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Charm   /tʃɑrm/   Listen
Charm

noun
1.
Attractiveness that interests or pleases or stimulates.  Synonyms: appeal, appealingness.
2.
A verbal formula believed to have magical force.  Synonyms: magic spell, magical spell, spell.  "Inscribed around its base is a charm in Balinese"
3.
Something believed to bring good luck.  Synonym: good luck charm.
4.
(physics) one of the six flavors of quark.



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"Charm" Quotes from Famous Books



... "Institutes" will not fail to notice the timid manner in which he treats the subject, as if uncertain of his ground and endeavoring to excuse usury to please his friend. This letter is wanting in that positive air of assured certainty that breathes inspired authority and lends a charm to his "Institutes." He is nearest himself when he bursts out, "It could be wished that all usury and the name itself ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott

... the cup behind him, sprang over the table, and fell at Lina's feet. The rest of the princes fell likewise at the knees of the princesses, each of whom chose a husband and raised him to her side. The charm was broken. ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various

... beyond a smattering of anything. He carried away college honours apparently at will, and might, many thought, have won a fellowship with little effort; but his passion was for change. Whatever bore upon the rogueries of letters, the frauds of literature, had an irresistible charm for him; and he once declared that he would almost rather have been Ireland than Shakespeare; and then it was his delight to write Greek versions of a poem that might attach the mark of plagiarism to Tennyson, or show, by a Scandinavian lyric, how the laureate had been poaching from the ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... four times since my emigration thence, and going or coming I visited Chicago, St. Louis, Denver, and other points, but have no striking memories of any of them. In 1914 I had a very delightful visit to the Hawaiian Islands, including the volcano. It was full of interest and charm, with a beauty and an atmosphere all its own; but any description, or the story of experiences or impressions, would but re-echo what has been told adequately by others. British Columbia and western ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... girl. Courteous manners, marked attentions, openly expressed admiration, and slavery almost if she proved exacting. But Standish had an idea, and not a too comfortable one about the character of the girl he had to deal with. And so this afternoon, he presented himself before her with all the charm of a studied negligence which attracts in spite of one's self. He was very careful about all that passed, as yet he was only groping in the dark. If he once knew whether she loved Guy or not, his game would be an easy one, and this was the first problem he set himself to solve. ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... it is a recognized system, papa, you remember," answered Maggie. "After all, if you wish a great tenor or a violin-player at your parties, you pay them for it. If you wish a duke to awe or a beauty to charm your guests, why should you not hire them? This is a commercial age. The poor people must live, and if they can only awe or charm, there is no harm in their receiving pay ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.

... song, both words and verses pleased him and he said to Al-Abbas, "O my son, verily long versifying hath tired these damsels, and indeed they make us yearn after the houses and the homesteads with the beauty of their songs. These five have adorned our meeting with the charm of their melodies and have done well in that which they have said before those who are present; so we counsel thee to free them for the love of Allah Almighty." Quoth Al-Abbas, "There is no command but thy command;" and he enfranchised the ten damsels in the assembly; whereupon they kissed the hands ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... few words now about the illuminations. They form a conspicuous feature in these old maps, and lend a great charm to such productions of a bygone age; it would be a useless task, however, to seek in these quaint devices a strict pourtrayal of the scenes appertaining to the countries they might be supposed to illustrate; to do so would be to forget their chief purpose, the ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge

... his desk and spoke in a low voice of peculiar charm. As though the better to have the stranger understand, he spoke slowly, ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis

... miracle of sunrise over the sea. Under her simplicity of character and girlish merriment Debby possessed a devout spirit and a nature full of the real poetry of life, two gifts that gave her dawning womanhood its sweetest charm, and made her what she was. As she looked out that summer dawn upon the royal marriage of the ocean and the sun, all petty hopes and longings faded out of sight, and her young face grew luminous with thoughts too deep for words. Her day was happier ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott

... apply to effect an insurance on their lives for a thousand pounds, and looking at him, to beg, before the form of proposal was filled up, that it might be made two. And yet he was not a giant. His coat was rather small than otherwise. The whole charm was in his waistcoat. Respectability, competence, property in Bengal or anywhere else, responsibility to any amount on the part of the company that employed him, were all expressed ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... by, and speaking of him, said: "Forsyte's the best palate in London!" The palate that in a sense had made his fortune—the fortune of the celebrated tea men, Forsyte and Treffry, whose tea, like no other man's tea, had a romantic aroma, the charm of a quite singular genuineness. About the house of Forsyte and Treffry in the City had clung an air of enterprise and mystery, of special dealings in special ships, at special ports, with ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... familiarity; but his poetical and chivalrous nature was gratified by the notice of a Crimean hero, and he infinitely admired the dignity and courtesy of Lady Merrifield, and the grace and ease of her daughters, finding himself in a new world of exquisite charm for him. ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... still hung on; and the leg which had been hurt while working in the rapids with the sunken canoe had taken a turn for the bad and developed an abscess. The good doctor, to whose unwearied care and kindness I owe much, had cut it open and inserted a drainage tube; an added charm being given the operation, and the subsequent dressings, by the enthusiasm with which the piums and boroshudas took part therein. I could hardly hobble, and was pretty well laid up. But "there aren't no 'stop, conductor,' while a battery's changing ground." No man has any business ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... mentally spreading the net destined to gather in the chief culprits—the outlook promised a multitude of warm episodes calculated to stir the blood to fever heat and afford him the wild excitement without which life lost much of its charm—in ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... said there was no such thing, and never had been in her time, Mrs. Irons put her down with asperity. It was not to be found, however, and the matron thought she remembered that old Mrs. Legge's cook had borrowed it some time ago for a charm. So she explained the accident to Captain Devereux, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... summer dress, with a plentiful crowd of holiday-makers on the water; but in the very early spring, before the foliage has begun to appear, and when the light-hearted champagne bottle still nestles in its straw, it has also a very great charm of its own. The fresh air, and the change to new scenes, together with the strong stream caused by winter rains, make the men feel like young bullocks, and the boat moves with twice the spring it had before. The jolly lounging life in between whiles, diversified ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... was thinking. Of what? Of several things, perhaps, but certainly of how to beat a retreat. I guessed it by the movement of her sunshade, which was nervously tracing figures in the turf. I signalled to Lampron. We retired backward. Yet it was in vain; the charm was broken, the peace ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin

... quite aback by saying, with cool deliberation, 'There are moments, Goody Two-Shoes, when you and your fiddle are before my eyes, that I think I should like to marry you and take you away with me somewhere where you should charm me with those strains continually. Don't look so frightened. We understand each other. I know you wouldn't dream of having me, so I am never going to ask you. You have certainly a fit of inspiration on you to-night. I don't think I have ever ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre

... fishermen list to it oft, And love the sweet charm of its spell, For sometimes it wispers so soft, It seems but the voice ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... the facts of Roman history in our endeavors to read the life of Cicero, the more apparent becomes its truth. But Cicero, though he saw far toward it, never altogether acknowledged it. In this consists the charm of his character, though at the same time the weakness of his political aspirations; his weakness—because he was vain enough to imagine that he could talk men back from their fish-ponds; its charm—because he was able through it all to believe in honesty. The ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... another motive. While following Mrs. Wentworth he had been thrown with Lois Huntington. Her freshness, her beauty, the charm of her girlish figure, the unaffected gayety of her spirits, attracted him, and he had paused in his other pursuit to captivate her, as he might have stepped aside to pluck a flower beside the way. To his astonishment, she declined ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... the point of acting, since the action must have its origin in a disposition to act: otherwise one will do anything from anything, quidvis ex quovis, and there will be nothing too absurd for us to imagine. But this disposition will have already broken the charm of mere indifference, and if the soul gives itself this disposition there must needs be another predisposition for this act of giving it. Consequently, however far back one may go, one will never meet with a mere indifference in the soul towards ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... over their neighbourhood. He had succeeded to a great degree in conciliating them, but the news of the death of the Due d'Enghien alienated from him minds which were still wavering, and even those which had already declared in his favour. That act of tyranny dissolved the charm which had created hope from his government and awakened affections which had as yet only slumbered. Those to whom this event was almost indifferent also joined in condemning it; for there are certain ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... to be rid of one of their flock. Though both pictures were often as overdrawn as that evoked by a daughter of the Blue Ridge—a whimsical picture of a pretty maid in full-skirted crinoline with a soft southern accent—moonlight and honeysuckle, a gallant, goateed colonel paying court to her charm and beauty while he sips a mint julep. This picture and that of the snaggle-toothed mountain woman in bedraggled black calico can no more be taken for fact than that Jesse James is still holding up stagecoaches or that cowboys in ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... the form of a hollow square. There may be a wing or two on one side or another, and wherever a projecting bay or oriel will add to the comfort or charm of the interior we shall have one, but its general form will be a great square with an open ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... many much larger, were wandering on the seas. The republican spirit was blazing forth in their crews, and ardently we longed to get among them. As yet, no one knew our destination. We had every stimulant to honourable excitement, and mystery threw over the whole that absorbing charm that impels us to love and ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... to whom the Vestal Virgins of Rome, professed tribades, sacrificed, also the neck-charm in phallus-shape. Fascinum is ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... does not tell to great advantage from the outside: its chief charm is undoubtedly the interior. It stands in a hollow, on what is probably the lowest ground in the city. The best view of the cathedral is obtained from the low ground to the eastward near the river, and close to Pull's Ferry; here the extreme length of the nave, which Fergusson remarked ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell

... residences and parks (including the well-known botanical gardens) are interesting, it is the oriental element that has the greatest charm for those from other lands. A rickisha ride through the teeming streets of the Chinese or Malay quarters, especially at night, is most interesting. If taken during the day a Chinese funeral procession ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese

... lost her pretty fresh color, and looked pale and subdued in her black dress; her gray eyes had a sad look in them, even her voice had lost its old cheery tones, and her very movements were quieter; the bright elasticity that had been her charm was missing now, and yet Edna thought she had never looked ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... to eat a piece of the tongue or flesh, will cure impotency; and tiger fat, rubbed on a painful part of the body, is an accepted specific for rheumatic affections. It is a firmly settled belief, that the whiskers and teeth, worn on the body, will act as a charm, making the wearer proof against the attacks of tigers. The collar-bone too, is eagerly coveted for ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... it would fail; the strong point would either be consolidated or it would not. The orders—the details—are necessary adjuncts to the operation; of no more interest than the arrangements for pulling up the fire curtain. Only if the fire curtain sticks, the play is robbed of much of its natural charm to ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... bishops have possessed of the position in which they were standing. It seemed as if they literally believed that the promise of perpetuity which Christ had made to his church was a charm which would hold them free in the quiet course of their injustice; or else, under the blinding influence of custom, they did not really know that any injustice adhered to them. They could see in themselves ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... locomotion the Elevated possesses a rugged charm which is all its own, the serene pleasure of gazing into frowsy bedroom windows at elderly coloured ladies in bust bodices and flannel petticoats, being only equalled by the sudden thrill you experience when the two front carriages hurtle down into ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward

... she tried to smile. Close to that dear presence, so delicately perfumed (with a haunting perfume that was a very part of her mother's charm and beauty) she halted; and curtsied—precisely as Monsieur Tellegen had taught her. And when the white-satin bow bobbed above the level of the table once more, she raised her face ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates

... before him. "And why should I trouble to hide anything from you?" she demanded. "Look at me"—she posed as if to exhibit for his critical inspection the charm of her physical beauty—"Look at me; am I to waste all this upon you? You tell me that you have had your money's worth—surely, the purchase price is mine to spend as I will. Even suppose that I were as evil as your ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... the rich are glad to give their gold in exchange for. That emperor died, but his work continued to live and increase until France became a nation of artisans and artists, and that art has now become second nature, and therein lies the charm. See how yonder lady picks up her drapery to cross the street; not ten women in England could do that little thing as she does. Do you know the reason why? She caught the art originally from old Charlemagne. That is, thirty generations ago, the old Emperor established the ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin

... beside the sea, but which is here without that extreme effect which the bathing-costume imparts on our beaches. These young people stretched side by side on the grass in Hyde Park added a pastoral charm to the scene, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... what thrilling songs of fairies, Wafted o'er the Kansas prairies, Charm the ear while zephyrs speed 'em! ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... a soothing charm, coupled with the little consultation as to the ribbon, and the capture of a smooth brown lock of the present to add to the original. And as the manly fingers dealt with the hasp, and the kind smile welcomed her pleasure, Cherry's heart felt that while she had her Felix, Alda need little comprehend ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Voyage of Columbus, and in 1814 Jacqueline, in the same volume with Byron's Lara. Human Life was published in 1819. It is a poem in the old style, (most of his poems are in the rhymed pentameter couplet;) but in 1822 appeared his poem of Italy, in blank verse, which has the charm of originality in presentation, freshness of personal experience, picturesqueness in description, novelty in incident and story, scholarship, and taste in art criticism. In short, it is not only the best of his poems, but it has great merit besides that of the poetry. The story of Ginevra is a masterpiece ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... polo field was their cow pasture. And whether at the age of twelve or of twenty or more, Helen Page ruled Fair Harbor. When she arrived the "season" opened; when she departed the local trades-people sighed and began to take account of stock. She was so popular because she possessed charm, and because she played no favorites. To the grooms who held the ponies on the sidelines her manner was just as simple and interested as it was to the gilded youths who came to win the championship cups and remained to try to win Helen. She was just as genuinely pleased ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis

... must sometimes fall below her own standard, and The Man from Australia (COLLINS), though written with considerable grace and charm, is too thin in plot to be altogether satisfactory. John Darling, a youngish man of wealth and an extremely liberal disposition, came from Australia to visit his connexions in the West of Ireland and—if opportunities occurred—to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various

... sudden stillness reign'd. As fearful turn'd my searching eye, Glanc'd near a shadowy form, and fleeted by; Anon, before me full it stood: A saintly figure, pale, in pensive mood. Damp horror thrill'd me till he spoke, And accents faint the charm bound silence broke: "Long, trav'ller! ere this region near, Say, did not whisp'rings strange arrest thine ear? My summons 'twas to bid thee come, Where sole the friend of Nature loves to roam. Ages long past, this drear abode To solitude I sanctified, and God: 'Twas here, by love of Wisdom brought, ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... head of the Lake, walking thence to Ambleside. But the whole road from Bowness is rich in diversity of pleasing or grand scenery; there is scarcely a field on the road side, which, if entered, would not give to the landscape some additional charm. Low-wood Inn, a mile from the head of Windermere, is a most pleasant halting-place; no inn in the whole district is so agreeably situated for water views and excursions; and the fields above it, and the lane that leads to Troutbeck, present beautiful views towards each extremity of ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... very quietly, but very pleasantly. Bertha and Gaston were happy enough in each other to have thought a repast of bread and cheese a banquet. Maurice could not but be penetrated by the charm of sharing Madeleine's home; and, at table, where she presided with such graceful ease, he never forgot that it was in her home he was dwelling. Madeleine herself could not gaze upon the little circle of beloved ones, from whom ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... wait," and he was learning patience, for his life was wrapped up in the person of his girl-wife. She was so infinitely lovable even when least comprehending his man's nature and holding herself aloof. Again, her charm was indescribable when, with adorable grace, she offered compensation, sorry for her uncomprehending selfishness; and he eternally rejoiced that, by the law of marriage, she was irrevocably his till death ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... seem crude. Perhaps it will help us to realize how unsightly most of the roofs of our houses are, and how unfinished. There's no reason in the world why they should be. The Greeks and the Romans had the right idea. They were very sensitive to lack of finish. They felt the charm of decorated roofs. See that angel down there that keeps recurring at the points of the gables. What a pretty bit of ornamentation. The Greeks used it to suggest the gifts of the gods coming down from heaven. 'Blessings on this house.' ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry

... will not man awake, And, springing from the bed of sloth, enjoy The cool, the fragrant, and the silent hour, To meditation due and sacred song? For is there aught in sleep can charm the wise? To lie in dead oblivion, losing half The fleeting moments of too short a life, Total extinction of th' enlighten'd soul! Or else, to feverish vanity alive, Wilder'd and tossing through distemper'd dreams? Who would in such a gloomy state remain Longer than nature craves, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various

... What charm is to a woman, the vague thing called quality is to an object of art. We feel it, though we may not be able to explain it. An old Etruscan jar may be reproduced in form, but it would be silly to ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe

... a schoolgirl now, but in a year or two she will be a young woman, and one well deserving of the best that can be given to her. I am city-bred myself, and though at my age I prefer the quiet of the country, yet for a young girl I well know the charm of a city life. Of course, we would all regret the loss of our Patty, who has grown to be a part of our daily life, but, nevertheless, were I to vote on this matter, I should unhesitatingly cast my ballot in favour of ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells

... grand landscapes of Claude (part of a collection of prints possessed by Miss Ladd's father) hung on the walls. The carpet was in harmony with the curtains; and the furniture was of light-colored wood, which helped the general effect of subdued brightness that made the charm of the room. "If you are not happy here," Miss Ladd said, "I despair of you." And Francine answered, "Yes, it's very pretty, but I wish it was ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins

... different sort of personage. She walked as delicately as if she had been bred in town, and as firmly as if she had been bred in the country; she seemed one who dimly knew her appearance to be attractive, but who retained some of the charm of being ignorant of that fact by forgetting it in a general pensiveness. She approached the gate. To let such a creature touch it even with a tip of her glove was to Fitzpiers almost like letting her proceed to tragical self-destruction. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... rumpled apron, the door opened and the little inventor ushered into the string-entangled sitting room a dainty, city-bred girl in a sport suit of white serge. She was not only pretty but she was perfectly groomed and was possessed of a fascinating vivacity and charm. Everything about her was vivid: the gloss of her brown hair, the sparkle of her eyes, her color, her smile, her immaculate clothes—all were dazzling. She carried her splendor with an air of complete sureness ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... with each other. The misfortune of most schools is that, to preserve the discipline, the children are trained to have nothing to do with each other, and it is only at recess, or in going and coming, that they get the society which is the great charm and only value of school life. In college, or in any good academy, things are so managed that young men study together when they choose; and there is no better training. In any way you manage it, bring that about. If the ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale

... that no beauty recommends a wife so much to her husband as the probity of her life, and her obedience: for as some few are catched and held only by beauty, so all are attracted by the other excellences which charm ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... "That's a charm given me by my Indian wife, to preserve me from disasters from wild animals; no panther, wolf, or bear will ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat

... emergency nearly every country has, at one time or another, been tempted to confuse the monetary with the fiscal functions of the Treasury. To borrow by the issue of money seems to have a seductive charm hard to resist. Lloyd George established a new precedent for Great Britain by issuing nearly $200,000,000 of Government currency notes, but this was done to provide notes for the public instead of coin (L1 and 10s.) and made ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... Angelico would mean to lack the true sentiment of ancient art, for though we recognize the pious naivete of the monk, there is in the heavenly beauty of his figures, and the joy of youthful faith which animates the artist, a charm unequalled in ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino

... took infinite pleasure in the thought of her youth; he tilled his mind and his senses with the image of her freshness, her clear, pure color, the outline of her face and form. "She is young and fragrant as spring; she has every bloom and charm of body and soul," he said to himself, as he galloped over the shady woodland road. In his exalted mood, he had almost forgotten how he had left her presence. He delighted in his own roused and wakened passion, ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... use of being on board ship,' said Wentworth, 'If you don't take advantage of the opportunity for making shipboard acquaintances? There is an unconventionality about life on a steamer that is not without its charm, as perhaps you will find out before ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr

... passing through the whole length of Italy. But the sight of the long journey, as she saw it on the map in the guide-book, terrified Mrs. Peterkin. And Mr. Peterkin had taken their tickets for the Marseilles line. Elizabeth Eliza still dwelt upon the charm of crossing under the Alps, while this ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale

... look upon—complete and beautiful as a pearl—with that outward purity, that perfect delicacy of tint and harmony of detail which is in itself a charm. Study her as captiously as you would, you could find no flaw in this jewel. The small regular features were so delicately chiselled, the fair fine skin was so transparent, the fragile figure so exquisitely moulded, the ivory hand and arm so perfect—no, you ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... but it is Christina, the eldest, who fills most of it. The other two were named Virgilia and Orinthia, and I can't say that these horrific labels did them any injustice. As for the story of "their lives," as VIOLET HUNT tells it, there is really nothing very much to charm in a history of three disagreeable children developing into detestable young women. Perhaps it may have some value as a study of feminine adolescence, but I defy anyone to call the result attractive. Its chief incident, which is (not to mince matters) the attempted ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various

... master of critical style, tells of a conversation he had once with an Arab gentleman on the topic of the different management of these difficult creatures in Orient and in Occident: and the Arab spoke in praise of many good results of the greater freedom enjoyed by Western ladies, and the charm of conversing with them. He was questioned why his countrymen took no measures to grant them something of that kind of liberty. He jumped out of his individuality in a twinkling, and entered into the sentiments of his race, replying, from the pinnacle of a splendid conceit, with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the victory," repeated Frank. The words seemed to have a charm for him. "It is wonderful, ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson

... forty kings, now, while we see on every side ancient institutions subverted, and great societies dissolved, now, while the heart of England is still sound, now, while old feelings and old associations retain a power and a charm which may too soon pass away, now, in this your accepted time, now, in this your day of salvation, take counsel, not of prejudice, not of party spirit, not of the ignominious pride of a fatal consistency, but of history, of reason, of the ages which ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the drear prospect of a Yorkshire moor will be found as barren of poetic as of agricultural interest: where the love of wild nature is strong, the locality will perhaps be clung to with the more passionate constancy, because from the hill-lover's self comes half its charm." ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... on the right, and from the copse-wood at their feet quails were calling, their mellow whistle blending with the notes of a wild Methodist air. In the distance rose the spires of Norfolk, completing a picture whose interest and charm I ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... recomposing what lay before them in disintegrated fragments. They did not explore new territory or invent fresh vehicles of expression. They sought to select the best points of Graeco-Roman and Italian style, unconscious that the physical type of the Niobids, the voluptuous charm of Correggio, the luminous color of Titian, the terribleness of Michelangelo, and the serenity of Raphael, being the ultimate expressions of distinct artistic qualities, were incompatible. A still deeper truth escaped their notice—namely, that art is valueless unless the artist has something ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... observed growing by the rivers or waters of Uganda—and Kasori, a sort of liquorice-root. He then commenced eating with us, and begging again, unsuccessfully, for my compass. I tried again to make him see the absurdity of tying a charm on Whitworth's rifle, but without the least effect. In fact he mistook all my answers for admiration, and asked me, in the simplest manner possible, if I would like to possess a charm; and even when I said "No, I should be afraid of provoking Lubari's" (God's) "anger ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... an abrupt start, a little brown half-naked boy, with large black eyes, and the string of a written charm round his neck, became panic-struck at once. He dropped the banana he had been munching, and ran to the knee of a grave dark Arab in flowing robes, sitting like a Biblical figure, incongruously, on a yellow tin trunk corded with ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... to see its rolling. I will give you, at the end of this letter, a few more verses belonging to that period, of which fragmentary copies are still preserved, as I see, in my portfolio. You may allow me to read them still; they harm me no more. Thine eyes have still (and will always have) a charm for me.[12] Please write me in your next letter about the uncertain marriage-plans. I believe, by Jove![12] that the matter is becoming serious. Until the day is fixed, it still seems to me as though we had ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... manifested Presence the name of "the Christ" may rightly be given, and it was He who lived and moved in the form of the man Jesus over the hills and plains of Palestine, teaching, healing diseases, and gathering round Him as disciples a few of the more advanced souls. The rare charm of His royal love, outpouring from Him as rays from a sun, drew round Him the suffering, the weary, and the oppressed, and the subtly tender magic of His gentle wisdom purified, ennobled, and sweetened the lives that ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... the sour dampness of a large uninhabited room, the perspiration of unclean and unhealthy feminine flesh, face-powder, boracic-thymol soap, and the dust of the yellow mastic with which the parquet floor had been polished yesterday. And with a strange charm the smell of withering swamp grass is blended with these smells. To-day is Trinity. In accordance with an olden custom, the chambermaids of the establishment, while their ladies were still sleeping, had bought a whole ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... his own resources, he determined to assume a bold front and call in person at the old house on the Esplanade. It being still early, he wandered for a time about the strange old city; but the crooked streets and their quaint shops had lost their charm. The ancient Place d'Armes, the old Cabildo, the French market, the tumble-down buildings which house the courts of justice ceased to interest him. He was relieved when finally he felt it proper to turn up the ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... Clonmel, Ireland. In the absence of the mother of a three-year-old child (fancied by the neighbours to be a changeling), two women "entered her house and placed the child naked on a hot shovel, 'under the impression that it would break the charm,'"—the only result being, of course, that the infant was very severely ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... free head that crowns so well The neck superb, whose outlines glide Into the bosom's perfect swell Soft-billowed by its peaceful tide, The cheek's faint flush, the lip's red glow, The gracious charm her beauty wears, Fill my fond eyes with tender tears As in ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay

... 'properties.' Upon such authority of intrinsic evidence we have no hesitation in pronouncing the writer to be a man. Certain novel-writing ladies indeed are given to depicting most royal heroes, types of the ideal man, glorified beings endowed with every charm of physique and of spirit. Such find an irresistible fascination in allowing their fancy to run wild riot and poetic revel in contemplation of a wonderful male creature, so graceful, so beautiful, so strong, so brave, so masterly, so bad or so ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... stable, after one of these Miriam-like flights of prophecy on the might-have-been. It isn't fair to judge a man's promise by one modest performance, and so I shall say nothing, save that I am sure it was the charm of the man that won my aunt's affection, not the ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... larder. In this excellent and honoured man, whose very piety was as sublime as it was confused, rambling, and paradoxical, we have the quaint original of Dr. Primrose, one of the most lovable characters that has ever lived to charm the page of ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland

... he murmured. "Where's this lake Lord Heyton spoke of? I should like to see that. In my opinion, every place of this sort ought to have a bit of water: lends such a charm to the scenery, don't ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice

... beautiful mare stood over me, while away to the right of us the hoarse tide of battle flowed and ebbed. What charm, what delusion of memory held her there? Was my face to her as the face of her dead master, sleeping a sleep from which not even the wildest roar of battle, no, nor her cheerful neigh at morning, would ever wake him? Or is there in animals some instinct, answering to our intuition, only ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... shone from her eyes, proud yet gay; it lurked in the corners of her mouth, where gravity followed merriment, as silence follows laughter when the brook sweeps from the purling stones to the deeper pools. Her art was unconscious of itself and scene succeeded scene with a natural charm, revealing unexpected resources, from pathos to sorrow; from vanity to humility; from scorn to love awakened. And, when the transition did come, every pose spoke of the quickening heart; her movements proclaimed the golden fetters; passion shone in her glances, defiant though ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... unable to live independently in the style to which she had become accustomed. Yet for the first year of our liaison she would accept from me no provision, and we saw each other but seldom. Strange as it may seem she taught me the value and the charm of conjugal moderation and fidelity. Just now she is receiving a visit from her son, on leave from his military services abroad; and respecting the ordinary moral conventions, which happen also to be hers, I do not go to ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... and do not care about seeing my hand before me. We have thought of staying here till after Christmas and then going somewhere else,—perhaps to Bath, perhaps to Devonshire. But all this is uncertain. Leamington is not so desirable a residence in winter as in summer; its great charm consisting in the many delightful walks and drives, and in its neighborhood to interesting places. I have quite finished the book (some time ago) and have sent it to Smith and Elder, who tell me it is in the printer's hands, but I have received ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... characteristic of him that the practical problems of science should have attracted him before his mind was as yet sufficiently matured to feel the charm of its abstract beauties. His first attempt at observation was made with a sextant, rudely constructed under his own directions, and a common clock. Its object was the determination of the longitude of Bremen, and its success, he tells us himself,[60] filled him with a rapture of delight, which, ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... prairie pigeon, or the quack of a lonely duck, came through the shimmering air. The lark's infrequent whistle, piercingly sweet, broke from the longer grass m the swales nearby. No other climate, sky, plain, could produce the same unnamable weird charm. No tree to wave, no grass to rustle; scarcely a sound of domestic life; only the faint melancholy soughing of the wind in the short grass, and the voices of the ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... him to come with them into a grand copartnership of the name of "Fairbanks, Frisbie and Fabens," and assume all the business of Summerfield; he was actually taken with agreeable surprise, his head growing giddy, as by some irresistible charm; and he looked upon the farmer's life and labor, as the life and labor of a drudge; glanced forth upon visions of opulence, honor and ease; and hoped to put away, without too much sacrifice, his stony acres, and enter upon ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee

... fluttering of her breath and seen the indignant tears gather to her eyes—he a boorish stranger who hated her because of her name. For the first time in her life she had run straight against an impregnable prejudice—had felt her feminine charm ineffectual against a stern masculine resistance. She was at the age when the artificial often outweighs the real—when the superficial manner with a woman is apt to be misunderstood, and so to her Christopher Blake now appeared stripped even of his physical comeliness; the interview had left her ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... of childhood warm, When, tottering by a mother's knee, Each sight and sound had power to charm, And hope was high, and thought was free. Langsyne!—the merry schoolboy days— How sweetly then life's sun did shine! Oh! for the glorious pranks and plays, The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 340, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various

... arrow your father gave me so long ago. I have worn it ever since. We call it 'The King's Arrow,' because of your father's name when he was in the royal service. It has meant a great deal to us both, for it was truly a Love-Charm." ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody

... interested traveller may, as he travels, know where to find the rare specimens of the hobby he is pursuing. This is a high-warp tapestry which authorities variously place as the product of the Eleventh or the Twelfth Centuries. Entirely regardless of its age, it has for us the charm of the craft of hands long vanished, and of primitive art in all its simplicity of artifice. The subject is religious—could hardly have been otherwise in those monastic days—and for church decoration, and to fit the space they were woven to occupy, each of the ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... is the name of a night spectre, said to have been Adam's first wife, but who, for her refractory conduct, was transformed into a demon endowed with power to injure and even destroy infants unprotected by the necessary amulet or charm. ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... professional—beauty of her kind. Her full rounded, splendidly developed body was gowned to accentuate the alluring curves of her sex. With such skill was this deliberate appeal to the physical hidden under a cloak of a pretending modesty that its charm was the more effectively revealed. Her features were almost too perfect. She was too coldly sure of herself—too perfectly trained in the art of self-repression. For a woman as young as she evidently was, she ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... in Alsace-Lorraine. Germany is essentially the persona ingrata everywhere it presents itself. It knows only the methods that divide, and not those which unite. Germany makes proclamations that act upon the mind as the frost acts upon plants. Germany knows neither how to attract nor how to charm nor how to civilize, because she has no personal and profound ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... of my sorcerer and sorceress; I have humbled myself before you and bring to you my cause Because of the evil they (i.e., the witches) have done, Of the impure things which they have handled,[384] May she[385] die! Let me live! May her charm, her witchcraft, her sorcery (?) be broken. May the plucked sprig (?) of the binu tree purify me. May it release me; may the evil odor[386] of my mouth be scattered to the winds. May the mashtakal herb[387] which fills the earth cleanse me. Before ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... beneficial.] With the exception of this want of national individuality, and the loss of the distinguishing manners and customs which constitute the chief charm of most eastern peoples, the Filipino is an interesting study of a type of mankind existing in the easiest natural conditions. The arbitrary rule of their chiefs, and the iron shackles of slavery, were abolished by the Spaniards shortly after their arrival; and peace and security ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... Aubrey, in the British Museum, he states that this was a prayer regularly used by people when they went to bed. Then Ody, in his Candle in the Dark, 1656, tells that it was frequently used by old people as a charm, and was repeated three times before going to bed. Launcelot Sharpe, in his Towneley Mysteries, 1838, relates that he had often, when a boy, heard similar words used in ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford

... entangled. See the saying of the wise man, 'with her much fair speech she caused him to yield, with the flattering of her lips she forced him. He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks.' (Prov. 7:21, 22) He heard her charm, and by hearing is noosed, and led away to her house, which is the way to hell, 'going down to the chambers of death.'(ver. 27) Take heed, therefore, of listening to the charms wherewith sin enchanteth the soul. In this, be like ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... But, the home-coming charm is on him; love draws him forward quickly like a magnet! He sees his mother's house at the end of the street. He is up the outside ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson

... commence"—a song often heard in concert-rooms, but not so often as the air with which the love-duet in the second act reaches its culmination, which is popularly held also to mark the climax of the opera. That song is wondrously insinuating in its charm; it pulsates with passion, so much so, indeed, that it is difficult to conceive that its sentiments are feigned, but this is lovelier in its fresh, suave, graceful, and ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... Florida, one can almost hear the whistle of the wind through her rigging, the creak of her straining cordage as she heels to the leeward. The adventures of Ben Clark, the hero of the story and Jake the cook, cannot fail to charm the reader. As a writer for young people Mr. Otis ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger

... you the meaning of that wonderful name. Nor yet the wondrous charm of Him who, for our sakes, embodies it. You may put together all these illustrations in the attempt to get a real, close-up, idea of what Jesus meant in that love-gift of His to you. And then you will not know. There is really only one way to gain that knowledge. It is this: take the step which ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon

... Lord Chesterfield, nor imagine that I mean to erect grace into a capital ingredient of writing, but I do believe that it is a perfume that will serve from putrefaction, and is distinct even from style, which regards expression. Grace, I think, belongs to manner. It is from the charm of grace that I believe some authors, not in your favour, obtained part of their renown; Virgil, in particular: and yet I am far from disagreeing with you on his subject in general. There is such a dearth of invention in the Aeneid (and when he did invent, it ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... grave; families escaping from the wind and fog of the bay, to spend a few weeks where they can find sunshine and quiet—it is a little world in itself. The spot is every way beautiful, but its chief charm is its isolation. Though within a few hours' ride of San Francisco, and only two miles from a railroad-station, you feel as if you were in the very heart of nature —and so you are. Winding along the banks of a sparkling stream, the mountains—great masses of leafy green—rise abruptly on either ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald

... of course: there are agencies you little think of, which, in my country, are still called into use. I have a charm, Philip, which ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... most cases to build a house more or less proportionate to his means; and it is his pride and pleasure to see his wife and children acclimatise themselves to their new environment. But such a house would lose most of its charm and meaning for him if the fortune which enabled him to live in it were to dwindle with each day's expenditure, and his family after his death were to be turned into the street, beggars. If each individual were a unit whose interests ended ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... whole, she fascinated me by the very mystery of her charm, and I found my eyes involuntarily returning again and again to that ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells

... hidden and rarely ever entirely revealed. How well must one come to know them, stone by stone, highways, homes and habitants, ere they will disclose their secret. I have rejoiced too often in the splendid serenity of St. Jean des Vignes, felt too deeply the charm of those ancient streets, hoped and suffered too intensely within its confines that Soissons should not mean more to me than to the average zealous newspaper correspondent, come there but to make note of its wounds, to ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard

... gold, which she fitted on her feet and hands, and by means of which she climbed the mountain with ease. Arrived at the summit she found new difficulties; for the valley below was one large smooth mirror, in which sixty thousand women stood admiring themselves. They had need, for the charm of the mirror was that each saw herself therein, not as she was, but as she wished to be; and the grimaces they made were enough to cause a person to die of laughter. Not one of them had ever gained the top of the mountain; and when they saw Florina ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... akin to that attraction we all experience when we see a powerful, well-groomed horse, a sleek hound, a handsome tiger—that is, it is not mere admiration for a beautiful animal. Whether it has any similarity to the mysterious charm which makes the doomed bird lose control of its wings upon the approach of a snake is difficult to estimate. Certainly, in the paraphernalia of the modern recital with its lowered lights and its solitary figure playing away at a polished instrument one may find something of the physical apparatus ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... The charm of Rome has never lain in its architecture, nor in the beauty of its streets, though the loveliness of its old-fashioned gardens contributed much which is now in great part lost. Nor can it be said that the enthralling magic of the city we used to know lay especially in its historical ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... sometimes, though they could hardly absorb. It is equally impossible to imagine any one being "enthralled" by Euphues. Admiration, of a kind, must have been the only passion excited by it. In the Arcadia there is a certain charm, but it belongs to the inset verse—to the almost Spenserian visionariness of parts—to the gracious lulling atmosphere of the whole. If it had been published in three volumes, one cannot imagine the most enthusiastic novel-reader knocking up a ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... serpents, and they bit the people, and much people of Israel died,"—a passage to which Jeremiah alludes in chap. viii. 17, where he says; "For behold I send against you serpents, basilisks, against which there is no charm, and they bite you, saith the Lord." It is very probable that to this the prophet also alludes in the ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... West Park, near Esopus, on the Hudson, and there building his house from the stones found in his fields, has given himself the best conditions for that humanizing of nature which constitutes the charm of his books. He was married in 1857 to a lady living in the New York village where he was at the time teaching. He keeps his country home the year round, only occasionally visiting New York. The cultivation of grapes absorbs the greater part of his time; but he has by no ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... The Cornhill Magazine (to which the writer is indebted for some data regarding Browning and Professor Masson); to each and all, acknowledgments are offered for their courtesy which has invested with added charm a work than which none was ever more ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... leaned back against our wall in a sort of silent revelry, Fred alone moving, making his beloved instrument charm wisely, calling to her just enough to keep a link, as it were, through which her imagery might appeal to ours. Some sort of mental bridge between her tameless paganism and our twentieth-century twilight there had to be, or we never could have sensed her meaning. The concertina's ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... Such was their summer life, and in their winter caves they had sufficient furniture, ample provender, store of old wine, and assuredly no lack of fuel, with joyous music and pleasant discourse to charm away the season of darkness ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock

... ache. Vellan, as she recalled him, had been, before all things, gentle. He was witty, he had humour, he had imagination; but he was, before all things, gentle—with the gentlest voice, the gentlest eyes, the gentlest manners. His gentleness, she told herself, was the chief element of his charm—his gentleness, which was really a phase of his modesty. 'He was very gentle, he was very modest, he was very graceful and kind,' she said; and she remembered a hundred instances of his gentleness, his modesty, his kindness. Oh, but he was no milksop. He had ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... a picture of a possible world to which we are adapted. In that world people and things have their well-known places, and do certain expected things. We feel at home there. We fit in. We are members. We know the way around. There we find the charm of the familiar, the normal, the dependable; its grooves and shapes are where we are accustomed to find them. And though we have abandoned much that might have tempted us before we creased ourselves into that mould, ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... mother of four, the eldest of which was a son. To all of them she had been a most assiduous instructor. It was well for her perhaps that she obtained this sphere for the exercise of her mind. It came just at the period when the charm which human life derives from novelty is beginning to wear off. It gave her new activity and animation. It is perhaps impossible that the refinements of which human nature is capable should not, after a time, subside into sluggishness, if they be not aided by the influence ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... of the inner world, each particular blade of which is tipped with a tiny, five-pointed blossom—brilliant little stars of varying colors that twinkle in the green foliage to add still another charm to ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... came, he was by that time so attached to her by ties of tender love and their conversation was so gentle and full of charm that he could not brook to part from K'o Ching. Hand-in-hand, the two of them therefore, went out for a stroll, when they unexpectedly reached a place, where nothing else met their gaze than thorns and brambles, which covered the ground, and a wolf and a tiger walking ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... even more conspicuous considered as a church discipline. There is a charm as of apostolic simplicity and beauty in its unassuming hierarchy of weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings, corresponding by epistles and by the visits of traveling evangelists, which realizes the type of the primitive church presented in "The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles." ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... low degree To assemble at her court. But this dismal mountain here, How unlike the plain below! Yet they are the better friends By the contrasts that they show. there the mournful birds of prey Hoarsely croak, presaging woe, Here the warblers in their joy Charm us with their tuneful notes. There the torrents leaping headlong Fright us with their frenzied roar, Here the crystal streamlets gliding Mirror back the sun's bright gold. Half way 'twixt that ugliness And this beauty, I behold ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... explained. The man had undoubtedly possessed the bird's nest which communicates its charm of invisibility to its possessor, though not equally so to his shadow; and this nest he had now thrown away. I looked all round, and soon discovered the shadow of this invisible nest. I sprang towards it, and was fortunate enough to seize the precious ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various

... them; an' above all, to keep away from her. That's the second attempt; and I know to a certainty, that if she makes a third one, it'll do for me. Oh, no doubt of that—the third time's always the charm!—an' into my heart that unlucky knife 'ill go, if she ever tries it a third time! They tell me," she proceeded, soliloquizing, as she was in the habit of doing, "that the inquest is to be held in a day or two, an' that the crowner was only ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... our agricultural or mining areas, that the Australian attains full consciousness of his own nationality; it is in places like this, and as clearly here as at the centre of the continent. To me the monotonous variety of this interminable scrub has a charm of its own; so grave, subdued, self-centred; so alien to the genial appeal of more winsome landscape, or the assertive grandeur of mountain and gorge. To me this wayward diversity of spontaneous plant life bespeaks ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... some years since) of a celebrated piece, of which other versions have appeared, and are now on the point of appearing, possesses so much peculiar charm and intrinsic merit, that we are happy in being permitted to present it to ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... Onesimus into slavery. Such a motion would have found ready advocates in the Church at Laodicea, if, as at a later day, they were 'neither cold nor hot' in religion; in which case any collateral subjects wholly or partly secular, would have a charm for them. These supplied that lack of warmth which they were conscious of as to religion; their church-meeting, no doubt, seemed to them dull, unless a subject was introduced which gave opportunity for discussion, and for things which gendered debate, whereof cometh ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... at once dim and rich; the sunlit garden through the casement windows; the scent of the logs burning on the hearth, and of the hyacinths and narcissus with which the warm air was perfumed; the signs everywhere of a woman's life and charm; all these first impressions leaped upon him, aiding the remembered spell which had recalled him—hot-foot and eager—from London, to this place, on the ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Horne Tooke Fox and Pitt Horner Adiaphori Citizens and Christians Professor Park English Constitution Democracy Milton and Sidney De Vi Minimorum Hahnemann Luther Sympathy of old Greek and Latin with English Roman Mind War Charm for Cramp Greek Dual, neuter pleural *sic*, and verb singular Theta Talented Homer Valcknaer Principles and Facts Schmidt Puritans and Jacobins Wordsworth French Revolution Infant Schools Mr. Coleridge's ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... hard to fix his mind on his story, but even the charm of Treasure Island failed to distract him. In spite of himself his thoughts turned always to the starlit winter night, and to the pond gay with bonfires and torches and covered with boys and girls. After a while he closed ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick

... every wifely virtue; and the sorrowful story of the warrior-god and his faithful spouse has appealed to deep sympathies in the human breast. The worship of Rama has seldom, if ever, degenerated into lasciviousness. In spite, however, of the charm thrown around the life of Rama and Sita by the genius of Valmiki and Tulsida,[26] it is Krishna, not Rama, that has attained the greatest popularity among the "descents" ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir

... worn one straw hat through five changes of fashion. It was averred that, when square crowns were in vogue, she flattened it over a tin pan, and that, when round crowns returned, she bent it on the bedpost. There was such a charm in her way of adapting these treasures, that the other girls liked to test her with new problems in the way of millinery and dress-making; millionnaire friends implored her to trim their hats, and lent her their own things in order to learn how to wear them. This applied especially to certain rich ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... of lung disease in over twelve months. She was nothing but a skeleton when she took the first dose, and to-day she weighs 135 pounds. I thought it my duty to write to you in regard to her case, as so many other medicines had failed, and it has acted like a charm. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... statuesquely patient in the buggy. His profile cut against the sky was blameless; and a humorous shrewdness which showed in the wrinkle at his eye and in the droop of his yellow mustache gave its regularity life and charm. It occurred to her that if Dr. Mulbridge caught sight of Mr. Libby before he saw her, or before she could explain that she had got one of the gentlemen at the hotel—she resolved upon this prevarication—to drive her to Corbitant in default of another conveyance, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... honor and wisdom,—bore their reproaches in meek silence, and left them unanswered to their fate. There were some others, however, who, believing the public to labor under a delusion, thought it worth while to see whether the charm would be broken by an open trial of its virtue, as compared with that of some less hallowed formula. It must be remembered that a peculiar value was attached to the Metallic Tractors, as made and patented by Mr. Perkins. Dr. Haygarth, ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... cases we generally found it better to turn aside ourselves than to insist upon our rights and compel the caravan to leave the road. The hills were sandy and desolate, and I could not see any special charm in the landscape. I employed much of the day in sleeping, which may possibly account for the lack of ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... on a low crimson chair, as antique in its pattern as the owner of the mansion, sat a maiden, who might have passed her seventeenth summer. She was not beautiful, and yet her face had a peculiar charm, which appealed directly to the softer and kindlier emotions of the heart. Her eyes, large, gray and beautifully fringed with long, black lashes, reminded one of calm mountain lakes, into whose very depths the light of sun and stars shine down, until they beam with tender sweetness, and inward ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey

... untiring energy, and love to all! What a joy to have had such a father! To be the son of such a man is ground for honest pride. The pleasure of having known him, the honor of having been in social relations with him, will always give a charm to my life. I cherish among my most precious recollections the pleasant words he has so often spoken to me. I can see him while I write, as vividly as though he were with me now; and never can his benign ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... superiority of manners in all classes is very striking. One rarely meets a man on a Virginia road who does not raise or touch his hat, and this not in a servile way either, but simply as politeness. The bearing of the men toward each other generally, too, has the ineffable charm, which Northern manners are so apt to want, of indicating a recognition of the fact that even if you are no better than any other man, you are different, and that your peculiarities are respectable, and that you ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... better adapted to tragedy than rhymed alexandrines, but then the French language does not admit of blank verse, and to write tragedies in prose, unless they be tragedies in modern life, would deprive them of all charm; but after all I find the harmonious pomp and to use a phrase of Pope's "The long majestic march and energy divine" of the French alexandrine, very pleasing to the ear. I am sure that the French poets ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... he opened his eyes with the sun, and went with a good heart to his lessons, which for the first time he found dull, and the instant they were over he crept across the floor, undid the shabby little bundle, climbed on a chair, and thence to the table so as to unbar the skylight; said his magic charm, and was away out of the window ...
— The Little Lame Prince - Rewritten for Young Readers by Margaret Waters • Dinah Maria Mulock

... shaken off the chill of the German Dreadnaughts at Kiel, crosses the Baltic to the Danish Islands—a change from the dread portents of war to smiling peace. There can be nothing more pastoral and restful than the Seeland landscape as framed in a car window; yet he misses its chief charm whom its folk-lore escapes—the countless legends that cling to field and forest from days long gone. The guide-book gives scarce a hint of them; but turn from its page and they meet you at every step, hail you from every homestead, every copse. Nor is their story always of peace. ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... as they successively appeared, by his own smiles in answer. Yet this was the actual state of the case; and the little man's soul was uplifted by the thought that here was a fresh proof, and a very pleasant one, of how irresistible were his personal appearance and his personal charm of manner when arrayed in battery against any ...
— A Border Ruffian - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier

... Kent's charm of manhood, all the memories of their childhood together, of his boyhood love for her and her baby sister, spoke together to win her to his desires. And after all, what could matter so much to her as ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... ladies concentrated in the person of one perfect woman would have had no witchery for the banker. His heart was dead. He had given all the truth, all the passion of which his nature was capable, to the one woman who had possessed the power to charm him. ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... Fotheringhay with the ill-fated Mary Queen of Scots, the beauties of Peterborough Cathedral, the splendid old Tudor house of Deene (the home of the Earls of Cardigan), the legends of King John concerning King's Cliffe, the gaunt splendour of ruined Kirby, and the old-world charm of Apethorpe. All these, and many others, had great attraction for her. She read them up in books she ordered from London, and then visited the old places with all the enthusiasm of ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux

... hurried ilex woods, and the sea-wind spares them and breaks upon the mountain. But the garden also is his, and his wild warm days have filled it with orange-trees and roses, and have given all the abundant charm to its gay neglect, to its grass-grown terraces, and to all its lapsed, forsaken, ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell

... Louis, and the young fortune-hunters started up the river in good spirits. It was only the second time either of them had been upon a Mississippi steamboat, and nearly everything they saw had the charm of novelty. Col. Sellers was at the ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... women of adventurous life. So this education, and the consequent asperities of character, which would have been softened down in a higher social sphere, could only serve to make her ridiculous at Angouleme so soon as her adorers should cease to worship eccentricities that charm only in youth. ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... that she is very young, a mere girl and make allowances. She is all interest, eagerness, vivacity, the world is to her a charm, a wonder, a mystery, a joy; she can't speak for delight when she finds a new flower, she must pet it and caress it and smell it and talk to it, and pour out endearing names upon it. And she is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the ministry, in 1889, I took up, with a great deal of zeal, the study of the poet Browning. I had already yielded to the charm of Ruskin—whom I personally knew—and Carlyle, but Browning opened up a new world of elevated thought to me, in which I am still a happy dweller. In seeking a new vocation I naturally gravitated towards several lines of thought and study, all of which have influenced ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... winning, drawn along at times by chivalrous or mystical sentiments and enthusiasms, at other times under the dominion of Oriental tastes and passions. No one could be more capable of being influenced by the charm of a superior genius and an extraordinary destiny, and the personal ascendancy of a man who knew at once how to ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... to die while his love was undiminished. Sometimes they made short excursions, for the disturbed state of the country forbade them to wander far from the castle, through the sunny woods, and along the glassy sea, which make the charm of that delicious scenery; and that mixture of the savage with the tender, the wild escort, the tent in some green glade in the woods at noon, the lute and voice of Adeline, with the fierce soldiers grouped and listening at the distance, might have well ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton



Words linked to "Charm" :   oral communication, fetish, voodoo, work, mesmerise, persuade, hex, language, spoken communication, spell, siren call, command, hoodoo, enchant, attract, flavor, conjuration, high energy physics, talisman, witch, jinx, attractiveness, high-energy physics, siren song, incantation, flavour, particle physics, juju, magnetize, hold, magnetise, control, winsomeness, fetich, spellbind, speech, protect, mesmerize, curse, glamour, whammy, voice communication, speech communication, amulet, spoken language, object, physical object, tempt



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