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Stateliness   Listen
noun
Stateliness  n.  The quality or state of being stately. "For stateliness and majesty, what is comparable to a horse?"






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Stateliness" Quotes from Famous Books



... wing of the house, whose elaborately cast lead guttering alone was worth a day's journey; passed under a great rose-grown gate in the red wall, and so round to the high front of the house which in beauty and stateliness as much excelled the back as that all ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... were disciplined to obedience, and a simple word was her command. She was not given to any display of petulance or rage, but was steady, well-balanced, and unvarying in her mood. That she was dignified, even to stateliness, is shown us by the statement made by Lawrence Washington, of Chotauk, a relative and playmate of George in boyhood, who was often a guest at her house. He says—"I was often there with George—his playmate, schoolmate, and young man's companion. Of the mother I was ten times more afraid than I ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various

... appellation of pleasure. His features were scarcely ever relaxed into a smile, nor did that air which spoke the unhappiness of his mind at any time forsake them: yet his manners were by no means such as denoted moroseness and misanthropy. He was compassionate and considerate for others, though the stateliness of his carriage and the reserve of his temper were at no time interrupted. His appearance and general behaviour might have strongly interested all persons in his favour; but the coldness of his address, and the impenetrableness ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... and silvern ankle-bands, and the ivory and amber and inlaid metal-work, and the iron-axled chariots with eight spokes to the wheel, and the crimson-cheeked ships and the fair-cheeked maidens, and the stateliness and grace amid the splendour of it all—why should we obstinately refuse to believe that these bards knew more than we—that they had seen the vision with their mortal eye before they took the brush in hand ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie

... drew herself up, and all trace of the look which Ashe had observed disappeared. She bowed, not carelessly as she had bowed to Darrell, but with a kind of exaggerated stateliness, not less girlish. ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... his carven chair amid his rolls of parchment and instruments of writing, raised me swiftly as I stooped to kiss his hand. Dark-eyed, hawk-nosed, with black hair not yet flecked with snow, there was an awe and stateliness in him whether he spoke to gentle or to simple. He was a Norman, and being such feared none, and had his will, and when it was possible mixed a rare gentleness with ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar

... up to the very hour of the wedding, noble Princes and their retinues were received in state by the King, all of them had to be told that they were too late, and most of them rode off again at once. Some who had never seen the Princess, but who had been attracted by reports of her beauty and her stateliness, waited to attend her marriage feast, and to regret that they had not ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... of praise from the guests, and the elaborate menu caused some of the men to beam with inward satisfaction. It was a superb dinner, served with a stateliness which could not have been exceeded if royalty had been amongst the guests. The plate was magnificent, the flowers arranged by an artist's hand, in rich and yet chaste abundance. Stafford, as he looked ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... and musicians, scattering the remainder among the crowd, to be scrambled for. Then, to show his affection for his subjects, unwilling to send them to their homes without giving them another treat, he danced sideways half way up the racecourse and back again to his residence, with much stateliness, his amiable wife smiling with delight that she had such a spouse, while the people were louder than ever in their ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... tip-toes with heads up and eyelids drawn over our eyes as we tried to look down in order to see where we were walking. We marched along like this with all the stateliness and solemnity of camels! He then taught us to make our exit with indifference, dignity, or fury, and it was amusing to see us going towards the doors either with a lagging step, or in an animated or hurried way, according to the mood in which we were ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... exposition of all the thoughts which crowd into the mind of the actor or sufferer, expanded, as it were, to prolong the enjoyment of those who are to sympathise with them, and expressed in select and appropriate terms, with the pomp and stateliness of heroic verse. An English tragedy is valued as a representation of life and character; a French tragedy as a display of eloquence and feeling: and the reason is, that in France eloquence and feeling are valued for their own sake, and in England they are valued for the sake of the corresponding ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... thing worthy of note is the Royal Exchange, so named by Queen Elizabeth, built by Sir Thomas Gresham, citizen, for public ornament and the convenience of merchants. It has a great effect, whether you consider the stateliness of the building, the assemblage of different nations, or the quantities of merchandise. I shall say nothing of the hall belonging to the Hans Society; or of the conveyance of water to all parts of the town by subterraneous pipes, nor the beautiful conduits and cisterns for the ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... narrow grass paddock and the ensuing gooseberry garden with the air of state barges making an unofficial progress along a rural trout stream. There was a certain amount of furtive haste mingled with the stateliness of their advance, as though hostile search-lights might be turned on them at any moment; and, as a matter of fact, they were not unobserved. Matilda Cuvering, with the alert eyes of thirteen years old and the added advantage of an exalted position in the branches ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki

... exaggeration of outward sorrow. The composition is specially beautiful, the sides are well-balanced, while the two mounted soldiers on either side (notwithstanding their characteristically badly-drawn horses) give the scene a ceremonious stateliness, ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell

... Aeschylus belonged to the race and the period from which emerged Themistocles and Aristides—Sophocles to those which produced Phidias and Pericles. Sophocles indeed, in the calmness of his disposition, and the symmetry and stateliness of his genius, might almost be entitled the Pericles of poetry. And as the statesman was called the Olympian, not from the headlong vehemence, but the serene majesty of his strength; so of Sophocles also it may be said, that his power is visible in his repose, and his thunders ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... as I have already described, and saluting the astonished Pawnees with a certain stateliness, opened the conversation. He was not long in discovering that Lone Bear was the only one with whom he could converse intelligently, and the two, as you remember, were soon seated beside each other. It was Lone ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... exaggeration. She looked divinely handsome in her ball-dress of a darkish shade of blue, relieved by a bunch of roses in her corsage and a single diamond brooch. Statuesque, too statuesque, Kelson had called her; certainly her manner and bearing had a certain cold stateliness, but Gifford had penetration enough to see that behind the reserve and the society tone of her welcome there might easily be a depth of feeling which his friend with a lesser knowledge of human nature ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William

... of the Iliad is also often spoken of as characteristic of the style in which that great epic is written. And yet, as has been said, "though its versification is always appropriate, and therefore never mean, it only rises into stateliness, or into a terrible sublimity, when Homer has occasion to brace his energies for an effort. Thus he ushers in with true grandeur the marshalling of the Greek army, in the Second Book, partly by the invocation of the Muses, and partly by an assemblage of no less than ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... continuous harmony. Besides, except in the hands of a great master of song, blank verse is apt to be tedious, and Lord Carnarvon's use of the weak ending, his habit of closing the line with an unimportant word, is hardly consistent with the stateliness of an epic, however valuable it might be in dramatic verse. Now and then, also, Lord Carnarvon exaggerates the value of the Homeric adjective, and for one word in the Greek gives us a whole line in the English. The simple [Greek text], ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... got up with a certain waddling stateliness (perhaps after all she was fifty). Her clothes fell into perfection—she walked slowly and calmly with appraising steps. The lace veil was over her face. She did not forget her sunshade, her bag, ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco

... you both dretful well—you and Spain. We think dretful well of all of you; and now," sez I, with some stateliness, "I am a-goin' to withdraw myself, and not tire you ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... still wonderfully dark for the condition of his beard.—It flashed into my mind, that this must be the organist who played so remarkably. Somehow I had not happened yet to inquire about him. But there was a stateliness in this man amounting almost to consciousness of dignity; and I was a little bewildered. His clothes were all of black, very neat and clean, but old-fashioned and threadbare. They bore signs of use, but more signs of time and careful keeping. I would ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... herself to be ushered down the monumental stairs and into the dining-room, which awed her with the solemnity of a church. She knew at once that she wouldn't be able to eat amid this stateliness any more than in the glitter of last evening's restaurant. She had yielded, however, and there was nothing for it but to sit down at the head of the table in the chair which Steptoe drew out for her. Guessing at her most immediate embarrassment, he showed her what to do by unfolding ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... stateliness: "Truly, fair lady, I will grant thy request, but it must be on one condition, that this squire shall go to Toboso and present himself in my name to the peerless Lady Dulcinea, that she may deal with him as ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)

... after tea on the dull earth, with uncommon dignity and self-esteem. Nor will this appear so slight a circumstance as to be unworthy of mention, when it is remembered that the caravan was in uneasy motion all the time, and that none but a person of great natural stateliness and acquired grace could have forborne ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... Cape of California, being the uppermost part of all New Spain, I navigated to the Philippine islands, hard upon the coast of China, of which country I have brought such intelligence as hath not been heard in these parts; the stateliness and riches of which country I fear to make report of; lest I should not be credited: for, if I had not known sufficiently the incomparable wealth of that country, I should have been as incredulous thereof as others will be that have not had the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... about Jacqueline Robins, declares it to be of St.-Omer, that there are people there, even now, who think of the days of the Spanish rule as the 'good old times.' But there is a certain Castilian stateliness about the older buildings of Aire; and the portals of the larger residences, leading from the street into charming secluded courts, gay with trees and flowers, remind one of the zaguans of the Andalusian houses. Very Spanish, too, is the Jesuit Church, despite some ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... its desolation. He got down at the corner, and leaving Shargar to go on to The Boar's Head and look after the luggage, walked into his grandmother's house and straight into her little parlour. She rose with her old stateliness when she saw a stranger enter the room, and stood ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... see it some day. She says ever so much about you, and as complimentary as possible. And then she declares her purpose to resign all rights, honours, pains, privileges, and duties of mistress of Dunripple into your hands as soon as you are Mrs. Marrable. And this she repeated yesterday with some stateliness, and a great deal of high-minded resignation. But I don't mean to laugh at her, because I know she means to do ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... coming from a detour through the library out into the full lights and of standing interminably facing a large gathering of people, the only face at which he could venture to glance that of Judge Calvin. Gray, standing dignified and stately beside another figure of equal dignity and stateliness—probably that of Mr. Matthew Kendrick. Then, at last—there was Roberta, coming toward him down a silken lane, her eyes fixed on his—such eyes, in such a face! He fixed his own gaze upon it, and held it—and forgot everything else, as he had hoped he should. Then there were the grave words ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond

... utterance, in which they seem to skip from consonant to consonant, until, lighting upon a broad, open vowel, they rest upon that to restore the balance of sound. The women carry this peculiarity of speaking to a much greater extreme than the men, who have more evenness and stateliness of utterance. A common bullock-driver, on horseback, delivering a message, seemed to speak like an ambassador at a royal audience. In fact, they sometimes appeared to me to be a people on whom a curse had fallen, and stripped them of everything but their ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... least some of us, had forgotten. He insisted on the immense value of history and continuity in the political life of a nation. He extolled (though the words were not his) the "institutions which incorporate tradition and prolong the reign of the dead." He affirmed that external beauty, stateliness, splendour, gracious manners, were indispensable elements of civilization, and that these were the contributions which Aristocracy made to the welfare of the State. He reminded us that the true greatness ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell

... suffered their flings and their blows to pass unresented; But if they ventured to ridicule father, when he of a Sunday Home from Church would come, with his solemn and dignified bearing; If they made fun of his cap-string, or laughed at the flowers of the wrapper He with such stateliness wore, which was given away but this morning— Threateningly doubled my fist in an instant; with furious passion Fell I upon them, and struck out and hit, assailing them blindly, Seeing not where. They howled as the blood gushed out from their noses: Scarcely they made their escape from my ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... a general favourite at home was evident enough, for his younger sister and brother received him with screams of delight, and his elder sister, Mary, forgot all her stateliness in the warmth of her welcome. Only one of the group walking in the fields failed to run forward to meet him—a fact Harry ...
— Hayslope Grange - A Tale of the Civil War • Emma Leslie

... mood had a little mollified. Everything here was so pacific, so unaggressive in its repose, that he was no longer incited to provoke a collision with Fitzpiers or with anybody. The comparative stateliness of the apartments influenced him to an emotion, rather than to a belief, that where all was outwardly so good and proper there could not be quite that delinquency within which he had suspected. It occurred to him, too, that even if his suspicion were justified, his ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... grassy slopes of the Simmenthal. There was a strange contrast between the image of that mighty palace, raised so high above the hills on which it is built as to make them seem little else than a basement for its glittering stateliness, and those lowland huts, half hidden beneath their coverts of forest, and scattered like gray stones along the masses of far-away mountain. Here man contending with the power of Nature for his existence; there commanding ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... carrying the body of a slain virgin eastwards, . . 'tis wondrously performed! ... and I, like others, have gaped upon the splendor of the scene half-credulous, and wholly dazzled! For the Ship doth rise aloft with excellent stateliness, plowing the air with as much celerity as sailing-vessels plow the seas; departing straightway from the watching eyes of thousands of spectators, it plunges deep, or so it seems, into the very heart of the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... boy's voices were gone; I heard instead the melancholy incantations of our own pagan religionists. The beautiful dignity of our great sacrificial rites seemed to settle about me, to enwrap me in its garment of solemnity and primitive stateliness. ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... his expression and attitude signifying that he clasped a revered partner. Releasing her from this respectful confinement, he offered the invisible lady a gracious arm and walked up and down the room with a stateliness tempered to rhythm, a cakewalk of strange refinement. Phrases seemed to be running in his head, impromptus symbolic of the touching and romantic, for he spoke them half aloud hi a wistful yet uplifted manner. "Oh, years!" he said. "Oh, years so fair; ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... Bargeton's rooms, his sister had changed her dress for a gown of pink cambric covered with narrow stripes, a straw hat, and a little silk shawl. The simple costume seemed like a rich toilette on Eve, for she was one of those women whose great nature lends stateliness to the least personal detail; and David felt prodigiously shy of her now that she had changed her working dress. He had made up his mind that he would speak of himself; but now as he gave his arm to this beautiful girl, ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... and mottled with grey, although it was perfumed with the sweets of Araby, and oiled with as pure and undefiled an unction as that which flowed from the horn of the ancient Samuel upon the head of the youthful David. His stateliness provoked her mirth—his deafness her impatience; and when she compared him with the joyous cavaliers, the brilliant and captivating men who graced the court of the gay and luxurious Louis, for whose gallant plumes and glittering armour she so often watched through her ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... the residents of this island, who are content to leave the resting-place of their dead in so shocking a condition. In the tiny little chamber of a church, the grand old litany of the Episcopal Church of England was not a little shorn of its ceremonial stateliness; clerk there was none, nor choir, nor organ, and the clergyman did duty for all, giving out the hymn and then singing it himself, followed as best might be by the uncertain voices of his very small congregation, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... out of the war with a tremendous reputation; but he lacked personal magnetism. A certain stateliness and dignity kept people at a distance, and, together with an exacting discipline, won him the sobriquet of "Old Fuss and Feathers." In 1852, he was the candidate of the Whig party for President; but the party was falling to pieces, he himself had no great personal following, and he was defeated by ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... effects rather than to their nature. For we are accustomed to call a man proud who boasts too much, who talks about nothing but his own virtues and other people's vices, who wishes to be preferred to everybody else, and who marches along with that stateliness and pomp which belong to others whose position is far above his. On the other hand, we call a man humble who often blushes, who confesses his own faults and talks about the virtues of others, who yields to every one, who walks with bended ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... keep a watch over its course. I am not speaking of Ireland; but to English Catholics at least it would be a serious evil, if it came as the emblem and advocate of a past ceremonial or an extinct nationalism. We are not living in an age of wealth and loyalty, of pomp and stateliness, of time-honoured establishments, of pilgrimage and penance, of hermitages and convents in the wild, and of fervent populations supplying the want of education by love, and apprehending in form and symbol what they cannot read in books. Our rules and ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... picturesque tree, and for combination with architecture, is unrivaled by any other tree. They grow rather slowly, but do not take much space, on account of their vertical habit. The making of the Court of Palms is due largely to the liberal use of these elegant trees, with their somber stateliness. ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... it was sleek and shiny. She had put on her Sunday dress and best bonnet; she had four ringlets at each side of her face; and to crown her charms, had ventured to borrow her mother's gold watch and chain. Being now a perfect princess in stateliness and beauty, she took Jack by the arm—she called him Jack—and made him march away with her. He was rather abashed at the new duty imposed upon him, but he had been so well kicked and cuffed all his life that he never thought of ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... had produced a single great play, we must wonder what he might have done had he outlived his wretched youth and become a man. Here and there his work is remarkable for its splendid imagination, for the stateliness of its verse, and for its rare bits of poetic beauty; but in dramatic instinct, in wide knowledge of human life, in humor, in delineation of woman's character, in the delicate fancy which presents an Ariel as perfectly as a Macbeth,—in a word, in all that makes a dramatic genius, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... that reason, if there had been no other, anti-mercurial. But the main cause of this reserve lay in the infrequency of visits consequent upon the difficulties of local movement. The other frost lay in the Spanish stateliness and the inflexibility of our social ceremonies. Our social meetings of this period, even for purposes of pleasure, were true solemnities. With usage of politeness that laid a weight of silence and delay upon every movement of a social ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... mighty forest's queen, With thy dishevell'd nymphs attired in youthful green, About the lawns hast scour'd, and wastes both far and near, Brave huntress; but no beast shall prove thy quarries here; Save those the best of chase, the tall and lusty red, The stag for goodly shape, and stateliness of head, Is fitt'st to hunt at force. For whom, when with his hounds The labouring hunter tufts the thick unbarbed grounds Where harbour'd is the hart; there often from his feed The dogs of him do find; or thorough skilful heed, The huntsman by his slot, or breaking earth, perceives, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... current in those same veins was from the race of plain and prairie. The practiced eye detected it in the slender stateliness of carriage, in the graceful, yet voluptuous, curves of the lithe body, in the smallness and delicacy of hand and foot, in the purple sheen on straight-falling masses of blue-black hair, and, more than all else, in the long, dark eye, full and soft, yet alight with a slumbering ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... certain distaste. "Of course. Don't be a goose, Mother dear! There'll never be any place I love as well as Storm—" (Kate winced again)—"or anybody I love as well as you. But we've our position in the world to think of, we Kildares," she ended, with the stateliness ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... bungalow being scarcely large enough for the Governor's family, I am lodged in the old Dutch Stadthaus, formerly the residence of the Dutch Governor, and which has enough of solitude and faded stateliness to be fearsome, or at the least eerie, to a solitary guest like myself, to whose imagination, in the long, dark nights, creeping Malays or pilfering Chinamen are far more likely to present themselves than the stiff beauties and formal splendors of the ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... It seems as if with English writers poetic sentiment naturally sought expression in poetic forms, while the Frenchmen of nearly corresponding temperament were restrained within the limits of prose by reason of the vigorously prescribed stateliness and stiffness of their verse at that time. A man in this country with the quality of Vauvenargues, with his delicacy, tenderness, elevation, would have composed lyrics. We have undoubtedly lost much by the laxity and irregularity ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley

... the struggle we know very little. Burke was not fond in after life of talking about his earlier days, not because he had any false shame about the straits and hard shifts of youthful neediness, but because he was endowed with a certain inborn stateliness of nature, which made him unwilling to waste thoughts on the less dignified parts of life. This is no unqualified virtue, and Burke might have escaped some wearisome frets and embarrassments in his existence, if he had been capable of letting the detail of the day lie more heavily upon him. ...
— Burke • John Morley

... themselves are parties. The tragedy was by them most pithily framed, and no less curiously acted in view of her Majesty, by whom it was then as princely accepted, as of the whole honourable audience notably applauded: yea, and of all men generally desired, as a work, either in stateliness of show, depth of conceit, or true ornaments of poetical art, inferior to none of the best in that kind: no, were the Roman Seneca the censurer. The brave youths that then (to their high praises) so feelingly performed the same in action, did shortly after lay up the book unregarded, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... Saying which she opened a small manuscript book containing extracts from various authors in her own handwriting, which she kept in her work-basket, and read as follows:—"'He has visited all Europe, not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces, or the stateliness of temples; not to make accurate measurements of the remains of ancient grandeur, nor to form a scale of the curiosities of ancient art; not to collect medals, nor to collate manuscripts: but to dive into the depths of dungeons, and to plunge into the infection ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson

... his sister, "there's a burning volcano in that woman's heart, that will tear her some day to pieces. For all that coldness, and calmness, and stateliness, her brain is on fire, and her heart ready for a convulsion. Her thoughts now, if she thinks at all, are all desperate. She's going through a very hell upon earth! When you think of her pride—and ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... magnificent an object. In height it exceeded 50 ft., the diameter of its shade was nearly 90 ft., and the circumference of the bole 15 ft.: it was in full leaf and flower, and in appearance at once united the features of strength, majesty, and beauty; having the stateliness of the oak, in its trunk and arms; the density of the sycamore, in its dark, deep, massy foliage; and the graceful featheriness of the ash, in its waving branches, that dangled in rich tresses almost to the ground. Its general ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various

... ladies wore in their capillary towers were, as it appears from the following story, "as sharp as any swords." "Pardon me, good signor Don Quixote," says the duenna Donna Rodriguez to that unrivalled knight, "but as often as I call to mind my unhappy spouse, my eyes are brim-full. With what stateliness did he use to carry my lady behind him on a puissant mule, for in those days coaches and side-saddles were not in fashion, and the ladies rode behind their squires. On a certain day, at the entrance into St. James's Street in ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne

... find it except where it has been shown to him. Neither was a common house like this by any means devoid of any things to please him. If there was not the lovely homeliness of the cottage which at once gave all it had, there was a certain stateliness which afforded its own reception; if there was little harmony, there were individual colours that afforded him delight—as for instance, afterwards, the crimson covering the walls of the dining-room, whose colour ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... out of her room a little after, paler than usual, with a great air of stateliness and gravity, conscious to her finger points of the looks that met her, and putting on an aspect of severity which was very unusual to her. Geoff seized and clung to her arm as he was wont, and found it trembling. He had begun to pour forth his wonder about ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... idiom, had censured "all the stiffness and stateliness, and operoseness of style, quite alien from the character of 'Phalaris,' a man of business and despatch." Boyle keenly turns his own words on Bentley. "Stiffness and stateliness, and operoseness of style, is indeed quite alien from the character of a man of business; ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... exaggeration; but here he does not exaggerate: he merely symbolises and sublimates like any other great artist. Sam Weller does not exaggerate the wit of the London street arab one atom more than Colonel Newcome, let us say, exaggerates the stateliness of an ordinary soldier and gentleman, or than Mr. Collins exaggerates the fatuity of a certain kind of country clergyman. And this breath from the boisterous brotherhood of the poor lent a special seriousness ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... Wilhelm Meister (Part I, Chapter XV), Goethe, on the basis of his own personal experiences, describes his hero's emotions in the humble surroundings of Marianne's little room as compared with the stateliness and order of his own home. "It seemed to him when he had here to remove her stays in order to reach the harpsichord, there to lay her skirt on the bed before he could seat himself, when she herself with unembarrassed frankness would ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... style of Mr. DAVIS was indigenous and strongly marked by his individuality. Although he doubtless admired, and perhaps imitated, the condensation and dignity of Gibbon, yet it is certain that he carefully avoided the monotonous stateliness and the elaborate and ostentatious art of that most erudite historian. I look in vain for his model in the skeptical Gibbon, the cynical Bolingbroke, or the gorgeous Burke. These were all to him intellectual giants; but giants of false belief and practice. Not even from Tacitus, upon whom ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell

... that we see the true William Browne, with all his high-handedness and worthy enthusiasm, the poet who not only loves his country with a lover's passion and cannot tolerate that any should be compared to her in fairness of feature, in stateliness of stature, or in virtue of mind; but who, first perhaps among English poets, has that more local patriotism, narrower and more intimate, for his own home, for its moors, its streams, its associations, all the actual or imagined surroundings of his ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... particularly in the language of his poems. He was compelled, of course, to use much more concrete and vivid terms than the eighteenth century poets had used, because he was dealing with much more concrete and vivid matter; but his language, nevertheless, has a prevailing stateliness, and at times an artificiality, which recommended it to readers tired of the inanities of Hayley and Mason, but unwilling to accept the startling simplicity and concreteness of diction exemplified by the ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... did know it had been through the leafage of that splendid tree that he had first glimpsed the girl's face, and he did know that never before had he seen a thing of trunk and branch and leaf that had so impressed him with its stateliness and vital beauty. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... stateliness and stiffness of James Auberly gave way, and the stern man, leaning his head upon the coffin, as he sat alone in the darkened room, wept as if he had been ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... of a natural stateliness of look and manner, Clara had a kind way with her. She took off their guest's cloak, and drew a comfortable chair forward to the tea-table, while her sister made out ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... intricate chandelier, its sixty-six aldermanic desks arranged in half-circles, one behind the other; its woodwork of black oak carved and highly polished; its walls a dark blue-gray decorated with arabesques in gold—thus giving to all proceedings an air of dignity and stateliness. Above the speaker's head was an immense portrait in oil of a former mayor—poorly done, dusty, and yet impressive. The size and character of the place gave on ordinary occasions a sort of resonance to the voices of the speakers. To-night through the closed windows could be heard the sound ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... in the background as a common setting in Van Dyck's portraits. The taste of this time was rather artificial in such matters, and inclined to stateliness. There is here no vista beyond the pillar, no glimpse into another apartment, but the space is, as it ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... day it was when he first saw through its autumn trees the scattered buildings of his university. What impressions it had made upon him as it awaited him there, gray with stateliness, hoary with its honors, pervaded with the very breath and spirit of his country. He recalled his meeting with his professors, the choosing of his studies, the selection of a place in which to live. Then had followed what had ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen

... DEFINITIONS:—Immense, very great. Majesty, stateliness, elevation of manner. Dignity, grace, loftiness of manner. Title, name. Solitary, living by oneself. Crags, steep, rugged rocks. Base, foot, bottom. Plumes, feathers. Talons, claws. Eyrie, the nest of a bird that builds in a lofty place. Ledge, a ridge ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey

... now alive and able to act, would once more hitch in very handsomely with the recitativers of the new academy of acting, for, says the author of the Thespian dictionary, "He possessed the singular talent of imparting stateliness to comic dialogues, and merriment to tragic scenes." Of this gentleman many anecdotes are recorded, curious in themselves, and well deserving ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various

... advanc'd it changed its spirit and garments to ampler stateliness. I was almost conscious of a definite presence, Nature silently near. The great constellation of the Water-Serpent stretch'd its coils over more than half the heavens. The Swan with outspread wings was flying down the Milky Way. The northern Crown, the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... him on occasions such as these, had appealed to the Speaker whether the right honourable gentleman opposite should not be called upon to resume his seat. Mr. Gresham had put him down with a wave of his hand. An affected stateliness cannot support itself but for a moment; and Mr. Daubeny had been forced to sit down when the Speaker did not at once support his appeal. But he did not forget that wave of the hand, nor did he forgive it. He was a man who in public life rarely forgot, and never forgave. They ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... he, gazing at the ruin of what was dearest to his eyes with grief and wonder, but nevertheless with a degree of stateliness,—"people, what have you done? This fire is consuming all that marked your advance from barbarism, or that could have prevented your relapse thither. We, the men of the privileged orders, were those who kept alive from age to age the old chivalrous spirit; ...
— Earth's Holocaust (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... morality, manners, and even politics and religion, in such a new manufacturing place as Keighley in the north, and any stately, sleepy, picturesque cathedral town in the south. Yet the aspect of Keighley promises well for future stateliness, if not picturesqueness. Grey stone abounds; and the rows of houses built of it have a kind of solid grandeur connected with their uniform and enduring lines. The frame-work of the doors, and the lintels of the windows, even in the smallest dwellings, are made of blocks of stone. There ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... best with her soft fine brown hair piled on top of her head. When she presented Mary so to Lady Anne the old lady was fain to acknowledge that Simmons was right. There was a quaint and delightful stateliness about Mary which made Lady Anne say to herself once more that the child had gentle blood ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan

... rest," continued the doctor, with a certain stateliness of manner, "I order a complete change of scene. This must be for a fortnight at least, if not longer. If the priest-doctor's report—to whom the Examen may be sent—is not satisfactory, it will have to be for longer. The patient must engage in no business that does ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... panels, broke the glasses, but in the main let the carriage-owners go unmolested. The Duke of Northumberland was forced to toast the popular favorite in a mug of ale. One ludicrous occurrence very nearly became an international episode. The Austrian Ambassador, Count Hatzfeldt, famed for his stateliness, for his punctiliousness in ceremonial, fell a victim to popular misapprehension. The mob that surrounded his coach took him, unhappily, for a Scotchman, either because of his stiffness of demeanor or ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... of the greater spirit at whose living tomb she was come to worship. Hers was a fine face, wearing the triple aristocracy of beauty, birth, and letters. The complexion was of lustreless ivory, the black hair wound round and round. The stateliness of her figure completed the impression of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... lack into town to see Julia for the last time before we met in church the next morning. There was an air of glad excitement pervading the house. Friends were running in, with gifts and pleasant words of congratulation. Julia herself had a peculiar modest stateliness and frank dignity, which suited her well. She was happy and content, and her face glowed. Captain Carey's manner was one of tender chivalry, somewhat old-fashioned. I found it a hard thing to "look at ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... great a respecter of persons. I was often invited out to dinner, and went to the expense of a dress-coat and kids, without which one passes the genteel British portal at his peril; but found that both the expense and the stateliness of "society" were onerous. In this department I had no perseverance; but when, one evening, I sat with the author of "Vanity Fair," in the concert rooms at Covent Garden, as Colonel Newcome and Clive had done ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... knowledge of men as of books. Probably few men of his time have been so frequently and so variously consulted. He always spoke with confidence and authority, and his clear, keen-cut, decisive sentences, a certain stateliness of manner which did not so much claim as assume ascendency, and a somewhat elaborate formality of courtesy which was very efficacious in repelling intruders, sometimes concealed from strangers the softer side of ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... usual stateliness, but panting, almost running, did Kaunitz traverse the gilded halls of his own palace, which were open to-day in honor of the empress's recovery, and were already festive with the sound of the guests assembling to a magnificent dinner which was to celebrate ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... walls and built up like them. Crudely chiseled, elaborately ornamental window casings, lintels and sills form a curious feature of this facade. Clothed as it is with clinging ivy and climbing roses, the house suggests an effect of both stateliness ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins

... to prevent the 'book-buying disease' from developing into a general collector's mania. With the world full of books, we must adopt some special variety for our admiration. One person will choose his library companions for their stateliness and splendid raiment, another for their flavour of antiquity, or the fine company that they kept in old times. Montaigne loved his friends on the shelf, because they always received him kindly and 'blunted the point of his grief.' He turned the volumes ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton

... beyond all patience and harassed almost to death. He went hastily down, and was followed by a dignified person dressed in a purple velvet suit with very rich embroidery; his demeanor would have possessed much stateliness, only that a grievous fit of the gout compelled him to hobble from stair to stair with contortions of face and body. When Dr. Byles beheld this figure on the staircase, he shivered as with an ague, but continued to watch him ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... mountainous region is copiously watered by limpid streams and springs, and the vegetable productions are of most remarkable stateliness, beauty, and variety. Except at the summits of the mountains, the trees are uncommonly large; and every where, and at all seasons, the earth abounds with the most beautiful flowers, partly resembling those of India, but still ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... which killeth," and not the portrayal of the spirit that seems to live within these walls. Details which seem so poorly few when read, are nobly so when seen. This small old church has a true religious stateliness, and it seemed as if a priest should bring the Sanctuary-light which says, "The Lord is in His ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose

... neither his gentlemen nor his ladies have much delicacy, nor are sufficiently distinguished from his clowns by any appearance of refined manners. Whether he represented the real conversation of his time is not easy to determine; the reign of Elizabeth is commonly supposed to have been a time of stateliness, formality and reserve, yet perhaps the relaxations of that severity were not very elegant. There must, however, have been always some modes of gayety preferable to others, and a writer ought to chuse ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson

... face and bearing. She bore no resemblance whatever to others of her own age in this brilliant assemblage, who were for the most part married also, and who were decked out in all the witcheries of lace and flowers. They possessed nothing of her stateliness, but she in turn had none of their sweetness or assumed gentleness; none of that premeditated amiability which society women assume under the public gaze. The severe rigidity of that lovely face was a heritage from her father, ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner

... tempo as the French, they passed to the braziers and the wooden benches. Last of all from the train, holding his bandaged arm against his chest, a native corporal with the features of a desert tribesman advanced with superb, unconscious stateliness. As the Algerians sat round the braziers, their uniforms and brown skins presented a contrast to the pallor of the French in their bedraggled blue, but there was a marked similarity of facial expression. A certain racial odor ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... But roused, he'll sometimes sit the livelong day, Forgetting teachers, sports and even food, As if with dreadful visions overwhelmed, Or buried in great thoughts profound and deep. But yet to see our people, riding forth, To their acclaims he answers with such grace And gentle stateliness, my heart would swell As I would hear the people to each other say; 'Who ever saw such grace and grandeur joined?' Yet while he answers gladness with like joy, His eyes seem searching for the sick and old, The poor, and maimed, and blind—all forms of grief, ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles

... compared with Chaucer. Even in the very rudest of the pictures, where the souls of the dying are going out of their mouths, in the shape of little children, there are passages not unworthy of Dante and Michael Angelo. . . . Giotto, be thou one to me hereafter, of a kindred brevity, solidity, and stateliness with that of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... was drawn aside, and the company shouted with delight. No picture had been so good yet as this one. The little grave figure, the helmet with its nodding plumes in mock stateliness; the attitude, one finger just resting on the pedestal of the broken column (an ottoman did duty for it), as if to show that Fortitude stood alone, and the shaggy St. Bernard at her feet, all made in truth an extremely pretty spectacle. ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell

... with unusual shyness, for Mrs. Sefton's stateliness rather awed her. Both her words and her manner were kind; nevertheless, Bessie found it difficult to respond; even when Mrs. Sefton had established her in the corner of the couch, and was questioning her with polite interest about her journey, she found herself answering in almost ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... sat beside him in a purple sacque, was more accessible; and there was present an interpreter so willing that his volubility became at last the cause of our departure. He had greeted us upon our entrance:—"That is the honourable King, and I am his interpreter," he had said, with more stateliness than truth. For he held no appointment in the court, seemed extremely ill-acquainted with the island language, and was present, like ourselves, upon a visit of civility. Mr. Williams was his name: an American darkey, runaway ship's cook, and bar-keeper at "The Land ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... rose about him, towering high into the soft darkness in serried ranks, and the snow gleamed a cold blue-grey under them. Not a twig stirred; the tall spires were black, and motionless, and solemn, and he felt that their stateliness emphasized his own feebleness and inconsequence. In the meanwhile, though the snow was loose and frost-dried, it was not much above his ankles, and the trail was comparatively good. It seemed to him advisable to push on ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss

... filled with fierce hatred of those blackguardly adventurers, of whom her own father was evidently one, I sat silent, while old Browning served the meal with that quiet stateliness which was one of his chief characteristics. The old man had never once mentioned his missing mistress, yet I saw, by the gravity of his pale, furrowed face, that ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux



Words linked to "Stateliness" :   grandness, majesty, formalness, loftiness, stately



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