"Niceness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a very great evil. There are some which Hippocrates compared to the falling sickness, and Scioppius doubtless only made pretence of envying the sparrows in order to be agreeably playful in a learned and far from playful work. Highly seasoned foods are injurious to health and impair the niceness of a delicate sense; and in general bodily pleasures are a kind of expenditure of the spirit, though they be made good in some better ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... great boiler, and a huge oven never now used. The necessary but unsightly doings of kitchen life were here carried on, out of view. He, indeed, would have been fastidious who would have hesitated, on any score of cleanliness or niceness, to sit and eat at the long board on which the miller's dinner was daily served, or would have found it amiss to sit at that fire and listen to the ticking of the great mahogany-cased clock, which stood in the corner ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... I know to this day what possible niceness there was for you in being married to a man everybody thought would never ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... years, thus proving that the stamp of time is upon them as on things belonging to a temporary economy; whereas such tastes as those that enjoy the beautiful in nature or in art, for example, abide in old age with a youthful freshness, and more than a youthful niceness of discernment; and so afford a presumption that they are destined for immortality. To the aged saint "the trees clap their hands, the little hills rejoice, and the mountains break forth into singing;" and when the earth is empty of every other sentient pleasure, ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... introduced to the decorations, including the Colonel, when the Americans began to arrive, three young officers and two who had hardened into warlike middle age. It was heart-warming to see them meet Mr. Beckett, and their chivalric niceness to Brian and me was somehow different from any other niceness I ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and pretty hard, but I tell you we are a good bit better off than they are in the prisons of Russia. We have got plenty to eat, though I cannot say much for its niceness; anyhow we are a long way better fed than the soldiers who look after us; but here ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... repeated the last words, If you mean me honourably, let me go out of this hated house, in came Mrs. Sinclair, in a great ferment —And what, pray, Madam, has this house done to you? Mr. Lovelace, you have known me some time; and, if I have not the niceness of this lady, I hope I do not deserve to ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... niceness, The handmaids of all women, or more truly, Woman its pretty self, into a waggish courage, Ready in gibes, quick-answer'd, saucy, and As ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... pleasures. Now the delicate are those who cannot endure toils, nor anything that diminishes pleasure. Hence it is written (Deut. 28:56): "The tender and delicate woman, that could not go upon the ground, nor set down her foot for . . . softness [Douay: 'niceness']." Thus delicacy is a kind of effeminacy. But properly speaking effeminacy regards lack of pleasures, while delicacy regards the cause that hinders pleasure, for ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... very nice about my friend. Indeed, he was always nice, with the niceness of people whose hearts are genuinely humane. But this time it cost him an effort. His attempts at general conversation broke down into dullness. It occurred to me he might have been indisposed. But before I could frame the inquiry ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... believe, soon became tired of her. He liked her flattery, and at first declared that she was clever and nice, but her niceness was too purely celestial to satisfy his mundane tastes. Mackinnon himself can revel among the clouds in his own writings, and can leave us sometimes in doubt whether he ever means to come back to earth, but when his foot is on terra firma ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... after the tail. The high charging of ships is that which brings many ill qualities upon them. It makes them extremely leeward, makes them sink deep into the seas, makes them labour in foul weather, and ofttimes overset. Safety is more to be respected than show or niceness for ease. In sea-journeys both cannot well stand together, and, therefore, the most necessary is to be chosen. Two decks and a-half is enough, and no building at all above that but a low master's cabin. Our masters and mariners will say that the ships will bear more well enough; ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... first time, I was looked down upon, and I did not like it. I do not quite know why I was made to know this so well. My dress, if not showy or costly, was certainly without blame in its neatness and niceness, and perfectly becoming my place as a schoolgirl. And I had very little to do at that time with my schoolmates, and that little was entirely friendly in its character. I am obliged to think, looking back at it now, that some rivalry was at work. I ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... hurt your niceness, it seems, by asking you a plain question, which your mother's heart is too full of grief to let her ask; and modesty will not let your sister ask; though but the consequence of your actions—and yet it must be answered, before you'll obtain ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... standing in a very sulky attitude at the corner where the railings were. In his heart of hearts he was extremely anxious that Flossy's mission should fail. It seemed to him that every bit of the niceness, all the interest would go out of his life if he hadn't Dickory. In some ways he considered that Dickory was more to him than she was to Flossy. He wondered how Flossy could even talk of parting with her. He hoped sincerely she would fail ...
— Dickory Dock • L. T. Meade
... surprising beauty and lightness, all covered over with a profusion of little statues and other ornaments"; and the cathedral at Siena, which Addison had characterized as "barbarous," and as an instance of "false beauties and affected ornaments," Gray commends as "labored with a Gothic niceness and delicacy in the old-fashioned way." It must be acknowledged that these are rather cold praises, but Gray was continually advancing in his knowledge of Gothic and his liking for it. Later in life he became something of an antiquarian and virtuoso. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... my Muse adventurous dares indite, Whether the niceness of thy piercing sight Applaud my lays, or censure what I write, To thee I sing, and hope to borrow fame, By adding to my page ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the battle was fought; upon the receipt of which he would at once have marched away home, and left the Achaeans to look to themselves. But Fortune, that loves to determine the greatest affairs by a minute, in this conjuncture showed such an exact niceness of time, that immediately after the battle in Sellasia was over, and Cleomenes had lost his army and his city, the messengers came up and called for Antigonus. And this above everything made Cleomenes's misfortune to be pitied; for if he had gone on retreating ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... mind stoops to this degraded state, New griefs will darken the dependant's fate; "Brother!" said Isaac, "you will sure excuse The little freedom I'm compell'd to use: My wife's relations—(curse the haughty crew!) - Affect such niceness, and such dread of you: You speak so loud—and they have natures soft - Brother—I wish—do go upon the loft!" Poor George obey'd, and to the garret fled, Where not a being saw the tears he shed: But more was yet ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... of the great cause was her own greater importance, chiefly revealed to her in the larger freedom with which she was handled, pulled hither and thither and kissed, and the proportionately greater niceness she was obliged to show. Her features had somehow become prominent; they were so perpetually nipped by the gentlemen who came to see her father and the smoke of whose cigarettes went into her face. Some of these gentlemen made her strike matches and light their cigarettes; ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... of the niceness of his taste, though he praised West's translation of Pindar, he pointed out the following passage as faulty, by expressing a circumstance so minute as to detract from the general dignity ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... pleasure or duty, hundreds of older ones in each literature, I think that the mysterious quality of readableness pure and simple has more generally belonged to the French novel than to the English. This, as I have endeavoured to point out, is not a question of naughtiness or niceness, of candour or convention. I have indeed admitted that the conventions of the French novel bore me quite as much as anything in ours. It may be partly a question of length, for, as everybody knows, the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... help, and mark of care) They chide that noise which heedless youth affect; Still course for use, for health they cleanness wear, And save in well-fix'd arms, all niceness check'd. They thought, those that, unarm'd, expos'd frail life, But naked nature valiantly betray'd; Who was, though naked, safe, till pride made strife, But made defence must use, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... at this point presents a double image of action baffled by wisdom. Hamlet baffles the dealing of the justice of Fate, and also the death plotted for him by his uncle. His weapon, in both cases, is his justice, his precise scrupulousness of mind, the niceness of mental balance which gives to all that he says the double-edge of wisdom. It is the faculty, translated into the finer terms of thought, which the ghost seeks to make real with bloodshed. Justice, in her grosser as in her finer form, is concerned with the finding ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... showed himself to be immensely impressed by Belknap-Jackson, whom I had never beheld more perfectly vogue in all his appointments. He became, in fact, rather moody in the presence of this subtle niceness of detail, being made conscious, I dare say, of his own sloppy lounge-suit, rumpled cravat, and shocking boots, and despite Belknap-Jackson's amiable efforts to draw him into talk about hunting in the shires and our ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... jest, "I'm sure he'd have laid in a silken warp to make fast on the bollards instead of mere plebeian hemp. I'm sure there'd be a frown on Dason's head this minute, if the sun hadn't scorched it stiff. My Lord Deucalion, will you pick your way with niceness over this common ship and tread on the genteel carpet they've spread for you on the ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... of life had denied Jessie the niceness given girls by the complexities of modern civilization. She had been brought up close to raw stark nature. The habits of animals were familiar to her and the ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... this niceness to that pleasure shewn, Where nature sums up all her joys in one; Gives all she can, and, labouring still to give, Makes it so great, we can but taste and live: So fills the senses, that the soul seems fled, And thought itself does, for the time, lie dead; Till, like a string screwed ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... is impossible to think of him as an abusive controversialist as Milton was in his controversy with Salmasius. But though Emerson never betrayed it to the offence of others, he must have been conscious, like Milton, of "a certain niceness of nature, an honest haughtiness," which was as a shield about his inner nature. Charles Emerson, the younger brother, who was of the same type, expresses the feeling in his college essay on Friendship, where it is all summed up in the line ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... himself winks sometimes," said Lotta, cutting another half- inch off from the unconsumed fragment, and picking the skin from the meat with her own fair fingers. Hitherto Souchey had been regardless of any such niceness in his eating, the skin having gone with the rest; but now he thought that the absence of the outside covering and the touch of Lotta's fingers ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... pretence that was her married life must end, she must be free. In her thought she went no farther. Rachael outwardly was no better than the other women of her world; inwardly there was in her nature an instinctive niceness, a hatred for what was coarse or base. For years the bond between her and Clarence Breckenridge had been only an empty word. But it was there, none the less, and before she could put any new plan into definite form, even in her own heart, it ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... Mossmoor the stupid coachman was going to drive us into the stable-yard, which would quite have stopped the niceness of our first arriving, especially as I caught sight of dear old Mrs. Parsley standing at the front door with her best cap on, all in a flutter to welcome us. (I didn't call her 'dear old Mrs. Parsley' to myself then: it's since ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth |
