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More "Robustness" Quotes from Famous Books



... girl looked at him with startled eyes. His fire warmed her. She wondered if she had been cold all her days. She wanted to lean toward this burning, blazing man that was like a volcano spouting forth strength, robustness, and health. She felt that she must lean toward him, and resisted by an effort. Then, too, there was the counter impulse to shrink away from him. She was repelled by those lacerated hands, grimed by toil so that the very dirt of life was ingrained in the flesh itself, by ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... Shelley's singular purity and beauty of character, testimonies borne out by the evidence of his own writings. Impulse with him took the place of conscience. Moral law, accompanied by the sanction of power, and imposed by outside authority, he rejected as a form of tyranny. His nature lacked robustness and ballast. Byron, who was at bottom intensely practical, said that Shelley's philosophy was too spiritual and romantic. Hazlitt, himself a Radical, wrote of Shelley: "He has a fire in his eye, a fever in his blood, a maggot in his brain, a hectic flutter in his speech, which mark out the ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... from his tradesman. The nouveau riche, by concealing his origin and trafficking with the College of Heralds, can intercept some of the homage paid to high birth. And (though the rich nobleman who is an invalid can make no tangible gain by pretending to be robust, since robustness is an advantage only from within) the rich, robust nobleman can, by employing a clever private secretary to write public speeches and magazine articles for him, intercept some of the homage which is paid ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... when Iago brings home to him the realization of his wife's infidelity, what can be finer than the sharpening of his voice from stress of pain, changing from the full roundness of its usual masculine robustness to a high womanish key, as he asks the fatal questions, "Che disse? Che? Che fece?" What words could have said so much as the dumb show with which he signifies that terrible fact of which he can neither ask nor hear in words? And who can doubt when he hears ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... estimate, she had her place in society as a full-grown lady. When I recall her personal appearance as she was then, and for ten or twelve years subsequent, I have the idea of a blooming girl of florid complexion and vigorous health, with a tendency to robustness of which she was painfully conscious, and which, with little regard to hygienic principles, she endeavored to suppress and conceal, thereby preparing for herself much future suffering." She had, he says, "no pretensions to beauty then, or at any time," yet she "was ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach

... thing. And, nevertheless, such is Borrow that I should by no means employ a gentleman of refinement to go over "The Bible in Spain" and cross out the like. It all helps in the total of half theatrical and wholly wild exuberance and robustness. Another minute contributory element of style is the Biblical phrasing. His home and certainly his work for the Society had made him familiar with the Bible. He quotes it several times in passages which bring him into comparison, if not equality, with Jesus and with Paul. A little after quoting, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... a coalition in parliament; but the price of this assent was coalition in office. In a word, their policy was to aid the government with their countenance and their votes, so far as it would be sufficient to keep it alive, but by no means to give it the robustness and vigour of perfect health. On the other hand, the Duke of Wellington was willing to use them as supporters; but he was not disposed to extend to them an equal share of power. It was his wish, indeed, to be reconciled to his old ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... in quality, and carries well; you observe the registers properly; but your vocalization is feeble, and your singing is ineffective. This is due largely to the lack of robustness in your voice, but not wholly. You do not tell your story in song so that the listener may know what you have to say to him. The imperfections in your method of speaking, so common in America—an imperfect articulation and a limp texture of voice—are ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills

... less terrifying than their brothers. They had their father's fierce, hawklike profile, softened by youth, and the appalling height and robustness due to the freedom and fresh air of a nomadic existence. Their costumes might, Mary thought, have been fashioned out of gunny-sacks by the simple expedient of cutting holes for the head and arms. The description of the dress worn by the charcoal-burner's ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... of the discolored mark on his temple, showing where his head had come in contact with the hearthstone, his body presents an appearance of natural robustness, which makes his sudden end ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green

... what sense qualified? Not only by principle and by honour—that glorious distinction which poor men can appreciate, even when less sternly summoned to its duties; not only by courage as fiery and as passively enduring as the courage of the lower ranks, but by a physical robustness superior to that of any other class taken separately; and, above all, by a scale of accomplishments in education, which strengthen the claim to command, even amongst that part of the soldiery least capable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... not, however, be assumed that the rural immigrants are in the mass better suited to urban life than the urban natives. It is probable that, notwithstanding their energy and robustness, the immigrants are less suited to urban conditions than the natives. Consequently a process of selection takes place among the immigrants, and the survivors become, as it were, immunized to the poisons of urban life. But this immunization ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... whole study seems directed to be as expensive as they possibly can, in every useless article of living; who, by long practice, can reconcile the most pernicious foreign drugs to their health and pleasure, provided they are but expensive, as starlings grow fat with henbane; who contract a robustness by mere practice of sloth and luxury; who can play deep several hours after midnight, sleep beyond noon, revel upon Indian poisons, and spend the revenue of a moderate family to adorn a nauseous, unwholesome living carcase? Let those few who are not concerned in any part of this accusation, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... faces to be the wild thing it is. If they go home at the end "high sorrowful and cloyed," there is no forecast of it in their demeanor, which is as little troubled as it is animated. The young people are even openly gay, and the robustness of their flirtations adds sensibly to the interest of the spectator. Our own public lovers seem of a humbler sort, and they mostly content themselves with the passive embraces of which every seat in our parks affords an example; but in England such lovers add playful struggles. ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells

... a great and salutary effect upon national character. I do not know a finer race of men than the English gentlemen. Instead of the softness and effeminacy which characterizes the men of rank of most countries, they exhibit a union of elegance and strength, of robustness of frame and freshness of complexion, which I am inclined to attribute to their living so much in the open air, pursuing so eagerly the invigorating recreations ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... heroine, Bobelina, whose legs looked larger than do the whole bodies of the drawing-room dandies of the present day. Apparently the master of the house was himself a man of health and strength, and therefore liked to have his apartments adorned with none but folk of equal vigour and robustness. Lastly, in the window, and suspected cheek by jowl with Bobelina, there hung a cage whence at intervals there peered forth a white-spotted blackbird. Like everything else in the apartment, it bore a strong resemblance to Sobakevitch. When host and guest had been conversing for two minutes ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... general forms over definite ideas, yet every one can see its tendency, if uncorrected, to make men shrink from importing anything like absolute quality into their propositions. We can see also, what is still worse, its tendency to place individual robustness and initiative in the light of superfluities, with which a world that goes by evolution can very well dispense. Men easily come to consider clearness and positiveness in their opinions, staunchness in holding and defending them, and fervour in carrying ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... almost every other distemper. The bodies of men are enfeebled and enervated; and it is not uncommon to observe very high degrees of irritability under the external appearance of great strength and robustness. The hypochondriac, palsies, cachexies, dropsies, and all those diseases which arise from laxity and debility, are, in our days, endemic every where; and the hysterics, which used to be peculiar to the women, as the name itself indicates, now attacks ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith

... in the matter of water," the Colonel approved. "We are not cursed by the humidity of New York State, grand old State that she is. Foh those who require water, there is the Platte only three miles distant. The nearer proximity of water we consider a detriment to the robustness of a community. Our rainy weather is toler'bly infrequent. The last spell we had—lemme see. There was a brief shower, scurcely enough to sanction a parasol by a lady, last May, warn't it, Bill? When we was camped ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... fortunes seem divided into two opposite classes—lean, penurious-looking mortals, or jolly fellows who are determined to get possession of, because they want to enjoy, the good things of the wo others, in the fulness of their persons and the robustness of their constitutions, seem to bespeak the reversion of a landed estate, rich acres, fat beeves, a substantial mansion, costly clothing, a chine and curkey, choice wines, and all other good things consonant to the wants and full-fed desires of their bodies. Such men charm fortune ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... evocative of noble feeling than in his Louvre altar-piece? Where in Florentine painting is there anything more fascinating than the playfulness of his children, more poetic than one or two of his landscapes, more charming than is at times his colour? And with all this, health, even robustness, and almost unfailing good-humour! Yet by themselves all these qualities constitute only a high-class illustrator, and such by native endowment I believe Fra Filippo to have been. That he became more—very much more—is due rather to ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson

... to the use of women, and thus very long preserve the vigour of youth. Neither are the virgins hastened to wed. They must both have the same sprightly youth, the like stature, and marry when equal and able-bodied. Thus the robustness of the parents is inherited by the children. Children are holden in the same estimation with their mother's brother, as with their father. Some hold this tie of blood to be most inviolable and binding, and in receiving of hostages, such pledges are most considered and claimed, ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus

... for Mandeville; and I fear he is getting to have private thoughts about the Young Lady. Mandeville naturally likes the robustness and sparkle of winter, and it has been a little suspicious to hear him express the hope that we ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... the principles of Evangelicalism were concerned, there was no reason why there should not have been many Lady Huntingdons among the Evangelical leaders. That there were not, is, perhaps, owing to the fact that there was a certain robustness of character common to all the chiefs of the party. One can scarcely conceive Venn, or Newton,[834] or Scott, or the Milners being led by women. There is, however, one ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... Annie; she annexed some irrelevancies about the weather, which Mrs. Munger swept away with business-like robustness. ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... the times." In addition to this remarkable poetic power, he was a splendidly-trained musician, a great adept in style, and one of the most original masters of rhythm and harmony that the records of music show. All his works, though wanting in breadth and robustness of tone, are characterized by the utmost finish and refinement. Full of delicate and unexpected beauties, elaborated with the finest touch, his effects are so quaint and fresh as to fill the mind of the listener with pleasurable sensations, perhaps not to ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... him almost morbidly indifferent and unresponsive, and he seldom showed the full measure of his powers.... I grew to have a strong liking for him personally as well as a respect for his intellectual power. But I should never have expected him to show the robustness of either mind or body which we now know him to have possessed. He was frail and sickly in appearance, and seemed to have a temperament in keeping with his physique. It took a strong impulse to bring him out and disclose his ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... not need to dwell upon that, except just to suggest that such a vividness and continuity of calm anticipation of a certain good beyond the grave is one of the strongest of all motives to the general robustness and efficacy of a Christian life. People used to say a few years ago, a great deal more than they do now, that the Christian expectation of Heaven was apt to weaken energy upon earth, and they used to sneer at us, and talk about our 'other worldliness' as if it were a kind ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... argument's sake I will suppose you are in earnest. Now, can you, who suspect nature, deny, that this same nature not only kindly brought you into being, but has faithfully nursed you to your present vigorous and independent condition? Is it not to nature that you are indebted for that robustness of mind which you so unhandsomely use to her scandal? Pray, is it not to nature that you owe the very eyes by which you ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... need of the world to-day is for men and women who are good animals. To endure the strain of our concentrated civilization, the coming man and woman must have an excess of animal spirits. They must have a robustness of health. Mere absence of disease is not health. It is the overflowing fountain, not the one half full, that gives life and beauty to the valley below. Only he is healthy who exults in mere animal existence; whose very life is a luxury; ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... velvet throat-band, such as is shown by No. 63, is one of the most graceful conceits of fashion. The too slim throat encircled by velvet or ornamented with a jewelled buckle or brooch is effectively framed. The unsightly lines of the shoulders are covered, and just enough individual robustness is disclosed to suggest with becoming propriety the conventional decollete corsage. The Princess of Wales is as constant to her velvet or pearl neck-band, as to her especial style of coiffure. Her throat, ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley

... to Devonshire, and Aunt Raby toiled, as perhaps no woman had ever toiled before, to put bread into their mouths. Katie had a fever, which made her pale and thin and took away that look of robustness which had characterized the little Yorkshire maiden. Nobody thought about the children's education, and they might have grown up without any were it not for Priscilla, who taught them what she knew herself. Nobody thought Priscilla ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... Montesquieu was President of the Parliament of Bordeaux. He was a voluminous writer, his most celebrated work being his "L'Esprit des Lois." Burke described him as "A genius not born in every country, or every time: with a Herculean robustness of mind; and nerves not ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... incredible to her, still, that Jerry and she had parted, and it would, she knew, seem so to her mother when she should be told. She sat eating cup-cake delicately, but with an ostentatious relish, to prove the robustness ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... their good points, I asserted—though, I fear, but lamely; for the robustness of his attitude impressed me, he being a man, presumably, of wide experience, and, what is more, a clergyman—the kind of man I had been taught to treat with ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall

... produced at the theatres; every conversation turns on him, and his is the name the pigmies quarrel over daily; the cry is heard that he has become hysterical, sentimental, out of his mind, but the next one knows, he is robustness itself, and enduring beyond belief, despite great need, enmity, sorrow. One hour one is angry over some extravagance which he has allowed himself, the next captivated by one of his plays, stirred, melted, strengthened and uplifted by his ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg

... cited and each give his fragment of evidence. Mr W.J. Stillman, an excellent observer, was specially impressed in his intercourse with Browning, by the mental health and robustness of a nature sound to the core; "an almost unlimited intellectual vitality, and an individuality which nothing could infringe on, but which a singular sensitiveness towards others prevented from ever wounding even the most morbid sensibility; a strong man armed in the completest defensive armour, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... the monument is owing to the strong construction of what might be called the carcass of the cathedral and, I am firmly convinced, through no desire on the part of the bombarding forces to spare this monument. The walls and vaults are of a robustness which can resist even modern implements of destruction, for even on Sept. 24, when the bombardment was again taken up, three bombs landed on the cathedral, but the vaults resisted absolutely, not ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... all his robustness, flushed hotly, and then became impertinent. "My pulse is twenty beats too quick still, after quinsy. If you don't believe the doctor, ma'am, it's ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the capacity of the Chapelle-aux Saints skull, observes [*] that "the anomaly disappears" on careful study. He assures us that a modern skull of the same dimensions would have a capacity of 1800-1900 cubic centimetres, and warns us that we must take into account the robustness of the body of primitive man. He concludes that the real volume of the Neanderthal brain (in this highest known specimen) is "slight in comparison with the volume of the brain lodged in the large heads of to-day," and that the "bestial or ape-like ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... longevity than ours. There is a hint of a typical difference in the American and the Englishman which I have long recognized in the two elms as compared to each other. It may be fanciful, but I have thought that the compactness and robustness about the English elm, which are replaced by the long, tapering limbs and willowy grace and far-spreading reach of our own, might find a certain parallelism in the people, especially the ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... symptomatic of their author. He loves robustness. If he cannot produce it, he can at any rate affect it, or attack its enemies. This worship of the robust is the fundamental fact of all Chesterton's work. For example, as a critic of letters he confines himself almost exclusively to the big men. When Mr. Bernard Shaw a few ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... of his play was accentuated by the brilliance of Joe's. Joe combined science and vigour to a remarkable degree. He laid on the wood with a graceful robustness which drew much cheering from the crowd. Beside him Mike was oppressed by that leaden sense of moral inferiority which weighs on a man who has turned up to dinner in ordinary clothes when everybody else has dressed. He felt awkward and conspicuously ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse

... the man beneath the veneer by expertly chipping at his feelings," said Lydia, laughing. "But I was serious, Lucian. Alice is energetic, ambitious, and stubbornly upright in questions of principle. I believe she would assist you steadily at every step of your career. Besides, she has physical robustness. Our student-stock needs an infusion ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... American town. Shakespeare was the teacher who replaced the "school marm," with her dull and formal lessons. Her quick perceptive mind grasped his great and noble thoughts, which gave a vigor and robustness to her mental growth. Since those days she has assimilated rather than acquired knowledge, and there are now few women of her age whose information is more varied, or whose conversation displays greater ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar

... personal appearance, as it was then and for ten or twelve years subsequent to this, I have the idea of a blooming girl of a florid complexion and vigorous health, with a tendency to robustness, of which she was painfully conscious, and which, with little regard to hygienic principles, she endeavored to suppress or conceal, thereby preparing for herself much future suffering. With no pretensions to beauty then, or at any time, her face was one ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... seems directed to be as expensive as they possibly can, in every useless article of living; who, by long practice, can reconcile the most pernicious foreign drugs to their health and pleasure, provided they are but expensive, as starlings grow fat with henbane; who contract a robustness by mere practice of sloth and luxury; who can play deep several hours after midnight, sleep beyond noon, revel upon Indian poisons, and spend the revenue of a moderate family to adorn a nauseous, unwholesome living carcase? ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... noteworthy, because, so far as the principles of Evangelicalism were concerned, there was no reason why there should not have been many Lady Huntingdons among the Evangelical leaders. That there were not, is, perhaps, owing to the fact that there was a certain robustness of character common to all the chiefs of the party. One can scarcely conceive Venn, or Newton,[834] or Scott, or the Milners being led by women. There is, however, one exception ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... to his people now and what he will be to eternity: the consolations of hope are mine; but for the present, I feel like the sparrow on the house-top, or like a pelican in the wilderness; and when I think on my years and the robustness of my constitution, and that I may have a long journey before me, I am not able to look at it. At the same time, when I consider my children, who, having lost their pastor, who bore them on his heart to the throne of grace, have double need of a mother, ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... may preface them by saying that Louis Roche, a native of Avignon, justified to the close his master's high opinion. He was again engaged for nearly a year in Switzerland, and soon after, poor fellow, though with a jovial robustness of look and breadth of chest that promised unusual length of days, was killed by heart-disease. "The brave C continues to be a prodigy. He puts out my clothes at every inn as if I were going to stay there twelve months; calls me ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... production, voluntarily chose, as the heroes of his stories, creatures very near to primitive existence, peasants, sailors, poachers, girls of the farm, and the source of the vigor with which he describes these rude figures. The robustness of his animalism permits him fully to imagine all the simple sensations of these beings, while his pessimism, which tinges these sketches of brutal customs with an element of delicate scorn, preserves him from coarseness. It is this ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... seemed to him that there was a certain dryness in the young people's greeting. Miss Van Tuyn was looking lovely, and almost alarmingly youthful and self-possessed, in a white dress. Craven, fresh from his successes at golf, looked full of the open-air spirit and the robustness of the galloping twenties. In appearance the two were splendidly matched. The faint defiance which Braybrooke thought he detected in their eyes suited them both, giving to them just a touch of the arrogance which youth and health render charming, but which ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... by our speed had chilled me bitterly, I noticed Miss West coming along the narrow deck, and could not avoid being struck by the spring and vitality of her walk. Her face, despite its firm moulding, had a suggestion of fragility that was belied by the robustness of her body. At least, one would argue that her body must be robust from her fashion of movement of it, though little could one divine the lines of it under the ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... poetic spirit of the times." In addition to this remarkable poetic power, he was a splendidly-trained musician, a great adept in style, and one of the most original masters of rhythm and harmony that the records of music show. All his works, though wanting in breadth and robustness of tone, are characterized by the utmost finish and refinement. Full of delicate and unexpected beauties, elaborated with the finest touch, his effects are so quaint and fresh as to fill the mind of the listener ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... which seemed to cast a sort of aerial bridge over the impassable gulf produced by difference of race. He was below the middle height, and robust and agile in figure. Valentin de Bellegarde, Newman afterwards learned, had a mortal dread of the robustness overtaking the agility; he was afraid of growing stout; he was too short, as he said, to afford a belly. He rode and fenced and practiced gymnastics with unremitting zeal, and if you greeted him with a "How well you are looking" he ...
— The American • Henry James

... certainly the sight was one to amuse a wiser head than a bear's. The standing-place of the paunchy little animal being very green and slippery, and the leg which he so tightly clasped belonging to a fellow creature of no ordinary robustness, the struggle was diversified every few seconds by the fat fellow toppling on to his nose or back, or being dragged behind the heap, and then suddenly reappearing, still holding with passionless determination to that devoted leg, and tumbling ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes

... contemporary faces and clothes, which give them the air of realistic portraits, are truthful and living, if not remarkably beautiful. Round the sides of the tomb are small images of the apostles. There is a kind of masculine completeness in the work, and a certain robustness of taste. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable robustness entered; immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back upon admitting him, a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the congregation, sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the chaplain. Yes, it was the famous Father Mapple, so called by the whalemen, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... a low, short, silent flight: this gives you a concise description of the female, who is strongly equipped for her arduous task. The male, being a mere philanderer, sports a more elegant pair of horns, is more daintily clad and has a more graceful figure, without altogether losing the quality of robustness which ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... borne out by the evidence of his own writings. Impulse with him took the place of conscience. Moral law, accompanied by the sanction of power, and imposed by outside authority, he rejected as a form of tyranny. His nature lacked robustness and ballast. Byron, who was at bottom intensely practical, said that Shelley's philosophy was too spiritual and romantic. Hazlitt, himself a Radical, wrote of Shelley: "He has a fire in his eye, a fever in his blood, a maggot in his brain, a hectic flutter in his ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... Indian of literature—perhaps a little too noble to be entirely true to life—and various simple, strong seamen. His Chingachgook and Uncas and Long Tom Coffin justly brought him added fame. In these narrative gifts, as well as in the robustness of his own character, Cooper was not unlike Sir Walter Scott. He once modestly referred to himself as "a chip from Scott's block" and has frequently been ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... young men come to the use of women, and thus very long preserve the vigour of youth. Neither are the virgins hastened to wed. They must both have the same sprightly youth, the like stature, and marry when equal and able-bodied. Thus the robustness of the parents is inherited by the children. Children are holden in the same estimation with their mother's brother, as with their father. Some hold this tie of blood to be most inviolable and binding, and in receiving of hostages, ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus

... found his new acquaintance awaiting him. It was long since Laurie Fernald had had a person of his own age to talk with. In fact, he had never before seen a lad whose friendship he desired. Most boys were so well and strong that they had no conception of what it meant not to be so, and their very robustness and vitality overwhelmed a personality as sensitively attuned as was that of Laurie Fernald. He shrank from their pity, their blundering ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett

... which, I believe, we can show vastly more samples than Great Britain. Indeed, I believe, for the most part, that the brutality of the English people is only the excess and plethora of that healthful, muscular robustness and full-bloodedness for which the nation has always been famous, and which it should prize beyond almost anything else. But for our brutality, our recklessness of life and property, the brazen ruffianism in our great cities, the hellish greed and robbery and plunder in high places, I should ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... art here is, it reveals, not for the last time, the influence of Giorgione with which its beginnings were saturated. The beautiful head of St. John shows the Giorgionesque type and the Giorgionesque feeling at its highest. The Joseph of Arimathea has the robustness and the passion of the Apostles in the Assunta, the crimson coat of Nicodemus, with its high yellowish lights, is such as we meet with in the Bacchanal. The Magdalen, with her features distorted by ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips

... sagacity and quick-wittedness in the science of horse-flesh, and was eminently expert in the arts of shooting, fishing, and hunting. Nor did he confine himself to these, but added the theory and practice of boxing, cudgel play, and quarter-staff. These exercises added ten-fold robustness and vigour ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... changed immensely in mere physical appearance, and the full brown cheeks, the brighter eyes of absolute health, and the general air of vigour and robustness that had come to replace his customary lassitude and timidity, had worked such an improvement that I hardly knew him for the same man. His voice, too, was deeper and his manner bespoke for the first time a greater measure of confidence in himself. He now ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... dandies of the present day. Apparently the master of the house was himself a man of health and strength, and therefore liked to have his apartments adorned with none but folk of equal vigour and robustness. Lastly, in the window, and suspected cheek by jowl with Bobelina, there hung a cage whence at intervals there peered forth a white-spotted blackbird. Like everything else in the apartment, it bore a strong resemblance to Sobakevitch. When host and ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... The nouveau riche, by concealing his origin and trafficking with the College of Heralds, can intercept some of the homage paid to high birth. And (though the rich nobleman who is an invalid can make no tangible gain by pretending to be robust, since robustness is an advantage only from within) the rich, robust nobleman can, by employing a clever private secretary to write public speeches and magazine articles for him, intercept some of the homage which is paid ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... altar-piece? Where in Florentine painting is there anything more fascinating than the playfulness of his children, more poetic than one or two of his landscapes, more charming than is at times his colour? And with all this, health, even robustness, and almost unfailing good-humour! Yet by themselves all these qualities constitute only a high-class illustrator, and such by native endowment I believe Fra Filippo to have been. That he became more—very much more—is due rather to Masaccio's potent influence ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson

... they were selling. I often saw the Tetchy girls hoeing and weeding, and have no doubt they performed a very large part of that important labor. It was light work, as well as home-work, such as I was extremely anxious to obtain. The wholesome out-door exercise, I was confident, would give robustness to my health,—and, if the summer sun did change me from a blonde into a brunette, the winter intermission would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... Training for a boxer)—Ver. 315. "Pugilem." This means "robust as a boxer," or "athlete." These persons were naturally considered as the types of robustness, being dieted for the purpose of increasing their flesh ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... fault in her loveliness before, it was that it remained always equal: the same light seemed always to play over face and hair, the liquid clearness of her eyes was always undimmed, and there was a trifle of over-robustness about the rounded contours of her figure. In spite of all her beauty, it had at times been hard for me to realize that she was a woman to give herself thoroughly to love. I had already had many dreams ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... the defects of their counsel, and had retained Mr. Pinkney, who stood at that time at the head of the bar of the United States. He had all the qualifications of a great lawyer, except perhaps that of robustness. He was keen, strong, and learned; diligent in preparation, he was ready and fluent in action, a good debater, and master of a high order of eloquence. He was a most formidable adversary, and one whom Mr. Webster, then just at the outset of his career, had probably ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge

... acquainting myself with the inner life of these inchoate millions, which must be well worth knowing. Papa, on arriving at our door, plunged into an altercation with a cab-tout. What a man! And yet sometimes I could find it in my heart to envy his robustness, his buoyancy. A Huntley and Palmer's Nursery Biscuit in a little hot water has somewhat quieted my nerves, which suffered cruelly during the scene. I believe I shall ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... genius in a man will always cover many defects of manner, and much will be excused to the strong and the original. Without genuineness and individuality, human life would lose much of its interest and variety, as well as its manliness and robustness of character. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... the robustness and depth that are so clearly in evidence in most of the writings that have been dealt with in this volume, but there is a beauty, a simplicity, a sweetness, a sincerity born of experience, which give this book an unusual flavour and perfume. The writer says that there is "an endless ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... are really better, ideals of passion, of mysticism, of a sense of the youth and adventurousness of the earth; but it will be well for us if we achieve as much by our frenzy as they did by their delicacies. It scarcely seems as if we were as robust in our very robustness as they ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... fishing villages many of which I visited. Everywhere I saw fine strong men and vigorous women; and it struck me that the extraordinary plenty and cheapness of nutritive food had quite as much to do with this robustness as climate and constant exercise. So easy, indeed, is it to live in Oki, that men of other coasts, who find existence difficult, emigrate to Oki if they can get a chance to work there, even at less remuneration. An interesting spectacle to me were the vast processions of fishing-vessels which always, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... only when the law compels you, and observe them closely while there, for health is far more important to them than education. "Infant prodigies" lack the mental staying power and physical robustness which real success demands, though they may do well for a time. Go to your old school: the successes of to-day were dunces twenty years ago; about those whose names are proudly emblazoned in fading gold on Rolls of Honour, ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... shopkeeping class, where the parents still gave their children religious lessons at home. Then ladies of refined habits and delicate feelings as mistresses of elementary schools—that was a new idea to him. A certain robustness seemed, perhaps, more desirable; teaching a crowd of imperfectly washed little boys and girls was not fancy-work; also he believed that essential propriety existed to the full as much amongst the ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... now obviously declining towards the grave. A man of vast physique—'your immense', an Irish servant used respectfully to call him—of sanguine temperament, of genial disposition, of versatile capacity, he seemed to have engrafted upon the robustness of his English nature the facile, child-like, and expansive qualities of the South. So far from being a Bishop Blougram (as the rumour went) he was, in fact, the very antithesis of that subtle and worldly-wise ecclesiastic. He had innocently looked forward all his life to the reunion of England ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... left a shadow on the assemblage, for, though faint sounds came through the closed doors, they were somewhat lacking in the robustness of youth. Ray did not deign an effort to remember. More than that, he hoped that it never would come back, for it might be disturbing to his solitudes. Of his attempts to remember the attack on the boy ten years ago, there had never come any result but the recollection of a wholly disconnected ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London









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