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Fascinate   Listen
verb
Fascinate  v. t.  (past & past part. fascinated; pres. part. fascinating)  
1.
To influence in an uncontrollable manner; to operate on by some powerful or irresistible charm; to bewitch; to enchant. "It has been almost universally believed that... serpents can stupefy and fascinate the prey which they are desirous to obtain."
2.
To excite and allure irresistibly or powerfully; to charm; to captivate, as by physical or mental charms. "There be none of the passions that have been noted to fascinate or bewitch but love and envy."
Synonyms: To charm; enrapture; captivate; enchant; bewitch; attract.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fascinate" Quotes from Famous Books



... any worth reading, do you?" replied To-no-Chiujio. "I have only just now discovered," continued he, "how difficult it is to meet with a fair creature, of whom one can say, 'This is, indeed, the one; here is, at last, perfection.' There are, indeed, many who fascinate; many who are ready with their pens, and who, when occasion may require, are quick at repartee. But how often such girls as these are conceited about their own accomplishments, and endeavor unduly to disparage those of others! There are again some who are special pets ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various

... prime, the Baroness had been equally successful in cajoling women and men. Though her day for ruling men was now over, she still possessed the power to fascinate women when she chose to exert herself. She did exert herself with Mrs Stuart, and succeeded ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... those straining thighs, the immense heaving of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the whole burrowing effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one's sense of probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever. He disappeared. I half expected the roof to split in two, the little box on wheels to burst open in the manner of a ripe cotton-pod—but it only sank with a click of flattened springs, and suddenly one venetian blind rattled down. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... better if their popular ministers were not experts in the art of dodging popular enthusiasms and duping popular ignorance. The politician who once had to learn how to flatter Kings has now to learn how to fascinate, amuse, coax, humbug, frighten, or otherwise strike the fancy of the electorate; and though in advanced modern States, where the artizan is better educated than the King, it takes a much bigger man to be a successful demagogue than to be a successful courtier, yet he who holds popular ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw

... our couple left alone, What fairer field could truly have been shown? The belle now wore a smart becoming dress, Designed, in ev'ry view, to prepossess. 'Twas NEGLIGENCE, so requisite to please And fascinate, with airy, careless ease, According to the taste which I pursue, That made her charms so exquisite to view. No gaudy tinsel: all was flowing light; Though not superb, yet pleasing to the sight; A neckerchief, where much should be concealed, Was made so narrow,—beauties ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... a grease mark on the case," he went on. "It is evident you could not have put the case away. Nella possessed herself of it when your back was turned, and, playing with this cream, amused herself by burying the pearls in it—just the sort of game to fascinate ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner

... of New York State. The mystery of the treasure will fascinate every boy. Jerry is ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton

... Avernus of horror. He reached the river, and in a third poor little boat, again he sailed down the passage. There was the swift-leaping current, the ugly tusk of rock staked with wreckage. A moment, a few feet, a turn of the oar-blade, and he would have been past. But, no! The rock seemed to fascinate him as the eyes of a snake fascinate a bird. He stared at it fearfully, a look of terror and despair. Then for the third time, with a hideous crash, his frail boat was piled up in ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... fascinate his eyes. He stared at it fixedly, and augured ominously of Barker's intentions, since that worthy obviously alluded to his having smiled in form, and chose to interpret it as an intentional provocation. He felt that he was in for it, and that Barker meant to pick a quarrel with him. ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... awake all night, as a strain of Mozart's might do," Keats wrote of his Charmian. There was no song this special songstress sang which she did not make her own by a peculiar and powerful effort. Her instinct was to rouse, charm, fascinate her little audience. Not to move her hearers was to her not to sing, and when she sang as she wished she could sweep away his world of ideas from her listener and recreate a new one. In one song, an Italian composition called "The Dream," she always seemed to be carried beyond herself. In reading ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... Enoch to give the boy a chance. But alas and alackaday for the instability of youthful affection! It befell in an evil time that there came over from the land of Nod a frivolous and gorgeously apparelled beau, who, with finely wrought phrases, did so fascinate the giddy Mizpah that incontinently she gave Methuselah the mitten, and went with the dashing young stranger of 102 as ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field

... approval. And though I knew he wouldn't have any objection to Florence, having known her father since they were at Oxford together, I hadn't wanted to take any chances; so I had told her to make an effort to fascinate the ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... that appeals to profound motives and feelings. The great engineering projects that await us, the work of exploring, colonizing and the like in which universal interest and cooeperation are necessary fascinate the mind. These things satisfy the dramatic instinct, and they may prove to be in the future an actual substitute for war, as James hoped. The educational opportunities of this theme, at least, are great. Any nation that expects to play a great part in the world's politics must expect ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... her the fairest vision he had ever seen, in spite of her indignation against him, and if she had sought to fascinate him—to weave the spell of her witchery more effectually about him, she could have taken no surer way to ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... undulating layer of air, Right above their heads, The potent plain of Daemons spreads. Stands to each human soul its own, For watch and ward and furtherance, In the snares of Nature's dance; And the lustre and the grace To fascinate each youthful heart, Beaming from its counterpart, Translucent through the mortal covers, Is the Daemon's form and face. To and fro the Genius hies,— A gleam which plays and hovers Over the maiden's head, And dips sometimes as low as to her eyes. Unknown, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... excess of an opposite kind, the Byronic dissolution of domestic feeling was not entirely without justification. There is probably no uglier growth of time than that mean and poor form of domesticity, which has always been too apt to fascinate the English imagination, ever since the last great effort of the Rebellion, and which rose to the climax of its popularity when George III. won all hearts by living like a farmer. Instead of the fierce light ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley

... he said slowly, "with someone of similar tastes to my own. I will confess at once that you are right. For myself I feel that there is nothing more interesting in this great city of yours than to watch the people coming and going from it. All your railway stations fascinate me, especially those which are the connecting links with other countries. Perhaps it is because I am an idle man, and must needs ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... tractable. Who will deny that as a whole it can be made intelligible even to very young children by the simple process of reading it with them intelligently? or that the mysteries such a reading leaves unexplained are of the sort to fascinate a child's mind and allure it? But if this be granted, I have established my contention that the Humanities should not be treated as a mere crown and ornament of education; that they should inform every part of it, from the beginning, in every ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... not puzzle yourself over such difficulties to-night, at any rate. Leave me to think of those. I will tell you what you must do. Make up your mind to be as charming as possible when you see my father, and fascinate him in spite of himself; for, I assure you he will not very readily forgive us for deranging his plans. Good-night now, I shall be ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... hopeless moan of despair, but the intensified fanaticism which defies misfortune to make it "bate one jot of heart or hope." The grand loneliness of Milton after 1668, "is reflected in his three great poems by a sublime independence of human sympathy, like that with which mountains fascinate and rebuff us" (Lowell). ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... watchest her to cast thy spells upon her. Thou hatest her for her youth and beauty and spotless purity, like all thy wretched tribe, whom the sight of innocence and brightness sickens to the heart's core. Thou wouldst fascinate her with thy eye of evil ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... marble trough, there seems O, last of my pale, mistresses, Sweetness! A twylipped scarlet pansie. My caress Tinges thy steelgray eyes to violet. Adown thy body skips the pit-a-pat Of treatment once heard in a hospital For plagues that fascinate, but ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray

... politics, and we will show you one who has failed to reach and enjoy that true relation of sovereignty which is held by her "meek and lowly" sisters; who, though destitute of such panting aspirations, hold the scepter of true authority in those high and holy virtues which fascinate while they command in their undisputed empire—the social circle. What iconoclast shall break our idol, by putting the ballot in woman's ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... loving youth. His soul and Marguerite's understood each other better; they went together to the depths of their hearts and found in each the same thoughts,—pearls of equal lustre, sweet fresh harmonies like those the legends tell of beneath the waves, which fascinate the divers. They made themselves known to one another by an interchange of thought, a reciprocal introspection which bore the signs, in both, of exquisite sensibility. It was done without false shame, but not without mutual coquetry. The two hours which Emmanuel spent with the sisters ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac

... personal activity of Holberg, several poets were born, who were destined to enrich the language with its first group of lyrical blossoms. Of these the two eldest, Wessel and Ewald, were men of extraordinary genius, and destined to fascinate the attention of posterity, not only by the brilliance of their productions, but by the suffering and brevity of their lives. Johannes Ewald (q.v.; 1743-1781) was not only the greatest Danish lyrist of the 18th century, but he had few rivals in the whole ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... it was not until James Catnach came up from Alnwick to London (in 1813), that the trade reached the top of its prosperity. The vast sheets, which he published with their scurvy couplets, and the admirable picture, serving in its time for a hundred executions, have not lost their power to fascinate. Theirs is the aspect of the early woodcut; the coarse type and the catchpenny headlines are a perpetual delight; as you unfold them, your care keeps pace with your admiration; and you cannot feel them crackle beneath your hand ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... the solitariness of the youthful Hawthorne. Is it surprising that in the fiction of the mature man there should be a pervading sense of remoteness, of silences that fascinate, of mysteries ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... those phases which followed have been such as are the least fitted to stand the trial of public exhibition. His pictures do not command the eye by extraordinary combinations of assertive colors,—nor do they, through great pathos, deep tenderness, or any overcharged emotional quality, fascinate ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... she had seen a great deal. Following her old tactics, she had started out to fascinate the tall newspaper man, expecting to find him an easy victim. For once, however, she found that she had met her match. Directly she arrived in Denver she sent him her card, and he called at the hotel, his manner courteous, but distinctly cold. He had ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow

... all; And looking like two Incubi, they glared As Baba with his fingers made them fall To heaving back the portal folds: it scared Juan a moment, as this pair so small, With shrinking serpent optics on him stared;[297] It was as if their little looks could poison Or fascinate whome'er they fixed their ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... forgot their dislike and joined hands. It was their friends who first brought them together, and subsequently Titus became the chief bond of union and for the common good suppressed their ignoble jealousy. Both by nature and training he had charm to fascinate even such a man as Mucianus. The tribunes and centurions and the common soldiers were attracted, each according to his character, either by Titus' meritorious industry or by his gay indulgence ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... work, and Schmucke looked on precisely as an idiot might have done. Broken down with sorrow, wholly absorbed, in a half-cataleptic state, he could not take his eyes from the face that seemed to fascinate him, Pons' face refined by the absolute repose of Death. Schmucke hoped to die; everything was alike indifferent. If the room had been on fire he would not ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... your trouble is not your body, but your soul. You read these great books, and they fascinate your mind. But they don't grip your soul; you see these brutal injustices, and they cut your heart; but they don't reach your will." The strong hand felt the fluttering pressure of the pale hand in its grasp. Morty looked down, ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... greeted with admiring glances and remarks; and from the fruit vender of whom she made occasional purchases, and the butcher who served the family with joints, to dancing and drawing masters, up along the line to merchants, professional, and literary men, she seemed to fascinate and attract with no effort ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... that he should be rapidly disarmed by this lady, who cannot be described in a paragraph. Though her face was rather plain, it was so expressive of herself that it seldom failed to fascinate. Nature can do much to render a countenance attractive, but character accomplishes far more. The beauty which is of feature merely catches the careless, wandering eye. The beauty which is the reflex of character ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... of illustrating to a group of students engaged in reading the original, the possibility of preserving intricate stanzaic form, and something of alliteration, without an entire sacrifice of poetic beauty. The experiment was persisted in because its problems are such as baffle and fascinate a translator, and the finished version is offered not merely to students of Middle English but to college classes in the history of English literature, and to ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett

... and toothsome, or at all events beaksome, morsels. These are, just now, the crimson cherries, purple and yellow plums, currants, red, white, and black—and sun-painted peaches, asking in their luscious ripeness for a mouth to melt in, that fascinate finch and flycatcher alike, and make the starlings smack their horny lips with a sound like a ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... easy and witty, and full of an irresistible charm. His dress, which in old times he neglected, became elegant. His expression and voice acquired gentleness and an almost caressing quality. Not only did he try to fascinate the young and handsome Empress, he spared no pains to please her. Being much honored and flattered in his vanity as a Corsican gentleman,—for this man of Vendmiaire, the saviour of the Convention, always had a weakness for coats-of-arms and for titles,—he was proud as well as happy in having for ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... Antonius. When the latter approached Alexandria, Antonius, deceived by the false report that Cleopatra had destroyed herself, threw himself upon his sword and died. Cleopatra, finding herself unable to fascinate the conqueror, but believing that he meant that she should adorn his public triumph at Rome, poisoned herself (30). Egypt was made into a Roman province. The month Sextilis, on which Octavianusreturned to Rome, received in honor of him the name of "August," from "Augustus," ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... made men less inclined to fire rifles at each other's trenches. I used to hear a Turk singing. He had a deep rich voice and I often stood in the front line or in a communication trench listening to him as his voice carried across "No Man's Land" from the Turkish line 120 yards away. It used to fascinate me quite a lot and one felt that under the eastern sky, in the land of Sinbad the Sailor and Omar Khayyam that war had not quite killed romance. I wonder what happened to that singer. I wonder if in ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous

... face of the islet, winding about among its crags and fissures, and the isle is overrun with people during the time the tide is out. It has many attractions. The view is grand from those heights. Yawning gulfs fascinate you to look dizzily down into the secret heart of the isle. On the highest point of rock stood, a few years ago, an ancient chapel which had in Roman Catholic days been dedicated to St. Catharine. Within the past six years this chapel has given way to a fortress, its walls partly embedded ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... from every window of the feudal mansion the hitherto solitary occupant might behold incessant variety, accompanied by the pleasing associations growing out of prosperous industry and smiling plenty. Does Claude ever revel in solitudes? Does Poussin fascinate in exhibitions of mechanical nature? And when does Woollet enchant us but in those rich landscapes in which the woods are filled with peeping habitations, and scope given for the imagination by the curling smoke of others ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... intuitive feeling of distrust that had tinged her thoughts of him earlier in their acquaintance, while his heroic act in descending into the forecastle in the face of the armed and desperate Byrne had thrown a glamour of romance about him that could not help but tend to fascinate a girl of Barbara Harding's type. Then there was the look she had seen in his eyes for a brief instant when she had found herself locked in his cabin on the occasion that he had revealed to her Larry ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... to wear mine," said April drily. "No, as you rightly suspect, it isn't for the clothes, though they fascinate and lure me. And it isn't for the honour and glory of being Lady Diana, though that is fascinating too, and it will be priceless to have the joke on the rest of the world for once. It is for various subtle reasons which I don't suppose you would ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... fascinate more than beautiful ones! My laughter died away. It is difficult to keep on laughing by oneself. I was tired, and had been giving out sympathy all day; depression clutched me, and a restless irritability. At this auspicious moment the orphan knocked ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... renounce all those artistic effects which proceed from the gradually accelerated growth of any object in the mind, or in the external world, through the march of time, while of all that in a drama is calculated to fascinate the eye they were through their wretched arrangement of stage- scenery deprived in a great measure by the Unity of Place. Accidental circumstances might in truth enforce a closer observance of this rule, or even render it indispensable. From a remark of Corneille's ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... not surpassingly beautiful as had been reputed, not graceful, not charming in manner and conversation. She could save them by justifying his description of her—by using a woman's art to lessen instead of enhancing her natural beauty, by putting away her natural charm and power to fascinate all who approached her. ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson

... had aught else to dream of in this world? Those exciting pictures of country life, so free from cares, from fears, and troubles, that ocean of happy days which glitters incessantly before all youthful imaginations, are real allurements wherewith to fascinate a poor, unhappy prisoner, worn out by prison life, and emaciated by the close air ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... not take his eyes from the photograph, which seemed to fascinate him. When the servant came in ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... complete with suitable amusements. She had taken all the Wendover shooting, too, and what she could get of Lord Graceworth's beyond. "You cannot drag people into the wilds and then bore them to death," she said. What she most enjoyed was to scintillate to a company of two or three, and fascinate them all into a desire for a tete-a-tete, and then, when with difficulty one had secured this privilege, to be elusive and tantalize him to death. To passion she was a complete stranger, and won all her ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn

... ornamented with a profusion of silk flags, resplendent with gaily colored ribbon streamers, handsome mats and a choice collection of small potted plants, palms and flowers; becomes a thing of beauty, well calculated to capture and fascinate the childish heart. When the train is in motion, gaily spinning around this five-hundred-foot oval; the cribs and seats filled with bright happy children, smiling and crowing, their chubby little hands clapping in unison with the measure of such exquisite music ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... few eternal essences, then, with a few of their necessary relations to one another, do actually appear to us, and do fascinate our attention and excite our wonder, is nothing paradoxical. This is merely what was bound to happen, if we became aware of anything at all; for the essence embodied in anything is eternal and has necessary relations to some other essences. The air of presumption which there ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... old Lakshmi, who naturally declared that she had always known it. The trust they reposed in her made her ready to address Padmavati once more on the forbidden subject. So she again went to the palace, and having lovingly greeted her nursling, said to her, "The Raja's son, whose heart thou didst fascinate on the brim of the tank, on the fifth day of the moon, in the light half of the month Yeth, has come to my house, and sends this message to thee: "Perform what you promised; we have now come"; and I also tell thee that this prince is worthy of thee: just as ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... fascinate us, nor will threats of a "halter" intimidate. For, under God, we are determined that wheresoever, whensoever, or howsoever we shall be called to make our exit, we will die ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... Then he resolves to break with the past, to put away childish things, to forgo affection, and to earn respect by imitating the activities of his elders. The strange power of words and the virtues of abstract thought begin to fascinate him. He loses touch with the things of sense, and ceases to speak as a child. If his first attempts at argument and dogma win him praise and esteem, if he proves himself a better fighter than an older boy next door, who has often bullied him, and if at the same time he comes into money, ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh

... leaders, and you have to spend your time turning over thick and shiny snap-shot journals with a surfeit of pictures in them; or the Real Lady, or the Ladylike Lady, or the Titled Lady, the portraits of whom—one or other of them—sweep in curves about their folio pages; and, while they fascinate you, make you feel that you would falter on the threshold of matrimony if only because they couldn't possibly take nourishment. Would not the discomfort of meals eaten with a companion who could swallow nothing justify ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... of Otranto excelled in the art of bending facts to his own liking. He exaggerated or extenuated them with so much skill, grasped them with so much address, and deduced consequences from them so naturally, that he was often able, to fascinate Napoleon. More securely to deceive and seduce him, he loaded him in his reports with protestations of attachment and fidelity; and he took care to contrive occasions of adding marginal notes with his own hand, in which he adroitly displayed in a distinguished manner his devotion, discernment, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... supercilious and scornful arrogance of air which so seldom characterises gentle birth, Calderon might have mingled with the loftiest magnates of Europe and seemed to the observer the stateliest of the group. It was one of those rare forms that are made to command the one sex and fascinate the other. But, on a deeper scrutiny, the restlessness of the brilliant eye—the quiver of the upper lip—a certain abruptness of manner and speech, might have shown that greatness had brought suspicion as well as ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... rule advocated by clever folk, especially by the French, which says that a girl should not let herself go when she marries, should not neglect her accomplishments, should be even more careful of her appearance than when she was unmarried, and should fascinate her husband as much as she did before he became her husband. Natasha on the contrary had at once abandoned all her witchery, of which her singing had been an unusually powerful part. She gave it up just because it was so powerfully seductive. She took no pains with her manners or with delicacy ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... in the kingdom, as the person who appeared to her the most admirable. She loved him sincerely, with a degree of sentimentalism, if not with a profound passion. Her ideal had been on arriving at the court to fascinate him, to keep him amused by a thousand diversions suggested by art or intellect, to make him happy and contented in a circle of ever-changing enchantments and pleasures. A Watteau-like country, plays, comedies, pastorals in the shade, a continual ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... 887.] Against these conclusions the whole soul of Plato rose in revolt. To reconstruct religion, he was driven back upon metaphysics; and elaborated at last the system which from his day to our own has not ceased to perplex and fascinate the world, and whose rare and radiant combination of gifts, speculative, artistic, and religious, marks the highest reach of the genius of the Greeks, and perhaps of mankind. To attempt an analysis of that system would lead us far from our present task. All that concerns us here, is its religious ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... Sir Geoffrey saw Diana she seemed to fascinate him—he refused to give up my letters—said he could not part with them. In this way he tortured me for weeks until at last he wrote from Raydon Manor, saying I should have the letters if I would call for them in ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... professor? They're indeed able to fascinate a naturalist; but for me they have an added charm, since I've collected every one of them with my own two hands, and not a sea on the globe has ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... be put off or placated by a chance to fatten my own bank roll. I didn't care if I broke the Free Gold Mining Company and myself likewise. A dollar doesn't terrify nor yet fascinate me—I hope it never will. And while, perhaps, it was not what they would call good form for me to lose my temper and go at them with my fists, I was fighting mad when I thoroughly sensed their dirty project. Anyway, it helped bring ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... the chain was being forged. But around whom, in the end, was it going to be fastened? It was the first time in his life that he had ever been brought face to face with crime, and the seeking out of the criminal was beginning to fascinate him. ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher

... with a firm accent, trying to fascinate her with the impassioned fixedness of her eyes, drawing near her, as if to caress her with the music of his words. And how about him? What did Margalida think of him? What if he should present himself to Pep some day, telling him that he ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... cake-walks. Who are they, these minstrels in the shadow? They seem not to be the Red Hungarians, nor the Blue, nor the Hungarians of any other colour of the spectrum. You set them down as the Colourless Hungarians, and resume your study of the tables. They fascinate you, these your fellow-diners. You fascinate them, doubtless. They, doubtless, are cudgelling their brains to 'spot' your state in life—your past, which now has escaped you. Next day, some of them are gone; and you miss them, almost bitterly. But others succeed them, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... not wonder that the rabbit wanted to see his master. There was something about that young man that made dumb animals just delight in him. When Mrs. Wood mentioned this to him he said, "I don't know why they should—I don't do anything to fascinate them." ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders

... all. So long as they were with her the little Arab house, the little African garden, had stood in the center of things, in the heart of vital things. The two women had troubled Charmian. Madame Sennier had almost frightened her. Yet something in both of them fascinated, must always fascinate such a mind and temperament as hers. They meant so much to the men who were known. And they had made themselves known. Both were women who stood apart from the great crowd. When their names were mentioned everyone—who ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... scene brilliant enough to fascinate anyone, and the two eggs stood spellbound while their eyes feasted upon ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum

... take up his life as valetudinarian, his life forgotten of the world which he had loved to conquer, barren of interest for the woman whom it had been his strongest passion to win against her instincts, to hold as it were against her will, and to fascinate in face of her distaste? Such were the terms offered; Alexander Quisante lay long hours open-eyed and thought of them. There had come into his head an idea that attracted him mightily and suited well with his nature, so oddly mixed of strength and weakness, greatness ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... other qualities and properties of the serpent would present themselves to the mind, and the effort would be made to discover or to imagine likenesses to these in the electric flash. The serpent is venomous; it casts its skin and thus seems to renew its life; it is said to fascinate its prey; it lives in the ground; it hisses or rattles when disturbed: none of these properties is present to the mind of the savage who scratches on the rock a zigzag line to represent the lightning god. But after-thought brings them up, and the association of contiguity can ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... meant to mould their own lives; and, instead of detesting their crimes, Rodney began to admire the skill and success with which they were perpetrated. The excitement and freedom, and wild, frenzied enjoyment of such a life, as depicted by the young knaves, began to fascinate and charm his mind. Something seemed to whisper in his ear, "As you are now disgraced, without any fault of your own, why not carry it out, and make the most of it? They have put you into jail, this time, for nothing; ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown

... not one picture, or two, or twenty, that seizes one's mind here; it is the accumulation of various objects, each worthy to detain it. Wonderful indeed, and sweetly-satisfying to the intellectual appetite, is the variety, the plenty of pleasures which serve to enchain the imagination, and fascinate the traveller's eye, keeping it ever on this little spot; for though I have heard some of the inhabitants talk of its vastness, it is scarcely bigger than our Portman Square, I think, not larger at the very ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... that I, sweet sorceress, Whose weird persuasions fascinate us, Can read my stars without ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various

... had so much sympathy with his ways of looking at life and of interpreting truth; as for the man, she had as yet come to no definite conclusion in her mind concerning him; it was not easy for mankind to fascinate Elisabeth Farringdon. ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... Parthenon (and in comparison of which the Pantheon and Colosseum are vulgar and coarse, mere broad-shouldered Titans before ambrosial Jove); but these fantastic spires, and cupolas, and galleries, excite, amuse, tickle the imagination, so to speak, and perpetually fascinate the eye. There were very few believers in the famous mosque of Sultan Hassan when we visited it, except the Moslemitish beadle, who was on the look-out for backsheesh, just like his brother officer ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... will ever urge them to call up the ice-bound will, that it may obey; that the torturing spirit of God in them will keep their consciences awake, not to remind them of what they ought to have done, but to tell them what they must do now, and hell will no longer fascinate them. Tell them that there is no refuge from the compelling Love of God, save that Love itself—that He is in hell too, and that if they make their bed in hell they shall not escape him, and then, perhaps, they will have some true presentiment of the ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... above all, the fatal inclination to repeat sin till it becomes a habit, are set forth with terrible force in these grim figures. What a menagerie of ravenous beasts some of us have at the doors of our hearts! With what murderous longing they glare at us, seeking to fascinate us, and make us their prey! When we sin, we cannot escape the issues; and every wrong thing we do has a kind of horrible life given it, and sits henceforth there, beside us, ready to rend us. The tempting, seducing power of our own evils was never put in more ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... delights in him; he talks to him all the time, and Mr. Hawthorne looks answers. He seems to fascinate Emerson. Whenever he comes to see him he takes him away, so that no one may interrupt him in his close and ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... the tabby cat, on the top of the table, ready to spring upon the cage where the unfortunate bird was. She gave a terrible scream, which had the effect of scaring away the wicked cat; but the poor bird had evidently been so frightened at the glaring green eyes that tried to fascinate it and lure it to its ruin as a serpent does its prey, that it fell down to the bottom of its ...
— Carry's Rose - or, the Magic of Kindness. A Tale for the Young • Mrs. George Cupples

... Hamilton, then Secretary of the Treasury (ranked by Talleyrand with Fox and Napoleon as one of the three great men he had known), must fascinate any English student of the period. If his name is not celebrated in the same way in the country which he so eminently served, it is perhaps because in his ideas, as in his origin, he was not strictly American. As a boy, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... she behaved perfectly, if she wished to fascinate and tantalize a flirt, such as Sidney Vandyke was said to be. She let herself seem to fall under his spell, and then suddenly slipped gently away, turning to Captain March who sat at her other side. She would talk to him in a friendly, intimate way, in a low voice, with little happy outbursts ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... that delight and fascinate the wide awake Girls of the present day who are between the ages of eight and fourteen years. The great author of these books regards them as the best products of her pen. Printed from large clear type on a superior quality of paper; attractive multi-color jacket wrapper ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger

... horse-shoe curve that began and ended in the fallow on the slope. When a considerable distance had been placed between herself and her pursuers, she ceased to hurry. Indeed, the music of horn and hounds seemed almost to fascinate the creature, and frequently she lingered for a few moments to listen intently to the clamour of her enemies. A farm labourer, who tried to "grab" her as she passed down the grassy lane, said that she "was coming along as cool as a cucumber. Sometimes she'd ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... profiting by them. All this donna a penser to the elder children. Having no softening medium of a mother's eyes to look at their father through, they were more bold in judging him than, perhaps, they ought to have been; and he did not take pains to fascinate his children, or throw the glamour of love into their eyes. He took it for granted, frankly and as a part of nature, that he himself was the first person to be considered in all matters. So he was, of course—so the father, the bread-winner, the head of the family, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... blue, flecked with violet shadows, and about sixty junks are floating upon it at anchor. There are vessels of foreign rig too, but the wan, pale junks lying motionless, or rolling into the harbour under their great white sails, fascinate me as when I first saw them in the Gulf of Yedo. They are antique-looking and picturesque, but are fitter to give interest to a picture than to battle with ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... society—the three great elements of civil life—have nowhere been so modified by the dominion of fancy over fact. Take the history of French republicanism, of Quietism, of court and literary circles; what perspicuity in the expression, and vagueness in the realization of ideas! In each a mania to fascinate, in none a thorough basis of truth; abundance of talent, but no faith; gayety, gallantry, wit, devotion, dreams, and epigrams in perfection, without the solid foundation of principles and the efficient development in practice, either of polity, a social system, or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... the most lovely thing the world has to show, such a combination of nature and art as one dreams of. These wonderful temples of enormous size, of natural wood filled with paintings and sculpture of an ancient and unknown kind, fascinate one to the point of feeling there must be many more worlds when such multiplicity of ideas and feelings can exist on a single planet, and we live unconscious of the whole of it or even of any part of its extent. The gardens we have seen to-day are the old ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey

... its tragedy, and its gratification for Lane. He saw clearly, and felt with the acuteness of a woman. Helen had jilted him for such young men as these. So in the feeling of the moment it cost him nothing to thrill and fascinate these girls with the story of how he had been shot through the leg. It pleased him to see Helen's green eyes dilate, to see Bessy Bell shudder. Presently Lane turned to speak ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... make an enemy, since these easily crop up along one's path, she is careful never to utter anything which could irritate the feelings or wound the pride of the most sensitive. Her descriptions are so varied, so vivacious, that they fascinate a whole crowd. If now and again some little touch of irony escapes her, she knows how to temper and even instantly to neutralise this by terms of praise at once ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... just as I have seen a skilful professor of chemistry watching a tube for the first appearance of the precipitate. This quiet thinker knew men, and he knew how to use them; moreover, he thought he saw in Ferrier a born king, and he strove to attract him just as he had striven to fascinate Miss Dearsley. It was ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... will fascinate by the grace and charm with which it is written, by the delightful characters that take part in it, and by the interest of the plot. The scene is laid in a magnificent Austrian castle in North ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... her, and when she was practicing would hover about her as often and as long as she could. Her singing especially seemed to enchant and fascinate the girl. But a change had already begun to show itself in her. The shadow of an unseen cloud was occasionally visible on her forehead, and unmistakable pools were left in her eyes by the ebb-tide of tears. In her service, notwithstanding, she was nowise less willing, scarcely ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... rarely mentioned his name. Harrie is Selwyn's weakness, and to his faults and failings the latter is, outwardly, at least, most inexplicably blind. He is as handsome as he is unprincipled and irresponsible, and his power to fascinate is seemingly limited only by his desire to exercise it. "What is it?" I repeated. "What ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher

... you go to Senator X? Not much. You get on the right side of his wife. Is it an appropriation? You'd go 'straight to the Committee, or to the Interior office, I suppose? You'd learn better than that. It takes a woman to get any thing through the Land Office: I tell you, Miss Laura would fascinate an appropriation right through the Senate and the House of Representatives in one session, if she was in Washington, as your friend, Colonel, of course ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... project appealed strongly to Clay. A league of young republics in the New World to offset the Holy Alliance in Europe was, as his biographer remarks, "one of those large, generous conceptions well calculated to fascinate his ardent mind." The imagination of the President was not so easily touched: he instructed Clay to inquire more particularly into the purposes of ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... his mistake. Women never act by deliberation, least of all in their relations with men. Reason has hardly anything to do with it. A woman is a weapon, designed by the Creator, who generally knows what he is doing, to fascinate the other sex: that is her essence and her raison d'etre: the woman who does not do it is a failure, and she is Nature's triumph and entelechy, who does it best. And this every woman knows, by instinct, and feels, long before she ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain

... There is similar spirit in the Italian galleries, with a variation due to national characteristics rather than to difference of opinion or method. The Italian pictures fully occupy the mind and eye; the French often fascinate by something more than skill and color. Both countries have placed their older art, and some of its best, in their ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... no doubt! You saw Antony's galleys from Actium come. But there! if questions could answers draw From lips so many a long age dumb, I would not tease you with history, Nor vex your heart for the men that were; The one point to learn that would fascinate me Is, where and what are ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... No royal crown holds such a jewel; it is a ruby with the emerald's green light playing ever upon it. Yet the deer that sees it loses all power of motion, and trembles, and awaits his death and even so, to compare hearing with sight, this sweet and mellow sound seemed to fascinate Martin Wittenhaagen. He stood uncertain, bewildered, and unnerved. Gerard was little better now. Martin's last words had daunted him, He had struck an old man and shed his blood, and, by means of that very blood, blood's four-footed avenger was on his ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... consciences to comfort them after all. Do not, therefore, be too much afraid of showing yourself as you are, affectionate and good-hearted; do not too harshly repress sentiments and feelings excellent in themselves, because you fear that some puppy may fancy that you are letting them come out to fascinate him; do not condemn yourself to live only by halves, because if you showed too much animation some pragmatical thing in breeches might take it into his pate to imagine that you designed to dedicate your life to his inanity. Still, a composed, decent, equable ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... might seem that there was danger of a lapse from the more serious kind of heroic composition into a more trivial kind. Certainly there is nothing in the plain story to give much help to the author; nothing in Grendel to fascinate or tempt a poet with a story made to ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... was silent and reflective for a moment. "Men are so queer," she finally said. "If I'd been an honest working girl he'd never have noticed me. It's because I am what I am that I've been able to get acquainted with him and fascinate him. And he feels it's a sporty thing to do—to marry a fast girl. If I was to settle down to work, be a regular working girl—why, I'm afraid he—he'd stop loving me. Then, too, he likes to believe he's rescuing me from a life ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... Court was then very brilliant, and gallantry the order of the day. Marie de Rohan was naturally vivacious and dashing, and, yielding herself up to the seductions of youth and pleasure, she had lovers, and her adorers drew her into politics. Her beauty and captivating manners were such as to fascinate and enthral the least impressible who crossed her path, and their dangerous power was extensively employed in influencing the politics of Europe, and consequently had a large share in framing her own destiny. A portrait in the possession of the late Duke de Luynes[1] ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... loggias imposed on great forbidding masses of brown stone, shooting aloft into a light aerial tower. The empty halls inside are of fair proportions and a noble size, and the views from the open colonnades in all directions fascinate. But the final impression made by the building is one of square, tranquil, massive strength—perpetuity embodied in masonry—force suggesting facility by daring and successful addition of elegance ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... emotions, anxiety, hope, gloom, terror and horror, Sophocles works on us as no man had ever done before. It is a sin against him to be content with a mere outline of the play; the words he has chosen are significant beyond description. Again and again they fascinate the reader and always leave him with the feeling that there are still depths of thought left unsounded. The casual mention of the shepherd at the beginning of the play is the first stroke of perfect art; Jocasta's disbelief in oracles is the next; then follows the contrast between the Queen's ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... he felt the need of some great stroke that should astonish and fascinate the world. He understood that to maintain his fame he was condemned to work miracles. September 23, 1805, he had exposed to the Senate the hostile conduct of Austria, and had announced his speedy departure to carry aid to the Elector of Bavaria, the ally of France, ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... "You fascinate me," he said slowly. "I admit it. You have found the weak spot in my armor. Proceed! ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... have experienced great joys and great trials. And Hut Point has an atmosphere of its own. I do not know what it is. Partly aesthetic, for the sea and great mountains, and the glorious colour effects which prevail in spring and autumn, would fascinate the least imaginative; partly mysterious, with the Great Barrier knocking at your door, and the smoke of Erebus by day and the curtain of Aurora by night; partly the associations of the place—the old hut, the old landmarks, so familiar ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... reclaimed, how a little woodland fairy, Jacqueline, worked out a scout fantasy, and how a very modest deed won the first Bronze Cross, makes the first volume of this series a book calculated to inspire as well as to fascinate the reader. ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis

... fascinate the boy are those which deal in thrilling tales of adventure. The wily and unscrupulous traffickers in cheap literature have ever been awake to this fact, and their highly-colored productions have been flung from the vicious presses ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given

... now two Black-Artists, of the first quality, busy on the unconscious Friedrich Wilhelm; and Seckendorf, for the next seven years, will stick to Friedrich Wilhelm like his shadow; and fascinate his whole existence and him, as few wizards could have done. Friedrich Wilhelm, like St. Paul in Melita, warming his innocent hands at the fire of dry branches here kindled for him,—that miracle of a venomous ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... very faulterings groundward come of flight Urged by a pinion all too passionate For heaven and what it holds of gloom and glow: Bravest of thinkers, bravest of the brave Doers, exalt in Science, rapturous In Art, the—more than all—magnetic race To fascinate their fellows, mould mankind. ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... how to make a once desperate operation fairly safe is usually followed by a rage for that operation not only among the doctors, but actually among their patients. There are men and women whom the operating table seems to fascinate; half-alive people who through vanity, or hypochondria, or a craving to be the constant objects of anxious attention or what not, lose such feeble sense as they ever had of the value of their own organs and limbs. They seem to care as little for ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw

... it, is it? So he keeps it up in memory of the past. It's a pity there's no one for him to fascinate here though. I kept staring at his exquisite collars. They're like marble, and his chin's shaved simply to perfection. Come, Arkady Nikolaitch, ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... "Peace, be still"? I dared not think. Every effort to reason upon what had befallen me, and realize what it implied, set up an intolerable swimming of the brain. The idea that I was two persons, that my identity was double, began to fascinate me with its simple solution of ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... lure of her personality; there was not one of us on board the Ertak who had not. And she had not exercised her wiles on any of us save Hendricks; with the shrewdness which had made her the leader she was, she had elected to fascinate the youngest, the weakest, the ...
— Priestess of the Flame • Sewell Peaslee Wright

... for ten minutes. It was Tupper's great poem, and she attempted to read it. Lady Linlithgow sat, totting up her figures, but said nothing. She had not spoken a word since Lucy's return to the room; and as the great poem did not at first fascinate the new companion,—whose mind not unnaturally was somewhat disturbed,—Lucy ventured upon a question. "Is there anything I can do ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... satisfied connoisseur. His glance played from one article of furniture to another, from the floor to the ceiling, from bookcase to bookcase, from picture to picture. The very plainness of the room seemed to fascinate him. His gaze sought out the ugliest picture, and became fixed on it. Tranter turned over all the cards, and shrugged his ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming

... followed the impulse which made you kindly offer to drink tea with us?" He suddenly turned to me. "Another proof, Mr. Roylake, of the sisterly interest that she feels in you; she can't hear of your coming to my room, without wanting to be with you. Ah, you possess the mysterious attractions which fascinate the sex. One of these days, some woman will love you as never man was loved yet." He addressed himself again to Cristel. "Still out of spirits? I dare say you are tired of waiting for your tea. No? You ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins

... vague sense of uncertainty and pain which had distressed him passed away, leaving him fully self-possessed once more. "I think you are one of those exceptional women whom a man never grows weary of: like a Cleopatra, or any other old-world enchantress, you fascinate with a look, you fasten with a touch, and you have a singular freshness and wild attraction about you which makes you unlike any other of your sex. I know well enough that I shall never get the memory of you out of my brain; your face will haunt me ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... leagues and leagues away, making the earth tremble with his heavy tread, and distancing everything with his long, untiring stride. Then, on his return, he would be the prince of good-fellows once more, and fascinate the merry revellers with the witchery of his tongue. Even when a boy, he had won a bet by walking six miles in two minutes less than an hour. He once dined in Grosvenor Square, and made his appearance at Oxford at an early ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... terrible position, she spoke volubly of all manner of things—her aunt, the weather, the Madonna. Then she stopped suddenly, frightened at her own words, frightened at her own silence; she fixed her burning gaze upon her brother's brow as though to fascinate him. Little by little animation returned to her; a faint colour tinted her hollowed cheeks, and Gabriel, deceived by the maiden's super human efforts, thought her still beautiful, and thanked God in his heart for having spared this tender creature. Nisida, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... the Master that mattered to them most, and it is perhaps not a mere random guess that they were not in any case so aware of the interest of childhood and of children as Jesus was. Matthew and Luke record the miraculous birth, and each adds a story, that has never failed to fascinate men, of the Magi or the Shepherds who came to the manger cradle. Luke gives one episode of Jesus' ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... second many times to do the like? Why doth scraping of trenchers offend a third, or hacking of files? Why doth a carcass bleed when the murderer is brought before it, some weeks after the murder hath been done? Why do witches and old women fascinate and bewitch children: but as Wierus, Paracelsus, Cardan, Mizaldus, Valleriola, Caesar Vanninus, Campanella, and many philosophers think, the forcible imagination of the one party moves and alters the spirits of the other. Nay more, they can cause and cure not only diseases, maladies, and several ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... fascinate you seem to surround pretty Carol Duncan. A vivid, plucky girl, her cleverness at solving mysteries will captivate ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin

... command, to some memorable spot in the neighbourhood, or in the sport which the river and the rod secured Egremont. In the evening, he invariably repaired to the cottage of Gerard, beneath whose humble roof he found every female charm that can fascinate, and conversation that stimulated his intelligence. Gerard was ever the same; hearty, simple, with a depth of feeling and native thought on the subjects on which they touched, and with a certain grandeur of sentiment and conception which contrasted with ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... noticed her, but none would intrude upon her in this reverie, that seems to be her normal state, her face has assumed that expression of intense emotion that could fascinate the most unwilling victim, and indeed they are very few who are not willing to pay a tribute at that shrine, while she in her unconsciousness, is living the long sunny hours, down in the bottomless sea, trying to penetrate it with the eyes of her soul, trying to fathom the fathomless, ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... strain and burden he tried to do. He encouraged her to find work among the poor; he tried in the tenderest ways to interest her in the great spectacle of London life which was already, in spite of yearning and regret, beginning to fascinate and absorb himself. But their standards were now so different that she was constantly shrinking from what attracted him, or painfully judging what was to him merely curious and interesting. He was really more and more oppressed by her intellectual limitations, though never ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... worship is a dull, meaningless round of ceremony. Here they mistake. While Romanism is based upon deception, it is not a coarse and clumsy imposture. The religious service of the Roman Church is a most impressive ceremonial. Its gorgeous display and solemn rites fascinate the senses of the people, and silence the voice of reason and of conscience. The eye is charmed. Magnificent churches, imposing processions, golden altars, jeweled shrines, choice paintings, and exquisite sculpture appeal to ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... I gazed on this scene, for how pleasant it was just now to think of the strange experience I had passed through—to think that I had come safely out of it, that no human eye had witnessed my weakness, and that the mystery existed still to fascinate me! For, ludicrous as the denouement now looked, the cause of all, the voice itself, was a thing to marvel at more than ever. That it proceeded from an intelligent being I was firmly convinced; and although too materialistic in my way ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson

... know about that," he said. "The poem has a certain power, it seems to me. It might repel—it might fascinate. I should like to buy it just to give the poor fellow a little lift. The lovely eyes of that fragile wife of ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... example, let us go to the southern hemisphere, whose most celebrated constellation, the "Southern Cross,'' has found a place in all modern literatures, although it has no claim to consideration on account of association with ancient legends. This most attractive asterism, which has never ceased to fascinate the imagination of Christendom since it was first devoutly described by the early explorers of the South, is but a passing collocation of brilliant stars. Yet even in its transfigurations it has been for hundreds of centuries, and will continue ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... "Ruby Hamilton," "Seba's Discipline," etc. This is a book which will fascinate and at the same time instruct and benefit every boy or girl who reads it. Its characters are delightfully sketched and have a refreshing air of genuineness. 400 pages, fully ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... cold face, deathly in its pallor, lighted by eyes sloe-black but like glinting steel. Striking as were these features, they failed to fascinate as did the strange tracings which apparently showed through the white, drawn skin. This first repelled, then drew her with wonderful force. Suffering, of fire, and frost, and iron was written there, and, stronger than all, so potent as to cause fear, could be read the terrible ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey

... be no mercy from Stumm. That large man was beginning to fascinate me, even though I hated him. Gaudian was clearly a good fellow, a white man and a gentleman. I could have worked with him for he belonged to my own totem. But the other was an incarnation of all that makes Germany detested, and yet he wasn't altogether ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... This carriage stimulated her curiosity, and, in such a country, was well adapted to suggest to a lively fancy the outlines of a romance. No doubt, she thought, the pavosk contained a young and beautiful Circassian, whose charms would fascinate some Oriental prince, and place a queen's diadem upon her brow. At an inn, in Stavropol, Madame de Hell again fell in with the Circassian and his mysterious charge, but the latter was veiled from head to foot "The young mountaineer," she says, "prepared a ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... shudder. "Don't talk about admiration, uncle; that is not the word for it; I don't know what it was like. They say snakes fascinate birds before they eat them by fixing their eyes upon them. I should say it was something of ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty

... me, because I should have thought he was just the sort of person to attract and fascinate the other sex—a bachelor too, without ties, able to take advantage of any success in that line that came his way. I mean, of course, by offering marriage to the ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... the house and the chapel seemed to fascinate Larry. He held that it must have some particular use and he devoted his ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson

... passion that reminded him of his pursuit. The deer trail led down through a break in the wall. Only a few rods of it could be seen. This trail was passable, even though choked with snow. But the depth beyond this wall seemed to fascinate Slone and hold him back, used as he was to desert trails. Then the clean mark of Wildfire's hoof brought ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... pay me, too,' said the witch, 'and it is no trifle that I demand. You have the most beautiful voice of any at the bottom of the sea, and I daresay that you think you will fascinate him with it; but you must give me that voice; I will have the best you possess in return for my precious potion! I have to mingle my own blood with it so as to make it as ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... one small finger struck a key. The sound seemed to fascinate her. Margaret caught her in her arms and kissed ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas

... delight us especially by their beauty, such as birds or butterflies; others may surprise us by their size, as Elephants and Whales, or the still more marvellous monsters of ancient times; may fascinate us by their exquisite forms, such as many microscopic shells; or compel our reluctant attention by their similarity to us in structure; but none offer more points of interest than those which live in communities. ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... Rosamond Lee was in a towering rage. She had sent for her own maid to help her dress, and she was obliged to wear a dress which was not near so becoming to her as the blue cashmere which she felt sure would fascinate handsome ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey

... him ever more barbarous and more barren, while season after season added to its horrors without revealing a single compensation, Seneca grew more and more disconsolate and depressed. It seemed to be his miserable destiny to rust away, useless, unbefriended, and forgotten. Formed to fascinate society, here there were none for him to fascinate; gifted with an eloquence which could keep listening senates hushed, here he found neither subject nor audience; and his life began to resemble a river which, long before ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... murmuring rill; Nor all the varied beauties of the year, That so can Scotland to our hearts endear— The merry both and melancholy strain, Their power assert, and o'er the spirit reign; Indebted more to nature than to art, They reach the ear to fascinate the heart; And waken hope that, animating, cheers, Or bathe our being in the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... economy, the mechanic and the mathematician fairly meet; and it requires a rare union of ability in both vocations to arrive at original results in this sphere. To invent a bridge, through the application of a scientific principle by a novel method, is one of those projects which seem to fascinate philosophical minds; in few have theory and practice been more completely tested; and the history of bridges, scientifically written, would exhibit as remarkable conflicts of opinion, trials of inventive skill, decision ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... absorbed in watching the approach of the boat that they were unconscious of her presence, and suddenly it began to fascinate the Countess de Mattos also, as if it were one of the discs which hypnotists give to their patients. She, too, bent over the rail and gazed at the boat as the rowers brought it nearer and nearer, but she could not see the faces of its occupants. For three or four minutes ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson

... The old records fascinate us. We spend every spare moment before the coming of the treaty party in transcribing choice bits from them. There were drinks and drinkers ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... "Girl, you do not fascinate—you do not charm me, but you bind me to you in a way I did not think it in the power of any human being to subjugate ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... girls, yet he knew that he had the power to fascinate any woman once he put his mind to the work. He had not tried his powers of fascination on Phyl. It was the other way about. Phyl absolutely unconsciously had used ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... Ivan Kinski—a Pole, who, though a Terrorist, was suspected by his friends of being a spy. You took one plum only, while he probably took more. At any rate, you had a very narrow escape. But you at least have the satisfaction of knowing that Julie will never again fascinate, and the Baron will never again be given an opportunity of preparing ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux

... I marry the Inca's son, Captain, I shall make the Inca order you to cut off that moustache. It is too irresistible. Doesn't it fascinate everyone in Perusalem? ...
— The Inca of Perusalem • George Bernard Shaw

... and the drawl was the same—but there was a purr in it that made every man stiffen in his chair and make sure that his right hand was free. The ghost of his former smile was still on his lips, but it was his eyes that seemed to fascinate Sandy. ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand

... his part to see that. And the thing which evidently held her in check was the newness, the strangeness, and for the moment the all-satisfying fact of his respect for her. Duane exerted himself to please, to amuse, to interest, to fascinate her, and always with deference. That was his strong point, and it had made his part easy so far. He believed he could carry the whole scheme through without involving himself ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey

... Circe; the semi-divine mariners of Phaeacia, whose ships are endowed with consciousness and obey without a steersman; the one-eyed Cyclopes, the gigantic Laestrygones, and the wind-ruler AEolus; the Sirens, who ensnare by their song, as the Lotophagi fascinate by their food,—all these pictures formed integral and interesting portions of the old epic. Homer leaves Odysseus reestablished in his house and family. But so marked a personage could never be permitted to remain in the tameness of domestic life; the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... understand is how Victor, with his religious views, can think of marrying a divorced woman. I've heard him say over and over again—once quite lately— that divorce is totally inconsistent with true Christianity. If she's been able to fascinate him to that point, I am afraid of her.—But how stupid of me to talk all the time! Have you spoken to him at all? What does he say? And don't you thoroughly agree ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al



Words linked to "Fascinate" :   enchant, appeal, work, seize, capture, beguile, becharm, enamor, transfix, charm, grab, matter to, grip, intrigue, entrance, catch, attract, interest, hold, fascination, trance, spellbind



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