"Charmed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heard an advantageous character of his comeliness and his valor. So Jesse sent his son, and gave him presents to carry to Saul. And when he was come, Saul was pleased with him, and made him his armor-bearer, and had him in very great esteem; for he charmed his passion, and was the only physician against the trouble he had from the demons, whensoever it was that it came upon him, and this by reciting of hymns, and playing upon the harp, and bringing Saul to his right mind again. However, he sent to Jesse, the father of the child, and desired him ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... "Charmed! Enchanted!" said Mr. Turveydrop, rising with his high- shouldered bow. "Permit me!" Handing chairs. "Be seated!" Kissing the tips of his left fingers. "Overjoyed!" Shutting his eyes and rolling. "My little retreat is made a ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... of varied pleasures to Ishmael. The gates of the Temple of Knowledge had been thrown open to him. All three of his studies had charmed him: the marvelous description of the earth's surface, the wonderful history of the human race, the curious analysis of language—each had in its turn delighted him. And now came the recreation hour to ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... green-robed senators of mighty woods, Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars, Dream, and so dream all night ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... me,' he said, taking a chair and coming into the charmed circle of the girls. How happy they were, how cosy and glamorous it was with them, in a world of lofty shadows! The outside world, in which he had been transacting funeral business all the day was completely wiped out. In an instant ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... Camillo was charmed with the spirit and propriety of Perdita's behaviour; and perceiving that the young prince was too deeply in love to give up his mistress at the command of his royal father, he thought of a way to befriend the lovers, and at the same time to execute ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... all eternity, have to bless God that Primitive Methodism ever sent him to labour in Hull. The Rev. G. Lamb prepared the people to receive him by styling him 'a bundle of love.' John went to hear him, and charmed by his preaching and allured by the grace of God, his religious feelings were deepened. Soon after this, and through the labours of Mr. Lamb, he obtained peace with God, and I have heard him say at our lovefeasts, ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... which swam across the Rhine and invaded him in his island tower, where they made short work of their victim.[4] Another tells how a town called Hamelin was overrun with rats until a magic piper appeared who so charmed them with his enchanted music that they gathered about him and followed his leading till they came to ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... entitled, "The Poetic Crown, composed on the glorious accession of Napoleon the First, by the Shepherds of Arcadia." He commenced a new series of Carmagnoles very different from those which had charmed the Mountain. The title of Emperor of the French, he said, was mean; Napoleon ought to be Emperor of Europe. King of Italy was too humble an appellation; Napoleon's style ought ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... enterprise on a firm footing. The site was next to be chosen, and Abingdon in Harford County was pitched upon. Of the 15,000 Methodists in the Union in 1784, over one-third were in Maryland, and hence, it had the best claim for the College, and the beauty of the situation of Abingdon charmed Coke so much that he determined upon placing the College there. It was also a place easy of access, being on the direct stage line from Baltimore to Philadelphia and near the Chesapeake Bay. Bishop Coke, the most zealous advocate of the ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... Monday, February 16.—WORTHINGTON EVANS charmed House to-day by one of those little delicacies of feeling and taste favoured in the assembly. MASTERMAN has met the reward of conspicuous success at the Treasury by promotion to Cabinet rank. In his absence his place temporarily taken at Question Time by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... the exact spot pointed out to me by Pepper Whitcomb! One thing is certain, Captain John Smith, who afterwards, according to the legend, married Pocahontas—whereby he got Powhatan for a father-in-law-explored the river in 1614, and was much charmed by the beauty of Rivermouth, which at that time was covered ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... that, alive, though exceedingly wounded, I shall rest within the depths of this lake." Having said these words unto me, O monarch, the king entered that lake. That ruler of men, by his power of illusion, then charmed the waters of that lake, making a space for him within them. After he had entered that lake, I myself, without anybody on my side, saw those three car-warriors (of our army) coming together to that spot with their tired animals. They were Kripa, the son of Saradwat, and the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... further, and by chance, revealed to him that she gave him some little share of that affection which she seemed to shed generously and indiscriminately on so many folks and things around her. He, too, was now in the charmed circle. He walked with a new pride through the warm, green meadows, his rod over his shoulder: he whistled as he went, or he sang snatches of "The Rose of Allandale." He met two small boys out bird's-nesting: he gave them a shilling apiece, and then inconsistently informed them that if he caught ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... alien, he charmed our hours of ease, Being either Blue Hungarian or Purple Viennese, And he cut a gorgeous figure in his blue (or purple) suit As he coaxed enticing noises from (I think ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... to Rome, was delighted by the accident which provoked the loud lamentations of his fellow-passengers. He jumped down to the platform and made use of the stoppage to go down to the sea, which drew him on and on. The sea charmed him so that when, a few hours later, the engine whistled as it moved on, Christophe was in a boat, and, as the train passed, shouted: "Good-by!" In the luminous night, on the luminous sea, he sat rocking in the boat, as it passed along ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... of Dover. I am glad to hear of your having been in the neighbourhood. There is no healthier (marshes avoided), and none in my eyes more beautiful. One of these days I shall show you some places up the Medway with which you will be charmed." ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... distance covered with bottles and glasses. Some one informed me that was the counter. In one of the lateral chapels, a statue of the Virgin had been dressed out in the uniform of a vivandiere, with a pipe in her mouth. I was, however, particularly charmed with the amiable faces of the people I saw collected there. The sex to which we owe the tricoteuses was decidedly in the majority. It was quite delightful not to see any of those elegant dresses and frivolous manners, which have for so long disgraced the better half ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... the radix I see too certainly and too instantly its entire expansion; in the first syllable of the dreadful sentence, I read already the last. It was not that I feared for ourselves. What could injure us? Our bulk and impetus charmed us against peril in any collision. And I had rode through too many hundreds of perils that were frightful to approach, that were matter of laughter as we looked back upon them, for any anxiety to rest upon our interests. The mail was not built, I felt assured, nor bespoke, that could ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the noon-tide sun, Dazzling her mortal eye: all else appear'd Her THEODORE. Amazed she saw: the Fiend Was fled, and on her ear the well-known voice Sounded, tho' now more musically sweet Than ever yet had thrill'd her charmed soul, When eloquent Affection fondly told The day-dreams of delight. "Beloved Maid! Lo! I am with thee! still thy Theodore! Hearts in the holy bands of Love combin'd, Death has no power to sever. Thou art mine! A little while and thou shalt dwell with me ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... men! 'Tis sharp work, but some of us will smile at this hereafter. Who stands by Alroy to-night bravely and truly, shall have his heart's content to-morrow. Fear not: I was not born to die in a civic broil. I bear a charmed life. So to it.' ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... attempt is being made to dry up the most fruitful source of confidence which the Christian has in the truth of his Bible:—viz., its plenary inspiration. We know that this is not new; but the lover of "the Book" had charmed himself with the hope that the controversy was over, and the truth triumphant. He is now, however, alarmed on finding that in addition to the old adversaries—the infidel, the sceptic, and the profane—he has to enter the lists with new combatants ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... noted that there are those whom she forsakes not often, and I have wondered by what charmed talisman they hold her true," ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... emerging from one or these sloughs just as the sun was rising, he was treated to a concert such as he had never heard. The music seemed to him almost heavenly—so exceedingly beautiful that he remained motionless on the water, charmed by the entrancing melody. It burst from the throats of thousands of birds on one side of the river, and the refrain was taken up by a swelling chorus of feathered warblers on the other shore. It was a concert that paid him ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... expanse, yet so continuous, so gentle, so imperceptible in its remotest gradations, as scarcely to be felt, till, combining with unity, we find the feeling embodied in the complete image of intellectual repose,—fulness and rest. The mind thus disposed, the charmed eye glides into the scene: a soft, undulating light leads it on, from bank to bank, from shrub to shrub; now leaping and sparkling over pebbly brooks and sunny sands; now fainter and fainter, dying away down shady slopes, then seemingly quenched in some secluded dell; yet only ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... your girlish laugh and supple dancing form! Look at the portrait of her, painted by Coddle at the height of her amazing beauty: note the sensitive nostrils, the delicate little mouth, and those eyes—the gayest, merriest eyes that ever charmed a king's heart; and her hair—that "mass of waving corn," as Bloodworthy describes it in his celebrated book of "International Beauties." But we must follow her through her wonderful life—destined, if not to alter the whole history of France, ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... the museful shade By close-inwoven branches made, Thee, sweetest bird, most musical Of all that warble their melodious song The charmed woods among, Thee, tearful nightingale, I call: O come, and from thy dark-plumed throat Swell sadly-sweet thy melancholy note. Euripides: ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... most delightful person he had ever met, as well as being the most beautiful. There was a sprightly, ever-growing air of self-reliance about her that charmed and reassured him. She possessed the capacity for divining the sane and the ridiculous with splendid discrimination. Moreover, she could jest and be serious with an impartial intelligence that gratified his vanity without in the least inspiring the suspicion that she was merely ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... and Rhiannon a goddess, whose early importance, like that of other Celtic goddesses, appears from her name, a corruption of Rigantona, "great queen." Elsewhere we hear of her magic birds whose song charmed Bran's companions for seven years, and of her marriage to Manawyddan—an old myth in which Manawyddan may have been Pryderi's father, while possibly in some other myth Pryderi may have been child of Rigantona and Teyrnon (Tigernonos, "king").[398] We may postulate an old ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... on the doorstep to wait for his return, not at all charmed with the prospect. It made me furious, too, to see my ambition nipped with the frost of a possible ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... heard, and their lives were intimately associated with those of the cattlemen, who would so gladly have destroyed them. There was not a stockman on the Currumpaw who would not readily have given the value of many steers for the scalp of any one of Lobo's band, but they seemed to possess charmed lives, and defied all manner of devices to kill them. They scorned all hunters, derided all poisons, and continued, for at least five years, to exact their tribute from the Currumpaw ranchers to the extent, many said, of a cow each day. According to this estimate, therefore, the band had ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... of life. So, for instance, at sixty-six years of age he writes to a friend in Paris the story of "The Whistle." One day when he was seven years old his pocket was filled with coppers, and he immediately started for the shop to buy toys. On the way he met a boy with a whistle, and was so charmed with the sound of it that he gave all his money for one. Of course his kind brothers and sisters laughed at him for his extravagant bargain, and his chagrin was so great that he adopted as one of his maxims of life, "Don't give too much for the whistle." As he grew up, came ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... not the waves that roll? No: in charmed bowl we swim. What the charm that floats the bowl? Water may not pass the brim. The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine. And our ballast is old wine; And your ballast is ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... first few weeks of college life, of course, a good deal of time was spent in receiving and returning the visits of acquaintances, old and new. Of the latter, there was one with whom Julian and Lillyston were equally charmed, and who soon became their constant companion. His name was Kennedy, and Julian first got to know him by sitting next him in lecture-room. His lively remarks, his keen and vivid sense of the ludicrous, the quick yet kindly notice he ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... This has been accomplished by bringing our domestic and foreign relations more and more under a reign of law. A rule of force has been giving way to a rule of reason. We have substituted for the vicious circle of increasing expenditures, increasing tax rates, and diminishing profits the charmed circle of diminishing expenditures, diminishing tax rates, and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge
... leaved shamrock In all its fairy dells, And if I find its charmed leaves, Oh how I'll weave my spells. I would not waste my magic might On diamonds, pearls or gold, Such treasures tire the weary heart, Their ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... in the old apple-tree. Betty can scrooch down, and I'll be the father, and put leaves on her, and then I'll be a great Injun and fire at her. I can make arrows, and it will be fun, wont it?" cried Bab, charmed with the new drama in which she could act ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the thumb they could not light; that was because one of the household was not asleep. The girl hastened to her master, but found it impossible to arouse him. She tried every other sleeper, but could not break the charmed sleep. At last, stealing down into the kitchen, while the thieves were busy over her master's strong box, she secured the hand, blew out the flames, and at once ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... Three things charmed me particularly about Henry Elizabeth (HURST AND BLACKETT), whose remarkable second name was due to the fact that he was born in the same year as the Virgin Queen and that his father had hoped that he too would be a girl. In the first place he became the greatest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... has been done, there will not be found much demanding moral censure; whilst the reader will note with delight, applied to the trifling concerns of life, those extraordinary gifts of observation and apprehension which have so often charmed him in the pages of ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... You talk as if you were an impostor. Are you, or are you not, the accomplished lady who has charmed him? Are you, or are you not, the beautiful woman whom he loves? There isn't a stain on your reputation. In every respect you are the wife he wants and the wife who is worthy of him. And you are cruel enough ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... place—from which, very privately, she sometimes took it out to read it over. "A la guerre comme a la guerre then"—it had been couched in the French tongue. "We must lead our lives as we see them; but I am charmed with your courage and almost surprised at my own." The message had remained ambiguous; she had read it in more lights than one; it might mean that even without her his career was up-hill work for him, a daily fighting-matter on behalf of a good appearance, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... the most virtuous and upright nobleman in the kingdom. The late dauphin's projects in favor of religion he will endeavor to execute. He is minister of war. The most heroic piety will be promoted by him by every method: if I gave you an account of his life, you would be charmed by so ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... desperadoes, they called him chief ungrudgingly. He was a daredevil, who had taken his life in his hands a hundred times. Yet always he came through smiling, and brought back with him the man he went after. The whisper ran that he bore a charmed life, so many had been ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... of this excrescence of speech, where the speaker is the umpire, and feels himself at liberty, unreproved, to say what he pleases. He is charmed with the sound of his own voice. The periods flow numerous from his tongue, and he gets on at his ease. There is in all this an image of empire; and the human mind is ever prone to be delighted in the exercise of unrestricted authority. The pupil ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... I'm quite certain I saw his face in the mirror as I passed. Oh, how delightful! and you'll be charmed with him; so, mind, you must not steal him from me; I shall never forgive you if you do; and look, only look! he has got the blue scarf I gave him when he marched to ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... vines "such as we had never before seen." Cartier called this attractive spot the Island of Bacchus, but changed the name subsequently to the Isle of Orleans, in honour of one of the royal sons of France. Cartier was equally {37} charmed with the varied scenery and the fruitful soil of the country ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... prepared to be delighted with everything, and the childishness of the little maid who took charge of our hats before we went in to the opera charmed me. My hat was heavy and hot, and I particularly disliked it, owing to the weight of the seagull which composed one entire side of it, and always pulled it crooked on my head. The little maid took the hat in both her arms, laid ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... failed or succeeded. When her interest changed to the Tombs of the Rameses, and the succession of the ancient dynasties, he spent hours studying his Baedeker that he might keep in step with her; and when she abandoned ancient for modern Egypt and became deeply charmed with the intricacies of the dual control and of the Mixed Courts, he interviewed subalterns, Pashas, and missionaries in a gallant effort to comprehend the social and political difficulties of the white ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... able to make Victorine from le Philosophe sans le savoir? That is beyond me. Your play charmed me and made me weep like an idiot, while the other bored me to death, absolutely bored me to death; I longed to get to the end. What language! the good Tourgueneff and Madame Viardot made saucer-eyes, comical to behold. In your work, what produced the ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... the history of Stella. Fifteen hundred dollars a week of her own money, besides lavish presents, had been too much for her. Even Phelps's money had had no over-burdening attraction for her. The world—at least that part of it which spends money on Broadway, had been open to her. Jack Daring had charmed her for a while—hence the engagement. Of Shirley, I did not even know. Perhaps the masterful crime roles he played might have promised some new thrill, with the possibility that they expressed something latent in his life. At any rate, she had dilettanted about him, to the amazement and dismay ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... Andrea was charmed, agreeing that there was something about it that seemed to suit a saucy pigeon, and, vastly pleased, he repeated over and over, "Chico, Chico," while ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... cheerful and indistinguishable murmur, pierced through at every moment by the wail of the hovering plover. Sometimes a face, black or white, peers through the entrance with some message. Since the light readily penetrates, though the rain cannot, the tent conveys a feeling of charmed security, as if an invisible boundary checked the pattering drops and held the moaning wind. The front tent I share, as yet, with my adjutant; in the inner apartment I reign supreme, bounded in a nutshell, with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... was soon snorting down the river. The decks and cabins of the Walsh were crowded with passengers; ladies handsomely dressed, planters going to New Orleans on business or pleasure; tourists making a trip down the Mississippi for the first time, and being charmed with the variety of the scenes around them: all ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... among the characters and her sister as well, Edna was free to ask anyone she chose. Mr. and Mrs. Horner had received an invitation from the whole club, so had Miss Newman, and the other teachers, and many of the pupils who were outside the charmed circle were invited by their schoolmates who were free to give invitations, only Clara Adams was not considered for a moment by anyone, and she was very miserable over the fact. If ever she regretted her past disagreeable treatment ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard
... there was a narrow channel of the sea, roughened with moonlight. So they sped between the rocks, and came upon a purple sea, dark-blue overhead, with large stars leaning to the waves. There was a soft whisperingness in the breath of the breezes that swung there, and many sails of charmed ships were seen in momentary gleams, flapping the mast idly far away. Warm as new milk from the full udders were the waters of that sea, and figures of fair women stretched lengthwise with the current, and lifted a head ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I am charmed with my present situation in every respect. It could not be more agreeable to my wishes. I shall have reason to thank you, as long as I live, for my change. The man I lodge with is an able farmer—has ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... add—the democratico-monarchical revolution that ensued. But Publius Scipio also, although setting the fashion to the nobility in arrogance, title-hunting, and client-making, sought support for his personal and almost dynastic policy of opposition to the senate in the multitude, which he not only charmed by the dazzling effect of his personal qualities, but also bribed by his largesses of grain; in the legions, whose favour he courted by all means whether right or wrong; and above all in the body of clients, high and low, that personally ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... pupil and companion save absolute silence, and sounded his praises to his father at the close of days when it had been rigidly observed—not caring, or considering, the finished dry old document that he was, under what kind of spell a turbulent commonplace youth could be charmed into stillness for six hours of the day. Ripton was supposed to be devoted to the study of Blackstone. A tome of the classic legal commentator lay extended outside his desk, under the partially lifted lid ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a fair comrade I have charmed from his cave! You savage brute, are you going to teach ...
— Opera Stories from Wagner • Florence Akin
... When the charmed moment arrived, everybody sprang up and lighted candles. Raymonde hurried into pink dressing-gown and bedroom slippers, and crept up the passage to the door which led to the monitresses' rooms. She had inserted her screws earlier in the evening, ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... lov'd Eurydice In such sad numbers mourn, that he Made the trees run in to his moan, And streams stand still to hear him groan. The does came fearless in one throng With lions to his mournful song, And charmed by the harmonious sound, The hare stay'd by the quiet hound. But when Love height'n'd by despair And deep reflections on his fair Had swell'd his heart, and made it rise And run in tears out at his eyes, And those sweet ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... subject, as she must know how very violent Johnson was against the people of that country. He talked a great deal, but I am sorry I have preserved little of the conversation. Miss Beresford was so much charmed, that she said to me aside, 'How he does talk! Every sentence is an essay.' She amused herself in the coach with knotting; he would scarcely allow this species of employment any merit. 'Next to mere idleness (said he,) I think knotting is to be reckoned in the scale of insignificance; ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... Eeny-Meeny," said Katherine, "she seems born to be rescued. She must bear a charmed life. It's a case of 'Sing Au Revoir but not Good-bye' when she goes to meet a tragic fate." She dried Eeny-Meeny off with bunches of grass and stood her up against a tree to guard ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... will read each work of wit With the same spirit that its author writ: Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind; Nor lose, for that malignant dull delight, The gen'rous pleasure to be charmed with wit. But in such lays as neither ebb, nor flow, Correctly cold, and regularly low, That shunning faults, one quiet tenor keep; We cannot blame indeed—but we may sleep. In wit, as nature, what affects our hearts Is not th' exactness of peculiar parts: 'Tis not a lip, or eye, we ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... has one charmed against steel. Hother has another; a mail-coat of proof is mentioned and their iron ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... armed, But with their arms concealed, And rubber heeled. Here priests and wavering want are charmed. And shadows fall here like the shark's In messages received or sent. Signals are flying from the battlement. And every president Of rail, gas, coal and oil, the parks, The receipt of custom knows, without a look, Their meaning as the code is in no book. The treasonous cracksmen of ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... escaped the temptations of opportunity and example. But gambling was not intellectual enough, jockeying was too undignified, and drinking too coarse a pleasure for him. Even hunting and coursing charmed him but for a few times; when he found he could out-ride and out leap all his companions, he hunted no more; telling his mother, when she attacked him on the subject, that he thought the hare the ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... the pile of ashes left by the departed oak sprang lovely flowers, which charmed the eyes of all the trees in the forest, and atoned, in a great measure, for the loss of their ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... protested to him that the King would be charmed to know him; and added, that one of his operas (for it must be told that our little friend was a vaudeville-maker by trade) had been acted seven-and-twenty times at the theatre at Potsdam. His Excellency then detailed to him all the honors and privileges ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Soft music charmed the ear, and floated in sweet melody through the apartment. Beauty was there, with rosy cheek and brilliant eye. Fashion displayed her most tasteful arrangements, and each one seemed vieing with the other in elegance of costume. ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... and the detachment of an official document was not limited to Beyle's style; it runs through the whole tissue of his work. He wished to present life dispassionately and intellectually, and if he could have reduced his novels to a series of mathematical symbols, he would have been charmed. The contrast between his method and that of Balzac is remarkable. That wonderful art of materialisation, of the sensuous evocation of the forms, the qualities, the very stuff and substance of things, which ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... developed cultivated, and refined by education) every man loves womanhood itself, and all women so far as they approximate to his ideal; and that in the same way every woman loves manhood, and is attracted and charmed by all its gentle, noble, and heroic manifestations. By such a man, every woman he meets is reverenced as a mother, sister, daughter, or, it may be, cherished in a more tender relation, which should be at first, and may always remain, free from any sensual ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... the sultry main, Like April hoar-frost spread; But where the ship's huge shadow lay, The charmed water burnt alway A ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... cure them no more?—R. She did not know, but thought-albeit she had no wish to fyle any one—that old Lizzie Kolken, who for many a long year had been in common repute as a witch, had done it all, and bewitched the cows in her name and then charmed them back again, as she pleased, only to bring her ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... next morning, at sunrise, a boat's crew of thirty men was sent to search for the wanderers. At length they were found, thoroughly frightened, having passed a very uncomfortable night. The beauty of this island charmed all who beheld it. They were lavish in their praises of its luxuriance, its fruits, its game, and its birds ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... countess left her cards and letters of introduction, and as they were from Orsinis, Colonnas, and other grandees of Rome, her hotel was crowded with elegant equipages, and she was admitted into the charmed circles of the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... so charmed with this jeu d'esprit that he is said to have added the following verse ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... thoughtlessness, but with an uneasy feeling, when I saw her suddenly stop. I instinctively ran toward her. An enormous crevasse of great depth lay at her feet, blue at its edges and dark in its depths. She stood motionless before this frightful gulf with hands thrown out before her in horror, but charmed like a bird about to be swallowed by a serpent. I knew the irresistible effect upon nervous temperaments of this magnetic attraction toward an abyss. I seized her by the arm, the suddenness of the movement ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... the King, who had been greatly charmed with the damsel at first sight, happened to call her to mind, and feeling himself fit, resolved, notwithstanding the hour, to go lie with her a while; and so, attended by a few of his servants, he hied him privily to Cuba. Having entered ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... hopes, stimulated by the thought that he had a job on hand that would not only occupy his thoughts, but give exercise to the benevolent impulses of his heart, he pressed on, the miles disappearing behind him and shortening before, as if the ground had been charmed. ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... mining-camp would be a nice place for a banjo solo." Wherefore he conceived the camp, with a chorus of red-shirted miners. Wherefore too, he created a comic Yankee who should be eccentric enough to bring a banjo to the camp, and a lover who should be charmed by its touching strains. It required a prologue and three acts to enable him to successfully introduce the banjo. In a somewhat condensed form, these acts and this prologue ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various
... lives abound in the victorious combination of non-resistance with personal authority. John G. Paton, for example, in the New Hebrides, among brutish Melanesian cannibals, preserves a charmed life by dint of it. When it comes to the point, no one ever dares actually to strike him. Native converts, inspired by him, showed analogous virtue. "One of our chiefs, full of the Christ-kindled desire to seek and to save, sent a message to an inland chief, that he and four attendants would ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... of the reign of Henry VIII., after the battle of Flodden Field, were spent in pleasure, and in great public displays of magnificence, which charmed the people, and made him a popular idol. Among these, the interview of the king with Francis I. is the most noted, on the 4th of June, 1520; the most gorgeous pageant of the sixteenth century, designed ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... lead, men and women to form a thousand relations with. It all lies there like a great surging sea, where we must plunge and dive and feel the breeze and breast the waves. I stand shivering here on the brink, staring, longing, wondering, charmed by the smell of the brine and yet afraid of the water. The world beckons and smiles and calls, but a nameless influence from the past, that I can neither wholly obey nor wholly resist, seems to hold ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... naive and innocent in Sadie's attitude and expression that Whitney Barnes was charmed. It also tickled his soul to see how thoroughly his friend was stumped. So to add to Travers's ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... my father's library, I had discovered a copy of Walton and Cotton's 'Angler,' similar in every respect, but its good condition, to the one that had charmed me at the inn. Sometimes the precious volume was lent to me, and with it in my lap, and my arms round the ropes of the swing, I passed many a happy hour. What fancies I wove after studying those quaint, suggestive old prints! As sweet as that 'contexture of woodbines, sweet-briar, ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... your resentment, you do not know half the secrets of this fearful prison-house." She then glanced her eyes anxiously round the room, and sunk her voice almost to a whisper—"He bears a charmed life; you cannot assail him without endangering other lives, and wider destruction. Had it been otherwise, in some hour of justice he had hardly been safe, even from this weak hand. I told you," she said, motioning me back to my seat, "that I needed no comforter. I ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... sing," whispered his little niece; and, in a voice as musical as the sound of ripples breaking on the shore, Lorelei sung a little song that made Fancy dance with delight, charmed Aunt Fiction, and softened Uncle Fact's hard face in ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... the enterprising publishers ventured upon, and I, who felt myself outside of the charmed circle drawn around the scholars and poets of Cambridge and Concord, having given myself to other studies and duties, wondered somewhat when Mr. Lowell insisted upon my becoming a contributor. And ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... contrary, I am perfectly charmed. He is one of those Americans who capture you at once, educated, frank, open, with that peculiar charm that Britishers will not be able to develop for many generations. An American, but not of the unspeakable type. Not at all. You ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... and wrinkled and eddied as was its wont between its pauses of marble calm. As he drew close to it another figure came towards it from the opposite side with equal footsteps. He saw that it was his own figure, his very self, and in silent terror, compelled by what force he knew not, he advanced—charmed as the bird is by the snake, mesmerised or hypnotised—to meet this other self. As he felt the yielding sand closing over him he awoke in the agony of death, trembling with fear, and, strange to say, with the silly man's prophecy seeming to sound in his ears: ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... the German Legion next came down and entered in panoramic procession the space below Anne's eyes, as if on purpose to gratify her. These were notable by their mustachios, and queues wound tightly with brown ribbon to the level of their broad shoulder-blades. They were charmed, as the others had been, by the head and neck of Miss Garland in the little square window overlooking the scene of operations, and saluted her with devoted foreign civility, and in such overwhelming numbers ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... later on. He reached Paris about the 17th of January, 1762, and there met with a reception which interposed, as might have been expected, the most effectual of obstacles to his further progress southward. He was received in Paris with open arms, and stepped at once within the charmed circle of the philosophic salons. Again was the old intoxicating cup presented to his lips—this time, too, with more dexterous than English hands—and again did he drink deeply of it. "My head is turned," he writes to Garrick, "with what I see, and the unexpected honour I have ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... made of gold. Each stamen supported a tiny figure carved out of ivory, holding a musical instrument. When they played, each figure appeared instinct with life, like the mythical fairies of my childhood; and the music was so sweet, yet faint, that I readily imagined the charmed ring and tiny dancers keeping time to ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... applause A charmed but timid audience pays, That murmur which a minstrel draws From hearts that feel but fear to praise, Followed this song, and left a pause Of silence after it, that hung Like a fixt ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... considering Millicent, and I should be charmed to let her stay here. You and she are such admirable foils to one another's fairness and darkness that no cultivated eye can rest on you together without great pleasure. But I don't think that you are doing the right thing in trying to find her a job like your own. She couldn't ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... and assisted publicly at mass; wherever he turned his steps the crowd was so great that it was sometimes impossible to pierce through it, while every moment a million of voices cried, "Long live the King!" Everyone returned, charmed with the gracefulness of his person, his condescension, and that engaging manner which was natural to him. "God bless him!" said they, with tears in their eyes, "and grant that he may soon do the same in our Church ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... altogether a Hollander. His mother, of Spanish descent and Catholic, had given a richness of tone and form to the healthy freshness of the Dutch physiognomy, apt to preserve its youthfulness of aspect far beyond the period of life usual with other peoples. This mixed expression charmed the eye of Isaac van Ostade, who had painted his portrait from a sketch taken at one of those skating parties, with his plume of squirrel's tail and fur muff, in all the modest pleasantness of boyhood. When he ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... was the charmed circle to which she had aspired, those the people she had envied; behind her was that life to which she had sold herself, and this was the end of her dream of fine ladies and gallant gentlemen! Lorelei scarcely knew whether to laugh or to cry. As she stared out ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... round and round, charmed at being the center of attention. There seemed to be dozens of faces, shifting with each spin of the prism, human and nonhuman, all dim and slightly distorted. My own face, Juli's, Joanna's came out of the crystal surface, not a ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... burnished steel, and hear the persistent call of the honey-bird. At night the roar of lions may now and then cause them to turn in their sleep, and in their dreams they may have visions of the animals that have charmed them during the day—the stately eland, the graceful roan and sable antelopes, the ungainly wildebeeste, and the funny old wart-hog, trotting along with high action and tail erect. Besides gaining health ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... his charmed nest he doth lay, There he sleeps the night away, There he sports along the day, And ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Alcott inspired in those near to him is well known by those who have made a study of the remarkable group of men that formed a charmed literary circle in Concord in the middle of the last century, of whom Ralph Waldo Emerson was the distinguished leader; yet each additional proof gives an added warmth of color and a truer portrayal of the character of this quaint and original follower of the ...
— Three Unpublished Poems • Louisa M. Alcott
... northward along the coast of San Juan de Ulloa. The natives of that region had heard of the wonderful white-skinned and bearded men who bore charmed lives, and they thought that these men were gods. They, therefore, treated the Spaniards in a friendly manner, and brought gifts of flowers, fruits, and vegetables, and also ornaments of gold and ...
— Discoverers and Explorers • Edward R. Shaw
... Moreover, to a devotee of the science that some one has aptly called Ornithography, nothing is so attractive. What hopes it holds out! Who can guess what mysteries shall be disclosed, what interesting episodes of life shall be seen about that charmed spot? ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... of vital domestic concern, and besides them, outside the charmed circle of our own national life in which our affections command us, as well as our consciences, there stand out our obligations toward our territories over sea. Here we are trustees. Porto Rico, Hawaii, the Philippines, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... with echoed rapture hopes that in his breast are swelling, Of the glory and the honour that have sunned his poet's dream, Charmed him by their bright illusion madly from his quiet dwelling To immerse him in life's ocean, there to lose him ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... woods, cultivated by insensible degrees a friendship with the peaceable Quakers. They loved these foreigners as much as they detested the other Christians who had conquered and laid waste America. In a little time a great number of these savages (falsely so called), charmed with the mild and gentle disposition of their neighbours, came in crowds to William Penn, and besought him to admit them into the number of his vassals. It was very rare and uncommon for a sovereign to be "thee'd" ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... Romance of America—in ever so many acts, and twice as many tableaux, that this boy saw. And always on the stage, now like Drake, now like Raleigh, now like Miles Standish, now like Captain John Smith, he saw a young Englishman, performing prodigies of valour and bearing a charmed life. Yet, do not think that it was a play with nothing but fighting in it. There were the Dutch burghers of New Amsterdam, under Walter the Doubter, or the renowned Peter Stuyvesant; there was Rip Van Winkle on the Catskill Mountains; there were the king-killers, hiding in the rocks beside Newhaven; ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... the ears of their pent-up inhabitants with all that variety of imprecation they so well know how to use. It was almost with sensations of guilt that I walked the streets of Rome in safety, bearing a sort of charmed life, while these thousands of my friends were already suffering more through their horrible anticipation, than they would when they should come to endure the reality. But, although I passed along uninjured by actual assault, the tongue was ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... innocence and youth complaining, Next appear'd a lovely maid, Affliction o'er each feature reigning, Kindly came in beauty's aid; Every grace that grief dispenses, 95 Every glance that warms the soul, In sweet succession charmed the senses, While pity harmonized the whole. 'The garland of beauty' — 'tis thus she would say — 99 'No more shall my crook or my temples adorn, I'll not wear a garland — Augusta's away, I'll not wear a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... of the rushing mustang, when he was snatched up by the muscular and far-reaching Apache, and borne away amid the shower of bullets, which hurtled as harmlessly about the red rider and his steed as if the two bore charmed lives. ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... upon the earth began. The winds, with wonder whist, Smoothly the waters kissed, Whispering new joys to the mild ocean, Who now hath quite forgot to rave, While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave. ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... was gone; and, in its place, the green and angry waters lashed the shores, as if indignantly casting back its impurities to the polluted strand. Still the clear fountain retained a portion of its charmed influence, but it reflected only the somber gloom that fell from the impending heavens. That humid and congenial atmosphere which commonly adorned the view, veiling its harshness, and softening its asperities, had disappeared, ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... with what casualness he chose; he might ignore her in public; he might talk brutally about women; he might leave her to wonder dully what he meant, for months at a stretch: but there emerged indisputable from the sum of his conduct the fact that he wanted her. He desired her; she charmed him; she was something ornamental and luxurious for which he was ready to pay—and to commit follies. He had been a widower since before she was born; to him she was a slip of a girl. All is relative in this world. As for her, she was too ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... presence, and his genial, modest, and dignified bearing. He seemed to me an ideal specimen of true American manhood. His wife was a lady whose appearance at once attracted attention and whose qualities of head and heart charmed and delighted friends and associates. He was a devoted husband. His tender and gentle bearing toward his wife were natural and unaffected. The daily life and conduct of both were a conspicuous example of the benign influence of a husband and wife ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... Proserpina was concealed. The three goddesses contrived some means to keep the dragons that guarded the cavern away, and then easily persuaded the maiden to come out to take a walk. Proserpina was charmed with the verdure and beauty which she found around her on the surface of the ground, strongly contrasted as they were with the gloom and desolation of her cavern. She was attended by nymphs and zephyrs in her walk, and in their company she rambled along, admiring ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... forgetful of me, charmed by the poet, by the excitement of hearing herself made a subject of a poem, drew nearer. Strange, is it not, that I should remember a few ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... vanished, and all was love for the boy whose memories filled the shadow of her childhood; about whom she had dreamed night after night as he crossed the great sea to come to her; who had crept into her arms timidly, and straightway turned into the daintiest merriest playmate; who had charmed her even in his hot-blooded rages, when he rushed at her with whatever was in his hand at the moment. Then she had laughed and dared him; now she shuddered to remember. Again, and this was the feeling that generally prevailed, she was a vessel overflowing with the mere woman-passion ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... is charmed, nevertheless, especially if it be not too near, and the air be still and dense, or hollow, as the farmer says. And again, if it be springtime and she task that powerful bellows of hers to its utmost capacity, how round the sound ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... the island of St. Anne's. The royal mountain (Mont Real), with its wooded sides, its rich scenery, and its city with its streets and public buildings, lie at your feet: with such objects before you the eye may well be charmed with ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... amorous episode with a rather doubtful, a decidedly shady, young Boston woman, whom he styled an "Ingenious Child," but who was far from being an ingenuous child. "She," as he proudly stated, "became charmed with my person to such a degree that she could not but break in upon me with her most importunate requests." And a very handsome and thoroughly attractive person does his portrait show even to modern eyes. Poor Cotton resisted the wiles of the devil in ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle |
