"Impeccable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... situations, with Spaniards, with serpents, with dangerous bridges, with rafts on rivers and so forth. Dated 1853 this must be one of Kingston's earliest books, and certainly one of the earliest with this theme: the style is impeccable. This edition is probably some years later, since there is an inscription in the version I used dated 1900, and it might have been tidied up ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the Synagogue? It was not so many years since the messengers of the congregation had offered him a pension of a thousand florins not to disturb its "established religion." Fullest freedom in philosophy, forsooth! How was that to be reconciled with impeccable deference to the ruling religion? A courtier like Descartes might start from the standpoint of absolute doubt and end in a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Loretto; but for himself, who held miracles impossible, and if ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... thoughts, and the sparsity of intellectual creativeness which strikes one in turning over his engravings, so many are there of which either the occasion or the conception are altogether trivial when compared with the grandiose aspect of the composition or the impeccable mechanical performance. Duerer's literary remains sufficiently prove his mind to have been constantly exercised upon and around great thoughts, and their influence may be felt in the austerity and intensity of his noblest portraits and other creations. ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... Dame was the sobriquet which Lord Francis had invented to conceal—or to display—his courteous disdain of the ideals represented by Mrs. Sardis, that pillar long established, that stately dowager, that impeccable doyenne of serious English fiction. Mrs. Sardis had captured two continents. Her novels, dealing with all the profound problems of the age, were read by philosophers and politicians, and one of ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... dull, ease-loving woman, feeling the burden of her royalty all too wearisome and heavy, should turn with almost pathetic insistence to a man young enough to be her son, attractive enough to be a favourite, high enough to be impeccable, and of such clear wit, strength of will and resource, and power over herself and others as seemed to set him apart from all the rest of those who gathered to clamour about her. In truth, my lord Duke's value to her Majesty ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... ideals of common honesty in national concerns could hopefully undertake the enterprise. This work of empire-building out of unwarlike materials could apparently be carried out only by some alien power hampered by no reserve of scruple, and backed by a servile populace of its own, imbued with an impeccable loyalty to its masters and with a suitably bellicose temper, as, e.g., Imperial Japan or ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... is—you may find an echo of it in the uniform type of his creatures, their monotonous grace, their prodigious invariability. He may very well have wanted to produce figures of a substantial, yet at the same time of an impeccable innocence; but we feel that he had taught himself how even beyond his own belief in them, and had arrived at a process that acted at last mechanically. I confess at the same time that, so interpreted, the painter affects me as hardly less interesting, and one can't but become conscious ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... expect to be allowed time to go to church. Some of these new characteristics may be of the nature of defects, but they also mean that he is more of a man than he was in his heathen days. And as regards honesty and general trustworthiness, although every Indian Christian is not altogether impeccable, he is on a completely different plane to his heathen comrade. It is also an unspeakable relief, to anyone whose Christianity is something more than form, to have Christian servants round ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... of the historical method of inquiry into theological doctrines.'[20] Here, perhaps, we have examples. In its highest aspect that 'simplest theology' of Australia is free from the faults of popular theology in Greece. The God discourages sin, though, in myth, he is far from impeccable. He is almost too revered to be named (except in mythology) and is not to be represented by idols. He is not moved by sacrifice; he has not the chance; like Death in Greece, 'he only, of all Gods, loves not gifts.' Thus the status of theology does not correspond to what we look for in very low culture. ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... Saturdays dedicated by a growing tradition to this or that national expression, the Ninety-ninth Regiment, to a flare of music that made the heart leap out against its walls, turned into a scene thus swept clean for it, a wave of olive drab, impeccable row after impeccable row of scissors-like legs advancing. Recruits, raw if you will, but already caparisoned, sniffing and scenting, as it were, for the great ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... pueblo of Tesuque which has just finished its series of Christmas dances—a four-day festival celebrating with all but impeccable mastery the various identities which have meant so much to them both physically and spiritually—that I would here cite as an example. It is well known that once gesture is organized, it requires but a handful of people to represent multitude; and this lonely ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... a fake," declared Bertram. He slumped heavily into a chair, and scowled at Average Jones' well-littered desk, whereon he had just tossed a sheet of paper. His usually impeccable hair was tousled. His trousers evinced a distinct tendency to bag at the knees, and his coat was undeniably wrinkled. That the elegant and flawless dilettante of the Cosmic Club should have come forth, at eleven o'clock of a morning, in such a state of comparative ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... us has been a little swifter than the generality in reading signs; a little bolder in conception and execution. If you read the papers you will gather that each of us is, in private life, impeccable, and each of us is, in business, as merciless ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... efforts had been less barren. The public was talking, for, after all, the disappearance of poor Dimmock's body had got noised abroad in an indirect sort of way, and Theodore Racksole did not like the idea of his impeccable hotel being the subject of sinister rumours. He wondered, grimly, what the public and the Sunday newspapers would say if they were aware of all the other phenomena, not yet common property: of Miss Spencer's disappearance, of Jules' strange visits, and of the non-arrival of ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... way I have wandered from "Sordello," my dear Mainwaring, but when a man turns to his books, his thoughts, like those of a boy, "are long, long thoughts." I have not written on Longfellow's sonnets, for even you, impeccable sonneteer, admit that you admire them as much as ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... my idea is to turn the tables on all this. I myself am impeccable in a real court of equity. My avatar as David Williams was by way of being a superb adventure. I only retired from the harmless imposture lest I might compromise you, and you are so far gone in politics now that the revelation—if it came about—that ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... Phillips Lovecraft died last March, at the height of his career. Though only forty-six years of age, he had built up an international reputation by the artistry and impeccable literary craftsmanship of his weird tales; and he was regarded on both sides of the Atlantic as probably the greatest contemporary master of weird fiction. His ability to create and sustain a mood of brooding dread and unnamable horror is nowhere better shown than in the posthumous tale presented ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... problem of slavery and states' rights. It required the utmost intellectual courage and ability to emancipate the conception of democracy from the illusions and confusions of thought which enabled Davis, Douglas, and Garrison all to pose as impeccable democrats; and at the present time reformers need to devote as much ability and more courage to the task of framing a fitting creed for a reformed ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... game was up anyway, and as there was no American Consul nearer than London, I decided to try the amiability of the French Consul which I found impeccable. ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... Strikingly contrasted they stood there: Carse, in rough blue denim trousers, faded work-shirt, open at the neck, old-fashioned rubber shoes and battered skipper's cap askew on his flaxen hair; Ku Sui, suavely impeccable in high-collared green silk blouse, full-length trousers of the same material, and red slippers, to match the wide sash which revealed the slender lines of his waist. A perfume hung about the man, the ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... had found nothing but filth in the deep seas into which fate has thrown me? Believe me, you never know the best about men till you know the worst about them. It does not dispose of their strange human souls to know that they were exhibited to the world as impossibly impeccable wax works, who never looked after a woman or knew the meaning of a bribe. Even in a palace, life can be lived well; and even in a Parliament, life can be lived with occasional efforts to live it well. I tell you it is as true ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... instincts respecting an eternal future, forbid that that work of elevation and progress should be, as in all the other instances, a work of creation. To create would be to supersede. God's work of elevation now is the work of fitting and preparing peccable, imperfect man for a perfect, impeccable, future state. God's seventh day's work is the work of Redemption. And, read in this light, his reason vouchsafed to man for the institution of the Sabbath is found to yield a meaning of peculiar breadth and emphasis. God, it seems to say, rests on his Sabbath from his creative labors, in order ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... attacked and gave up a chunk of hard boiled potato, and lighted a cheap Virginia cigarette. He glanced out of the dirty window. Before it, making inquiries of a big, leisurely policeman, was a slim, exquisite girl of twenty, rosy-cheeked, smart of hat, impeccable of gloves, with fluffy white furs beneath her chin, which cuddled into the furs with a hint of a life bright and spacious. She laughed as she talked to the policeman, she shrugged her shoulders with the exhilaration of winter, ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... man had been a priest or a parson his presence in such company would have been no more surprising. He had the appearance of a well-dressed gentleman, probably a professional man of some kind. His features were good and his dress impeccable. ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... image of Madeleine; what he had lost and what he had never possessed. And, again, he tormented himself with imaginings of her own suffering and despair; alternated with visions of Madeleine enthroned, secure, impeccable, admired, envied—and with other men in love with her! Some depth of insight convinced him that she loved him immortally, but he knew her need for mental companionship, and the thought that she might find it, however briefly and barrenly, ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... at the English law on the subject of mustard, and demand why, in the nature of things, mustard should not be eaten with mutton. The answer is very simple; this law has been made by the English palate—which is impeccable. I maintain it is impeccable! Your educated Englishman is an infallible guide in all that relates to the table. "The man of superior intellect," said Tennyson—justifying his love of boiled beef and new potatoes—"knows ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... be sure the trade had found an answer to the riddle; and the answer was that, on close inspection, Neave had found the collection less impeccable than he had supposed. It was a preposterous answer—but then there was no other. Neave, by this time, was pretty generally recognized as having the subtlest flair of any collector in Europe, and if he didn't choose to keep the Daunt collection ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... of the primitive Umbrian Masters. They are all alike; they are awkwardly posed; everything in and around them sins against the most elementary rules of art, and yet their memory pursues you, and when you have long forgotten the works of impeccable modern artists you recall without effort these creations of those unknown painters; for love calls for love, and these vapid personages have very true and pure hearts, a more than human love shines forth from their whole being, they speak to you and ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... deal more! The impeccable Scarlet Pimpernel, the noble and gallant English gentleman, has agreed to deliver into our hands the uncrowned King of France—in exchange for his own life and freedom. Methinks that even his worst enemy would not wish for a better ending to a career of adventure, and ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... to believe that Bob, being attacked by an overwhelming force, suddenly bethought him of an engagement, and made a swift run for safety. The impeccable man who has never done a cowardly thing, nor a mean thing, is no kinsman of mine! The saintly hero who has not had his heels run away with his head, and sought safety in a friendly pig-pen—aye! and filled his belly with the husks that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... "Hm-m-m. Well, now, I wouldn't exactly say so, your lordship. He knew how clothes should be worn, yes. But he couldn't pick out a woman's gown of his own accord. He could choose his own clothing with impeccable taste, but he'd not any real notion of how a woman's clothing should go, if you see what I mean. All he knew was how good clothing should be worn. But he knew nothing ...
— The Eyes Have It • Gordon Randall Garrett
... to the Council. "Gentlemen," he said, "he did not strike the first blow, nor did Cadet Corbett, nor Cadet Manning. And I will not insist that the three members of the Capella unit be asked the same question, since I concede that they are three impeccable gentlemen who could not strike the first blow in ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... foolish; you might compare these last to the much-admired statues which must come down at once from their pedestal if the frost chips off a nose or a finger. They are not permitted to be human; they are required to be for ever divine and for ever impeccable. So one glance exchanged between Mme. de Bargeton and Lucien outweighed twelve years of Zizine's connection with Francis in the social balance; and a squeeze of the hand drew down all the thunders of the ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... than ever. If this were Lord Henry, the mental picture she had formed of him had evidently been very far from the truth; nor had Denis Malster's description of him been even fair. She wondered, as she examined his fine thoughtful head, and handsome athletic figure, telling to such advantage in his impeccable attire, what motive Denis could have had in saying what he had about the young noblemen before her. She was deeply interested, and for the time being this feeling overcame every other motive in ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... height, hung over the narrow and, during the winter months, not a little dusky channel, with endless movement and interest in the vivid exhibition it supplied. What faced us was a series of subjects, with the baker, at the corner, for the first—the impeccable dispenser of the so softly-crusty crescent-rolls that we woke up each morning to hunger for afresh, with our weak cafe-au-lait, as for the one form of "European" breakfast-bread fit to be named even with the feeblest of our American forms. ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... and manners of a reigning prince. His courtesy and affability were impeccable and charming. In the most profound sense this human being had succeeded, for it was impossible to believe that, had he to live his life again, he would live ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... occasionally, but he thoroughly understood himself at the time. He took it to be companionable, that was all. Therefore, in view of what happened to him on one unforgetable night, it is well to know that Hawkins bore an impeccable reputation for sobriety. Likewise, his veracity never had been ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... authority of one set of men over another to attain its object of restraining those who override public interests for their personal ends, power ought only to be put into the hands of the impeccable, as it is supposed to be among the Chinese, and as it was supposed to be in the Middle Ages, and is even now supposed to be by those who believe in the consecration by anointing. Only under those conditions could the social ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... songs in which to return to her public. This may in a measure account for her lack of success in always calling forth steady tones. However, on the whole, her voice sounded amazingly fresh. Her high notes especially rang true and resonant as ever. Her middle voice showed wear. Her style remained impeccable, unrivalled.... She announced, following this concert, a series of four recitals in a small hall and actually appeared at one of them. This time I did not hear her, but I am told that her voice ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... also snored. To think of London and of night romance was like conjuring up the wildest of anachronisms. Romance there was in London, but to me it had always been shot through with sunshine. It had been the hard commercial romance of the Stock Exchange. Or the courteous and impeccable romance of polished hats and social banalities. Or the gustatory romance of Cheddar cheese, musty ale, roast lamb and greens. Or it had been the romance of the Cook's tourist—the romance of cathedrals, towers, palaces, dungeons and parliamentary buildings. Or the romance of ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... foreigner, who, after reading a commentary on the principles of English Law, does not get nearer to a real apprehension of them than to be led to accuse Englishmen of considering that the queen is impeccable and infallible, and that the Parliament is omnipotent. Mr. Kingsley has read me from beginning to end in the fashion in which the hypothetical Russian read Blackstone; not, I repeat, from malice, but because of his intellectual build. He appears to be so constituted ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... passed his hand over his face to conceal a smile, but Leary seemed sincerely grieved by Archie's conduct and remarked dolefully that there must be something wrong with the money. The Governor hastily vouched for its impeccable quality and excused Archie as a person hardly second to ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... prosaic, mercantile whisker, surmounting the last new thing in shirt-collars. Dear to him is the physiognomy of clean-shaven periods, when cheek and lip and chin, abounding in line and surface, had the air of soliciting the pencil. Impeccable as he is in drawing, he likes a whole face, with reason, and likes a whole figure; the latter not to the exclusion of clothes, in which he delights, but as the clothes of our great-grandfathers helped it to be ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... title, "Authentic and Impartial Narrative of the Tragical Scene which was Witnessed in Southampton County (Virginia) on Monday the 22d of August Last," the list below of the victims of Nat Turner's insurrection is given. It must be said about this work, however, that it is not altogether impeccable; it seems to have been prepared very hastily after the event, its spelling of names is often arbitrary, and instead of the fifty-five victims noted it appears that at least fifty-seven white ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... this Meindert Hobbema? Where was he born? Where did he live? What was his life? Alas, we know very little concerning this impeccable master, one of the greatest glories of Dutch painting. The principal historians of the Netherland school are ignorant of him or pass him by in silence. Houbraken, Descamps, and d'Argenville are dumb regarding him. Those who, by chance, treat of him, commit so many errors that it is best ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... credit'—he took up the newspaper—'from the morning press. When I take to art criticism, as you kindly suggested a dishonest man might do, it will be of a livelier description than any to which you are usually accustomed. Vain dupe, you think yourself impeccable. Infallible ass, there is hardly a museum in Europe where my manuscripts are not carefully preserved for the greatest and rarest treasures by senile curators, too ignorant to know their errors or too vain to acknowledge them. ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... thoroughness which goes deeper than the misplacing of letters, but not in itself a proof of inability to express. Great writers have often misspelled; and the letters which some of our capable business men write when the stenographer fails to come back after lunch are by no means impeccable. Other accusations refer to a childish vagueness of expression—due to the fact that the American undergraduate is often a child intellectually rather than to any defects in composition per se. But it is a waste of time to deny that he ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... solicitor to represent me. In the end I should be fined for furious driving—at the rate, when the accident happened, of a mile an hour—and probably have to pay a heavy compensation to the wilful and uninjured victim of McKeogh's impeccable driving. And all the time, while waiting for injustice to take its course, I should be the guest of a hostile population. I grew angry. The crowd grew angrier. The gendarmes approached with an air of majesty and fate. But just before they could be acquainted with ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... as he entered. He tried to look encouraging, without success. I noticed that he looked tired and dusty, and, although he was ordinarily impeccable in his appearance, it was clear that he was at least two ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to be other than impeccable so amazed Cherry, that she could scarcely answer. 'O Mettle, I never knew what you and Felix must be. I have so often thought of a house divided against itself, one against two, and two against three. We have been all to wrongs, and Clem and I have said ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... This insatiable thirst for action and for renown was to be the source of Napoleon's strength and also of his weakness. But only a few clear-sighted men made these reflections when the Empire began. The masses, with their easy optimism, looked upon the new Emperor as an infallibly impeccable being, and thought that since he had not yet been beaten, he was invincible. Josephine indulged in no such illusions; she knew the defects in her husband's character, and dreaded the future for him as ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... subject to the rhythmical rise and fall of the currents of life as is the social organism or man himself, therefore it is not to be expected that it will pursue a course of even exaltation, or maintain a status that is impeccable. ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... not asked. The other had been not merely forbidding, not merely repugnant, but alternately forbidding and repugnant—in daylight, an impeccable burgher sitting tall and righteous under a tall hat; in tunnels, a hunchbacked gargoyle picking its nose in the ...
— In the Control Tower • Will Mohler
... judgment at Paris when he gave his Historical Recitals, refused to accept him as an interpreter. His touch was too rich and full, his tone too big. Chopin did not care for Liszt's reading of his music, though he trembled when he heard him thunder in the Eroica Polonaise. I doubt if even Karl Tausig, impeccable artist, unapproachable Chopin player, would have pleased the composer. Chopin played as his moods prompted, and his playing was the despair and delight of his hearers. Rubinstein did all sorts of wonderful things with the coda of the Barcarolle—such a page!—but ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... of earning a livelihood. Most of them, he found to his surprise, though they had been great chums of his at college, seemed a little shy of him nowadays: one old Oxford friend, in particular, an impeccable man in close-cut frock coat and hat of shiny perfection, he overheard saying to another, he followed him accidentally up a long staircase in King's Bench Walk, 'Ah, yes, I met Le Breton in the Strand yesterday, when I was walking with a Q.C., too; he's married badly, got no ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... attempted to set it down here, would only result in my being treated to the same humiliating process as the excellent M. M. with his "choicest paragraphs." It was highly instructive—the contrast between that impeccable personality which he displays at home and his present state. I wish his wife and two little girls could have caught a few shreds of what he said—just a few shreds; they would have seen a new light on dear ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... Within the impeccable orderliness of the bedroom was silence; and beyond was the vast Sunday afternoon silence of the district, producing the sensation of surcease, re-creating the impressive illusion of religion even out of the brutish irreligion that was bewailed from ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... dressed in black; it had the very aspect of life. I could follow the creases in the black coat, the direction of the nap of the silk hat. How well by this time I knew the faultless black coat and that impeccable hat! Yet it seemed that I could not examine them too closely. I pierced them with the intensity of my fascinated glance. Yes, I pierced them, for, showing faintly through the coat, I could discern the outline of the table which should have been hidden by the man's figure, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... respectable pseudo-spinsters, the Sister Arts, supposedly cozily immune in their polygamous chastity (for every suitor for favor is popularly expected to be wedded to his particular art)—I repeat, it is very dreadful to suggest that these impeccable old ladies are in danger ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... thoroughly human. Spenser's Prince began the "blamelessness" which grew more trying still in Tennyson's King. (In the few remarks of this kind made here I am not, I need hardly say, "going back upon" my lifelong estimate of Tennyson as an almost impeccable poet. But an impeccable poet is not necessarily an impeccable plot- and character-monger either in ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Queen's acquaintance with Edward Maudelain. She was by this time the loneliest woman in the island. Her husband granted her a bright and fresh perfection of form and color, but desiderated any appetizing tang, and lamented, in his phrase, a certain kinship to the impeccable loveliness of some female saint in a jaunty tapestry; bright as ice in sunshine, just so her beauty chilled you, he complained: moreover, this daughter of the Caesars had been fetched into England, chiefly, ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... swiftness with which her family went to bed. Josephine was usually incorrigibly slow, and Sally May always needed reminding that the devotion bell would ring in two minutes' time. To-night clothes were neatly arranged ready for the morning, rooms were in impeccable order, hair was properly brushed, and there was no mad rush to be at one's own door when ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... formal sorts of invitations—as to weddings—have become rather fixed, and the set wordings are carried through regardless of the means at hand for proper presentation. For instance, one often sees a wedding invitation in impeccable form but badly printed on cheap paper. It would be far better, if it is impossible to get good engraving or if first-class work proves to be too expensive, to buy good white notepaper and write the invitations. A typewriter is, of course, ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... insipid flower, floral count, compute cowardly, pusillanimous tent, pavilion money, finance monetary, pecuniary trace, vestige face, countenance turn, revolve bottle, vial grease, lubricant oily, unctuous revive, resuscitate faultless, impeccable scourge, flagellate power, puissance barber, tonsorial bishop, episcopal carry, portable fruitful, prolific punish, punitive scar, cicatrix hostile, inimical choice, option cry, vociferate ease, facility peaceful, pacific ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... hemmers, and tried the shirrer and the fire-stitch ruffler, and obviously had a fling at the binder and a turn at the tucker. What she did to the tension-spring heaven only knows. And my brand-new machine is on the blink. And my meek-eyed little Poppsy isn't as impeccable as ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... Banneker had been deftly enshrouded in a fur-lined coat, worthy of a bank president, had crowned these glories with an impeccable silk hat, and had set forth. Wickert had only to add that he wore in his coat lapel one of those fancy tuberoses, which he, Wickert, had gone to the pains of pricing at the nearest flower shop immediately after ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... last thing Hetty would have forbidden her to tell, yet just the last thing Hetty would have told, had she been pleading for Molly. For Hetty had long since gauged her mother and knew that, while her instinct for her sons' interests was well-nigh impeccable, on any question that concerned her daughters she would blunder ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... nobility in your class as a whole to considerably damp their resistance. Because you have silver mirrors and silver hairbrushes, it does not follow that you have not a conscience. I am no believer in the theory that to be a sans-culotte is to be morally impeccable, or that a man loses his soul because he possesses thirty pairs of trousers beautifully folded by a valet. I cherish the belief that your very refinement will turn—I have seen it in one or two fine ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... "desk" stood several impeccable clerks, and to one of these I addressed myself, giving our names and mentioning the fact that we had telegraphed for rooms. I am not sure that this young man wore a braided cutaway and a white carnation; ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... to gain possession. The girl, at least, regarded him as firmly anchored to his Leonora. She had not the slightest inkling of any infidelities. He had always spoken to her of his wife in terms of reverence and deep affection. He had given her the idea that he regarded Leonora as absolutely impeccable and as absolutely satisfying. Their union had appeared to her to be one of those blessed things that are spoken of and contemplated with reverence by ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... partisans were at least as resourceful as their opponents. The Cretan had never been able to bear contradiction. If his greatness had created him {45} many enemies, his pettiness had created him more. His tone of prophetic and impeccable omniscience was vexatious at all times, but particularly galling at this agitated period. It was now his constant cry that the situation called for the work of a statesman and not of an international lawyer or strategist. There were times when he declaimed this thesis in so violent ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... must not be finished or inclosed. After a rational system had been formulated and declared to be the Whole, his first instinct was to get away from it. He was sure that there must be more outside than there was inside. "The 'through-and-through' universe seems to suffocate me with its infallible, impeccable all-pervasiveness. Its necessity with no possibilities, its relations with no subjects, make me feel as if I had entered into a contract with ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... gossips in this world are to be found always among the thoroughly-upright, meanly-impeccable members of any and every church. They are the Scribes and Pharisees who contribute most to the building of fine houses of worship; they give most to its causes. They are the "right hands" of all the preachers from their youth up. They have never been truthful ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... encountered already at the Chateau de Nantes, where she was born; at Langeais, where she married her first husband; at Amboise, where she lost him; at Blois, where she married her second, the "good" Louis XII., who divorced an impeccable spouse to make room for her, and where she herself died. Transferred to the cathedral from a demolished convent, this monument, the masterpiece of Michel Colomb, author of the charming tomb of the children of Charles VIII. and the aforesaid Anne, which we admired ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... with his hand on the Butterfly Man's arm, walk off with him. Major Cartwright had kept George Inglesby out of two coveted clubs, for all his wealth; he was stiff as the proverbial poker to Howard Hunter, for all that gentleman's impeccable connections; he met John Flint, not as through a glass darkly, but ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... highest, implying entire union with the Divine essence, is held by Schamyl alone. In virtue of this elevation and spiritual endowment, the Imam, as an immediate organ of the Supreme Will, is himself the source of all law to his followers, unerring, impeccable; to question or disobey his behests is a sin against religion, as well as a political crime. It may be seen what advantage this system must have given to Schamyl in his conflict with the Russians. The doctrine of the indifference ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... strictly conformable—impersonal in its beauty, the perfection of nobody's style—thus vindicating anew by its very impersonality that much worn, but not untrue saying, that the style is the man:—a man, impassible, unfamiliar, impeccable, veiling a deep sense of what is forcible, nay, terrible, in things, under the sort of personal pride that makes a man a nice observer of all that is most conventional. Essentially unlike other people, he is always fastidiously in the fashion—an expert in all the little, half- [37] ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Something about her had made them treat her with respect, although I have been told that the Prussian officers were always vaguely uncomfortable in her presence. There was, perhaps, not enough humility in her clear eyes, and they worked her to the breaking point. Yet so impeccable and businesslike was her conduct that they could never convict her of any infringement of rules. Little did these pompous invaders suspect how this slender capable girl with the hazel eyes was spicing the hours behind their backs, and drawing with nimble and irreverent pencil ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... the one kingdom, the monarch, according to the genius of the constitution, was regarded as incapable of committing wrong; whereas, in the other, he was no less constitutionally regarded as equally peccable with any of his subjects. A peccable monarch may forfeit his throne; an impeccable one can only abdicate it. The argument must of course depend on the soundness of Baillie's statement. Was the doctrine that the king can do no wrong a Scottish doctrine at the time of the Revolution, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... bolt upright, most correctly, on the edge of a chair, and responded monosyllabically to Judith's questions. Her demeanour could not have been more impeccable had she been trained in a French convent. Just before we arrived, she had been laughing immoderately because I had ordered her to spit out a mass of horrible sweetmeat which she had found it impossible to masticate, and she had challenged ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... public opinion in Ireland which would tolerate no tampering with it. Furthermore, a rigid rule obtained against members of the Party seeking office or preferment for themselves or their friends on the sound principle that the Member of Parliament who sought ministerial favours could not possibly be an impeccable and independent patriot. ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... he and his wife are persone gratissime at the Quirinale, and that her jewels are extremely fine. When he was named Senator two years ago the Press, especially the Press of the Right, saluted his nomination as strengthening the Senate by the accession to it of a person of impeccable virtue, of enlightened intellect, and of a character cast in antique moulds of noble simplicity and Spartan courage. You think, my brother, that this favourite of fortune is likely to favour your plea ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... a lady middle-aged but not too middle-aged, not overly handsome, but not overly otherwise; an excellent disciplinarian, of a good family, and with impeccable references. ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... agents, and Captain Rust failed to discover a siren who appeared to be French and yet was not French, and who aroused any plausible suspicion that she dwelt in the central web of German intrigue. Madame began to think that for once the impeccable Dawson had despatched her upon a wild goose chase, and Rust became convinced that Froissart's vivid longing to score off the detested Dawson had misled him in the selection of the means to bring about this much-desired consummation. They told me little of these wanderings, but when I asked for ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... the French Parnassians created the most brilliant poetry that has, since Milton, been built upon erudition and impeccable art. Their leader, Leconte de Lisle, in the preface of his Poemes antiques (1853), scornfully dismissed Romanticism as a second-hand, incoherent, and hybrid art, compounded of German mysticism, reverie, and Byron's stormy egoism. Sully Prudhomme addressed a sterner criticism ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... Jerusalem" (1099), whose ordinances were received and recognized throughout Europe as a code of law and honour. For a general statement of conditions and effects we cannot do better than turn to the pages of the almost impeccable Gibbon. ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... engaged in debating with herself internally how a young lady of perfect manners and impeccable breeding, travelling without a chaperon, ought to behave under such trying circumstances, after having allowed herself to be drawn unawares into familiar conversation with a most attractive young artist, when ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... this American tradition impeccable in the political ideas, the literary ideals, the social customs it has given us. We must admit a rampant individualism in our political practices which is in the very best Anglo-American tradition, and yet by no means favorable to cooperative government. We admit also more Puritanism ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... in, and then balanced him with ten bad Jews whom nobody could fail to recognise. It seems as if he had avenged himself for the doubt about Fagin by introducing five or six Fagins—triumphant Fagins, fashionable Fagins, Fagins who had changed their names. The impeccable old Aaron stands up in the middle of this ironic carnival with a peculiar solemnity and silliness. He looks like one particularly stupid Englishman pretending to be a Jew, amidst all that crowd of clever Jews who are pretending to ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... certain orders to certain people and made certain odd arrangements. When everything had been set up to his satisfaction, he ate a leisurely dinner, topped it off with two glasses of Velaskan wine, read the tenth edition of the Globe, and strolled out to the street again, looking every inch the impeccable gentleman. ...
— The Unnecessary Man • Gordon Randall Garrett
... "spurn his addresses;" His merits may still be as high As the sort that your hero possesses, Though they leap not so quick to the eye; At the least, you've the comfort of knowing, Since his heart at your feet he has placed, That in one thing at least he is showing A wholly impeccable taste. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... "it's so unlike him. His taste for furniture's impeccable. The old house was perfect. So, in its way, was ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... Russian literary art reached its climax, and the art of the modern novel as well. He is not only the greatest master of prose style that Russia has ever produced; he is the only Russian who has shown genius in Construction. Perhaps no novels in any language have shown the impeccable beauty of form attained in the works of Turgenev. George Moore queries, "Is not Turgenev the greatest artist ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... refuses to descend to earth and please the groundlings—Rafael Joseffy—is for me the most satisfying of all the pianists. Never any excess of emotional display; never silly sentimentalizings, but a lofty, detached style, impeccable technic, tone as beautiful as starlight—yes, Joseffy is the enchanter who wins me with his disdainful spells. I heard him play the Chopin E minor and the Liszt A major concertos; also a brace of encores. ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... the virtues with which you endow this excellent Florian. He is a delightful creature,—a good artist—unique in his own particular line,—but you think him something much greater than even artist or man—a sort of god, (though the gods themselves were not impeccable) only fit to be idealised. Now, I am not a believer in the gods,—but of course it is delightful to me to ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... forgiving her enemies—slowly! As a preliminary process she demanded an abject apology, and a period of waiting, during which the culprit was expected to be devoured by remorse and anxiety. Then, bending from an impeccable height, she vouchsafed a mitigated pardon. "I forgive you, but I can never forget!" Some such absolution she would have been ready to bestow upon a tearful and dejected Cornelia, but the pink and white complaisance of the uplifted face steeled her heart afresh. ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... we know, a pleasure more refined to be got from looking at a chart than from any impeccable modern map. Maps today are losing their attraction, for they permit of no escape, even to fancy. Maps do not allow us to forget that there are established and well-ordered governments up to the shores of the Arctic Ocean, waiting to restrict, ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... repeat, Gyp," he said. "Nobody could blame you, if you disqualified yourself from this decision. I think we could get the newscasts to see it as impeccable public behavior. We'll paint you as the administrator so devoted to pure justice that even potential resentment will be a barrier to your personal decision. How's that sound ...
— Tinker's Dam • Joseph Tinker
... dare not question it. My reverence for her will not let me directly question it. But let me, in my turn, ask thee—Is not, may not her virtue be founded rather in pride than in principle? Whose daughter is she?—And is she not a daughter? If impeccable, how came she by her impeccability? The pride of setting an example to her sex has run away with her hitherto, and may have made her till now invincible. But is not that pride abated? What may not both men and women ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... (superiority) 33. V. be perfect &c. adj.; transcend &c. (be supreme) 33. bring to perfection, perfect, ripen, mature; complete &,,c. 729; put in trim &c. (prepare) 673; maturate. Adj. perfect, faultless; indefective[obs3], indeficient[obs3], indefectible; immaculate, spotless, impeccable; free from imperfection &c. 651; unblemished, uninjured &c. 659; sound, sound as a roach; in perfect condition; scathless[obs3], intact, harmless; seaworthy &c. (safe) 644; right as a trivet; in seipso ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... right; there was! A gravely-reproachful, sternly-commiserating 'leader,' wherein the apparently impeccable and highly conscientious writer 'deplored' the laxity of those who supported M. Carl Perousse in his 'regrettable' scheme ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... similarly spread, used the same gesture—as Miss Bracy had seen him use it a thousand times. Yet the boy had no artistic talent—not so much as a germ. For beauty of line and beauty of colour he inherited an impeccable eye; indeed his young senses were alive to seize all innocent delight,—his quickness in scenting the lemon-verbena bush proved but the first of many instances. But he began and ended with enjoyment; of the artist's ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... proportioned to his capacity to begin life with, what certainty is there that the rules of strict right will be followed? that wrong will not often be done, both voluntarily and involuntarily? Are your chiefs to be infallible and impeccable? Still the movement interested me, and many of its principles took firm hold of me and held me for years in a species of mental thraldom; insomuch that I found it difficult, if not impossible, either to refute them or to harmonize them with other principles which I also held, or rather which ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... a position that warrants declining to receive me," he announced with an ironically ceremonious bow to Karyl. He was imperturbable and impeccable from his patent-leather pumps to the Legion of Honor ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... Ireland with the long eyelashes. She was always inventing new divinities. But even this change of plan, this more feminine line of politics failed to reconcile the strict and the stern, the Queen Charlotte-ish elderly ladies, and the impeccable matrons, to Lady Kirkbank and her sea. The girls who were launched by Lady Kirkbank never took high rank in society. When they made good marriages it was generally to be observed that they dropped Lady Kirkbank soon afterwards. It was ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... of intrigue in which already groping were most of the people I knew. What with the mysterious relations between Betty and Boyce and Gedge, what with young Dacre's full exoneration of Boyce, what with young Randall's split with Gedge and his impeccable attitude towards Phyllis, things were complicated enough; Sir Anthony's revelations regarding poor Althea and his dark surmises concerning Randall complicated them still more; and now comes Mrs. Holmes to tell me ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... minister of all the realm he cares for; good society has not a vote against him—he transacts its affairs, he knows its secrets—he yields its patronage. Ever requested to do a favour—no loan great enough to do him one. Incorruptible, yet versed to a fraction in each man's price; impeccable, yet confidant in each man's foibles; smooth as silk, hard as adamant; impossible to wound, vex, annoy him—but not insensible; thoroughly kind. Dear, dear Alban! nature never polished a finer gentleman out of a solider block of man!" Darrell's voice quivered a little ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not take this well-known gaze with meekness. She was a small person, thin as a lath, with no attempt at complexion, and a way of doing her hair which alone would have proved impeccable virtue in the face of incriminating circumstantial evidence. She had neat little features, and a neat little figure, though "provincial" was written over her in conspicuous letters; and the gray eyes which she fastened on Miss ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... "That need not worry us. When the time comes for a safari, there shall also be clients, impeccable clients, asking for it to ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... be the more apt word, perhaps; you worry me, Nephew. Such impeccable virtue naturally suggests an early death—a harp—a halo! And yet you appear to enjoy robust health. Pray to what do you attribute your so great immunity from those pleasant weaknesses that are so frequently a concomitant of strength and youthful vigour—those charming ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... their own native right and might, organized or unorganized, inside or outside of the constitution, as most modern democratic theorists maintain; since, if so, the will of the people, however expressed, is the criterion of right and wrong, just and unjust, true and false, is infallible and impeccable, and no moral right can ever be pleaded against it; they are accountable to nobody, and, let them do what they please, they can do no wrong. This would place the individual at the mercy of the state, and deprive him of all right to complain, however oppressed ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... understood to exist still in manuscript], but found that too stiff and bald a medium for a satire on the social crudity of Norway. In writing satire, it is all-important that the form should be adequate, and at this time Ibsen had not reached the impeccable perfection of his later colloquial prose. He started Love's Comedy, therefore, anew, and he wrote it as a pamphlet in rhyme. It is not certain that he had any very definite idea of the line which his attack should take. He was very poor, very sore, very ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... impeccable, as always, in appearance. Kate was glad that he was as tall as she. She knew, down in her inner consciousness, that they made a fine appearance together, that they stepped off gallantly. It came to her that perhaps they were to ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... our room, and she stayed out all night, greatly to her owner's alarm and distress. Her habits were so regular, her deportment was always so impeccable that the circumstance assumed the proportions of an Event by breakfast time. My mother was anxious, Mary 'Liza sorrowful, and my father shook his head more gravely than ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... at home. Here were the sanded floors, the old water-bottles, the large chandelier with its cut glasses in the middle of the room, the small tables with their coarse clean linen. The same old French waiters stood here and there about, each with impeccable apron and very peccable shoes, as is the wont of all waiters. But the waiters at Luigi's are more than waiters; they are friends, and they never forget a face. Therefore, as always, I had no occasion for surprise when Jean, my waiter these many years at Luigi's, stepped ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... deeply, I revelled in the vastness of the opened horizon, in the different atmosphere that seemed to vibrate with the toil of life, with the energy of an impeccable world. This sky and this sea were open to me. The girl was right—there was a sign, a call in them—something to which I responded with every fibre of my being. I let my eyes roam through space, like a man released from bonds who stretches his cramped limbs, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... whittled away to common sense by the admirers of Addison and Steele. Swift and Johnson, Gibbon and Fielding, were apparitions of strength in an amiable, ineffective age. They emerged sudden from the impeccable greyness, to which they afforded an heroic contrast. So, while the highway drifted—drifted to a vulgar incompetence, the craft was illumined by many a flash of unexpected genius. The brilliant achievements of Jonathan Wild and of Jack Sheppard might have relieved the gloom of the darkest era, and ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... reiterated, that faith, even were it capable of moving mountains, without good works is of no