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Fineness   Listen
Fineness

noun
1.
The quality of being very good indeed.  Synonym: choiceness.
2.
The property of being very narrow or thin.  Synonym: thinness.
3.
Having a very fine texture.  Synonym: powderiness.
4.
The quality of being beautiful and delicate in appearance.  Synonyms: daintiness, delicacy.  "The fineness of her features"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Fineness" Quotes from Famous Books



... no, because how would he get your measure?—and surely no modest woman could give him hers even if she did take it herself—anyway, you'd be insulted by all the street rowdies as you rode by, to say nothing of being ogled by men without a particle of fineness in their natures—but there's always something to be said on both sides, and it's time woman came into her own, anyway, if she is ever to be anything but man's toy for his idle moments—still it would never do to go to extremes in a narrow little town like this with every one just looking for an ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... a word dear to Jacques de Wissant. It was one which he used as a synonym for great things—things such as honour, fineness of ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... things are merely the superficialities of her. There still remains the princess herself below these wonderful externals. There still remains the woman herself. Woman, any woman, is marvelous enough, Covington. When you think of all they stand for, the fineness of them compared with our man grossness, that wonderful power of creation in them, their exquisite delicacy, combined with the big-souled capacity for sacrifice and suffering that dwarfs any of our petty burdens into insignificance—God ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... of letters, who in his own age filled a sphere not unlike that of Voltaire in a later century. There is another portrait of Erasmus by Holbein, often repeated, so that two great artists have contributed to his renown. That by Duerer is admired. The general fineness of touch, with the accessories of books and flowers, shows the care in its execution; but it wants expression, and the ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner

... material in woman, and I wondered if in her case outward appearances were as deceptive as they were in my wife—with her saint's eyes, and her distorted moral vision. Perhaps I was intuitively right, and that beneath Delilah Jeliffe's exterior there is a certain fineness, and that these funny fads of dress and decorations are merely in some way her striving toward the expression ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey

... in a very simple manner. In it has been very cautiously dropped an alcoholic solution of mastic. Now mastic is practically insoluble in water, and directly the alcoholic solution comes in contact with the water it separates out in very fine particles, which, from their very fineness, remain suspended in the water. I propose now to make an ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various

... justness of judgment, a tenderness of feeling, which elevate as well as charm the reader. He makes us love the most grotesque characters, whom in life we should dislike and avoid, by the sympathetic fineness of his interpretation of their springs of life and their warping by circumstance. The impression left on one by the studies of the Thrums community is not primarily of intellectual and spiritual narrowness, or niggardly thrift, or dour natures: all are there, but with them are souls ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... insist here only upon the arrangement of the microphone, which is new (at least in practice), and upon the uselessness of having well magnetized steel bars and wires of extreme fineness ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various

... their account in Rybeeck. In the districts where the forest-trees mostly consist of lindens, the inhabitants are principally engaged in the manufacture of matting, which, according to its greater or less degree of fineness, is employed either for sacking or sail cloth, or merely as packing mats. The linden-tree grows only on moist soils, rich in black humus, or vegetable mould; but will not grow at all in sandy soils, which renders it comparatively scarce in some parts of Russia, while ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... there are gradations of matter of which man knows nothing; the grosser impelling the finer, the finer pervading the grosser. The atmosphere, for example, impels the electric principle, while the electric principle permeates the atmosphere. These gradations of matter increase in rarity or fineness, until we arrive at a matter unparticled—without particles—indivisible—one and here the law of impulsion and permeation is modified. The ultimate, or unparticled matter, not only permeates all things but impels all things—and thus is all things within ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... reflection on the mother or on father's lineage. On the contrary, it means that they had in them an element of exceptional vigour, which resulted in a peculiar intensifying of all pigments, transmuting red into black and carrying with it an unusual vigour of growth and fineness of texture, producing, in short, the world-famed Silver Fox, the lightest, softest, thickest, warmest, and most lustrous of furs, the fur worth many times its weight in gold, and with this single fault, that it does not stand ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton

... feelings, motives, which dim the lustre we see in them at greater distance. Intimacy weakens the friendship. But, on the other hand, there are those who, the more we see of their private life, the more we love them. Close association reveals loveliness of character, fineness of spirit, richness of heart, sweetness of disposition—habits, feelings, tempers, noble self-denials, which add to the attractiveness of the life and the charm of our friend's personality. We may be sure that intimacy with Jesus only made him appear all the more winning and beautiful ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... are seen in the well-known mistakes to which one is subjected in blind touching. At the same time practice leads to considerable accuracy in touch and on many occasions the sense is trusted more than sight—e. g., whenever we test the delicacy of an object with our finger-tips. The fineness of paper, leather, the smoothness of a surface, the presence of points, are always tested with the fingers. So that if a witness assures us that this or that was very smooth, or that this surface was very raw, we must regularly ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... energy (heat, light, electricity, &c.) to a substance, or by the mixing of two or more substances together. If two or more substances be mixed one of three things may occur. First, the particles may be mechanically intermingled, the degree of association being dependent upon the fineness of the particles, &c. Secondly, the substances may intermolecularly penetrate, as in the case of gas-mixtures and solutions. Or thirdly they may react chemically. The question whether, in any given case, we have ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... direction. Others, less faithful, finding their method chops some parts fine and leaves some leaves almost whole, let it go at that, with the reflection that "that must do, as it would take all day" to get them all one degree of fineness. So, although it may seem almost too trivial a point to need mention, we will go into the matter of herb-chopping, lemon-grating, etc., that the simple operations may be performed easily and in ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen

... brown, red, yellow, black, and white, the design being sometimes in dark on a light ground, and sometimes in light upon dark. The extraordinary thinness of the walls of these polychrome vessels, and the fineness of the clay from which they are fabricated, show to what a pitch the potter's craft had reached at the early period to which they belong. Of the later pottery of Knossos, which substituted naturalistic motives, executed in monochrome, for the conventional polychrome designs ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie

... hands lay on the rough stone parapet of the Castle wall. He had inherited from his mother a fineness of mould, so that his hands were small and vigorous. Hers were large, to match her large limbs, but white and powerful looking. As Paul looked at them he knew her. "She is wanting somebody to take her hands—for ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... when he laughed, two white buck-teeth protruded themselves and glistened savagely in the midst of the grin. He had been dining with royal personages, and wore his garter and ribbon. A short man was his Lordship, broad-chested and bow-legged, but proud of the fineness of his foot and ankle, and ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... birch is eminently a winter tree, and its tresses of fibres, whether petrified and covered with crystal by the frost, or waving freely in the breeze which has stripped them of their snow, are equally ornamental. The ground is strewed with the shadows of the trees, traced with exquisite fineness on the white snow, from which these lunar photographs stand forth with wonderful distinctness. To drive out with an indefinite number of troikas to some village in the environs, or to the first station on one of the Government roads, is a common mode of spending a fine winter's night, ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... worse than want of depth and fineness of intonation in a period, is all gross excess of colour, because excess of colour is connected with graver faults in the region of the intellectual conscience. Macaulay is a constant sinner in this respect. The wine of truth is in his cup a brandied draught, a hundred degrees above ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley

... It is a piece of gold, on which is engraven the image of some one of their gods. This is fastened around the neck by a short yellow string, containing one hundred and eight threads of great fineness. Various ceremonies are performed before it is applied, and the gods, of whom I will tell you something by and by, with their wives, are called upon to give their blessing. When these ceremonies are finished, the tahly is brought ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder

... left the pleasant town of Xerez, and lodged the next night at Lebrija; and the next night at Utrera, where we saw the ruins of a brave town, nothing remaining extraordinary, but the fineness of the situation. We were met there by Don Lope de Mendoca, who was sent with his troop of horse from Seville, by command of the Asistente of that city, [Footnote: The Asistencia of Seville is a high municipal office, peculiar to that city. Dic. de la Acad: Espan.] the Conde de ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe

... seems to have been a very happy side to it—a great deal of love and many friends, all more or less poor, but artistic and congenial and high-thinking. The little lads, in their gentleness and fineness, show that phase of their upbringing. They have an air which many of my children, despite all the good manners I can pour into ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... Colonel with profound ceremony, and talked of the fineness of the evening, which had summoned him forth of the Lodge, to take a turn in the Park, and enjoy the favourable weather. He then took Everard by the arm, and walked back with him towards the Lodge, Wildrake and Tomkins following close behind and leading the horses. Everard, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... Carara entered. He was smoking his customary corn-husk cigarette, but his dark eyes were grave and his silken mustachios were pointed to the fineness of ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach

... the depths of the gloomy ground floors, inhabited by the Persians and the Jews, within the miserable shops are sold carpets of incredible fineness, and colors artistically combined, woven mostly by old women without ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... servant, he could, and did, engage a charwoman for all the heavy work. It was not that the light work Violet did was unbecoming to her. On the contrary, Violet bloomed in Granville. She had had to own that the unaccustomed exercise was a good thing, giving a fineness and a firmness to outlines that had been a shade too lax. It was that you can have too much of a good thing when you have it every day; too much of light washing and light cooking, of the lightest of light sweeping, ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... He presented the following appearance: The skin of the whole posterior part of the trunk, from the nape of the neck to the loins, was of a bronze color. This color extended over the shoulders and the sides of the neck, and this part was covered with hairs of great fineness and growing very thick; the skin of the rest of the body was of the usual whiteness. Those parts were the darkest which were the most covered with hair; on the back there was a space of an inch in diameter, which had preserved its whiteness, and where the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... quarters. My dear boy, she is no more a miller's daughter than you are. Her beauty—there's race in it. Her manner and carriage, her voice, accent, her way of dressing, (I'd give a sovereign for the name of her dressmaker), the fineness of her skin, her hair, everything—there's race in 'em all, race and consciousness of race, pride, dignity, distinction. These things don't come to pass in a generation. I'm surprised at your lack of perspicacity. And those blue eyes of yours look so sharp, too. But perhaps your wish was father ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland

... having been fashioned by clever workers from the Coromandel country, who brought with them here supplies of a certain hard white stone, which they first roasted to a great heat, and then ground to the fineness of flour, finally compounding this material with other things, and constructing therefrom the columns of ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... and is divided into many small farms. There is a village and post station here, 8 miles from Hobart, containing an episcopal church and day school, and a Wesleyan chapel. This district is celebrated for the fineness of its potatoes. ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... celebrated web nipis de [Pina.] Pina, which is considered by experts the finest in the world. Two shirts of this kind are in the Berlin Ethnographical Museum (Nos. 291 and 292). Better woven samples are in the Gewerbe Museum of Trade and Commerce. In the Philippines, where the fineness of the work is best understood and appreciated, richly-embroidered costumes of this description have fetched more ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... check; it was simply the violence there would be in going when Osmond wished her to remain. A gulf of difference had opened between them, but nevertheless it was his desire that she should stay, it was a horror to him that she should go. She knew the nervous fineness with which he could feel an objection. What he thought of her she knew, what he was capable of saying to her she had felt; yet they were married, for all that, and marriage meant that a woman should cleave to the man with whom, uttering tremendous vows, she had stood ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... be coined into money in ancient Rome. The Roman as or pondo weighed a Roman pound of good copper, therefore possessed the two principal attributes of good money, a definite weight and a definite fineness. It was divided like our troy pound into ...
— The Paper Moneys of Europe - Their Moral and Economic Significance • Francis W. Hirst

... been peculiarly embarrassing but for the gentlemanly demeanor of James, who, always courteous, particularly to those whom he thought neglected, bowed politely, and made to her several remarks concerning the fineness of the day and the delightful view which Laurel Hill commanded of the surrounding country. She was no menial, he knew, and looking in her bright, black eyes he saw that she had far more mind than the dollish Nellie, who, as usual, was provoking J.C. to ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes

... twenty, with a dark gypsy face, golden-brown eyes, and hair black as pitch; her large white teeth gleamed between full red lips. She had on a white dress; a blue shawl, pinned close round her throat with a gold brooch, half hid her slender, beautiful arms, in which one could see the fineness of her race. She took two steps with the bashful awkwardness of some wild creature, stood ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev

... tell me clearly why it was different. Neither could the others explain why they liked it better than the Canadian Rockies, or why its beauty puzzled and disturbed them. It is only he whom intelligent travel has educated to analyze and distinguish who sees in the fineness and the extraordinary distinction of Glacier's mountain forms the completion of the more heroic undevelopment north of ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... I established myself out of sight under the doorway of an unfinished house opposite, and waited. I don't know why; perhaps I fancied that when his friends were gone, the fineness of the night might induce Monsieur Steinmetz to take a stroll, and that then I should be able to gratify my curiosity. You see, I knew that if he were my man, I should know him directly. I waited a good while: shadows crossed the lighted blinds; once a big, broad shadow appeared ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... that, save in book knowledge, the people occupied no low plane of civilization. The Mangbettu work both iron and copper. "The masterpieces of the Monbutto [Mangbettu] smiths are the fine chains worn as ornaments, and which in perfection of form and fineness compare well with our best steel chains." Shubotz in 1911 called the Mangbettu "a highly cultivated people" in architecture and handicraft. Barth found copper exported from Central Africa in competition with European ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... Susy and Lilly, and the Bunces, and Henry Robinson and Dick Burton, and perhaps others. And I also was of the number, but not in the same degree—for she was above my duller comprehension. I merely knew that she was my superior in fineness of mind, in the delicacy and subtlety of her intellect, but to fully measure her I was not competent. I know her better now; for I have read her private writings and sounded the deeps of her mind; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... then what kind of work Giotto had been first put to. There is, literally, not a square inch of all that panel—some ten feet high by six or seven wide—which is not wrought in gold and colour with the fineness of a Greek manuscript. There is not such an elaborate piece of ornamentation in the first page of any Gothic king's missal, as you will find in that Madonna's throne;—the Madonna herself is meant to be grave and noble only; and to ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin

... away for safe-keeping differ in one respect from those things which are stored away in the memory. The material object is the same, whether we visit and inspect it from day to day or not. The banker's dollars are not increased in fineness or value by his handling them over carefully every day. Not so with intellectual coin. The more frequently we re-examine our knowledge and pass it under review, the more does it become fixed in its character, the more full and exact in its proportions. Handling it does not wear ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... family. That a special fitness was required for admission to Mrs. Lessing's circle he would have guessed even without the aid of print which consistently described it as Our Best Society, for it was a Best attested to by all the marks by which Clarice herself expressed the essential fineness of things. ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin

... which is to the heart what the sun is to the eyes of a blind man dreaming of sight. There she was on my side of the chasm that had separated us—alone with me—mine—mine! And my heart dilated with pride. But a moment later came a sense of humility. Her beauty intoxicated me, but her youth, her fineness, so fragile for such rough hands as mine, awed and humbled me. "I must be very gentle," said I to myself. "I have promised that she shall never regret. God help me to keep my promise! She is mine, but only to preserve and protect." ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... me to sit thus motionless beside a beautiful woman (for such I then thought her)—so near that I could feel the warmth of her body strike like sunshine through the silken fineness of her sea-green gown. I glanced up at her eyes. They were fixed, and, as it seemed, glazed also. But the emerald in them, usually dark as the sea-depths, had opal lights in it, and her lips moved like those of a devotee kneeling ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... meaning of the curious questions she propounded to him, he resolved them sooner than any body could have expected. So she was amazed at the wisdom of Solomon, and discovered that it was more excellent upon trial than what she had heard by report beforehand; and especially she was surprised at the fineness and largeness of his royal palace, and not less so at the good order of the apartments, for she observed that the king had therein shown great wisdom; but she was beyond measure astonished at the ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... strings of his tongue were loosened as they had never been before. His woman, too (as we say in those parts, Melody; wife is the more genteel expression, but I never heard Ham use it. My father, on the other hand, never said anything else; a difference in the fineness of ear, my dear, I have always supposed),—his woman, I say, or wife, had not "turned up her toes," but recovered, and as he was a faithful and affectionate man, his heart was enlarged by this also. However it was, he talked more in those weeks, ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... at her face, drinking in the beauty of the profile and wondering whether he were right. Could it be that this was his little brown friend, the maid of the wilderness? This girl with the lovely, refined face, the intellectual brow, the dainty fineness of manner? She looked like some white angel dropped down into that motley company of Sunday-school picknickers and city pleasure-seekers. The noise and clatter of the place seemed far away from her. She was absorbed utterly in ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill

... propulsive crash of the climax. The tone rapidly subsided and receded; for the composer had so cunningly scored it that groups of instruments were withdrawn without losing the thread of the musical tale. The tone, spun to a needle fineness, rushed up the fingerboard of the fiddles accompanied by the harp in a billowing glissando and—then on ragged rims of wide thunder a gust of air seemed to melt lights, men, instruments into a darkness that froze the eyeballs. With a scorching ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... and admitted the fineness of the night. It seemed to me that he had more to say—and ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... in the morning David came out of the distillery; he had been careful to leave no sign of his occupation behind him; but he brought out some thirty sheets of paper that left nothing to be desired in fineness, whiteness, toughness, and strength, all of them bearing by way of water-mark the impress of the uneven hairs of the sieve. The old man took up the samples and put his tongue to them, the lifelong habit of the pressman, who tests papers in this way. He felt it between his thumb and finger, ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac

... into the knowledge of the world) to perceive that a person, however admirable may be his qualities, does not readily find a welcome without a penny in his pocket. In the neighbourhood of Thames Court he had, indeed, many acquaintances; but the fineness of his language, acquired from his education, and the elegance of his air, in which he attempted to blend in happy association the gallant effrontery of Mr. Long Ned with the graceful negligence of Mr. Augustus Tomlinson, had made him many ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the meadows, and weave it into cloth, which is much in vogue for shooting suits and ladies' dresses. The pieces run from twenty to seventy yards long, and whole families are engaged on the work, which commands a ready sale at the wholesale depots, the price being regulated by the fineness, evenness of texture, and equality of tint throughout. The Nationalist advice to burn everything English except English coals, is as hollow as other patriotic utterances. But for England the Donegal peasantry would have no market for their goods. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... that tended to protrude. His immense frame was thin and angular; his arms were inordinately long; hands, feet and eyebrows were large; skin swarthy; hair coarse, black and generally unkempt. Only the amazing, dreamful eyes, and a fineness in the texture of the skin, redeemed the face and gave it distinction.(3) Why did precise, complacent Miss Todd pick out so strange a man for her mate? The story that she married him for ambition, divining what he was to be—like Jane Welsh in the conventional story of Carlyle—argues ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... bar, the talent is superior to what it is without; and I have been often delighted with the amazing fineness, if I may use the expression, with which the Chancellor discriminates the shades of difference in the various points on which he is called to deliver his opinion. I consider his mind as a curiosity of no ordinary kind. It deceives itself by its own acuteness. The edge is too sharp; ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt

... legs, the thin-soled low boots—all proclaimed him the typical time-killing dandy of the times. His superb proportions made him look smaller, lighter than he really was, and his lean features, which under the I.F.P. skullcap would have looked hawk-like, were sufficiently like the patrician fineness of the character part he was playing. Young men of means in the year 2159 were by no means without their good points. They indulged in athletic sports to counteract the softening influence of idleness, and so Quirl ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl

... that must be paid where no available stone can be found in the region. Great areas do have some beds that should be used, and a low-priced machine for pulverizing it is the solution of the problem. Such a machine must be durable, have ability to crush the stone to the desired fineness and be offered at a price that does not seem prohibitive to a farmer who would meet the demands of a small farming community. In this way freight charges are escaped, and a long and costly haul from a railway ...
— Right Use of Lime in Soil Improvement • Alva Agee

... about a fortnight after young O'Mara had arrived in Dublin, where all things, and places, and amusements; and persons seemed thoroughly stale, flat, and unprofitable, when one day, tempted by the unusual fineness of the weather, Lady Emily proposed a walk in the College Park, a favourite promenade at that time. She therefore with young O'Mara, accompanied by Dwyer (who, by-the-by, when he pleased, could act the gentleman sufficiently well), proceeded to the place proposed, where they continued to walk ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... dollar was coined for the purpose of traffic in countries where silver passed at its value as ascertained by its weight and fineness. It never had a legal-tender quality. Large numbers of these coins entered, however, into the volume of our currency. By common consent their circulation in domestic trade has now ceased, and they have thus become a disturbing element. They should not be longer ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson

... vision was fresh, keen, and direct. He escaped that subtle distortion of mental perception from which others were likely to suffer because of long-sustained attention. To such, Douglas must have seemed unemotional, unsensitive, and lacking in spiritual fineness. ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... transformed by some mysterious process into efficient conduct. While the machinery of the process, like the mills of the gods, certainly grinds slowly, it is some consolation to believe that, at any rate, it does grind; and we are perhaps fain to believe that the exceeding fineness of the grist is responsible for our failure to detect at the spout all of the elements that we have been so careful to pour in at the hopper. What I should like to do is to examine this grinding process rather carefully,—to gain, if possible, ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... his dark, almost ugly face. Wasn't he a strange fellow! Stubborn and rough, like a brute! And yet there was in him something fine and delicate, that seemed foreign to him. God knows in what corner of his heart lurked this—this fineness, that made anything beautiful that he saw affect him as the minister's sermon or a great joy or—no matter what, might affect other people. Every time Hallheimer came near the man he had to wonder at him, and—because he wondered at him, he kept on stopping to see him and—but—but, he was ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... dark, and the only other man visible stood at the edge of the quay gazing at the water. He stood for so long that the mate's easily aroused curiosity awoke, and, after twice passing, he edged up to him and ventured a remark on the fineness of the night. ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs

... such distinction should go with them. This is undoubtedly one of the grounds for tatuing the body. Among the Kayans a man's hands are only fully tatued when he has taken a head; while the social status of a woman is marked by the degree of fineness of the tatuing.[124] It follows that death is neither greatly feared nor desired; but an old man will sometimes affirm that he is quite ready or even desirous to die, although he may seem ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... me that he visited each cell and each bed, and found the monks, either wrapt in slothful sleep, or awake, eating irregular meals and engaged in senseless gossip; while the nuns employ their leisure in wearing garments of excessive fineness, either to attire themselves, as if they were the brides of men, or to bestow them on people outside." One must admit that here and there in the writings of the period, there are references to this worldliness in some monasteries; but whatever may have been the ...
— Early Double Monasteries - A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914 • Constance Stoney

... The reverent scientist affirms that he believes in a God whose omniscience keeps track of every particle of matter in a universe whose spaces are measured by billions of miles, a God whose omnipresence implies the interlacing of forces whose sweep and fineness seen through the telescope and microscope astonish us. Moreover, the modern doctrine of evolution shows us that the entire material system is moving on and up from lower to higher forms. "It doth not yet appear ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell

... of all judgement, if your Nine Comedies, whereunto in imitation of Herodotus, you give the names of the Nine Muses (and in one man's fancy not unworthily), come not nearer Ariosto's comedies, either for the fineness of plausible elocution, or the rareness of poetical invention, than that Elvish Queen doth to his Orlando Furioso, which notwithstanding you will needs seem to emulate, and hope to overgo, as you flatly professed yourself in one of ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... become intelligible no less than its contradictions and practical disasters. Its object is the same as that of reason, but its method is to proceed by intuition and by unchecked poetical conceits. These are repeated and vulgarised in proportion to their original fineness and significance, till they pass for reports of objective truth and come to constitute a world of faith, superposed upon the world of experience and regarded as materially enveloping it, if not in space at least in time and in existence. The only truth of religion comes from ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... dear husband," said she, "and carry it to your father, the Tsar, but do not open it on the way lest the dust should spoil the fineness of the bread." ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle

... to work and raised the mighty nugget to the surface, but instead of its weighing two or three hundred pounds, it weighed one hundred and ten. But it was a splendid lump of gold, almost entirely free from quartz and dirt, and of rare fineness and purity.. The finders were overjoyed, as well they might be, and guarded their treasure with great care until they saw it safe in the custody of the government agent. A gentleman from Melbourne, who was on a visit to the mines for the purpose of collecting ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... day, tempted by the fineness of the weather up the road that led from the suburb farther into the country, Fanny was stopped by a gentleman in a carriage, who accosted her, as she said, very kindly: and after several questions, which she answered with her usual unsuspecting innocence, learned her ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the days when he was most fully in the public eye the invincible obscurity of his origins clung to him like a shadowy garment. He had handled millions without ever enjoying anything of what is counted as precious in the community of men, because he had neither the brutality of temperament nor the fineness of mind to make him desire them with the will power of a masterful adventurer . ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... way, of course, but not in the highest way. Now, for instance, if he felt all her fineness as—as we do, I don't believe he'd be willing to appear before her just like that." The father of the gods wore a damask tablecloth of a pale golden hue and a classic pattern; his arms were bare, and rather ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... circular hardwood board, a paddle, a set of small, well pointed sticks, a thin-bladed knife, and squares of white muslin of various degrees of fineness. She talked and modelled, and we listening watched the fascinating process; saw her take the plastic substance, fashion a duck with ducklings on a pond, a lamb curled up asleep, and a couched lion with ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... for precious metal as such in the mass is in an act of 1451. From the use of gold and silver as a medium of exchange, it followed that they should approximate in all nations to a common degree of fineness; and though this is not uniform even in coins, yet the proportion of alloy in silver, and of carats alloy to carats fine in gold, has been reduced to infinitesimal differences in the bullion of commerce, and is a prime element of value even in gold and silver ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... have treated offenders in this kind, by considering the crime itself as a species of treason. The reason of which arises thus. As money is the universal standard or measure of the value of any commodity, so the value of money is always regulated, in respect of its weight, fineness, etc., by the public authority of the State. To counterfeit, therefore, is in some degree to assume the supreme authority, inasmuch as it is giving a currency to another less valuable piece of metal than that made current by the State. The old laws ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... contact; to be in some sort as a brother to her, seeing there was no brother in the house. But from this it must not be inferred that Grace Anna is less gifted with the distinctive qualities of her sex. For the native fineness of her spiritual texture, her gentle dignity and feminine delicacy and grace, mark her as "every inch" a true and noble woman. In her combine in happy union the calm strength of soul and self-reliance of her younger, with the poetic ideality and ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... adapt them to their owner's need, others sharp-edged, elaborately flaked, "turtle-backed" weapons, similar in shape to much of the more modern and finished work in flint. With few exceptions, however, these are made of argillite, and in many cases they have lost the fineness of edge and angle by weathering and by attrition against the gravel in which they were rolled under glacial floods. They bear about the same relation in their roughness and shapelessness to the carefully-worked relics ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... the window to point out the fineness of the day—the others turned too—and a frozen silence caught at Cyril, and none of the others felt at all like breaking it. For there, peering round the corner of the window, among the red leaves of the Virginia creeper, was a face—a brown face, with a long nose and a tight mouth ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... there be among women;—for to this silent ministry their nature calls them, endowed, as it is, with fineness of fibre, and a subtile keenness of perception outrunning slow-footed reason;—and she of whom we write was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... came to the front; and when I asked the servant to send off the half-vagrant boys and girls who stood gazing at us, this man came up and said to me in a confidential tone, 'They do not understand the sacredness of the occasion, and the fineness of the conditions.' There was something regal in his audacity, but he was ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... brow she had curved black eyebrows without a criss-cross hair in them, and these disclosed and heightened the clear white of the skin. And her nose, too—not flat nor arched, not long nor snub, but beyond the fineness of geometry, with light, soft breath, and the sweet scent of incense. Such shining eyes too: like emeralds starring her face with light! And the face, blended lilies and roses in a third lovely hue that one could not withdraw one's eyes from beholding. ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson

... anything but a timid man, the combative and defensive elements were not prominently developed in his character, and could have been made available only when he put an unnatural force upon his instincts. It was on this account, and also because of the fineness of his nature generally, that the English appreciated him no better, and left this sweet and delicate poet poor, and with scanty laurels in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... beautiful was the girl, crouching upon the sands. So unlike was she to the young people of the Station that she repelled, rather than attracted, the common eye. Tall, slim, and sinewy was she, with the quick strength of a boy. The smooth, brown skin had the fineness and delicacy of exquisite bronze. Some attempt had been made earlier in the day to confine the splendid hair with strong strands of seaweed, but the breeze of the later morning had treated the matter contemptuously, and the shining waves were beautifully disordered. Out ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock

... exhausted every possible expression of feeling. Their scales were in true intervals; they had really major and minor tones; we have neither, but a confusion of both. They had both sharps and flats: we have neither, but a mere set of semitones, which serve for both. In their enharmonic scale the fineness of their ear perceived distinctions which are lost ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... Hall, who was manifestly in an ill humour; "now, if I had been punished instead of you, the weather would have been a marvel of fineness, sunny all ...
— Leslie Ross: - or, Fond of a Lark • Charles Bruce

... taken up and fastened up with gold embroidery to imitate the folds and wrinkles of the dress, trimmed round the edge with white Brussels lace, having an underskirt of amber satin trimmed with Brussels lace, to show underneath; lined throughout with silk 1 large Brussels shawl, of 700 exquisite fineness and elegance of design, to go with it 1 crimson velvet dress, lined 400 throughout with rose-colored silk; train very long, trimmed with rich silk, blonde lace covering the entire train, being carried around and brought up the front of the dress and body, forming the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... from the truth. But his work on earth is for ever over; and the sense of bereavement is deepened by the reflection that, save in the memory of a few, he has left behind him no adequate impress of the powers of his understanding or of the fineness of his genius. It is strange how much the lack of a single ingredient in a man's moral constitution—and that, too, an ingredient in itself of a low and vulgar cast—may affect one's whole destiny. It was the grand defect of this gifted man, that that sentiment of self-esteem, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... an odor of pressed flowers. These are the tender tops of the Jebelee, plucked as the buds begin to expand, and carefully dried in the shade. In order to be used, it is moistened with rose-scented water, and cut to the necessary degree of fineness. The test of true Jebelee is, that it burns with a slow, hidden fire, like tinder, and causes no irritation to the eye when held under it. The smoke, drawn through a long cherry-stick pipe and amber mouth-piece, is pure, cool, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... the greatness of his sacrifice and the fineness of his soul, and she fell into a passion of weeping ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... solidifies into a dense, hard mass (density 1.6), in which state it is called lyddite. The fuze on striking ignites the exploder and in turn the lyddite. When properly detonated a dense black smoke is produced and the projectile is broken up into small pieces, some of which are almost of the fineness of grains of sand. The radius of the explosion is about 25 yds., but the local effect is intense, and hence on light structures in a confined space the destruction is complete. The shell is only of use against thin plates; against modern armour it is ineffective. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... it to alight and give him reasonable time for deliberate aim. In English playhouses an appreciable number of seconds usually precede the smile or the ripple of laughter that follows a facetious turn of the least fineness. I disclaim all responsibility for this statement of my personal observation, since it has recently been indorsed by one of London's ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... white, and panelled, and full of really old and beautiful French furniture. Everything is in keeping, even to the locks on the doors and the bell-ropes. How grandmamma would have appreciated this! And the fineness of the linen, and the softness of the pillows and sofa-cushions! And everywhere great bowls of roses—my ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn

... antelopes. They have long, slender necks, and rich fawn-coloured coats, with patches of white across the shoulders and inside the legs. The wool is shorter and more curly than that of the three other species, and, from its extreme fineness, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... the most delicate of these—differences in the effect depend as much on differences of quality in the physical agents, as on their quantity: and if the quality of an instrument is to be tested by the nicety and delicacy of the work it can do, the indications point to a greater average fineness of quality in the brain and nervous system of women than of men. Dismissing abstract difference of quality, a thing difficult to verify, the efficiency of an organ is known to depend not solely on its size but on its ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill

... good, wholesome, horse-racing, sheep-farming Australian white may think. These queer little races, the black-fellows, the Pigmies, the Bushmen, may have their little gifts, a greater keenness, a greater fineness of this sense or that, a quaintness of the imagination or what not, that may serve as their little unique addition to the totality of our Utopian civilisation. We are supposing that every individual alive on earth is alive in Utopia, and so all the surviving "black-fellows" ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... six molars on each side of both jaws, making in all 32 teeth. The fleece consists of two coats, one to keep the animal warm, the other to carry off the water without wetting the skin. The first is of wool, the weight and fineness of which depend on the quality of the pasture and the care bestowed on the flock; the other of hair, that pierces the wool and overlaps it, and is in excess in exact proportion to the badness of the keep and inattention with which the animal ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... he had spent a considerable Part of his Youth in Labours and Fatigues, had been inur'd to nothing else but Hardships and Adventures, we see him receive the Recompence of his Merit, and become the Favourite of his Prince: And here we may perceive all the Fineness of the Gentleman, mixt with all the Resolution and Courage of the Warriour; We may behold him as ready to oblige the Ladies with a Dance, as he was to draw his Sword ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe

... supplies at the fort they camped under a live oak. It was a mighty growth, its domed outline fretted with the fineness of horny leaves, its vast boughs outflung in contorted curves. The river sucked about its roots. Outside its shade the plain grew dryer under unclouded suns, huge trees casting black blots of shadow in which the Fort's cattle ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... that painful separation of parents and children which is one of the disagreeable accidents of Indian life. On the contrary, the Dutch race appears to have developed favourably in Java, and the colonial-born women are famous for the beauty of their complexions and for the fineness of their physique. Another test of the social condition of a community is its shops. In Batavia there are excellent shops. Not merely can the newest books, and the cleverest etchings, and all the numberless refinements of Bond Street ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold

... except, perhaps, as the reputed inventor or introducer of the octave stanza in his 'Teseide', it will be sufficient to say, that we owe to him the subjects of numerous poems taken from his famous tales, the happy art of narration, and the still greater merit of a depth and fineness in the workings of the passions, in which last excellence, as likewise in the wild and imaginative character of the situations, his almost neglected romances appear to me greatly to excel his far famed 'Decameron'. To him, too, we owe the more doubtful merit ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... as drains for the rainwater on the surface, would have much interfered with the durability of the inscription. The available space for the panel remains 3 feet 7 in length by 1 foot 9 inches in depth. Owing to the fineness of the grain of the stone, it may be quite possible to letter the native rock; but it has been difficult to fix on a style of lettering for the inscription that shall be at once in good taste, forcible, and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... herself to the dramatis personae, not without a sense of her value in the scene. But these were only passing phases. There was no morbid strain in Phil. Her father was the best of companions, and she was quick to recognize his fineness and gentleness and to appreciate his cultivation with its background ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... He rose and crossed the room to the wall of book- shelves. And Tembarom's eye was caught again by the fineness of movement and line the evening clothes made manifest. "What a swell he looked when he moved about like that! What a swell, ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... whereas in Latin we must too often be contented with a mere general and inclusive term. How indeed can it be otherwise, when we attempt to render the most copious language of the world, the most admirable for the fineness of its distinctions, into one of the poorest and most vague languages? Especially when we reflect on the comparative number of the works, still extant, written while the Greek and Latin were living languages. Were I asked what I deemed the greatest and most unmixed benefit, which a ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... naked, shivering in the rain! Indeed, the facts of aboriginal life seem to indicate that dress is developed out of decorations. And when we remember that even among ourselves most think more about the fineness of the fabric than its warmth, and more about the cut than the convenience—when we see that the function is still in great measure subordinated to the appearance, we have further reason ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... to." Amory sat down again, and as Burne perched on a table and launched into argument with Tom, he looked at this revolutionary more carefully than he ever had before. Broad-browed and strong-chinned, with a fineness in the honest gray eyes that were like Kerry's, Burne was a man who gave an immediate impression of bigness and security—stubborn, that was evident, but his stubbornness wore no stolidity, and when he had talked for five minutes Amory knew that this keen enthusiasm ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... Eastern rugs are as simply woven as a Navajo blanket, or even a rag carpet. The process is in many cases almost identical, the variation being only in closeness or fineness of warp and arrangement ...
— How to make rugs • Candace Wheeler

... passed on from generation to generation, the most precious heir-loom of the English tongue, to-day as fresh as on the morning when the paper was moist with the ink wherewith they were first written? Because they have in them more fullness and fineness and fidelity than any others. The poet has more life in him than other men, and Shakespeare has in him more life than any other poet, life manifested through power of intellect exalted through union with ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... refuse the invitation, and had only yielded on Arthur's assertion that he was needed for help, not ornament, and must come whether he liked it or not, to lend a hand with the oars. He looked pre-occupied and solemn, but was absolutely friendly in his manner, rejoicing in the fineness of the weather, and congratulating Peggy on the success of her dressmaking experiment, of which he had heard from his brother. To explain that Hector's report was entirely prejudiced, seemed but a tacit acknowledgment ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... Bishop had seen that man do an act of supreme and unselfish bravery. It was an act of both physical and moral courage the like of which the Bishop had never witnessed. It was an act which had revealed in Clifford W. Stanton a depth of strong fineness that no man would have suspected. It was done in the dim, dead time of faraway youth, but the Bishop had not forgotten. And he knew that men do not rise to such heights without having very deep in them the nobility to make it possible and at times ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher

... tempting showers in pleasant sort descend Into fair Phillis' lap, my lovely friend, When sleep her sense with slumber doth restrain. I would be changed to a milk-white bull, When midst the gladsome fields she should appear, By pleasant fineness to surprise my dear, Whilst from their stalks, she pleasant flowers did pull. I were content to weary out my pain, To be Narsissus so she were a spring, To drown in her those woes my heart do wring. And more; I wish transformed to remain, That whilst ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher

... for the simple reason that his temptation will be to expend his force in entering into closer relations with the casual, and possibly unintelligent, person than the necessities of the situation warrant. The artist is so impatient of dulness, so greedy of fineness, in all his relations, that he is apt to subject himself to a wasteful strain in talking to unperceptive and unappreciative persons. It is not that he desires to appear brilliant; it is that he is so intolerant of tedium that he sacrifices himself to fatiguing efforts in trying to strike a spark ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... merriment. In general, indeed almost universally, the limbs of these people were small; of most of them the arms, legs, and thighs were thin. This, no doubt, is owing to the poorness of their living, which is chiefly on fish; otherwise the fineness of the climate, co-operating with the exercise which they take, might have rendered them more muscular. Those who live on the sea-coast depend entirely on fish for their sustenance; while the few ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... a surpassing conviction of the beauty of existence and in particular of his own good fortune—though the matter of his inheritance never once entered his mind. He gazed down at Eve's ingenuous features, and saw in them the fastidious fineness which had caused her to recoil so sensitively from her son's display at the Grand Babylon. Yes, women had a spiritual beauty to which ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... had just sic a voice—ye canna weel ca 't sweet, for it is ower intellectual for that—ye canna ca 't saft, for even in its aigh notes there's a sort o' birr, a sort o' dirl that betokens power—ye canna ca 't hairsh, for angry as ye may be at times, it's aye in tune frae the fineness o' your ear for music—ye canna ca 't sherp, for it's aye sae nat'ral—and flett it cud never be, gin you were even gi'en ower by the doctors. It's maist the only voice I ever heard, that I can say is at ance persuawsive ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... call; and this feeling, perhaps, induced her to dawdle a little over the last touches of her toilet. She had put on a thin, black dress, which tamed the exuberance of her face and hair, and set off the brilliance and fineness of her skin where the open blouse displayed it. The beautiful throat was sunburnt, indeed, but not unbecomingly so; and she was about to fasten round it a slender gold chain, when she suddenly dropped the chain. Some association had ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... is the fineness and goodness of the Ore, by which the Mine is wont to be estimated? And what are the marks and {339} characters, that distinguish ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... Union" says: "Here the insight into character, the delicacy and fineness of touch, the keenness of analysis, and the firmness of the literary method, remind one of Mr. Henry James, but are unaccompanied ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... cried "Clubs?" and cracked his neighbours' heads with the precision and fineness of touch which only manual craftsmanship can give. The housewives who flatly refused to cook the hot dinner knew how much or how little, cold meat there was in the house. The sailor who defied discipline by mutinying ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton

... house opposite the church, and let out her spare rooms to student boarders. Her pride was never lowered and her crepe was never laid aside. She sat up far into the night to darn the sleeves of her black silk gown, but the stitches were of such exquisite fineness that in the dim light of her drawing-room they seemed but an ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... of stopping the dog was to spill blood upon the track, which destroyed the discriminating fineness of his scent. A captive was sometimes sacrificed on such occasions. Henry the Minstrel tells us a romantic story of Wallace, founded on this circumstance. The hero's little band had been joined by an Irishman named Fawdon, ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... the day of the dinner at the Hall, Mrs. Wilson, with all her nieces and her nephew, availed herself of the fineness of the weather to walk to the rectory, where they were all in the habit of making informal and friendly visits. They had just got out of the little village of B——, which lay in their route, when a rather handsome travelling carriage ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper

... public stamps of this kind that were affixed to the current metals, seem in many cases to have been intended to ascertain, what it was both most difficult and most important to ascertain, the goodness or fineness of the metal, and to have resembled the sterling mark which is at present affixed to plate and bars of silver, or the Spanish mark which is sometimes affixed to ingots of gold, and which, being struck only upon one side of the piece, and not covering the whole surface, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... off the electric light as she pattered out of the room, leaving Magda alone in the cool dark, with the silken softness of crepe de chine once more caressing her slender limbs, and the fineness of lavender-scented ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... a glorious way to talk?" demanded the Rev. T.E. Brown of this last passage, when he talked about Sidney, the other day, in Mr. Henley's New Review. "No one can fail," said Mr. Brown, amiably assuming the fineness of his own ear to be common to all mankind—"no one can fail to observe the sweetness and the strength, the outspokenness, the downrightness, and, at the same time, the nervous delicacy of pausation, the rhythm all ripple and suspended fall, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... next booth there were two Persians, who unfolded before our eyes some of those marvellous shawls, where you forget the barbaric pattern in the exquisite fineness of the material and the triumphant harmony of the colors. Scarlet with palm-leaf border,—blue clasped by golden bronze, picked out with red,—browns, greens, and crimsons struggling for the mastery in a war of tints,—how should we choose between them? Alas! we were not able to choose: they were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... met on the River with Colonel Martin, a Man of great Gallantry, Wit, and Goodness, and whom I have celebrated in a Character of my new Comedy, by his own Name, in Memory of so brave a Man: He was wise and eloquent, and, from the Fineness of his Parts, bore a great Sway over the Hearts of all the Colony: He was a Friend to Caesar, and resented this false Dealing with him very much. We carried him back to Parham, thinking to have made an Accommodation; when he came, the first ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... of this instrument is not unlike a square razor strop, only that the handle is longer, and each of its four sides or faces is marked, lengthways, with small grooves, or furrows, of different degrees of fineness; those on one side being of a width and depth sufficient to receive a small packthread, and the others finer in a regular gradation, so that the last are not more than ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... lacks one small ingredient to make it a standard household remedy. You can supply that ingredient—to wit, cash of the present standard of weight and fineness. Every spare dollar that Live Wire Luiz and I can get our hands on is working overtime in the legitimate business of the West Coast Trading Company; every loose asset with a hockable value has been hocked, and we dare not strain our credit with our banker by borrowing money ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... painter's life and works. They have recently placed in a tiny oratory, scooped by Guidobaldo II. from the thickness of the wall, a cast of Raphael's skull, which will be studied with interest and veneration. It has the fineness of modelling combined with shapeliness of form and smallness of scale which is said to have ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds



Words linked to "Fineness" :   choiceness, high quality, fine, smoothness, daintiness, elegance, narrowness, delicacy, thinness, superiority, powderiness



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