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More "Finesse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... traditional driver of the spoil. This was what Scott foresaw when he objected to "writing up to a title." In fact, he did not write up to, it, and, as the "Scots Magazine" said, "shaped his story in such a manner as to throw busybodies out in their chase, with a slight degree of malicious finesse." "All the expeditions to the wonderful cave have been thrown away, for the said cave is not once, we think, mentioned from ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... got them. They gave Pop no praise for yielding—no credit for extracting somehow from the dry-soil of an arid town the money they extracted from him. They knew nothing of the myriad little agonies, the ingenuity, the tireless attention to detail, the exquisite finesse that make success possible in the melee of competition. Their souls were above trade ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... putting his house in order for the final crash, but now it merely enraged him. He redoubled his activity, launching a new campaign of publicity so extravagant and ill-timed as to repel the assistance he needed. He had lost his finesse; his nicely adjusted financial ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... a year to pass without writing to his friend, but he had occupied himself daily over his affairs. He had haggled with the most ferocious usurers of the island, insulting some, outwitting others in finesse, resorting to persuasion or to bravado, advancing money to satisfy the more urgent creditors, who threatened attachment. In conclusion, he had left his friend's fortune free and sound, but it emerged from the terrible battle shrunken and comparatively insignificant. There only remained to Febrer ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... guides, I am reminded that our acquaintanceship with the second member of the Mark Twain brotherhood was staged in Paris. This gentleman wished himself on us one afternoon at the Hotel des Invalides. We did not engage him; he engaged us, doing the trick with such finesse and skill that before we realized it we had been retained to accompany him to various points of interest in and round Paris. However, we remained under his control one day only. At nightfall we wrested ourselves free ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... of a caution worthy of a finer finesse than hers, and suddenly she seemed to realize the quality of her fear for him to whom she was everything and who to her ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... the common language of politeness, and servants do not understand it. As for myself, I naturally prefer the German tongue; it is blunt and honest and lacks the finesse of the French, which is full of evasive words and meanings. However, French predominates at court. Besides, heaven help the foreigner who tries to learn all the German tongues to be found in the empires of the Hohenzollern and Hapsburg. Luncheon will be served to ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... sold the picture?' inquired Jeanne, when they met. 'Not yet,' said Paul. 'But they are delicate matters, these negotiations. I use finesse. I proceed with caution.' ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... somewhat absurd that a man should go about armed like that? Carr evaded and made a vague remark about a man riding across the Bad Lands perhaps with money in his pocket. But John Carr was a blunt, straightforward type of a man, little given to finesse in circumlocution, and Helen fixed her frank, level gaze upon him and knew that he was holding back something. Still higher rose her curiosity about a man whom she did her feminine best ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... event in Sir John Macdonald's career affords a more admirable illustration of his strategic ability, delicate finesse, and subtle power over men than his negotiations with Joseph Howe. Howe's opposition to Confederation was of no ordinary kind. He {80} had long been a conspicuous figure in Nova Scotia, and was passionately devoted to the interests of the province. He was incomparably ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... himself in pride, and endeavored to acknowledge the compliment in the manner of his well-meant but rude courtesy; for refinement did not then extend its finesse and its deceit among the glens ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... however, not wanting in discernment, penetration, finesse; in this light they are superior to many of the white girls in the lower classes of society, girls so impenetrably dull, that like that of Balsac's village, they are too stupid to be deceived by a man of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... superior. Yet the catalogue of his virtues is an easy task. Achilles was a huge body, associated with little brain, and had no symptom of sagacity. In this regard, Ulysses outranks him, and commands our respect. He has diplomacy and finesse. He is not simply a huge frame, wrestling men down because his bulk surpasses theirs. He has a thrifty mind. He is the man for councils of war, fitted to direct with easy mastery of superior acumen. His fellow-warriors called him "crafty," because he was brainy. He was schooled in stratagem, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... apart, the brutal Bismarck stands side by side with the lovely Louise; the blood and iron of the man were of no avail without the finesse of the woman. ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... ... le nouveau prefet ... il a la finesse d'une femme, il est ruse comme un diplomate, et avec cela actif, perseverant ... et pensez que c'est a moi peut-etre qu'il doit ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve
... demands, of the same kind, from two chiefs of other isles who were present; and from Taipa himself. When Feenou returned, which was immediately after I had made the last of these presents, he pretended to be angry with Taipa for suffering me to give away so much; but I looked upon this as a mere finesse; being confident that he acted in concert with the others. He now took his seat again, and ordered Earoupa to sit by him, and to harangue the people as Taipa had done, and to the same purpose; dictating, as before, the heads ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... introduction is a masterstroke, the porter at the door is another, the effect of the wine upon the women, their jealousy lest either's husband should seem more liberal, their appraisal of each other's jewelry, Scintilla's remark anent the finesse of Habinnas' servant in the mere matter of pandering, the blear-eyed and black-toothed slave, teasing a little bitch disgustingly fat, offering her pieces of bread and when, from sheer inability, she refuses to eat, cramming ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... art, craft, finesse, invention, stratagem, blind, cunning, fraud, machination, subterfuge, cheat, device, guile, maneuver, trick, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... first night J.'s world was shattered. We need not enter into details in this matter, but a woman of this type needs finesse in the initiation into marriage more than at any other time. Cave-man style outraged her every fiber, and the man was dumbfounded at her reaction. Though he tried to make amends his very effort and lack of understanding ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... lives they should stray amongst Congregationalists, Baptists, or Methodists, they come away disgusted at the brutal directness with which social evils are exposed in the light of the word of the Lord. They complain of the general lack of finesse and Latin; the licence of the pulpit has usurped the reverence of the altar. It is perfectly true that statements are sometimes made in nonconformist pulpits which are bald and offensive to the ear of scholarly accomplishment. But the complaint of secularization is singularly inept. Nothing could ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... perfect stranger to him he would have known her voice for the voice of a woman who was in love. Was she really lacking, he asked himself in amusement, in the quality which he called for want of a better phrase—"the finesse of sentiment?" or was the angelic candour of her emotion only the outward expression of that largeness of nature which inspired him at times with a respect akin to awe? The absence of any coquetry in her attitude impressed him as the final ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... tactics were exactly opposite. The instructor, with all the native politeness of his race, called on those only who caught his eye and appeared willing and anxious to recite. This made the matter comparatively simple, but still required considerable finesse. Patty dropped her pen, spilled the pages from her note-book, tied her shoe-string, and even sneezed opportunely in order not to catch his eye at inconvenient moments. The rest of the class, who were not ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... equally graceful and grateful. Like the india-rubber trees of Asia, these ceibas have at least one half of their anaconda-like roots exposed upon the surface of the ground, dividing the lower portion of the stem into supporting buttresses, a curious piece of finesse on the part of nature to overcome the disadvantage of insufficient soil. The tree bears annually a large seed-pod, packed with cotton of a soft, silky texture, and hence its name. It is, however, suitable neither ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... speculative calculations the banker put forth as much intelligence and skill, finesse and mental power, as a practised diplomatist expends on national affairs. If he were equally remarkable outside his office, the banker would be a great man. Nucingen made one with the Prince de Ligne, with Mazarin or with Diderot, is a human ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... this respect. He loved best the retirement of his own study, and was rarely seen outside of it, except when required by his official duties. He abjured the artificial forms and fashions of social life, the bustling confusions of trade and commerce, and the whirl and finesse of political agitations. He never would stand on a platform, nor be seen at an anniversary, nor harangue a popular assembly. He was happiest in solitude where, undisturbed, he could solve the abstruse problems of ethics, or be a delighted critic of metaphysical theories, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... enough in its proportions to be very well adapted to the talent of Miss Cushman. It was remarkable how perfectly the genius which had, the evening before, adequately represented Phedre, could impersonate the ablest finesse of Italian subtilty. The old Italian romances were made real in a moment. The dim chambers, the dusky passages, the sliding doors, the vivid contrast of gayety and gloom, the dance in the palace and the duel in the garden, the smile ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... been often translated. Antonio de Trueba is a writer of popular songs and short stories not without merit, Campoamor (b. 1817) and Bequer represent the poetry of twenty years ago. The short lyrics of the first named are remarkable for their delicacy and finesse. Bequer, who died at the age of thirty, left behind him poems which have already exercised a wide influence in his own country and in Spanish America; they tell a story of passionate love, despair, and death. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... distances that separated the houses of gentlefolk in the west of Ireland would have made hospitality a more spontaneous and less formal affair in any case. In Devon, as Gabrielle soon discovered, calling was a ritual complicated by innumerable shades of social finesse. Lady Halberton had already coached her in the list of people whom she must know, people she could safely know at a distance, and people whom it was her duty to discourage. As soon as she was settled in at Lapton the county descended ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... vehemence of veritable attack. Landry she could manage with the lifting of a finger, Corthell disturbed her only upon those rare occasions when he made love to her. But Jadwin gave her no time to so much as think of finesse. She was not even allowed to choose her own time and place for fencing, and to parry his invasion upon those intimate personal grounds which she pleased herself to keep secluded called upon her every feminine ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... of the Bar Double M interrupted impatiently, tired of trying to pump out the information by finesse. "You've got to speak, Flandrau. You've got to tell us who was engineering ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... thought they did but finesse with him, that they might get the ass at their own price; but, when they went away from him and he had long in vain awaited their return, he cried out, saying, 'Woe!' and 'Ruin!' and 'Alack, my sorry chance!' and shrieked aloud and tore his clothes. So the people of the market assembled to him ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... as to balance two opposing interests, and reserve in her own hand the power of making either predominate, as the interest of the state, or perhaps as her own female caprice (for to that foible even she was not superior), might finally determine. To finesse—to hold the cards—to oppose one interest to another—to bridle him who thought himself highest in her esteem, by the fears he must entertain of another equally trusted, if not equally beloved, were arts which she used throughout ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... a dash, an ease, that shows long and varied experience. Charley Abbott is a finished ladies' man. It almost discourages me when I contemplate the serried ranks of women that must have contributed to his perfect finesse." ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... the wee fraction of a second before the Canadian struck, Drennen jerked up his own hands, ready for him. And the two struck at the same instant. There was to be no finesse of boxing; these men had no knowledge of fistic trickery. All that they knew was to fight, to strike hard and straight from the shoulder, opposing strength with strength, swiftness with swiftness, merciless hatred with a hatred as merciless. And so it happened that ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... Brown, with his eyes wide open. By this time he had begun to understand that the depth of his partner's finesse was not to be fathomed by his own ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... knowledge, that Emily did not possess; and then I could not but see that Lucy's tact in moral feeling, was much of the highest order of the two. But, in purely conventional attainments, in most that relates to the world, its usages, its finesse of feeling and manner, I could see that Emily was the superior. Had I known more myself, I could have seen that both were provincial—for England, in 1801, was but a province, as to mere manners, though on a larger scale than America is even now—and that either would have been remarked ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... remembered for his singularly personal touch along with men like Fuller and Ryder. He is not as dramatic as either of these artists, but he has greater finesse in delicate sensibility. He was, I think, actually afraid of repetition, a characteristic very much in vogue in his time, either conscious or unconscious, in artists like Inness, Wyant, and Blakelock, with their so single note. There is exceptional ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... mistakes in spelling. Very patient was he about this, and even when he was President and harried constantly we find him stopping to acknowledge for her "an invitation to take some Tea," and at the bottom of the sheet adding a pious bit of finesse, thus: "The President requests me to send his compliments and only regrets that the pressure of affairs compels him to forego the Pleasure of ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... than the world of dress And pompous dining, out, Better than simpering and finesse Is all this stir ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... they carried me into a chamber full of their portraits; I was looking for Bassompierre; my laquais de louage opened a door, and said, "Here are more." One of the first that struck me was Philibert Comte de Grammont!(914) It is old, not at all handsome, but has a great deal of finesse in the countenance. I shall think of nothing now but having it copied. If I had seen or done nothing else, I should be content ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... proceeded to carry it out with considerable finesse. An ordinary schemer would have been content to work with a savage hound. The use of artificial means to make the creature diabolical was a flash of genius upon his part. The dog he bought in London from Ross and Mangles, the dealers in Fulham Road. It ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... Honey Tone did not feel constrained to explain the finesse which prompted him to abandon the vocabulary which he had derived from a year's schooling ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... 's nought but shy finesse, And mim and prim 'bout mess and dress, That scarce a hand a hand will press Wi' ought o' feeling free; A cauldrife pride aside has laid The hodden gray, and hame-spun plaid, And a' is changed since neebors said Just, How ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... confused disposition of the Norman towers, with their division into stories of equal height, has been adopted by the French master builder, although in submitting to these local customs he has still thrown over his work the grace and finesse, the study of detail, the sobriety in projections, the perfect harmony between the profiles, sculpture, and the general effect of the whole, which belong to the school he came from. He has managed his voids and solids with especial cleverness, giving the more importance to the ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... an easy and extemporaneous liar, but, alas, a clumsy one. He lacked the Bald-faced Kid's finesse; lacked also his tireless energy, his insatiable curiosity, and the thin vein of pure metal which lay underneath the base. There was nothing about Squeaking Henry which was not for sale cheap; body and soul, he was on life's bargain counter among the remnants, and Abe Goldmark, examining ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... great knowledge of business and much wit, had, by mere absurdity of judgment and a disposition to finesse, thrown himself out of all estimation, and out of all the views which his large fortune and abilities could not have failed to promote, if he had preserved but the least shadow of steadiness. He had two or three times gone all lengths ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... dramatic accompaniments of his larger songs, before mentioned, attention is called to the Impromptu in B-flat—the air and variations known as "The Fair Rosamunde," the title due to the appearance of this melody in his opera of "Rosamunde." At least three of these variations display great finesse in treating the pianoforte. The first needs to be done with the utmost delicacy and lightness, the melody suggested rather than brought out. The third has a new rhythm and a melodic secondary figure in the left-hand ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... which showed me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in finesse. I let him go on in his own way, and ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... was therefore mindful not to mix too freely with other boys. He had not the great talents of his younger brothers, but he exceeded them in judgment and propriety of demeanour; his fault, if he had one, was an over-attention to words instead of things; there was a thought too much finesse about him, and, as even his father sometimes told him, he was too fond of ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... of using the telephone, decided against it. It might take some diplomatic finesse to persuade the old scientist to hire himself out to a newspaper. He might feel it degrading and cheapening to do ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... most extravagant compliments; her senseless chatting I described as unrestraint tempered by finesse, her pretentious exaggerations as a natural desire to please; was it her fault that she was poor? At least, she thought of nothing but pleasure and confessed it freely; she did not preach sermons herself, nor did she listen to them from others; ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... "What finesse!" exclaimed the South American ladies. "These Germans are not so phlegmatic as they seem. It is an attention . . . something very distinguished. . . . And is it possible that some still believe that they and the French might ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... has been my joy, our joy as well as yours. You have made for yourself a unique place upon the stage. We have so many actresses who aspire to great things in the drama, not one who can interpret as you have interpreted it, the delicate finesse, the finer lights and shades of true comedy. Ennison will make a thousand enemies if he takes you from the stage. Yet I think that he will ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... diked in themselues, chose officers and gouernours and deuised lawes, that thei also emong theimselues might liue in quiete. So beginning a rough paterne of tounes and of Cities, that aftre ware laboured to more curious finesse. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... in Rebekah's interview with the servant of Abraham, a pattern of unaffected simplicity. It is this which throws an inexpressible charm over the narrative. We see nothing but nature; not a particle of false delicacy or finesse. There is no study, no aim to please, no acting a part to court esteem, no suspicions about her, and no concealments; but, in every word and motion, the most perfect artlessness. "When unadorned" she approaches the well ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... another detail that struck the boy. Always Big James had addressed him as 'Master Edwin' or 'Master Clayhanger.' Now it was 'Mister.' He had left school. Big James was, of course, aware of that, and Big James had enough finesse and enough gentle malice to change instantly the 'master' to 'mister.' Edwin was scarcely sure if Big James was not laughing at him. He could not help thinking that Big James had begun so promptly ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... course," he admitted. "You don't get much idea of it just going through those letters, but the real thing is the biggest kind of a game you ever saw. It's a finesse here and a forcing of the opponent's hand there, but it can never be the ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... recovered herself, and her words had come with that airy, impersonal tone which permits nothing of what is said in it to be taken seriously. Something said by the others had recalled her to herself, and she was now returned very suddenly to the old position of alertness and social finesse. Something icy seemed to pass over her, and she immediately lost all self-consciousness, and began to speak to her husband with less reserve than she had shown since he had come. But he was not deceived. He saw ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... journalist, Frank, you are too obvious—too delightfully verdant. You should study indirection, subtlety, finesse—study our mutual friend ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... maintained its grip. All the wit and sprightliness of the fight was on the part of the lizard, who lashed its foe with its pliant tail, and endeavoured so to swerve as to bite. Both were light weights. One was all dash and sportive agileness; the other played a dull waiting game with admirable finesse. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... degradation of poverty. "Phanias the Lesbian" (so states the biographer of Solon) "asserts, that to save the state he intrigued with both parties, promising to the poor a division of the lands, to the rich a confirmation of their claims;" an assertion highly agreeable to the finesse and subtlety of his character. Appearing loath to take upon himself the administration of affairs, it was pressed upon him the more eagerly; and at length he was elected to the triple office of archon, arbitrator, and lawgiver; the destinies ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... from that day, every morning after breakfast till four o'clock, the Major and I were shut up, playing two dummies under his instruction. Adept as he was, I very soon learnt all the finesse and beauty of ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... rhetorical, my little one, and the question interrogative. However, we'll not puzzle thee with Quintilian. Run away to thy lute. And so it is, Senhor da Costa. I love my Judaism more than my Portugal; but while I can keep both my mistresses at the cost of a little finesse—" ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... paused long enough to explain the affair, in a few dignified words, to an admiring policeman who found it difficult to believe that this stripling had vanquished two such powerful brutes. Sometimes another act was staged in which he conferred his card upon the amazed policeman and later explained the finesse of his science to him, thereby winning his deathless gratitude. He became quite chummy with this officer and was never to be ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... miseries of war, as your lordships will perceive by the form of the agreement, explaining itself and making manifest its pure and undissembling intentions, promising nothing and engaging to nothing which will not be effectually performed. This would not be the case if his Majesty were proceeding by finesse or deception. The ratification might be nakedly produced as demanded, without any other explanation. But his Majesty, acting in good faith, has now declared his last determination in order to avoid anything that might be disputed at ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... immeasurable resources of tradition behind them, to quell any such inquisition, she was by training defenceless. She had plenty of pluck, plenty of adroitness; but she could only play the sex game with Alf very crudely because he was not fine enough to be diverted by such finesse as she could employ. All Jenny could do was to play for safety in the passage of time. If she could beat him off until Emmy returned she could be safe for to-night; and if she were safe now—anything might happen another day to bring ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... important; since our fleet would go there, and the whole war would be settled by one "stand-up fight." But wars are not so conducted and never have been. From the oldest times till now, and even among savage tribes, finesse has always been employed, in addition to actual force—more perhaps by the weaker than by the stronger side, but very considerably also by the stronger. A coming enemy would endeavor to keep his objective a close secret, and even to mislead us; so that our fleet would have ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... not skilful," said Raymonde thoughtfully. "They don't do the thing artistically. There's a finesse required for this kind of work that their stupid young heads don't possess. I'm not sure if it wouldn't be philanthropic ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... Shu[u]zen with the task." His laugh was so cold and purposeful, his look so derisive and comprehending, that the old fellows in some confusion sought comfort in each other. This Aoyama Shu[u]zen was a very devil of a fellow. He had a perspicacity in finesse that the plain, keen, and honest bluntness of former days could not deceive. Aoyama was not one to charge with effeminacy in any form. He had a wife—whom he neglected. He had a page, whom he favoured. He had all the harsh vices and capabilities ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... was not pleased at this question being put to her. She would have preferred to leave that to Griffith. And, as she was a singular mixture of frankness and finesse, I believe she had retired to her own room partly to test Griffith's heart. If he was as sincere as she was, he would not be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... her to understand that he had forgotten her entirely. The finesse of the Tuileries could not have struck home more delicately, and more keenly. "I've often heard," she thought to herself, "that an awkward swordsman is dangerous." But she made no cry of "touchee!" Instead she caught at ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Chinese chef of the Arrowhead Ranch, had butchered, cooked, and served two young roosters for the evening meal with a finesse that cried for tribute. As he replaced the evening lamp on the cleared table in the big living room he listened to my fulsome praise of his artistry as Marshal Foch might hear me say that I considered him a rather good strategist. Lew Wee heard but gave no sign, as one set above the petty adulation ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... In two days it will be common gossip from Damascus to Beersheba. In a week it will be known from end to end of Egypt; then Arabia; then India! Ho! When the Indian Moslems get the news—the Indian troops in Palestine will send it by mail—then what a furor! Then what anger! That was finesse! That was true statesmanship! Never was a shrewder genius ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... dediees a Mr. Joseph Merk. On the whole we may accept Chopin's criticism of his Op. 3 as correct. The Polonaise is nothing but a brilliant salon piece. Indeed, there is very little in this composition—one or two pianoforte passages, and a finesse here and there excepted—that distinguishes it as Chopin's. The opening theme verges even dangerously to the commonplace. More of the Chopinesque than in the Polonaise may be discovered in the Introduction, which was less of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... now become easy and familiar to you? Can you speak it with the same fluency that you can speak German? You cannot conceive what an advantage it will give you in negotiations to possess Italian, German, and French perfectly, so as to understand all the force and finesse of those three languages. If two men of equal talents negotiate together, he who best understands the language in which the negotiation is carried on, will infallibly get the better of the other. The signification and force ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Unless I underestimate him gravely he is incapable of such finesse. He is a thug first, a thief afterwards. He would have killed me out of hand if it had been he who had me at his mercy, down here, in the dark. Nor would he have been able to open the safe without using an explosive. That, indeed, is why, as I understand him, Dupont attacked ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... counsellor of Maurice, prince of Orange, and afterwards of Frederick Henry, prince of Orange, in their conduct of the foreign affairs of the republic. He was sent on special embassies to Venice, Germany and England, and displayed so much diplomatic skill and finesse that Richelieu ranked him among the three greatest politicians of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Rabelais dans son bon sens, et vivant en bonne compagnie. Il n'a pas, a la verite, la gaite du premier, mais il a toute la finesse, la raison, le choix, le bon gout qui manquent a notre cure de Meudon. Ses vers sont d'un gout singulier, et presque inimitable; la bonne plaisanterie est son partage en vers et en prose; mais pour le bien entendre il faut faire un petit voyage ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... required more finesse on the part of the handy man. Bat strolled as if it were a matter of habit into the telegraph editor's room, where he lolled back in one of the two empty chairs. It was still early and the wires were silent. Bat laid one cigar at the editor's ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... them at their appearance "[cet] ouvrage est sans gout, sans finesse, sans invention, un rabachage de toutes les vieilles polissonneries que l'auteur a debitees sur Moise, et Jesus-Christ, les prophetes et les apotres, l'Eglise, les papes, les cardinaux, les pretres et les moines; nul interet, nulle chaleur, nulle vraisemblance, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Card you hopefully Finesse Capture the Trick,—your Partner Smiles! Oh yes! And you smile Broadly! But, if it be Caught By the Fourth Hand,—your Smiles are ...
— The Rubaiyat of Bridge • Carolyn Wells
... was trying to save the gate, and that while she remained, the fuse would not be lighted. Saidee, who had come out from the dining-room into the courtyard, could see her on the wall, and Rostafel was babbling that she was "une petite lionne, une merveille de courage et de finesse." The Highlanders knew, too, and were doing their best to rid her of Maieddine, but, perhaps because of the superstition which made them doubt the power of their bullets against a charmed life, they ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to get back. I have never talked seriously to you before; I may never do it again. The essence, the distinctive finesse, of breeding, lies in a trained gaiety and an implied sincerity. But what I must say to you is this: Even in this leveling age there are a few of us who look with terror upon an incipient socialism; who ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... or accomplish by finesse; effect: inf. dd e we ealle r ne meahton snyttrum be-syrwan (a deed that all of us could not accomplish before with all our wisdom), 943.—2) to entrap by guile and destroy: inf. mynte se mnscaa manna cynnes sumne be-syrwan (the fell foe thought to entrap ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... acetylene lamp we had dined, and there had been two rubbers of bridge, the colonel and the little American doctor bringing about the downfall of Wilde, the signalling officer, and myself, in spite of the doctor's tendency to finesse against his own partner. The doctor had never played bridge before joining us, and his mind still ran to poker. The Reconnaissance Officer of the —th Divisional Artillery had rung up at 10 o'clock to tell ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... a horse play such a dangerous game, and surely none ever showed such finesse. Deliberately trailing behind him an enemy bent on taking either his life or freedom, not for a moment did Black Eagle show more than imperative caution. At the close of each day when, by a few miles of judicious galloping, ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... contribution, after having made it clear that it was for some one in distress—not for a church. The only return Shay ever asked was that Jim come sometimes and put on the gloves with him in a friendly round. Most of Shay's legal finesse was done through Squeaks. That small, but active person was on the boards of at least twenty-five popular organizations, and it was understood that he was there to represent the boss. Extraordinary evidence of some one's pull was shown when one day Squeaks was elevated ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... resorted to a bit of finesse, in order to learn whether or not Garson had been arrested. She spoke with a ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... ruffle her temper. No disappointment must embarrass her. She must see her old china broken without a sigh, and her best glass shattered with a smile. In short, to quote the language of a clever contemporary, she must have "the genius of tact to perceive, and the genius of finesse to execute; ease and frankness of manner; a knowledge of the world that nothing can surprise; a calmness of temper that nothing can disturb; and a kindness of disposition that can ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... about the coquetry of women; men also have their coquetry, but as they show less grace and finesse than we do, they do not ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... enough to cause suspicion. One would not have imagined, on looking at Mr. O'Dwyer, that he was a very crafty person, or one of whose finesse in affairs of the world it would be necessary to stand much in awe. He seemed to be thick, and stolid, and incapable of deep inquiry; but, nevertheless, he was as fond of his neighbour's affairs as another, and knew as much about the ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... colouring, I had contrived to have assembled a party of some eight or ten, and was solicitously careful that the introduction of cards should appear accidental, and originate in the proposal of my contemplated dupe himself. To be brief upon a vile topic, none of the low finesse was omitted, so customary upon similar occasions that it is a just matter for wonder how any are still found so besotted ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... delivering his blow, Mr. Smith took his hat and left the studio without shaking hands with Archie, although he smiled frostily on the trust company's ward and "hoped all would go well with her in her new life." All the way back to his hotel he congratulated himself for his dispatch, finesse, eloquence, and wisdom in handling a deplorable and difficult situation. Yet it is hard to see just what he had accomplished by crossing the ocean. He washed his hands of "the Clark girl" before he left Paris for his return voyage, and, like so many persons ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... troops reached France, I know that Marshal Joffre and General Haig have not spoken too highly of you; and yet," here the American commander hesitated a moment before continuing; "and yet the piece of work I have in sight will entail, perhaps, more danger, more finesse, and more resourcefulness than any mission ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... out with genuine scholastic finesse and verbosity into a discussion of the questions whether this definition is based upon the essentia or the differentia of fever; whether the heat of fever is natural or unnatural, and other similar subtle speculations, and finally arrives at a classification of ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... their minds was made clear in the campaign. No one would wish to minimize the unusual abilities of Mr. Hughes, but they are the abilities of an adroit lawyer. He makes "points." He pleases those minds which like cleverness and finesse. He deals with international affairs like an astute lawyer drawing a brief. But has he ever quickened the nation's pulse or stirred its heart by a single utterance? Did he ever make any one feel that behind the formalities of law, civil ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... far-reaching purpose to connect them. There is no intention of progress in it all. The race is barbarous, and then it changes to civilized; in the one case the strong rob the weak by brute force; in the other the crafty rob the unwary by finesse. The latter is a more agreeable state of things; but it comes to about the same. The robber used to knock us down and take away our sheepskins; he now administers chloroform and relieves us of our watches. It is a gentlemanly proceeding, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... public, the audience is an essential feature in our discussion. The audience of Plautus was not of a high class. Terence, even in later times, when education had materially progressed, often failed to reach them by over-finesse. Plautus with his bold brush pleased them. Surely a turbulent and motley throng they were, with the native violence of the sun-warmed Italic temperament and the abundant animal spirits of a crude civilization, ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... strongly feels to belong to group III and which he uses, along with a number of other classificatory concepts,[73] to relate his subjects and objects, attributes and predicates, as a Russian or a German handles his genders and, if possible, with an even greater finesse. ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... the poet. "It's envy that speaks! But what do you suppose I have here?" Producing a slip of paper from his vest pocket. "No; it's not another draft! An advertisement! Listen: 'Mademoiselle de Castiglione's select seminary. Young ladies instructed in the arts of the bon ton. Finesse, repose, literature! Fashions, etiquette, languages! P. S. Polkas a specialty!' Celestina, your destiny lies at Mademoiselle de Castiglione's. They will teach you to float into a drawing room—but you won't ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... will not lie down," he said. "Seriously, and since you refuse to treat me as a man, and since you finesse with me, I will try and set you at bay, as a hunter does ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... rational living. But such fulness requires a sphere of life that will call forth and exercise the highest human capacities. Aristotle frankly pronounces "external goods" to be indispensable, and happiness to be therefore "a gift of the gods." The rational man will acquire a certain exquisiteness or finesse of action, a "mean" of conduct; and this virtue will be diversified through the various relations into which he must enter, and the different situations which he must meet. He will be not merely brave, temperate, and just, as ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... the author to choose his company? If his receptions are ill-attended, that may not reflect ill on those who accept the invitation. Not everyone will read the poems of Mr. Doughty; Mr. Doughty has made it hard for them; but if they do, they are repaid. Not everyone will tolerate the finesse of Mr. Henry James; but among those who can understand him, assuredly Mr. James ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... interest of an indolent man to be honest: for it requires considerable trouble and finesse, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various
... these feats helped me to the subjugation of Nelly. Yet, after all, in sheer physical prowess, I could not really rival Fred, who stood a full head taller than I did. But I had a deal more of finesse than he had, made very much better use of my opportunities, and was a far more practised poseur. Fred was well supplied with self-esteem—a most valuable qualification in love-making—but he lacked the introspectively seeing eye. He might ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... been ashamed of myself. I had not room to be that now; I was too full of anger. "I did make rather a mess of it," I equably remarked, "but, you see, Nannie had shown strength in diamonds, and I simply couldn't resist the finesse. So they made every one of their clubs. And I hadn't any business to take the chance of course at that stage, with the ace right ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... miserable cravings after applause; one who in the exercise of his profession was jealous even of the women-performers that stood in his way; a manager full of managerial tricks and stratagems and finesse: that any resemblance should be dreamed of between him and Shakespeare,—Shakespeare who, in the plenitude and consciousness of his own powers, could with that noble modesty, which we can neither imitate nor appreciate, express ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... essentially French composers. His operas may be summed up as being the perfect translation into music of the witty plays of Scribe, with whom he was associated all his life. To read a comedy by Scribe is to imagine Auber's music to it. No one has excelled Auber in the expression of all the finesse of wit and lightness of touch. What the union between the two men was may be inferred from the fact that Scribe wrote many of his librettos to Auber's music, the latter being written first, Scribe then adding the words. His principal works are "Masaniello" or "The Mute," and "Fra Diavolo." ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... hours upon it daily since I last wrote; and that is all I have done forbye working at Samoan rather hard, and going down on Wednesday evening to the club. I make some progress now at the language; I am teaching Belle, which clears and exercises myself. I am particularly taken with the FINESSE of the pronouns. The pronouns are all dual and plural and the first person, both in the dual and plural, has a special exclusive and inclusive form. You can conceive what fine effects of precision and distinction can be reached in certain cases. Take Ruth, i. VV. 8 to 13, and imagine ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... right, of course," he admitted. "You don't get much idea of it just going through those letters, but the real thing is the biggest kind of a game you ever saw. It's a finesse here and a forcing of the opponent's hand there, but it can never be the whole ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... dull sensibilities, by one of keen poetic feeling, and finally by one who recalled its context and on that account could enjoy its fullest richness: "It is the landscape, not of dreams or of fancy, but of places far withdrawn, and hours selected from a thousand with a miracle of finesse."[3] ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... ministerial body are planned and agitated over the inspirations of his viands and the excitement of his wine—from a haunch of venison, like the one of which we have partaken to-day, what noble and substantial measures might arise? From a saute de foie, what delicate subtleties of finesse might have their origin? from a ragout a la financiere, what godlike improvements in taxation? Oh, could such a lot be mine, I would envy neither Napoleon for the goodness of his fortune, nor S—for the grandeur ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... exactly opposite. The instructor, with all the native politeness of his race, called on those only who caught his eye and appeared willing and anxious to recite. This made the matter comparatively simple, but still required considerable finesse. Patty dropped her pen, spilled the pages from her note-book, tied her shoe-string, and even sneezed opportunely in order not to catch his eye at inconvenient moments. The rest of the class, who were not artists, contented themselves with merely lowering their ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... was so cold and purposeful, his look so derisive and comprehending, that the old fellows in some confusion sought comfort in each other. This Aoyama Shu[u]zen was a very devil of a fellow. He had a perspicacity in finesse that the plain, keen, and honest bluntness of former days could not deceive. Aoyama was not one to charge with effeminacy in any form. He had a wife—whom he neglected. He had a page, whom he favoured. He had all the harsh ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... the history of France "from the earliest time to the present day," seen in the mirror of the writer's ironical temperament. It is very good. It is inimitable. It is sheer genius. One cannot reasonably find fault with its amazing finesse. But then one is so damnably unreasonable! One had expected—one does not know what one had expected—but anyhow something with a more soaring flight, something more passionate, something a little less gently "tired" in its attitude towards the criminal frailties of mankind! ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... a good creature at heart,' she explained frankly, as if to disclaim any finesse, 'and almost quixotically loyal. But what really did she mean, do you think? She is so obstinate. That maddening "some one"! How they do repeat themselves. It can't be my husband; not Dr Ferguson, I mean. You don't suppose—oh surely, not "some one" else!' ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... was characteristic. The lands in controversy had just been ceded by solemn treaty to the new republic. To openly espouse the cause of Brant was to declare war. A little finesse must be resorted to in order to evade the leading question, and at the same time hold the tribes. They therefore wined and dined the American chief, and presented him to the king and queen, but promised him nothing. Lord Sidney rained ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... see. But Anne was there. At least, the knowledge of her was in his mind, insisting on being heard, and insisting as it never had in this present life. For whereas then her attack had been subtly organized, Anne herself, the directing general, behind almost invisible potencies of suggestion and finesse, now here she was in the open, plainly commanding him, as if this might be the only fight she should be able to manage, and it must be to the finish. And what she wanted was plain obedience touching the disposal of her trust. It was not his love she was asking for now. That, he concluded, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... to dampen the new-lighted hope which this turn of the affair seems to give that poor, wretched wife and mother. But, to my mind, all this makes it doubly certain that the Elwoods have met with foul play. It looks exactly like one of Gaut's devilish schemes of finesse, to cause this canoe to be sent down the rapids, and be so found as to lead folks to suppose the owners were drowned, and to put the public on a false scent. Yes, friends, you may depend there has been foul play,—I dare not guess how foul. I have felt it the last ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... over his papers he was amazed at the imagination of his mistress which had first discerned the possibility of making the cause of Italian liberty serve her brother's ambitious imperialism, and the marvellous finesse with which she had vanquished Murat's gascon envy and resentment and made him once more a tool in the hand of the Emperor. Still more he admired Napoleon's acumen and resource as he saw order coming out of chaos and all things working together for ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... the count, "have you attained the eminent situation in which you are, without having admitted, or even without having met with exceptions? and do you never use your eyes, which must have acquired so much finesse and certainty, to divine, at a glance, the kind of man by whom you are confronted? Should not a magistrate be not merely the best administrator of the law, but the most crafty expounder of the chicanery of his profession, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was visibly snappish for three whole days, Justine remarked, in reply to an unjust reproach, and with a chambermaid's finesse: ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... the Card you hopefully Finesse Capture the Trick,—your Partner Smiles! Oh yes! And you smile Broadly! But, if it be Caught By the Fourth Hand,—your Smiles are ...
— The Rubaiyat of Bridge • Carolyn Wells
... of analysis, and sympathy with mental finesse, must also specially adapt this actor to the correct assumption of the character of Iago. Those who have never seen him in it may know by analogy that his merits are not exaggerated. We take it that Iago is a sharply intellectual personage, though his logic, warped by grovelling purpose, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... wrested from him by Bill Bardin. When he would have retrieved her Terry Stamper had secured her notice. So through another dance he stood aloof against the wall, moody now. It might be only social finesse in Pearl but she was showing to others the same pleased vivacity she had shown to him. Could it be she did not yet understand? Had she possibly not divined that they two were now forever apart from the trivial world? ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... once for all the entire question between the North and the South, no strategy could have been more effectual than that of sacrificing Sumter exactly as it was sacrificed. The whole affair could not have been arranged with greater shrewdness and finesse. Anderson and his officers—without an exception, gallant and competent—were made to appear as heroes and, in a sense, they were; the North was completely unified, and the same can be said of the South. The lines were now distinctly ...
— The Supplies for the Confederate Army - How they were obtained in Europe and how paid for. • Caleb Huse
... power of finesse in the feminine mind that no man may fully compass, and Yolanda, in that respect, was the flower of her sex. That she had been able to maintain her humble personality with Max, despite the fact that she had been compelled to meet him twice as princess, proved her ability. Of course, ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... teams on Saturday last produced a struggle of titanic dimensions worthy of the best traditions of the famous combinations engaged. On the one hand we saw the machine-like precision, the subtle finesse so characteristic of the Whitebrook men, while at the same time we revelled in the dash and speed, the consummate daring displayed by their doughty opponents. We have witnessed many games, but for keenness and enthusiasm this one must rank.... In a game where every man acquitted himself well it is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... a tact and self-command, a knowledge of finesse that he would not have believed possible in a rough and uneducated mountaineer. But the same quality, the wonderful perception, or rather intuition, that had made Wood a military genius, was serving him here, and though he perceived at once ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... came in a canoe with mats, roots, and the berries of the sacacommis. These people proceed with a dexterity and finesse in their bargains which, if they have not learned it from their foreign visitors, may show how nearly allied is the cunning of savages to the little arts of traffic. They begin by asking double or treble the value of what they have to sell, and lower their ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... last two years, been insulated and saturated, and had then lost those embellishments, by operations; a quantity of the fluid having been substituted in their places so happily, that the patients fancied themselves more than ever conspicuous for the length and finesse of their caudce. An experiment had also been successfully tried on a member of the lower house of parliament, who, being married to a monikina of unusual mind, had for a long time been supplied with ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... company of heroes, Ulysses is easy superior. Yet the catalogue of his virtues is an easy task. Achilles was a huge body, associated with little brain, and had no symptom of sagacity. In this regard, Ulysses outranks him, and commands our respect. He has diplomacy and finesse. He is not simply a huge frame, wrestling men down because his bulk surpasses theirs. He has a thrifty mind. He is the man for councils of war, fitted to direct with easy mastery of superior acumen. His fellow-warriors called him "crafty," because he was brainy. He was schooled ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... gold cigar-case, chose and lighted a cigar to steady his nerve, and faced her with a smile—the worst tactic he could possibly have chosen in dealing with this woman. Supremely successful in handling men, he lacked finesse and insight with the other sex; and now that lack, in his moment of need, was bringing him moment by moment nearer the edge ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... weeks of her stay, Emma managed, little by little, to take the place of second mother in the household. She had tact and finesse and cleverness enough even for that herculean feat. Grace's pale cheeks and last year's wardrobe made her ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... more breeding have immeasurable resources of tradition behind them, to quell any such inquisition, she was by training defenceless. She had plenty of pluck, plenty of adroitness; but she could only play the sex game with Alf very crudely because he was not fine enough to be diverted by such finesse as she could employ. All Jenny could do was to play for safety in the passage of time. If she could beat him off until Emmy returned she could be safe for to-night; and if she were safe now—anything might happen another day ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... Giboyer, of Olympe and the Marquis d'Auberive, there were analogies between the genius of Labiche and the genius of Teniers. 'C'est au premier abord,' says he, 'le meme aspect de caricature; c'est, en y regardant de plus pres, la meme finesse de tons, la meme justesse d'expression, la meme vivacite de mouvement.' For myself, I like to think of Labiche as in some sort akin to Honore Daumier. Earnestness and accomplishment apart, he has much in common with that king of caricaturists. The lusty frankness, the jovial ingenuity, the ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... death. I wanted the world, which had despised me, to think a beautiful woman had preferred to die with me rather than marry a man she did not wish to wed. But why should we recall that dreadful day and night? You won the victory. You, with your superior finesse, triumphed over the African as your race has always triumphed over mine. I demanded love or death. You dissuaded me from both. And the next day I permitted you to depart, and saw vanish with you the last hope of happiness ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... Eric the rival of Steen Sture, was sent when young to Rome (where it is supposed he learned the art of political finesse), and was there consecrated Archbishop of Upsal by Leo the Tenth. On his return to Sweden, he treated with great haughtiness Steen Sture, who came to congratulate him on his elevation. He joined in Christiern's attempts on Sweden, and, being convicted of treason by the ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... in Sir John Macdonald's career affords a more admirable illustration of his strategic ability, delicate finesse, and subtle power over men than his negotiations with Joseph Howe. Howe's opposition to Confederation was of no ordinary kind. He {80} had long been a conspicuous figure in Nova Scotia, and was passionately devoted to the interests of the province. He was incomparably ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... at the opposite side of the table. Clearing his throat, Dove gazed at the sinner before him. He began to see that his errand was not going to be an easy one; where no hint was taken, it was difficult to insert even the thinnest edge of the wedge. He resolved to use finesse; and, for several of the precious moments at his disposal, he talked, as if ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Baldwin's cowboys could get new mounts in plenty without wasting many minutes, and that then they would overhaul me in very short order. Clearly there was no use in my attempting to escape by running. And, as I wasn't armed, my only hope was to beat them by some finesse. ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... I was going, too," said Mary Lou mildly, as they parted. "But I presume a certain young man is very glad I am not," she added, with deep finesse. Peter laughed out, but turned red, and Susan wished impatiently that Mary Lou would not feel these embarrassing inanities to be either ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... way to say the thing she thought, directly, in headlong Highland fashion. Of finesse she used none. She loved me (oh, a thousand times more than I deserved!) and that was all there was about it. To be ashamed of her love or to hide it never, I think, occurred to her. What more natural then than that others should think of me ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... amour propre. Its defect and its weakness lie in the fact that it is still too young to have acquired dignity. But lately sprung from the mob it now preys upon, it yet shows some of the habits of mind of that mob: it is blatant, stupid, ignorant, lacking in all delicate instinct and governmental finesse. Above all, it remains somewhat heavily moral. One seldom finds it undertaking one of its characteristic imbecilities without offering a sonorous moral reason; it spends almost as much to support the Y. M. C. A., vice-crusading, Prohibition and ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... dedicated to artistic perfection as was A. E. Housman. Her output has, therefore, been limited: Flowering Judas (1930, enlarged 1935); Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939), The Leaning Tower (1944). Her stories penetrate psychology, especially the psychology of a Mexican hacienda, with rare finesse. Her small canvases sublimate the inner realities of men and women. She appeals only to cultivated taste, and to some tastes no other fiction writer in America today is ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... then!" exclaimed du Portail, impatiently; "you go round and round the pot as if I were a man it would do you some good to finesse with." ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... the world of dress And pompous dining, out, Better than simpering and finesse Is all ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... credit for the solution of the Ella's mystery. I have a certain quality of force, perhaps, and I am not lacking in physical courage; but I have no finesse of intellect. McWhirter, a foot shorter than I, round of face, jovial and stocky, has as much subtlety in his little finger as I have in my six feet and a fraction ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... proof of sagacity in the twelfth year of his age, what might not be expected from his finesse in the maturity of his faculties and experience? Thus secured in the good graces of the whole family, he saw the days of his puerility glide along in the most agreeable elapse of caresses and amusement. He never fairly plunged into the stream of school-education, but, by ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... respect. He loved best the retirement of his own study, and was rarely seen outside of it, except when required by his official duties. He abjured the artificial forms and fashions of social life, the bustling confusions of trade and commerce, and the whirl and finesse of political agitations. He never would stand on a platform, nor be seen at an anniversary, nor harangue a popular assembly. He was happiest in solitude where, undisturbed, he could solve the abstruse ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... learned this largely by having my cuticle removed in many quarters of the globe. The methods here are rather raw and shameless, also more novel and picturesque. We accomplish the same result with more finesse in the East." ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... heart. I expected to find her conversation satirical and full of pleasantries and points. It was not so; it was much better. The conversation of Madam de Luxembourg is not remarkably full of wit; it has no sallies, nor even finesse; it is exquisitely delicate, never striking, but always pleasing. Her flattery is the more intoxicating as it is natural; it seems to escape her involuntarily, and her heart to overflow because it is too full. I thought I perceived, on my first visit, that notwithstanding ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... discovery, two things alone crowded all else from her mind. She must contrive to hold off Drummond until that part of the expedition which was ready could be got off. And she must play the jealous rivals against each other with such finesse as to ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... had been a perfect stranger to him he would have known her voice for the voice of a woman who was in love. Was she really lacking, he asked himself in amusement, in the quality which he called for want of a better phrase—"the finesse of sentiment?" or was the angelic candour of her emotion only the outward expression of that largeness of nature which inspired him at times with a respect akin to awe? The absence of any coquetry in her attitude impressed him ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... hours in the former without discovering the latter; on the other hand, some blundering ninny might have lighted instantly on the ship and ocean, and awkwardly inquired what it was doing there. So Helen was really enchanted by the ruin. She handled her men with notable finesse: Uncle James savage and vindictive, but uncertain upon whom to pour out his anger; Emanuel nursing his injured innocence; and Andrew Dean nursing his elbow, his head, and vengeance. She also found a moment in which to calm Georgiana, who had run flying and hysterical into ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... "there must be no mistake as to who is in command of this expedition. If we succeed it will be by finesse rather than force, and that is distinctly a feminine quality. Second, there is to be no unnecessary fighting. We are here to secure my nephew, not ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... carried away by vanity as though she had been only in her twenty-fifth year," says Madame de Motteville, when noting her reappearance. "She relied all the same upon her charms," she adds with a somewhat malicious finesse, "for she returned with the same desire of pleasing; and those who saw her assured me that the mourning garb which she wore as a widow, and to which she added everything in the shape of ornament that self-love could suggest, rendered ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... the very moment of my disaster, the enemy, suspecting our flight to be only a finesse, had halted, while only sixteen dragoons under colonel Camp, continued ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... craft, finesse, invention, stratagem, blind, cunning, fraud, machination, subterfuge, cheat, device, guile, maneuver, trick, contrivance, dodge, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... paid her the most extravagant compliments; her senseless chatting I described as unrestraint tempered by finesse, her pretentious exaggerations as a natural desire to please; was it her fault that she was poor? At least, she thought of nothing but pleasure and confessed it freely; she did not preach sermons herself, nor did she listen to them from others; I went so ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... to blame that the conversation began in the presence of other officers. Perhaps I ought not to have spoken before them, but I am not a diplomatist. That's why I joined the hussars, thinking that here one would not need finesse; and he tells me that I am lying—so ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... private dining-room at Gastron's would be just as likely to incriminate Langhorne and some of his crowd as not. It is a difference in degree of graft—that is all. They don't want an open fight. It was just a piece of finesse on Langhorne's part. You may be sure of that. No, neither of them wants a fight. That's the last thing. They're both afraid. What Langhorne wanted was a line on Dorgan. And we should never have known anything ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... did it mean? He must think now, and think quickly. It meant, first of all, that any hope for the Tocsin which he had built upon the Magpie was shattered, gone forever. And it meant, that gray seal on the sole of the dead man's boot, that the murder had been committed with even greater cunning and finesse, and an even greater security for the murderer, than he had attributed to the Magpie a moment since, when he had thought the Magpie the instigator, and not ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... extreme crisis in the fortunes of the treaty its chief protagonist was removed from the scene of action and the Democratic forces fighting for ratification were deprived of effective leadership. Had there been a real leader in the Senate who could carry on the fight with vigor and finesse, the treaty might even then have been saved; but Wilson's system had permitted no understudies. There was no one to lead and no one to negotiate a compromise. From his sick-room, where his natural obstinacy seemed to be intensified by his illness, the President still ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... but not with equal effect, and several of his later plays were failures. He died on the 22nd of July 1904. Wilson Barrett was a sterling actor of a robust type and striking physique, not remarkable for intellectual finesse, but excelling in melodrama, and very successful as the central figure ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... had said enough to cause suspicion. One would not have imagined, on looking at Mr. O'Dwyer, that he was a very crafty person, or one of whose finesse in affairs of the world it would be necessary to stand much in awe. He seemed to be thick, and stolid, and incapable of deep inquiry; but, nevertheless, he was as fond of his neighbour's affairs as another, and knew as much about the affairs of his neighbours at Kanturk ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... cruelly asked of the poor, cowering wretch. "You will never get another chance, I'll warrant me. Go, let the servants put you to work in the large music room first. Begin with the grands, then follow with the uprights. Thank you, gentlemen both, for the courage and finesse you displayed in this desperate quest. I'll see that you are both suitably rewarded." I fancied that Michael regarded me sardonically, but he held his peace about ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... believe in a man who expects to go through a long tournament, going "all out" for every match. Conserve your strength and your finesse for the times you need them, and win your other matches decisively, but not destructively. Why should a great star discourage and dishearten a player several classes below him by crushing him, as he no doubt could? A few games a set, well earned, would be a big factor in encouraging ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... hands you would not grasp in friendship, whose presence you would not tolerate by your fireside—incompetent men, whose fitness is not in their capacity as functionaries, or legislators, but as organ pipes; the snatching at the slices and offal of office, the intemperance and the violence, the finesse and the falsehood, the gin and the glory; these are indeed but too closely identified with that political agitation which circles around the Ballot-Box. But, after all, they are not essential to it. They are only the masks of a genuine grandeur and importance. For ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... inspectors of the revenue, about pedagogues, about attorneys, about the police, about officers, about sensual ladies, about engineers, about baritones—and really, by God, altogether well—cleverly, with finesse and talent. But, after all, all these people are rubbish, and their life is not life, but some sort of conjured up, spectral, unnecessary delirium of world culture. But there are two singular realities—ancient as humanity itself: the ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... from criminal law, steers equally clear of the civil code? What curious paradoxes, what subtleties of finesse lurk in those fine meshes of jurisprudence, ingeniously spread to succor wary guilt, to tangle and trip the careless feet of innocence! All the world knows that the dearest wish that warmed General ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Il tend sans relache a un sublime qu'il ne connoit pas, & qu'il met tantot dans les choses, tantot dans les Paroles, sans jamais attraper le Point d'Unite, qui concilie les Paroles avec les choses, en quoi consiste tout le Secret, & la Finesse de cette Art merveilleux. ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... Their very prosperity, however, with a certain reserve in their character, and supposed steady attention to small gains, renders them not excessively popular with those among whom they settle. They are charged with a peculiar species of finesse, called 'Yankee tricks,' and the character of being 'up to every thing' is applied to them, we know not exactly how, in a sense of reproach. The Virginian planter, on the contrary, is lax in principle, destitute of industry, eager in the pursuit of rough pleasures, and demoralized ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... and grateful. Like the india-rubber trees of Asia, these ceibas have at least one half of their anaconda-like roots exposed upon the surface of the ground, dividing the lower portion of the stem into supporting buttresses, a curious piece of finesse on the part of nature to overcome the disadvantage of insufficient soil. The tree bears annually a large seed-pod, packed with cotton of a soft, silky texture, and hence its name. It is, however, suitable ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... reminded one of the insipid angel on a Christmas card; but in spite of the engaging innocence of her look, she was prodigiously experienced in the beguiling arts of her sex. Almost from the cradle she had had "a way" with men; and her "way" was as far superior in finesse to the simple coquetry of Cousin Pussy as the worldliness of Broadway was superior to the worldliness of Hill Street. From her yellow hair, which she wore very low over her forehead and ears, to her silk stockings of the gray called "London smoke," which showed coquettishly ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... small attentive eyes and curls slowly waving from side to side. But for once in her life the vicar's wife was not communicative in return. That the situation should have driven even Mrs. Thornburgh to finesse was a surprising testimony to its gravity. What between her sudden taciturnity and Catherine's pale silence, the girls' sense of expectancy was roused to its ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had to pray and speak against it; scarcely any one beyond the mourners' room could hear his voice. It was a hard task that the poor young minister had. He was quite aware of the feeling against Deborah, and it required finesse to avoid jarring that, and yet display the proper amount of Christian sympathy for the afflicted. Then there were other difficulties. The minister had prayed in his closet for a small share of the wisdom of ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... think he's been in New York"—he gave a groan—"on account of some delicate finesse on Maria's part, some incomprehensible plan of hers for bringing Goward back here. The worst of it is that, like all her plans, I believe it's ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... ready for the day's work, instead of giving all day to professional work and then with exhausted brains undertaking the work of governing the country after dinner. Cavendish, the authority on whist, being asked if a man could possibly finesse a knave, second round, third player, replied, after reflecting, "Yes, he might ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... was dismayed. How could he, a man of delicacy, prudence and finesse, have committed such an awkward mistake? He had just cruelly wounded this man, who was so well disposed toward him, and he had everything to ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... character; timid in nature, fond of society, loving peace and quietude, delighting in warm and close friendships. There is much that is firm, steadfast and industrious, some self-love, a good deal of diplomacy, a little that is subtle, or what is called finesse. You are reserved with those you dislike. There is a serious and sad side to your character; you are very thoughtful and contemplative when in these moods. But you are not pessimistic. You have superior abilities, for they are intuitively intellectual. There is a cold reticence ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... game; and yet he did not wish to do this. But there was a mobility, a subtleness in his nature, an unconscious tact, —which the mode of life and of mixing with men in America fosters and perfects,—that made this sort of finesse inevitable to him, with any but a natural character; with whom, on the other hand, Redclyffe could be as fresh and natural as any Englishman ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... veritable attack. Landry she could manage with the lifting of a finger, Corthell disturbed her only upon those rare occasions when he made love to her. But Jadwin gave her no time to so much as think of finesse. She was not even allowed to choose her own time and place for fencing, and to parry his invasion upon those intimate personal grounds which she pleased herself to keep secluded called upon her every feminine art of ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... witness to such a well-posed tableau, no audience to such a charming scene. The pity of it struck Destiny, and Destiny flashed the white of Betty's dress, a shrill point of light, into an eye a hundred yards away. The eye's owner, with true rustic finesse, drew back into the wood's shadow, shaded one eye with a brown rustic hand, looked again, and began a detour which landed the rustic boots, all silently, behind the shed, at a spot where a knot-hole ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... the Estates cut the Gordian Knot by throwing the King's lieutenants out of a window on the Hrad[vs]any. They happened to fall soft, on a midden, and got away unhurt. As a diplomatic action, this measure taken by the Estates lacked finesse, but it had one advantage over the usual diplomatic transactions in their devious course, that it was direct and final in its effect, namely, to precipitate a great devastating war, and to leave Bohemia hopelessly enchained for ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... What have we to show for our day's work? An ephemeral thing, lacking the first breath of life; a thing that is dead before it is born. Why, any cub reporter, if he were to put into some other profession the same amount of nerve, and tact, and ingenuity and finesse, and stick-to-it-iveness that he expends in prying a single story out of some unwilling victim, could retire with a fortune in ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... nearer the truth of the matter as I came to realise that our philosophies differed profoundly. That isn't a very curable difference,—once people have grown up. Theirs was a philosophy devoid of FINESSE. Temperamentally the Baileys were specialised, concentrated, accurate, while I am urged either by some Inner force or some entirely assimilated influence in my training, always to round off and shadow my outlines. I hate them hard. I would sacrifice detail to modelling always, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... instance of excessive finesse, in which Tom awakened suspicion by his very efforts to allay it. It seemed highly improbable to Sir Gervaise, that a man like the nephew could long possess his uncle's will, and feel no desire to ascertain its contents. The language of the young man was an indirect ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... nothing. The French have practised it with great success, and may have invented it. It appears particularly French in some of its phases,—in the manner that is necessary for its practice, in its wit and finesse. The affair of the Diamond Necklace, with which all the world is familiar, is the most magnificent instance of it on record. A lesser case, involving one of the same names, and playing excellently upon woman's vanity, illustrates the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... was trickery, business barter, commerce finesse, government exploitation, slaughter honorable, and murder a fine art; when religion was ignorant superstition, piety the worship of a fetich and education a clutch for honors, there was small hope for the race. Under these conditions everything tended towards division, dissipation, ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... with regard to the education he received. His earliest biographer, de La Porte, maintains that his father "ne negligea rien pour l'education de son fils, qui annonca de bonne heure, par des progres rapides dans ses premieres etudes, cette finesse d'esprit qui caracterise ses ouvrages."8] Lesbros de la Versane gives the same testimony: "Ses heureuses dispositions lui firent profiter de celle (the education) qu'il recut," and adds: "Il fut admire de ses maitres, et il a fait les delices de tous ceux qui l'ont connu."[9] There is ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... chuckle inside, and his heart was full of admiration and gratitude; but would Freckles be equal to bluffing it through? Would the boy have the finesse, the nice subtlety, the real master hand, the situation demanded? If not, then—imp of salvation though he was—in the interest of reform, Freckles would ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... Miss Rolls do to stop Lord Raygan from wanting to come—and from saying anything about me to the others?" she wondered. She could not guess. Yet she grew more and more confident of Ena's finesse as ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... a tout, hence an easy and extemporaneous liar, but, alas, a clumsy one. He lacked the Bald-faced Kid's finesse; lacked also his tireless energy, his insatiable curiosity, and the thin vein of pure metal which lay underneath the base. There was nothing about Squeaking Henry which was not for sale cheap; body and soul, he was on life's bargain counter among the remnants, and Abe ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... plaine, I am voyde of al iudgement, if your nine Comoedies, whervnto, in imitation of Herodotus, you giue the names of the nine Muses, (and in one mans fansie not vnworthily), come not neerer Ariostoes comoedies, eyther for the finesse of plausible elocution or the rarenesse of poetical inuention, than that Eluish Queene doth to his Orlando Furioso; which, notwithstanding, you wil needes seeme to emulate, and hope to ouergo, as you flatly ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... He must be praised for not having dreamed of entering the lists against a spirit of such a temper as his rival. Had he desired, after Luther's manner, to deal in caricature, he would certainly have failed. Sallies, play upon words, and conceits did not suit a mind like his, whose forte was finesse. By nature sober, he could not, like the Saxon monk, fertilize his brain in enormous pots of beer; moreover, beer was not as yet in use beyond ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... likely to compromise their sister at school. It was clearly impossible to betray the least hint of her suspicion, but on the other hand it would be an exceedingly stupid denouement if both Forms were to act the same play. She decided to try finesse. ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... had contrived to have assembled a party of some eight or ten, and was solicitously careful that the introduction of cards should appear accidental, and originate in the proposal of my contemplated dupe himself. To be brief upon a vile topic, none of the low finesse was omitted, so customary upon similar occasions that it is a just matter for wonder how any are still found so besotted as to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Colonel Lilias put a hand on Henri's shoulder affectionately. "They have not your finesse, boy. And I doubt if, in all their army, they have so brave ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... he had overshot the mark. He had been too eager and had alarmed the man. He was annoyed at himself. It would take time and patience and finesse to recover lost ground. Shrewdly he guessed at the rancher's state of mind. The man wanted to tell something, was divided in mind whether to come forward as a witness or keep silent. His evidence, it was clear ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... Roxburghe's magnificent collection of rare, curious, and valuable books, in the gathering of which he spent a goodly portion of his life, and evinced the policy and finesse of the most wily statesman and the shrewdness and cunning of a Jew money-lender, was soon after his decease scattered, by the hammer of Evans, over England and the Continent. A circumstantial history of this memorable sale was written by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... with fastidious meanings do not always engage one's ears, whilst the latter satisfy one's eyes, as with some beautiful spectacle they hold all men prisoners and entranced; and the passage over which good poets most trouble themselves, and which they hold as the greatest finesse, is to show you in words (perchance too many and too long), as if painting a storm on the sea, or the burning of a city, which storm, if they were able, they would rather paint, for when you finish the work of reading, you have already forgotten the commencement, and ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... cater to his public, the audience is an essential feature in our discussion. The audience of Plautus was not of a high class. Terence, even in later times, when education had materially progressed, often failed to reach them by over-finesse. Plautus with his bold brush pleased them. Surely a turbulent and motley throng they were, with the native violence of the sun-warmed Italic temperament and the abundant animal spirits of a crude civilization, tumbling into the theatre in the full enjoyment ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... easy to determine. At Florence there has somehow been attached to it the curious name Howard duca di Norfolk,[13] but upon what grounds, if any, the writer is unable to state. The master of Cadore never painted a head more finely or with a more exquisite finesse, never more happily characterised a face, than that of this resolute, self-contained young patrician with the curly chestnut hair and the short, fine beard and moustache—a personage high of rank, doubtless, notwithstanding the studied simplicity of his dress. Because we know nothing ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... feels to belong to group III and which he uses, along with a number of other classificatory concepts,[73] to relate his subjects and objects, attributes and predicates, as a Russian or a German handles his genders and, if possible, with an even greater finesse. ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... is so happily settled, Clary," wrote my lady, "without any finesse or diplomacy on my part, I don't mind telling you that I have had this idea in my head from the very first day I saw you. I wanted you to win back Arden Court, the place you love so dearly; and as Mr. Granger, to my mind, is a very charming person, nothing seemed more natural ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... audacious enough in all conscience," says Mr. Barker, "but the finesse was successful, and a play most probably otherwise destined to neglect, ran like wild fire through all our theatres." On March 24, 1817, there was acted in Philadelphia, Barker's "The Armourer's Escape; ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... that might blow over. Finesse was required. Ruth had suggested a plan, which, although applauded by the major and his mother, they could not advise her to carry out. For, if it failed, her own peril would be as great as Tom Cameron's. In fact, the result of failure would be that both ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... remarked after the first words exchanged: that was, that he had to deal with a man of high distinction. He could not be an assassin, and it was repugnant to Monk to believe him to be a spy, but there was sufficient finesse and at the same time firmness in Athos to lead Monk to fancy he was a conspirator. When they had quitted table, "You still believe in your treasure, then, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... The subject matters little; the French perception and execution are there. Where other canvases offer—say a beautiful glow—the French picture "vibrates." If other works are finished, these have finesse. 