssinian Yakoob, "of no ungracious figure": nor does he, like another beau garcon, Mr. Gibbon, prefix his pleasing countenance to captivate the ladies. ...
— No Abolition of Slavery - Or the Universal Empire of Love, A poem • James Boswell
... Usson.[25] As she passed the drawbridge, Marguerite recognised at a glance that there was no hope of evasion from this new and impregnable prison, save through the agency of her gaoler; and she accordingly lost no time in exerting all her blandishments to captivate his reason. Although she had now attained her thirty-fifth year, neither time, anxiety, hardship, nor even the baneful indulgence of her misguided passions, had yet robbed her of her extraordinary beauty; and it is ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... at his own power of endurance as reader. For the volume is actually readable even at this day. Did Lyly not grow wearied of perpetually riding these alliterative trick-ponies? Apparently not. The book is 'executed' with a vivacity, a dash, a 'go,' that will captivate any reader who is willing to meet the author halfway. Euphues became the rage, and its literary style the fashion. How or why must be left to him to explain who can tell why sleeves grow small and then grow big, why skirts are at one time only two and a half yards around ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... of the desirable young men had borne Miss Greeb to the altar, so that when her mother died the fair Julia almost despaired of attaining to the dignity of wifehood. Nevertheless, she continued to keep boarders, and to make attempts to captivate the hearts of such bachelors as she judged weak ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... of politics and of great issues. It was she, with her youthful zeal, who inspired Mr. Grayson and his friends with courage for a conflict against odds. He consulted her daily about his speeches; it was she who always put into them some happy thought, some telling phrase that was sure to captivate the people. In a pinch she could make a speech herself, and she would probably be seen on the stump in the West. And she was as beautiful as she was intellectual and eloquent; she would be the most picturesque feature of this or any ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... very gratifying. The ornaments of eloquence dressing out a sublime subject are just so many proofs either of bad taste in the orator, or of distrust and contempt of the taste of those whom he is trying thus to captivate. ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... satisfaction in bowing before the hosts of saints, virgins, pictures, and images generally, which the Catholic Church presents for their adoration; while their simplicity and ignorance permit them to be dazed and overawed, if not converted, by a faith which presents itself in such theatrical form as to captivate both their eyes and ears. "This people have changed their ceremonies, but not their religious dogmas," ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... really adored her patroness. She governed her manners and she modelled her dress on that great original, and, next to Mrs. Ferrars, Sylvia in time became nearly the finest lady in London. There was, indeed, much in Mrs. Ferrars to captivate a person like Sylvia. Mrs. Ferrars was beautiful, fashionable, gorgeous, wonderfully expensive, and, where her taste was pleased, profusely generous. Her winning manner was not less irresistible because it was sometimes uncertain, and she had ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... learn from it to guard themselves against the mischiefs which attend an early knowledge of their own beauty. If a young woman once thinks herself handsome, she never doubts the truth of any man that tells her he is in love with her; for if she believes herself charming enough to captivate him, 'tis natural to expect the ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... pleasure, was greatly overcome with sorrow, and like a sword it pierced his heart. Forthwith assembling all his council, he sought of them some means to gain his end; they all replied, "These sources of desire are not enough to hold and captivate his heart." ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... be beautiful, and it is the duty of every woman to be as attractive as possible. All may enhance their charms and be lovely by following the directions of this book. Few persons know how to improve their natural looks so as to captivate, charm, and win the admiration of those whom they meet. This book tells the wonderful secret—all the ancients ever knew, and all that has been discovered since. It teaches how to wonderfully improve the person in loveliness. ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... the heart, win the affections, gain the affections, secure the love, engage the affections; take the fancy of have a place in the heart, wind round the heart; attract, attach, endear, charm, fascinate, captivate, bewitch, seduce, enamor, enrapture, turn the head. get into favor; ingratiate oneself, insinuate oneself, worm oneself; propitiate, curry favor with, pay one's court to, faire l'aimable[Fr], set ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... all, contemplated all, and everything won his heart. The first to captivate and take his fancy were the pots, out of which he would have very gladly helped himself to a moderate pipkinful; then the wine skins secured his affections; and lastly, the produce of the frying-pans, if, indeed, such imposing cauldrons may be called ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... probability her parentage would remain unknown. He would not relinquish her. She should be a daughter to him. He realized that he had a curious love for the child, that she had attracted him from the first. In the years to come her beauty and winsomeness would captivate a husband, with the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... genuine sensibility to its intrinsic charm. The greater and more distinguished poets of our country have so much else in them to gratify other tastes and propensities, that they are pretty sure to captivate and amuse those to whom their poetry is but an hindrance and obstruction, as well as those to whom it constitutes their chief attraction. The interest of the stories they tell—the vivacity of the characters they delineate—the weight and force of ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... had been overtaken by the thunderstorm, was present this evening; he was silent and glum, though the most charming village maidens chaffed him and tried to captivate him, and the peasant girls in this part of Germany are renowned for their beauty and their grace. The melancholy which was not so much part of his natural disposition as due to the adventures of that evening, fell on him again like a dark cloud oppressing his brain. The girls who had been listening ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... little pale—yes, a trifle haggard, Perry, but there's nothing like a romantic pallor to attract the feminine regard and captivate the female heart, my boy—I'm married and I know! But your dress is a thought too sombre, I think, considering your youth, though I'll admit it suits you and there's a devilish tragic melancholy Danish-air about ye as should nail ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... a man under any circumstances. But Fenwick had no decided points in his character. He had limited intelligence, and no energy arising from clear perceptions and strong resolutions. He was a man fit to captivate a young and innocent girl, but not to hold the affection of ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... just arrived. Doctor Morgan sprang to his feet, and, there being no other way of escape, leaped through the open window into the garden below. This was too fair a challenge for a girl of spirit to refuse, and she set to work to captivate him, succeeding more effectually than she desired, for she had dreamed of making a brilliant match. Soon a letter was written to her father asking his leave to marry the conquered doctor, yet she does not seem to have been one bit in love. He was too grave and good, though as devoted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... Therefore when once divine truth gets entry into the heart of a man, and becomes one with his will and affection, it will quickly command the whole man to practise and execute, and then he that received "the truth in love" is found a walker in the truth. Many persons captivate truth in their understandings, as the Gentiles did, they hold or detain it in unrighteousness, but because it hath no liberty to descend into the heart, and possess that garrison, it cannot command the man. But oh! it is better to be truth's captive than to captivate ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... don't mind a bit o' aching, and I'm ready for any game you like. What do you say, sir, to trying to captivate the schooner again?" ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... that it was soon suspected by many of their observers, and especially by Lady Glistonbury and the Lady Sarah, that Julia had a design upon his heart; but he plainly discerned that she had no design whatever to captivate him; and that though she gave him so large a share of her company, it was without thinking of him as a lover: he saw that she conversed with him and Mr. Russell, preferably to others, because they spoke on subjects which ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... country, has at least done more than any other to direct attention to it,—to exhibit defects, suggest improvements, create beauties, and invest his subject with such a charm and interest as to captivate many minds which might otherwise have been long insensible to the dormant beauty within their reach, or that which they themselves had the power to produce: we refer, of course, to the late Andrew J. Downing. With naturally fine artistic perceptions, his original ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... refrigerate larder at hand. We waited until the confusing pepper of a shower had passed away and left the water calm. Then softly and deftly we propelled our bark across to the Ayboljockameegus. We tossed to the fish humbugs of wool, silk, and feathers, gauds such as captivate the greedy or the guileless. Again the "gobemouches" trout, the fellows on the look-out for novelty, dashed up and swallowed disappointing juiceless morsels, and with them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... vision and revelation, with a complete scheme of reconciliation, with correlated catalogues of Shint[o] and Buddhist gods, with liturgies, with lists of old popular festivals newly named, with the apparatus of art to captivate the senses, K[o]b[o] forthwith baptized each native Shint[o] deity with a new Chinese-Buddhistic name. For every Shint[o] festival he arranged a corresponding Buddhist's saints' day or gala time. Then, training up a band of disciples, he sent ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... out," he often said to himself, "I have an odd instinct which tells me that there is the sleeping lioness or the wild-cat hidden somewhere beneath all that languid, gracious carelessness. Poor little girl! she has managed to captivate us all, but I should not be surprised if she turned out more difficult and troublesome to manage than the whole of my ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... give rise to conflicting impressions. Historians, taking a bird's-eye view of their subject, portray its most general characteristics; they bring out only the prominent features, and sacrificing all the rest, draw pictures whose precision and simplicity captivate our minds. We finally get into the habit of seeing an epoch as they have painted it, and cannot imagine there was anything in it besides the qualities they specify. But when we read letters relating, without alteration or selection, events as they took place, the opinions ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... behold that lowering brow, Which indicates the mind within, I marvel much that woman's vow A man like that could ever win! Yet it is said, in rustic bower, (The fable I have often heard) A serpent has mysterious power To captivate a timid bird. ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... of secret societies in the sixteenth century. A more atrocious confederacy than this the human mind could hardly have conceived. It was, however, peculiarly calculated to captivate the multitude in those days of darkness and blood. Though at first formed and extended secretly, it spread like wildfire through all the cities and provinces of France. Princes, lords, gentlemen, artisans, and ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... has now laid down the external pomp of Protector, and, like Cincinnatus, has withdrawn to retirement, but not with the same view. This modesty is to captivate the crowd, who are to call on him to convert the ploughshare into an Imperial sceptre! I have excellent information to this effect, having found means to obtain it from behind the ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... confess that you are very fond of gold. Now, how is it that you don't barter your virtue for gold sometimes? I am a philosopher, Ursula, and like to know everything. You must be every now and then exposed to great temptation, Ursula: for you are of a beauty calculated to captivate all hearts. Come, sit down and tell me how you are enabled to resist such temptation as gold and ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... Rachel nor I could have thought of anything so sure to captivate a shallow mortal like ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... itself that is lovable, save that it is God's gift, it is much easier to go by it straight to the will of God, and to unite ourselves to His good pleasure. Easier, I say, than by prosperity, which has attractions of its own that captivate our senses, and, like Dalila, lull them to sleep, working in us a subtle change, so that we begin insensibly to love for its own sake the prosperity which God sends us, instead of bestowing all our grateful love ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... which was intended to point out to her the true road to happiness in the new condition which she was on the point of adopting. I told her how she ought to behave towards her husband, towards his aunt and his sister, in order to captivate their esteem and their love. The last part of my discourse was pathetic and rather disparaging to myself, for, as I enforced upon her the necessity of being faithful to her husband, I was necessarily led to entreat her pardon for having seduced her. "When you promised to marry me, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... an assertive or deprecatory wave of the hand, conveying so much—and a voice at that time of a singular penetrating sweetness, he was, even without that light of the future upon his forehead which she was so swift to discern, a man to captivate any woman of kindred nature and sympathies. Over and above these advantages, he possessed a rare quality of physical magnetism. By virtue of this he could either attract irresistibly ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... desire to convert the gentiles. We therefore told them that they did well to shun them, because their intention was, not to teach, but to secure gain and dominion; and that they strive by various means first to captivate men's minds (animi), and afterwards to subject them to themselves as slaves: moreover, that they did well in not suffering their idea concerning God to be disturbed by such spirits. They said further, that these spirits also confuse them by asserting ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... much dismay'd; His spirits droop'd, his lilies 'gan to fade; No more he look'd the charmer he had been; And when the court's gay dames his face had seen; They cried, Is this the beauty, we were told, Would captivate each heart, or young or old? Why, he's the jaundice; ev'ry view displays The mien of one,—just ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... drifting about derelict for nearly three weeks when we two ocean waifs fell in with and took possession of her. The "notions" of which her cargo consisted seemed, according to the manifest, to comprise more or less of nearly everything that could possibly captivate a savage's fancy; but in addition to these multitudinous articles there were—somewhere in the ship—a few bales of goods—mostly linen, fine muslins, silks, and ready-made clothing— consigned to a firm ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... a tender spot. "Mr. Benton," I cried, "cease your foolish talk, you know that I never tried to captivate you, that I take no pleasure in an experience like this. You say that I am untrue to myself, false to my highest perception of right and justice. If you claim for me what you have said, you do not believe it, Wilmur Benton; you know in your ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... River God of a larger Urn, who at some few Miles distance is lost in the Ocean, which heaves it's broad Bosom to the Sight, and ends the Prospect with an immense Expanse of Waters. Tell me, EUPHEMIUS, would not such a Scene captivate the Heart even before the intellectual Powers discover Minerals in the Mountains; future Navies in the Woods; Civil and Military Architecture in the Rocks; healing Qualities in the smaller Streams; ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... were always accompanied by a peculiar play of feature and of voice, and with unique and original gestures, which seemed to excite and captivate his audience. ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... affected with anything, he did not confide the execution of his design to the languid and precarious operation of our reason; but he endued it with powers and properties that prevent the understanding, and even the will; which, seizing upon the senses and imagination, captivate the soul before the understanding is ready either to join with them, or to oppose them. It is by a long deduction, and much study, that we discover the adorable wisdom of God in his works: when we discover it, the effect is ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... picturesque nature more picturesque still. Therefore, a show-place, to be regarded as such in the true sense of the word, must possess features of interest of another kind, underlying the external loveliness of form and outline that merely please and captivate the eye. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... costume of Rebecca the Jewess, assisted by Tom Barton as the famous Robin Hood. Emily Barton represented, with very good effect, Maid Marion, under the escort of young Snaffle of the Lancers, who rode over from the nearest Garrison Town to captivate some stray heart by personating Young Lochinvar. The other two sets, figuring in costumes as handsome as they were varied, were made up of the youth and beauty of the neighbourhood, with the exception of the bottom couple of the ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... however, is a very pardonable sort of coxcombry; and tho' it appear sometimes pedantic, and occasionally laughable, yet it tends to encourage learning and science, and compels the young men to read in order to shine and captivate the fair. ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... but hers was a different style of beauty from that of Rose, whose ripe, sensuous charms were fitted to captivate the admiration of the voluptuary, while Sabine was of the most refined and ethereal character. Rose fettered the body with earthly trammels, while Sabine drew the soul heavenward. Her beauty was not ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... a layman who walks at our side. The amazing multitude of Protestant sects is due in a great degree to this superiority of lay preaching over clerical. The most brilliant orators of the Christian pulpit are bad converters; their eloquent appeals may captivate the imagination and lead a few men of the world to the foot of the altar, but these results are not more brilliant than ephemeral. But let a peasant or a workingman speak to those whom he meets a few simple words going directly to the conscience, ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... thought of "pleasing." It was the aim and object of her life. If I told her that in such a house, in such a street, there lived a man who was not attracted by her, it would have caused her real suffering. She wanted every day to enchant, to captivate, to drive men crazy. The fact that I was in her power and reduced to a complete nonentity before her charms gave her the same sort of satisfaction that victors used to get in tournaments.... She had an extraordinary opinion of her own charms; she imagined that ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... followed him, and then Irving preached. His subject was 'God's love,' upon which he poured forth a mystical incomprehensible rhapsody, with extraordinary vehemence of manner and power of lungs. There was nothing like eloquence in his sermon, no musical periods to captivate the ear, no striking illustrations to charm the imagination; but there is undoubtedly something in his commanding figure and strange, wild countenance, his vehemence, and above all the astonishing ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... Music completes the charm by the most exquisite strains, by the harmony of the choir. These powerful incentives are repeated in a hundred different places; the metropolises, parishes, the numerous religious houses, the simple oratories, sparkle with emulation to captivate all the powers of the religious and devout mind. Thus a taste for the arts becomes general by means of so potent a lever, and artists increase in number and rivalry. Under this influence the celebrated schools of Italy and Flanders flourished; and the finest ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... all through the Stearns' dinner to captivate Dave Darrin. He, without diminution of love and loyalty to Belle Mead, was glad to be on friendly terms with this ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... the slave be, as I have already observed to your majesty, there is no king on earth can tyrannize over her will. When indeed you speak of a slave mistress of charms sufficient to captivate a monarch, and induce him to love her; if she be of a rank infinitely below him, I am of your opinion, she ought to think herself happy in her misfortunes: still what happiness can it be, when she considers herself only as a slave, torn from a parent's arms, and perhaps ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... absolutely satisfied. I have before me on the mantelpiece yonder a portrait of a painting which represents Queen Mary's Bothwell. Take it down and look at it. Mark the big head, fit to conceive large schemes; the strong animal face, made to captivate a sensitive, feminine woman; the brutally forceful features—the mouth with a suggestion of wild boars' tusks behind it, the beard which could bristle with fury: the whole man and his life-history are revealed in that picture. I wonder if Scott ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... always accompanied by a peculiar play of feature and of voice, and with unique and original gestures, which seemed to excite and captivate his audience. ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... dissipation and immorality, they are incapable of feeling the beauties which come from delicate concords and truly artistic combinations. They verge towards barbarism, and require things that are strange, odd, dazzling, and peculiar to captivate their jaded senses. Such we take to be the condition of Parisian society now. The tone of it is given by women who are essentially impudent and vulgar, who override and overrule, by the mere brute force of opulence and luxury, women of finer natures and moral tone. The court of France is ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... travelled on our globe from a desire to convert the gentiles. We therefore told them that they did well to shun them, because their intention was, not to teach, but to secure gain and dominion; and that they strive by various means first to captivate men's minds (animi), and afterwards to subject them to themselves as slaves: moreover, that they did well in not suffering their idea concerning God to be disturbed by such spirits. They said further, that these spirits also confuse them ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... me"—he was satisfied with his own expression. Yet in a moment, when she had come all rustlingly and fragrantly close, "It would captivate me," he handsomely added. ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... schools for the common people; and the children of Protestant parents were drawn into an observance of popish rites. All the outward pomp and display of the Romish worship was brought to bear to confuse the mind, and dazzle and captivate the imagination; and thus the liberty for which the fathers had toiled and bled was betrayed by the sons. The Jesuits rapidly spread themselves over Europe, and wherever they went, there ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... cloister; imprison, immure; incarcerate, entomb; clap under hatches, lay under hatches; put in irons, put in a strait-waistcoat; throw into prison, cast into prison; put into bilboes. arrest; take up, take charge of, take into custody; take prisoner, take captive, make prisoner, make captive; captivate; lead captive, lead into captivity; send to prison, commit to prison; commit; give in charge, give in custody; subjugate &c. 749. Adj. restrained, constrained; imprisoned &c.v.; pent up; jammed in, wedged in; under lock and key, under ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... I protest t'ye, Sir Duncan, that I have known twenty-five men, by the mere surprise and audacity of the attack, win, at point of pike, as strong a hold as this of Ardenvohr, and put to the sword, captivate, or hold to the ransom, the defenders, being ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... and shouting. To increase the merriment, one or two jackanapes, with zebras' manes tied over their heads, would advance with long tubes like monster bassoons, blowing with all their might, contorting their faces and bodies, and going through the most obscene and ridiculous motions to captivate their simple admirers. This, however, was only the feast; the ball then began, for the pots were no sooner emptied than five drums at once, of different sizes and tones, suspended in a line from a long horizontal bar, were beaten with fury, and all the men, women, and children, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... exhausted their Treasures, and were grown naked and incapable of affording him farther supplies, and then he declared them to be the Vassals and Subjects of the King of Spain, flattering them, and proclaiming twice by sound of Trumpet, that for the future he would not captivate or molest them any more, looking upon it as lawful to rob, and terrifie them with such Messages as he had done, before he admited them under the King's protection, as if from that very time, he had never rob'd, destroy'd or ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... this stage, has passed away Its noble author from the gaze of men, No more, alas! to wield his facile pen. In Knebworth's ancient park, across the sea, Lord Lytton sleeps, but not his witchery. The dramatist, romancer, poet, still Can touch our hearts and captivate our will; For laureled genius has the power to brave Death's fell advance, and lives beyond the grave: Bear witness, this grand audience clustered here. Your plaudits cannot reach dead Lytton's ear, But no more sweet libation can you pour ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... a miserable piece of business!" exclaimed Berkley, when he had finished. "Strange enough! And yet I have long ceased to marvel at the caprices of women. Did not Pan captivate the chaste Diana? Did not Titania love Nick Bottom, with his ass's head? Do you think that maidens' eyes are no longer touched with the juice of love-in-idleness! Take my word for it, she is in love with somebody else. There must be some ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... 5, be set apart as a day of Fun, Folly and Frolic, when the innocent license of the mask shall have no let, when the places of festivity shall offer a night of pleasure to all our people, and when the pageant of the Mystick Krewe of Comus shall dazzle the eye and captivate the reason by the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... disappointments, cruel misunderstandings, and insufficiency of human love. First of all, the love of heaven is essentially mutual. The vision of God not only reveals to the soul His divine beauty, goodness, wisdom, and numberless other perfections, which captivate her, and set her on fire with a seraphic love; but it also reveals the intense and mysterious love of God for her. The sight of that divine love produces in her the happiness which the ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... first to introduce truth into literature: they merely professed to have attained it by a different route. The innovation for which they claimed credit is a matter of method, of technique. Their deliberate purpose is to surprise us by the fidelity of their studies, to captivate and convince us by an accumulation of exact minutiae: in a word, to prove that truth is more interesting than fiction. So history should be written, and so they wrote it. First and last, whatever ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... ocean. The passengers below had all retired to their beds; and I felt the interest of this quiet scene the more deeply from the circumstance of having just quitted them. For the Prussian had during the whole of the evening displayed all his talents to captivate the Dane, who had admitted him into the train of his dependents. The young Englishman continued to interpret the Prussian's jokes to me. They were all without exception profane and abominable, but some sufficiently ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... were well chiselled, and his upper lip was ornamented with a mustache of the same color as his hair. Notwithstanding his handsome features and extravagant display of dress, there was an expression in his dark blue eyes, which, though likely to captivate the young and innocent portion of the fair sex, was not deemed elegant by those who are accustomed to read the features of man. He was very wealthy, but was a perfect type of the roue, although a good education and remarkable control of himself rendered it difficult for his acquaintances ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... Draupadi, the God of Desire invaded their hearts and continued to crush all their senses. As the lavishing beauty of Panchali who had been modelled by the Creator himself, was superior to that of all other women on earth, it could captivate the heart of every creature. And Yudhishthira, the son of Kunti, beholding his younger brothers, understood what was passing in their minds. And that bull among men immediately recollected the words of Krishna-Dwaipayana. And the king, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... such graceful mien, That she, thereby, became a queen. For thus (may ever truth prevail) We draw our moral from this tale. This quality, fair ladies, know Prevails much more (you'll find it so) T'ingage and captivate a heart, Than a fine head dress'd up with art. The fairies' gift of greatest worth Is grace of bearing, not high birth; Without this gift we'll miss the prize; Possession gives us wings ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... versa, as long as he or she was in demand; a successful man had nearly every woman of prominence at his feet. The men planned their attacks upon the women whom they desired, and the women connived, posed, and set most ingenious traps and devised most extraordinary means to captivate their hero. As the century wore on and the vices and appetites gradually consumed the healthy tissues, there sprang up a class of monsters, most accomplished roues, consummate leaders of theoretical and ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... graces, you that inhabit the heavenly mansions of Seraphina's countenance, what were the weapons used to captivate the heart of Mr. Jones. First, from two lovely blue eyes, whose bright orbs flashed lightning at their discharge, flew off two pointed ogles; but, happily for our hero, hit only a vast piece of beef, which he was then conveying into his plate. The fair warrior perceived their miscarriage, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... the lips, an assertive or deprecatory wave of the hand, conveying so much—and a voice at that time of a singular penetrating sweetness, he was, even without that light of the future upon his forehead which she was so swift to discern, a man to captivate any woman of kindred nature and sympathies. Over and above these advantages, he possessed a rare quality of physical magnetism. By virtue of this he could either attract irresistibly ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... is in the right road,—but not for greatness. The marks by which Fame has always separated her great martyrs from the rest of mankind are not upon him, and the crown cannot be his. He may dazzle, may captivate the circle, and even the times in which he lives, but he ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... I intend to have her with me very soon. Your mother is anxious that she should get into a high family, trusting that her beauty will captivate some of the members—a bad kind of speculation. I will advertise for a companion, and so arrange that your mother shall not see me; and when your sister does come to me, it shall not be as a companion, but as a child of my own. I owe you much, Tom— indeed, almost everything; and it is the ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... strain every energy at the Bar, to carve or force my own way to fortune; and if I arrived at independence, then,—what then? Why, the right to speak of love and aim at power. This was not the view of Ellinor Compton. The law seemed to her a tedious, needless drudgery; there was nothing in it to captivate her imagination. She listened to me with that charm which she yet retains, and by which she seems to identify herself with those who speak to her. She would turn to me with a pleading look when her father 'dilated on the brilliant prospects of a parliamentary ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... weakly. Like many women of that period, when all hope of marrying and having a home of her own was past, she sank down into a gentle nonentity and dreamed of Cousin Chilian. Not that she had expected to captivate him, but life with some one like that would set one on ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... repository, where they will lie at full length, and which has drawers in it for linen. A repository, that used to hold the riches suits which some of the nymphs put on, when they are to be dressed out, to captivate, or to ape quality. For many a countess, thou knowest, has our mother equipped; nay, two or three duchesses, who live upon quality- terms with their lords. But this to such as will come up to her price, and can make an appearance like quality themselves on the occasion: ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... females, neighbours and friends, were tried some years since in England for the murder of their husbands. It appeared that they were in love with the same individual, and had conjointly, at various times, paid sums of money to a Gipsy woman to work charms to captivate his affection. Whatever little effect the charm might produce, they were successful in their principal object, for the person in question carried on for some time a criminal intercourse with both. The matter came to the knowledge of the husbands, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... with it, she made it her whole desire to be of good service to him in the society in which she had been called upon to live with him. "I hadn't a word to say in society," she writes; "I didn't even know its language. Obliged, as a woman, to captivate people's minds, I was ignorant how many shades there are of self-love, and I offended it when I thought I was flattering it. Always striking wrong notes and never hitting it off, I saw that my old ideas would never accord with those ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Albany scrawls a hasty note to Winslow: "Friday, 11 o'clock: Sir, about half an hour since, a party of near fifty French and Indians had the impudence to come down to the river opposite to this city and captivate two men;" and Winslow replies with equal quaintness: "We daily discover the Indians about us; but not yet have been so happy as to obtain any ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... beautiful, but hers was a different style of beauty from that of Rose, whose ripe, sensuous charms were fitted to captivate the admiration of the voluptuary, while Sabine was of the most refined and ethereal character. Rose fettered the body with earthly trammels, while Sabine drew the soul heavenward. Her beauty was not of the kind that dazzles, for the air of proud reserve ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... saw the executioner with the whip in his hand. At this sight she forgot her desire to captivate the multitude, and even her hatred, and sinking on her knees she said, "Have pity!" and seized his hand; but he raised the other, and let the whip fall lightly on her shoulders. She jumped up, and was about to try and throw ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... embarrassments and dangers in which they eventually implicated the princess Elizabeth, it will now become necessary to unravel. The younger Seymour, still in the prime of life, was endowed in a striking degree with those graces of person and manner which serve to captivate the female heart, and his ambition had sought in consequence to avail itself ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... obliterated. The rhythmical structure of poetry, and above all the device of rhyme, is essentially immature and childish: the use by poets of rhythmical beat and verbal assonance is simply the endeavour to captivate what is a primeval and even barbarous instinct. The pleasure which children take in beating their hands upon a table, in rapping out a tattoo with a stick, in putting together unmeaning structures of rhyme, is not necessarily an artistic thing at all; what lies at the ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... This hour enjoyment more intense, Shall captivate each ravish'd sense, Than thou could'st compass in the bound Of the whole year's unvarying round; And what the dainty spirits sing, The lovely images they bring, Are no fantastic sorcery. Rich odours shall regale your smell, On choicest sweets ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... fetes were given at Mousseau, a villa belonging to the Duke of Orleans. near Paris, at which Mrs. Robinson invariably declined to appear. Brilliant races a l'Anglaise were exhibited on the plains des Sablons, to captivate the attention of the inexorable Anglaise. On the birthday of Mrs. Robinson a new effort was made to subdue her aversion and to obtain her regard. A rural fete was appointed in the gardens of Mousseau, when this beautiful pandemonium ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... by the most exquisite strains, by the harmony of the choir. These powerful incentives are repeated in a hundred different places; the metropolises, parishes, the numerous religious houses, the simple oratories, sparkle with emulation to captivate all the powers of the religious and devout mind. Thus a taste for the arts becomes general by means of so potent a lever, and artists increase in number and rivalry. Under this influence the celebrated schools of Italy and Flanders flourished; and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... stepmother and stepbrothers and sisters, who made life a misery for me until I was eighteen, and then one day I met a gentleman. Oh, my lad, it was no wonder I loved him; he was different from all the lads I had met in those parts, young, handsome, laughter-loving, just the man to captivate a lassie's heart. He married me, Scottish fashion, and on the day we were wed he told me he had received a letter which urged him to go back to his home at once. We were married secretly, my boy, because I was afraid for my father and ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... makes them ready to fight in defense of their own, while it destroys the license that breaks out into acts of injustice and rapacity. Numa, therefore, hoping agriculture would be a sort of charm to captivate the affections of his people to peace, and viewing it rather as a means to moral than to economical profit, divided all the lands into several parcels, to which he gave the name of pagus, or parish, and over every one of them he ordained chief overseers; and, taking a delight ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of vision and revelation, with a complete scheme of reconciliation, with correlated catalogues of Shint[o] and Buddhist gods, with liturgies, with lists of old popular festivals newly named, with the apparatus of art to captivate the senses, K[o]b[o] forthwith baptized each native Shint[o] deity with a new Chinese-Buddhistic name. For every Shint[o] festival he arranged a corresponding Buddhist's saints' day or gala time. Then, training up a band ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... me forget that I was transplanted; he could act dog, tame rabbit, fox, pony, and a whole nursery collection alive, but he was sometimes absent for days, and I was not of a temper to be on friendly terms with those who were unable to captivate my imagination as he had done. When he was at home I rode him all round the room and upstairs to bed, I lashed him with a whip till he frightened me, so real was his barking; if I said 'Menagerie' he became a caravan of wild beasts; I undid a button of his waistcoat, and it was a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... must be so, else why Dr. Sherman and Mrs. Cameron present?—this point, therefore, was settled—at least with the Falkners, of her acceptance of him, a rich East Indian, oh there could be no doubt of that. And the elder Miss Falkner could breathe again, since she was free to captivate Mr. George Mortimer, with whom she was desperately in love. Thus do vain and silly people jump at conclusions and thus is half the business of a country town, or village, settled without any concurrence, or even ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... faculties all captivate Unto thyself with strongest tye; My will entirely regulate: Make me thy slave, Nought else I crave For this I know ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... her out," he often said to himself, "I have an odd instinct which tells me that there is the sleeping lioness or the wild-cat hidden somewhere beneath all that languid, gracious carelessness. Poor little girl! she has managed to captivate us all, but I should not be surprised if she turned out more difficult and troublesome to manage than the whole of my seven daughters ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... it is one of the first rudiments, but main principles, of a Christian, to captivate his understanding, and so regulate all his dictamens, that they be sure to run parallel with the sentiments of the Church. And this I take to be the case when the question is started about Purgatory fire, which I shall ever reckon in the class of those truths, which cannot ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... was obliged to take a rest, leaving her small school in Louisa's charge. There were twenty scholars, and it was a great responsibility for the girl of seventeen, but she took up the work with such enthusiasm that she managed to captivate her pupils, whose attention she held by illustrating many of their lessons with original stories, telling them in a way they would never forget. When Anna came back the school was so flourishing that Louisa continued to help with the teaching, and it seemed probable that ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... gave.' One bastard virtue the poet hath given her; which, with these sort of critics, might make her pass for a wit; and that is, her love of a joke—'For gentle Dulness ever loved a joke.' Her delight in games and races is another of her bastard virtues, which would captivate her nobler sons, and draw them to her shrine; not to speak of her indulgence to young travellers, whom she accompanies as Minerva did Telemachus. But of all her bastard virtues, her FREE-THINKING, the virtue which she anxiously propagates ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... can he be justly charged with prolonging an echo. He is not one of the many mocking-birds that infest the groves at the foot of Parnassus. Though portions of his songs be wild, fitful, and incoherent, they gush with the force and feeling of a heart loyal to its intuitions, and thus many strains captivate and keep the tuneful ear. Yet such charming lines make conspicuous the want of that high appreciation of form and proportion without which any felicity of touch in the treatment of details will only cause the consummate master to grieve over glorious forms that have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the nature of government and the "beauty" of nullification, striving to make a lasting impression on his intellect. Clay would rise, extend his hand with that winning grace of his, and instantly captivate him by his all-conquering courtesy. He would call him by name, inquire respecting his health, the town whence he came, how long he had been in Washington, and send him away pleased with himself and enchanted with Henry Clay. And what was his delight to receive a few weeks after, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... in the glass, and as she looked the color deepened in her cheek, her eyes shone, and a smile would sit upon her lips, for the reflection showed her a very winning face under the coquettish hat put on to captivate. ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... footstool for the lover. This attitude of Janina's irritated him, but nevertheless attracted him so irresistibly that he doubled his pretenses of love, thinking that by a larger dose of sentimental falsehood, and a better acting of emotion he would at last captivate and conquer her completely. However, he did ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... dangerous feeling of security, for in fact King Henry's wife is never safe. The axe always hangs over her head, and you must ever consider your husband as only a fickle lover, whom you must every day captivate anew." ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... maid, whose joyous glances roll To cheer the heart and charm the soul; Whose graceful locks, that flow behind, Engage and captivate mankind! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 368, May 2, 1829 • Various
... concerned, my mind is easy. But, then, you girls—you poor little inexperienced poppets, who know nothing of the world. There's Jane; but then she's pretty—really beautiful. Why, her face is a fortune: she will of course captivate a rich man; and what more can a father wish? As for Emily—I fear Emily, my dear, you're rather plain than otherwise; but what, I would ask, is beauty?—fleeting, transitory, skin-deep. The happiest marriages ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... pose as an agreeable man, and try to captivate her attention and good graces by the minute attentions and delicate flattery which constitute what is classically called paying court? But D'Arzenac had seized this role, and filled it in such a superior way that all competition would be unsuccessful. I saw where this had ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... subject was 'God's love,' upon which he poured forth a mystical incomprehensible rhapsody, with extraordinary vehemence of manner and power of lungs. There was nothing like eloquence in his sermon, no musical periods to captivate the ear, no striking illustrations to charm the imagination; but there is undoubtedly something in his commanding figure and strange, wild countenance, his vehemence, and above all the astonishing power of his voice, its compass, intonation, and variety, which arrests attention, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... was the widow Toothaker. Her troubles had come early, and, tedious as they seemed, had passed before all her bloom was fled. She was still fair enough to captivate a bachelor, or with a widow's cheerful gravity she might have won a widower, stealing into his heart in the very guise of his dead wife. But the widow Toothaker had no such projects. By her watchings and continual cares her heart had become knit to her first husband with a ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this change spread abroad, and the princes of the neighbouring kingdoms made many attempts to captivate her. Almost all asked her in marriage. But she found none with enough sense, and so she listened to all without promising herself ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... 29 And not choose eternal death, according to the will of the flesh and the evil which is therein, which giveth the spirit of the devil power to captivate, to bring you down to hell, that he may reign over ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... chose ministers from their own people, and continued to meet and worship God with the simple forms to which they had been accustomed, and it is a remarkable fact that Romanism, notwithstanding its gorgeous ceremonies and corrupt practices, did not captivate them. ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... displeased with the taste, want of taste she called it, shown by Mr Arabin in paying so much attention to Madame Neroni. It was as infallible that Madeline should displease and irritate the women, as that she should charm and captivate the men. The one result followed naturally on the other. It was quite true that Mr Arabin had been charmed. He thought her a very clever and a very handsome woman; he thought also that her peculiar afflictions entitled her to the sympathy of all. He had never, he said, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... peace. armonioso, -a harmonious, melodious. aroma m. aroma, fragrance, scent, perfume. aromoso, -a aromatic, fragrant. arpa f. harp. arrancar tear out, pluck out, wring, wrest, tear away, take away. arrebatar bear away, catch, snatch up, attract, captivate, charm; —se grow furious, rush headlong, give way to passion. arrebolar redden. arrogancia f. arrogance. arrojar throw, cast, cast off. arrojo m. daring, fearlessness. arrostrar face, fight, encounter. arroyuelo m. little brook, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... more Than raiment to adore; Thou must have more than a dress, More than any mode or mould, More than mortal loveliness, To captivate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... not to quarrel with Heaven. If the feeble charms which my countenance displays have exposed me to the misfortune of my lover abandoning me, Heaven could not better soften such a blow than by making use of you to captivate that heart. I ought not to blush for an inconstancy which indicates the difference between your attractions and mine. If this change makes me sigh, it is from foreseeing that it will be fatal to your love; amidst the sorrow caused by friendship, I am angry for your sake that my ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... towards him, for in them lay the force of a powerful will and a depth and subtlety of intellect that made men fear, if they could not love him. Yet when he chose—and it was his usual mood—to exercise his blandishments on men, he rarely failed to captivate them, while his pleasant wit, courtly ways, and natural gallantry towards women, exercised with the polished seductiveness he had learned in the Court of Louis XV., made Francois Bigot the most plausible and dangerous man ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... betwixt him and the pretty novice. But he was mistaken. Catherine, it would seem, had no mind so far to indulge him; for, moved either by delicacy or caprice, or some of those indescribable shades betwixt the one and the other, with which women love to tease, and at the same time to captivate, the ruder sex, she reminded the Abbess that it was necessary she should retire an hour before vespers; and, receiving the ready and approving nod of her Superior, she arose to withdraw. But before leaving the apartment, she made obeisance to the matrons, bending ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... plant, I love thee, yes, I do, And all thy blooming kindred too, (More than the works of art,) For in them, I can ever find Such beauty, skill and power combined, As captivate and soothe the mind, And ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... birth, and luxury, spoiled and pampered as if earth had no thorn for their feet, and heaven not a wind to visit their young cheeks too roughly. The mother had been extremely handsome; and though the first bloom of youth was now gone, she had still the beauty that might captivate new love—an easier task than to retain the old. Both her sons, though differing from each other, resembled her; she had the features of the younger; and probably any one who had seen her in her own earlier youth would have recognized in that child's gay yet gentle countenance ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... youngest. He had not Undy's sharpness, his talent for public matters, or his aptitude for the higher branches of the Civil Service; but he had wit to wear his sash and epaulets with an easy grace, and to captivate the heart, person, and some portion of the purse, of the Widow Golightly. The lady was ten years older than the gentleman; but then she had a thousand a year, and, to make matters more pleasant, the beauteous Clementina had a fortune ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... opinion generally entertained, though probably not often expressed. Hence it was not unnatural that the sentimental dandies and high-toned villains of Bulwer's earlier novels should have been the heroes to captivate ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... the two candidates was almost pathetic. Senator Douglas was the most brilliant figure in the political life of the day. Winning in personality, fearless as an advocate, magnetic in eloquence, shrewd in political manoeuvring, he had every quality to captivate the public. His resources had never failed him. From his entrance into Illinois politics in 1834, he had been the recipient of every political honor his party had to bestow. For the past eleven years he had been a member of the United States ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... the fiends entertain for Holy Writ depended, not on the meaning of the words, but the arrangement of the page, and the type in which they were printed. This singular species of flattery was designed to captivate the clergyman through his professional opinions; others were more strictly personal. The afflicted damsel seems to have been somewhat of the humour of the Inamorata of Messrs. Smack, Pluck, Catch, and Company, and had, like her, merry as ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... every base and treacherous trick, to render Honoria Eversleigh an object of suspicion in the eyes of her husband. She had a double game to play; for she sought at once to gratify her ambition and her thirst for revenge. On one hand she wished to captivate Lord Sumner Howden; on the other she wanted to widen the gulf between Sir Oswald ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... which does not captivate me. I recognize an attempt at the grand manner now and then, in persons who are well enough in their way, but of no particular importance, socially or otherwise. Some family tradition of wealth or distinction is apt to be at the bottom of it, and it survives all the advantages ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that is turned to my father and uncles, to captivate them: but I am afraid that my brother's and sister's design is to ruin me with them at any rate. Were it otherwise, would they not on my return from you have rather sought to court than frighten me into measures which their hearts are so much bent to carry? A method they ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... who threw mists before your eyes—you had no time to detect his fallacies. He would say "hand me the silver sugar tongs;" and, before you could discover it was a single spoon, and that plated, he would disturb and captivate your imagination by a misnomer of "the urn" for a tea kettle; or by calling a homely bench a sofa. Rich men direct you to their furniture, poor ones divert you from it; he neither did one nor the other, but ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... think neither Rachel nor I could have thought of anything so sure to captivate a ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... I wait To take, and he devours my bait, How poor a thing, sometimes I find, Will captivate a greedy mind: And when none bite, I praise the wise Whom vain ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... how long his precarious power might last, for bettering his low and indigent circumstances. It appeared to him, that the traffic in Indians was the shortest way to riches. He therefore granted commissions to several persons, to assault, trepan and captivate as many Indians as they could, and resolved to turn the profits of such trade to his own private emolument. Not contented with this cruel method of acquiring wealth, he formed a design for engrossing the whole advantages arising ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... his heart, as the proper man to become his future son-in-law. And Miss Mary, who lost her passion for Dick Giblet, after he shut the watch-dog in the kitchen-pantry,—a trick which had nearly cost her the loss of a beloved mother,—and finding she could not captivate the handsome Colonel Malcome with checkered aprons and broad lace, began, like a dutiful child, to receive the advances of the mild Theophilus more graciously, and had, after much maidenly confusion, consented to become his wife, when, as we have seen, the uncompromising colonel ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... why he detested what he called stump oratory was because he believed it to be a great school of insincerity. Its end was not truth, but plausibility. It was the effort of interested men to throw opinions into such forms as might most captivate uninstructed men; to keep back every unpopular side; to magnify everything in them that was seductive. He once said to me that two great curses seemed to him eating away the heart and worth of the English people. One was drink. The ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... selfe, and to give a goodly colour and lustre to those fair and flattering promises of things, which our nature is most given to hearken after, on goeth the habite also and cloake of religion: a point, I may tell you, that even in these daies holdeth captivate the spirit of man, and draweth away with it a greater part of the world, and nothing so much. But not content with this successe and good proceeding, to gather more strength and win a greater name, shee entermingled with medicinable receipts and religious ceremonies, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... of Seraphita is its hybridity, not to speak of its pretentious psychology. It is neither flesh nor fowl; and, exception made for some fine passages, more at the beginning than in the rest of the book, it jars and irks, and amazes, but does not captivate or persuade. ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... not vicious, and her defects may be ascribed to her education and to the actual state of the society in which she lived. Her virtues were inherent in her character; every day developed them more and more, and they were such as to make the happiness of all who lived with her and to captivate the affection of all who really knew her. I have never lost anyone I loved before, and though I know the grief I now feel will soon subside (for so the laws of nature have ordained), long, long will it be before I forget her, or before my mind loses the lively ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... that to get money I must marry money. In consequence of which, I am always looking out for money to captivate.' ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... aliae exsequuntur. Therefore when once divine truth gets entry into the heart of a man, and becomes one with his will and affection, it will quickly command the whole man to practise and execute, and then he that received "the truth in love" is found a walker in the truth. Many persons captivate truth in their understandings, as the Gentiles did, they hold or detain it in unrighteousness, but because it hath no liberty to descend into the heart, and possess that garrison, it cannot command the man. But oh! it is better to be truth's captive than to ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... desires to be beautiful, and it is the duty of every woman to be as attractive as possible. All may enhance their charms and be lovely by following the directions of this book. Few persons know how to improve their natural looks so as to captivate, charm, and win the admiration of those whom they meet. This book tells the wonderful secret—all the ancients ever knew, and all that has been discovered since. It teaches how to wonderfully improve the person in loveliness. ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... since in all probability her parentage would remain unknown. He would not relinquish her. She should be a daughter to him. He realized that he had a curious love for the child, that she had attracted him from the first. In the years to come her beauty and winsomeness would captivate a husband, with the dowry he ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... combat. He must always be suspected—Heaven knows of what, but of some covert design against the religion or the pocket, or the influence of those who admit him. Some thought him dangerous because his manners were insinuating, and his address studiously directed to captivate. Others did not fancy his passion for mixing in the world, and frequenting society to which his straitened means appeared to deny him rightful access; but when he had succeeded in introducing his daughter to the world, and people began to say, 'See how admirably M. Kostalergi ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... same places. The first thing I noticed, the other evening, was that the Tutor was sitting between the two Annexes, and the Counsellor was next to Number Five. Something ought to come of this arrangement. One of those two young ladies must certainly captivate and perhaps capture the Tutor. They are just the age to be falling in love and to be fallen in love with. The Tutor is good looking, intellectual, suspected of writing poetry, but a little shy, it appears to me. I am glad to see him between the ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... mere beauty possess such an influence over the capricious wandering heart of man?" he thought; "yet it is not beauty alone that makes me prefer Juliet to the rest of her sex. Her talents, her deep enthusiasm, captivate me more than her handsome face and graceful form. Oh, Juliet! Juliet! why did we ever meet? or is Godfrey destined to enact the same tragedy that ruined my uncle's peace, and consigned my ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... that we should be affected with anything, he did not confide the execution of his design to the languid and precarious operation of our reason; but he endued it with powers and properties that prevent the understanding, and even the will; which, seizing upon the senses and imagination, captivate the soul before the understanding is ready either to join with them, or to oppose them. It is by a long deduction, and much study, that we discover the adorable wisdom of God in his works: when we discover it, the effect ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... offended that the Lord Jesus is of the Father made so much to his, but rather admire and wonder that the Father and the Son should be so concerned with so sorry a lump of dust and ashes as thou art. And I say again, be confounded to think that sin should be a thing so horrible, of power to pollute, to captivate, and detain us from God, that without all this ado (I would speak with reverence of God and his wisdom) we cannot be delivered from the everlasting destruction that it hath brought upon the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... both at Calais and at Paris with the most gratifying honours: he was then entirely the man to captivate the French. The beauty of his person, the grace of his manner, his consummate taste in all things, the exceeding variety and sparkling vivacity of his conversation, enchanted them. In later life he has grown more reserved and ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... himself. No work he had ever done had so delighted the boyish heart of James Price, alias Pickles, as the capture of Sue from the hands of the police. The whole story had a certain flavor about it which would be sure to captivate such a nature as his. Sue was innocent; he was quite certain of that. But then, as certainly some one else was guilty. Here, then, was a work after his own heart; he would find out who the guilty party was. He had a great deal ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... head, magnetize; lobby. persuade; prevail with, prevail upon; overcome, carry; bring round to one's senses, bring to one's senses; draw over, win over, gain over, come over, talk over; procure, enlist, engage; invite, court. tempt, seduce, overpersuade^, entice, allure, captivate, fascinate, bewitch, carry away, charm, conciliate, wheedle, coax, lure; inveigle; tantalize; cajole &c (deceive) 545. tamper with, bribe, suborn, grease the palm, bait with a silver hook, gild the pill, make things pleasant, put a sop into the pan, throw a sop to, bait the hook. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... observes, greater intensity of feeling in a single musical note than in pages of writing. It is probable that nearly the same emotions, but much weaker and far less complex, are felt by birds when the male pours forth his full volume of song, in rivalry with other males, to captivate the female. Love is still the commonest theme of our songs. As Herbert Spencer remarks, "music arouses dormant sentiments of which we had not conceived the possibility, and do not know the meaning; or, as Richter says, tells us of things we have ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... interest of plot, a hearty, breezy spirit of youth and adventuresomeness which will captivate the special audience they are addressed to, and will also ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... time. In this part of the work Lincoln displayed remarkable tact. He did not badger the witnesses, or attempt to confuse them. His questions were plain and practical, and elicited answers that had a direct bearing upon the case. He did nothing for effect, and made no attempt to dazzle the jury or captivate the audience. When he arose to speak he was confronted by an audience that was too numerous for all to find seats in the court-room. He was attired in a fine broadcloth suit, silk hat, and polished boots. His neck ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... companions than she will make thee, for she is excessively irritable and passionate. Withal she is so fond of admiration, that I have no doubt she would give chace to the ugliest toad that ever devoured a worm, so she could captivate him. She is a ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... inspired Mr. Grayson and his friends with courage for a conflict against odds. He consulted her daily about his speeches; it was she who always put into them some happy thought, some telling phrase that was sure to captivate the people. In a pinch she could make a speech herself, and she would probably be seen on the stump in the West. And she was as beautiful as she was intellectual and eloquent; she would be the most picturesque feature of this or any campaign ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... great public have huge amphibious matter for their wonderment. The new curiosity comes to us staggering under the unwieldy name of Hippo-potamus. He is a comely gentleman, fair and beauteous to look upon; and the strange loveliness of his countenance cannot fail to captivate the crowd. His youth, too, gives him a special claim to the consideration of the ladies, for he is a little darling of only three years—a very baby of a hippopotamus in fact, who, only a few months ago, daily sucked ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... flush of evening, and the aurora over the southern sky, now like a row of flaming spears, then changing into a silvery veil, undulating in wavy folds with the wind, every here and there interspersed with red sprays. These wonderful night effects are ever new, and never fail to captivate the soul." ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... the appeals of a layman who walks at our side. The amazing multitude of Protestant sects is due in a great degree to this superiority of lay preaching over clerical. The most brilliant orators of the Christian pulpit are bad converters; their eloquent appeals may captivate the imagination and lead a few men of the world to the foot of the altar, but these results are not more brilliant than ephemeral. But let a peasant or a workingman speak to those whom he meets ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... instance, that the most mischievous doctrine of pantheism will surrender its elements of truth (for it has an important admixture of truth) to the formation of a new conception of God, which will appeal to and captivate the Indian mind and heart. Indeed, we are witnessing, this very day, even in the far West, the influence of India in her monistic overemphasis upon the divine immanence, working toward a new Christian conception of God. Modern interchange of thought is ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... for poetry, and a genuine sensibility to its intrinsic charm. The greater and more distinguished poets of our country have so much else in them to gratify other tastes and propensities, that they are pretty sure to captivate and amuse those to whom their poetry is but an hindrance and obstruction, as well as those to whom it constitutes their chief attraction. The interest of the stories they tell—the vivacity of the characters they ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... all their charms and powers of fascination to captivate the attention, and, if possible, the heart of their sovereign, who is, after all, but human. That is why Emperor William deserves so much credit for having remained true to his wife, and why Emperor Francis-Joseph ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... blessedness that clings to her in spite of all evil influence, there is enough of the Divine Master left to accomplish the noblest work ever achieved under the canopy of the vaulted skies; and that time is fast approaching, when the picture of the true woman will shine from its frame of glory, to captivate, to win back, to restore, and to call into being once more, THE OBJECT OF ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Mr. Weller drew a long puff of smoke, and detecting himself in the very act of smiling on the housekeeper, put a sudden constraint upon his countenance and looked sternly at the candle, with a determination not to captivate, himself, or encourage thoughts of captivation in others. From this iron frame of mind he was roused by the ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... drawbridge, Marguerite recognised at a glance that there was no hope of evasion from this new and impregnable prison, save through the agency of her gaoler; and she accordingly lost no time in exerting all her blandishments to captivate his reason. Although she had now attained her thirty-fifth year, neither time, anxiety, hardship, nor even the baneful indulgence of her misguided passions, had yet robbed her of her extraordinary beauty; and ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... the Life of Napoleon Bonaparte was never too particular in regard to his facts, but those which he made use of he could array with such skill as to completely captivate the judgment of the unwary. In his History of the Civil War, all the enthusiasm of the writer, his easy flow of rhetoric, his vast fund of anecdote, and his characteristic inability to discriminate between truth and falsity, assert themselves. The chief importance of the work consists ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... a mortal so far favored as never to have worn the abominable European costume—those hideous habits, and frightful hats, which render the men so ridiculous, so ugly, that in truth there is not a single good quality to be discovered in them, nor one spark of what can either captivate or attract! There comes to me at last a handsome young prince from the East, where the men are clothed in silk and cashmere. Most assuredly I'll not miss this rare and unique opportunity of exposing myself to a very serious and ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... enchant, charm, captivate, enamor, infatuate, entrance, enrapture, enravish. Antonyms: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... dangerous region of the tribes beyond the Six Nations. The outfit of this young "bushloper," as such a man was called in the still earlier Dutch period, consisted mainly of a sort of cloth suited to Indian wants. But there were added minor articles of use and fancy to please the youth or captivate the imagination of the women in the tribes. Combs, pocket mirrors, hatchets, knives, jew's-harps, pigments for painting the face blue, yellow, and vermilion, and other such things, were stored away in the canoe, to be spread out as temptations before ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... the powers of Erebus, he sang his complaints to the rocks and mountains, melting the hearts of tigers and moving the oaks from their stations. He held himself aloof from womankind, dwelling constantly on the recollection of his sad mischance. The Thracian maidens tried their best to captivate him, but he repulsed their advances. They bore with him as long as they could; but finding him insensible, one day, one of them, excited by the rites of Bacchus, exclaimed, "See yonder our despiser!" and ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... Bavarian Count: and which must have cost that Count very little short of 120 guineas. The shelves of the front repository were almost wholly filled with English books, in the choicest bindings; and dressed out to catch and captivate the susceptible bibliomaniac, in a manner the most adroit imaginable. To the left, on entrance, were two rooms filled with choice paintings; many of them just purchased at the Frankfort fair. Some delicious Flemish pictures, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... lodgers. These came and went, married and died; but not one of the desirable young men had borne Miss Greeb to the altar, so that when her mother died the fair Julia almost despaired of attaining to the dignity of wifehood. Nevertheless, she continued to keep boarders, and to make attempts to captivate the hearts of such bachelors as she ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... poor Sprigg have ever imagined that he had but to put on a pair of red moccasins to captivate the fancy and win the love of such a little angel as Bertha Bryant? Had she seen him so bedizened—"Fop-Indian!" "Jack-Monkey!" would have been the first thoughts to pop into her judicious little head, and Sprigg might have chased her till he had worn his red moccasins slip-shod, ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... as doubtless foreseen by Russia, soon proved disastrous. Draga, having achieved her ambition and mounted the throne, showed none of the ability of Theodora. Clever enough to captivate the feeble-minded Alexander, she was too stupid to realize that her only chance lay in gaining the popularity of the people who were none too well disposed. With incredible folly, before in any way consolidating her position, ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... in Tennessee, Ben Hardin, John J. Crittenden and John C. Breckenridge in Kentucky. Tradition still has stories to tell of their exploits and prowess, their wit and eloquence, even their commonplace sayings and doings. They were marked men who never failed to captivate their audiences. The system of stump oratory had many advantages as a public force and was both edifying and educational. There were a few conspicuous writers for the press, such as Ritchie, Greeley and Prentice. But the day of personal journalism ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... the timerous Trout I wait To take, and he devours my bait, How poor a thing sometimes I find Will captivate a greedy mind: And when none bite, I praise the wise, Whom ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... shouting, and inviting the passers-by to enter and behold the wonders they had to exhibit. There were tumblers also, and fat pigs, and learned pigs, and dancing bears, indeed sufficient exhibitions of all sorts to captivate and amuse every ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... rusty as the wares we deal in without any one asking; the price of our merchandise. But I do not rest my hopes upon this department of my labours only. I propose also to have a corresponding shop for Sentiment, and Dialogues, and Disquisition, which may captivate the fancy of those who have no relish, as the established phrase goes, for pure antiquity—a sort of greengrocer's stall erected in front of my ironmongery wares, garlanding the rusty memorials of ancient times with cresses, cabbages, ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... are impressed upon them by his commanding eloquence. Addison's style, like a light wine, pleases everybody from the first. Johnson's, like a liquor of more body, seems too strong at first, but, by degrees, is highly relished; and such is the melody of his periods, so much do they captivate the ear, and seize upon the attention, that there is scarcely any writer, however inconsiderable, who does not aim, in some degree, at the same species of excellence. But let us not ungratefully undervalue that beautiful style, which has pleasingly conveyed to us much instruction ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... hair, in colour gold, in texture soft as silk. A band of gold forms the girdle of her ruby-coloured velvet robe, which descends to the wrist, and there reveals the small white hand and tapering fingers of patrician beauty. All this may captivate the fastidious noble; but, to men less artificial in their tastes and habits, could such a woman be better than a statue—and could love, the strongest of human passions, be ever more to her than a short-lived ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... Indian, not content with lurking in ambush, went afloat to wreak mischief, and the records of the First Church of Salem contain this quaint entry under date of July 25, 1677: "The Lord having given a Commission to the Indians to take no less than 13 of the Fishing Ketches of Salem and Captivate the men... it struck a great consternation into all the people here. The Pastor moved on the Lord's Day, and the whole people readily consented, to keep the Lecture Day following as a Fast Day, ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... with the sea of crystal, the tree of life, or the gates of precious stones, also soothes the sublimity of mountains with gentle traits of scenery and soft gradations of color which give enjoyment more passive than awe, and rather captivate than overpower the eye ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... accession of his majesty to the Germanic confederation, as Elector of Hanover, would give mortal offence to the Emperor Joseph, and would indispose him to an alliance with Great Britain in the event of a future war. He argued, that it was our interest to conciliate and captivate Austria, as the only power in Europe able to keep France in awe. Fox next adverted to a favourable opportunity for an alliance with Russia, which had been lost, and then condemned a commercial treaty, which government had begun to negociate with France. The experience of past ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... language, and finish of diction, when even ideas fail, words come to his aid—arranging themselves, as it were, so completely, that they not only captivate, but often deceive us for ideas; and hence the vacuum that would necessarily occur in the address of an ordinary speaker is filled up, presenting the same beautiful harmony as do the lights ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... us a verdant specimen," she said, as she at last bade him good-by, and turned her attention to Mark Ray, her brother's partner, who had been with them at Newport, and whom she was bending all her energies to captivate. ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... Clifton and Mr Maxwell, or her father, she saw, and professed herself delighted with it. She admired the farm-houses and the farmers, and the farmers' wives and daughters, and laid herself out to captivate them in a way that Clifton declared to be wonderful. To Elizabeth it seemed ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... Grammont was not so agreeable to them; and I think that this was to be attributed, in part, to the sound of her voice, and to her blunt manner of speaking; for she was said to be a woman of great sense, and devotedly attached to the King and Madame de Pompadour. Some people pretended that she tried to captivate the King, and to supplant Madame: nothing could be more false, or more ridiculously improbable. Madame saw a great deal of these two ladies, who were extremely attentive to her. She one day remarked to the Duc d'Ayen,—[Afterwards Marechal de ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... old of spiders. The stage associates of Mile. Guimard called her "L'araignee," and Sophie Arnould christened her "the little silkworm," for the sake of the joke about "la feuille." But such spiteful raillery did not prevent her charming men to her feet whom greater beauties had failed to captivate. Houdon the sculptor molded her foot, and the great painters vied for the privilege of decorating the walls of her hotel. When she broke her arm, mass was said in church for her recovery, and she was one of the reigning toasts of Paris. Among ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... love you, Jude; that I own. When I first knew you I merely wanted you to love me. I did not exactly flirt with you; but that inborn craving which undermines some women's morals almost more than unbridled passion—the craving to attract and captivate, regardless of the injury it may do the man—was in me; and when I found I had caught you, I was frightened. And then—I don't know how it was—I couldn't bear to let you go—possibly to Arabella again—and so I got to love you, Jude. But you ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... judges and punishers of heresy. Thus the several orders of monks became a kind of regular troops or garrisons of the Romish church; and though the temporal interests of society, still more the cause of true piety, were hurt, by their various devices to captivate the populace, they proved the chief supports of that mighty fabric of superstition, and, till the revival of true learning, secured it from any ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... And yet a victim to the little Sylvie!" he mused, "Well! The two things will not work together. Though truly Sylvie would captivate a John Knox or a Cromwell. I really think,—I really do begin to think, that rather than lose her altogether, I must ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... picture hangs: But now the substance shall endure the like, And I will chain these legs and arms of thine, That hast by tyranny these many years Wasted our country, slain our citizens, And sent our sons and husbands captivate. ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... unity, which governs variety, from this movement of every world around its sun, of every sun around its centre sun—the sun of suns—which informs all with the rays of the spirit, with the light of thought—is generated that perfect harmony of colours, sounds, forms, which strike the sight and captivate and enthrall the intellect. That which in the heavens is harmony becomes, in the individual, morality, and in companies of human beings, law. That which is light in the spheres becomes intelligence and science in the world of the spirit ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... judgment; and since our death and our judgment are the only two things that we are absolutely sure about in our whole future, we shall henceforth fore-fancy those two events much more than we have done in the past. And to assist us in that; to quicken our fancy, to kindle it, to captivate it, and to turn our fancy wholly to our salvation, we have all the entrancing river-scenes in the Pilgrim's Progress set before us; a succession of scenes in which Bunyan positively revels in his exquisite fancies, clothing ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
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