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Attraction   /ətrˈækʃən/   Listen
Attraction

noun
1.
The force by which one object attracts another.  Synonym: attractive force.
2.
An entertainment that is offered to the public.
3.
The quality of arousing interest; being attractive or something that attracts.  Synonym: attractiveness.
4.
A characteristic that provides pleasure and attracts.  Synonyms: attracter, attractive feature, attractor, magnet.
5.
An entertainer who attracts large audiences.  Synonyms: attracter, attractor, draw, drawing card.



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"Attraction" Quotes from Famous Books



... various steps taken towards the improvement, and towards the extension of education): even in cases like these, when the primary and ostensible object of the speaker already, on its own account, possesses a commanding attraction, yet will it often happen that the secondary questions, growing out of the leading one, the great elementary themes suggested to the speaker by the concrete case before him—as, for instance, the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... maintains, that the nocturnal radiance of the fire-fly is purposely intended as an attraction to the opposite sex; that the artful insect illuminates its body for a beacon to love. Thus: perched upon the edge of a leaf, and waiting the approach of her Leander, who comes buffeting with his wings the aroma of the flowers, some insect Hero may show ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... a little money of their own, have they not?" inquired Mrs. Ingham-Baker, with the soft blandness of one for whom money has absolutely no attraction. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... a carefully groomed woman, as artificial as French heels. Yet indeed it was that studied artificiality which constituted her chief attraction. As Harris greeted her I noted that Clare was amazed at the daring cut of her gown, which excited comment even ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... capabilities, has not, though evidently under the influence of feelings quite incompatible with a correct and disinterested judgment, ventured to rate his imaginary maximum of the profit to be derived from farming in the Illinois, (which appears to be the principal magnet of attraction possessed by the United States,) so high as I have proved by a calculation, to which I defy any one to attach the character of hyperbolical, that the investment of capital in the growth of fine wool in this colony will infallibly produce. This too, although certainly the most inviting and extensive ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... to the free creature, in the hour of its creation, He said: "Behold! thou art made in mine own image! my will is written in thy conscience; become a worker together with me, and realize the plans of my love." And that voice—I hear it within myself. Ah! I know that voice well, I know the secret attraction which, in spite of all my miseries, draws me towards that which is beautiful, pure, holy, and says to me: This is the will of thy Father. But I know other voices also which speak within me only too ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... the forty-odd tanka which I have translated, their chief attraction lies, I think, in what they reveal to us of the human nature of their authors. Tanabata-tsum['e] still represents for us the Japanese wife, worshipfully loving;—Hikoboshi appears to us with none of the luminosity of the god, but as the young Japanese husband of the sixth or ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn

... say at once, "Oh, my boy has no taste for natural history, and he would take no interest in this kind of thing." All the better his finding it a bit dry—it will rid the subject of some of its dangerous attraction. I have yet to find the boy for whom the Latin Grammar has the least interest; but we do not excuse him on that ground from grinding at it. Whether he takes an interest in it or not, you have to teach ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... hardly find you at home again before the late autumn. I will delay writing no longer,—the more so because I have received, through the Smithsonian Institution, your great work on the Natural History of the United States. Valuable as it is in itself, it has a double attraction for me as the gift of the author. Accept my warm thanks. It will always be to me a token of your friendly regard. It gave me great satisfaction to know that my Fossil Arctic Flora had met with your approval. Since then many new facts have come to light tending to confirm my results. ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... Pinckney, upon returning from just such a social function to take up once more the heavy routine of managing three plantations, complained: "At my return thither every thing appeared gloomy and lonesome, I began to consider what attraction there was in this place that used so agreeably to soothe my pensive humor, and made me indifferent to everything the gay world could boast; but I found the change not in the place but ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... he might sink into 250 Queen's Gate as into a feather bed. The other palace intimidated him. It recalled the terrors of a continental hotel. In his wanderings he had suffered much from the young, cheerful and musical society of bright hotels, and bridge (small) had no attraction ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... I find so many objects of attraction in this neighbourhood, that I would gladly postpone ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock

... and Miss Sabine Monroy at Charleston throughout the month of March. The casual observer would have said that she was "playing him up," as a young poet of my acquaintance puts it; but I was not casual. For me Vaness had the attraction of a theorem, and I was looking rather deeply into him and ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... When their warriors returned from an expedition, the women of the tribe met them with dance and song, receiving the heads they brought with ancient ceremonies—"fondling the heads," as it was called; and for months afterwards keeping up, by frequent feasts, in which these heads were the chief attraction, the heathen customs which it was the object of the ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... good-nature, Savka despised women. He behaved carelessly, condescendingly with them, and even stooped to scornful laughter of their feelings for himself. God knows, perhaps this careless, contemptuous manner was one of the causes of his irresistible attraction for the village Dulcineas. He was handsome and well-built; in his eyes there was always a soft friendliness, even when he was looking at the women he so despised, but the fascination was not to be explained by merely external qualities. Apart from his happy exterior and original manner, ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... of natural counterpart to that more ancient impersonation of evil which took its origin from the theological sphere. The Devil, being the stronger principle, naturally had use for the Vice as his agent or factor. Hence we may discover in these two personages points of mutual sympathy and attraction; and, in fact, it was in and through them that the two species of ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... grace, in which even her mortal nature seems half hidden, so that we are in doubt whether she belongs more to Heaven or to Earth. Thus both her native virtues and the efficacies of the place seem to have crept and stolen into her unperceived, by mutual attraction and assimilation twining together in one growth, and each diffusing its life and beauty over and through the others. It would seem indeed as if Wordsworth must have had Miranda in his eye, (or was he but working in the spirit ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... Church; they provide harsh penalties for heretical teaching and writing, and grant privileges to the orthodox clergy (exemptions from regular taxes and benefit of the clergy).... Christianity becomes a monopoly defended by the state.... Psychological power and attraction in the elaborate symbolism and ritual of the church.... Allegory put an end to all literary criticism.... Flourishing of the miraculous; any unusual or startling occurrence attributed to the intervention of either God or the Devil.... ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski

... of such eccentrics is George Borrow; who sympathised with unsuccessful nomads like the gipsies while every one else sympathised with successful nomads like the Jews; who had a genius like the west wind for the awakening of wild and casual friendships and the drag and attraction of the roads. But whether George Borrow ought to go into the section devoted to philosophers, or the section devoted to novelists, or the section devoted to liars, nobody else has ever known, even ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... fact that Rebecca's attitude towards the opposite sex was still somewhat indifferent and oblivious, even for fifteen and a half! No one could look at her and doubt that she had potentialities of attraction latent within her somewhere, but that side of her nature was happily biding its time. A human being is capable only of a certain amount of activity at a given moment, and it will inevitably satisfy first its most pressing needs, its most ardent desires, its chief ambitions. Rebecca ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... twentieth lesson will be forwarded to the subscriber, gratis, one of five well bound volumes of superior literary attraction and interest. ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... know that he was fond of originals, of rarities, of the superior and the exquisite; and now that he had seen Lord Warburton, whom he thought a very fine example of his race and order, he perceived a new attraction in the idea of taking to himself a young lady who had qualified herself to figure in his collection of choice objects by declining so noble a hand. Gilbert Osmond had a high appreciation of this ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... an orphan girl who in infancy is left by her father to the care of an elderly aunt residing near Paris. The accounts of the various persons who have an after influence on the story are singularly vivid. There is a subtle attraction about the book which will make it a great favorite ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... Besworth night, Georgiana Ford had studied her brother Merthyr's face when Emilia's voice called for Wilfrid. Her heart was touched; and, in the midst of some little invidious wonder at the power of a girl to throw her attraction upon such a man, she thought, as she hoped, that probably it was due to the girl's Italian blood. Merthyr was not unwilling to speak of her, and say what he feared and desired for Emilia's sake; and Georgiana read, by this mark of confidence, how sincerely she was loved and trusted by him. "One never ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... opportunity, he sprang upon the black warrior, and commenced his operations near the root of his right fore-leg, leaving the foe to select among his own members; and so there were three united for life, as if a new kind of attraction had been invented which put all other locks and cements to shame. I should not have wondered by this time to find that they had their respective musical bands stationed on some eminent chip, and playing their national airs the while, to excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... wicket-gate ajar, I went down the lane, it was darkish, a fine summer night, but no moon. I knew where Pender lived, and by cunt attraction strolled in front of the cottage, though ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... of statement. . . But on the other hand the romantic manner lends itself, as the true classical does not, to inferior work. Second-rate conceptions excitedly and approximately put into words derive from it an illusive attraction which may make them for a time, and with all but the coolest judges, pass as first-rate. Whereas about true classical writing there can be no illusion. It presents to us conceptions calmly realized in words that exactly define them, conceptions ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... companion. Yet she was conscious of a vague twinge of annoyance at Edith's act, although she could neither have excused nor defined the feeling. Mrs. Fenton not infrequently aroused in her a curious mingling of attraction and repulsion; and it was under the influence of the latter that she answered brusquely her friend's ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates

... consecutively for many months. On rainy days, and often enough one had occasion to say through rainy weeks, what a delightful resource did this library prove to both of us! And one day it occurred to us, that, whereas the stables and the library were both jewels of attraction, the latter had been by much the least costly. Pretty often I have found, when any opening has existed for making the computation, that, in a library containing a fair proportion of books illustrated with plates, about ten shillings a volume might ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... made in the burrow, and the young are three or four in number. His diet is as variable and extensive as that of the coon, and consists of anything in any way eatable. Snails, worms, rats, mice and moles, seem to have a particular attraction for him; and he seems to take especial delight in unearthing the stores of the wild bees, devouring honey, wax and grubs together, and caring as little for the stings of the [Page 176] angry bees as he would of the bills of so many mosquitoes, the thick coating of fur forming a perfect protection ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... minutes, and then with a little smile at her sister Mrs. Carleton moved off to the breakfast-table, well pleased that Lady Peterborough was too engaged to answer her. Fleda had won them all. Mr. Carleton's intervening shield of grace and kindness was only needed here against the too much attention or attraction that might distress her. He was again, now they were in presence of others, exactly what he had been to her when she was a child, the same cool and efficient friend and protector. Nobody in the room shewed less ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... lungs, some melodia sacra, in an untranslatable tongue; or, it may be, exhibiting the mysterious power of an amber bade fastened as a Decade to his paudareens* lifting a chaff or light bit of straw by the force of its attraction. This is an exploit which causes many an eye to turn from the bades to his own bearded face, with a hope, as it were, of being able to catch a glimpse of the lurking sanctimony by which the knave hoaxes them in ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... the attraction of seeing Mr. Rochester so soon again, would not have put off a series of visits which she was about to make, had not Lord Grayleigh's letter decided her. She therefore arrived at Silverbel on the ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade

... India through strong trade and monetary links. Low wages in industry lead most Bhutanese to stay in agriculture. Most development projects, such as road construction, rely on Indian migrant labor. Bhutan's hydropower potential and its attraction for tourists are its ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... in myself without the music of hammers or the odoriferous scent of paint." He easily dropped back into the round of country duties and pleasures, and the care of farms and plantations, which had always had for him so much attraction. "To make and sell a little flour annually," he wrote to Wolcott, "to repair houses going fast to ruin, to build one for the security of my papers of a public nature, will constitute employment for the few years I have to remain ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge

... must be noted in The Metropolitan Messenger. It had a magnetic attraction for all the sour and sorry failures whose reputation and income, however greatly in excess of their deserts, had not equalled their expectation. The Cave of Adullam could not have been more abundantly stocked with discontent. It is the custom of the rates everywhere to attempt to prevent, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various

... in basin of water. Impelled by attraction of gravitation, needles will act very curiously; some cling together, others rush to margin and remain. The manner in which one person's needle behaves towards another's causes amusement, and is supposed to be ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain

... but he also gazed at the scraper!—and the attraction of that was irresistible. Down went his white head, and over went his dusty feet, and then Charles twelfth ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... literature of the Novella has the attraction of graceful naughtiness in which vice, as Burke put it, loses half its evil by losing all its grossness. At all times, and for all time probably, similar tales, more broad than long, will form favourite talk or reading of ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter

... woods. To reach these woods, Eyebright had only to climb two stone walls and cross a field and a pasture, and as they seemed just then the most desirable refuge possible, she made haste to do so. She had always had a peculiar feeling for woods, a feeling made up of terror and attraction. They were associated in her mind with fairies and with robbers, with lost children, redbreasts, Robin Hood and his merry men; and she was by turns eager and shy at the idea of exploring their depths, according to which of these images ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge

... Lovely is the portrait of a young lady of rank, though the Elizabeth Bas, in another gallery, will always be the masterpiece in portraiture if for nothing else but the hands. The Jewish Bride is bulky in its enchantments, the phosphorescent gleams of the apparel the chief attraction. The Toilet is heavy Rembrandt; while the anatomical lecture is repulsive. But the disembowelled corpse is more corpse-like than the queerly foreshortened dead body in the picture on anatomy at The Hague. The warrior's head, supposed to be a portrait of his ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... adaptations which our people (the worse for them) practise perhaps less than any other. There was no assembling at the sake shop. Poor though the homes are, the men enjoy them; the children are an attraction at any rate, and the brawling and disobedience which often turn our working-class homes into bear-gardens are unknown here, where docility and obedience are inculcated from the cradle as a matter of course. The signs of religion become fewer as I travel ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... There was nothing of the milksop about him, and the dangers of which his mother and sister spoke so eloquently had no terrors for him, but, on the contrary, constituted a positive and very powerful attraction; besides, as he pointed out to his companions, he would not always be clinging to the face of a precipice, or endeavouring to cross an impassable mountain torrent. Storms did not rage incessantly in Peru, any more than they did elsewhere; Mr ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... matter; so for instance as to be greater at the 1/100 of an inch from the surface of any body, than at its surface; and so on. To the action of this aether he ascribes the attractions of gravitation and cohoesion, the attraction and repulsion of electrical bodies, the mutual influences of bodies and light upon each other, the effects and communication of heat, and the performance of animal sensation and motion. David Hartley, from whom this account of aether is chiefly ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... before he reaches the point of falling in love, the disposition and character of those to whom his fancy turns. When propinquity and mere physical attraction have aroused the emotions of a young couple, the ardor of their excitement so obscures observation and judgment that any careful analysis of each other's characteristics is impossible. Even if such an analysis were possible, one could not be intelligently made by a mere observation of behavior ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... study of the common life which Ibanez calls La Horda; dealing with the horde of common poor and those accidents of beauty and talent as native to them as to the classes called the better. It has the attraction of the author's frank handling, and the power of the Spanish scene in which the action passes; but it could not hold ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... proper quarters. Divine peeresses are no longer interesting, though possessed of every virtue; but a pattern peasant or an immaculate manufacturing hero may talk as much twaddle as one of Mrs Ratcliffe's heroines, and still be listened to. Perhaps, however, Mr Sentiment's great attraction is in his second-rate characters. If his heroes and heroines walk upon stilts, as heroes and heroines, I fear, ever must, their attendant satellites are as natural as though one met them in the street: they walk and talk like men and women, and live among our friends a rattling, lively life; yes, ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... jolly party that assembled in the Union Depot on the night of October 20th, 1888, and the ball players were by no means the center of attraction, as there were others there to whom even the ball players took off their hats, and these were the ladies, as Mrs. Ed. Williamson, the wife of the famous ball player, and Mrs. H. I. Spalding, the stately and ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... outlines must suffice: any attempt to draw the lines more sharply would only falsify the picture. The manifold play of mutual attraction and repulsion among those earliest political atoms, the cantons, passed away in Latium without witnesses competent to tell the tale. We must now be content to realise the one great abiding fact that they possessed a common ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... the same. She turned around and put both hands on Miss Laura's shoulders. "Laura," she said, earnestly, "there are enough cold hearts in the world. Don't you ever stifle a warm or tender feeling toward a dumb creature. That is your chief attraction, my child: your love for everything that breathes and moves. Tear out the selfishness from your heart, if there is any there, but let the love and pity stay. And now let me talk a little more to you about the cows. I want to interest you in dairy ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... of the 'Hessians' at Mrs. Dumars' house gave it much the same attraction that is attached to a menagerie. Feminine curiosity is an article that the blockade can not keep out of Dixie, and many were the morning calls that Annie received, and many and various were the methods of pumping adopted to learn ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... and cross the strip of sand which generally lies between it and the edge of the water, formed by the large space which is annually devastated and covered with shingle or mud, during the rise of the water in the rainy season. These singular scenes have always possessed a great attraction for me. The pleasure experienced was not merely that of a naturalist in the objects of his study; it belongs to all men who have been educated in the habits of civilization. You find yourself in contact with a new world, with savage and unconquered Nature. Sometimes it is the jaguar, the beautiful ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... became a lion of no small dimensions, and whether mounted on old Battle, or afoot, was so great an object of attraction that a swarm of urchins, from the smallest toddler in his buff to the more mature imp of fourteen, persisted in following close at his heels, presenting him with pomegranates and plantains, and, indeed, offering ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... aims of Scouting are similar to those of the schools, the church and the home, its methods are less direct and success depends upon the attraction which the program has for the girls. Belonging to an organization, the uniform, such novel activities as knot-tying, hiking, signalling and drilling, the chance for leadership, the laws to which they voluntarily subscribe and the recognition of ability by ...
— The Girl Scouts Their History and Practice • Anonymous

... might here be revealed, or some rare and unheard-of game disturbed. There is ever a lurking suspicion that the beginning of things is in some way associated with water, and one may notice that in his private walks he is led by a curious attraction to fetch all the springs and ponds in his route, as if by them was the place for wonders and miracles to happen. Once, while in advance of my companions, I saw, from a high rock, a commotion in the water near the shore, but on reaching the ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... clasped in his, and her face close to his own, her grayish-blue eyes, which were so very like his own, now smiling and now soberly reflective, was not the way to carry on an inherited feud. He couldn't subject himself to that peculiarly feminine attraction which Betty Gower bore like an aura and nurse a grudge. In fact, he had no grudge against Betty Gower except that she was the daughter of her father. And he couldn't explain to her that he hated her father because of injustice and injury done before either of them was born. In the ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... point in the Highlands of the Hudson, his destination. Making a better dinner than he had enjoyed for a long time, and feeling stronger than for weeks before, he started for the place that now, of all the world, had for him the greatest attraction. ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... speak to me, or stay here. Go!" She was like marble, only that her eyes blazed. Her hand pointed toward the door emphasizing her repulsion. Edmonson looked in amazement at this new power, to him a new attraction. ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... needs; Second, the marketers of the article must spend a lot of money in advertising the article and making the public think it wants it; or, Third, the article must carry with it some great interest and attraction that makes ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Look Forward and Back at the Woman's Journal, the Organ of the - Woman's Movement • Agnes E. Ryan

... attraction for a youthful ramble—perhaps almost too far, unless one could manage to get a lift in a little yellow-painted black-bodied vehicle called a whisky, which was grandfather's property, and into the shafts of which could be put any spare quadruped, ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... beginning of the year 1803, Mr. Salt, whose name has since become so celebrated among the discoverers of Egyptian antiquities, observed before one of the public rooms of Edinburgh, a great crowd assembled. For almost every one there exists a mysterious attraction in the sight of a number of people, and Mr. Salt, no wiser than his neighbors, pushed his way, when the doors were opened, into the room. There, on a sort of stage, he saw a tall and powerfully-built young man, performing various ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... minority, and that all the other parties in the House united can beat them when they will. It is equally clear that they can beat any section of their opponents whenever these are disunited. The political attraction which binds together the mass cannot last long, and there are too many elements of repulsion in esse or in posse not to insure the speedy disjunction of the several atoms; but in the meantime, if they can be held together, what ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... our left, on the summit of some rocks, were two forts of somewhat ancient appearance, the guardians of the town, while on the west was another fort of no very terrific aspect. But perhaps the chief attraction of the landscape, next to the picturesque outline, was its exquisitely varied tinting and colouring, and the ever-changeful shadows which were cast over it by the passing clouds. White and bright are the houses in the town, with their red tiles; and green and shining are the quintas ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... value, he also led a dissipated and extravagant life. In 1592 he married a Protestant wife, Katherine, daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh of Stoneleigh Abbey, Warwickshire; she died before 1602. His talents were considerable, his will inflexible, and he possessed that singular power of attraction inherent in some persons. A portrait reputed to be his exists at Brockhall, near Ashby. "He was very wise," writes Gerard, "and of great judgment, though his utterance not so good. Besides, he was so liberal and apt to help all sorts, as it got him much love. He ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... which to some extent disorganised our preparations for the line, collected round the spot and watched the R.F.C. extract the pilot and parts of the machine, which was deeply embedded in the hole. For hours the wreckage remained the centre of attraction to many visitors. The General hailed the burnt relics, not ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose

... addition contributed to the rich revenue by this useless official "permit," appears the sole reason for retaining it, now that vexatious restrictions are withdrawn. In the intervals of arranging an up-country tour from monotonous Weltevreden, destitute of any attraction beyond the white colonnades and verdant groves flanking sleepy canals and quaint bridges, the local industry of sarong stippling affords a curious interest. Every city in Java possesses a special type of this historic dress, represented on the walls of temples ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... some years ago, she might have a better chance than now of captivation - for the deeper she had immersed in politics, the more she had forfeited of feminine attraction. "Ah!" he cried, " with her talents-her knowledge-her parts-had she been modest, reserved, gentle, what a blessing might she have proved to her country! but she is devoted to intrigue and cabal, and proves ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... very difficult to prevent the Indians going to Chouaguen; the brandy that the English give out freely is an invincible attraction. ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... our best meetings was a garden-party at Mitcham Vicarage. There was a large gathering of ladies and gentlemen beneath the dark spreading cedars on the soft lawn. The Chief put on his feathers and ornaments, and at once became the centre of attraction. I think it was on this occasion that he narrated the Indian tradition ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson

... am not going to shock you, but very likely I am going to make you think you are shocked. You are not really. The fact is, you are not in love with him, but he attracts you with an attraction that is very often in the same relation to love as the bud is to the flower. He has the sort of attraction for you that often contains the folded immature petals of the full flower. You wanted to ask me some series of questions which would lead up to ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

... small, they loved, like others of their kind, to play in the gutter, to splash in the sink about the hydrant, and to dance to the hand-organ that came regularly into the block, even though they sadly missed the monkey that was its chief attraction till the aldermen banished it in a cranky fit. Dancing came naturally to them, too; certainly no one took the trouble to teach them. It was a pretty sight to see them stepping to the time on the broad flags at the mouth of the alley. Not rarely they had for an appreciative ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... wondering, Mr. Dru, why you came to West Point and why it is you like the thought of being a soldier?" she asked. "An American soldier has to fight so seldom that I have heard that the insurance companies regard them as the best of risks, so what attraction, Mr. Dru, can a military ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House

... theatre. Your tone conveyed it very clearly. Do you know that you disappoint me, Andre? It is stupid of me, perhaps; it betrays, I suppose, my imperfect knowledge of your sex. I am aware that most young men of fashion find an irresistible attraction for creatures who parade themselves upon the stage. But I did not expect you to ape the ways of a man of fashion. I was foolish enough to imagine you to be different; rather above such trivial pursuits. I conceived you ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... reverence for God. The scientific man sees in the sun only an attractive centre, and sees space filled with self-illuminating orbs, and reasoning from the known to the unknown, he believes these centres of attraction to planetary families, and the imagination stretches away through space filled with centres and revolving worlds, and each centre with its dependents revolving around one great centre, and this great centre ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... everything they saw, and the sutler's store proved a great attraction for them. They seemed determined to buy out his entire stock in trade, this being their first opportunity to spend money since we ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens

... charity, but to be judged harshly and condemned summarily by this type of the conventional and proper. She believed that Lucy would be "shocked" by what she said, and horrified by her freedom and absence of prejudice. Yet, notwithstanding all this, there was an attraction in the candid eyes and countenance of little Lady Randolph which drew her in spite of herself. It was of her own will, though with a little appearance of reluctance, that she drew near, and soon plunged into talk—for to tell ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... greatest orator of Rome divorce his wife after thirty years, apparently because she had been indiscreet or unscrupulous in money matters, and marry at the age of sixty-three his own ward, a young girl whose fortune he admitted was the main attraction. The coldness of temper suggested by these transactions is contradicted in turn by Cicero's romantic affection for his daughter Tullia, whom he is never tired of praising for her cleverness and charm, and whose ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... sir, and you know it as well as I do, is nothing so out of date. It is Number 2613 of the five thousand Attraction Houses controlled by the Hustle Trust Circuit of Automatic Drama: President, Mr. Theodor B. Kedger. But it is located on 99th ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker

... how often, and how soon, does it become involuntary! How often, and how soon, would she throw off the yoke if she could! O ye wives, I know how superior you are to your husbands in many respects,—not only in personal attraction, (although in that particular, comparison is out of place,) in grace, in refined thought, in passive fortitude, in enduring love, and in a heart to be filled with the spirit of heaven. Oh, I know all this. ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.

... matters in a proper and innocent manner, as something perfectly natural, improper curiosity and eroticism are far less likely to be aroused than when this is not the case. For the whole subject will have lost the dangerous attraction of novelty. On the other hand, we find boys who have been brought up with great prudery and in complete ignorance of sex matters (save that which may come to them from impure sources) greatly excited and ashamed by the first appearance of the indications of puberty. ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton

... expressing exquisitely fresh youth, grace and—innocence?—yes! surely that wondrous charm which hung about her like a delicate atmosphere redolent with the perfume of spring, could only be the mystic exhalation of a pure mind adding spiritual lustre to the material attraction of a perfect body,—his heart misgave him. Already he was full of remorse lest so much as a passing thought in his brain might have done her unmerited wrong. He advanced to meet her, and his voice was full of ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... last century, it is at once curious and instructive to cast a glance backward, and to examine, by the glimmering of ancient traditions, the attempts which have been made or imagined by man to enfranchise himself from the attraction ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion

... OF STATE FOR THE COLONIAL DEPARTMENT, at present occupied by Lord John Russell. This lot must possess considerable attraction for a gastronomical experimentalist, as its present proprietor has for a long time been engaged in the discovery of how few pinches of oatmeal and spoonsful of gruel are sufficient for a human pauper, and will be happy to transfer his data to the next fortunate proprietor. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... significance. After they were married, he had wanted to take her away with him, but she had clung to her own home; and so he had stayed with her on the Redfield Farm, making lazy efforts to learn a trade that had no sort of attraction for him, just ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox

... At the end of six months he bought Peale's Museum, and the whole, including the splendid gallery of American portraits, was removed to the American Museum, and he immediately advertised the great card of a "Double Attraction," and "Two Museums in ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... thousand volunteers were ready to march against her. I know little about Kendall—and the less the better. He was under General Jackson; but for him the Federal treasury seemed to have a magnetic attraction. ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... the movements of the appetitive faculty, good has, as it were, a force of attraction, while evil has a force of repulsion. In the first place, therefore, good causes, in the appetitive power, a certain inclination, aptitude or connaturalness in respect of good: and this belongs to the passion of love: the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... the land. In Bulgaria there are many preparatory grammar schools in which tuition for both sexes is free. All scholars who have passed through one of the German schools are admitted without any examination into the Grammar School, or Gymnasium, a privilege which works as a powerful attraction. Since Turkey retroceded Karagatch[61] to Bulgaria there are three such centres of Teutonic propaganda in Bulgaria, and I am informed that a fourth will shortly be established ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... Barbara Ferris's first one, when she was eleven, and her twenty-second birthday could not have been counted on the fingers of her two hands. Many boys, many men, had seemed wonderfully attractive to her. She did not know why. She knew only that the attraction seemed strong and eternal while it lasted, and that it never lasted long. She was sixteen before she began to consider herself a heartless, flirtatious, unstable, jilting sort of a girl. When she made ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... that sort of spirit which impels a man to sing at his labor. On the whole, I found Mr. Wigglesworth an entertaining, and often instructive, if not an interesting, character; and, partly for the charm of his society, and still more because his work has an invariable attraction for "man that is born of woman," I was accustomed to spend some hours a day at his workshop. The quaintness of his remarks and their not infrequent truth—a truth condensed and pointed by the limited sphere of his view—gave a raciness to his talk which mere worldliness and general cultivation ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... size, but compact, well formed, and having a gentlemanly deportment. The Queen was, questionless, the most interesting female in the circle. To an Englishman, her long and popular residence in England, rendered her doubly an object of attraction. She was superbly dressed, and yet the whole had a simple, lady-like, appearance. She wore a magnificent tiara of diamonds, and large circular diamond ear rings: but it was her necklace, composed of the largest and choicest of the same kind of precious stones, which ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... anything attempted by his predecessor. Smith thrills thousands in daily flights and skiey acrobatics, including crazy dips and loops, startling dashes to the earth and illuminated flights through the night air. (See p. 192.) Smith became in a day an attraction outshining, perhaps, any other single performer upon the ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... assistance. The industrial sector is technologically backward, with most production of the cottage industry type. Most development projects, such as road construction, rely on Indian migrant labor. Bhutan's hydropower potential and its attraction for tourists are key resources. Model education, social, and environment programs are underway with support from multilateral development organizations. Each economic program takes into account the government's desire to protect the country's environment and cultural traditions. For ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... accustomed to her; we had known her so long, we had known her always. We had never analyzed our admiration of her. She had so many qualities that are better than beauty that we had not credited her with the more obvious attraction. And perhaps she had just become visibly beautiful. It may be that there is an instant in a girl's life corresponding to what the Puritans called conversion in the soul, when the physical qualities, long maturing, suddenly ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... sheepskin,' and so on. And strange to say! these, as you see, not overwhelmingly witty phrases, keep him in food and drink and clothes. (He has run through his property ages ago, and lives solely upon his friends.) There is, observe, absolutely no other attraction about him; he can, it is true, smoke a hundred pipes of Zhukov tobacco in a day, and when he plays billiards, throws his right leg higher than his head, and while taking aim shakes his cue affectedly; but, after all, not everyone has a fancy for these accomplishments. ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev

... story had excited such intense interest had become the object of universal attention. Hyde, hitherto the centre of attraction, was already forgotten, and instead of people going away from the court to canvass his guilt or his innocence, they surged round the witness whose testimony, strange and unexpected, had so altered the probabilities of the case. It was with difficulty that Methley ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher

... the continual movement of one part supposes and carries with it the movement of the whole, in such a way that the attraction of the posterior parts is consequent upon the repulsion of the anterior parts; thus the movement of the superior parts results of necessity from that of the inferior, and from the raising of one opposite power, follows ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... thing: once a sailor, always a sailor, is an old saying; but it has a new application in modern navies. They become fascinated with the very drudgery of ship existence. They like their world, which is their house and their shop. It has the attraction of a world of priestcraft, with them alone understanding the ritual. Their drill at the guns becomes the preparation for the great sport of target practice, which beats any big-game shooting when guns compete with guns, with battle practice greater sport than target practice. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... an extraordinary attraction about her that makes all other women seem tame." And then Rosa ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... trait just mentioned, especially as it is confirmed by 1Samuel i. In this last-cited passage a feast at Shiloh is also spoken of, as occurring at the end of the year, that is, in autumn at the time of the asiph, /1/ and as being an attraction to pilgrims ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... globe. It is apparently as quiet and dormant as is our earth; yet in those cold plates, solutions, and wire, there lie the hidden elements of heat, light, and power. At the distant extremity of the wire, when not connected with the earth, we may have none of the manifestations of heat, light, or attraction—even though the plates are put into the solution. But let us now make the connection between the extremity of the wire and the earth, then the circuit is complete, and heat, light, and attraction are ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers

... exercise of your powers on poor Mr. Raymond is hardly fair. Recollect (turning to Middlemore,) it is not given to all to possess the refinement of wit, nor, (addressing St. Clair) the advantages of personal attraction, therefore is it more incumbent on those, to whom such gifts are given, to be merciful unto the wanting in both." This was ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... authority, like that of most miracles, is in their antiquity or repetition. In short, water is one of the most popular subjects in this age of inquiry. What were the first treatises of the Useful Knowledge Society? Hydrostatics and Hydraulics. What is the attraction at Sadler's Wells, Bath, and Cheltenham, but water? the Brighton people, too, not content with the sea, have even found it necessary to superadd to their fashionable follies, artificial mineral waters, with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various

... woman who presently appeared to gaze at him with open-mouthed wonder, was pretentiously and untidily dressed, with some measure of good looks woefully obscured by a hard and unsympathetic expression. Burton knew these things also. It flashed into his mind as he stood there that her first attraction to him had been because she resembled his ill-conceived idea of an actress. As a matter of fact, she resembled much more closely her cousin, who was a barmaid. Burton looked into the tragedy ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... force but a repulsive motion, and may it not be that there is no such thing as repulsion, and that it is solely by inertia that what seems to be repulsion is produced? Two bodies fly together, and, accelerated by mutual attraction, if they do not precisely hit one another, they cannot but separate in virtue of the inertia of their masses. So, after dashing past one another in sharply concave curves round their common center of gravity, they fly asunder again. A careless onlooker might imagine ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various

... the danger that the trail made by them on their way up the gulch would be discovered, and unless the dogs proved a greater attraction Skipper Ed knew that the moment the wolves came upon the trail they would take up the fresh scent, and might overtake them before they could gain the ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... energetically than before: if that were possible. An unromantic, apathetic figure, fitting so naturally into his surroundings as to demand no second look even from the most observant; yet one seeming to possess a magnetic attraction for the eyes of the hall-boy of the apartment hotel (who, acquainted by sight and hearsay with the stout gentleman's identity and calling, bent upon him a steadfast and adoring regard), as well as for the policeman who lorded it on ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... still haunted by the memory of the boy Chatterton, and Will's Coffee House, the resort of wits and literary lights of former days, vies with Royal Palaces as an attraction for those who would worship at the shrines of a bygone age,—a process which has been made the easier of late, now that the paternal Society of Arts has taken upon itself to appropriately mark, by means of a memorial tablet, many of these localities, ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... her brother's sudden change of address with mingled annoyance and anxiety. It was not pleasant to have him quit the lodgings she had found for him after so short a trial, and she could not help feeling that there was some very strong attraction drawing him to town. Mrs. Benn, that uncompromising "Son of Temperance," had come over herself to explain matters to Jimmy's sister, and had taken the opportunity to enlarge on the number of bottles she had found in her lodger's room, omitting ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt

... and thee claim My other half: with that thy gentle hand Seisd mine, I yeilded, and from that time see How beauty is excelld by manly grace 490 And wisdom, which alone is truly fair. So spake our general Mother, and with eyes Of conjugal attraction unreprov'd, And meek surrender, half imbracing leand On our first Father, half her swelling Breast Naked met his under the flowing Gold Of her loose tresses hid: he in delight Both of her Beauty and submissive ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... or Lord De Vayne, would read with him. This was always in lighter and easier authors, read chiefly for practice, and for the sake of the poetry or the story, which lent them their attraction. It was necessary to pursue in solitude all the severer paths of study; but he found these evenings, spent at once in society and yet over books, full both of profit and enjoyment. Lillyston, although not a first-rate classic, often formed one of the party; Owen ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... The most general law governing the action of Life, as a tendency to individuation, is here designated polarity; for instance, the power termed magnetism (not meaning that there is necessarily an actual tangible magnet in the case) has two poles, the negative, answering to attraction, rest, carbon, &c., and the positive, answering to repulsion, mobility, azote, &c.; and as the magnetic needle which points to the north necessarily indicates thereby the south, so the power disposing to rest has necessarily a counteracting influence disposing to mobility, ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... appointment, and since that unlucky day they had encountered quite frequently. Where the Indian obtained the liquor was a mystery, but it was an attraction that never failed to draw Teddy forth into the forest. The effect of alcoholic stimulants upon persons is as various as are their temperaments. The American Indian almost always becomes sullen, vindictive and dangerous. Now and then there is an exception, as was the case with the new-made ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... market-place soon presented an ominous appearance. Anton was now swept off by the crowd to its opposite side, where the custom-house stood, made conspicuous from afar by the national escutcheon suspended near the windows. That was now the point of attraction, and Anton saw from a distance a man plant a ladder against the wall, and hack away at the escutcheon till, amid profound silence, it fell to the ground. Soon, however a drunken rabble fell upon it with wild yells, and, ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... the slowly moving berg as it drifts past their vessel, fearing that their own ship will be drawn towards it from the peculiar power of attraction they believe the iceberg to possess. And as they watch, against the icy base of the mountain in the sea the waves beat and break as if expending their forces upon a rocky shore. Down the furrowed sides of the disintegrating berg streamlets ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... One secret of the attraction for the young of the city over the country or small town is contact with those who talk. They are conscious of the exercise of a freedom they have never known—the freedom to say what rises to the lips. They experience the unknown joy of play of mind. According to their ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell

... because many of the natural facts that present the most plausible appearance of design can be accounted for by Natural Selection; and it would be so absurd to keep a child in delusive ignorance of so potent a factor in evolution as to keep it in ignorance of radiation or capillary attraction. Even if you make a religion of Natural Selection, and teach the child to regard itself as the irresponsible prey of its circumstances and appetites (or its heredity as you will perhaps call them), you will none the less find that its appetites are ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... of sermons. Had one of us been bold enough to enter a church, he must have been ejected for the sake of decency. His forlorn and curiously patched habiliments would have contested the point of attraction with the ordinary eloquence of that period. Church bells rang not for us. Poets were indeed our priests: but for those, the last relic of moral existence would have passed away. Song was the dewdrop which gathered during the long dark night of despondency, and was sure ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... affluence to the views that left the spectator in a strange doubt which most to admire, their wildness or their picturesque beauty. The little air that remained was still at the southward, and as the ship moved slowly along this scene of singular attraction, each ravine seemed to give up a town, each shelf of rock a human habitation, and each natural terrace a ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... and loaf—possibly a little closing of the eyes to sleep would be more profitable—and paint again in the afternoon and evening. And if he didn't use all his stock of paints, water-colour, and oils before he left I'd be surprised. A great attraction would be the absence of distractions such as you'd have in larger centres, and very important, is the ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... I'm sick of everything this day—I don't believe in the constitution of the United States, including the thirteenth amendment, nor the ten commandments, nor the attraction of gravitation, nor anything else—it's ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips

... as famous a point as there is today on the earth's surface—as famous as were the Californian diggings in 1848, or the Australian gold mines in 1853. It is now the centre of attraction for the adventurous of all countries. The excitement throughout the Canadas and Northern States of America is universal. In fact, the whole interior of North America is quite in a ferment—the entire floating population being either ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne

... small blessing, just as I was entering upon dark and unknown ways of life, to meet this hoary headed man with all his lanterns. He would sell you anchors and fathoms of chain and rope enough to hang you to the moon but his 'lights'were the great attraction of Riggs s. He had every kind of lantern that had ever swung on land or sea. After dark, when light was streaming out of its open door and broad window Riggs's looked like the side of an old lantern itself. It was a door, low and wide, for a time when men had big round bellies and nothing to ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller



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