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Texture   Listen
verb
Texture  v. t.  (past & past part. textured; pres. part. texturing)  To form a texture of or with; to interweave. (R.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Texture" Quotes from Famous Books



... often paid. The writer has seen a few bales, of a most beautiful color and length of staple, which sold for eighty cents, when middling Uplands brought but ten cents per pound. It is mostly shipped to France, where it is used for manufacturing the finest laces, and contributes largely to the texture of fancy silks, particularly the cheaper kinds for the American market. After passing above the flow of the salt water, but within the rise of the tide, there is a wide alluvial range along the rivers and creeks, which, by a system of embankments, can be flowed or drained at pleasure. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... of a topic somewhat farther removed from us, but which, according to our humble opinion, ought not to remain wholly beyond the limits of a candid, liberal, and unprejudiced examination,—we mean the important question, Whether the choicest of all substances, the most delicate of all muscular texture, that substance of which kings, philosophers, policemen, and supporters of crinoline are fashioned by the plastic hand of Nature, ought forever to be excluded from the reproductive process of wasted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... gained the main thoroughfare, both Royson and Irene were conscious of many prying eyes. Not a few passers-by yielded frankly to curiosity and followed them. The girl, of course, was hatless. Her dress of fine muslin was of a style and texture seldom seen in Massowah, and if the rare beauty of her face could excite comment in Hyde Park it would surely not pass unnoticed in a small and ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... very plain reason for admitting it here. The earliest living things were at least as primitive of nature as the lowest animals and plants we know to-day, and these, up to a fair level of organisation, are so soft of texture that, when they die, they leave no remains which may one day be turned into fossils. Some of them, indeed, form tiny shells of flint or lime, or, like the corals, make for themselves a solid bed; but this ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... tall man with skin the color and apparent texture of good leather. He had a face like an eagle, and his eyes were ice-blue. He moved his thin, strong hands gently back and forth on the table that held his papers, inkstand and pen, and said in a voice like audible sandpaper: "You wanted to ...
— Wizard • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)

... and balsams in vials and boxes, little images in burned clay of the gods and of men, of which none but the Egyptians knew the allegorical meaning, stood in long rows on low wooden shelves. On the higher shelves were mummy bands and shrouds, some coarse, others of the very finest texture, wigs for the bald heads of shaven corpses, or woolen fillets, and simply or elaborately embroidered ribbons ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Post-Impressionists, and Italy that of the Futurists, the flagrancy of neither of these schools is on view here. Both countries show their best balanced art since 1905. In the French exhibit, the mode of the day prevails, color, luminosity, richness of texture. All that differentiates the art of France to-day from that of other countries is her own inimitable, delicate, inherent taste and touch. The subject matters little; the French perception and execution are there. Where other canvases offer—say a beautiful glow—the French picture "vibrates." ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... I say yes, she's handsome, trusting you not to gild my plain words with your imagination. She's handsome, but in a way easily overlooked; a way altogether apart from the charms of color and texture, I judge, or of any play of feeling; not floral, not startling, not exquisite; but statuesque, almost heavily so, and replete with the ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable

... naturalism, not realism, not imitation. By all manner of renunciations Greek sculpture is what it is. The material, itself marble, is utterly unlike life, it is perfectly cold and still, it has neither the texture nor the colouring of life. The story of Pygmalion who fell in love with the statue he had himself sculptured is as false as it is tasteless. Greek sculpture is the last form of art to incite physical reaction. It is remote almost to the point of chill abstraction. The ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison

... was golden hair in fact, not merely in name; her eyes were an intense, bright blue; her complexion was exquisite, the delicate texture and perfect whiteness of her skin emphasized by the healthful coloring which came and went on her cheeks. Every one of the Vestals fell in love with her at once, ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... quality of a fire brick may be made from the appearance of a fracture. Where such a fracture is open, clean, white and flinty, the brick in all probability is of a good quality. If this fracture has the fine uniform texture of bread, the brick is ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... the gorse bushes are leaping, Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame; Above them, exultant, the pee-wits are sweeping: They are lords of the desolate wastes of ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence

... babe's, and formed a perfect Cupid's bow, such as a girl might well be proud of. His eyes were large, inquiring and full of intelligence. His nose might have been chiseled by an old Greek sculptor, while his hair, long and wavy, was of the texture and color ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... Composition; Mineral Matter; Fat; Protein; Non-nitrogenous Compounds; Why Meats vary in Composition; Amides; Albuminoids; Taste and Flavor of Meats; Alkaloidal Bodies in Meats; Ripening of Meats in Cold Storage; Beef; Veal; Mutton; Pork; Lard; Texture and Toughness of Meat; Influence of Cooking upon the Composition of Meats; Beef Extracts; Miscellaneous Meat Products; Pickled Meats; Saltpeter in Meats; Smoked Meats; Poultry; Fish; Oysters, Fattening of; Shell Fish; Eggs, General Composition; Digestibility of Eggs; Use of Eggs in the Dietary; ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder

... its enemies—the little nymph floats up to the surface of the water. In a few minutes the old skin splits along the back, and from it flies forth a frail little May-fly. Its body is very soft and delicate. Its four wings are of a gauzy texture. At the tip of the body are two long, fine hairs. Its jaws are small and weak, but the life of this little creature is so short that it never eats. Up it flies into the air with thousands of its brothers and sisters, whirls ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody

... abundantly on almost all rocks, and also grows on dry moors. It is collected in May and June, and steeped in stale urine for about three weeks, being kept at a moderate heat all the time. The substance having then a thick and strong texture, like bread, and being of a blueish black colour, is taken out and made into small cakes of about 3/4 lb. in weight, which are wrapped in dock leaves and hung up to dry in peat smoke. When dry it may be preserved fit for use for many years; when wanted ...
— Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet

... convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its arabesque expression with ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... largest tonnage, the produce direct to any part of the world? Wheat has been only grown in small patches—each time, however, with success. Cotton was here produced in the same way from a few plants, and pronounced by competent judges to be of the finest quality both in staple and texture. Equally favourable results have been obtained with the other products named above. The particulars of climate I give from a resident of the township of Maryborough for a period of twelve years before the place was ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... one day, did Jupiter proclaim, 'Let all that live before my throne appear, And there if any one hath aught to blame, In matter, form, or texture of his frame, He may bring forth his grievance without fear. Redress shall instantly be given to each. Come, monkey, now, first let us have your speech. You see these quadrupeds, your brothers; Comparing, then, yourself with ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... foreground and middle distance and of the introduction of 'life,' whilst with more technical skill in the manipulation of screens and exposures he emphasises the subtle shadows of the snow and reproduces its wondrously transparent texture. He is an artist in love with his work, and it was good to hear his enthusiasm for results of the past ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... was a simple gray one, and the skirts and underclothing all white. But the latter was of the finest texture, and convinced me, before I had given them more than a glance, that they were the property of Howard Van Burnam's wife. For, besides the exquisite quality of the material, there were to be seen, on the edges of the bands and sleeves, the marks of stitches and clinging ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green

... nose was uptilted like Ranny's; but something that was not gaiety, but pathos, had dragged down and made tremulous the corners of a mouth that had once been tilted too—a flowerlike mouth, of the same tender texture as her face, a face that was once one wide-open, innocent pink flower. Now it was washed out and burnt with the courses of her tears. Worry had fretted her soft forehead into lines and twisted her eyebrows in an expression as of permanent ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... loving husband, all fresh and in every respect desirable (gentil), clothed in a dressing-gown of very light texture. ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... older than the end of the Ming period. Of these fig. 17 will serve as a specimen, and a comparison with fig. 9 will show how the softer rounded forms and jewelled festoons of Hindu-Greek taste enervated the grand primitive force of the earlier age, and that neither the added delicacy of texture and substance nor the vastly increased dexterity of workmanship can compensate for the vanished ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... Australian and Penang oysters. Ambergris is not infrequently found floating along the shores of the Coral Sea, and about the west coast of New Zealand, having been ejected by the whales which frequent these waters. When first taken from the animal it is of a soft texture, and is offensive to the smell; but after a brief exposure to the air it rapidly hardens, and then emits a sweet, earthy odor, and is used in manufacturing ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... is meant than a series of organizations for economic purposes. We hope to create finally, by the close texture of our organizations, that vivid sense of the identity of interest of the people in this island which is the basis of citizenship, and without which there can be no noble national life. Our great nation-states have grown so large, so myriad are their ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell

... with her alone for a moment, asking her quite an unimportant question, but nevertheless with a distinct object. As we stood there I placed my hand upon her shoulder—and upon the shawl. It was for that very reason—in order to feel the texture of the silk—that I ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... the police, who used Mr. Lawton's valet, I received some hair from his head. Here is another specimen from each of the advertisers, Hata, the Swami, the Pandit, and the Guru. There is just one of these specimens which corresponds in every particular of colour, thickness, and texture with the hair found so tightly grasped in Miss ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... as in all other countries of northern climates, the quadrupeds are clothed with a longer and thicker fur during winter, than in summer; and many of the birds have a softer down, and feathers of a closer texture, than those of milder countries. Some of the animals also assume a white clothing at ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... said constantly—for he carried his beads loose in his trousers' pockets that he might tell them as he walked the streets—transformed themselves into coronals of flowers of such vague unearthly texture that they seemed to him as hueless and odourless as they were nameless. He offered up each of his three daily chaplets that his soul might grow strong in each of the three theological virtues, in faith in the Father Who had created him, in hope in the Son Who had redeemed him and in love of the Holy ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... can ne'er adorn The flimsy robe by pleasure worn; Its feeble texture soon would tear, And give those jewels to ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous

... troublesome period when frocks are constantly getting too short, and sleeves too scanty. Janey was shuffling slowly round the visitor, admiring her at every point; her garments were not made as dresses were made in Carlingford. Their fit and their texture were alike too perfect for anything that ever came out of High Street. The furred jacket had not been seen in Grange Lane before. Perhaps it was because the cold had become more severe, an ordinary and simple reason—or because Clarence Copperhead, who knew her, and ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... over the table at which he was sitting. Bread, indeed, in piles of white flakiness; and butter; but besides, there was the cold ham in delicate slices, and excellent-looking cheese, and apples in a sort of beautiful golden confection, and cake of superb colour and texture; a pitcher of milk that was rosy sweet, and coffee rich with cream. The glance that took all this in was slight and swift, and yet the old lady was quick enough to ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner

... it must be mentioned that in the centre of Georgiana's left cheek there was a singular mark, deeply interwoven, as it were, with the texture and substance of her face. In the usual state of her complexion,—a healthy though delicate bloom,—the mark wore a tint of deeper crimson, which imperfectly defined its shape amid the surrounding rosiness. ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various

... reasoning and glowing eloquence, the fabric of voluptuous prejudice has been shaken to its foundation and totters towards its fall; while her philosophic mind, taking a wider range, perceived and lamented in the defects of civil institutions interwoven in their texture and inseparable from them the causes of those partial evils, destructive to virtue and happiness, which poison social intercourse and deform domestic life." Her eulogist concludes by calling her the ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... watered, and produces many excellent trees and fruits. It produces many turnips, rapes, and other such herbs and roots; likewise abundance of flags, rushes, herbs, and flowers, of so loose and tender a texture, that the leaves drop off on the slightest touch. Among these herbs and fresh flowers, the natives often dwell without beds or houses, even like cattle in the fields, and some of them have tails[92]. These people are gross, and wear long hair, but have no beards; and they speak ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... acquiescence in the ideas and customs of his time, and he played an honourable and acceptable part in that time; but his permanent interest lies not in his general conformity but in his incidental scepticism, in the fact that underlying the observances and recognised rules and limitations that give the texture of his life were the profoundest doubts, and that, stirred and disturbed by Plato, he saw fit to write them down. One may question if such scepticism is in itself unusual, whether any large proportion of great statesmen, great ecclesiastics and administrators have escaped ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... felt that some new material must be devised to meet the requirements. Already Paul E. Denneville had been successful in working with material made in imitation of Travertine marble, used in many of the ancient buildings of Rome, very beautiful in texture and peculiarly suited to the kind of building that needed color. He it was who had used the material in the Pennsylvania Station, New York, in the upper part of the walls. After a good deal of experimenting Denneville had found that for his purpose gypsum rock was most ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry

... these painful figures with deep and mournful interest. There was one of a woman, apparently of the poorer classes, who had been overtaken by the deadly shower while endeavouring to save a young girl, probably her daughter; the coarse texture of their raiment is distinctly visible, and the smooth, rounded arms of the little maid may be discerned through the rent sleeves. Another stately figure, evidently a Roman matron, has gathered ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... unintentionally been exposed to culture. The grains differ in size, weight, and colour; in being more or less downy at one end, in being smooth or wrinkled, in being either nearly globular, oval, or elongated; and finally in internal texture, being tender or hard, or even almost horny, and in the proportion of ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... be spared to make it as pretty and attractive as possible. So the walls were frescoed and tinted, and I spent two entire days in New York hunting for a carpet of the desirable shade, which should be right both in texture ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes

... cheeks eclipsed the rosy tint of the sandias, scattered profusely over the tables. It was Rosarita herself. A silken scarf covered her head, permitting the thick plaits of her dark hair to shine through its translucent texture, and just encircling the outline of her oval face. This scarf, hanging down below the waist, but half concealed her white rounded arms, and only partially hindered the view of a figure of the most elegantly voluptuous tournure. Around her waist another ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... resembling ourselves apparently cease to be that which they were. We no longer hear them speak, nor see them move. If they have sensations and apprehensions, we no longer participate in them. We know no more than that those external organs, and all that fine texture of material frame, without which we have no experience that life or thought can subsist, are dissolved and scattered abroad. The body is placed under the earth, and after a certain period there remains no vestige even of its form. This is that contemplation of inexhaustible melancholy, whose ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... had fallen into a momentary silence, during which, she caught the bed-clothes like a child, and felt them, and seemed to handle their texture, but with such an air of vacancy as clearly manifested that no corresponding ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton

... belt, that encircled the jacket of each, were thrust a brace of pistols and a strong dagger; the whole so disposed, however, as to be invisible when the outer garment was closed: this, again, was confined by a rude sash of worsted of different colours, not unlike, in texture and quality, what is worn by our sergeants at the present day. They were otherwise armed, however, and in a less secret manner. Across the right shoulder of each was thrown a belt of worsted also, to which were attached a rude powder horn and shot pouch, with a few ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... graceful—remarkably so, even for a Gypsy girl. Her hair, which was not so much coal-black as blue-black, was plaited in the old-fashioned Gypsy way, in little plaits that looked almost as close as plaited straw, and as it was of an unusually soft and fine texture for a Gypsy, the plaits gave it a lustre quite unlike that which unguents can give. As she sat there, one leg thrown over the over, displaying a foot which, even in the heavy nailed boots, would have put to shame the finest foot of the finest English lady I have ever seen, I could discern that ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... one kind of stuff as well as another; it is quite a possible thing: but is it not plainly impossible, if I think one kind of stuff is of an exquisite fineness and color, for me to believe and say at the same time, that its texture is coarse and its hue dull? The mind cannot believe according to any other laws than those of its own constitution. Is it not then the height of wickedness to set out to make people believe and act one way in religion? The history of the world has shown that, in spite of men's ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... She had a temperament that estimated her acts not as right and wrong but as necessity. Men, all the rest of the world, might regard her as nothing but sex symbol; she regarded herself as an intelligence. And the filth slipped from her and could not soak in to change the texture of her being. She had no more the feeling or air of the cocotte than has the married woman who lives with her husband for a living. Her expression, her way of looking at her fellow beings and of meeting their looks, was that of the woman of the world who is for whatever reason above that ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... canning fruit in syrup is based on the improvement in flavor and texture which sugar gives to fruit. Sugar is not necessary for its preservation. Success depends upon thorough sterilization—that is, killing the organisms which cause food to spoil, and then sealing perfectly to prevent their entrance. Fruit may ...
— The New Dr. Price Cookbook • Anonymous

... had more beds in it than one really needed, two or even three in each bedroom, but a coup-d'oeil was sufficient to assure one's self that it was out of the question to make use of any of them. I counted four different coloured hairs, of disproportionate lengths and texture, on one bed-pillow in my room, leaving little doubt that no less than four people had laid their heads on that pillow before; and the pillow of the other bed was so black with dirt that I should imagine at least a dozen consecutive occupants of that couch would ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... round the neck of beautiful women and comely men stiffened with no lesser splendor the vestments of the princes of the Church, whose robes, as rich as the gorgeous garments of the court, answered color with color and texture with texture. A Sicilian nurtured in the school of Robert the Good would have frowned at the effrontery with which the women audaciously intensified the clinging fit of the garments, which moulded the form so precisely, and would have deplored the elegance, the effeminate foppery, ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... for short flights, hawking gnats and midges, and flitting back again, keeping up through it all the sweetest and gentlest of anxious twitterings, and, when they are clinging to the chequered wood, resembling it so closely in colour and texture as to make it hard to count a dozen birds quickly. Martins near their time for going enter on all kinds of engaging habits, especially just before and just after dusk, when bands of a dozen or so seem suddenly to make up their minds to trial flights of ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... renewed force; gnarled and blackened fingers gingerly felt the shirt's texture. "Man dear! The lily of Lebanon. Arrayed like a regular ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... the printed calicoes of the manufactures of Jouy, the texture, designs, and colors of which he thought even superior to cashmere; and bought several robes to ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... feeling when he presented himself at the drawing-room door, where he stood as grave and silent as Banquo's ghost. Constance arose at sight of this fantastic figure, barked furiously and darted toward a pair of legs for which she seemed to share the irreverence of the liveried servants; but the texture of the blue stocking and the flesh which covered the tibia were rather too hard morsels for the dowager's teeth; she was obliged to give up the attack and content herself with impotent barks, while the old man, who would gladly have given a month's ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... which she laid before him on the grass. There was a look of modest reluctance in her eyes when he glanced quickly up at them. A cherished underskirt, ripped ruthlessly from waistband to ruffle, making one broad white flag of the finest texture, ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon

... I thought was a swelling on one part of the flower, but a closer look showed it was a living spider. Here was protective colouring carried to a wonderful degree. The body of the spider was white and glistening, like the texture of the white flower on which he rested. On his abdomen were two pink, oblong spots of the same tint and shape as the pinkened tips of the false petals. Only by an accident could he be discovered by a bird, and when I focussed my camera, I feared that ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... remember, when dining in Christ Church Hall with a friend, that I had the good luck to find myself opposite Lawrence's picture of Eden, afterwards Lord Auckland, the young diplomatist. He is dressed, if I remember rightly, in a green velvet coat of exquisite tint and texture. I daresay if by chance a reader looks up the two pictures he will find that under the spell of memory they have assumed beauties not their own. But what does that matter? They were to me, at twenty, an inspiration. They are still, at sixty, a ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... taken to be the second thoughts of the Creator; human nature's fringes, mere finishing touches, not a part of the texture,' said Diana; 'the pretty ornamentation. However, I fancy I perceive some tolerance growing in the minds of the dominant sex. Our old lawyer Mr. Braddock, who appears to have no distaste for conversations with me, assures ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... were alive), Winton hauling them in and coiling them away behind him as trimmers in a telegraph-ship's hold coil away deep-sea cable. King broke from the Aeneid to the Georgics and back again, pausing now and then to translate some specially loved line or to dwell on the treble-shot texture of the ancient fabric. He did not allude to the coming interview with Mullins except at the last, when he said, 'I think at this juncture, Pater, I need not ask you for the precise significance of atqui sciebat ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... the gate, the eunuchs dispersed; and only the maids-of-honour and ladies-in-waiting ushered Yuan Ch'un out of the chair, when what mainly attracted her eye in the park was the brilliant lustre of the flowered lamps of every colour, all of which were made of gauze or damask, and were beautiful in texture, and out of the common run; while on the upper side was a flat lantern with the inscription in four characters, "Regarded (by His Majesty's) benevolence and permeated ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... much more free from blemishes, but it is not so fine and compact in its texture; the skies in particular exhibiting a minutely speckled appearance, and the whole picture admitting ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various

... the old-fashioned mahogany table in the hall. She stood looking at them from a distance of a few feet; then she wrapped her silk draperies closely around her and slid closer. She passed her hand over the fine texture of the coat, which was redolent of cigar smoke. She took up the hat. Then she spied the top card on the little china card-basket on the table, and took it up. It was Arthur Carroll's. She nodded her head, remained standing a moment listening to the inaudible ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... set in, and the high colourless features seemed to be modelled in that soft, semi-transparent material. The time had come when the stern furrows of age had broken up into countless minutely-traced lines, so close and fine as to seem a part of the texture of the skin, mere shadings, evenly distributed throughout, and no longer affecting the expression of the face as the deep wrinkles had done in former days; at threescore and ten, at fourscore, and even at ninety years. The century that had passed ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... lay on her lap; the thumb of it began to move against the forefinger rapidly, the motion a woman makes in feeling the texture of cloth—or the trick of a ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay

... was that the light and the darkness seemed separate things, each distinctly visible. After each stroke of his wings he saw the darkness sift downwards past him through the air like dust. It floated all round him in thinnest diaphanous texture—visible, not because the moonlight made it so, but because in its inmost soul it was itself luminous. It rose and fell in eddies, swirling wreaths, and undulations; inwoven with starbeams, as with golden thread, it clothed him about in circles of ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood

... are threadbare and worn through, And all too narrow for the broadening soul, Give me the fine, firm texture of the new, Fair, beautiful, ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... as if surprised, and then laughed. "Of course, of course I do. Who doesn't?" Her touch on the bills was a caress. She seemed to find a joy in the very texture of them. He never dreamed for a moment that she took a delight in those rather crumpled and dirty bills. He merely took it for granted that she exulted in the visible expression of appreciation of ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... told you before, good ink and good paper were necessary to beautiful text, and these Gutenburg did not have. Gradually, however, as a result of repeated experiments, paper and ink that were of practical value were manufactured. China had long been successful in printing because of the fine texture of her paper. Italy, the home of the arts, caught up Gutenburg's invention and brought not only lettering but paper-making to a ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett

... between the higher and lower fertility level is not wholly a question of percentage of nitrogen, carbon, etc. At its highest level the soil possesses a good physical texture owing to the flocculation of the clay and the arrangement of the particles: it can readily be got into the fine tilth needed for a seed bed. But when it has run down the texture becomes very unsatisfactory. Much calcium ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley

... glance, one might have mistaken her for a mummy, so still and lifeless she lay; her face, too, carried out the resemblance startlingly, for it was furrowed and seamed with countless wrinkles, the skin appearing like parchment in its dry, leathery texture. Only the eyes gave assurance that this was no mummy, but a living, sentient body—eyes large, full-orbed and black as midnight, arched by heavy brows that frowned with great purpose, as if the soul behind and ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter

... There is no need to explain the word 'dense,' for in its ordinary sense we use it every day, but in an astronomical sense it does not mean exactly the same thing. Everything is made up of minute particles or atoms, and when these atoms are not very close together the body they compose is loose in texture, while if they are closer together the body is firmer. For instance, air is less dense than water, and water than earth, and earth than steel. You see at once by this that the more density a thing has the heavier it is; for as a body is attracted ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton

... The texture of the outer garments should take into account this same quality of warmth; in other respects in selecting them personal taste is an excellent guide. Outfitters carry a variety of maternity garments; patterns for such garments are also sold by dealers, so that those who cannot afford ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... that a large mill for sawing marble is in course of erection at Brandon, Vt. The marble in that vicinity is principally of a beautiful white, and of a fine texture, though ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various

... water-lily, which communicates a peculiar flavour to the flesh of the animal, it is said to be very palatable. It is, however, principally for its fur that it is hunted; the skin, even, is of little value, being coarser and looser in texture, and of course less applicable to general uses, than that of many other animals. I dare say you have often seen ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley

... existence, as his miserable death proved. Those petty courts of Germany have been injurious to its literature. They who move in them are too prone to imagine themselves to be the whole world, and compared with the whole world they are nothing more than these little specks in the texture ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... may be those of a Christian or they may not. The true Christian, for instance, will begin by regarding miracles as probable; he will either believe he has experienced them in his own person, or hope for them earnestly; nothing will seem to him more natural, more in consonance with the actual texture of life, than that they should have occurred abundantly and continuously in the past. When he finds the record of one he will not inquire, like the rationalist, how that false record could have been concocted; ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... the last time, and Ulysses's mate bawled, "Now! any one for shore!" Calypso and her female attendant must have both walked over the same plank, with beating hearts and streaming eyes; both must have waved pocket-handkerchiefs (of far different value and texture), as they stood on the quay, to their friends on the departing vessel, whilst the people on the land, and the crew crowding in the ship's bows, shouted hip, hip, huzzay (or whatever may be the equivalent Greek for the salutation) to all engaged on that voyage. But the point to be remembered ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... bundles of rays. Nothing of all this, however, was visible in 1878. Instead, there was seen, as the groundwork of the corona, a ring of pearly light, nebulous to the eye, but shown by telescopes and in photographs to have a fibrous texture, as if made up of tufts of fine hairs. North and south, a series of short, vivid, electrical-looking flame-brushes diverged with conspicuous regularity from each of the solar poles. Their direction was not towards the centre of the sun, but towards each summit of his axis, ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... shoulder-high on its side bounds, a close evergreen hedge of hemlock spruce. In its young way this hedge has been handsome from infancy; though still but a few years old it gives, the twelvemonth round, a note both virile and refined in color, texture and form, and if the art that planted it and the care that keeps it do not decay neither need the hedge for a century to come. Against the intensest cold this side of Labrador it is perfectly hardy, is trimmed with a sloping top to shed ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable

... shoulder, and, although so bulky and heavily built, it is extremely active, as our long and fruitless hunt had shown us. The skin is about half the thickness of that of the hippopotamus, but of extreme toughness and closeness of texture. When dried and polished it resembles horn. Unlike the Indian species of rhinoceros, the black variety of Africa is free from folds, and the hide fits smoothly on the body like that of the buffalo. This two-horned black ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... cooled and crystallised, but with extreme slowness, and under conditions very different from those of bodies cooling in the open air. Hence they differ from the volcanic rocks, not only by their more crystalline texture, but also by the absence of tuffs and breccias, which are the products of eruptions at the earth's surface, or beneath seas of inconsiderable depth. They differ also by the absence of pores or cellular cavities, to which the expansion of the entangled ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... older ones are in their turn converted into other forms by the greater or lesser agency of Platonic forces. Even where no disruption takes place the crystalline moleculres are displaced, combining to form bodies of denser texture. The water presents structures of a totally different nature, as, for instance, concretions of animal and vegetable remains, of earthy, calcareous, or aluminous precipitates, agglomerations of finely-pulverized mineral bodies, covered with layers ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... underneath it. The ruddy colour in their faces was in his represented by the palest tinge of pink. His bare arms were soft and white and thin. Their abundant straw-coloured hair had in his case become palest gold, of silky texture, falling in curling locks almost on to his shoulders. He was, in short, a smaller, weaker, more delicate edition of these two elder ones. They looked the very embodiment of health and strength, he fragile, timid, and delicate. No wonder he never scampered across the heath or rolled ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... the pathos here does not seem to be of the poet's seeking, but a part of the necessary texture of the fable. He speaks of what he wishes to describe with the accuracy, the discrimination of one who relates what has happened to himself, or has had the best information from those who have been eye-witnesses of it. The strokes of his pencil always tell. ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... wonderful, I think, about the land of Cornwall. That long peninsula extending out into the ocean has caught all sorts of strange floating things, and has held them there in isolation until they have woven themselves into the texture of the Cornish race. What is this strange strain which lurks down yonder and every now and then throws up a great man with singular un-English ways and features for all the world to marvel at? It is not ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... had not then appealed to me. (I except the original dream of my childhood, which seems to me still to stand fantastically apart.) In the inventions to which I now gave myself the sense of being passed across limbs of different texture and color was subtle and pleasurable. I think the note of constructive cruelty which now followed arose from an imagined rivalry among my lovers for possession of me; the idea that I was desired made me soon take a delight in imagining ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of life. It is the perfect and consummate surface and bloom of all things; it is as the odour and the colour of the rose to the texture of the elements which compose it, as the form and splendour of unfaded beauty to the secrets of anatomy and corruption. What were virtue, love, patriotism, friendship—what were the scenery of this beautiful universe which ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... its green attire. There are some objections to the willow; it is not a dry and cleanly tree, and impresses the beholder with an association of sliminess. No trees, I think, are perfectly agreeable as companions unless they have glossy leaves, dry bark, and a firm and hard texture of trunk and branches. But the willow is almost the earliest to gladden us with the promise and reality of beauty in its graceful and delicate foliage, and the last to scatter its yellow yet scarcely withered leaves upon the ground. All through the winter, ...
— Buds and Bird Voices (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the row of faces, many of which looked sullen and cloudy: most of them avoided their master's eye, and looked intently on the ground. Dr. Wilkinson sought Hamilton's eye, but Hamilton, though perfectly conscious of the fact, was very busily engaged in a deep meditation on the texture of Louis' jacket. ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May

... as she drew it more closely over her head, and thought that surely no more becoming article of apparel ever was designed for woman's wear. He had never seen anything like it either in color or texture,—it was of a peculiarly warm, rich crimson, like the heart of a red damask rose, and it suited the bright hair and tender, thoughtful eyes of its ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... great, who goes constantly barelegged and often bare-headed, through whose rude straw hut the piercing wind of the paramos sweeps and chills the white man to the very bones;—all these, in the colour and texture cf the skin, the hair and other important features, are plainly of one and the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... his flapped waist-coat, as though it pitted its gravity and longevity against the levity and evanescence of the brisk fire. He had a good leg, and was a little vain of it, for his brown stockings fitted sleek and close, and were of a fine texture; his shoes and buckles, too, though plain, were trim. He wore an odd little sleek crisp flaxen wig, setting very close to his head: which wig, it is to be presumed, was made of hair, but which looked far more as though it were spun from filaments of silk or glass. His ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... for an attack of some kind. He feared by this that she was guilty, and he was all the more distressed, ashamed, outraged, made wholly unhappy. He fumbled in the left-hand pocket of his coat and drew forth from among the various papers the fatal communication so cheap in its physical texture. His big fingers fumbled almost tremulously as he fished the letter-sheet out of the small envelope and unfolded it without saying a word. Aileen watched his face and his hands, wondering what it could be that he had here. He handed the paper over, small in his big fist, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... operation in the life of the plant—the sucking-in of carbon and giving-out of oxygen, which is to the vegetable exactly what the eating and digesting of food is to the animal organism. In their old age, however, the stems of the prickly pear display their true character by becoming woody in texture and losing their articulated ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... I intend to be, I must set down a few jottings on things that belong to the texture of my story. To begin with, the Colonel, though pardoned, was still in France, looking after his affairs there, for before starting to join the Prince he had wisely shifted all his ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... to be wrought in the intimate texture of all societary organizations, without violence or any form of antagonism. It seeks to replace the worn-out with the living and the beautiful, so as to reconstruct without overturning, and to regenerate ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... full of small fry from the Settlement or going about the business of the chapel. The car had always reminded me of his evening clothes, which were straight and simple in line with the black silk vest cut up around the collar buttoned in the back, but which were so fine in texture and perfect in cut and fit that they seemed to be some kind of super clothes that ought to be called by a name of their own, just as the people in the Settlement had decided to call the car the "Chariot" as soon as they had stopped resenting a parson's having ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... with swift hands she opened the package. The action disclosed two pairs of fine, soft shoes, of a style she had never seen, and four pairs of stockings, two of strong, serviceable wool, and the others of a finer texture. Ellen looked at them in amaze. Of all things in the world, these would have been the last she expected to see. And, strangely, they were what she wanted and needed most. Naturally, then, Ellen made the mistake ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... with a substance perfectly white. Outside of these two skins was a large square sheet, which was either wove or knit. This fabric was the inner bark of a tree, which I judge from appearances to be that of the linn tree. In its texture and appearance, it resembled the South Sea Island cloth or matting; this sheet enveloped the whole body and the head. The hair on the head was cut off within an eighth of an inch of the skin, except near the neck, where it was an inch long. The color of the hair was a dark red; the ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt

... regard to baptism. Any tale to my discredit was welcome, and the supply of slanderous tales seemed infinite. They wrested my words, they belied my deeds, they misinterpreted my motives, they misrepresented the whole course of my life, and the whole texture of my character. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... however, yet another peculiarity in Turner's painting of smooth water, which, though less deserving of admiration, as being merely a mechanical excellence, is not less wonderful than its other qualities, nor less unique—a peculiar texture, namely, given to the most delicate tints of the surface, when there is little reflection from anything except sky or atmosphere, and which, just at the points where other painters are reduced to paper, gives to the surface of Turner the greatest ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... not mistaken. The shape of the nest, like a pine-cone, its color and texture, and the lining, which showed through, made him smile. He heard the hiss of the brooding bird ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... burnt the dead, found in the Esquiline field at Rome, might have afforded clearer solution. But their insatisfaction herein begat that remarkable invention in the funeral pyres of some princes, by incombustible sheets made with a texture of asbestos, incremable flax, or salamander's wool, which preserved their ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... they could pin them, with their legs, catch them with their hands. In their need for protein, the colonists were finding, as many Earth peoples had found, raw fish were excellent in flavor and texture as food. ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... lived out, could be a machine-wrought manacle. If it seemed one, then the greater shame to those who wore it, the greater shame to him, the husband, that his more crass nature could throw doubt upon the fineness of the texture of the bond. Besides, Kathryn was his wife, his lawful, loyal, albeit sometimes uncomprehending, wife. That fact alone was quite sufficient. Beyond it, there was no need to probe. Kathryn and he were one; the sacred seal of joint parentage was ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... as Hebe the golden-haired, as she sat in the arbor this morning. Her light morning dress of softest texture fell in graceful folds about her exquisite form. She held a Book of Hours in her hand, but she had not once opened it since she sat down. Her dark eyes looked not soft, nor kindly, but bright, defiant, wanton, and even wicked in their expression, like ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... Joan of Arc into a pot girl. You are not going, I hope, to annex to that most splendid ornament of Southey's poem all this cock and a bull story of Joan the publican's daughter of Neufchatel, with the lamentable episode of a waggoner, his wife, and six children; the texture will be most lamentably disproportionate. The first forty or fifty lines of these addenda are, no doubt, in their way, admirable, too; but many would prefer the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... wholesome; if, on the contrary, it have an offensive smell, a bitter, astringent, or styptic taste, or even if it leave an unpleasant flavour in the mouth, it should not be considered fit for food. The colour, figure, and texture of these vegetables do not afford any characters on which we can safely rely; yet it may be remarked, that in colour, the pure yellow, gold colour, bluish pale, dark or lustre brown, wine red, or the violet, belong to many that are esculent; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various

... being. It forgets that, housed in a dark complexion is, equally alike with the whites, all that is lofty in mind and noble in soul, that there lies an equal immortality. It reaches to grade mind and soul, either by the texture of the hair, or the form of the features, or the color of the skin. This is an education fostered by prejudice; consequently, an education almost universally prevalent in our country; an education, too, subverting the principles of our humanity, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various



Words linked to "Texture" :   marbleising, smoothness, character, fine arts, feel, coarse, nap, marbleisation, visual property, composition, beaux arts, marbleization, constitution, roughness, musicality, quality



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