"Slightness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the feel of her, and, looking down at the little hand that lay in his, he found the reason. She had on a pair of new gloves. They were still of the same fawn colour, but so smooth and soft and cool. They fitted closely without a wrinkle, displaying the slightness and the gracefulness of the hands beneath. The twilight had almost faded, and, save for the broad back of a disappearing policeman, they had the Outer Circle to themselves; and, the sudden impulse coming to ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... from the gutter, blinded with blood from a very slight skin-wound, and, queerly enough, not caring either for the blindness or for the slightness of the wound. For one mortal minute after that amazing cavalcade had spun past, there was dead stillness on the empty road. And then came Barker and all his halberdiers running like devils in the track of them. It had been their business to guard the gate by which the ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... slightness of her plots and their family likeness, warm praise is due for the skill with which they are conducted; they are neatly articulated, the climactic effect is, as a rule, beautifully graduated and sure in its final force: the multitude of ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... a broad oval wicker-basket covered with a white cloth, which burden she bore round to the back door. Of course, she washed for his own household: he had not thought of that. In the morning sunlight she appeared rather as a sylph than as a washerwoman; and he could not but think that the slightness of her figure was as ill adapted to this occupation as her mother's ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... retorted, "but you must see that the boy is far more beautiful. It is your sex-instinct, your sinful sex-instinct which prevents you worshipping the higher form of beauty. Height and length of limb give distinction; slightness gives grace; women are squat! You must admit that the boy's figure is more beautiful; the appeal it ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Public sentiment approves the judgment and the punishment in the case of John W. Webster. But certainly he should never have been convicted without giving the fullest weight to his previous character and to the slightness of the temptation to the commission of such a crime, to the fact that the evidence was largely circumstantial, to the doubt of the identity of the body of the victim, and to the fact that the means or instrument ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... along the north coast of Grant Land are remarkable for the slightness of the rise and fall, which varies from an average of 1.8 feet at Cape Sheridan to .8 at Cape Columbia. As is well known to navigators, the tides at Sandy Hook, New York, sometimes rise twelve feet, while the tides in the Bay of Fundy are often over fifty ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... and taste—which happily is not confined to the French, nor to waiters—produces some admirable results, results out of all proportion to the slightness of the means employed. It often takes but a word, a gesture, to indicate the delicate process of adjustment. A few summers ago I was drinking tea with friends in the gardens of the Hotel Faloria, at Cortina. At ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... he rejoined with a shade of triumph, the politest of triumph. He was a step above her, her head on a level with the pocket of his blouse. His square shoulders, commanding height, and military erectness were thus emphasized, as was her own feminine slightness. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... every advance. I was therefore much surprised when a young fellow of the exquisite type came and squeezed himself in between us, and met with a perfectly civil reception despite the liberty. I did not know the boy by sight, nor did Raffles introduce us; but their conversation proclaimed at once a slightness of acquaintanceship and a license on the lad's part which combined to puzzle me. Mystification reached its height when Raffles was informed that the other's father was anxious to meet him, and he instantly consented to ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... Llewellyn's books—the most delightful things in the market: the sweetest covers, with little gilt apples and things carelessly distributed over luminous grey, and bright red initials, and all these delightful fopperies. But it was the very slightness of these bibelots that disorganised me. And perhaps, also, the fact that no one has ever asked ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... the contrary, in the exercises of artists, oil should be the vehicle of colour employed from the first. The extended practice of water-colour painting, as a separate skill, is in every way harmful to the arts: its pleasant slightness and plausible dexterity divert the genius of the painter from its proper aims, and withdraw the attention of the public from excellence of higher claim; nor ought any man, who has the consciousness of ability for good ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... peaked face, very clear-skinned, and resembled in some manner a mask. But the look of it was as sharp as steel; like a slender rapier, fragile and thin, yet keen enough to run a man through. The power of it, in a word, was out of all measure with the slightness of the face.... Then the face dropped; and Marjorie watched the back of the head bending this way and that, till the nodding heads that followed hid it ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... not blame us for the slightness of construction and unimportant subjects of many of the minor pieces which we have admitted into our present selection from Pushkin's lyrical productions. It was our object to give the English reader, as far as possible, a fair and just ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... for her own progeny. No suspicion probably had yet, or would hereafter, occur with regard to its true parent. If her character be distinguished by the usual attributes of women, the knowledge of this truth may convert her love into hatred. I reflected with amazement on the slightness of that thread by which human passions are led from their true direction. With no less amazement did I remark the complexity of incidents by which I had been empowered to communicate to her this truth. How baseless are the structures of falsehood, ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... as frivolous as these, duels continued to be fought in most of the countries of Europe during the whole of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. A memorable instance of the slightness of the pretext on which a man could be forced to fight a duel to the death, occurs in the Memoirs of the brave Constable, Du Guesclin. The advantage he had obtained, in a skirmish before Rennes, against ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... resorted to it, was to give proper solemnity to the alienation of property. It is likely that a very slight perversion of the Nexum from its original functions first gave rise to its employment in Contracts, and that the very slightness of the change long prevented its being appreciated or noticed. The old name remained because men had not become conscious that they wanted a new one; the old notion clung to the mind because nobody had seen reason to be at the pains ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine |
