"Seductive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what a seductive though angry air pervaded her face found it difficult to repress his feelings, and speedily taking up, from the side of the pillow, a hair-pin made of jade, he dashed it down breaking it into two exclaiming: "If I again don't listen to your words, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... head, and, seating himself on the sofa, motioned me to come to his side; then, leaning his arm over my shoulder, he said, in his seductive, wincing way,— ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... special merits or demerits. Esmond was brought out as a whole. The others appeared in numbers. "He lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." It is a mode of pronunciation in literature by no means very articulate, but easy of production and lucrative. But though easy it is seductive, and leads to idleness. An author by means of it can raise money and reputation on his book before he has written it, and when the pang of parturition is over in regard to one part, he feels himself entitled to a period of ease because ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... Diana, but they could not allure the shivering, whining animal from her retreat without a good deal of coaxing. Ardan talked to her in his most honeyed and seductive accents, while trying to pull her out by ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... magic. Modern improvements, water, gas, bath, butler's pantries, and dumb-waiters; and the houses offered so cheaply that the solid, slow-going, honest business-men wondered how it could be done. The places had a wonderfully seductive look, and were sought ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... Bertha remained alone with her husband—alone! She had a hope that perhaps she might succeed in making him change his purpose, and that she might obtain his forgiveness. She knelt beside the bed. Never had she been so beautiful, so seductive, so irresistible. The keen emotions of the evening had brought her whole soul into her face, and her lovely eyes supplicated, her breast heaved, her mouth was held out as if for a kiss, and her new-born passion for ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... affords an egregious instance of the predominance of genius, the dazzling splendour of imagery, and the seductive powers of eloquence. Never was penury of knowledge and vulgarity of sentiment so happily disguised. The reader feels his mind full, though he learns nothing; and, when he meets it in its new array, no longer knows the talk of his mother and his nurse. When ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... most dangerous little speckled viper! And in order that I may no more see your foolish little pretty face, I decree that, for the future, you wear a yashmak to cover up your lips, which, I can see, were meant to be seductive, though dirty; and you can leave the blue eyes, and the little white-skinned freckled nose uncovered, if you like, they being commonplace enough. Meantime, if you care to see how to draw a ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... deeply interested in. The Hampstead of this hour, though changed enough, may remind us very fairly of Boz's time. It has still the attractions of the old-fashioned, red-brick houses, and terraces, the mixture of green, and the charming, even seductive, heath. "The Spaniards" at Hampstead—Boz calls it "The Spaniard"—is scarcely altered from the day of the Bardell visit, and is as picturesque as ever with its Tea Gardens and Bowers. I never pass it without seeming to see Jackson's ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... almost the identity, of the sexes might betray her. Too much of the woman in a daughter of our race leads her to forget danger. Too little of the woman prompts her to defy it. Fortunately for this last class of women, they are not quite so likely to be perilously seductive as their ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... ponderous watch—the plethoric purse—the massive snuff-box—the dainty tooth-pick—the grotesque handkerchief; all were accommodated and cherished in the more ample recesses of his coat; while supplementary fobs were endeared to him by their more seductive contents: as ginger lozenges, love-letters, and turnpike-tickets. Such were the days on which we should reflect with regret; such were the men whom we should imitate and revere. Had such a character as we have endeavoured feebly to sketch, met an individual ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Peppermint with honey, which they esteemed highly, partaking of it to sweeten their breath, and to conceal their passion for wine at a time when the law punished with death every woman convicted of quaffing the ruby seductive liquor. Seneca perished in a bath ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... over here and settled in Kentucky, and commenced makin' whiskey, payin' a tax of $2.00 per gallon, and sellin' the seductive flooid for $1.50 per gallon, gettin' rich at that, which may surprise you, altho' it doesen't our Eternal Revenoo Offisers, who, as Mr. ANTONY remarked of H. BEECHER STOW when she stabbed Lord ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... not have a student on the throne, though I would have one near by for an adviser. I would set forward as prince a man of a good, medium understanding, lively rather than deep; a man of courtly manner, possessed of the double art to ingratiate and to command; receptive, accommodating, seductive. I have been observing you since your first entrance. Well, sir, were I a subject of Gruenewald I should pray Heaven to set upon the seat of government just ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... o'clock. He had finished reading his second act, and the reading had been a bitter disappointment. The idea floated, pure and seductive, in his mind; but when he tried to reduce it to a precise shape upon paper, it seemed to escape in some vague, mysterious way. Enticingly, like a butterfly it fluttered before him; he followed like a child, eagerly—his ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... the shelter of prejudice, ignorance, and fear. It would seem that in Europe, where man so easily submits to the despotic sway of women, they are nevertheless curtailed of some of the greatest qualities of the human species, and considered as seductive but imperfect beings; and (what may well provoke astonishment) women ultimately look upon themselves in the same light, and almost consider it as a privilege that they are entitled to show themselves futile, feeble, and timid. The women of America ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... conduct less rigorous, less imperious, and more indulgent would have thrown greater lustre over her character, let it be remembered that some good qualities appear to be incompatible with others; nor let the seductive and corrupting nature of power be left out in the account. Her insincerity was perhaps the greatest blot in her character and the fruitful source of all the vexatious incidents of her reign. Though unacquainted with philosophical toleration, the only method of disarming the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... is not always a lure. There is a beauty in woman which makes one glad, but there is the beauty that haunts one like a great sadness, besides the beauty that draws one nearer to her. There is the seductive beauty of Cleopatra, but there is also the almost repulsive beauty of Medea, and besides both there is the mysterious beauty of ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... spirit differed intrinsically from the morning spirit. Mary found herself watching the flight of a bird, or making drawings of the branches of the plane-trees upon her blotting-paper. People came in to see Mr. Clacton on business, and a seductive smell of cigarette smoke issued from his room. Mrs. Seal wandered about with newspaper cuttings, which seemed to her either "quite splendid" or "really too bad for words." She used to paste these into books, or send them to her friends, having first drawn ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... said, and some five or six in America. Of the four authorities named above, each has some representative value for American players. Mayne Reid was the pioneer, Routledge is the most compact and seductive, Fellow the most popular and the poorest, and "Newport" the newest and by far the best. And among them all it is possible to find authority for and against ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... as a lily, reared in innocence among the blameless, was rich as her frail, lovely mother had been before her in the mysterious allure of sex. Beautiful Lady Bridget-Mary at the zenith of her stately beauty had never possessed one-tenth of the seductive charm that emanated from this young girl. Thoughts of the stored-up golden honey seen gleaming through the translucent waxen cells of the virgin comb made the senses reel as you looked at her, if you were man born of woman, with your passions alive and keen-edged in you, and your blood had not ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Flanders. The men stood up to the march with their heavy loads splendidly, thanks to the excellent physical training they had undergone on board ship. At the first halt a number lit up cigarettes, and as soon as they started a chorus of coughs showed where the seductive weed was getting in its deadly work on the lungs and bronchial tubes. The Commanding Officers passed the word along to try and not smoke, and not to use the water bottles, and the men did their best for the rest of the march. About an hour before we came to our camp we ran full ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... wandered about restlessly; there was nothing to be seen but a desolate field over which black birds were flying, but in his mind's eye he already saw her. How she smiled! Always beautiful, either merry or sad; always seductive, either good or bad. The same fever was raging within him that had always driven him along this road. He ran until he was breathless; every minute longer that he could be with her before the others returned seemed of the utmost importance. He had hardly ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... modern than this thorough morbidness, this dilatoriness and excessive irritability of the nervous machinery, Wagner is the modern artist par excellence, the Cagliostro of modernity. All that the world most needs to-day, is combined in the most seductive manner in his art,—the three great stimulants of exhausted people: brutality, ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... approaches by noon-day? There was mystery in this eavesdropping and musical courtship. Surely Inez could not be encouraging a secret intrigue! Oh! no! she was too artless, too pure, too ingenuous! But then the Spanish females were so prone to love and intrigue; and music and moonlight were so seductive, and Inez had such a tender soul languishing in every look.—"Oh!" would the poor scholar exclaim, clasping his hands, "oh, that I could but once behold those loving eyes beaming on me ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... Inspired by a few words from Juana, the retired soldier came to Paris, resolved to win in an administrative career a position to command respect, bury in oblivion the quartermaster of the 6th of the line, and secure for Madame Diard a noble title. His passion for that seductive creature enabled him to divine her most secret wishes. Juana expressed nothing, but he understood her. He was not loved as a lover dreams of being loved; he knew this, and he strove to make himself respected, loved, and cherished. He foresaw a coming happiness, poor man, in the patience ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... college days were over, in the dangerous position of a young man with vast possessions, abundant leisure, unsettled principles, and uncontrolled desires. He had no other object than to extract from life its most seductive draughts of ease and pleasure. His companion, who sat opposite him on the verandah, quietly smoking a cigar, was a remote cousin, a few years older than himself, the warmth of whose Southern temperament had been modified by ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... and the wine cup, the myrtle branch and the lute went round, and songs were warbled by sweet voices, full of seductive thoughts and words of passion. At length the lamps were lighted, and the women arose to quit the hall, leaving the ruder sex to prolong the revel; but as Lucia rose, she again pressed the fingers of Arvina, and whispered a request that he would ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... young life broken By sin's seductive art; And touched with a Christlike pity, I took him to my heart. He lived with a noble purpose And struggled not in vain; But the life that sin had stricken Never soared as ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... incident to the completion of an elaborate toilet, together with the seductive charms of a stroll through the moon-haunted night beneath the spell of bright eyes and whispered words, resulted in a later arrival at the scene of festivities than had been intended. The great majority of the expected guests had ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... turned up its nose at flirtation. The fillets of drying salmon suspended from every bough were a million times more seductive than the dark Naiads who had dressed them. Slice after slice I tore down and devoured, as though my maw were as compendious as Jack the Giant Killer's. This so astonished and delighted the young women that they kept supplying me, - with the expectation, perhaps, that sooner ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... is a rather poor example of the art of Claude Michel (1738-1814), known as Clodion whose popularity rivalled that of his master Pajou, and whose prodigious output of marble and terra-cotta sculpture failed to keep pace with the demands of his clients. 777 is Pajou's, The Forsaken Psyche. By the seductive and sentimental Canova are 523 and 524, variants of a favourite theme, Love and Psyche.[202] With some sense of relief we enter the more invigorating atmosphere of Room VI., named after the sturdy Francois Rude (1784-1855), who flung off the yoke of the Roman classicists, and from whose simple, ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... actress got damages for a song that was called "vulgar," which is as if I could fine or imprison my neighbour for calling my handwriting "rococo." A politician got huge damages because he was said to have spoken to children about Tariff Reform; as if that seductive topic would corrupt their virtue, like an indecent story. Sometimes libel is defined as anything calculated to hurt a man in his business; in which case any new tradesman calling himself a grocer slanders the grocer opposite. All this, I say, is Anarchy; for it is clear that its exponents ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... served, at an alluring price, out of bottles adorned with a seductive label—a label which had been designed by an impecunious artist who, after running up a rousing bill for drinks, got off payment on the strength of this job. But the prettiest label in the world could not stone for the mixture within. Members often complained of feeling queer. They threatened ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... suspicion.... The idealist, like the ecclesiastic, carries all sorts of lofty concepts in his hand (—and not only in his hand!); he launches them with benevolent contempt against "understanding," "the senses," "honor," "good living," "science"; he sees such things as beneath him, as pernicious and seductive forces, on which "the soul" soars as a pure thing-in-itself—as if humility, chastity, poverty, in a word, holiness, had not already done much more damage to life than all imaginable horrors and vices.... The pure soul is a pure lie.... So long as the priest, that professional ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... well-nigh forgotten, because the reading world has found that he exhibited no truths of genuine importance, but rather sacrificed the eternal realities of life for mere momentary plausibilities. Probably, also, there is no artist in French prose more seductive in his eloquence than Rene de Chateaubriand; but his fiction is no longer read, because the world has found that his sentimentalism was to this extent a sham—it was false to the nature of normal human beings. "Alice in Wonderland" will survive the works of both these able authors, because ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... soft brown eyes flashed into his, the little curl of her lips seemed to transform her whole expression. She was no longer the gravely minded prophetess of a great cause, the scheming woman, furious at the prospect of failure. She was suddenly wholly feminine, seductive, a coquette. ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in the modern young man. Briefly, he is a boor. If it is true that 'manners makyth man,' one doubts whether the British race can be perpetuated. The young Englishman of to-day is inferior to savages and to beasts of the field in that they are eager to show themselves in an agreeable and seductive light to the females of their kind, whilst he regards any such effort as beneath his dignity. Not that he cultivates dignity in demeanour. He merely slouches. Unlike his feminine counterpart, he lets his raiment match his manners. Observe him any ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... however, were not misled by the seductive cry of the Whigs. They proceeded to capture as many seats as possible. Everywhere they instructed their candidates to vote against banks. When the returns were all in it was found that they had elected more than two-thirds of the whole number ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh
... caterpillars and spiders, affirming that the former tasted like almonds and the latter like walnuts; but no American who ever feasted inadvertently on horse liver or a savory sirloin of the same flesh, has yet been found to acknowledge the fact, much less to promote a taste for it by any seductive comparison. The Baxter Street purveyor imitates the Parisian restaurateur in the mystery with which he surrounds his art, and so ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... interpretations, flooded his mind as she walked beside him through the winding streets, while the picturesque old gabled town, softly coloured in the sunset, had never appeared to him so wholly wonderful and seductive. ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... am trespassing too far away from my sworn fealty to Northern opinions and feelings. I begin to fear that I may be tempted to be recreant to my inborn, inbred notions of liberty, while holding converse with you, for there is something extremely seductive to a Northerner in slavery; it is like the apple and the serpent to the woman; so that whoever goes to the South, or has anything to do with slave-holders, is apt to lose his integrity; there is a Circean influence there for Northern people; thousands of ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... Elvina, was not improbably the owner of the seductive feet apostrophized by the poet, since, in 1816, he wrote an ode, ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... present state of science appears as a blank, now that she answers doubtingly, or wholly rejects as unanswerable, questions to which former ages deemed they could furnish satisfactory replies. In her severer aspect, and clothed with less luxuriance, she shows herself deprived of that seductive charm with which a dogmatizing and symbolizing physical philosophy knew how to deceive the understanding and give the rein to imagination. Long before the discovery of the New World, it was believed that new lands ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... other magnificently dressed. The latter is Leonardo's well- known type, as a magically fascinating personality. Its essential feature is a profoundly serious melancholy, but the beauty of the figure is seductive. She is by no means smiling, and yet she looks as though a very slight alteration would produce a smile, and as though the heavens themselves would open, if smile she did. The powerful glance of the dark blue eyes is in harmony with the light-brown ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... that. I never can tell when a couple's married—not unless he's showing the mar-rks of it about the pate, or flir-rting wid another gir-rl. What I meant to ask was how did yeer benevolent paterfamilias contrive to induce him to direct his seductive manners to the uncongenial atmosphere o' construction." He peered more closely into the laughing eyes of the girl. "And good taste he has, too, bad cess to him! If I was younger now— These whiskers hide me age; they've ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... in width. The inlet on the north had admitted the fleet of Xerxes, and now it received the bold raiders from the Euxine. The towns along the Pelasgic and Meliac gulfs were rich and their plunder seductive. All things considered, therefore, Arrius judged that the robbers might be found somewhere below Thermopylae. Welcoming the chance, he resolved to enclose them north and south, to do which not an hour could be lost; even the fruits ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... changed. In the eyes of the magistrates, Mme. Fauville was no longer the widow and mother who must on no account be attacked. She had suddenly become a woman whom circumstances compelled them to cross-examine. However prejudiced they might be in her favour, however charmed by the seductive qualities of her beauty, they were inevitably bound to ask themselves, whether for some reason or other, for instance, in order to be alone in the enjoyment of the enormous fortune, she had not had the madness to kill her husband and to kill the boy ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... he had threatened to pull out a revolver, she, so accustomed to revolvers, should have taken a girlish alarm! That queer detail of her behaviour was extraordinarily seductive. But far beyond everything else it was the grand loyalty of her nature that drew him. He wanted to sink into it as into a bed of down. He really needed it. Enveloped in that loving loyalty of a creature who gave all and demanded nothing, he felt that he could truly be his best self, that ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... throw the sunshine of good-humor over the whole neighborhood. It meets once a week at a little old-fashioned house kept by a jolly publican of the name of Wagstaff, and bearing for insignia a resplendent half-moon, with a most seductive bunch of grapes. The whole edifice is covered with inscriptions to catch the eye of the thirsty wayfarer; such as "Truman, Hanbury, and Co's Entire," "Wine, Rum, and Brandy Vaults," "Old Tom, Rum, and Compounds," etc. This indeed has been a temple of Bacchus ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... more charming posada in Italy, or a more seductive fonda in Spain? No. And the crowd of English tourists have not yet raised the scale of prices as in Switzerland—at least, they had not at the time of which I write. In Dal, the current coin is not the pound sterling, the sovereign of which the travelers' purse ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... recalled that, when fired with the desires of this mocker, ambition, one is inclined, in his selfish absorption, to be ruthless in his dealings with others. It is so easy to trample upon others when a siren is beckoning you to climb higher, and your ears are eagerly listening to her seductive phrases. With her song in your ears, you cannot hear the wails of anguish of others, upon whose rights and life you trample, the manly rebukes of those you wound, or the stern remonstrances of those who bid you heed your course. Ambition ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... moderate amount of spare time, and that at uncertain intervals, to devote to this seductive pursuit, I am always a great stickler for economy of time in all the processes, as well as for economy of material, the former with me having, perhaps, a shade more influence ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... shrub is as lively as a merry-go-round with the feasting and antics of flitting gems, and there are others by the dozen attentive to less seductive fare. For half an hour the courtship of a perfect Ulysses has interfered with the staid ways of those not in holiday humour. Unlike Cassandra, there is little in appearance to distinguish the sexes, nor in the wooing does the dame exhibit staid demeanour. The ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... was warm, her eyes had the tender glow of joy expectant, her voice was soft with the promise of coming surrender. Their hands met and clasped as she stood to welcome him in the red, seductive dimness of the little throne room. His tall frame quivered; his lean, powerful, young face betrayed the hunger of his heart; his voice turned husky. It was not as he had planned. Her beauty—her mere presence—swept him past the preliminary fears and doubts. His handclasp tightened ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the seductive powers which European civilization exercised upon Russia, the Russians perceived its weak sides, which they studied by the light of the ideal which they promised themselves to attain in some indefinite future, a future which they nevertheless hoped ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... like, however, to ask my sisters one question: Are they quite sure that women gain by these changes? Do they imagine, these "sporty" young females in short-cut skirts and mannish shirts and ties, that it is seductive to a lover, or a husband to see his idol in a violent perspiration, her draggled hair blowing across a sunburned face, panting up a long hill in front of him on a bicycle, frantic at having lost her race? Shade ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... as the sophists, even confining the matter to the literary aspect, cast immortal glory on Attica. Imbued with the spirit of Socrates, even when more or less unfaithful to him, Plato, psychologist, moralist, metaphysician, sociologist, marvellous poet in prose, seductive and fascinating mythologist, really created philosophy in such fashion that even the most modern systems, if not judged by how much they agree or differ from him, at least invariably recall him, whether ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... stirred her passionate soul so fiercely was grief at the sight of the man whom she had regarded as the stronghold of integrity, the possessor of the firmest will, the soul of inviolable fidelity, succumbing here, before the eyes of all, like a dissolute weakling, to the seductive arts of an immature kobold? These two, who gave to her, the orphaned vagrant, surrounded by unbridled recklessness, physical and mental misery, a proof that there was still in marriage real love and a happiness secure from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... impossible to describe the acclamations which followed this address; there is something so seductive in popular enthusiasm that even indifferent persons cannot help yielding to its influence. And yet the least reflection would have shown how shamefully Napoleon forswore the declaration he made to the Senate, when the organic 'Senatus-consulte' for the foundation of the Empire was presented ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... might return that very evening, or at least the next day! In the impatience and ecstacy of hope, I forgot all impediments. Let me but see her; let me but know that she was in the house, and I supposed the moment of perfect bliss would then be come. Happy evening! Never did seductive fancy paint more delicious dreams, or raise up phantoms more flattering ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... she less fatigued, she would have caught the vague anxiety, the note of distrust, in his voice. But the carpet of sand and leaves on which she lay was very seductive. Her eyes closed. She nestled into a comfortable position, ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... at first amazed, then angry, how angry she scarcely knew even herself. She had been a spoilt child, she had grown into a spoilt woman. Men, at least, had been ready enough to do her bidding all her life. Her beauty was of that peculiar kind, half seductive, half pathetic, wholly irresistible. And now there had come this strange, almost impossible person, against the armor of whose indifference she had spent herself in vain. Her eyes filled with tears once more as she looked at him, and Tavernake became uneasy. He glanced at ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to an immediate and more dangerous reaction of the frost. This effect Bertram experienced: a pleasant sensation began to steal over him; one limb began to stiffen after another; and his vital powers had no longer energy enough to resist the seductive approaches of sleep. At this moment an accident saved him. The whole troop pulled up abruptly; and at the same instant a piercing cry for help, and a violent trampling of horses' hoofs, roused ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... the many-petalled lotus. A pair of cavalier's jack-boots, standing just below, most truculent and ungainly of foot-gear, wooden, hinged, leather-covered. A trophy of Polynesian spears, shields, and canoe paddles. A bronze Antinous, seductive of bearing and dainty of limb, but roughened by green rust. A collection of old sporting prints, softly coloured, covering a bare space of wall, beneath a moose skull, from the broad flat antlers of which hung a pair of Canadian snow-shoes. Along the inside wall of the great room, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... them with simulated friendship. Taking his drum, he began to beat upon it, accompanying the music with a song. As his listeners heard the magic music, they became intoxicated with the strains, and yielding themselves to its seductive influence, they lost all thought for the future or care for the present. The locality to which the crafty Tezcatlipoca had invited them was called, The Rock upon the Water.[1] It was the summit of a lofty rock at ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... the unbounded plain, you behold her in the form of an enchanted city—a paradise of leafy loveliness, or it may be simply as a fantastic Erl-King, a giddy dazzling vapour. Let her appear, however, where and how she will, she is ever seductive, mysterious, and beautiful, and attended with the awe of a strange ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... daily comedy she was obliged to keep up. There was in it, too, a very slight suggestion of danger; for it was conceivable, though almost impossible, that some letter of hers or her husband's might fall into Griggs's hands. There was a perverseness about it which was seductive to her ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... striking eye, which has a remarkable fascination. His triumphs as a debater are achieved not by the aid of the passions, as with Sir James Graham, or with Mr. Sheil; not of prejudice and fallacy, as with Robert Peel; not with imagination and high seductive colouring, as with Mr. Macaulay: but—of pure reason. He prevails by that subdued earnestness which results from deep religious feelings, and is not fitted for the more usual and more stormy ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... the dancers. It was a pretty scene. To the rhythm of a particularly seductive waltz, the guests were gliding about the floor. I noted the gay colors of the ladies' gowns, ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... be—it is mere coincidence, seductive, damning coincidence. My mother knows all. If it were true that Paul was the son of Lowther, she would know that Paul and Greta must be half-brother and half-sister. She would ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... monarch, instinctively laying his hand upon his sword. "The clash of arms, the thunder of hoofs, the waving banners—yes, Glory is a seductive mistress who robs us of our youth. Have I not wooed her and found—gray hairs? Who shall give me ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... this mysterious struggle with these mysterious persons. His secret passion for that woman grew by reason of all these obstacles. Madame Jules was ever there, erect, in the midst of his thoughts, in the centre of his heart, more seductive by her presumable vices than by the positive virtues for which he had made ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... used all his influence in the Council to promote a special bill of divorce, for he wanted Rachael to be free to marry again. He had no faith in the permanent resources of the intellect for a young and seductive woman, and he understood Rachael very thoroughly. The calm might be long, but unless Levine died or could be legally disposed of, she would give the Islands a heavier shock than when the innovation of Mary Fawcett had set ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... are my young bride and that we have just come from the wedding, and I am bringing you for the first time into our home—to be alone with you for the first time—quite alone with my shy little darling! All this evening I have longed for nothing but you. When I watched the seductive figures of the Tarantella, my blood was on fire; I could endure it no longer, and that was why I brought you ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... benignant ray Shall guide, his fancy cheer, your way; But ne'er to a seductive lay Let faith be given; Nor deem that 'light which leads ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... let sleep's seductive charms Upon your torpid souls be shed: A crash like this, such dire alarms, Might burst the slumbers ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... absorbing fascination of a fairy tale. We are led into the dreamy atmosphere of haunted palace and beauteous plaisance: we glide in the picturesque imaginings of the oriental poet from the charm of all that is languorously seductive in nature into the shadowy realms of the supernatural. At one moment the sturdy bowman or lithe and agile lancer is before us in hurrying column, and at another we are told of mystic sentinels from ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... business; that it would give to all capitalists, large or small, the means for buying from the nation the ecclesiastical real estate, and that from the proceeds of this real estate the nation would pay its debts and also obtain new funds for new necessities: never was theory more seductive ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... least falsehood bears like an intolerable weight upon the soul, I protest that we have richly deserved death, not on account of any heresy or sin of which ourselves or our order have been guilty, but because we have yielded, to save our lives, to the seductive words of the Pope and of the King; and so by our confessions brought shame and ruin on our blameless, holy, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... sympathetic people who emerged from the interstices of the desultory little town to gaze at the two foreigners who had driven over from Arles and whose horses were being baited at the modest inn. The resources of this establishment we did not venture otherwise to test, in spite of the seductive fact that the sign over the door was in the Provencal tongue. This little group included the baker, a rather melancholy young man, in high boots and a cloak, with whom and his companions we had a good deal of conversation. The Baussenques of to-day ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... should never dare fall in love with a woman as exquisite as Alice de Breville. She is too beautiful, too seductive, with her olive skin, her frank smile, and her adorable head poised upon a body much too well made. She is too tender, too complex, too intelligent. She has a way of mischievously caressing you with her eyes one moment and giving an old comrade like myself a platonic ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... check to my king from your bishop. You were just going to make this move, which was to ruin me, when Bishop Gardiner entered. You turned away your eyes and saluted him. You were not looking on the game. Oh, my lord and husband, the temptation was too alluring and seductive; and I yielded to it. Softly I took the pawn from the board, and slipped it into my pocket. When you looked again at the game, you seemed surprised at first; but your magnanimous and lofty spirit had no suspicion of my base act; so you innocently ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... these dishes, brimming over, "bubbling and blistering with the stew," followed a pudding that's still famous. Although down the centuries the recipe has been kept secret, the identifiable ingredients have been itemized as follows: "Tender steak, savory oyster, seductive kidney, fascinating lark, rich gravy, ardent pepper and delicate paste"—not to mention mushrooms. And after the second or third helping of pudding, with a pint of stout, bitter, or the mildest and mellowest brown October Ale in a dented pewter ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... of his thought, by striking images and flowery metaphors, and by all the phraseology of rhetoric in which the versatile French nature is so superior to our sober German one. It is all the more important that we should not let ourselves be dazzled by these seductive tricks, and particularly by adduced facts which bear upon the most important and fundamental questions of human science, but that we should extract the hard kernel from the savoury and fragrant fruit. In the preface ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... Marseillais,—"When the last of the Gracchi expired, he flung dust towards heaven, and from this dust sprang Marius!"—that voice which had conquered the aversion of Mademoiselle de Marignan with its seductive melody—that voice which had been at once the oracle of the king and the law of the rabble. Mirabeau lay before the Rosicrucian, with his natural ugliness rendered yet more repulsive by the tokens of a terrible malady. The touch of death imparted additional horror to the massive deformity ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... expectation. Very little expectation! They knew well enough, by this time, the kind of thing to expect from him, the turn of phrase, the rise and fall of the voice, the pause dramatic, the whisper expostulatory, the thrust imperative, the smile seductive. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... appearance at that time is thus graphically sketched. "He is middle-sized, of an agreeable countenance, and has a military air. To personal advantages he joins the more seductive distinction of manners simple, natural, and full of good taste and ease. At first sight I was struck with his resemblance to Prince Eugene, and to the Empress Josephine, his grandmother. But I did not remark a like resemblance to the Emperor. But by attentively observing the essential ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... and did not take the least notice of the marquis's and the earl's daughters. Never had Nancy Greenfield, Jane Calvert, Mary Barton, Agnes Featherstonhaugh, and last, but not least, Margaret Drummond felt so elated. Holly was talking in a very low, seductive voice. Her rich curls were tumbling about her face and far down her back. Her cheeks were like bright, soft fire, and the flash in her glorious black eyes it would be difficult ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... healthful influence of a conviction that his works were appreciated, and that his fame was increasing, led him for a while to cheerful views of life, and to regular habits of conduct. He wrote to a friend, the author of "Edge Hill," in Richmond, that he had quite overcome "the seductive and dangerous besetment" by which he had so often been prostrated, and to another friend that, incredible as it might seem, he had become a "model of temperance," and of "other virtues," which it had sometimes been difficult ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... hand. She awoke calmly and looked up at him without stirring a muscle. All three eyes stared at him; but the two lower ones were dull and vacant—mere carriers of vision. The middle, upper one alone expressed her inner nature. Its haughty, unflinching glare had yet something seductive and alluring in it. Maskull felt a challenge in that look of lordly, feminine will, and his manner ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... when you were crossing the Atlantic?" says the master, turning to Pat with a seductive air, and leading into the "full and true account" (for Pat had thought fit to visit North Amerikay, for "a raison he had," in the ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... mingled. But we have the testimony of one who knew him well, that, however loose his comedies, the temper of the author was modest;[58] his indelicacy was like the forced impudence of a bashful man; and Rochester has accordingly upbraided him, that his licentiousness was neither natural nor seductive. Dryden had unfortunately conformed enough to the taste of his age, to attempt that "nice mode of wit," as it is termed by the said noble author, whose name has become inseparably connected with it; but it sate awkwardly upon ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... portmanteau ready strapped for departure, he found the Railway Guide lying open at the page showing the lines from Paris to the Cote d'Azur! He would not look at the seductive time-table. He rushed to his portmanteau, undid the straps in furious haste, dragged out his clothes, which he flung to the four quarters of the room. For the moment he was in a ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... approached her ladyship; she was pale as marble, but how superbly beautiful! Her glossy hair, all disordered, hung in rich masses upon her uncovered shoulders; her seductive night-dress but imperfectly concealed the glories of her divine form,—her heaving bosom, so voluptuous and fair, was more than half disclosed to my gaze. With a palpitating heart I laid my trembling hand upon one of her plump, white shoulders. ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... greater peril in the shape of a vast store of novels, poems, and romances, which Miss Cornelia had accumulated, and to which she was continually making additions. In that young lady's bedchamber, where Helen slept, there was a large bookcase full of these seductive volumes; even the upper shelves of the wardrobe closet, and a cupboard over the mantel, were closely packed with them; and there was not one of them all which Helen had not read by the time she was fifteen. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Ovid De Tristilus, translated by Churchyard, 1578, 4to. (his contribution to the Roxburghe Club) as a present from ONE President of Bibliophiles to ANOTHER. It was bound by Lewis, in his very best style, in morocco, with vellum linings, within a broad border of gold, and all other similar seductive adjuncts. Lewis considered it as a CHALLENGE to the whole bibliopegistic fraternity at Paris:—a sort of book-gauntlet;—thrown down for the most resolute champion to pick up—if he dare! Thouvenin, Simier, Bozerian (as has been intimated to me) were convened on ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of the population of Massachusetts were excluded from all share in the Government, and were actually opposed to it. Referring to the petition to the local Legislature, he says: "The demand was enforced by considerations which were not without plausibility, and were presented in a seductive form. It was itself an appeal to the discontent of the numerical majority not invested with a ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... that in the life of the body he had regarded adulteries as of no account. But I was permitted to tell him that adulteries are heinous, although to those like himself they do not appear to be such, and even appear permissible, on account of their seductive and enticing delights. That they are heinous he might know from the fact that marriages are the seminaries of the human race, and thus also the seminaries of the heavenly kingdom; consequently they must on no account be violated, but ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... only bananared. I reach Winter street, where I must turn my back on the Common pleasures of Boston life—but yet, one glance at that seductive window of the corner store, which, indeed, is nearly all window. Flowers are there, of course,—flowers from January to January; any poor devil can have a temporary conservatory at that window, 'all for nothing;' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Bonaparte's household are as regularly paid as his Senators, Counsellors of State, and other public functionaries. All the men are picked, and all the officers as much as possible of birth, or at least of education. In the midst of this voluptuous and seductive capital, they are kept very strict, and the least negligence or infraction of military discipline is more severely punished than if committed in garrison or in an encampment. They are both better clothed, accoutred, and paid, than the troops of the line, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... once more—had received him when his quest had been accomplished, when all that he wished for had been gained, when his travelling-staff had been laid aside with the words "It is finished." And of this seductive frame of mind the true source had been the eloquent discourse of his hospitable host. Yes, for every man there exist certain things which, instantly that they are said, seem to touch him more closely, more intimately, than anything has done before. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... two elder—Barbara and Made line were their seductive names—had good looks. Barbara, perhaps twenty-two years old, was rather colourless, somewhat too slim, altogether a trifle limp; but she had a commendable taste in dress. Madeline, a couple of years younger, presented a more healthy physique and a less common comeliness, but in the matter of costume ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... full and flooded half the patio with silver light; the rest was in shadow and rows of colored lamps twinkled in the gloom. A band played behind the pillars, the rattle of castanets breaking in on the tinkle of the guitars when the beat was sharply marked. The music was seductive, unlike any Kit had heard in England, and he thought it tinged by the melancholy the Moors had brought, long since, from the ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... was to provide the breakfast for the following morning. This their landlady offered to do for them. The next thing was to go to bed utterly wearied and worn out. They both slept soundly, and both woke much refreshed and full of buoyant hope. A pleasant and seductive vista lay before them—seductive and pleasant, although they were in Nelson Square, as that which we see in one of Turner's Italian pictures—a temple at the side, a lake in front and beyond it a valley embosomed in woods and mountains, ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... happiness awes me. It appears to me, for a reason which I cannot divine, that some sad disappointment lurks under the seductive prospect." ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... religion. Christianity profoundly modified Irish life, softened manners, and stimulated learning. Not that the fighting propensities were obliterated. There were indeed many long and peaceful reigns, but the historians record neat little wars, seductive forays and "hostings", to use the new-old word, to the heart's content. The Irish character remained fixed in its essentials, but, under the influence of religious enthusiasm, Ireland progressed and prospered in the arts of peace. ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... mean narrow street, at one of the lowest descriptions of wine-houses where dancing was going forward, perhaps amongst fishwomen and scavengers, I noticed a large lantern hanging out over the door, upon which was inscribed, "Bal seduisant, le Paradis des Dames," which may be translated, "Seductive Ball, the Paradise of Ladies." The traveller may remark on the road from Boulogne to Paris and within a few leagues of the latter, in a small village at a house little better than a hut, where the insignia of a barber is displayed, a board on which is written; "Ici on embellit ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... falls easily into the habit of dropping, of an evening, into the snug, well-lit bar-parlour of the "Goat and Compasses" or the "Mariner's Friend," or some such house of entertainment, with its glowing fire and warm, seductive, tobacco-and grog-scented atmosphere, there to wile away the time swopping yarns with old friends. Sometimes, if opportunity offer, he is not averse from a mild game of cards for moderate points; ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... therefore, fenced around with chastity; [110] corrupted by no seductive spectacles, [111] no convivial incitements. Men and women are alike unacquainted with clandestine correspondence. Adultery is extremely rare among so numerous a people. Its punishment is instant, and at the pleasure of the husband. He cuts off the hair [112] of the offender, strips her, and in ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... very sorry for souls who lose themselves in this way. It is so easy to go astray in the seductive paths of the world. Without doubt, for a soul somewhat advanced in virtue, the sweetness offered by the world is mingled with bitterness, and the immense void of its desires cannot be filled by the flattery of a moment; but I repeat, if ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... pure, so flowing, with such happy transitions; in a word, everything to charm and entice the reader; admirable preface, magnificent promises, short, learned dissertations, a pomp, an authority of the most seductive kind. As for the history, there was much romance in the first race, much in the second, and much. mistiness in the early times of the third. In a word, all the work evidently appeared composed in order to persuade ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... spell in the presence of the enchanter? should he disturb the veneration that encircled his decline? should he steel himself against the gracious pleadings of Madame Recamier, and throw a bomb-shell into that circle of which no one could better appreciate the seductive repose? He chose rather to limit the scope of his judgment, to look at the object solely on its attractive side, to postpone reservations which would have had the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... when she was again in her old world? He, also, was deserving of gratitude. She stamped her foot in the snow. She hated him, hated him, and he would drop out of her life, utterly and forever. She would be glad when she saw the last of him with his seductive eyes. Those eyes—why did he, and not Lawrence, have them? They should have been Lawrence's. It was one more instance of the endless ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... fell dead on my lips. The wine fevered, but did not exhilarate me. Still, the image of the dark beauty of the morning was the one reigning image of my thoughts—still, the influence of the morning, at once sinister and seductive, kept ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... And most unfair. Ban," said Betty in her most seductive tones, "do call him down. Make him write something decent about us. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... very, very much! You have been most kind!" and with a swift droop of her white eyelids she veiled those seductive 'mirrors of the soul' beneath a concealing fringe of long golden-brown lashes—"It's quite a new experience to find a clergyman able and willing to be a telegraph clerk as well! ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... been her dupe; yesterday, I had rejoiced in my captivity. To-day, I was not the favoured one; to-day I had not been selected recipient of her confidences—confidences sweet, seductive, deadly: but Abel Slattin, a plausible rogue, who, in justice, should be immured in Sing Sing, was chosen out, was enslaved by those lovely mysterious eyes, was taking to his soul the lies which fell from those perfect lips, triumphant in a conquest that must end in his undoing; deeming, ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... children's feet have trod; Brave January, beauteous May and June, My lovely daughters, and my valiant sons, All, all save one, have left me for that bourne Men call the Past. It seems but yesterday I saw fair August, laughing with the Sea, Snaring the Earth with her seductive wiles, And making conquest, even of the Sun. Yet has she gone, and left me here to mourn.' Then spake December, from an open door: 'Father, the night grows cold; come in and rest. Sit with me here beside this glowing grate; I have not left thee; thou art not alone; My house is thine; all warm with ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the outset that my soft and seductive tones could never penetrate Millie's stone-deafness. Only the loudest and angriest remarks are audible to Millie, so I preserve an attitude of silent facial amiability in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various
... come down to breakfast en Amazone, and took her the most enchanting rides in that Seductive April weather. Her equestrian experience previously had been limited to steady macadamizing on the roads. Bertie took her as the crow flies, never pulled a fence, but merely gave her a lead, and Cecil, ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... Bhagavata Purana most closely connected with Krishna's career. Krishna is shown as a Rajput princeling dressed in fashionable garb, threading his way among the cowgirls, pursuing his amorous inclinations and practising with artless guile the seductive graces of a courtly lover. Each picture has a passionate intensity—its rich browns and reds, greens and blues endowing its characters with glowing fervour, while Krishna and the cowgirls, with their sharp robust forms and great intent eyes, display a ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... coffee-house, to read the newspapers and enjoy a bowl of punch. Until an arch fellow from Dublin came to be master of the chief coffee-house, nine o'clock was the hour for these worthy mercantile gentlemen to be at home in the evening. The seductive Irish stranger began his wiles by placing a few nice cold relishing things on the table, and so gradually led the way to hot suppers and midnight symposia. Towards the end of his college-session, Carlyle was introduced to a club which ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Allston, beware! The sin is not lessened that the tempter is so near to thee. Like the sparkle of the red wine to the inebriate are the seductive influences of the ballroom. Thy foot will fall upon roses, but they will be roses of this world, not those that bloom for eternity. Thou wilt lose the fervor and purity of thy love, the promptness of thy obedience, ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... the review of later experiences have arrived at the conclusion that Madame la Baronne was a somewhat heartless and not particularly brainy little fribble, he was never able to forget or deny a certain charm of manner which he had not elsewhere encountered, and which had in it a seductive warmth and gentleness. Before he fairly knew it, he was talking with something of the ease and intimacy of an old friend. He had been so sore-hearted of late and so removed from all feminine companionship, that this unexpected, unlooked-for intercourse with a woman of culture and ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... not happen at the moment to be flirting. The reproach was unjust; he had never done anything systematically in his life; it was his temperament that flirted, not his will. He simply had that most perilous of all seductive natures, in which the seducer is himself seduced. With a personal refinement that almost amounted to purity, he was constantly drifting into loves more profoundly perilous than if they had belonged ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... manner was perhaps the more seductive, Because he ne'er seemed anxious to seduce; Nothing affected, studied, or constructive Of coxcombry or conquest: no abuse Of his attractions marr'd the fair perspective, To indicate a Cupidon broke loose, And seem to say, 'Resist us if you can'— Which ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... illuminated charity. To love men, or to understand them, is not as unusual as to do both together; and it was the intellectual acuteness of his friend's judgments that made their Christian amenity so seductive to Odo. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... 20. Great seductive arts I used against the riders of the night,[36] when from their husbands I enticed them. A mighty Jotun I believed Hlebard to be: a magic wand he gave me, but from his ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... say, although it appears evil to many, that that offense is the most excusable, especially in young and healthy men, placed in the torrid zone. Nature must struggle continually with duty. The garb of the Filipina women is very seductive; and it is known that the girls, far from being untractable to the cura, consider themselves lucky to attract his attention, and their mother, father, and relatives share that sentiment with them. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... the seductiveness of the dusty road and of the ditch beyond. To his surprise he found, presently, that the gate was moving outwards; it was yielding to his weight. One thing leads easily to another sometimes, and the open gate led easily on to the seductive road. The result was that a minute later Jimbo was chasing butterflies along the green lane, and throwing stones into the water of ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... sore temptation to any writer, and of dalliance with a Delilah so seductive it is futile to declare that I am innocent. My principles positively are known to myself; which is a measure of self-knowledge, in these any-thing-arian days, of that cabinet coin-climax the "8th degree of rarity;" and ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... too scarce, alas! even in the times when Jacke of Dover hunted for him in the highways, has since then grown to be rarer than a phenix. He has carried his cap and bells and jests and laughter elsewhere, and has left us to the mercies of the serious fool, who is by no means so seductive a companion. If the Cocquecigrues are in possession of the land, and if they are tenants exceedingly hard to evict, it is because of the encouragement they receive from those to whom we innocently turn for help: from the poets, novelists and men of letters whose duty it is to ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... silence for a moment. The stream gurgled and splashed; the breeze whispered through the cottonwoods; and over all, or under all, was the vague, insistent, seductive sound that the summer makes in ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... She plays, and drinks, and gambles, and dances with them, and goes riding with them in wheel chairs by moonlight, and sits with them by the sea, and holds their hands, and gets them sentimental. There's some scent she uses that is very seductive—none of the rest of us have been able to find ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... were to meet the Susquehanna—beautiful, broad-bosomed name, that has always haunted my imagination like the name of some beautiful savage princess—La belle sauvage. Susquehanna! What a southern opulence in the soft, seductive syllables! Yes, soon we were to meet the Susquehanna. Nor had we long to wait, and little did we suspect what our meeting with that beautiful river was ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... was rude and unattractive in comparison with the splendid armor, the gay tournaments, and the witching minstrelsy which signalized French chivalry; and thus the peaceful elements of conquest were as seductive as the force of arms was potent. A dynasty which had ruled for more than six hundred years was overthrown; a great chapter in English history was closed. A new order was established, and a new chapter in England's ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... but here, it is a fearful thing for young men, released from all the restraints of their native land, to find the house of revelry and dancing so near the house of God, and the gates of hell, alluring by all the fascinating and seductive attractions of harmonious sounds, so near the ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... and modern, have given pleasure a bad name, because they saw that the most alluring and powerfully seductive pleasures, pleasures which appeal to all men alike, were indulged to excess, and became a source of evil. But men will have pleasure and ought to have pleasure. The best way of drawing them off from the more dangerous pleasures ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... great stars were shining whitely. The breeze of early morning stirred, penetrating our barred outer gates, and bringing a subtle fragrance from the beflowered groves that lie beyond the city. It had a freshness that demanded from one, in tones too seductive for denial, prompt action. Moreover, we had been rising before daylight for some days past in order that we might cover a respectable distance before the Enemy should begin to blaze intolerably above our heads, commanding us to seek ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... She fixed her wonderful eyes on me, with a curiosity full of kindness, and complimented me on my figure, in terms which would have seemed exaggerated and too direct if they had not been marked by an obvious sincerity, which made the praise very seductive. She perceived my embarrassment, and expresssd a desire to see me often, on her return to Paris; for she was going to Coppet. It was then a mere apparition in my life; but the impression was intense. I thought only of Madame ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... move to Montreal most pleasurably, notwithstanding the great pecuniary loss to himself. The element of practicality had little place in his mental composition. An atmosphere of vagueness surrounded all his schemes, and coloured them with a seductive halo. ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... some vindictive spirit of rage provoked the huge beast; or that he fancied a rival bull were challenging him to mortal combat, just as in the case of the fellow, whom Sebattis had previously lured within gunshot, with his seductive moose call. ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... talking at the foot of the stairs, Mr. Frere was listening sardonically. As Sarah Brown went past them into the Shop, she smelt the unflower-like scent that always denoted the presence of Miss Ford. Sarah Brown herself was accompanied by nothing more seductive than a faint smell of gasoline, showing that her clothes had lately been home-cleaned. In the darkness of the Shop she saw Miss Ford stooping, trying to shut the big difficult drawer in which the witch ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... not seductive, and we do not become slaves at the tap of a fan, when the hand that holds it is palsied and withered. We have in the volume before us the melancholy spectacle of an aged female of quality ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... belongs to this work to resist all false, seductive, erroneous, heretical doctrines, every misuse of spiritual power. Now this is much higher, for these use the holy Name of God itself to fight against the Name of God. For this reason it seems a great ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... shore of the Dead Sea. It was believed that during the time which Jesus passed in this frightful country, he had gone through terrible trials; that Satan had assailed him with his illusions, or tempted him with seductive promises; that afterward, in order to recompense him for his victory, the angels had come to minister ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... from intense care, rather than that of a man who was greedy of profiting by the services of others. Indeed, it would not have been difficult, for a close and practised observer, to have detected a shade of regret in the lightings of his seductive smile, or in the momentary flashes of his changeful eye. The feeling, however, quickly passed away, and his whole figure and countenance resumed the ordinary easy mien in which he most indulged ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... one of the most seductive little confidantes in the world. She was so pure from selfishness, so heartily and innocently interested in what another was telling her, that people in talking with her found the subject constantly increasing in interest,—although, if they really had been called ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... to do so; but scarcely had the honeymoon waned, than my fickle partner transferred his affections from me to one of my attendants; and to such a height did his guilty passion carry him, that he quitted his home for Italy, carrying with him the unfortunate victim of his seductive arts. It was during his absence that I first became acquainted with madame Boncault; she was my own age, and equally unfortunate in her domestic life; the same tests, griefs, and a great similarity of temper and ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon |
