"Pleasurable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not heard for so long, had an even more pleasurable and exhilarating effect on Rostov than the previous sounds of firing. Drawing himself up, he viewed the field of battle opening out before him from the hill, and with his whole soul followed the movement of the Uhlans. They swooped down close to the French dragoons, something ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... through a room and a passage to the kitchen. They shared a pleasurable sense of adventure and secrecy. At the kitchen door she paused and spoke to an old woman chopping ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... kneeling or standing upon the white sand in the bright sunshine, their sinewy hands that should have been ingrained red clasped over their knees, or, arms akimbo, resting upon their hips, on their scoundrel faces a broad smile, and in their eyes that had looked on nameless horrors a pleasurable expectation as of spectators in a playhouse awaiting ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... temptation. But Manuel was too wily to yield to a temptation merely because it was pleasurable. As long as the boy did not know that he had been found out, he would live in a Fool's Paradise of his own cleverness. Believing himself unsuspected, he would carry out his plans—whatever they were—the while that Manuel, knowing his secret, could play with him as a cat plays with ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... dance, are occasioned. To this notion he was, no doubt, led from having observed a milder form of St. Vitus' dance, not uncommon in his time, which was accompanied by involuntary laughter, and which bore a resemblance to the hysterical laughter of the moderns, except that it was characterized by more pleasurable sensations, and by an extravagant propensity to dance. There was no howling, screaming, and jumping, as in the severer form; neither was the disposition to dance by any means insuperable. Patients thus affected, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... cheery voice a good deal more pleasurable than the possibilities suggested. Surely that cedar tree could not keep off rain ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... on the physiological problem of the impression produced on the instinctive element in man, and giving rise to a current of painful or pleasurable sensations diametrically opposed to those which the thinking man desires, aims at, and regards as right and wholesome, when he has risen superior to himself by the cultivation of his intellect. He tried to picture to himself the frame of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... Cleo had behaved with perfect sang-froid. If at home she had occasionally allowed her natural excitement to appear, it had been of a pleasurable kind and fully sympathised with by Morgan. In the mere commercial transactions that had relation to the enterprise, she had shown herself as calm and unshakable as a rock, but as soon as the actual fact of her chosen art began to be concerned, she commenced to reveal other sides of her nature that ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... revelations still in his ears; while she herself sat expectant, and resigned. He knew she was expectant and resigned and that she had braced her courage for the worst. With many men, with most men, to do so would have been needful. In the confusion of his rapid summaries and calculations it was a pleasurable thought that she should learn from him, and through him and in him, that it was not so with all. The silence which at first was inadvertent now became deliberate as—while he noted with satisfaction ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... me. But, out of doors the snow and rain swept the roofs, and with a low, rushing sound ran along the gurgling gutters; sometimes a gust of wind forced itself beneath the tiles, which rattled together like castanets, and afterward it was lost in the empty corridor. Then a slight and pleasurable shiver thrilled through my veins: I drew the flaps of my old wadded dressing-gown around me, I pulled my threadbare velvet cap over my eyes, and, letting myself sink deeper into my easy-chair, while my feet basked in the heat and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and the happiness of nations, and while describing the adventures of the son of Ulysses its author strove to establish the true system of state-craft, and his work is imbued with a sense of beauty and refinement which renders it a most pleasurable book to read. But Madame de Maintenon was grievously offended by its success, and by the praise which even Louis bestowed upon it. She easily persuaded him that the work was a carefully executed satire directed against the ministers of the Court, and that even the King himself was not spared. ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... will admit that I have already been frank in my description of the man I am defending; but before I take you up upon this head, I will be franker still, and tell you that perhaps nowhere in the world can a man taste a more pleasurable sense of contrast than when he passes from Damien's "Chinatown" at Kalawao to the beautiful Bishop-Home at Kalaupapa. At this point, in my desire to make all fair for you, I will break my rule and adduce Catholic testimony. Here ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... He had greatly distinguished himself; he had conferred on his rival an essential service; and the whole world rang with his applause. He began rather to like Millbank; we will not say because Millbank was the unintentional cause of his pleasurable sensations. Really it was that the unusual circumstances had prompted him to a more impartial judgment of his rival's character. In this mood, the day after the visit of Buckhurst and Henry Sydney, Coningsby called on Millbank, but finding his medical attendant with him, Coningsby availed ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... was authenticated by an affectionate wink now and then. Miss Carvil had come to look forward rather to these winks. At first they had discomposed her: the poor fellow was mad. Afterwards she had learned to laugh at them: there was no harm in him. Now she was aware of an unacknowledged, pleasurable, incredulous emotion, expressed by a faint blush. He winked not in the least vulgarly; his thin red face with a well-modelled curved nose, had a sort of distinction—the more so that when he talked to her he looked with a steadier and more intelligent glance. ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... point on which he insisted was the right of way through fields or woodlands, and especially beside the sea. With the advent of the motor-car and other swift means of locomotion, the public roads are no longer safe and pleasurable for pedestrians; besides the iniquitous fact that hundreds are kept from enjoying the beauties of nature by the utterly selfish and useless reservations of ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... considerable time. That grief should be willingly endured, though far from a simply pleasing sensation, is not so difficult to be understood. It is the nature of grief to keep its object perpetually in its eye, to present it in its most pleasurable views, to repeat all the circumstances that attend it, even to the last minuteness; to go back to every particular enjoyment, to dwell upon each, and to find a thousand new perfections in all, that were not sufficiently understood before; in grief, the pleasure is ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... absolute unconcern. He studies the phenomena of hurricanes with almost pleasurable interest, while his comrades on the ship abandon hope. When seized with yellow-fever, then known as the Siamese Sickness (mal de Siam), he refuses to stay in bed the prescribed time, and rises to say his mass. He faints at the altar; yet a few days later we hear of him on horseback ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... figuratively speaking; you come in contact with more diversified aspects of life than a person of my limited means can afford to do. The body, you say, is a subtle instrument to be played upon in every variety of manner and rendered above all things as sensitive as possible to pleasurable impressions. In fact, you want to be a kind of Aeolian harp. I admit that this is more than a string of sophisms; you may call it a philosophy of life. But it is not my philosophy. It does not appeal ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... was not beautiful in any strictly defined sense of the word she possessed a certain evasive charm and distinction of appearance that left beholders with a pleasurable sense of satisfaction in that softly rounded girlhood of hers, with all its strongly felt potentialities. Those who knew Anne best felt, without realizing that they felt it, that her greatest attraction was the aura of possibility ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... very contented frame of mind, both as regarded himself and the world at large. Here he was, a strong, healthy young man, with a generous share of this world's goods, and the pleasurable thought that he was engaged to be married to a girl who suited him, and who would, he knew, make him a ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... as if I could see this countenance gradually brightening while I look at it. It gives the impression of a growing intellectual power and moral sense. Donatello's face used to evince little more than a genial, pleasurable sort of vivacity, and capability of enjoyment. But here, a soul is being breathed into him; it is the Faun, but advancing towards ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... practising—sweet angel boys! H'm! H'm! Some of the family will not be present. I am very fond of you, Mr. Karslake, and I think it admirably Christian of you to have waived your—eh—your—eh—that is, now that I look at it more narrowly, let me say, that in the excitement of pleasurable anticipation, I forgot, Karslake, that your presence might occasion remark— [THOMAS responds to his ring.] Thomas! I left, in the hall, a small hand-bag or satchel containing ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... will, means not always or only the anticipation of a pleasure or a pain, but often the desire of the action itself. The action having finally become by association in itself desirable, we may get the habit of willing it (that is, get a purpose) without reference to its being pleasurable. We are then said to have a ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... white-washed in front, and hedged in by a rustic fence, with a little gate opening next the road. This was the dwelling of our schoolmistress, the remembrance of whom will ever be an oasis upon the deserts of memory—for to her I owe some of the most pleasurable moments of my boyhood existence. A more Christian-like spirit, a soul fraught with greater or intenser sympathies, and a mind less selfish in its manifestations, or imbued with more genial influences than hers, never existed within the compass of human being. As a teacher, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... instance, when a frog sees a small object in front of him, that may or may not be an edible insect, the direct visual impression does not directly determine his subsequent action. It revives a number of previous experiences, an image already stored of similar insects and associated with painful or pleasurable gustatory experiences. With these arise an emotional effect of desire or repulsion which, passes into action of ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... reality, is impossible. In the narrow view the lust of the eye and the pride of life may seem beautiful, but in the broad perspective of the inward world they take on ugliness; in the moment they may seem pleasurable, but in the backward reach of memory they take on pain; to assert eternity against the moment, to see life in the whole, to live as if all of life were concentrated in its instant, is the chief labour of the mind, the eye, the heart, the enduring will, ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... cling to the garments of those that work in them. Thus I can distinguish the carpenter from the ironworker, the artist from the mason or the chemist. When a person passes quickly from one place to another I get a scent impression of where he has been—the kitchen, the garden, or the sick-room. I gain pleasurable ideas of freshness and good taste from the odours of soap, toilet water, clean garments, woollen ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... apprehensive. His tingling nerves had defined his spine for him before this pause ended, and then, when the roots of his hair began to crinkle, his grandfather would suddenly bow low over his plate and rumble in his head. It was very curious and weirdly pleasurable, and it lasted one minute. When it ceased the tension relaxed instantly, and every one was friendly ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... years old, an anniversary much too melancholy to think of; and when I reflect how intolerably these forty years have been wasted, how unprofitably spent, how little store laid up for the future, how few the pleasurable recollections of the past, a feeling of pain and humiliation comes across me that makes my cheeks tingle and burn as I write. It is very seldom that I indulge in moralising in this Journal of mine; if anybody ever reads it, what ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... "Report" regarded tobacco from the medicinal point of view only; but it is important to note that he goes on to describe his personal experience of the practice of smoking in words that suggest the pleasurable nature of the experience. He says: "We ourselves during the time we were there used to suck it after their maner, as also since our returne, and have found maine [? manie] rare and wonderful experiments of the vertues thereof: of which the relation woulde require a volume by itselfe: ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... a good estate to his mind, from which he receives rents and revenues of profit and pleasure in kind, according to its extent, and the richness of the soil. Wit is often a meagre substitute for pleasurable sensation; an effusion of spleen and petty spite at the comforts of others, from feeling none in itself. Falstaff's wit is an emanation of a fine constitution; an exuberance of good-humour and good-nature; an overflowing ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... sentiment of recognition was wholly genuine and almost rapturously pleasurable. It is true that in the confusion of our flight I had not been able to give a thought to our friend, who was, unless I am much mistaken, absent from her palace. Nor will I be so absurd as to pretend that I have, for a long while past, felt at all keenly the desire for her company. She has very little ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... filled with the yellows and red-browns, the silvery pinks and mauves of chrysanthemums. The ancient charm, the delicate harmony of the room, in which every piece of furniture, every picture, every ornament, had been chosen with an exactness of taste seldom found in the young, made it more pleasurable to a cultivated eye than the gilded show drawing-rooms into which wealth too commonly crowds a medley of incongruous ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... they talk about the heat," said Philip, as they drove from the station. "Supposing we were here for pleasure, what could be more pleasurable than this?" ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... sets himself to masticate and swallow. With the unaccustomed flavour of gravy or fruit juice there may be seen on his face a look of hesitation or surprise. In the stolid and placid child these manifestations are as a rule but little marked, and pleasurable sensations clearly predominate. With children of more nervous temperament it is clear that sensations of taste are much more acute. Even in earliest infancy, children have a way of proclaiming their nervous inheritance by the repugnance which they show to even trifling changes ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... the works of creation is a gift of our bountiful Creator, for which we are not sufficiently thankful. Look at the changing seasons; how beautifully they vary the same prospect! And the changing clouds of heaven, too; what an infinite and pleasurable variety they afford to us! If the world were all sunshine, we should ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... the Buddhist religion, a state of pleasurable annihilation awarded to the wise, particularly to those wise enough ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... with me. At length, with his assistance, I succeeded and gradually penetrated within the delightful cavity, till I was completely imbedded within it. Of course, the opposition I met with and the extreme tightness of the place, when it was once fairly overcome, only increased the pleasurable sensations I experienced after I had fairly accomplished my entrance. When he found I was completely buried within him and was beginning to proceed with the work of pleasure, he took my hand and placed it on his majestic champion, saying that if I would ...
— Laura Middleton; Her Brother and her Lover • Anonymous
... what was to some extent an unreal atmosphere. His senses were tingling with the excitement of the last few hours—for the first time he knew the full fascination of a woman's intellectual sympathy. He had gone to his task wholly devoid of any pleasurable anticipation. It spoke much for the woman's tact that before he had read half a dozen pages he was not only completely at his ease, but was experiencing a new and very pleasurable sensation. The memory of it was with him now—he had ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... deal of leakage in the "Morvandelle," though a thick kind of flannel had been pressed into the interstices, it was decided to use the wooden parts to make two small boats for the pond, one for Stephen and the other for Richard, the old ones being rotten. There was much pleasurable planning for my husband in the scheme, and also some manual work for rainy weather. He was exceedingly careful and handy in doing joiner's work, and every one in the house applied to him for delicate repairs, and—when ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... with organism. Sensation and Emotion are prominent marks of it. These are either pleasurable or painful; the latter diminish vital motions, the former increase them. This is a product of natural selection. A mis-reading of these facts is the fallacy of Buddhism and other pessimistic systems. Pleasure comes from continuous ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... A warmth of pleasurable relief passed through Donald; but he managed to reply formally, "I am pleased; but I hope that you didn't ease up any because of anything ... ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... it's the same. An' I know that air a true word. An' that's what makes me 'low what he said war true 'bout'n that fiddle; that I ought never ter hev pervented the boy from playin' 'round home an' sech, an' 'twarn't no sin but powerful comfortable an' pleasurable ter set roun' of a cold winter night an' hear him play them slow, sweet, dyin'-away chunes—" She dropped her hands, and gazed with the rapt eyes of remembrance through the window at the sunset clouds which, gathering red and purple and gold on the mountain's ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... a man whose ordinary impassivity was touched with a pleasurable excitement stood on ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... sense that the real life of the place is the river behind these houses; even the leisurely little railway station does not seem of much consequence, though it acts as a feeder of the boats that busily ply here. Quite obviously this is no resort of mere pleasure, and it is all the more pleasurable for that; it has set itself to live sturdily, not troubling to attract the idler and the luxurious. Fowey is not altogether content to repose on its memories, though these are great. Generations of those who laboured on deep ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... agreeably relieved, at due intervals, by breath-catching sobs. The violence of the storm had passed, but its gloom still remained. Seeing the little gladness that the possession of clothes, the finest I had yet had, communicated to me, my director could not avoid giving himself the pleasurable relief of saying, "Sulky little brute!" A trunk being sent for, and my wardrobe placed in it, we then drove to three or four other shops, not forgetting a hatter's, and in a very short space of time I had a very tolerable fit-out. During all this time, not a word ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... clothes; and even when that is done she goes to bed with the certainty of being roused from her hard-earned rest by a husband who brings a sickening odour of bad tobacco and spirits home with him, and naturally her temper suffers. She knows nothing of love and sympathy; she has no pleasurable interest in life. Fatigue and worry are succeeded by profound disheartenment. One can imagine that while she was young, the worn garments she was wont to mend during those long lonely evenings were often wet with tears. The dulness must have been ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... ani, and those of the abdomen, which act along with them by the combined powers of sensation and association, are in tenesmus excited by painful sensation, and in the latter by a sensation, which may in some instances be almost called pleasurable, as relieving us from a painful one in the exclusion ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... that foolish word," and while what she utters gives him a pleasurable feeling, and brings the color into his set face, he only ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... of making his acquaintance, although he felt drawn to a worker whom he knew by indescribable tokens for a character of no common order. Both, as they came to know afterwards, were unsophisticated and shy, given to fears which cause a pleasurable emotion to solitary creatures. Perhaps they never would have been brought into communication if they had not come across each other that day of Lucien's disaster; for as Lucien turned into the Rue des Gres, he saw the student coming away ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... butler, always looked forward to Thursdays with pleasurable anticipation. He enjoyed the sense of authority which it gave him to herd these poor outcasts to and fro among the surroundings which were an every-day commonplace to himself. Also he liked hearing the sound of his own voice as it lectured in rolling periods on the objects of interest by ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... participation on the part of the domination apparatus (Bemaechtigungsapparatus), which served also for the gratification of the great wants of the other, ontogenetically the older impulse.[21] It has also been claimed that every pain contains in itself the possibility of a pleasurable sensation. Let us be satisfied with the impression that the explanation of this perversion is by no means satisfactory and that it is possible that many psychic efforts unite themselves into ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... picked up handfuls of the hard and sparkling sand; he sent the broad flat pebbles flying over the surface, and skimming through the crests of the waves; he half-filled his pockets with green and yellow shells, and crimson fragments of Delessaria Sanguinea for his little sisters; and he was full of pleasurable excitement when the great clock of Saint Winifred's, striking five, reminded him that he had better go in, and learn something, if possible, about the order ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... have rolled by since I have left the Earth, and how, amid all the pleasurable things of this serene and hopeful life, the hidden loneliness has denied it the last completing touch of joy! Only as I still dare to believe, that the flight of years must end his aging days on Earth, and that the eternal destiny of married souls is an eternal union, and that his reincarnation ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... is something pleasant in watching, from dry land, the great difficulties another man is undergoing out on the high sea, with the winds lashing the waters. This is not because one derives delight from any man's distress, but because it is pleasurable to perceive from what troubles one ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... of Wales having expatiated on the beauty of Dr. Darwin's opinion, that the reason why the bosom of a beautiful woman possesses such a fascinating effect on man is, because he derived from that source the first pleasurable sensations of his infancy. Sheridan ridiculed the idea very happily. 'Such children, then,' said he, 'as are brought up by hand, must needs be indebted for similar sensations to a very different object; and yet, I believe, no man has ever felt any intense emotions of amatory delight ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... pleasurable? To enjoy aright aught in God's creation is to praise God. Even so, is not to pray ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... was anything but pleasurable; but Captain Keppel's conciliatory and kind manner soon removed any feeling of fear; and was all along of the greatest use to me in our subsequent doings. The first qualification, in dealing with a Malay, is ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... one; that they were, in fact, gambling for mighty stakes. And in truth, as long as the money came in to them—flowing in as the result of their own craft in this game—the excitement had about it something that was very pleasurable. There was danger, which makes all games pleasant; there was money in handfuls for daily expenses—those daily wants of the appetite, which are to such men more important by far than the distant necessities of life; there was a possibility of future grandeur, an opening out of ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... course has your approbation, and that you estimate rightly my determination, and the sacrifice I am making. However, I have on my side conscience, which applauds me for preferring, to the real, actual joys of a quiet and pleasurable existence, the prospect, even if a remote one, of preferment, which may secure me a distinguished position and a distinction which may be of advantage to my children. The greater have been my sacrifices, the more commendable it is to have made them; and ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... park drive to the town he recalled with distinctly pleasurable emotion the first time he had encountered Mrs. Levitt, the vision of the smart little lady who had stood there by the inner gate, the gate that led from the park into the grounds, waiting for his approach with happy ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... preparation for departure to the fishing were days of keen and pleasurable anticipation for the boys. It was a break from the routine of the long winter, and brought with it the novelty of change. These promised weeks upon the open sea were always weeks of delight, and above all else was the pleasure of seeing ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... Bentham, or O. P. Q., would necessarily hope for the most frequent opportunities possible of scalping the greatest possible number of savages, for the longest possible time. There is no escaping this absurdity, unless you come back to a standard of reason and duty, imperative upon our merely pleasurable sensations. Oh! but, says O. P. Q., I am for the happiness of others! Of others! Are you, indeed? Well, I happen to be one of those others, and, so far as I can judge from what you show me of your habits and views, I would rather be excused from your banquet ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... that the club might think that he was entertained at friends' houses; but the two places were nearly the same to him, as he could achieve a dinner and half a pint of wine for five or six shillings at each of them. A more empty existence, or, one would be inclined to say, less pleasurable, no one could pass; but he had always a decent coat on his back and a smile on his face, and five shillings in his pocket with which to pay for his dinner. His asking what was up about Scarborough showed, at any rate, that he was very backward in ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... have to be expensive. Any change of environment will do, but it is much more pleasurable to meet new scenes and breathe new atmospheres. Whether one depends upon the trains for transportation, or the boats, or automobiles and whether one stops at the hotels, at the boarding houses or camps, depends largely upon one's circumstances ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... Not that he had brooded much over the matter. He was too busy and too sanely healthy to do that. Besides, he was only as yet questioning within himself whether he was going to fall in love. The sensation so far was exceedingly pleasurable, and he was ready for the whole thing when it should arrive and prove itself; but at present he was just in that quiescent stage when everything seemed significant and ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... little feeling of regret that the boys didn't feel "crazy" about her. She was sitting bolt upright, with her cheeks flaming a little when she felt Kent's arm stealing round her. She did not resist when he pulled her softly against him. She was utterly surprised at the pleasurable sensation she experienced at having Kent's arm about her. The others were singing but for once Lydia's throaty contralto did not ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... a most pleasurable task. We have fully accomplished what we have sought to attain. There is nothing lacking in the realization of our anticipations. As to whether we have acted wisely it is for you to judge. If, as the executive head of our State, it shall please you to commend the results ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... tempest blackens on the dusky moor, And billows lash the long-resounding shore; In pensive mood I roam the desert ground, And vainly sigh for scenes no longer found. Oh, whither fled the pleasurable hours That chased each care, and fired the muse's powers; The classic haunts of youth, for ever gay Where mirth and friendship cheer'd the close of day, The well-known valleys where I wont to roam, The native ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... his cousin said nothing to him on this subject, his feelings would have had very much the same tendency and general direction which they were taking now. A dark and somewhat pleasurable anxiety to be in conflict with his rival—a deadly conflict—a close, hard death-struggle—was now the predominant feeling in his mind;—but the feeling was not ALTOGETHER a pleasurable one. It had its pains and humiliations, also. Not ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... a world in which consciousness should exist without any agreeable or disagreeable qualities; in such a world nothing would matter; all acts would be equally indifferent. Or there might be a world in which all experiences were equally pleasurable or painful; in such a case all acts would be equally good or equally sad; there would be no ground for choice. One might in any of these hypothetical worlds be driven by mechanical impulse or fitful whim ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... handsome young man bending over her with a stethoscope was a doctor; that the plump, bleached blonde in the white shirtwaist was the hotel housekeeper; that the lank ditto was a waitress; and that the expression on the face of each was that of apprehension, tinged with a pleasurable excitement. So she sat up, dislodging the stethoscope, and ignoring the purpose of the thermometer which ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... good dancer, and Jim kept wanting to cut in to get an extra dance with her himself. Somehow even the sting of the visiting girl's laugh and of Raymond's defection seemed to have subsided into triviality. And when Raymond came up to ask for a dance she experienced a new and pleasurable thrill in telling him she was already engaged. That thrill disturbed her a little. Was it possible that she was vindictive, wicked? But when she saw Jim approaching while Raymond was receiving his conge, she thrilled ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... practicable. They are a wonderful relief to the student. There is always about them a something that infuses a sensation of placid joy, cheering and refreshing. Perhaps they were first introduced at festivals, in consequence of their possessing this quality. A flower garden is the scene of pleasurable feelings of innocence and elegance. The introduction of flowers into our rooms infuses the same sensations, but intermingles them more with our domestic comforts; so that we feel, as it were, in closer contact with them. The succession ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... stay to see the great man after the curtain fell. The disillusion of such a meeting is too great to be pleasurable. Othello is dead, and the idea of meeting Othello in the flesh ten minutes later, smiling and triumphant, is a death-blow to that very reality which Margaret so much enjoyed. Besides, she wanted to be alone with her own thoughts, ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... that you've got such long holidays, Allan,' said Tricksy, who was walking on her tip-toes with pleasurable anticipation. 'We've got such a jolly game at present; ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... a pleasurable glow of excitement. It was his nature to throw himself into everything he did and to at once become a partisan. It was a quality which made his writings attractive to the reader, and an object of concern to his editor. At the very word ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... blazed in dazzling splendour in a sky of deep unclouded blue, while the white prairie glittered as if it were a sea of diamonds rolling out in an unbroken sheet from the walls of the fort to the horizon, and on looking at which one experienced all the pleasurable feelings of being out on a calm day on the wide, wide sea, without the disagreeable consequence of being very, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... absolute sincerity dissipated every trace of his apprehension. He felt gay, calmly happy, and yet excited too. He was sure, then, that Rachel's agitation was a pleasurable agitation. It was caused solely by his entrance into the kitchen, by the compliment he was paying to her kitchen! Her eyes glittered; her face shone; her little movements were electric; she was intensely conscious of herself—all ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... that night had been, therefore, of a nature more than usually pleasurable, and the mirth did not sound hollow, but wrung from the heart. Yet, as Eugenie from time to time contemplated the young people, whose eyes ever sought each other—so fair, so tender, and so joyous as they seemed—a melancholy shadow darkened her brow, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... is: "Why does he not divide all feelings into pleasurable and not-pleasurable, rather than into 'painful and not-painful'?" A Westerner will not be at a loss to answer that: "Oh, the Hindu is naturally so very pessimistic, that he naturally ignores pleasure and speaks of painful and not-painful. The universe is full of pain." But that would ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... image is common enough, as the idea of eating lemons will testify. Sometimes the pleasurable recollection of a delightful dinner will cause the mouth to water years afterward, or the "image" of particularly atrocious medicine will wrinkle the nose long after it made one day in ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... important question. For, throughout our past reasonings about art, we have always found that nothing could be good or useful, or ultimately pleasurable, which was untrue. But here is something pleasurable in written poetry which is nevertheless untrue. And what is more, if we think over our favourite poetry, we shall find it full of this kind of fallacy, and that we like it all the ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... likely to be laid passed, and there were still no signs of the enemy, the keenness of the watch began to abate, and the set expression of the faces to relax. Then as the hills receded and the valley opened before them a pleasurable excitement succeeded the grim expectation of battle. The task that had proved so hard was indeed fulfilled; the Boers were gone, and the siege of Ladysmith was at an end. As they emerged from the valley into the ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... desk in the empty schoolroom heard the girls laughing and talking, as they clattered down the tin-covered back stairs to the dining-room. She was very tired and very hungry. She had had five hours of work since breakfast, with only a glass of milk at eleven o'clock. Even the pleasurable sensation of being abused did not quite offset the pangs of hunger. She listlessly set about learning the morrow's lesson in French History. It dealt with another martyr. Louis the Ninth left his bones bleaching on the plains of Antioch. The cause ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... It was Rachel coming into the room that awoke him. She too! he muttered. He began to fuss about, seeking for writing materials, for he was now intent to send Joseph a letter of recommendation to the High Priest, having already forgotten the gulf that awaited him, in the pleasurable recollection of the courtesy and consideration he received from the most distinguished men the last time he was in Jerusalem—from Hanan the son of Seth and father-in-law of Kaiaphas: Kaiaphas was now High Priest, the High Priest of that year; but in truth, ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... running through pipes. A gentleman of the Court of the Emperor Ferdinand suffered epistaxis when he heard a cat mew. La Mothe Le Vayer could not endure the sounds of musical instruments, although he experienced pleasurable sensations when he heard a clap of thunder. It is said that a chaplain in England always had a sensation of cold at the top of his head when he read the 53d chapter of Isaiah and certain verses of the Kings. There was an unhappy wight who could not hear his own name pronounced ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... impossible for Him to proceed except by certain steps as it would be impossible for a man, though a free agent, and apparently master, as he feels and thinks, of his own life, to cut his throat while in a state of pleasurable health ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... and with so little thought or hope of ever visiting them again, she seemed to have a strange desire to know what happened in the busy world. Any old newspaper, or scrap of intelligence from London, she caught at with avidity. The excitement it produced was not of a pleasurable kind, for her manner at such times expressed the keenest anxiety and dread; but it never faded in the least degree. Then, and in stormy winter nights, when the wind blew loud and strong, the old expression came into her face, and she would be seized with a fit of trembling, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... temperature far below zero with no covering upon his shoulders but a damp reindeer skin. It may not be unhealthy, and perhaps a physician of the water-cure practice might recommend it for certain ailments, but it would never become popular as a pleasurable pastime. At night the other two skins are put in the bed, one beneath and the other over the sleepers, and by morning are dry. But it seems almost a miracle that the occupants escape a severe attack of inflammatory ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... cook their dinner over an open fire. They would tow the Keewaydin, Sahwah's birchbark canoe, behind the launch, and some time during the day would manage to let every one go for a paddle. The Winnebagos thrilled with pleasurable anticipation, all but Hinpoha, who crept sadly away, for she could not bear to hear about the fun that was being planned when she could not have ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... at the suit of the philosophers, in the following form: We'll prove, if we can, that it is impossible to live a pleasurable life according to their tenets. Bless me! said I to him, smiling, you seem to me to level your foot at the very bellies of the men, and to design to enter the list with them for their lives, whilst you go about to rob them thus of their pleasure, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... upon this head, to assume the pleasurable, but modest language, with which he has concluded his narrative of his second navigation round the globe: 'Whatever,' says he, 'may be the public judgment about other matters, it is with real satisfaction, and without claiming any merit but that ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... of his dwelling-place made him not only discontented with his lot, but also with the people amongst whom he found himself. "I am here," he writes, "on my farm, but for all the pleasurable part of life called social communication, I am at the very elbow of existence. The only things to be found in perfection in this country are stupidity and canting.... As for the Muses, they have as much idea of a rhinoceros ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... I would not that for this you read no further, through fear that your reading should be always through sighs and tears. This frightful beginning I prepare for you as for travelers a rough and steep mountain, beyond which lies a most beautiful and delightful plain, by so much the more pleasurable as the difficulty of the ascent and passage of the mountain had been great. And as the extreme of pleasure touches pain, so suffering is effaced by a joy succeeding. To this brief vexation (I call it brief, as contained in few words) follow closely the sweets and pleasures ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... "the Nature of the Human Mind," the characteristics of the true pastoral, such as the avoidance of the hardships and vulgarities of rural life, follow logically. Similarly, since a minutely drawn description deprives the reader's fancy of its naturally pleasurable exercise, pastoral descriptions should only set "the Image in the finest Light." Rapin, on the other hand, had determined the proper length of descriptions by examining Virgil and Theocritus. For the association of the pleasure ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... to find the room vacant. The odour of drugs mingled with the other smells of the chamber, which she mitigated, in some measure, by opening the window as far as she was able. She pulled off her tight boots, enjoying for some moments a pleasurable sense of relief; then she tumbled into bed, soon to fall asleep. She was awakened by the noise of voices raised in altercation. Miss Potter and Miss Impett were having words. The girls were in bed, although ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... to get themselves into hard condition by strenuous route marches. Dotted about the camp were little groups of specialists and others practising their several trades. Here was a bombing-school urgently killing imaginary Turks; there a squad of bayonet-fighters engaged in the same pleasurable pursuit; while farther away an eager band of signallers with their handy little cable-waggons laid a ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... appreciation of the social calendar, he is doomed to the outer solitude of London in September. I say 'martyrdom', but in fact the case was infinitely worse. For to feel oneself a martyr, as everybody knows, is a pleasurable thing, and the true tragedy of my position was that I had passed that stage. I had enjoyed what sweets it had to offer in ever dwindling degree since the middle of August, when ties were still fresh and sympathy abundant. I had been conscious that I was missed at Morven Lodge party. Lady Ashleigh ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... being should do his duty under any conceivable circumstances. You see, there are two kinds, the pleasurable ones, and the painful ones. Pleasurable duties are done, not because they are duties, but because they are pleasurable. So they do not count. And a painful duty can not be a duty or it would not be painful. My idea is, ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... tables? Possibly; at all events, I approached the doorway, and was about to enter, when a heavy step shook the threshold before me, and I found myself confronted by the advancing figure of an elderly lady, whose portrait it is now time for me to draw. It is no pleasurable task, but one ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... delicious, pleasant, refreshing, agreeable, grateful, pleasing, satisfying, congenial, gratifying, pleasurable, welcome. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... as useful as productive labor; it may be more useful, even in point of permanent advantage; or its use may consist only in pleasurable sensation, which when gone leaves no trace; or it may not afford even this, but may be absolute waste. In any case, society or mankind grow no richer by it, but poorer. All material products consumed by any one while he produces nothing are so much subtracted, for the time, from the material ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... were in good spirits, for rowing was more pleasurable than tramping in that dismal monotonous primeval forest that rose on either side, therefore against the broad, slowly-flowing waters our carriers bent to their paddles, grinning and joking ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... in the tranquillising influences about her, the young lady got up, expanded, and grew like herself again—not like enough, indeed, to say much, but to listen and follow his manly, refined, and pleasant talk, every moment with a pang, that had yet something pleasurable in it, contrasting the quiet and chivalric tone of her present companion, with the ferocious duplicity of the sly, smooth terrorist who had just left ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... a steamer at the landing would cause much pleasurable excitement. If anything of special interest was expected, the first puff of steam from down the river would be eagerly examined through the spy-glass. Then would follow several days of busy life down at the different barns ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... Al Cloud get that line of talk he was handing out, anyway? Why, he talked about God as if He were an intimate friend of his, and spoke of prayer and Bible reading in the way common, ordinary people talked of going to breakfast or eating candy, as if they were necessary and pleasurable acts. Why, it was inconceivable! What was he doing it for? There ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... indeed a fairyland. The boulevards are brilliant and the scenes most animating. Everybody is courteous, and all seen bent on a pleasurable time. Cafes, shops, and places of entertainment are very inviting, and you easily forget to note the passage of time. Midnight even overtakes you before you are aware of the lateness of the hour. This is true, if you chance to visit, as did the Harris party, some characteristic ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... great credit to this very gentle and simple soul, who, although not being great as a thinker, yet could animate and arouse a pleasurable interest. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... ears, and all his comprehensive understanding and warm heart. Poor Mrs. Watt is almost crippled with rheumatism, but as good-natured and hospitable as ever, and both were heartily glad to see us. So many recollections, painful and pleasurable, crowded and pressed upon my heart during this half-hour. I had much ado to talk, but I did, [Footnote: Mr. Watt had been one of Mr. Edgeworth's most intimate friends.] and so did he,—of forgeries on bank notes, no way can he invent of avoiding such but by having an inspecting clerk in every ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... was probably the most pleasurable experience in the novelist's life, being an anticipated honeymoon. From Chalon they journeyed along the banks of the Rhone, visiting no fewer than twenty-three towns on the way. At Naples they parted, and the prospective bridegroom turned Paris-wards, going via Pisa, Civita Vecchia, and Marseilles; ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... the Apollo Theatre in search of merely pleasurable sensations, and he got exactly what he wanted. The old house was brilliant even in those days, less with light than with jewels, it is true, but perhaps that illumination was as good as any other. The Roman ladies and the ladies of the great ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... also the news of this tiresome circumstance. For not in one, but in several of my previous letters, in spite of others having given up the idea in despair, I gave you hope of being able at an early date to quit your province, not only that I might as long as possible cheer you with a pleasurable belief, but also because I and the praetors took such pains in the matter, that I felt no misgiving as to the possibility of its being arranged. As it is, since matters have so turned out that neither the praetors by the weight of their ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the pastor to adopt a policy commensurate with modern demands. He should lead, but on the other hand a very legitimate fear of being discredited through failure deters him; traditional methods hold the field; peace at any price and pleasurable satisfaction play a large part in church affairs; the adult, whose character is already formed, receives disproportionate attention; money for purposes of experimentation in church work is hard to get; everything ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... very voluminous poet in Hudibrastic verse, but best known by the London Spy, in prose. He has of late years kept a public-house in the City (but in a genteel way), and with his wit, humour, and good liquor (ale) afforded his guests a pleasurable entertainment, especially those of the High-Church party. Jacob, Lives of Poets, vol. ii., p. 225. Great number of his works were yearly sold into the plantations. Ward, in a book called Apollo's Maggot, declared this account to ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... when the harvest commenced, but he had reasons for believing that the market would rally first. In that case Hawtrey, who had sold forward largely, would fall altogether into his hands, and he looked forward with very pleasurable anticipation to enforcing his claim upon the Range. In the meanwhile he was unobtrusively watching his companion's face, and it had become evident that in another moment or two Hawtrey would adopt the course suggested, when there was a rattle ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... practical wisdom that enables one to live consistently with his real intention. But what is the real intention, the end or good of life? In the "Protagoras," where Plato represents Socrates as expounding his position, virtue is interpreted to mean prudence, or foresight of pleasurable and painful consequences. He who knows, possesses all virtue in that he is qualified to adapt himself to the real situation and to gain the end of pleasure. All men, indeed, seek pleasure, but only virtuous men seek it wisely ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... leaving a happy impression behind him. People in general like those who charm them without causing them to fear that they will be called upon to render aught in return for the amusement given, or that the pleasurable excitement of gayety will be followed by the sadness of melancholy confidences the sight of mournful faces, or the inevitable reactions which occur in susceptible natures of which we may say: Ubi mel, ibi fel. People generally ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... understand themselves. They learn to know what they want. Their taste becomes surer and surer as their experience lengthens. They do not enjoy to-day what will seem tedious to them to-morrow. When they find a book tedious, no amount of popular clatter will persuade them that it is pleasurable; and when they find it pleasurable no chill silence of the street-crowds will affect their conviction that the book is good and permanent. They have faith in themselves. What are the qualities in a book which give keen and lasting pleasure ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... weak and almost powerless, and really almost obliged to depend for support upon the arm which encircled me. If my partner failed from ignorance, lack of skill, or innocence, to arouse these, to me, most pleasurable sensations, I did not dance with him the ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... room across a little alleyway ten or twelve feet wide, ambushed themselves in it, and cut some peep-holes in the window-blind. Mr. Holmes's blinds were down; but by and by he raised them. It gave the spies a hair-lifting but pleasurable thrill to find themselves face to face with the Extraordinary Man who had filled the world with the fame of his more than human ingenuities. There he sat —not a myth, not a shadow, but real, alive, compact of substance, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... months of midsummer, when the mercury reaching into the nineties brought discomfort, especially since the men and women were clothed in the bunglesome garments, necessary in a cool zone frequently overhung with fog. The many open, pleasant months in the Colony made life out of doors a continuing pleasurable experience, when hunting, fishing, horse-racing and games ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... bearing; their self-imposed restraint, self-effacement, absence of all unnecessary gesture, and modulated voices had made them so; but the warmth of this one's underlying nature was as unexpected as it was pleasurable. ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and Mons Veneris. The vulva and the clitoris have no special functions to perform; but in them, in the clitoris particularly, but also in the labia minora, resides the feeling of voluptuousness, the pleasurable sensation experienced during the sexual act. Another seat of voluptuousness in the woman is located in ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... Prince Ali-Tomas, "we hope that you and your participants will enjoy Singhalut. It is a truism that, in order to import, we must export; we wish to encourage a pleasurable response to the 'Made in Singhalut' tag on our ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... trees, above which stars were beginning to twinkle, my ears soothed by the splashing of the mill stream and the hooting somewhere near of a solitary owl, and I wondered whether, if the Man of Wrath were by my side, it would be a relief to my pleasurable feelings to murmur "Klopstock," and whether if I did he would immediately shed tears of joy over my hand. The name is an unfortunate one as far as music goes, and Goethe's putting it into his heroine's mouth just when she was most enraptured, seems to support the view ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... apprehension, somewhat as you do when you stand, breathing quickly, balanced on your skis, at the top of a long white slope you are not sure you are clever enough to manage. Sitting down at my desk one morning, I "pushed off" and with a tingle of not altogether pleasurable excitement and alarm, felt myself "going." I "went" almost as precipitately as skis go down a long white slope, scribbling as rapidly as my pencil could go, indicating whole words with a dash and a jiggle, filling page after page with scrawls ... it seemed to me that I ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... not why, whether it was to thank him, to express her sympathy, or to express her submission. She struggled against this impulse, but the impulse was part of herself and of her inmost self; She was afraid, but her fear was pleasurable. She was ashamed, but her shame was pleasurable. She wanted to move away from where she stood. She thought: "If only I willed to move away, I could move away. But, no! I shall not will it. I like remaining just here, in this fear, this shame, and this agitation." She had a clear, dazzling ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... capacity. Major Newman had several Questions on the Paper this afternoon, and, as he had just announced the withdrawal of his valuable support from a Government so lost to all sense of propriety as to welcome Messrs. Churchill and Montagu to its fold, Mr. Reddy's comments were awaited with pleasurable anticipation. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... highly of his success. He liked the controversy, its excitement, and the applausive echo which followed each Letter. Like every true artist, he felt the joy and yet the gravity of his work. He took up his pen with a pleasurable sense of mastery, and yet he wrote some of the Letters six or seven times over. He spared no pains, yet he never wearied. All his intellectual life for the time was thrown into the controversy, and his most finely-tempered ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... expressive character seems fundamentally connected with the actions of the head. "How stupid I am," I thought, "not to have remarked so evident an action of an agent which leads the head itself. How could I let this movement of the shoulder escape me!" And I revelled in the pleasurable triumph of reproducing and contemplating expressions which I could not have rendered previously without dishonoring them. Thenceforth I understood without a doubt all the importance of this latest discovery. But this importance, clearly proven ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... was in no humour for quarrelling with any one. Nothing could have added to his pleasurable anticipations of a desperate and bloody combat in the lists, except his being in his own royal person one of the combatants; and he was half in charity again even with Conrade of Montserrat. Lightly ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... of Landor's favorites, although he was quite ready to allow the greatness of il gran poeta. He had no sympathy with what he said was very properly called a comedy. He would declare that about one sixth only of Dante was intelligible or pleasurable. Turning to Landor's writings, I find that in his younger days he was even less favorable to Dante. In the "Pentemeron" (the author spelling it so) he, in the garb of Petrarch, asserts that "at least sixteen parts in twenty of the Inferno and Purgatorio ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... readily lend itself to precise definition at the outset, we may indicate itsscope and aim, as undeibtood by recent writers, by saying that it deals successively with one great department of human experience, viz. the pleasurable activities of pure contemplation. By pure contemplation is here understood that manner of regarding objects of sense-perception, and more particularly sights and sounds, which is entirely motived by the pleasure of the act itself. The term "object'' means whatever can be perceived through ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the bottom of a case that must be unique, a case that has troubled even my mind for over a year, and if that isn't a good reason for standing a dinner, I don't know what is. Cupples, we will not go to my club. This is to be a festival, and to be seen in a London club in a state of pleasurable emotion is more than enough to shatter any man's career. Besides that, the dinner there is always the same, or at least they always make it taste the same, I know not how. The eternal dinner at my club ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... any satisfaction to themselves or anybody else—I am not writing for them; but only to those of the world's workers who go, or would like to go, every summer to the woods. And to these I would say, don't rough it; make it as smooth, as restful and pleasurable as ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears |
