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Inimitable   /ɪnˈɪmətəbəl/   Listen
Inimitable

adjective
1.
Defying imitation; matchless.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Inimitable" Quotes from Famous Books



... 290. For the idea of this line, I am indebted to Emerson, in his inimitable sonnet to ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... way to other and more natural forms of composition. They still maintained their ground in Italy, whither they had passed later, and where they were consecrated by the hand of genius. But Italy was not the true soil of chivalry, and the inimitable fictions of Bojardo, Pulci, and Ariosto were composed with that lurking smile of half-supprest mirth which, far from a serious tone, could raise only a corresponding smile of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... consisting of translations from his prized volume, appeared in 1826. Dr. Jessop surmises that these translations must have brought him in a very respectable sum, but Mr. Augustus Birrell, in his own inimitable way, expresses his doubt on the point. "I hope it was so," he writes, "but, as Dr. Johnson once said about the immortality of the soul, I should like more ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt

... gesture was inimitable. Englishmen to him were obviously the salt of the earth. Germans and Austrians—why, they existed as the cattle in the fields—nothing more. Bellamy ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... scientific criticism. In the English Foreign Office it was correctly described as a piece of drollery; and Metternich was too familiar with the language of principles himself to attach much meaning to it in the mouth of anyone else. Talleyrand, however, kept a grave countenance. With inimitable composure the old Minister of the Directory wrote to Louis XVIII. lamenting that Castlereagh did not appear to care much about the principle of legitimacy, and in fact did not quite comprehend it; [219] and he added his fear that this moral dimness on the part of the English Minister arose ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... far pleasingly was spent, And every Hour admin'stred Content, Then would I range the Fields, and flow'ry Meads, Where Nature her exub'rant Bounty spreads, In whose delightful Products does appear Inimitable Beauty ev'ry where; Contemplate on each Plant, and useful Weed, And how its Form first lay involved in Seed, How they're preserv'd by Providential Care, For what design'd, and what their Virtues are. Thus to my Mind by dint of Reason ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous

... vieillirez, O ma belle Maitresse," a gentle graceful sadness wins us. In "Le Dieu des Bonnes Gens," "Les Etoiles qui filent," "Les Conseils de Lise," "Treize a Table," a noble dignity is admired, while such as "La Fortune" and "La Metempsycose" are inimitable in their childlike playfulness. "Ma Vocation" I have had and admired for many years. He is of the pure ore, a darling fairy changling of great mother Nature; the poet of the people, and, therefore, of all in the upper classes sufficiently intelligent and refined to appreciate ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... hundred times in uninterrupted and monotonous succession, he condescends to utter a single delightfully modulated strain. He often brings his tiresome extravaganzas to a magnificent climax of melody, and just as often concludes an inimitable chant with a most contemptible bathos. But the notes of the Robin are all melodious, all delightful,—loud without vociferation, mellow without monotony, fervent without ecstasy, and combining more of mellowness of tone, plaintiveness, cheerfulness, and propriety of execution, than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... early in the play, since what follows is necessarily inferior in force. Dryden, while writing this scene, had unquestionably in his recollection the quarrel betwixt Brutus and Cassius, which was justly so great a favourite in his time, and to which he had referred as inimitable ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... common government. In the next place there is the confusion between the status of a self-governing Dominion, in its relations to the Imperial Government, and the status of a Colonial state or provincial government towards the Dominion of which it forms a part. A truly inimitable instance of this confusion has been provided by Mr. Redmond in a declaration made on more than one occasion that all that Ireland asks for, is, "What has already been given to twenty-eight different portions of the Empire."[54] ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... was as perverse as a princess in a fairy tale; she laughed mercilessly at my timid ways, at my awkward manners and my ungraceful fashion of entering the parlor; there was kept up between us a constant interchange of playful raillery, an oral stream of inimitable pleasantry. ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti

... the center of the building, and the Egyptian Temple in its south-eastern portion. Countless incandescent lamps were glowing in all the colors of the rainbow. The luminary effect gave us the impression as if a fiery serpent was meandering along these iridescent glass-tubes with inimitable velocity. ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler

... the more increased when he saw the list of promised performers: La Belle Marie, the famous little toe dancer in her attractive transformations; the Brothers Zincatello, Risley experts at the Hippodrome; Julian Jokes, "in his inimitable Hebrew monologue"; the Seven Sebastians, the world's most marvelous Herculean acrobatic performers; Mlle. Joujou, the popular singing comedienne, Prima Donna and Star, direct from her unusual and most distinguished triumph at the Palace Theater, London; and a dozen ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... and not far from the lake. The family Ney received us in the most cordial manner; nevertheless their dignified bearing very profoundly impressed even my proud father. The ladies in particular were so much like princesses in disguise that my father at once transformed himself into the inimitable gallant Paladin of chivalry you have known him to be in Rome, London, and Vienna. Father Ney betrayed, at the first glance, the profound thinker accustomed to serious work, but who by no means lacked the mien ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... deftly touched with a gentle humor. It is a dainty book—daintily illustrated."—New York Tribune. "A wholesome, bright, refreshing story, an ideal book to give a young girl."—Chicago Record-Herald. "An idyllic story, replete with pathos and inimitable humor. As story-telling it is perfection, and as portrait-painting it is true to ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... almost called them; with his taste in weapons; his delight in any that 'he found to be a man of his hands'; his chivalrous point of honour, letting Giant Maul get up again when he was down, a thing fairly flying in the teeth of the moral; above all, with his language in the inimitable tale of Mr. Fearing: 'I thought I should have lost my man'—'chicken-hearted'—'at last he came in, and I will say that for my lord, he carried it wonderful lovingly to him.' This is no Independent minister; this is a stout, honest, big-busted ancient, adjusting ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... said Sherlock Holmes, sharply. "We were the old women to be so taken in. It must have been a young man, and an active one, too, besides being an incomparable actor. The get-up was inimitable. He saw that he was followed, no doubt, and used this means of giving me the slip. It shows that the man we are after is not as lonely as I imagined he was, but has friends who are ready to risk something for him. Now, Doctor, you are looking done-up. ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle

... had been provided for the comfort of our country cousins of whom there were large contingents. Considerable amusement was caused by the favourite Dublin streetsingers L-n-h-n and M-ll-g-n who sang The Night before Larry was stretched in their usual mirth-provoking fashion. Our two inimitable drolls did a roaring trade with their broadsheets among lovers of the comedy element and nobody who has a corner in his heart for real Irish fun without vulgarity will grudge them their hardearned pennies. The children of the Male and ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... Burns had an inimitable ear for ballad feeling and for ballad rhythm and music. But, except for some vigorous satiric, political, and bacchanalian chants of his own, and the recasting of a few of the old-fashioned and lively rhymes like ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie

... instance) they did nearly all the sheep shearing. Then at last Bodo comes back for his supper, and as soon as the sun goes down they go to bed; for their hand-made candle gives only a flicker of light, and they both have to be up early in the morning. De Quincey once pointed out, in his inimitable manner, how the ancients everywhere went to bed, 'like good boys, from seven to nine o'clock'. 'Man went to bed early in those ages simply because his worthy mother earth could not afford him candles. She, good old lady ... would certainly have ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... period of time in which the stage was less polluted, owing to the inimitable Garrick, than the present: notwithstanding there ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... Stradiuarius and Joseph Guarnerius were occupied with the noble instruments which have immortalized their names, Canaletto was painting his Venetian squares and canals, Giorgio was superintending the manufacture of his inimitable maiolica, and the Venetians were blowing glass of marvelous beauty and form. In the musical world, Corelli was writing his gigues and sarabandes, Geminiani composing his first instruction book for the violin, and Tartini dreaming out his "Devil's Trill"; and while Guadognini ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris

... successor of Dotty Dimple, Little Prudy, Flyaway, and the other charming child creations of that inimitable writer for children, Sophie May. There never was a healthy, fun-loving child born into this world that, at one stage or another of its growth, wouldn't be entertained with Sophie May's books. For that matter, it is not safe for older folks to look into them, unless they ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May

... such skies, none are so tender, various, inimitable; Turner himself never caught them. Correggio, putting out his whole strength, could have ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin

... sanguinary two days' conflict had been in progress. The Greeks attacked and finally captured the Bulgarian entrenched positions. Time after time their charges failed to reach, but eventually their persistent courage and inimitable elan won home, and the Bulgarians fled in utter rout and panic, leaving everything, even many of their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... hand, and while her Carl disappeared through a secret door on one side of the room, she glided forward with grace and elegance inimitable, to receive the high-born ladies who were just then passing the portals of her ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... melody in D. It is an aubade, a nocturne of the morn—if the contradictory phrase be allowed. There is morning freshness in its hue and scent, and, when it bursts, a parterre of roses. The close of the section is inimitable. All the more sorrow at what follows: wild disorder and the luxuriance called tropical. When B major is compassed we sigh, for it augurs us a return of delight. The ending is not that of a sonata, but a love lyric. For Chopin is ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... charming Essay, in the Spectator, is so applicable and prefatory to a work of this nature, that we cannot resist inserting that inimitable production ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... his genius, by his style, and by his knowledge of men, I mean La Bruyere, who died of apoplexy at Versailles, after having surpassed Theophrastus in his own manner, and after painting, in the new characters, the men of our days in a manner inimitable. He was besides a very honest man, of excellent breeding, simple, very disinterested, and without anything of the pedant. I had sufficiently known him to regret his death, and the works that might ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... damsels, and made no unfavorable impression upon the mind of the fair Alice Goldworthy, whom he had casually met in polished society, and whose admiration he had enlisted, as much by the charms of inimitable wit as by the graces of his matchless person. What wonder that the gentle girl, all unskilled as she was in the ways of the world, should receive his frequent visits with pleasure; and when her kind father intimated to ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson

... humorists, and in popularity he is a close rival of O. Henry. His "Ruggles of Red Gap," published at the beginning of the war, achieved a distinct success in England, while the raciness and vivacity of "Ma Pettengill" have furthered the author's reputation as an inimitable delineator of Western comedy. An English edition of this author's works is in course of preparation, of which the above ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock

... tombs. And though the fellaheen very rightly rejoice, there are some unpractical sentimentalists who form a company about her, and make their plaint with hers—their plaint for the peace that is gone, for the lost calm, the departed poetry, that once hung, like a delicious, like an inimitable, atmosphere, about the palms of the ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... things away! How dare you bring It inside the house?" By "It" I knew she meant the wild natural world. Obediently I took the flowers out and flung them over the fence. I knew that Kathleen Somers was capable of getting far more pleasure from their inimitable hue than I; but even that inimitable hue was poisoned for her because it came from the world that was torturing her—the world that beat upon her windows, so that she turned her back to the day; that stormed ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... understood, your Excellency," said Mudara, with the inimitable accent of respect. "Let good be done and let evil be avoided, is the sum total of the Government's desires. But whenever I can see clearly, I shall know how to act. When right and truth are plain, time and experience are ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... the broadest basis, they were, with the most perfect consideration, each other's devoted, and most obedient humble servants. Candour, however, obliges us to confess, that though the deference on the part of the gentleman was the most unqualified and praiseworthy, the lady was superior in her inimitable air of frank cordiality. The volto sciolto was in her favour, the pensieri stretti in his. Any one but an ambassador would have been deceived by the husband; any one but a woman would have ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... he can hear Nature breathing deeply and freely; even as she takes her rest she turns and smiles"? or this, "A faint sound, more like a moving coolness than a stream of air"? And at the end of the chapter which describes his "night under the pines," he speaks of the "tapestries" and "the inimitable ceiling" and "the view which I command from the windows." In this one chapter are personification, simile, metaphor,—all comparisons, and doing what could hardly be done without them. Common, distinct, ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... With inimitable ease, the beautiful woman mentioned a very considerable sum. The skeptical man got up to give a few orders, and a short time afterwards the money was ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... read the words three times before he put down the paper. The words were: "I die by my own hand; yet I die murdered!" They were in the quite inimitable, not to say illegible, ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... Berkeley answered with a smile. 'How do you think it runs now?' and he hummed over a few lines of his own words, set with a quaint lilt to his own inimitable ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... the young girl changes tune and song, now pouring forth one of those inimitable lays for which the language of Cervantes ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... those novels to express the idea, or even the business, of the moment. On matters of the street or of the household they would use the very language of Mrs. Elton and Mrs. Bennet, Mr. Woodhouse, Mr. Collins, and John Thorpe, and the other inimitable actors on Jane Austen's unpretending stage: while they would debate the love affairs and the social relations of their own circle in a series of quotations from Sir Charles ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... first two Acts, then; for Miss LOTTIE VENNE'S voice; above all, for Mr. A. W. BASKCOMB'S face, My Aunt is worth while. As Aubrey Braxton Mr. BASKCOMB—the never-to-be-forgotten Slightly of so many Christmasses—goes through all the many troubles of a hero of farce with his own inimitable air of hopeless resignation. I hope that his efforts will not be unrewarded, and that the management will find that, without rivalling the success of that other aunt, Charley's, they will yet for some time be able to play ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various

... said Percival with his inimitable sang-froid. "In the very nick of time, here she comes. Mademoiselle, ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... mountain, lies just within the southern boundary. Beyond it the road follows the Nisqually and Paradise valleys, under glorious groves of pine, cedar, and hemlock, along ravines of striking beauty, past waterfalls and the snout of the Nisqually Glacier, finally to inimitable Paradise Park, its inn, its hotel camp, and its public camping-grounds. Other centres of wilderness life have been since established, and the marvellous north side of the park will be opened by the construction of a northwesterly highway up the valley of ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... the name of this king than of any other who ruled in Egypt, and there are few remains of any city in that country where it is not met with. To him we are indebted alike for the rock temples of Nubia, and the inimitable obelisks of Luxor. He raised that splendid structure on the western side of Thebes, supported by colossal statues, which is foolishly styled the Memnonion; he made great additions to Karnak; he built the temple of Osiris at Abydus; ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... whose densely packed meetings commanded the ablest speakers of the country. John Van Buren, fully aroused to the seditious trend of peace advocates, evidenced again the power that made him famous in 1848. In his inimitable style, with admirable temper and freshness, he poured his scathing sarcasm upon the authors of disloyal sentiments, until listeners shouted with delight. The Tribune, forgetful of his flippant work in the preceding year, accorded him the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... in her humorous and inimitable way on The Authority of Women to Preach the Gospel of Christ in Public Places. Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery (Penn.) under the title What's in a Name? told of the efforts that were being made by the conservative women of Philadelphia to reform municipal ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... to his collateral posterity as trophies won from the depths of nescience; but his work, designed by his own genius, executed by his own hand, tracery and all, and every single stone signalized by his own private mark, indelible, characteristic, and inimitable—his work is the only record of his name. How deeply are its foundations rooted in space, and how lasting its materials ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... that I am very charming," said Miss Ellen Terry, "a perfectly delightful creature, a Queen of Hearts, a regular witch!" she added thoughtfully, at the same time projecting a pip of the orange she was chewing, with inimitable grace ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... his hands). Masterly! Inimitable! You play your part to admiration! First you lure the credulous fool into the slough, and then chuckle at the success of your malice, and cry "Woe be to you sinner!" (Laughing and clenching his ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... the point of view I speak of that would be fatal; I should kill the goose that supplies me with the material of my inimitable omelettes. I use that animal as the symbol of my insane illusions. What I mean is that I shall have the thrill of seeing what a young lady does who ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... There is the "grass" but not the "splendour"—the "flower" but not the "glory." In depicting character, it is very different. His likenesses of men and women, so far as manners, external features, and the contrasts produced by the accidents of circumstances and the mutation of affairs, are inimitable. His power of complimenting is superior even to that of Louis XIV. He picks out the one best quality in a man, sets it in gold, and presents it as if he were conferring instead ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... here. But something unexpected happened: what was begun as burlesque, almost horse-play, began to pass from the key of shallow, lively satire, broadening and deepening into a finer tone of truth. In a few chapters, by the time the writer had got such an inimitable personage as Parson Adams before the reader, it was seen that the book was to be more than a jeu d'esprit: rather, the work of a master of characterization. In short, Joseph Andrews started out ostensibly to poke good-natured ridicule ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... With this inimitable sketch, we take leave of the Khan for the present, shortly to return to his ideas of men and manners ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... intrusive brilliancy. It tones down scarlet and pink, blue and yellow, and gives them an indescribable charm, suggesting all kinds of pleasant things—the Cachuca and castanets, and the mantilla worn with such inimitable grace and coquetry by the Spanish ladies. Black and white is also a pleasing combination. White has generally the opposite effect of black. It adds to the brilliancy of the colours, and smartens rather than subdues. Many of ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge

... Telemachus. It treats of the conduct and sufferings of Ulysses, the father of Telemachus. The picture which it exhibits is that of a brave man struggling with adversity; by a wise use of events, and with an inimitable presence of mind under difficulties, forcing out a way for himself through the severest trials to which human life can be exposed; with enemies natural and preternatural surrounding him on all sides. The agents ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... compared with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime should be merely the work of man? The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in the Gospel, the marks of whose truths are so striking and inimitable that the inventor would be a more ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... religion. The bishops received back some of the converts, and a jubilee established among them completed their reconversion. The Hon. Mr. Noel and Captain Gordon posted to Cavan, with a challenge to discussion for their lordships; of course, their challenge was not accepted. Thomas Moore's inimitable satire was the most ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... stir throughout the crowd as, with a movement of inimitable grace, Mrs. LaGrange stepped forward, darting a swift glance of such venomous hatred towards Scott, as he again seated himself beside Miss Carleton, that the latter, with a woman's quick intuition, instantly grasped the situation and watched the proceedings ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour

... the wisdom literature, and especially in the book of Proverbs, he found many of those practical truths which he applied to life with new authority and power. From the same storehouse of crystallized experience he derived certain of those figures which he expanded into his inimitable parables; he adopted also, and put to new use, the effective gnomic form of teaching of the wisdom school. As in the mouth of his herald, John the Baptist, the great moral and spiritual truths, first proclaimed by the ancient prophets, live ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent

... other work, his essay in foreign history, the Life of King Hacon of Norway. The Hkonar Saga, as compared with Sturlunga, is thin, grey, and abstract. It is a masterly book in its own kind; fluent and clear, and written in the inimitable Icelandic prose. The story is parallel to the history of Iceland, contemporary with Sturlunga. It tells of the agonies of Norway, a confusion no less violent and cruel than the anarchy of Iceland in the same sixty years; while the Norwegian history has the advantage that it ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... tastes, dispositions, frames of mind from which his various characters act, and which, at bottom, really make them the characters, good or bad, which they are. See the principles which Bunyan has with such inimitable felicity embodied and exhibited in their names, the principles within them from which they have acted till they have become a habit and then a character, that character which they themselves are and will remain. See ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... in the morning paper; and a big town house with myriad lights blinking through the fog outside, where shivering wretches watch the carriages drive up to my door. For twenty—no thirty years—I might be the one inimitable and wholly adorable being, clothed with rare garments, blazing with jewels, confidant of statesmen, maker of the men who make history. History! ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... not very comfortably.' Byron is quite right in his assertion that, if he had taken this striking description of Constance as a model for his Parisina, he would have been attempting 'to imitate that which is inimitable.' See ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... the antique can hold you long at Brandon. From out some drawer or chest or closet, another treasure will appear and lure you away with another story of the long ago. With the inimitable sheen of old silver still in our eyes, our ears caught the crackle of ancient parchment; and we turned to the fascinations of venerable records and dingy red seals and queer blue tax stamps. The papers were delightfully quaint and yellow and ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... her flying-machine in the bird, which is nearly a thousand times as heavy as the air its bulk displaces, and only those who have tried to rival it know how inimitable her work is, for the "way of a bird in the air" remains as wonderful to us as it was to Solomon, and the sight of the bird has constantly held this wonder before men's minds, and kept the flame of hope from utter extinction, in spite of long disappointment. I well remember ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson

... Beatrix at first was quite bit (as the phrase of that day was) and did not "smoke" the authorship of the story: indeed Esmond had tried to imitate as well as he could Mr. Steele's manner (as for the other author of the Spectator, his prose style I think is altogether inimitable); and Dick, who was the idlest and best-natured of men, would have let the piece pass into his journal and go to posterity as one of his own lucubrations, but that Esmond did not care to have a lady's name whom he loved sent forth to the world in a light so ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... simply a poet, facile in every form of measure from Spenser to Campbell. No remarkable prose writings appeared in England at all, at that time, until Sir Walter Scott's novels were written, and until Macaulay, Carlyle, and Lamb wrote their inimitable essays. Nothing is more heavy and unartistic than Moore's "Life of Byron;" there is hardly a brilliant paragraph in it,—and yet Moore is one of the most musical and melodious of all the English poets. Milton, indeed, was equally great in prose and verse, but very few men ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... Florine and Blondet. He gave them an inimitable sketch of Gigonnet, his fireplace without fire, his shabby wall-paper, his stairway, his asthmatic bell, his aged straw mattress, his den without warmth, like his eye. He made them laugh about this new uncle; they neither troubled themselves ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac

... as she spoke more earnestly, "linger no longer, carry out the resolution which you have already broken repeatedly, and you will never regret so wise an action." Thus did Miss Church-Member urge upon him a course which, in her inimitable missionary spirit, she made really attractive to him. Although he appreciated her genuine earnestness, yet he could not be induced ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris

... models set before you in this institution, and in the others established throughout the kingdom for the teaching of design, there are, I suppose, none in their kind more admirable than the decorated works of India. They are, indeed, in all materials capable of colour, wool, marble, or metal, almost inimitable in their delicate application of divided hue, and fine arrangement of fantastic line. Nor is this power of theirs exerted by the people rarely, or without enjoyment; the love of subtle design seems universal in the race, and is developed in every implement that they shape, and every building that ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... boisterous and extravagant than ever; and he danced and capered, with despair in his heart; and the audience yelled, and shouted 'bravo, bravissimo!' Pulcinella was actually called before the curtain. He was pronounced inimitable. ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... friends into the wide-verandahed house, sat down with them in the cool trellised room, where the wine shone on the lamp-lighted tablecloth; tasted of their exotic food—the raw fish, the bread-fruit, the cooked bananas, the roast pig served with the inimitable miti, and that king of delicacies, palm-tree salad; seen and heard by fits and starts, now peering round the corner of the door, now railing within against invisible assistants, a certain comely young native lady in a sacque, who seemed too modest to be a member ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... king thought so highly of this great work, its author was bowed down by poverty and infirmities, and nothing was done for him by the king or his courtiers. The last glimpse of the life of Cervantes I have space for, is from his own inimitable pen, and is taken from the preface to the "Labors of Persiles and Sigismunda," which was published by the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... Christian era?" We prefer to call this a prodigy rather than a miracle,—a distinction more verbal than real; and we fancy we have explained it when we say that such arithmetical power was a peculiar endowment of his mental life. Now all of the inexplicable, inimitable reality that at any time has to be left by the baffled intellect as an unsolved wonder under the name of miracle is just that,—the natural product of an extraordinary endowment of life. More of its marvellous capability is latent ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton

... Skag followed her among the people going back to the village. Once she whirled with an inimitable movement, flinging her fingers toward Skag, in a gesture that seemed to focus the eyes of the whole world upon him. (And in that instant, the American men could not have spoken a word—for the richness ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... I was seized with certain misgivings and flutterings which a clownish education may account for. I so far conquered my timidity, however, as to snatch a look at her. I was not born to execute her portrait. Perhaps the turban that wreathed her head, the brilliant texture and inimitable folds of her drapery, and nymphlike port, more than the essential attributes of her person, gave splendour to the celestial vision. Perhaps it was her snowy hues, and the cast rather than the position of her features, that were so prolific of enchantment; ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... portrait. I thought it would be impossible to induce the ladies to take Paris on their way; there I should have the choice between the accuracy and objectivism of Bonnat, the bold breadth of Carolus Duran, and the inimitable sweetness of Chaplin. Shutting my eyes, I imagined how each of them would acquit himself of the task, and I was pleased with the fancy. But I saw it was impracticable; I foresaw that my aunt would insist upon a Polish painter. I should have no objection to that, ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... out in her inimitable way for a broad interpretation of the visionary's very earthly mother; indeed once or twice she almost laid herself out of the picture; but she still remained irresistible. As a pair of light-hearted young lovers Miss DOROTHY TETLEY and Mr. JOHN WILLIAMS played really well in parts that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various

... ingenious Chupprassee; for is he not the portal through which the humble petitioner may have access to the Collector, whose smile is prosperity and his frown destruction? And must not the hinges of the portal be oiled that they may open smoothly? Therefore, the inimitable Sir Ali Baba made a point of dismissing a Chupprassee whenever he began to grow fat, and he was wise, but in applying the rule you must have regard to the man's rank. The belt of an ordinary peon may range from twenty ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... prepare the steel or how to make the needle. He adds that some of the earliest travelers in Africa found a tribe in the interior who gave them better razors than the explorers had. Oriental steel has been celebrated for ages as an inimitable product. It is certainly true that by the simple processes of semi-barbarism the finest tool-steel has been manufactured, perhaps from the days of Tubal Cain downward. The keenness of edge, the temper whose secret is now unknown, the marvelous elasticity ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele

... &c 33; good; bully [Slang], crackajack [Slang], giltedged; superfine, superexcellent^; of the first water; first-rate, first-class; high- wrought, exquisite, very best, crack, prime, tiptop, capital, cardinal; standard &c (perfect) 650; inimitable. admirable, estimable; praiseworthy &c (approve) 931; pleasing &c 829; couleur de rose [Fr.], precious, of great price; costly &c (dear) 814; worth its weight in gold, worth a Jew's eye; priceless, invaluable, inestimable, precious as the apple ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... The flora continues quite European. I have some of singular interest. Compositae, Cruciferae, and Gramineae form the bulk of the vegetation. All fish are very different from those below the Ghats. I have five or six species of Cyprinidae. One very inimitable fuscous loach. There are few birds, and fewer quadrupeds; in fact the country is at a minimum in ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... led one to expect, and the almost walnut brown of the general colour scheme is unique in Duerer's work. However, if some such transmogrification has been effected, it is marvellous that it should have obliterated so little of the inimitable handiwork of the master. Thausing considered the date (1500), monogram and inscription on the back to be forgeries, and it certainly looks as if it ought to come nearer to the portrait in the Feast of the Rose Garlands (1506) than to that at Madrid (1498). A genuine scalloped tablet is faintly ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... was to his later works what the Marriage of the Virgin is to the great mass of Raphael's, the first step of a gifted artist taken with the inimitable grace, the eagerness, and delightful overflowingness of a child, whose strength is concealed under the pink-and-white flesh full of dimples which seem to echo to a mother's laughter. Prince Eugene ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... exactly as admirable when they patted me on the back as when they kicked me in the shins. Whenever since I've happened to have a glimpse of them they were still blazing away—still missing it, I mean, deliciously. YOU miss it, my dear fellow, with inimitable assurance; the fact of your being awfully clever and your article's being awfully nice doesn't make a hair's breadth of difference. It's quite with you rising young men," Vereker laughed, "that I feel most what a ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James

... transferred the assembly to another court-house from which the Capitol could not be seen at all and so a remembrance spring up of his trophies. Then they kill him. But on the other hand, even so, through the whole period the populace of Rome wore black, recompensing the graces of his valor and the inimitable manner of his distinguished behavior. (Tzetzes, Hist. 3, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio

... think, every book you ever wrote, and do not let any production of yours escape me; and I have a little pile of framed copies of your inimitable "My Own" to diffuse among people at Christmas; and all these your writings make me wonder and shed metaphorical tears to think that you are such a heretic about reason in animals. But even Homer nods; and it is said Roosevelt has moments of silence. ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... Squandercounsel, who is my particular friend, was pleased to rally me in his inimitable way upon it next day. I shall never forget a sensible thing he said on the occasion—speaking of absence of mind, my ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... got over its disappointment in his personal appearance and antecedents. It knew him and revered him as the master-mind of the ages; and it loved him for himself, for his quizzical short-sighted eyes and the inimitable way in which he screwed up his face when he laughed; it loved him for his simplicity and comradeship and warm humanness, and for his fondness for salted pecans and his aversion to cats. And to-day, in the wonder-city ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... than a book, If a chap has eyes to see; For, no matter where I look, Stories, stories jump at me. Moving tales my pen might write; Poems plain on every face; Monologues you could recite With inimitable grace. ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... poets, and ranks him first for facility. He did not direct his genius by a sound judgment, and has the unenviable fame of having been the first to depart from the canons of correct Greek taste.] the inimitable felicity and taste of Horace, the gentleness and high spirit of Virgil, and the vehement declamation of Juvenal, but, had the verses of Lucretius perished, we should never have known that it could give utterance to the grandest conceptions with all that sustained ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman

... chorus of applause, and insult to the circle of applauders, was launched with all the piquance of inimitable canteen-slang and camp-assurance, from a speaker who had perched astride on a broken fragment of wall, with her barrel of wine set up on end on the stones in front of her, and her six soldiers, her gros bebees, as she was given maternally to calling them, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... wrote his History of British Birds in 1797, presents in one of his inimitable "tailpiece" wood-cuts a prevision of the aeroplane. The picture shows the airman seated in a winged car, guiding with reins thirteen harnessed herons as the motive power, and mounting upwards, apparently very near the ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... in his company but another Hindustani, as little versed as himself in the ways and speech of Franguestan. In this "considerable unhandsome fix," as it would be called on the other side of the Atlantic, the perplexities of the khan are related with such inimitable naivete and good-humour, that we cannot do better than give the account of them in his own words. "As I could neither ask for any thing, nor answer any question put to me, I passed the whole night without a morsel of food ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... true that Best Society is comparatively rich; it is true that the hostess of great wealth, who constantly and lavishly entertains, will shine, at least to the readers of the press, more brilliantly than her less affluent sister. Yet the latter, through her quality of birth, her poise, her inimitable distinction, is often the jewel of deeper water in the ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... dressed in a suit of black, his hair powdered and tied in a black queue behind, with a very elegant dress-sword, which he wore with inimitable grace. Mrs. Washington often, but not always, dined with the company, sat at the head of the table, and if, as was occasionally the case, there were other ladies present, they sat each side of her. The private secretary sat at the foot of the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... hearth of Gadshill Place were drawn, by the fame of the "Inimitable Boz", a long succession of brilliant men and women, mostly of the Anglo-Saxon race, whether English or American; and if not in the throngs for which at Abbotsford open house was kept, yet with a frequency which would have made literary work almost impossible for the host ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin

... sublime spectacle of the close of day. The summits of the Sabine hills appeared of lapis lazuli and pale gold, while their bases and sides were bathed in vapors of violet or purple. Sometimes lovely clouds, like fairy cars, borne along by the evening wind with inimitable grace, recall the mythological tales of the descent of the deities of Olympus. Sometimes old Rome seems to have spread all over the west the purple of her consuls and her Caesars, beneath the last steps of the god of day. This rich decoration does not vanish so quickly as in our ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... nothing that might excite a blush in the cheek of the lovely Countess, to whom I was indebted for the honour and delight I on that occasion experienced. Imprimis:—I know you are intimate with that inimitable child of whim, Charles Mathews. He is in high estimation with royalty, I assure you; and annually receives the King's command to deliver a selection from his popular entertainments before him—an amusement ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... which they called alteres. Those he took up from the ground, in each hand one, then lifted them up over his head, and held them so without stirring three quarters of an hour and more, which was an inimitable force. He fought at barriers with the stoutest and most vigorous champions; and when it came to the cope, he stood so sturdily on his feet that he abandoned himself unto the strongest, in case they could remove him from his place, as Milo was ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... spirit into his men, as put them instantly upon new designs. He inspired them with the belief that the sole execution of his orders would be a certain means of obtaining great riches, which so influenced their minds, that with inimitable courage they all resolved to follow him, as did also a certain pirate of Campechy, on this occasion joined with Captain Morgan, to seek new fortunes under his conduct. Thus Captain Morgan in a few days gathered a fleet of nine sail, either ships or great boats, ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... and costly dresses, though, as he quietly remarked to Agias, the gifts meant no more of sacrifice to him than an obol to a rich spendthrift. He filled her ears with music all day long; he entertained her with inimitable narrations of his own adventurous voyages and battles. And only dimly could Cornelia realize that the gems she wore in her hair, her silken dress, nay, almost everything she touched, had come from earlier owners ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... which is apparent in Aristotle and Hippocrates, although the form of them is different. But the writings of Plato, unlike the writings of Aristotle, seem never to have been confused with the writings of his disciples: this was probably due to their definite form, and to their inimitable excellence. The three dialogues which we have offered in the Appendix to the criticism of the reader may be partly spurious and partly genuine; they may be altogether spurious;—that is an alternative which ...
— Menexenus • Plato

... the Alps have swallowed up all the rest." The truth was, she had been really robbed of her baggage in her journey, and the merchandize on which she now depended, was her talent at dancing. Nor was she deceived, for her inimitable performance, joined to the vivacity with which she bore her misfortunes, in the spirit of the old Philosopher, who valued himself upon carrying his all about him, made her many friends, whose generous compassion soon enabled her to appear in her ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini

... that time profuse of legendary lore, he inserted it in the shape of a note to Waverley, the first of his romantic offences. Had he then known, as he now does, the value of such a story, it is likely that, as directed in the inimitable receipt for making an epic poem, preserved in the Guardian, he would have kept ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... thus helps to form the moral types which are indispensable to the progress of civilisation and which may serve others as models. Poets such as Corneille, for example, create heroes superior to the majority of men, and possibly inimitable; but they thereby help greatly to stimulate our efforts. The example of heroes must always be set before a people in order to ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... abundance of fine things, and such as do honor to the noble writers, but I am under the indispensable necessity of giving the palm to my lord Dorset; and when I have read it, I am convinced your lordships will all be satisfied with my judgment—these are the inimitable words: ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... Addison's hands it fulfilled to perfection the needs of the essay style. He avoids verbiage and excessive adornment, he is content to tell what he sees or knows or thinks as simply as possible (and even with a tendency towards the conversational), and he has an inimitable feeling for just the right word, just the most elegantly turned phrase and period. Do not imagine this sort of thing is the result of a mere gift for style: true, it could not happen without that, but neither can it happen without ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others

... descent in a direct line from one of the unbending old Scotch Covenanters of 1638, and it had always been a source of vague bewilderment to Eliza that a race sprang from so staunchly Puritan a stock should have been juggled by that inimitable trickster, Fate, into allying itself with a family in whose veins ran the hot French blood of ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... regulations and defying discipline were as original as they were persevering, and could the third-story room of the building occupied by the subject of this sketch be given tongue, it would tell a tale of frolic and drollery that would only find parallel in the inimitable pages of Marryatt. Convenient apparatus for the stewing or roasting of oysters, poaching of eggs, or the mixing of refreshing drinks, could be readily stowed away from the inspecting officer, or a roast goose or turkey be smuggled by a trusty darkey ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various

... it to write in a particular style, in a given lucid style, a given figurative style, or a given dignified style? Nay, it is only very mediocre writers who could obey such precepts. Every supreme writer has his own style, inalienable and inimitable, which is as much a part of him as his own soul, the look in his eyes, or his tones of voice. Bethink yourselves of Carlyle, how his abrupt, crabbed, but withal sinewy and picturesque, prose compares with the pure crystalline ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... innovations of Masolino and Masaccio, the theory of perspective of Paolo Uccello, the varied works of Fabriano, Antonello da Messina, the Lippi, Botticelli, Ghirlandajo, the Bellini, and their contemporaries, culminated in the inimitable painting of the Cinquecento—in works still unsurpassed, ever challenging artists of later centuries to the task of ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... memory is confined to two brief views, both before he had achieved his fame. One was hearing him tell a story with his inimitable drawl, as he stood smoking in front of a Montgomery Street cigar-store, and the other when on his return from a voyage to the Hawaiian Islands he delivered his famous lecture at the Academy of Music. It was ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... delivering the whole order in good condition; while the Slav was sometimes almost voiceless, sometimes inspired. She put you off with a hope, a promise, time after time. But she was quite as likely to put you off with a revelation,—with an interpretation that was inimitable, unrepeatable. ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... both knew, to the chosen, the inimitable spot of Wentworth: that fugitive curve of the river, where, before hurrying on to glut the brutal industries of South Wentworth and Smedden, it simulated for a few hundred yards the leisurely pace of an ancient university stream, with willows ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... gave it an appearance far superior to a marble building and one might survey it with feelings somewhat akin to those produced by the contemplation of a Grecian temple reared by Phidias; both are triumphs of art, inimitable in ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... Benedetta, by behaving amiably towards her protege. Idle as he was, too, it seemed to him a pleasant occupation to initiate that young priest, who was said to be so intelligent, into what he deemed the inimitable side, the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... whom she sometimes obeys. If your meeting takes place at a ball or an evening party, you will gather the honey, natural or affected of her insinuating voice; her empty words will enchant you, and she will know how to give them the value of thought by her inimitable bearing." ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac

... was sure to mean that some old soldier, officer or otherwise, had turned up, who had served with him in some part of the world, long before Pauline was born. Aunt Cecilia welcomed them all in her inimitable manner, which made each one feel that he was the one and most particularly honored guest. For all her apparent absent-mindedness, she knew exactly who belonged to Mrs. ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss

... Horace's inimitable ode to this god, will see that Bacchus meant no more than the improvement of the world by tillage, and the culture of ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway

... conflagration. The boy touched one of the incinerated little ones to feel if it were alive; burnt his fingers and applied them to his mouth. His father returned and did the same, and thus roast sucking-pig became a new dish. Lamb plays with his subject with an inimitable mock earnestness. ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold

... to say, any of it;" he sighed angrily. "It's just what I meant not to say—confound it! You've done gloriously; you've played the thing through to perfection; you've made an inimitable success of it; but Wallencamp doesn't offer scope wide enough for your powers. I offer you a field hitherto untilled, left to the wandering winds and the birds of the air, extensive enough in its forlorn iniquity, I assure ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... separation from her lord, and for nearly half an hour her lovely face maintained its expression of pathetic and unconquerable woe; but Willett had seated himself at the piano, and he and Sanders and Tommy Dot began singing with inimitable drollery some of the popular melodies of the day, and presently, "to save her life," as she declared, Almira could not resist joining in the laughter and applause, and then Willett began telling of the new step they were dancing in ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... opportunity to admire them and study their habits from life. Would that some of our young explorers could be induced to turn from the ice-fields of the Poles, and the death-swamps of the Tropics, to seek these inimitable birds in the mountains and woods of the Papuan Islands—not to shoot for our museum shelves, but to study their manners and customs, and above all to introduce them into American aviaries, that a new and absorbing chapter might be added to our Natural Histories, and the Bird of Paradise ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller

... receding line of mountains; elsewhere infinite space and blazing light. Our "tonga," its pair of wheels and its white awning rolling and jolting behind two good horses, passes long lines of bullock-carts. Indians, walking beside them with their inimitable gait, make exquisite gestures of abjection to the clumsy white Sahibs huddled uncomfortably on the back seat. Their robes of vivid colour, always harmoniously blent, leave bare the slender brown legs and ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... doubt, however, that the subtlety and depth of metaphysical genius which his work betrays, its rare display of rigorous and consistent reasonings, and the inimitable precision and beauty of its style on almost every page, must secure for it a distinguished place in the history of ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie

... conceal his thoughts and emotions, not only by the expression of his features but by direct misstatements of his tongue, and in all things to present to the obedient Flemings as elaborate a reproduction of his great prototype as copy can ever recall inimitable original. Old men in the Netherlands; who remembered in how short a time Philip had succeeded, by the baleful effect of his personal presence, in lighting up a hatred which not the previous twenty years of his father's burnings, hangings, and butcherings in those ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... and inimitable (at least I hope so) Warburton! This note of thine, if but one in five millions, would be half ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... Its repetition evidently shows that the Psalmist wishes to run a parallel between God's dealings in two regions. The same beneficence works in both. Here is the true extension of natural law to the spiritual world. It is the same teaching to which our Lord has given immortal and inimitable utterance, when He says, 'Your heavenly Father feedeth them.' And so we are entitled to look on all the wonders of creation, and to find in them buttresses which may support the edifice of our faith, and to believe that wherever there is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... render M. Herbault the justice to say, that he evinced no ordinary tact in suggesting certain alterations in his chapeaux and caps, in order to suit my face; and, aided by the inimitable good taste of the Duchesse, who passes for an oracle in affaires de modes a Paris, a selection was made that enabled me to leave M. Herbault's, looking a little more like ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... of inimitable kindness to me," said I, "and I know how to value it; but there's more friendship than honesty in ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... we preach it ourselves?" said Desire, with inimitable unwittingness. She was so utterly and wholly in the vision, that she left her present self standing there on the rock with Christopher Kirkbright, and never even thought of a reason why to blush ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... and to this day the true Spaniard nourishes the lofty and romantic qualities which, combined with a tone of sentiment and gravity and nobility of conversation, embellishes the legitimate grandee. Sismondi de Sismondi says the style of "Don Quixote" is inimitable. Montesquieu says: "It is written to prove all others useless." To some it is an allegory, to some a tragedy, to some a parable, and to others a satire. As a satirist we think him unrivalled, and this spirit found a choice opportunity for vent when ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... had an eye for a pretty face, or rather for every pretty face. Indeed, he had nothing else to do, except clean his spurs and ride to the market town. So, since the author of Waverley began to write his inimitable fictions, and his mother to divide her time between works of devotion and the adventures of Ivanhoe and Nigel, Agnew Greatorix had made many pilgrimages to Craig Ronald. Here the advent of the captain was much talked ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... in blank verse awful and shocking in its more than natural deformity—but bright quips and cranks fresh from the back-yard of the slum where the linen is drying, or the "pub" where the unfortunate wife has just received a black eye that will last her a week. That inimitable artist, Bessie Bellwood, whose native wit is so curiously accentuated that it is sublimated, that it is no longer repellent vulgarity but art, choice and rare—see, here she comes with "What cheer, Rea! Rea's on the job." The sketch is slight, but is welcome and refreshing after the ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... Euripides wept when he heard a tragedy of Sophocles recited at the Isthmian games; he mourned, but his own subsequent greatness proved without reason, the apparent impossibility of rivalling his inimitable predecessor. Milton, blind and poor, found a solace for all the crosses of life in listening, in old age, to the verses of Euripides. Napoleon, at St Helena, forgot the empire of the world, on hearing, in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... and the trail-rope attached to his horse's neck hanging coiled in front. He carried a double-barreled smooth-bore, while I boasted a rifle of some fifteen pounds' weight. At that time our attire, though far from elegant, bore some marks of civilization, and offered a very favorable contrast to the inimitable shabbiness of our appearance on the return journey. A red flannel shirt, belted around the waist like a frock, then constituted our upper garment; moccasins had supplanted our failing boots; and the remaining essential portion of our attire consisted of an extraordinary article, manufactured ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... these touching exhortations: she was a woman sorrowfully tried. Her son had been beheaded in 1372, in punishment for heinous sin; and now her only daughter had died. "For the which thing," writes Catherine, with one of her own inimitable phrases, "I am deeply content, ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... afterwards to Wharncliffe as they walked away from the door together, 'she was inimitable to-night; she has more roles than Desforets!' Sir John and his ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... case. He taunted him, bewildered him, scolded him, laughed at him, as he only could do; and when at last the unfortunate man came out with some observation about "false facts," O'Connell threw the whole court into a roar of laughter by directing attention to the bull, and by his inimitable imitation of his English accent. The jury could not agree, and the men were acquitted. Another trial came on next day, and it was then discovered that one of the approvers differed in most important matters from his statements on ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... traveler a rough time of it were he to suggest that they are any but pure Chinese. To the ethnological student, it is obvious that so soon as the Chinese have tyrannized sufficiently and in their own inimitable way preyed upon these feudal landlords enough to warrant their lands being confiscated, reducing a tribe to a condition in which, far removed from districts where co-tribesmen live, they have no status, the aboriginals throw ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... weakness, which rendered such design unprogressive. Perfect in its peculiar manner, and exulting in the faultless practice of a narrow skill, it remained century after century incapable alike of inner growth, or foreign instruction; inimitable, yet incorrigible; marvellous, yet despicable, to its death. Despicable, I mean, only in the limitation of its capacity, not in its quality or nature. If you make a Christian of a lamb or a squirrel—what can you expect of the lamb but jumping—what of ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin

... she had been ill, and that she had—at last—something to show him. He smiled at the childlike secrecy of the announcement. She had something to show him. Her illness, then, had not impaired her gift, her charming, inimitable gift. ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... me that here, in his own inimitable way, Mr. Wells (though I think quite unconsciously) sums up the past labour-history of woman and man. His statement has very far-reaching considerations. It forces us to accept the active utility of primitive woman in the community—a utility more developed and practical than that of man. This was ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... nothing in it to answer their purpose. It is but an ordinary production in their estimation. They pass on through Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. How stale, how dull, how uninteresting these gospels, they are led to exclaim. They see but little beauty in the God-like teaching; or the inimitable example of Christ. His last agonies, his death on the cross is insufficient to move their callous hearts. But on they pass through the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistle to the Romans; but, oh! stop, they have found it at last? Reader, what do you suppose that they have found? What were they ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward

... advances to her table with his inimitable insolence, and taking the cigar from his mouth, bends his stare on her, and says: "Charmed to see you lookin' so well! Will you have supper with me here to-morrow night?" Startled out of her reverie, CLARE looks up. She sees those eyes, she sees beyond him the eyes of his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... was revoked by a new revelation. A great deal of it is so absurd, trifling, and full of tautology that it requires no little patience to read much of it at a time. Notwithstanding, the Koran is cried up by the Mussulmans as inimitable; and in the seventeenth chapter of the Koran Mahomet is commanded to say, "Verily if men and genii were purposely assembled, that they might produce anything like the Koran, they could not produce anything like unto it, though they assisted ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... assure you, Sir, were you to behold her, you would be in the same Condition; for as her Speech is Musick, her Form is Angelick. But I find I grow irregular while I am talking of her; but indeed it would be Stupidity to be unconcerned at such Perfection. Oh the excellent Creature, she is as inimitable to all Women, as she is ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele



Words linked to "Inimitable" :   irreproducible, unreproducible



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