"Gentle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... artless man, of simple understanding, fearing God above all things, then robbers, next to that of nobles, and more than all, a disturbance. Although if he had two hands, he never did more than one thing at a time. His voice was as gentle as that of a bridegroom before marriage. Although the clergy, the military, and others gave him no reputation for knowledge, he knew well his mother's Latin, and spoke it correctly without waiting to be asked. Latterly the Parisians had taught him to walk uprightly, not to beat the bush ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... was a cruel-hearted man, and in his anger he could have struck him. But now, after the affair with Willie Logan and the talk about Uncle Matthew, and remembering, too, that Uncle William was always very gentle with Uncle Matthew, even though his words were sometimes rough, he felt that his heart had ample room inside it for this rough, bearded man who made so few demands on the affection of his family, ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... Margaret herself installed as nurse, for as Dr. Forbes had feared, he had found it impossible to obtain anyone else. Margaret had a natural gift for nursing, and she had had a good deal of experience in sick rooms. She was skilful, gentle and composed, and Dr. Forbes nodded his head with ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... character. He was now in his third year of residence, had won the pair-oar race, and had pulled seven in the great yearly match with Cambridge, and by constant hard work had managed to carry the St. Ambrose boat up to the fifth place on the river. He will be introduced to you, gentle reader, when the proper time comes; at present, we are only concerned with a bird's-eye view of the college, that you may feel more or less at home in it. The boating set was not so separate or marked as the reading set, melting on one side into, and keeping up more or less connexion with, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... close-hauled, and render her what is termed weatherly. On the present occasion, there could scarcely be said to be anything deserving the name of wind, though Ghita felt her cheek, which was warmed with the rich blood of her country, fanned by an air so gentle that occasionally it blew aside tresses that seemed to vie with the floss silk of her native land. Had the natural ringlets been less light, however, so gentle a respiration of the sea air could scarcely have disturbed them. But the lugger had her lightest ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... friends know not which they should do—praise him or condole with him. "Isn't it good of So-and-so?" we constantly hear; "he has gone into politics." And with the approval is mixed a kindly, if contemptuous, sorrow. The truth is, that the young American of gentle birth and leisured ease hates to soil his hands with public affairs. His ambition does not drive him, as it drives his English cousin, into Parliament. He prefers to pursue culture in the capitals of Europe, or to urge an automobile at a furious pace across the ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... in truth as glorious a prospect as could greet the eye. A magnificent sheet of water lay before us in one unbroken expanse, resembling a smooth translucent lake. Its gentle repose harmonized exquisitely with the slender motionless boughs of the drooping gums, palms, and acacias, that clustered on the banks, and dipped their feathery foliage in the limpid stream, that like a polished mirror bore, within its bosom, the image of the graceful vegetation by which it was ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... furnish decent lining, My own and others' bays I'm twining— So, gentle Thurlow, throw me ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... leaves us the angels will hear: "Just half of that, please." When with joys for the gentle and brave they appear: "Just half of that, please." And for fear they may think she is selfish up there, Or is taking what may be a young angel's share, She will say with the loveliest smile she can wear: ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... intentionally. The bulldog, the stern, relentless setting of the will, had gone, he knew not whither. And there had come in its place, as he looked in that face, a something which he did not understand. You did not, gentle reader, the first time it ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... brooded over this, barely noticing what passed in our company for hours—nay, not until the next day when, towards evening, the cry arose round me that we were within sight of Cahors. Yes, there it lay below us, in its shallow basin, surrounded by gentle hills. The domes of the cathedral, the towers of the Vallandre Bridge, the bend of the Lot, where its stream embraces the town—I knew them all. Our long journey ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... at her lady friend, and a suggestive exclamation of "Horrors!"—and the heavy satchel. These were placed where Jessie could see them and feel that they were safe, and then she was able to answer a few questions and to look up trustfully into the gentle face that was nestled every little while to hers, and to sip the cup of milk that Ralph fetched from the hotel. She had certainly fallen into the hands of persons ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... meant by 'moderate.' 'Very true.' And is our lawgiver to have no preamble or interpretation of his laws, never offering a word of advice to his subjects, after the manner of some doctors? For of doctors are there not two kinds? The one gentle and the other rough, doctors who are freemen and learn themselves and teach their pupils scientifically, and doctor's assistants who get their knowledge empirically by attending on their masters? 'Of course there are.' And did you ever observe that the gentlemen ...
— Laws • Plato
... Glen, who had fallen in the last charge with a flesh wound in the leg. Until he woke the next morning to find her sitting by his bedside, Harry thought he had been dreaming all the time that Rachel Bond had come to him, dressed in quaint country garb, and loosed with gentle, painless fingers the stiff, blood-encrusted bandage about his head, and replaced it with something that soothed and eased his ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... rodmer og baever And red'neth and shaketh, Og skjaelvende haever And trembling uptaketh Med undrende Aand With wondering sprite Udaf sorten Muld From the dingy mould, Med snehvide Haand, With hand snow-white, Det rode Guld. The ruddy gold. En sagte Torden A gentle thunder Dundrer; Pealeth; Hele Norden The whole North wonder ...
— The Gold Horns • Adam Gottlob Oehlenschlager
... eyelashes. Delirium had ceased, and the aching heart was still. That small, white hand, which had been held out tremblingly, to receive the blows of the harsh ferule, now lay lovingly folded within the other. Never again would tears flow from those gentle eyes, nor that bosom heave with sorrow. That sleep was the sleep ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... islands, but above all, the constant intermingling of land and water, seem more like a drawing of fairy land than a reality. There is nothing grand, nothing imposing, or calculated to excite any feeling bordering upon the awful, throughout the whole; but it is soft, gentle, and exquisitely pleasing. ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... to be kind to animals, just as their sisters were; yet, as they grew up, they forgot all about it,—at least, very many of them did; and they seemed to try who would do the most cruel thing. She sat trying to think of a plan to make her brother Herbert kind and gentle; and again it came into her mind how by her own hastiness she had made him angry just when he was doing everything to please her. "It was so very dreadful of him to hurt the poor blind mole," she said aloud; "I could not help speaking out; only I need ...
— Carry's Rose - or, the Magic of Kindness. A Tale for the Young • Mrs. George Cupples
... fear any harm coming to me through him. Ben showed a much better disposition than I ever did. He was very gentle in his manners, always inclined to yield to me in everything, giving me my own way to an extent which unfortunately fostered my tendency to be domineering and overbearing. It was this trait in my character which led to the incident I am about ...
— Harper's Young People, July 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... than any other poet. Wordsworth's own character, as we have already observed, was dominated by a certain contentment, a sort of naturally religious placidity, not often found in union with a poetic sensibility so [97] active as his; and this gentle sense of well-being was favourable to the quiet, habitual observation of the inanimate, or imperfectly animate, world. His life of eighty placid years was almost without what, with most human beings, count for incidents. His flight from the active ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... ages tending the light that burned, Tortured and trodden therefore, spat on and slain and spurned; Branded for others' vices, robbed of your rightful fame, Clinging to Truth in a truthless land in the name of the ancient Name; Generous, courteous, gentle, patient under the yoke, Decent (hemmed in a harem land ye were ever a one-wife folk); Royal and brave and ancient—haply an hour has struck When the new fad-fangled peoples shall weary of raking muck, And turning ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... for so many curious inventions of men have come into use that the wonders of Fairyland are somewhat tame beside them, and even the boys and girls can not be so easily interested or surprised as in the old days. So the sweet and gentle little immortals perform their tasks unseen and unknown, and live mostly in their own beautiful realms, where they are almost unthought of by ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... God more respect for the homage bestowed through a gentle animal than for the worship expressed by Cain's fruit? No; but the lamb was a more spiritual type of 541:12 even the human concept of Love than the herbs of ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... sorts of mercies, some more rough, some more tender. God can save a man, and yet have him a dreadful way to heaven! This the broken-hearted sees, and this the broken-hearted dreads, and therefore pleads for the tenderest sort of mercies; and here we read of his gentle dealing, and that he is very pitiful, and that he deals tenderly with his. But the reason of such expressions no man knows but he that is broken-hearted; he has his sores, his running sores, his ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... washed and bright. By late May a yellow tinge is creeping over the hills. This is followed by a golden June and a brown July and August. The hills are burned and dry. The fog comes in heavily, too; and normally this is the most disagreeable season of the year. September brings a day or two of gentle rain; and then a change, as sweet and mysterious as the breaking of spring in the East, passes over the hills. The green grows through the brown and the flowers begin to ...
— The City That Was - A Requiem of Old San Francisco • Will Irwin
... her as best he could, and began to examine her attentively as they conversed together. "She was," he said, "a woman naturally courageous and fearless; naturally gentle and good; not easily excited; clever and penetrating, seeing things very clearly in her mind, and expressing herself well and in few but careful words; easily finding a way out of a difficulty, and choosing her line of conduct in the most embarrassing circumstances; light-minded and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... doctor fiercely, and swept him from his contemplation of Cuckoo. No drowsy poppy-bed was Julian's. The shadowy spirit of sleep strove not to influence him. No opiates gave him peace. No veil of gentle forgetfulness descended upon him. He was a human being plunged in the deepest abyss of fate, beneath the range of the starlight and the gaze of other worlds. He was trembling, stretching out his feeble hands in the blackness for ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... sepulchral artists carefully avoided anything which might harrow the feelings. They represented the dead at their best, engaged in victorious warfare, or in athletic sports or in the happy family circle. A gentle air of melancholy could not be avoided; but there was nothing to shock, nothing to oppress the spirits. The deceased represented seemed still to share the occupations and pleasures of the living, not to be shut off ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... of mercy. She has ever been a sort of sister of charity. I confess that I have never been able wholly to understand her. At times she has even puzzled her mother, and a daughter is odd, indeed, when a mother cannot comprehend her. I am striving to be gentle with you, but I must tell you that you cannot marry her. I don't want to tell you to go, and yet it is better that this interview should ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... their knowledge of Latin and Greek made them either inefficient or hard? The weary, wounded soldier in the hospitals would testify that the kind hand of an educated and refined woman bathed his feverish temples, while her gentle voice breathed into his ear the glad tidings of a peace to be attained by repentance and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Delicacies were needed for the invalid soldiers, and were not to be bought ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... le petit mal, in epilepsy, seems to be intended, the patient 'stude as bereft of hir senssis'. {232b} Again, we have the official explanation of the second sight, and that is the spiritualistic explanation. The seer has a fairy 'control'. This mode of accounting for what 'gentle King Jamie' calls 'a sooth dreame, since they see it walking,' inspires the whole theory of Kirk (1691), but he sees no harm either in 'the phairie,' or in the persons whom the fairies control. In Kirk's own time we shall find another minister, Frazer of Tiree, explaining ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... at the Invalids' Hotel, I was too sick and fatigued to treat with civility the sweet-faced, lady-like housekeeper who received me, or the gentle nurses who tried so patiently and kindly to minister to ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... days, was starving in fact,—indeed, she died within a year, of the slow starvation of the tenements that parades in the mortality returns under a variety of scientific name which all mean the same thing,—she met her pastor's gentle chiding with the excuse: "Oh, your church has many that are poorer than I. I don't want to ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... Sunday, June 8, 1376, he closed a life which for years had been one sad scene of suffering. He was interred with due pomp in Canterbury Cathedral, his favorite suit of black armor being suspended over his tomb. Thus, scarcely past his prime, died "the valiant and gentle Prince of Wales, the flower of all chivalry in the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... angles run out, let the holes be situated, and let the breadth be reduced by one sixth; moreover, let the hole be longer than it is broad by the thickness of the bolt. After designing the scutula, let its outline be worked down to give it a gentle curvature. ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... England among the nations!' The voice rang out clear and fluting like a boy's. 'Her people how free and bold! Her laws how gentle and beneficent, her nobles how courteous and sweet in their communings together for the public weal! How thrice happy that land when peace is upon the earth! Her women how virtuous, her husbandmen how satiated, ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... Cecilia, who was too gentle or too politic to betray the fact that she heard the interesting name of Picklebody for the first time, remarked in a tone as cheerful ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... is fair as Fields in Autumn seen, Her Temper gentle as the purling Stream: That's true; but then with those the rest conspire, Lighter she is than Air, and ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... the years of her hard endeavor. It was on the eve of her first day of teaching that his unusually affectionate attitude to her at the supper-table suddenly roused in her a passion of hot resentment such as her gentle ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... patient, obliging, a good friend, and a moderate enemy, loving his country, but his King better; and on very good terms with him and Madame de Maintenon. His mind was limited and; like all persons of little wit and knowledge, he was obstinate and pig-headed— smiling affectedly with a gentle compassion on whoever opposed reasons to his, but utterly incapable of understanding them—consequently a dupe in friendship, in business, in everything; governed by all who could manage to win his admiration, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... And thou, gentle dame, who must bear to thy grief, For thy clan and thy country the cares of a Chief, Whom brief rolling moons in six changes have left Of thy husband, and father, and brethren bereft; To thine ear of affection how sad is the ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... relating to quadrupeds—and I foresaw the pleasure of observing the habits of these wild creatures. We should not, therefore, confine ourselves to making 'pets' of those animals that might merely serve us for food. We should embrace in our collection all that we could subject to our rule, whether gentle or fierce. In fact, it was our intention to establish a regular 'menagerie ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." Even the beasts of the field and the birds of the heaven had warmer welcome in this world than he in whose heart was the most gentle love that ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... to the affrighted South; 335 Spreads o'er the shuddering Line his shadowy limbs, And Frost and Famine follow as he swims.— SYLPHS! round his cloud-built couch your bands array, And mould the Monster to your gentle sway; Charm with soft tones, with tender touches check, 340 Bend to your golden yoke his willing neck, With silver curb his yielding teeth restrain, And give to KIRWAN'S hand the silken rein. —Pleased shall the Sage, the dragon-wings between, Bend o'er discordant climes his eye serene, ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... the gentle Bella has been unusually beastly today to Jim, and—I believe she's jealous of you, Kit. Jim followed her up to the roof before dinner with a box of flowers, and she tossed them over the parapet. She said, I believe, ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand, neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing with powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the Government to support them, conventional rules of intercourse, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... neglect. Devotion to the memory of ancestors is the mainspring of all virtues. No one who discharges his duty to them will ever be disrespectful to the gods or to his living parents. Such a man also will be faithful to his prince, loyal to his friends, and kind and gentle to his wife and children. For the essence of this devotion is ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... administrative bodies and the police, still in their infancy, seem to act only in fear and trembling. . . . So far, in all crimes, they are more concerned with extenuating the facts, than in punishing the offense. The result is that the guilty have had no other restraint on them than a few gentle phrases like this: Dear brothers and friends, you are in the wrong, be careful," etc.—Ibid. , F7, 3229. Letter of the Directory of the Department of Marne, July 13, 1791. (Searches by the National Guard in chateaux and the disarming of formerly privileged persons.) "None of our injunctions ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... torments in the accompanying exorcisms. All forms of torture were employed, and in the great cities of Europe, "witch towers," where witches and demoniacs were tortured, and "fool towers," where the more gentle lunatics were imprisoned, may still be seen. The treatment of the insane in the Middle Ages is one of the darkest blots ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... Come gentle Spring, etherial mildness come, And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud, While music wakes around, veil'd in a show'r Of shadowing roses, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... Bordeaux was more affectionately remembered in connexion with its women than its wine. We left it with regret, and the more youthful and imaginative amongst us said that we were wafted across the Channel by the gentle sighs of the ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... Milly Boon, and, after his first amazement at her beauty and her lovely voice, and beseeching eyes, he studied her character. And, after due thought, he came to the conclusion that, though in his opinion a very beautiful nature belonged to Milly, and she was not only lovely, but of a gracious and gentle spirit, yet he couldn't feel she was built to get the whip-hand of a man like ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... absence, one doubts whether there be any truth in what poets have told about the splendor of an American autumn; but when this charm is added, one feels that the effect is beyond description. As I beheld it to-day, there was nothing dazzling; it was gentle and mild, though brilliant and diversified, and had a most quiet and pensive influence. And yet there were some trees that seemed really made of sunshine, and others were of a sunny red, and the whole picture was painted with but little relief of darksome hues,—only ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... singular that Mary Rogers, leaning back comfortably in the buggy, also accepted these heart-rending revelations with comfortably knitted brows and luxuriously contented concern. If she found it difficult to recognize in the picture just drawn by Susy the quiet, gentle, and sadly reserved youth she had known, she said nothing. After a silence, lazily watching the distant wheeling ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... of nature, thus unacquainted with toil and danger, felicity must have fixed her residence; they must know only the changes of more vivid or more gentle joys: their life must always move either to the slow or sprightly melody of the lyre of gladness; they can never assemble but to pleasure, or ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... my hand on, and that was an old mare, which I supposed to be the mother of all the rest; and I knew that I could walk faster than she could travel. She had a bell on and was very thin in flesh; she looked gentle and walked on three legs only. The young horses pranced and galloped off. I was not able to get near them, and the old mare being of no use to me, I left them all. After fixing my eyes on the north star I pursued my journey, holding ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... Here the gentle and bantering tones ceased, for he had reached the top of the stair. But in another moment I heard them again as he passed from room to room, pausing here and pausing there, till suddenly he gave ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... was giddy, careless, selfish, and incapable in practical matters, she was not accountable for her sins; the responsibility is divided between the firm of Adolphus and Company of Manheim and Baron d'Aldrigger with his blind love for his wife. The Baroness was a gentle as a lamb; she had a soft heart that was very readily moved; unluckily, the emotion never lasted long, but it was all the more ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... to suspect that poor little modest gentle child, who supports her sick mother by her own industry! Oh! ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... hose, as ready to fight as to dance or to make a poem to a fair lady's eyebrow. Helmets of every age, with visors behind which the knights of old had looked grimly as they charged down the lists at "gentle and joyous passages of arms." Horse-armour of amazing weight—"I always pictured those old knights prancing out on a thirteen-stone hack, but you'd want a Suffolk Punch to carry that ironmongery!" said Wally. So through ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... in her gentle, refined tones, "I am liable to fall as well as others, and may astonish both you and myself some day ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... that other sect, that sets up an express profession of scornful superiority—[The Stoics.]—: but when even in that sect, reputed the most quiet and gentle, we hear these ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... testifies that he told Miss Anthony before election that she had a right to vote, and this after a careful examination of the question, the whole subject assumes new importance, and Mr. Selden at once becomes the central object of adoration by all the gentle believers in woman's right to the ballot. And when the same able lawyer advocates the cause of Miss Anthony in the United States Courts, there is abundant reason why other men, both lay and legal, should put themselves in an attitude, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... snipe, that were greatly relished. The wind continuing good, the doctor resolved to keep on during the night, the moon, still nearly at the full, illumining it with her radiance. The Victoria ascended to a height of five hundred feet, and, during her nocturnal trip of about sixty miles, the gentle slumbers of an infant would not have been disturbed by ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... No borrowed glories of Muse or Sage; But an offering simple and pure we bring, And a wreath of wild roses around it fling; Not culled from the shades of enamelled bowers, But watered by love's own gentle showers. In tones of affection we here would speak; To waken an echo of love we seek; We mingle our tears for the early dead, To the land of spirits before us fled. While a moral we humbly would here entwine With the flowers we lay on affection's shrine, We pray that ...
— Our Gift • Teachers of the School Street Universalist Sunday School, Boston
... died. Garrison and Stanton meet and only exchange civilities. They, too, have become completely alienated, and so on down the long list of the "goodliest fellowship ... whereof this land holds record." To a sweet and gentle spirit like Samuel J. May, the acrimony and scenes of strife among his old associates was unspeakably painful. Writing to Garrison from South Scituate, May 1, 1839, he touches thus upon this head: "I ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... the time in a placid, brook-like manner while he felt under the wagon-seat for a second and much smaller traveling-bag. The young man possessed himself of this after having been refused the first by a gentle motion of the owner's hand. The visitor accepted his signal of invitation, and followed him ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... Letty pulled so piteously at his heart that he fairly melted in tenderness toward her. Everything he knew as appeal was summed up in her soft voice, her gentle manner, her humility, her unquestioning faith in himself. No one had ever had faith in him before. To Barbe he was a booby when he was not a baby. To Letty he was a hero, strong, wise, commanding. It wasn't ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... being over, king Duryodhana invited him of Vrishni's race—that foremost of victors—to eat at his house. Kesava, however did not accept the invitation. The Kuru king Duryodhana seated in the midst of the Kurus, in a gentle voice but with deception lurking behind his words, eyeing Karna, and addressing Kesava, then said, 'Why, O Janardana, dost thou not accept the diverse kinds of viands and drinks, robes and beds that have all been prepared and kept ready for thee? Thou hast granted aid ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... found, with Mrs. Chesterton at the Biltmore, this big, gentle, leonine man of letters six feet of him and 200 odd lbs. There is a delightful story of how an American, driving with him through London, remarked "Everyone seems to ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the same age as her husband, with a face extraordinarily filled with deep wrinkles, and pale blue eyes. Her gray hair was arranged in ringlets according to the fashion of her youth. She wore a black dress, and her only ornament was a gold chain, from which hung a cross. She had a shy manner and a gentle voice. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... conjunction with each other, as if they were the same thing. That done, every other measure grows mild. To territorialize the whole South, and place a satrap over every parish and county of it—saying no word for freedom—would be a gentle and conciliating procedure compared with the most innocent utterance of a mere sentiment in behalf of emancipation and the elevation of the negro to the status of a man. Why, then, strain at a gnat when we have already swallowed a camel? If we mean anything by Emancipation Proclamations, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... pleasing. He continued to visit her every day, till at length she began to think he was not so terrible as she once thought him. One day when they were seated together the Lion took hold of her hand, and said in a gentle voice: "Beauty, will you marry me?" She hastily withdrew her hand, but made no reply; at which the Lion sighed deeply and withdrew. On his next visit he appeared sorrowful and dejected, but said nothing. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... as strong folk are by the gentle ones, the worthy baron winked at little things which did not please him, and went so far as to ask that noble spark to flash upon the natives of benighted Devon. Lord Auberley was glad enough to retire for a season, both for other ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... Your words alarm me! Gentle lads, behold, I'll be your nurse until you're two years old. Then if you have not found your pa or ma, I will adopt you. ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... his powers are incomparably greater than those of other men; and instead of the latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have mutually lent each other strength;" but "in social life no human being can be more gentle, patient, and unassuming. He is cheerful, frank, and witty. His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication; men are held by it as by ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... request, Mr. Anagnos had this story embossed, and I read it again and again, until I almost knew it by heart; and all through my childhood "Little Lord Fauntleroy" was my sweet and gentle companion. I have given these details at the risk of being tedious, because they are in such vivid contrast with my vague, mutable and ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... young German girl, aged fifteen or sixteen or thereabouts who was married to a gentle gallant, and who complained that her husband had too small an organ for her liking, because she had seen a young ass of only six months old which had a bigger instrument than her husband, who was 24 ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... that followed so hunted was he by his love of her that that one hour of peace in the Sunday morning was all he dared give himself with her. And in her gentle trustfulness it was not hard to make his excuses, for the Monday morning brought the strenuosity in the career of David Kildare to ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... expression of pain—gave to her features a strange character in which pride and pain seemed to contend for the mastery. There was nothing left of the elasticity of youth in that aged woman of thirty—nothing but her tall, upright figure, her brilliant eyes, and her voice, which was always as gentle and as sweet as a dream of childhood. She often walked up and down for hours in this very room, with her head hanging down, and I, an unthinking child, ran happily along by her side, never aware that my mother was sad, ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... shoulder-belt, kissed the knights on the left cheek; and William the Conqueror is said to have made use of the blow in conferring the honour of knighthood on his son Henry. At first it was given with the naked fist, a veritable box on the ear, but for this was substituted a gentle stroke with the flat of the sword on the side of the neck, or on either shoulder as well. In Great Britain the sovereign, in conferring knighthood, still employs this ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... tell you how delighted we are with her. She is the loveliest girl I ever saw, so gentle, so nicely mannered, so soft-voiced, and so winning—I feel myself like a peasant beside her. The least thing she says—her laugh, her slightest gesture, the way she moves about the room, with a sort of swinging grace, which I ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... doubtfulness of a matter which I had privately pictured to myself as so feasible. Frau Hofrath Boehme invited me shortly afterwards. I found her alone. She was no longer young, and had very delicate health; was gentle and tender to an infinite degree; and formed a decided contrast to her husband, whose good nature was even blustering. She spoke of the conversation her husband had lately had with me, and once more placed the subject before me, in all ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the woman whispered, very low, still soothing his arm with her hand and patting his cheek softly from time to time with a gentle, caressing motion. "Tell me where does that live? Who holds it in charge? Where is Tu-Kila-Kila's great spirit laid by in safety? I know it is in the tree; but where and in what ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... Tityus—what is a bird more or less on a body that covers nine acres? He found the vultures a gentle stimulant to the liver without which it would ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... vivre solitaire, occupe d'une oeuvre que Dieu benit, et de protester par mon silence, et de temps en temps par mes paroles, contre la plus grande insolence qui se soit encore autorisee au nom de Jesus-Christ." Gratry was a man of more gentle nature, but his tone is the same: "Esprits faux ou nuls, consciences intellectuelles faussees par l'habitude de l'apologie sans franchise: partemque ejus cum hypocritis ponet.—Cette ecole est bien en verite une ecole de mensonge.—C'est cette ecole qui est depuis des siecles, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... lands with justest sway; and he shall rule them and him shall the lieges obey."; Then he awoke from his dream gladdened by the good tidings he had seen, and after a few days, Death smote him, and because of his dying great grief fell on the people of Baghdad, and simple and gentle mourned for him. But Time passed over him, as though he had never been[FN63] and Kanmakan's estate was changed; for the people of Baghdad set him aside and put him and his family in a place apart. Now when his mother saw this, she fell into ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... about her baby, and how he was to be managed, with a pretty humility which made her irresistible. They all felt an individual interest thenceforward in the heir of the Randolphs, as if they had some personal concern in him; and Lady Randolph's gentle accost, and the pretty blush upon her cheeks, and her way of speaking to them all, "as if they were just as good as she was," had a wonderful effect. When she received him in the hotel which was the headquarters ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... in place of rigidity; and with the same strength as the super-man, but with gentleness and consideration in proportion to the strength. We do not want a man of wood; and what we do want is not so much a super-man as a gentle-man—a man of courtesy and grace as ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... only for a moment, though, and then he put his great gentle arms about me, and kissed me on the lips, and said, silently but oh, so eloquently, "Good-bye darling, and God ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... But, gentle as was the wheelwright's act, it roused the injured man, who seemed to be driven into a fit of fury by the pain he suffered, and he burst into a torrent of bad language against Hickathrift and the two boys, which he kept up till he had been ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... the summer afternoon the Red House was taking its siesta. There was a lazy murmur of bees in the flower-borders, a gentle cooing of pigeons in the tops of the elms. From distant lawns came the whir of a mowing-machine, that most restful of all country sounds; making ease the sweeter in that it is ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... one's self these two women, both of whom were over sixty years of age. Madame Magloire small, plump, vivacious; Mademoiselle Baptistine gentle, slender, frail, somewhat taller than her brother, dressed in a gown of puce-colored silk, of the fashion of 1806, which she had purchased at that date in Paris, and which had lasted ever since. To borrow vulgar phrases, which possess the merit of giving utterance in a single ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... chase! The panther shrunk back at the sight of his strength! His enemies fell at his feet! He was brave and courageous in war! As the fawn was harmless: his friendship was ardent: his temper was gentle: his pity was great! Oh! our friend, our companion is dead! Our brother, your brother, alas! he is gone! But why do we grieve for his loss? In the strength of a warrior, undaunted he left us, to fight by the side of the Chiefs! His war-whoop was shrill! His rifle ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... bald-headed commercial-looking gentleman opposite to him, went on reading their newspapers as coolly as if the rocking of the carriage had been no more perilous than the lullaby motion of an infant's cradle, guided by a mother's gentle foot. ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... about five foot ten, very thin and active, and as strong as a buffalo. He had pale blue eyes, a face as gentle as a girl's, and a soft sleepy voice. From his present appearance it looked as if he had been living hard lately. His clothes were of the cut you might expect to get at Lobito Bay, he was as lean as a rake, deeply browned with the sun, and there was a lot of grey ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... Guido] My gentle Lord, you see that I was right My sword is better tempered, finer steel, But let us ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... One with a gentle scholar's face answered: "That may be precisely the trouble, my dear. Three thousand of us, counting children, totally isolated from the human mainstream. Can we hope to build a civilization? ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson
... angry he could become Menthu, the war god. If he were inclined to be gentle, he could shrink to the dimensions of Horus, child-god of the Rising Sun. If he were weary, he could rest as the old god Tum, of the Setting Sun. Probably gods and goddesses never enjoyed themselves ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... led into an area of thick undergrowth covering the side of a gentle slope where the water tumbled down in little falls. He must be approaching very near to the source, he thought, for the stream was becoming a mere trickle, picking its way around rocky obstacles in a very jungle of ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... rosy face of a strapping tavern wench would not have startled him, but he was not gazing upon a bouncing serving maid or the hoydenish daughter of a prosperous innkeeper. He beheld a creature in all the gentle bloom of highbred beauty—tall, well-formed, and radiating a sort of natural elegance, with a fine-shaped, expressive face, to which great speaking eyes and a mouth half pensive, half smiling, lent an air of rare distinction. These ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... Now, gentle reader, do not censure him, this George Addison, lover, for he straightway sent them back to her? No, not that—but this: He deliberately—although it gave him a pang—arranged to dispose of them all as Christmas gifts to his friends and relatives. It was after this fashion: The hat-mark, ...
— A Few Short Sketches • Douglass Sherley
... Mrs. Leland said in her sweet, gentle tones. "You have had most unpleasant weather for your journey, Laura, so that it is not to be wondered at that you are exhausted. You must have some refreshment at once," and with the last word she hastened away in ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... King, while Marie de Medicis, who was present, wept with the heart-broken wife, and warmly seconded her petition, but the monarch, who probably feared the result of such an act of mercy, having raised her from her knees with a gentle kindness which made her tears flow afresh, led her to the side of the Queen, upon whose arm he placed his hand as he said firmly: "Deeply, Madame, do I pity you, and sympathize in your suffering, but were I to grant what you ask, I must necessarily admit my wife to ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... a letter from Erasmus in his hands that Hans Holbein stood before the aged Archbishop, still young as when he sketched himself at Basel with the fair, frank, manly face, the sweet gentle mouth, the heavy red cap flinging its shade over the mobile, melancholy brow. But it was more than the "seventy years" that he has so carefully noted above it that the artist saw in the Primate's ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... sat with his mother at the window. Together they watched the shadows gather—the hills and the city and the river dissolve: the whole broad world turn to points of light, twinkling, flashing, darting, in the black, voiceless gulf. Nor would she fail to watch the night come, whether in gentle weather or whipping rain: but there would sit, the boy in her arms, held close to her breast, her hand straying restlessly over his small body, intimately ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... influence. So young, and so ingenuous as she is still, in spite of the surroundings she must have known, she is capable of becoming a noble woman. Perhaps, if she turns out to be really as sweet and gentle ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the peace commissioners between Henry II and Philip II, and at this time he came into possession of that secret which changed his life. Here ends the youth of William of Nassau. Let us get this man more clearly in the eye. He was above middle height, spare, sinewy; dark in complexion; had gentle brown eyes, auburn hair and beard; face thin, nose aquiline; head small, but well formed; his hair luxuriant, his beard trimmed to a point; about his neck the superb collar of the Golden Fleece. He is married, and his home ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... letter, dear Charles!" Her emotion increased as her thoughts recurred to the heartless paragraph concerning her brother with which the letter concluded. "I could have overlooked everything but that," said she, unwittingly. With gentle force he succeeded in getting hold of the painfully ridiculous and contemptible effusion. He attempted faintly to smile several times as ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... had been a failure, and he knew it. On going back to the sacristy the Reverend Golightly congratulated him with a simper and a vapid smile. The canon was more honest but more vain. He mingled lofty advice with gentle reproof. Mr. Storm had taken his task too lightly. Better if he had written his sermon and read it. Whatever might serve for the country, congregations in London—at All Saints' especially—expected culture ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... fatly. "That ain't no decline," she said, "you take it from me. What Miss Betty wants is a young man. It is but nature after all, and what we must all come to, gentle or simple. Give her a young man to walk out with and you'll see the difference. Decline indeed! A young man's what she wants. And if I know anything of gells and their ways she'll get one, no matter how close the old ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... cry for food, I will feed it with copious dews; If it wish to sleep, I will rock its cradle with a gentle breeze." ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... instructions in art from his father, his later teaching probably from Matthew Grunewald. In some instances he attained to the expression of dignity, earnestness and feeling, but generally his characteristics are a naive and childlike cheerfulness and a gentle and almost timid grace. The impression produced by his style of representation reminds one of the "Volksbuecher" and "Volkslieder." Many of his church pictures have a very peculiar significance: in these he stands forth properly speaking as the painter of the Reformation. Intimate both with ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... supplying us with fuel. Four miles from the village is a point of land on the right, where the hills become lower, but are still thickly timbered. The river is now about two miles wide, the current smooth and gentle, and the effect of the tide has been sensible since leaving the rapid. Six miles lower is a rock rising from the middle of the river to the height of one hundred feet, and about eighty yards at its base. We continued six miles further, and halted for the night under a high projecting rock on the ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... people because of their good or bad qualities. This is the origin of names like Wise, Gay, Hardy, Friend, Truman, Makepeace, Sweet, etc. The people who have these names may well believe that the first of their ancestors who bore them was of a gentle and amiable disposition. Names like Proud, Proudfoot, Proudman, Paillard (French for "lie-a-bed") show that the first people who had them were not so well liked, and were ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... right bank of the Rhine at an early period, and afterwards were found on the other side. (Expect the Ubii were a tribe; but make sure of this, as they might be something in the fossil line.) Cologne was the cradle of German art. Talk about art and the old masters. Treat them in a kindly and gentle spirit. They are dead now. Saint Ursula was murdered at Cologne, with eleven thousand virgin attendants. There must have been quite a party of them. Draw powerful and pathetic imaginary picture of the slaughter. (N.B.—Find out who murdered them all.) Say something about the Emperor Maximilian. ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... will benefit by the spoils of antiquity. And if, upon mature deliberation we decree that Mr. Wesley's 'Journal,' and his apology for the Association's 'Appeal,' should share the same fate with the old buckrams, we will procure them a gentle fall. After having rocked ourselves in the large and hospitable cradle of the Free Press, where the peer and the commoner, the priest and the alderman, the friar and the swaddler,[2] can stretch themselves at full length, provided they be not too churlish, let us laugh at those who breed useless ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous |