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 ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... horsemanship; rope-dancing. accomplishment, acquirement, attainment; art, science; technicality, technology; practical knowledge, technical knowledge. knowledge of the world, world wisdom, savoir faire [Fr.]; tact; mother wit &c (sagacity) 498; discretion &c (caution) 864; finesse; craftiness &c (cunning) 702; management &c (conduct) 692; self-help. cleverness, talent, ability, ingenuity, capacity, parts, talents, faculty, endowment, forte, turn, gift, genius; intelligence &c 498; sharpness, readiness &c (activity) 682; invention &c 515; aptness, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... two days it will be common gossip from Damascus to Beersheba. In a week it will be known from end to end of Egypt; then Arabia; then India! Ho! When the Indian Moslems get the news—the Indian troops in Palestine will send it by mail—then what a furor! Then what anger! That was finesse! That was true statesmanship! Never was a shrewder ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... what has transpired in North and South America, were less than the small theatre of the antique, or the aimless sleep-walking of the middle ages!) The pride of the United States leaves the wealth and finesse of the cities, and all returns of commerce and agriculture, and all the magnitude of geography or shows of exterior victory, to enjoy the sight and realization of full-sized men, or one full-sized man unconquerable and simple. The ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... is foiled at argument, she generally has recourse to finesse. Lady Mary had made up her mind to carry her point; finding therefore the right column of her vengeance turned by the smart attack of D'Almaine's raillery, she was determined to out-flank him with her whole park of well-appointed ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... temper began to rise. Henry was showing more finesse and more knowledge of the world and its events than he had thought possible in one just come ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... young people, Judge Jarriquez installed himself in his study. His door, barred against every one, assured him of several hours of perfect solitude. His spectacles were on his nose, his snuff-box on the table. He took a good pinch so as to develop the finesse and sagacity of his mind. He picked up the document and became absorbed in meditation, which soon became materialized in the shape of a monologue. The worthy justice was one of those unreserved men who think more easily aloud than to himself. "Let us proceed with method," he said. "No ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... extracting somehow from the dry-soil of an arid town the money they extracted from him. They knew nothing of the myriad little agonies, the ingenuity, the tireless attention to detail, the exquisite finesse that make success possible in the melee of competition. Their souls were above trade ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... constantly observed a deferential attitude toward American national self-esteem, even while engaged on a persistent infraction of American commercial rights. The first named line of diplomacy has convicted itself of miscarriage and has lost the strategic advantage, as against the none too adroit finesse of the other side. The statesmen of this European war power were so ill advised as to enter on a course of tentatively cumulative intimidation, by threats and experimentally graduated crimes against the property and persons of American citizens, with a view to coerce American ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... read many of those MSS. which I bitterly repent not having taken, for in that case the world would not have been deprived of many beautiful and valuable writings. I remember a poem of his written in the style of 'The House that Jack built,' the biting sarcasm of which, the ironical finesse—is beyond anything I have ever read. Many great people still living found their way into these verses. I begged Lady Burton to keep it, but her peasant confessor said 'Destroy it,' so it was burnt along with a hundred other beautiful things." She destroyed valuable papers, [648] ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... it was the more fascinating from the disregard of any minor charm notable upon this grand visage, which could not suffer a betrayal. You saw, and there was no effort to conceal, that the spirit animating it was intensely human; but it was human of the highest chords of humanity, indifferent to finesse and despising subtleties; gifted to speak, to inspire, and to command all great emotions. In fact, it was the masque of a dramatic artist in repose. Tempered by beauty, the robust frame showed that she possessed a royal nature, and could, as a foremost qualification ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... compass or accomplish by finesse; effect: inf. dd e we ealle r ne meahton snyttrum be-syrwan (a deed that all of us could not accomplish before with all our wisdom), 943.—2) to entrap by guile and destroy: inf. mynte se mnscaa manna cynnes sumne be-syrwan (the fell foe thought to entrap ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... whose stories have been often translated. Antonio de Trueba is a writer of popular songs and short stories not without merit, Campoamor (b. 1817) and Bequer represent the poetry of twenty years ago. The short lyrics of the first named are remarkable for their delicacy and finesse. Bequer, who died at the age of thirty, left behind him poems which have already exercised a wide influence in his own country and in Spanish America; they tell a story of passionate love, despair, and death. Perez Galdos, a writer of fiction, attacks the problem of modern life ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... different from all the rest. Her understanding is just and delicate; with a finesse of wit that is the result of reflection. Her manner is soft and feminine, and though a savante, without any declared pretensions. She is the decent friend of Monsieur de Nivernois; for you must not believe a syllable of what you read in their novels. It requires the greatest curiosity, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... comprehended a return to antiquity, and a return to nature. Raphael represents the return to antiquity, and Leonardo the return to nature. In this return to nature, he was seeking to satisfy a boundless curiosity by her perpetual surprises, [110] a microscopic sense of finish by her finesse, or delicacy of operation, that subtilitas naturae which Bacon notices. So we find him often in intimate relations with men of science,—with Fra Luca Paccioli the mathematician, and the anatomist Marc Antonio della Torre. His observations and experiments fill thirteen volumes ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... technical qualifications of the story-maker's art, Scott compensated in the more masculine virtues for what he lacked in the feminine. Possessing less of finesse, subtlety and painstaking than some who were to come, he excelled in sweep, movement and variety, as well as in a kind of largeness of effect: "the big bow-wow business," to use his own humorously descriptive ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... to the profession"; and something like a sigh escaped her as she said it. Perhaps Catherine was wrong in not demanding the cause of that gentle emotion—but she was not experienced enough in the finesse of love, or the duties of friendship, to know when delicate raillery was properly called for, or when a confidence ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... phlegmatic servants of routine. The relative spirit, by its constant dwelling on the more fugitive conditions or circumstances of things, breaking through a thousand rough and brutal classifications, and giving elasticity to inflexible principles, begets an intellectual finesse of which the ethical result is a delicate and tender justice in the criticism of human life. Who would gain more than Coleridge by criticism in such a spirit? We know how his life has appeared when judged by absolute standards. We see him trying to apprehend ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... the vice of finesse in her nature, for even a "good" woman accused parries by the use of trickery and wins her point by the artistry of the bagnio. Women and men are never really far apart anyway, and women are what men ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... tout, hence an easy and extemporaneous liar, but, alas, a clumsy one. He lacked the Bald-faced Kid's finesse; lacked also his tireless energy, his insatiable curiosity, and the thin vein of pure metal which lay underneath the base. There was nothing about Squeaking Henry which was not for sale cheap; body and soul, he was on life's bargain counter among the remnants, and Abe Goldmark, examining ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... the general gist of this though the mystical finesse involved was a bit out of his sublunary depth still he felt bound to enter a demurrer on the head of simple, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... world of dress And pompous dining, out, Better than simpering and finesse Is all this stir ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... best the retirement of his own study, and was rarely seen outside of it, except when required by his official duties. He abjured the artificial forms and fashions of social life, the bustling confusions of trade and commerce, and the whirl and finesse of political agitations. He never would stand on a platform, nor be seen at an anniversary, nor harangue a popular assembly. He was happiest in solitude where, undisturbed, he could solve the abstruse problems of ethics, or be a delighted critic of metaphysical theories, or seek to penetrate the ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... low, Long murmur of the Asians,—"The foreigner must go"! What wonder that we hate you all? You look on us to-day As lions look on antelopes,—their heaven-appointed prey; You know you have no lawful right to lands that you possess; You gained them all through violence, or lying and finesse; Your cursed opium alone, despite our prayers and tears, Has ruined millions of our race for more than two score years, And when we rose indignantly to right that bitter wrong, Your heavy guns bombarded us, and you annexed ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... fully against him, contrived a plan which your Lordships will see the effects of presently, and this was, to confound this lac and an half, or 15,000l., with the two lacs given directly and specifically as a bribe,—intending to avail himself of this finesse whenever any payment was to be proved of the two lacs, which he knew would be proved against him, and which he never did deny; and accordingly your Lordships will find some confusion in the proofs of the payment ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... reasons which we do not utter, sometimes because we like to play the hypocrite to ourselves, again because we must give the other person a chance to play the hypocrite before himself—and us. And often I left him reluctant and trying to muster courage to refuse or finesse to evade, only to find him the next day consenting, perhaps enthusiastic. Many's the time she spared me the disagreeable necessity of being peremptory—doubly disagreeable because show of authority has ever been distasteful to ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... they were "suspicious" of him on that account. It was my judgment at first that the General, in stopping short when a question was difficult and referring to the Council he had to consult, was showing a capacity for finesse, that he really had the power to do or to undo, though he has not a personal appearance of possible leadership. Now this, even, has been modified. His Council seems to be the real center of power. When I was talking with ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... Ventnor was most profoundly annoyed, and he cursed Anstruther from the depths of his heart. But he could see a way out. The more desperate the emergency the more need to display finesse. Above all, he must avoid ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... whose essence of success lies in his strong sense of his ephemeral existence, and his consequent horror of ennuyering his world—in short, to perceive the joke of life is rarely given to our people, whilst it forms the mainspring of the Parisian's savoir plaire. The finesse of the Frenchman, acquired in long loafing and clever cafe cackle—the glib go and easy assurance of the petit creve, combined with the chic of great habit—the brilliant blague of the ateliers—the aptitude of their argot—the fling of the Figaro, and the knack of short paragraphs, ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... for leg with the rather conscious air of escaping from an awkward situation only by the subtlest finesse. ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... giving all day to professional work and then with exhausted brains undertaking the work of governing the country after dinner. Cavendish, the authority on whist, being asked if a man could possibly finesse a knave, second round, third player, replied, after reflecting, "Yes, he might ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... attention is called to the Impromptu in B-flat—the air and variations known as "The Fair Rosamunde," the title due to the appearance of this melody in his opera of "Rosamunde." At least three of these variations display great finesse in treating the pianoforte. The first needs to be done with the utmost delicacy and lightness, the melody suggested rather than brought out. The third has a new rhythm and a melodic secondary figure in the left-hand part, which, taken with the treatment of the variation in the right-hand ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... Joseph Merk. On the whole we may accept Chopin's criticism of his Op. 3 as correct. The Polonaise is nothing but a brilliant salon piece. Indeed, there is very little in this composition—one or two pianoforte passages, and a finesse here and there excepted—that distinguishes it as Chopin's. The opening theme verges even dangerously to the commonplace. More of the Chopinesque than in the Polonaise may be discovered in the Introduction, which was less of a piece d'occasion. What subdued the composer's individuality was no doubt ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... partly, because the liquids which he useth to prescribe to himself and his patients, on these distressing occasions, are ordinarily more conveniently to be found at these common hostelries, than in the shops and phials of the apothecaries. His ear hath arrived to such finesse by practice, that it is reported, he can distinguish a plunge at a half furlong distance; and can tell, if it be casual or deliberate. He weareth a medal, suspended over a suit, originally of a sad brown, but which, by time, and frequency of nightly divings, has been dinged into a true professional ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... The merchant snapped his fingers. "It's finesse, my boy, commercial finesse. Who's to trace it, I should like to know. I haven't worked out all the details—I want your co-operation over that—but here's a rough sketch of my plan. We send a man we can depend upon to some distant part of the world—Chimborazo, for example, or the Ural Mountains. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... all right, of course," he admitted. "You don't get much idea of it just going through those letters, but the real thing is the biggest kind of a game you ever saw. It's a finesse here and a forcing of the opponent's hand there, but it can never be the ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... the North and the South, no strategy could have been more effectual than that of sacrificing Sumter exactly as it was sacrificed. The whole affair could not have been arranged with greater shrewdness and finesse. Anderson and his officers—without an exception, gallant and competent—were made to appear as heroes and, in a sense, they were; the North was completely unified, and the same can be said of the ...
— The Supplies for the Confederate Army - How they were obtained in Europe and how paid for. • Caleb Huse
... a power of finesse in the feminine mind that no man may fully compass, and Yolanda, in that respect, was the flower of her sex. That she had been able to maintain her humble personality with Max, despite the fact that she had been compelled to meet him twice as princess, proved her ability. Of course, she had the ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... and speak against it; scarcely any one beyond the mourners' room could hear his voice. It was a hard task that the poor young minister had. He was quite aware of the feeling against Deborah, and it required finesse to avoid jarring that, and yet display the proper amount of Christian sympathy for the afflicted. Then there were other difficulties. The minister had prayed in his closet for a small share of the wisdom of Solomon before ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... mark out of any times! As if the opening of the western continent by discovery, and what has transpired in North and South America, were less than the small theatre of the antique, or the aimless sleep-walking of the middle ages!) The pride of the United States leaves the wealth and finesse of the cities, and all returns of commerce and agriculture, and all the magnitude of geography or shows of exterior victory, to enjoy the sight and realization of full-sized men, or one full-sized man unconquerable and simple. The American poets are to enclose old and new, for America ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... playwright must cater to his public, the audience is an essential feature in our discussion. The audience of Plautus was not of a high class. Terence, even in later times, when education had materially progressed, often failed to reach them by over-finesse. Plautus with his bold brush pleased them. Surely a turbulent and motley throng they were, with the native violence of the sun-warmed Italic temperament and the abundant animal spirits of a crude civilization, tumbling ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... the interest of an indolent man to be honest: for it requires considerable trouble and finesse, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various
... deep and sagacious; and what can be more useful to a reader than a wise man's judgment on a great man's conduct? In my writings you will find no rash censures, no undeserved encomiums, no mean compliance with popular opinions, no vain ostentation of critical skill, nor any affected finesse. In my "Parallels," which used to be admired as pieces of excellent judgment, I compare with perfect impartiality one great man with another, and each with the rule of justice. If, indeed, latter ages have produced greater men and better writers, my heroes ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... chopping. These English 'll have their lesson. It 's like what you call good writing: the simple way does the business, and that's the most difficult to learn, because you must give your head to it, as those French fellows do. 'Trop de finesse' is rather their fault. Anything's better than loutishness. Well! the lesson ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... alarm yourself," I said, coolly. "I have not the slightest intention of killing you! I am no vulgar murderer, yielding to mere brute instincts. You forget: a Neapolitan has hot passions, but he also has finesse, especially in matters of vengeance. I brought you here to tell you of my existence, and to confront you with the proofs of it. Rise, I beg of you, we have plenty of time to talk; with a little patience I shall ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... business, or, if the occasion offers, a little amateur detection. In tracking a criminal, following a particular horse along a beaten highway, and drawing inductions from a hair or a footprint, one of these somnolent, grinning Hodges will suddenly display activity of body and finesse of mind. By their names ye may know them, the women figuring as Loveina, Larsenia, Serena, Leanna, Orreana; the men answering to Alvin, Alva, or Orion, pronounced Orrion, with the accent on the first. Whether they are indeed a race, or ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from the first blow, with none of the finesse of a boxers' match, with less thought of escaping punishment than of inflicting it. More than once had Bud Lee felt that he was falling only to catch his balance and come back at Trevors; more than once had Trevors ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... manner? Our Steinfurth project has gone to water; and it is not to-day we shall get across the Rhine!—Not to-day; nor any other day, on that errand, strong as our resolutions are! For new light, in a few hours afterwards, pours in upon the project; and human finesse, or ulterior schemes, avail nothing henceforth. "The Crown-Prince's meditated Flight" has tried itself, and failed. Here and so that long meditation ENDS; this at Steinfurth was all the over-act it could ever come to. In few hours more it will ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... of the French peasant is a certain scoffing finesse of which he makes effective use, sometimes with his equals, and almost invariably with his superiors. He puts questions to power as embarrassing as are those which infancy puts to mature age. He ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... They had always been in that position since the work began, yet on this day it seemed new; it was so different now for them to be opposite each other; so different for Tito to take a book from her, as she lifted it from her father's knee. Yet there was no finesse to secure an additional look or touch. Each woman creates in her own likeness the love-tokens that are offered to her; and Romola's deep calm happiness encompassed Tito like the rich but quiet evening light ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... the rebellion was at an end. It was Joseph that, in the first instance, penitently sent a deputation to the king to bring him back. Judah, on the other hand, continued to hold aloof. Ultimately a piece of finesse on the king's part had the effect of bringing Judah also to its allegiance, though at the cost of kindling such jealousy between Israel and Judah that Sheba the Benjamite raised a new revolt, this time of Israelites, which was soon, however, ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... Sorbonnists. He must be praised for not having dreamed of entering the lists against a spirit of such a temper as his rival. Had he desired, after Luther's manner, to deal in caricature, he would certainly have failed. Sallies, play upon words, and conceits did not suit a mind like his, whose forte was finesse. By nature sober, he could not, like the Saxon monk, fertilize his brain in enormous pots of beer; moreover, beer was not as yet in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... a party of some eight or ten, and was solicitously careful that the introduction of cards should appear accidental, and originate in the proposal of my contemplated dupe himself. To be brief upon a vile topic, none of the low finesse was omitted, so customary upon similar occasions that it is a just matter for wonder how any are still found so besotted ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... news in them; interesting glimpses of that same young King;—likewise of Hyndford, laid at his Majesty's feet, and begging for self and brothers any good benefice that may fall vacant. We can discern, too, a certain rough tenacity and horse-dealer finesse in the man; a broad-based, shrewdly practical Scotch Gentleman, wide awake; and can conjecture that the diplomatic function, in that element, might have been in worse hands. He is often laid metaphorically at the King's feet, King ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... up to a title." In fact, he did not write up to, it, and, as the "Scots Magazine" said, "shaped his story in such a manner as to throw busybodies out in their chase, with a slight degree of malicious finesse." "All the expeditions to the wonderful cave have been thrown away, for the said cave is not once, we think, mentioned from beginning ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... mischief, gleaming with bewildering light from out a face schooled to gravity. Maitland experienced a sensation of having grasped after and missed a subtlety of allusion; his wits, keen as they were, recoiled, baffled by her finesse. And the more he divined that she was playing with him, as an experienced swordsman might play with an impertinent novice, the denser ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... enterprise could be accomplished without the worship of Satan,—whether men could be managed for such an end without more or less of the trickery practised by every ambitious leader, every self-serving conqueror—without double-dealing, tact, flattery, finesse. I will not inquire into this, because, on the most distant supposition of our Lord being the leader of his country's armies, these things drop out of sight as impossibilities. If these were necessary, such ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... branches, a shade equally graceful and grateful. Like the india-rubber trees of Asia, these ceibas have at least one half of their anaconda-like roots exposed upon the surface of the ground, dividing the lower portion of the stem into supporting buttresses, a curious piece of finesse on the part of nature to overcome the disadvantage of insufficient soil. The tree bears annually a large seed-pod, packed with cotton of a soft, silky texture, and hence its name. It is, however, suitable neither for timber nor fuel, and the small product ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... such a proof of sagacity in the twelfth year of his age, what might not be expected from his finesse in the maturity of his faculties and experience? Thus secured in the good graces of the whole family, he saw the days of his puerility glide along in the most agreeable elapse of caresses and amusement. He never fairly plunged into ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... cigar-case, chose and lighted a cigar to steady his nerve, and faced her with a smile—the worst tactic he could possibly have chosen in dealing with this woman. Supremely successful in handling men, he lacked finesse and insight with the other sex; and now that lack, in his moment of need, was bringing him moment by moment nearer the edge ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... falsehood—that his delicate love of his child would have prevented—but as an instrument, perhaps, to work some delay in a wedding that humanity, independent of one or two new and latent causes, called upon him to prevent; but in any plot where finesse was necessary, he saw that Barbara would be perfectly useless; and before taking his departure, he only told her she might, if she pleased, inform Mistress Cecil, but at the same time begged of her not to repeat to any one else that he had been ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... I wish I was going, too," said Mary Lou mildly, as they parted. "But I presume a certain young man is very glad I am not," she added, with deep finesse. Peter laughed out, but turned red, and Susan wished impatiently that Mary Lou would not feel these embarrassing inanities to be either welcome ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... particular night he was tormented by half a dozen ugly little worries. He was worried about Adams, whose leg had a nasty look to the unprofessional eye; he was worried about Pachuca, whose case was going to require a good deal of finesse; and he was worried about Polly Street, who had to be conveyed to the border, revolution or ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... I underestimate him gravely he is incapable of such finesse. He is a thug first, a thief afterwards. He would have killed me out of hand if it had been he who had me at his mercy, down here, in the dark. Nor would he have been able to open the safe without using an explosive. That, indeed, is why, as I understand him, Dupont attacked you at Montpellier. If ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... qu'une pareille proposition venant d'un Anglais, et d'un Anglais de sa haute distinction, c'etait une victoire, dont je serais fier toute ma vie. Et nous commencions a user de cette nouvelle forme dans nos rapports. Vous savez avec quelle finesse il parlait le francais: comme il en connaissait tous les tours, comme il jouait avec ses difficultes, et meme avec ses petites gamineries. Je crois qu'il a ete heureux de pratiquer avec moi ce tutoiement, qui ne s'adapte ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... becomes insane at the idea that truth is inaccessible to human reason and that the reign of the Lie is invincible. The hero of "The Thought"[10] reveres but one thing in the world—his own thought. Wrapped up in this one idea, he admires the force and finesse of it, while his reason, detached from reality and having only him for an end, begins to weaken, becomes gradually perverted to the point where this man, harassed by a terrible doubt, begins to ask himself whether he is insane. In the long and pathetic story, "The Life of a Priest," we ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... success with other plays of a religious type, but not with equal effect, and several of his later plays were failures. He died on the 22nd of July 1904. Wilson Barrett was a sterling actor of a robust type and striking physique, not remarkable for intellectual finesse, but excelling in melodrama, and very successful as the central figure ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... blow over. Finesse was required. Ruth had suggested a plan, which, although applauded by the major and his mother, they could not advise her to carry out. For, if it failed, her own peril would be as great as Tom Cameron's. In fact, the result of failure would ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... political double dealing and malfeasance in office. Trimalchio's introduction is a masterstroke, the porter at the door is another, the effect of the wine upon the women, their jealousy lest either's husband should seem more liberal, their appraisal of each other's jewelry, Scintilla's remark anent the finesse of Habinnas' servant in the mere matter of pandering, the blear-eyed and black-toothed slave, teasing a little bitch disgustingly fat, offering her pieces of bread and when, from sheer inability, she refuses to eat, cramming it down her throat, the effect of the alcohol upon ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... cotages, one by anothers chieque, diked in themselues, chose officers and gouernours and deuised lawes, that thei also emong theimselues might liue in quiete. So beginning a rough paterne of tounes and of Cities, that aftre ware laboured to more curious finesse. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... trade was trickery, business barter, commerce finesse, government exploitation, slaughter honorable, and murder a fine art; when religion was ignorant superstition, piety the worship of a fetich and education a clutch for honors, there was small hope for the race. Under these conditions ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... finesse a good deal. I can manage with Mrs. Fenwick. But—I wish I felt equally secure with Miss Sally." He feels very insecure indeed in that quarter, if the truth is told. And he is afflicted with a double embarrassment here, as he has never left Sally without ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... future success is only a kind of revenge. Less than thirty-five years old, he is already sick of the world, and believes in nothing. Under the appearance of universal benevolence he conceals universal scorn. His finesse, sharpened by the grindstone of adversity, has become mischievous. And, while he sees through all disguises worn by others, he hides his penetration carefully under a mask of cheerful good nature and jovialness. But he is kind, ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... had at different times received from the Minister, adding, that whatever might be the consequence, I should think it my duty to pay a higher regard to the honor of the United States, than to the feelings of a Court by whose finesse that honor had ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... sphere of speculative calculations the banker put forth as much intelligence and skill, finesse and mental power, as a practised diplomatist expends on national affairs. If he were equally remarkable outside his office, the banker would be a great man. Nucingen made one with the Prince de Ligne, with Mazarin or with Diderot, is a human formula that is ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... and gesture, and of an animation when speaking nearly fiery in its vivacity: neither pretty nor young, but neither ugly nor old; and her smile, which was rare, had a finesse very engaging; while her whole demeanour announced a person Of consequence, and all her discourse told that she was well-informed, well-educated, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... seven long years, all the world knew John was coming. The homes were scrubbed and scoured,—above all, one; the gardens and yards had an unwonted trimness, and Jennie bought a new gingham. With some finesse and negotiation, all the dark Methodists and Presbyterians were induced to join in a monster welcome at the Baptist Church; and as the day drew near, warm discussions arose on every corner as to the ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... are, however, not wanting in discernment, penetration, finesse; in this light they are superior to many of the white girls in the lower classes of society, girls so impenetrably dull, that like that of Balsac's village, they are too stupid to be deceived by a man of breeding, gallantry ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... architects from all over the country who, to his delight, spent hours in the office of the Westley Cement-Mixer Manufacturing Company trying to outdo one another in finesse and suavity. Fortunately he decided upon a man who had genius as well as tact, who, without his knowing it, could quietly bend old Peter Westley to his way of thinking. Under this man's planning the new home grew until it stood in its finished perfection, a mass of stone and ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... gave to those of us, like myself of course, who appreciated your grasp of protocol. Such finesse! How subtly you appeared to ignore each overture, while neatly avoiding actual contamination. I can tell you, there were those who thought—poor fools—that you had no grasp of etiquette. How gratified we were, we professionals, who could appreciate your virtuosity—when you placed matters on a comfortable ...
— The Yillian Way • John Keith Laumer
... after him. "I will not lie down," he said. "Seriously, and since you refuse to treat me as a man, and since you finesse with me, I will try and set you at bay, as a ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... muscles of his neck and the carriage of his head were distinguished. But, like Odysseus, the President looked wiser when he was seated; and his hands, though capable and fairly strong, were wanting in sensitiveness and finesse. The first glance at the President suggested not only that, whatever else he might be, his temperament was not primarily that of the student or the scholar, but that he had not much even of that culture of the world which marks ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... Clearing his throat, Dove gazed at the sinner before him. He began to see that his errand was not going to be an easy one; where no hint was taken, it was difficult to insert even the thinnest edge of the wedge. He resolved to use finesse; and, for several of the precious moments at his disposal, he talked, as if at ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... there 's nought but shy finesse, And mim and prim 'bout mess and dress, That scarce a hand a hand will press Wi' ought o' feeling free; A cauldrife pride aside has laid The hodden gray, and hame-spun plaid, And a' is changed since neebors said Just, How 's a' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Antonio de Trueba is a writer of popular songs and short stories not without merit, Campoamor (b. 1817) and Bequer represent the poetry of twenty years ago. The short lyrics of the first named are remarkable for their delicacy and finesse. Bequer, who died at the age of thirty, left behind him poems which have already exercised a wide influence in his own country and in Spanish America; they tell a story of passionate love, despair, and death. Perez Galdos, a writer ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... of the room. He must have understood my look, for he at once said he had burnt them, but would make sure. He left the room. As soon as he was gone I played my final card with Goldenburg. I knew that the time had gone by for finesse; I told him that unless he gave up the letters I would suggest to Grell that he should declare them forgeries, and that I would ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... SVANHILD [with finesse]. O, among other things, the bold unreason Of modern Zacharies who seek for fruit. If the tree blossom'd to excess last season, You must not crave the ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... her suggestion that Cecelia Brooke dance with him, considered in conjunction with her recent admonition, impressed Lanyard as significantly inconsistent. Sophie was no more a woman to make purposeless gestures than she was one sufficiently wanting in finesse to signal him by pressures of her foot. There was sheer intention in that iteration: "... lose no time ... you must not miss this opportunity." Something had happened even since their dance; she had observed something momentous, ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... the man who sat stolidly smoking in the deck-chair. No two people could have formed a stronger contrast—the yacht's captain, fair-bearded, with the features of a Viking—the yacht's owner, dark, alert, with a certain French finesse about him that gave a strange charm to a personality that otherwise might have been ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... did a horse play such a dangerous game, and surely none ever showed such finesse. Deliberately trailing behind him an enemy bent on taking either his life or freedom, not for a moment did Black Eagle show more than imperative caution. At the close of each day when, by a few miles of judicious galloping, he had fully winded the cowboy's mount, the sagacious black ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... differ from him. Like Mr. Morris he quite underrates the art of Japan, and looks on the Japanese as naturalists and not as decorative artists. It is true that they are often pictorial, but by the exquisite finesse of their touch, the brilliancy and beauty of their colour, their perfect knowledge of how to make a space decorative without decorating it (a point on which Mr. Crane said nothing, though it is one of the most important ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... conduct, I was recalled to my senses by the voice of Parker, who urged me to relieve them at once from the terrible anxiety they were enduring. Even then I could not bring myself to arrange the splinters upon the spot, but thought over every species of finesse by which I could trick some one of my fellow-sufferers to draw the short straw, as it had been agreed that whoever drew the shortest of four splinters from my hand was to die for the preservation of the rest. Before any one condemn me for ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... disappointment must embarrass her. She must see her old china broken without a sigh, and her best glass shattered with a smile. In short, to quote the language of a clever contemporary, she must have "the genius of tact to perceive, and the genius of finesse to execute; ease and frankness of manner; a knowledge of the world that nothing can surprise; a calmness of temper that nothing can disturb; and a kindness of disposition that can never ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... illustrated. The character of the soldier, with its virtues and faults, is portrayed with such delicacy, that to condense would ruin. The peculiar reserve, the habit of duty, the beauty of a character which cannot look forward, and need not look back, are given with distinguished finesse. ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... J'ay mesme toujours remarque (& j'en pourrais donner des exemples bien sensibles) que quand des esprits accoutumes aux cordes, comme dit Montagne, & qui n'osent tenter de franches allures, entreprennent de traduire & de commenter ces excellens Ouvrages, ou il y a plus de finesse & plus de mystere qu'il n'en paroist, tout leur travail ne fait que les gater, & que la seule vertu qu'ayent leurs copies, c'est de nous degouter presque des originaux. Comme j'ay pris la liberte de juger du travail de ceux qui m'ont precede, & que je n'ay pas fait difficulte ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... long time to think, to compare, to digest all that she knew of him, much that was subconscious impression rising late to the surface, a little that she heard from various sources. The sum total gave her a man of rank passions, of rare and merciless finesse where his desires figured, a man who got what he wanted by whatever means most fitly served his need. Greater than any craving to possess a woman would be the measure of his rancor against a man who humiliated him, thwarted him. She could understand how a man like Monohan would ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... his royal presence alone would not have operated more powerfully. The army is here, the king is not. But we should be most ungrateful were we to forget what we owe to the Regent. Let it be acknowledged! By her prudence and valour, by her judicious use of authority and force, of persuasion and finesse, she pacified the insurgents, and, to the astonishment of the world, succeeded, in the course of a few months, in bringing a rebellious people back to ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... aware that it does, Frank, though I think it is not at all unlikely. As its instinct teaches it to finesse in the way which I have told you, however, I should not expect to find that it does so with equal spirit. Even the pigeon, the very emblem of gentleness and love, boldly pecks at the rude hand which is extended towards its young, during the earlier stages of their existence. ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... advent of Franck there were two important pioneers in the broadening tendency which finally became noticeable, Saint-Saens and Lalo. For great assimilative power, for versatility, for clarity of expression and a finish and finesse peculiarly French, Camille Saint-Saens (1835-still living) is certainly one of the most remarkable musicians of the nineteenth century. His works are numerous, always "well-made" and, though lacking in emotional depth, by no means without charm and grace. They ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... She might take alarm, he did not know what she might think; he hastened, therefore, to banish from his manner all traces of absorption, but in this he was about as successful as his father would have been, for he had inherited all old Jolyon's transparency in matters of domestic finesse; and young Mrs. Jolyon, busying herself over the affairs of the house, went about with tightened lips, stealing at him ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... espionage here," he remarked, "is painfully primitive. It lacks finesse and judgment. The fact that I have taken expensive rooms on the Campania, and that I have sent many packages there, that my own belongings are still in my rooms untouched, seems to our friends conclusive evidence ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Madness held him. Finesse, saving, the crafty utilising of small advantages had had their day. It was the moment for brute strength. All day he swung on in a swirl of snow, tireless. The landscape swam about him, the white glare searched out the inmost ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... behind them, to quell any such inquisition, she was by training defenceless. She had plenty of pluck, plenty of adroitness; but she could only play the sex game with Alf very crudely because he was not fine enough to be diverted by such finesse as she could employ. All Jenny could do was to play for safety in the passage of time. If she could beat him off until Emmy returned she could be safe for to-night; and if she were safe now—anything might happen another day ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... am sore and disgusted. What I should have done was to accept Burke's offer - surround the house with a posse if necessary, last night, and catch the counterfeiters by sheer force. I was too confident. I thought I could do it with finesse, and I have failed. I'd give anything to know what safe deposit vault they kept the ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... of the revolted States, it was Mr. Johnson's misfortune that he had not Mr. Lincoln's capacity for so great and so peculiar a task; though a gentleman of proven patriotism, ability, of a kindly, genial nature, and with record of valuable public service. Hampered by his lack of political finesse and intricate knowledge of state-craft, and in view of the conditions of that time, and the people with whom he had to deal, it was obvious from the outset that the result of the controversy could hardly be otherwise than disastrous to him. Mr. Lincoln would undoubtedly have ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... words were spoken for the benefit of the unseen intelligence controlling these manifestations; and although I regarded such finesse as somewhat wasted, I followed my friend's lead and replied in a voice as loud as ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... that took place in that private dining-room at Gastron's would be just as likely to incriminate Langhorne and some of his crowd as not. It is a difference in degree of graft—that is all. They don't want an open fight. It was just a piece of finesse on Langhorne's part. You may be sure of that. No, neither of them wants a fight. That's the last thing. They're both afraid. What Langhorne wanted was a line on Dorgan. And we should never have known ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... he came. Meryl she did not worry greatly about. She might be expected to be swept off her feet and go with the tide, by the very suddenness of it all. The two men presented the obstacles. Carew would have to be inveigled with the greatest finesse into an interview with Meryl, without ever letting him perceive a woman was leading him. In her heart Diana was a little afraid of the steady, unbending face. He was not likely to prove pliable; he might even refuse to come. Nothing she could say could alter the fact that ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... diplomatic to bother with finesse of this kind. Other things being equal, a man goes to see the girl he wants to see. It does not often occur to her that he may not want to see her, may be interested in someone else, or that he may ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... of language that the other sex seldom attains, and with a delicacy of discrimination, and a sentiment that were strictly feminine, she rendered a theme interesting, that, however important in itself, is forbidding, veiling all its odious and revolting features in the refinement and finesse of her ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... aristocratic and leisurely state vast numbers of people without background, without tradition or culture or taste. By reason of its largeness and resources, this group of people without taste, without interest, without finesse, has come to dominate in particular the world of art as the world of play, has come to demand distraction, sensation, excitement which its unreal existence does not afford it. Indeed, this band has come to give a cast to the whole of present-day life; ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... cosmopolitan, and now that his method was determined he dismissed M. & T. stock from his mind. He knew Tillman City, and more to the point, he knew Michael Blaney, Chairman of the Council Finance Committee. Finesse would not be needed, subtlety would be lost, with Blaney, and so Mr. McNally was prepared to talk bluntly. And on occasion Mr. McNally ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... minds was made clear in the campaign. No one would wish to minimize the unusual abilities of Mr. Hughes, but they are the abilities of an adroit lawyer. He makes "points." He pleases those minds which like cleverness and finesse. He deals with international affairs like an astute lawyer drawing a brief. But has he ever quickened the nation's pulse or stirred its heart by a single utterance? Did he ever make any one feel that ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... sensibilities, by one of keen poetic feeling, and finally by one who recalled its context and on that account could enjoy its fullest richness: "It is the landscape, not of dreams or of fancy, but of places far withdrawn, and hours selected from a thousand with a miracle of finesse."[3] ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... intently watching the embarrassment of the National Republicans, took good care to have Crary remain and Solomon Southwick substituted for Granger. The general sentiment of the Anti-Masons did not respond to this movement. But the angry feeling excited by Granger's declination, aided by Van Buren's finesse, gave Southwick, who had acquired some credit with the Anti-Masons by an early renunciation of his masonic ties, an opportunity of advancing his visionary projects of personal ambition. Thurlow Weed declared that the people had been "juggled" ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the truth of the matter as I came to realise that our philosophies differed profoundly. That isn't a very curable difference,—once people have grown up. Theirs was a philosophy devoid of FINESSE. Temperamentally the Baileys were specialised, concentrated, accurate, while I am urged either by some Inner force or some entirely assimilated influence in my training, always to round off and shadow my outlines. I hate them hard. ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... master of the anecdote this generation has known. He claimed the humorous story as an American invention, and one that has remained at home. His public speeches were little mosaics in the finesse of their art; and the intricacies of inflection, insinuation, jovial innuendo which Mark Twain threw into his gestures, his implicative pauses, his suggestive shrugs and deprecative nods—all these are hopelessly volatilized and disappear entirely from ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... traditions of the elder branch. A Bonapartist Restoration was out of the question. Yet all three sections began more and more to urge their claims. Thiers met them with consummate skill. Occasionally they had reason to resent his tactics as showing unworthy finesse; but oftener they quailed before the startling boldness of his reminders that, as they constituted the majority of the deputies of France, they might at once undertake to restore the monarchy—if they could. "You do not, and you cannot, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... throughout, passive—so passive that even Ezra Baroni, who knew what the Seraph never dreamed, looked at him in wonder, and felt a faint, sickly fear of that singular, unbroken calm. It perplexed him—the first thing which had ever done so in his own peculiar paths of finesse and of intrigue. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... seller must have taken his degree from some college of venders, his call has such finesse. I cannot reproduce the lilt of it—"Here's where you get your horoscope, a dime, ten cents." It is suggestive of the midways of country fairs, shooting galleries on the Board Walk, and circuses in the springtime. "Here's where you get your ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... struck the boy. Always Big James had addressed him as 'Master Edwin' or 'Master Clayhanger.' Now it was 'Mister.' He had left school. Big James was, of course, aware of that, and Big James had enough finesse and enough gentle malice to change instantly the 'master' to 'mister.' Edwin was scarcely sure if Big James was not laughing at him. He could not help thinking that Big James had begun so promptly to call him ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Roman life, without any preoccupation, whatever one may say of it, with reform and satire, without the need of any studied end, or of morality; this story without intrigue or action, portraying the adventures of evil persons, analyzing with a calm finesse the joys and sorrows of these lovers and couples, depicting life in a splendidly wrought language without surrendering himself to any commentary, without approving or cursing the acts and thoughts of his characters, the vices of a decrepit civilization, ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the Tocsin which he had built upon the Magpie was shattered, gone forever. And it meant, that gray seal on the sole of the dead man's boot, that the murder had been committed with even greater cunning and finesse, and an even greater security for the murderer, than he had attributed to the Magpie a moment since, when he had thought the Magpie the instigator, and not the ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the starting place counts two thousand to give the runners a full start, and then pursues them. The runners will use all possible finesse in making it difficult to find their arrows, although it is a rule of the game that the arrow must be in plain sight, though not necessarily from the point of view of the course taken. It may be marked on the farther side of a post, stone, ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... stated in a former chapter,[1193] she showed to Walsingham, wherein he advised Charles to keep Elizabeth and Philip "as low as he could, as a thing that tended much to the safety and maintenance of his crown." But the finesse of the queen mother failed of accomplishing its object; for neither Elizabeth nor Walsingham would think less of Coligny for proving himself faithful to his own sovereign's interests. Elizabeth's incredulity was, doubtless, enhanced by the hypocritical pretence ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... skilful," said Raymonde thoughtfully. "They don't do the thing artistically. There's a finesse required for this kind of work that their stupid young heads don't possess. I'm not sure if it wouldn't ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... did not come up, so I felt sure she had gone down for good this time, and was sitting on her nest. Her husband exerted himself to his utmost to beguile my attention with his choicest arias, but no amount of finesse would now turn me from my purpose. I made a bee-line for the spot where I had last seen the madame, stopping not, nor veering aside for water, mud, bushes, or any other obstacle. A search of a couple of minutes ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... the finesse of gunners' craft worthy of veterans in the way that these eighteen-pounders were concealed. The Germans had put some shells in the neighbourhood, but without fooling the old hands. They did not change the location of their battery and their judgment that the shots which came near were chance ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... feel badly, Johnnie. There's no harm done—if you don't say anything about it to Mr. Lindsay. But I don't think you were intended for a match-maker. That takes quite a little finesse, doesn't it?" ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... as learning in its higher branches became more and more a possession of the Brahmans,—and since there was no feeling against adding to this epic whatever material came handy,—Brahmin esotericists manipulated it with great tact and finesse into a symbol of the warfare of ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... ascribed to Mac-Ivor was in reality played by several Highland chiefs, the celebrated Lord Lovat in particular, who used that kind of finesse to the uttermost. The Laird of Mac—-was also captain of an independent company, but valued the sweets of present pay too well to incur the risk of losing them in the Jacobite cause. His martial consort raised his clan and headed it in ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... year. That being so, not a man of the lot but would gladly surrender to me his dead souls rather than continue paying the poll-tax; and in this fashion I might make—well, not a few kopecks. Of course there are difficulties, and, to avoid creating a scandal, I should need to employ plenty of finesse; but man was given his brain to USE, not to neglect. One good point about the scheme is that it will seem so improbable that in case of an accident, no one in the world will believe in it. True, it is illegal ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... filed for reference at the War Office? He is immaculate, ce cher Malcolm, from his parting to the toes of his boots. And, ma foi, he is clean—like all that redoubtable army of British officers—aggressively clean, inside and out, which one cannot always say with truth! But he has no finesse, no savoir faire where women are concerned. If he is in earnest let him try weapons more compelling than his beaux yeux. A man was not given lips and a pair of hands for eating and fighting merely; and if he cannot turn them to good account, ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... and its weakness lie in the fact that it is still too young to have acquired dignity. But lately sprung from the mob it now preys upon, it yet shows some of the habits of mind of that mob: it is blatant, stupid, ignorant, lacking in all delicate instinct and governmental finesse. Above all, it remains somewhat heavily moral. One seldom finds it undertaking one of its characteristic imbecilities without offering a sonorous moral reason; it spends almost as much to support the Y. M. C. A., vice-crusading, Prohibition and other such puerilities ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... many pages of this book. The Sleep theme enters as Wotan sees a way to the great compromise—the compromise foredoomed to bring him to ruin. He will put Bruennhilda to sleep to await the hero; but he will hedge her in with fire so that the hero shall be a true one. With the indescribable finesse, subtlety, of his own particular art, Wagner lets us feel how Bruennhilda, in begging to be protected in this (rather unusual) way, is reading only her own father's thought: he seems for a long time to contend, ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
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