avail. The Catholic Church is convinced that this doctrine is genuine and reliable enough to make it her own; and sensible enough, too. For faith does not make a man impeccable; he may believe rightly, and live badly. His knowledge of what God expects of him will not prevent him from doing just the contrary; sin is as easy to a believer as to an unbeliever. And he who pretends to have found religion, holiness, the Holy Ghost, or whatever else he may ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... perhaps as if they were wrong. But were they necessarily wrong? Was it really true that they had any more reason to trust their employers than their employers had to trust them? The cabmen might quite honestly and justly have said to the owners: "What we want is an honest, impeccable little dividend-recorder fastened on the back of every owner, as well as on our machines and on us. Then we will publish ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... the majority. Priestley, for example, while adhering to the idea that the Christian revelation had been guaranteed by miracles, had abandoned belief in the Virgin birth as early as 1784, and went so far as to maintain that Jesus was not impeccable and had certainly entertained erroneous ideas about demoniacal possession. Probably there were very few who had arrived at these conclusions even thirty years later; some Unitarians repudiated them at a much later period. The miraculous ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... sentence spoken on the stage, and pays very little attention to the form of words in which the meaning is set forth. At Hamlet's line, "Absent thee from felicity a while"—which Matthew Arnold, with impeccable taste, selected as one of his touchstones of literary style—the thing that really moves the audience in the theatre is not the perfectness of the phrase but the pathos of Hamlet's plea for his best friend to outlive him and explain his motives to ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... the work of any possible competitor between the death of Spenser and the dawn of Milton. In clear mastery of narrative and presentation, in melodious ease and simplicity of strength, it is not less pre-eminent than in the adorable beauty and impeccable perfection of ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... your account, and charges it to the Superior. So that Saint Jerome well exclaimed, in celebrating the advantages of obedience, 'Oh, sovereign liberty! Oh, holy and blessed security by which one become almost impeccable!' ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... fool of a reporter with his sanctimonious airs and impeccable morals, has put you against me you want to sack me. You can't do it. Last night you were ready to go any lengths with me. You know it. Do you think I am going to be balked by a miserable circus brat—a mere nobody? Not so long as I am Alan ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... September morning consecrated to the enormous event he arose nervously at six o'clock dressed himself, adjusted an impeccable stock, and hurried forth through the streets of Baltimore to the hospital, to determine whether the darkness of the night had borne in ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... was he a criminal irresistibly driven to tell us the story of his evil life? Were the police of Europe and America even now scouring the surface of the globe for him? That brother, that dare-devil gentleman of the painter-cousin's letter, was a fitting accomplice for him, the quiet, unobtrusive, impeccable "seaman." He had a number, what was it? Three-nine-(fool not to write it down!) three-nine-something. Was that his number during his last imprisonment? Had he spoken in terrific hyperbole when he admitted ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... family; it has the same sort of claims, intimacies, and quarrels, the same sort of jealousies within, combined with solidarity against the outsider. Perceiving this quickly, Drusilla proceeded to disarm criticism by being impeccable in dress and negatively amiable in conduct. "With my temperament," she said to herself, "I can afford to wait." Following her husband to Barbados, the Cape, and India, she had just succeeded in passing all the tests of the troop-ship and the married ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... profession at that period of the highest honor, and one that led to preferment, not only in religious circles, but in the world of society. At that time, conventual and monastic dignitaries occupied a prominent place in the formation of public and private manners and customs, and if not regarded impeccable, their opinions were always considered valuable in state matters of the greatest moment, even the security of thrones, the welfare and peace of nations sometimes depending upon their wisdom, judgment, ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... candle flickered inside, before a small hand mirror. Scissors and safety razor were for a while busy. The man who entered in impeccable clothes emerged fifteen minutes later—transformed. There appeared under the rising June crescent, a smooth-faced native, clad in stained store-clothes, with rough woolen socks showing at his brogan tops, and a battered ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... matrimonii (On Christian Marriage) of 1526, written for Catherine of Aragon, Queen of England, quite in the spirit of the Enchiridion, save for a certain diffuseness betraying old age. Later follows De vidua Christiana, The Christian Widow, for Mary of Hungary, which is as impeccable but ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... prodigal spender of time and substance in riotous living. He lived to the mature age of fifty-two and died a well-to-do man. The prodigals of the world do not retire with a competency. I repeat that Shakspere was not impeccable; he was no Puritan; but we cannot think of the creator of Hamlet, Ophelia, Othello, Desdemona, Cordelia, Portia, Rosalind, Miranda, and Prospero as other than a man of a contrite spirit and a pure heart. As he surpassed his contemporaries ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... upon him was heavy and piercing. Yet he awaited the result with confidence. It was true that he was American, but he had been with the French so much now that he had acquired many of their tricks of manner, and his French accent was impeccable. ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... who, starting at the foot of the list of his chevroned fellows two years before, had risen only to "late sergeant" of a centre company when they came from furlough, but, standing foremost in "Tactics," well up in every subject but French and drawing, and impeccable in conduct, won a captaincy in spite of his lack of inches. Graduating a dozen files ahead of his brilliant comrade, Harris had sought and won commission in the cavalry, was sent to duty in New Mexico and then in Arizona, ever roughing it in the deserts or the mountains ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... garden pavilions, and on the broad tracts of their hunting preserves. It is always the same people with whom we have to do: imperious counts who wish to be admired and to enjoy themselves, and whose life consists of hunting, gaming, adultery, duelling, and ultimate return to impeccable correctness in their peaceful homes. In this world, "hung with fine white curtains," there are women with the fine pallor of the old families, they also full of longing for freshly pulsating life. When, however, the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... occupies so small a space, represents several hundred designs, all treated in a manner which is decorative (although it eschews the Duerer line), but marked by strong "colour." Indeed, Mr. Hughes's technique is all his own, and if hard pressed one might own that in certain respects it is not impeccable. But if his textures are not sufficiently differentiated, or even if his drawing appears careless at times—both charges not to be admitted without vigorous protest—granting the opponent's view for the moment, it would be impossible to find the ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... generally useful English prose. No stranger instance of prejudice can be given than that Coleridge, on the point of asking, and justly, from Dryden "a stricter grammar," should exalt to the skies a writer compared to whom Dryden is grammatically impeccable. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... homely philosophy. The document was, Lou reflected, a fifty-year diary, all jammed onto two sheets—a garbled, illegible log of day after day of strife. This day, Lou would be disinherited for the eleventh time, and it would take him perhaps six months of impeccable behavior to regain the promise of a share in the estate. To say nothing of the daybed in the living room for Em ...
— The Big Trip Up Yonder • Kurt Vonnegut
... not only Jadwin's virtues that endeared him to his wife. He was no impeccable hero in her eyes. He was tremendously human. He had his faults, his certain lovable weaknesses, and it was precisely these traits ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... and then the other, like a see-saw; afraid of the effort needed to come to a decision and choose. What slothful cowardice is here! All whitewashed over with a comfortable faith in the goodness of things, which will, we think, settle themselves. And we continue to look on, and glorify the impeccable course of Destiny, paying ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... passed. Stover's glance was riveted on it, trying to remember whether the American Constitution prohibited head masters from the brutal English practice of caning and birching; and,—listening to the lagging tick of the mantel clock, he solemnly vowed to lead that upright, impeccable life that would keep him from ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... to the rail so near him that his elbow almost touched the artificial orchid that adorned her corsage. He was acutely sensitive of her presence, of the faint persistent odour of her individual perfume, of the beauty and grace of her strong, free-limbed body in its impeccable Paquin gown, of the sheen of her immaculate arms and shoulders and the rich warmth of her face with its alluring, shadowed eyes that seemed to mock him with light, fascinating malice, of the magnetism ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... contrary, a lady of quiet reserve, composed of manner, authoritative of speech, not lacking in humour, of impeccable taste in dress, and to all appearances not a day older than forty-five, despite hair like snow that framed a face of rich but ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... to Cardinal Sirleto, suggesting a doubt whether it is obligatory to adhere to the letter of the Tridentine decree upon the Vulgate.[137] Is it rational, he asks, to maintain that every sentence in the Latin text is impeccable? Must we reject those readings in the Hebrew and the Greek, which elucidate the meaning of the Scriptures, in cases where Jerome has followed a different and possibly a corrupt authority? Would it not be more sensible to regard the Vulgate as the sole authorized version for use in universities, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... was a tender-hearted and anxious mother, daughter, and sister, and an impeccable wife, if a somewhat monotonous one. At all events her husband never found fault with her in public or private. He had his reasons. To the friends of her youth and to all members of her own old set, she was intensely loyal; and although she ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... after Italian opera had first been heard in America (November 29, 1825). Save Mme. Patti we have heard no Zerlina comparable with Mme. Sembrich, and Mme. Nilsson's singing of the airs, "Ah, che mi dice mai," and "Mi tradi quell' alma ingrata" lingers in my memory as an impeccable exemplification of the true classic style. The performance suffered shipwreck, however, in the famous first finale, because of the untunefulness of the orchestra, and the incapacity of the enlisted stage bands. In "Mefistofele," on December 5th, Nilsson appeared as Marguerite and ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... has formed the background for more than one of his stories. At the age of fifteen, while still a student at Prato, he published his first volume of poems, 'Intermezzo di Rime' (Interludes of Verse): "grand, plastic verse, of an impeccable prosody," as he maintained in their defense, but so daringly erotic that their appearance created no small scandal. Other poems followed at intervals, notably 'Il Canto Nuovo' (The New Song: Rome, 1882), 'Isotteo e la Chimera' ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... sneer. "Rags rather!" And then more quickly, "But that is not all, nor the half. Do you think Blondel, who is on the point, Blondel, who will and will not and on whom all must turn, Blondel the upright, the impeccable, the patriotic, without whom we can do nothing, and who, I tell you, hangs in the balance—do you think he likes it, blockhead? Or is the more inclined to trust his life with us when he sees us brawlers, toss-pots, common swillers? Do you think he on whom I am bringing ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... at the play; the watchful manager was in the depths of a box and the poor actress in the glare of the footlights. But she passed, the poor performer—he could see how she always passed; her wig, her paint, her jewels, every mark of her expression impeccable, and her entrance accordingly greeted with the proper round of applause. Such impressions as we thus note for Densher come and go, it must be granted, in very much less time than notation demands; ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... art. Mark Twain, in one of his least inspired moments, selected Cooper's novels for attack. Every grammar school teacher is ready to point out that his style is often prolix and his sentences are sometimes ungrammatical. Amateurs even criticize Cooper's seamanship, although it seemed impeccable to Admiral Mahan. No doubt one must admit the "helplessness, propriety, and incapacity" of most of Cooper's women, and the dreadfulness of his bores, particularly the Scotchmen, the doctors, and the naturalists. Like Sir Walter, Cooper seems to have taken but little pains in the deliberate ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... were impeccable in their sense of form; indeed, he was very English in that matter: People must be just so; things smell properly; and affairs go on in the one right way. He could tolerate neither creatures in ragged ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... interest. The instinct of enjoyment turns the scale; those rapid changes of purpose which have furnished the text for so much rhetoric are calculations prompted by the hope of pleasure. Rastignac beholding himself well dressed and impeccable as to gloves and boots, forgot his virtuous resolutions. Youth, moreover, when bent upon wrongdoing does not dare to behold himself in the mirror of consciousness; mature age has seen itself; and ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... trilogy of King Henry IV. and King Henry V. On a lower degree only than this final and imperial work we find the two chronicle histories which remain to be classed. In style as in structure they bear witness of a power less perfect, a less impeccable hand. They have less of perceptible instinct, less of vivid and vigorous utterance; the breath of their inspiration is less continuous and less direct, the fashion of their eloquence is more deliberate and more prepense; there is more of study and structure apparent ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... no name for it! What do we know of the vagaries of the human mind? Three minds and one obsession!" he said with the utmost gentleness. "Three maiden ladies who have lived impeccable lives for far be it from me to say how many years; and now—this! Oh, ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... It was at a meeting—exclusively religious and philosophical; but the police had wind of it; and a friendly inspector mentioned it to Krishna Lal. The chief speaker would be a Swami of impeccable sanctity. "But if you have a sensitive palate, you will doubtless detect a spice of political powder under the jam of religion!" quoth Krishna Lal, who was a man of humour and no ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... an ideal of refinement of the most negative description ... the Aunt Errant of Christendom."[80] There is always that blushful shyness, that timorous uncertainty, broken by sudden rages, sudden enunciations of impeccable doctrine, sudden runnings amuck. Formalism is the hall-mark of the national culture, and sins against the one are sins against the other. The American is school-mastered out of gusto, out of joy, out of innocence. ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... do what he will with the women of Italy, and Monseigneur of Orleans may deal stern justice out to the women of France; Continental immorality is in the nature of things; but there is something else that is in the nature of things too, and before the impeccable majesty of British womanhood every ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... which left no doubt in his own mind as to the unselfishness of his host. Even before the war Renwick and Constantine Koulas had met in secret, so that if trouble came no plan should mar the man's impeccable character in Austrian eyes. And Renwick would not have come to him now, had not his own need been great. But Herr Koulas, having heard the tale of his adventures and reassured as to the present danger of ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... she told him; "beginning with father's announcement of the engagement in the papers, Tuesday. We remain on exhibition during the conventional six weeks and then we're married at noon over in the Fourth Church. Impeccable! That's going to be ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... affection, those feet of love which blossomed like a garden of chastity in too miraculous a manner for him to seek to cover them with kisses. She scented his room with lily-like fragrance. She was indeed the silver lily planted in a golden vase, she was precious, eternal, impeccable purity. Within the white veil, so closely drawn round her, there could be nothing human—only a virgin flame, burning with ever even glow. At night when he went to bed, in the morning when he woke, he could see her there, ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... would seem at the beginning to have been indifferent and not to have taken much interest one way or another: the court, a hundred men and more with all their hangers-on, the cleverest men in France, one more distinguished and impeccable than the others: the stern ring of the Englishmen outside keeping an eye upon the tedious suit and all its convolutions: these all appear before us, surrounding as with bands of iron the young lonely victim in the donjon, who submitting to every ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... terribly well. It would be only another case of man's pursuing, promising—what had they promised in the past? And after all, he thought recklessly, what did the private honor of his testifying yes or no amount to anyway? What moral conceit! To save his own impeccable soul by denying a woman the one consolation that would save ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown |
