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More "Nicety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eighteen miles long and the greatest stretch of pebbles in Europe, ranging from large and irregular lumps at Portland to small polished stones at the western extremity. It is said that a local seafarer landing on the beach in a fog can tell his whereabouts to a nicety by handling the shingle. For about half the distance, that is to Abbotsbury, the Fleet makes a brackish ditch on the landward side. Behind this barrier is a country of low hills and quite out-of-the-world hamlets seldom visited or visiting. Chickerell, the nearest ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... naturally, we all looked forward to with lively interest. It was an eclipse of the sun. During the night Hansen had made a calculation that the eclipse would begin at 12.56 o'clock. It was important for us to be able to get a good observation, as we should thus be able to regulate our chronometers to a nicety. In order to make everything sure, we set up our instruments a couple of hours beforehand, and commenced to observe. We used the large telescope and our large theodolite. Hansen, Johansen, and myself took it by turns to sit for five minutes each at the instruments, watching the rim of the sun, ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... with a clean cloth of the finest of homespun, and everything set out with the same nicety as if the meal had been spread in the dining-room. The old lady, who had sought to please her son by putting on her best cap for the occasion, but who had in truth forgot what day it was until reminded by Grizzie, sat already at the ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... define lineaments; I diffuse about their outline a haze of warm, light half-tints, so that I defy any one to place a finger on the exact spot where the parts join the groundwork of the picture. If seen near by this sort of work has a woolly effect, and is wanting in nicety and precision; but go a few steps off and the parts fall into place; they take their proper form and detach themselves,—the body turns, the limbs stand out, we feel the ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... There is a laughable tale which expresses the state of Parliament with singular nicety. The Recorder was reading his comments on the trial, on the share the Devil might have had therein, when a loud noise was heard. A black man fell down the chimney. In their fright they all ran away, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... nicety," answered the voice of Harcourt, as he threw himself from the saddle. "Sound the stable call, bugler. Dismount your prisoner, sergeant, and bring him in," he ordered; and then continued to the host: "We had the tavern surrounded, Mr. Meredith, ere they so much as knew, bagged ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... was not without company more pleasing to him than any mortal's could be; and what made this conjecture seem the more reasonable was, that if he were left ever so dirty, the woman at her return saw him with a clean face, and his hair combed with the utmost exactness and nicety."[76] Luther tells us that he saw and touched at Dessau a changed child which was twelve years of age. The account he gives of the child is that "he had his eyes and all members like another child; he ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... eyes were heavy and his voice that of one driving himself to the limit of his strength, was certainly not intoxicated; for in that matter, Charles the footman knew and trusted the nicety of his own judgment. But the condition of the dress, the cut cheek-bone, the puffy eye above it, the dirty hands with raw knuckles, and the pockets grotesquely bulging, made a picture so painfully in contrast with the house and its ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... gravely, in a tone which implied that, had he not given this nicety the benefit of his liberal consideration, the intruder would never have penetrated so far. "Since that is agreed, may I ask you to explain your business ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... doesn't come to," Rawdon said to his little wife as they sat together in the snug little Brompton lodgings. She had been trying the new piano all the morning. The new gloves fitted her to a nicety. The new shawl became her wonderfully. The new rings glittered on her little hands, and the new watch ticked at ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... to your observatory a meridian instrument, I should advise a small one. Size is not so important as people generally suppose. Nicety and accuracy are what is needed in all scientific work; startling effects by large telescopes and high powers are ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... but it left him without either fancy or imagination. He also felt the want of that external refinement which a nature like Hawthorne's requires as a fulfilment of its internal condition. The lack of nicety in the housekeeping became continually more and more unpleasant to him. The expenditures at the end of the first year were largely in excess of the receipts; in fact the inmates had eaten up nearly ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... precious blood of the most precious victim. The housesteward of the amalgamated cats' and dogs' home was in attendance to convey these vessels when replenished to that beneficent institution. Quite an excellent repast consisting of rashers and eggs, fried steak and onions, done to a nicety, delicious hot breakfast rolls and invigorating tea had been considerately provided by the authorities for the consumption of the central figure of the tragedy who was in capital spirits when prepared for death and evinced the keenest interest in the proceedings from beginning ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... contrive it, never fear," said the captain. "I know to a nicety what you require. How say you now: if I was to carry him overseas to the plantations where they lack toilers of just such thews as his?" He lowered his voice and spoke with some slight hesitation, fearing that ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... considered of the greatest importance. The exquisite drapery of caryatids and canephorae, no English artist, a hundred years ago, thought fit to imitate; but the cornices which they supposed were measured inch by inch with the utmost nicety. Ingenious devices were invented for enabling the artificer to reproduce, by a series of complicated curves, the profile of a Doric capital, which probably owed its form to the steady hand and uncontrolled taste of the designer. To put faith in many of the theories propounded ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... ready, 'A' party? Then come on." Worming over the bank Samuel followed his subaltern into the darkness, and the raid had begun. Without a sound they approached the wire through which they had to cut, crawling as they had practised. Timed to a nicety they reached it and lay still, just as a couple of flashes from the rear proclaimed the gunners were beginning. Five—six—seven seconds, and with a shrill scream two shells whistled over their heads and burst fifty yards in ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... the soap thoroughly off with fresh water before drying with a towel. The hands unquestionably make the softest and most delicate means of bringing the lather completely into contact with the surface of the skin and, besides this, the amount of pressure to be applied can also be regulated to a nicety. The face and neck should always be carefully and thoroughly dried by means of a suitable towel. But for the ears something of a softer material, such as a clean handkerchief, is more convenient in following out the various hollows ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... the next room. From that moment his eyes never left the hand which held the weapon. He watched it for the first sign of unsteadiness, for the first evidence of weakness or abstraction. He measured the distance between them, weighed to a nicety every possibility, and bided his time. He wanted just the merest ghost of a chance of reaching that lean frame before the steel devil could spit death. What it all meant he did not know, but it was clear that this stranger was willing to sacrifice the girl to ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... long shot for my old rifle, which was only sighted up to one hundred yards; but I had used the piece for six years and knew to a nicety what it would do. Moreover—I am now an old man and may therefore perhaps venture to speak the simple truth without being suspected of boasting—I seem to have been endowed, from my earliest years, with the gift of straight shooting; it was just ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... and nicety of discernment were not allotted in a less proportion to Dryden than to Pope. The rectitude of Dryden's mind was sufficiently shown by the dismission of his poetical prejudices, and the rejection of unnatural thoughts and rugged numbers. But ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... Lazzi, are certain actions by which the performer breaks into the scene, to paint to the eye his emotions of panic or jocularity; but as such gestures are foreign to the business going on, the nicety of the art consists in not interrupting the scene, and connecting the Lazzi with it; thus ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... used more for ascertaining relatively large differences in altitudes than for purposes where any great nicety is required. For hills under 2000 ft., the following rule will give a very close approximation, and is easily remembered, because 55 degrees, the assumed temperature, agrees with 55 degrees, the significant figures in the 55,000 factor, while the fractional ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... hand. Mr. Blow might have married a South Sea Islander, and would have been none the worse as regarded his official duties. Mr. Blow did not want the services of a wife in discovering and reporting all the secrets of the Belgium iron trade. There was no intricacy in that, no nicety. There was much of what, in his lighter moments, Mr. Anderson called "sweat." He did not pretend to much capacity for such duties; but in his own peculiar walk he thought that he was great. But it was very fatiguing, and he was sure that a wife ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... Florence, and are got hither on the way to a pope. In three hours' time we have seen all the good contents of this city: 'tis old, and very snug, with very few inhabitants. You must not believe Mr. Addison about the wonderful Gothic nicety of the dome: the materials are richer, but the workmanship and taste not near so good as in several I have seen. We saw a college of the Jesuits, where there are taught to draw above fifty boys: they are disposed in long chambers in the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... anxious deliberation, are ultimately determined by the most minute and trifling circumstance, totally unconnected with the thing itself. The truth is, under such circumstances we are like a man weighing fine gold dust, who does it to such a nicety that a hair falling into the scale turns it ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... to a nicety, and I tell you again and again you are the only woman of the sort that I ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... obligation incumbent on the rowdy to assert his manhood in unprovoked combat with his fellows. And spreading through all grades of society, a similar usage prevails among the boys of the community. The boy usually knows to nicety, from day to day, how he and his associates grade in respect of relative fighting capacity; and in the community of boys there is ordinarily no secure basis of reputability for any one who, by exception, will not or ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... the Palace of Tell-el-Amarna, might lead us to expect among them the letters from distant governors or diplomatic correspondence. It is probable that some of them are contracts or public acts, which may give some actual formulae of Minoan legislation. There is, indeed, an atmosphere of legal nicety, worthy of the House of Minos, in the way in which these records were secured. The knots of string which, according to the ancient fashion, stood in the place of locks for the coffers containing the tablets, were rendered inviolable by the attachment of clay seals, impressed ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... make him out. Gentility, nobility, Royalty, would appeal to that donkey in vain to do what he does for a costermonger. Feed him with oats at the highest price, put an infant prince and princess in a pair of panniers on his back, adjust his delicate trappings to a nicety, take him to the softest slopes at Windsor, and try what pace you can get out of him. Then, starve him, harness him anyhow to a truck with a flat tray on it, and see him bowl from Whitechapel to Bayswater. There appears to be no particular private understanding ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... they leave out some medium,—some enchantment that should intervene, and keep the object from pressing so baldly and harshly upon the spectator's eyeballs. With the most lifelike reproduction, there is no illusion. I think if a semi-obscurity were thrown over the picture after finishing it to this nicety, it might bring it nearer to nature. I remember a heap of autumn leaves, every one of which seems to have been stiffened with gum and varnish, and then put carefully down into the stiffly disordered ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... {230} the top, in what proportion of time and swiftness it rises. He seems not to have considered, that in this Experiment, the times of the descent and assent are both taken and computed together; so that for this purpose, there needs not that nicety, he discourses of. ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... girl of sixteen. The only sign she showed of interest in her person, appeared in her hair and the covering of her neck. Of one of the many middle shades of brown, with a rippling tendency to curl in it, her hair was parted with nicety, and drawn back from her face into a net of its own colour, while her neckerchief was of blue silk, covering a very little white skin, but leaving bare a brown throat. She wore a blue print wrapper, nowise differing from that of a peasant woman, and a blue winsey petticoat, beyond which appeared ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... pieces with red hair, and found several of them which, when matched to the other pieces, formed the top of a man's head. She had also found the other eye and the ear by the time Omby Amby in a far corner discovered the mouth. When the face was thus completed, all the parts joined together with a nicety that ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... door the next morning is "more germain to the matter." How that knock often goes to the heart! We distinguish to a nicety the arrival of the Two-penny or the General Post. The summons of the latter is louder and heavier, as bringing news from a greater distance, and as, the longer it has been delayed, fraught with a deeper interest. We catch the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... but imbibed the teaching of all that surrounded them; they did but do in manhood what they had been unconsciously molded to do in boyhood, when they were set to Eton at ten with gold dressing-boxes to grace their Dame's tables, embryo Dukes for their cofags, and tastes that already knew to a nicety the worth of the champagnes at the Christopher. The old, old story—how it repeats itself! Boys grow up amid profuse prodigality, and are launched into a world where they can no more arrest themselves than the feather-weight can pull in the lightning ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... indeed I must observe, that in no other respect could I discern any defect in his vision; on the contrary, the force of his attention and perceptive quickness made him see and distinguish all manner of objects, whether of nature or of art, with a nicety that is rarely to be found. When he and I were travelling in the Highlands of Scotland, and I pointed out to him a mountain which I observed resembled a cone, he corrected my inaccuracy, by shewing me, that it was indeed ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... would be found to be quite safe. But by degrees he began to find that his wife's eyes had been sharper than his own. Other people coupled the signora's name with that of Mr. Arabin. The meagre little prebendary who lived in the close told him to a nicety how often Mr. Arabin had visited at Dr. Stanhope's, and how long he had remained on the occasion of each visit. He had asked after Mr. Arabin at the cathedral library, and an officious little vicar choral had offered to go and see whether he could be found ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... quite proud of being left to take care of itself, and, with its huge white sails bulged out, strutted off like a vain turkey. I had been standing by my father near the wheel-house all this while, observing things with that nicety of perception which belongs only to children; but now the dew began falling, and we went below ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... delight in waiting upon her, in judging to a nicety the true amount of sugar and cream, in drawing the little table just within ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... which, however, was fast closed this morning; and Nettie herself sat by the child's bedside—Nettie, all alert and vigorous, in the little room, which, homely as its aspect was, displayed even to the doctor's uninitiated glance a fastidious nicety of arrangement which made it harmonious with that little figure. Nettie was singing childish songs to solace the little invalid's retirement—the "fox that jumped up on a moonlight night," the "frog that would a-wooing ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... which he started the first time. He pauses, panting, but with the scowl of determination still more intense, and concentrated chiefly in his right eye. Very cautiously extending his dexter hand, that he may not destroy the nicety of his perpendicular balance, he points with a finger at the knob of the door, and suffers his stronger eye to fasten firmly upon the same object. A moment's balancing, to make sure, and then, in three irresistible, rushing strides, he goes through the glass doors with a burst, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... long-legged, lean, shy young man, of apparently twenty-three or twenty-four, with black hair and eyes and a swarthy complexion. From the jack-knife beside him, and the shavings scattered around, it was clear that he had been whittling out the piece of pine that he was adjusting, with some nicety, to a wooden model of some mechanical contrivance which stood upon the floor beside him. They were a strikingly handsome couple, ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... gradually lowered till all are removed, and the bough, bereft of its clothing, is laid on the ground. Then comes the difficult task of felling the trees between the rows of coffee, a work of great nicety, which is partly effected by the final stroke of the axe, and partly by hauling a rope attached to the top of the tree. When a tree cannot be felled between the rows, it may often be felled so as to fall into the fork of an adjacent tree, and there it may be ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... acquainted with this particular roadway I never fully comprehended the nicety and the force of the phrase "to drive in." I had heard people say that they had driven into such and such places, and I had wondered why they employed this figure of speech when, it seemed to me, it would have been more exact to say that ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... deal with details with little taper-finger touches of nicety, but she could not judge as well as he of generalities and the final scope of combinations. It was doubtful if Abigail ever ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Warburton's edition, "Critical Observations on Shakespeare" had been published by Mr. Upton, a man skilled in languages, and acquainted with books, but who seems to have had no great vigour of genius or nicety of taste. Many of his explanations are curious and useful, but he likewise, though he professed to oppose the licentious confidence of editors, and adhere to the old copies, is unable to restrain the rage of emendation, ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... honest at least in his desire for a permanent residence in an up-to-date penitentiary, for, even as the deed itself had been accomplished with a precision that was almost automatic, so did the work yet to be done go off with the nicety of a well-regulated schedule. Everything came about as Holmes had predicted, even to the action of the police in endeavoring to fasten the crime upon an inoffensive and somewhat impecunious social dangler, whose ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... undoubtedly here. Mr. Bumble is in the parish sketches, and Mr. Dawkins the dodger in the Old Bailey scenes. There is laughter and fun to excess, never misapplied; there are the minute points and shades of character, with all the discrimination and nicety of detail, afterwards so famous; there is everywhere the most perfect ease and skill of handling. The observation shown throughout is nothing short of wonderful. Things are painted literally as they are, and, whatever the picture, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... often lonely, for her papa managed to be with her a great deal, and she never cared for any other companion when he was by. Then, Mr. Travilla came in frequently to see her, and always brought a beautiful bouquet, or some fine fruit from his hot-house, or some other little nicety to tempt an invalid's appetite, or what she liked, even better still, a new book. Her aunts Adelaide and Lora, too, felt very kindly toward her, coming in occasionally to ask how she was, and to tell her what ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... reader may like to see a few "specimens" of some notes which Lamb took the pains to make on two of the tales that were shown to him. I give these the rather that there is occasionally blended with their critical nicety of tact, a drollery that is very characteristic of the writer. I shall leave these notes and verbal criticisms to speak for themselves, after merely explaining that they are written on separate bits of paper, each note having a numerical reference to that page of the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... beady black paint eyes) Chet was momentarily at a loss. Miss Kate had not told him to stop painting when the chicken was completed. Miss Kate was at the other end of the sunny garden walk, bending over a wheel-chair. So Chet went on painting, placidly. One by one, with meticulous nicety, he painted all his finger nails a bright and cheery yellow. Then he did the whole of his left thumb, and was starting on the second joint of the index finger when Miss Kate came up behind him and took the brush ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... require a pattern volume each time, and your pattern volume will be lying about his workshop each time a volume is published. To register a pattern is by no means advisable in the case of a really well-bound series of books. It may do well enough for scientific and other journals, when great nicety of detail is not so much required. In the case of well-bound volumes, a pattern should accompany the order. A book like Murray's Dictionary, volumes of which are slow in completing themselves, the parts of the volumes, current and incomplete, should either be tied up in paper, ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... anything like the proper time, in spite of all his ringing, and as much anger as he liked to show, for fear of making Lord Hollingford uncomfortable. At last dinner was ready, but the poor host saw the want of nicety—almost the want of cleanliness, in all its accompaniments—dingy plate, dull-looking glass, a tablecloth that, if not absolutely dirty, was anything but fresh in its splashed and rumpled condition, and compared it in his own mind with the dainty ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... elegance of his illustration, when a look of pain upon Miss Warren's face checked me, and I said nothing. Lack of delicacy was one of Mr. Hearn's gravest faults. While courtly, polished, and refined in externals, he lacked in tact and nicety of discrimination. He often said things which a finer-fibred but much worse man would never have said. He had an abundance of intellect, great shrewdness, vast will force, and organizing power, but not much ideality or imagination. This lack rendered him incapable of putting himself ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... to a reddish mustache lay sleek with it. There was the merest suggestion of embonpoint to the waistcoat, but not so that, when he dropped his eyes, the blunt toes of his russet shoes were not in evidence. His pin-checked suit was pressed to a knife-edge, and his brocaded cravat folded to a nicety; there was an air of complete well-being about him. Men can acquire that sort of eupeptic well-being in a Turkish bath. Young mothers and ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... wide trowsers, they were evidently of a piece with what was seen and developed; and this was vouched for by the turn of his ankle and well—shaped foot on which he wore a small Spanish grass slipper, fitted with great nicety. He was at least six feet two in height, and such as I have described him; there he stood, with his hands grasping the rail before him and looking intently at a wigless lawyer who was opening the accusation, while he had one ear turned a little towards the sworn ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... poor, hence there was very little in the shape of anything to eat that we could forage. On the first day of our return march our commissary sergeant, Bonfoy, did manage to capture and kill a gaunt, lean old Arkansas steer, and it was divided up among the men with almost as much nicety and exactness as if it was a wedding cake with a prize diamond ring in it; and we hadn't any salt to go with it, but in lieu of that used gun-powder, which was a sort of substitute. With that exception, (and a piece of hardtack, to be presently mentioned,) my bill ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... rate, after the old woman's death. For during her life-time her stern son paid her such deference that it was a moot point, perhaps, which of them really ruled. Between them, however, the young wife was moulded to a nicety, and her voice gained no more weight in the counsels of the windmill when the harsh tones of the mother-in-law were ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... felicity; he eked out old fragments and sobered down licentious strains so much in the olden spirit and feeling, that the new cannot be distinguished from the ancient; nay, he inserted lines and half lines, with such skill and nicety, that antiquarians are perplexed to settle which is genuine or which is simulated. Yet with all this he abated not of the natural mirth or the racy humour of the lyric muse of Scotland: he did not like her the less because she walked like some of the maidens of her ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... things of this character. Art was no longer anything but a kind of puzzle. Furthermore, the decadence of eye and hand followed that of the mind, and there next appeared a taste for brilliant colors, overladen compositions, and fine and meticulous lines, culminating in an unbearable nicety. The work of the Academy is summed up in ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... most insignificant Trespass that's committed against him, the least Word, Look, or Motion, if he can find but any far-fetch'd reason to suspect a Design in it to under-value him; and of this No body is allow'd to be a Judge but himself. The Enjoyments that arise from being virtuous are of that Nicety, that every ordinary Capacity cannot relish them: As, without Doubt, there is a noble Pleasure in forgiving of Injuries, to Speculative Men that have refin'd Notions of Virtue; but it is more Natural to resent them; and in revenging one's self, there is a Pleasure which the ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... is just it. Put her on her guard—that is all that is necessary. She is a dear, good, clever girl, and it would be very sad if anything were to interrupt our comfortable way of getting on with her." Mrs. Robarts knew to a nicety the exact meaning of this threat. If Lucy would persist in securing to herself so much of Lord Lufton's time and attention, her visits to Framley Court must become less frequent. Lady Lufton would do much, very much, indeed, ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... it came into my thoughts that while we worked at this rate in a thing of such nicety and consequence, it was ten to one if the gold, which was the make-bait of the world, did not, first or last, set us together by the ears, to break our good articles and our understanding one among another, and perhaps cause us to part companies, ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... steel-tipped cone, with the small charge (for that rifle) of four drachms of powder. The proper charge for that gun is one-fourth the weight of the ball, or one ounce of powder, with which it carries with great nicety and terrific effect, owing to its great weight of metal (twenty-one pounds); but it is a small piece of artillery which tries the shoulder ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... his companion throwing a word into a pause now and then. Both patient men articulated with such careful nicety that the syllables fell from their mouths like clear-cut crystals. But Mr. Barrymore shook his head again; then, suddenly, with a joyous smile he seized a pocket-book from inside his coat. From this he tore out an important-looking document stamped with a red seal, ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... prepared in the forests of Lebanon, and carried down to Joppa on floats, and taken from thence up to Jerusalem and set up with wooden mauls, prepared for that purpose; which, when completed, every part thereof fitted with that exact nicety, that it had more the resemblance of the handy workmanship of the Supreme Architect of the Universe than of ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... was hardly calculated for the rapid reception and assimilation of these particles, terminations, and cases of philological nicety in which May began to recognize that she ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... imagine, little understood; and certainly if one of their moods was a progression by quarter-tones, which we are told was the nature of the enharmonic scale, simplicity was by no means the characteristic of their melody; for this is a nicety of progression of which modern music is not susceptible. The invention of the barbiton is, by ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... trembling church, which seemed too weak with age to resist such an onslaught; but when at length the skin began to grow soft and yield to my gentle efforts at removal, I became far too much absorbed in the simple operation, which had to be performed with all the gentleness and nicety of a surgical one, to heed the uproar about me. Slowly the glutinous adhesion gave way, and slowly the writing revealed itself. In mingled hope and doubt I restrained my curiosity; and as one teases oneself sometimes by dallying with a letter ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... exquisite delicacy are exhibited; silk- weaving factories where fine fabrics are made on the simplest of looms; feather shops where breastpins and other ornaments are made of tiny bits of feathers on a silver base—a work requiring almost incredible nicety of vision and such strain upon the eyes that the operators often become blind by forty. Another curiosity is a shop where crickets are reared for fighting as the Filipino fights cocks and the Anglo-Saxon fights ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... be disastrous. Raby she peremptorily forbade to dream of the ice; and as for Percy, she conjured him by the love he bore her to skate on nothing deeper than the Rodnet Marsh, whereat that young gentleman gibed. The Overstone ironmonger had skates which fitted the boy to a nicety, and by way of business sent up "on inspection" a pair which Mr Rimbolt might ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... his usual nicety was Average Jones attired, when, at four o'clock, he sent his card to judge Ackroyd. Small favor, however, did his appearance find, in the ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... chains baubles. Then a storm had arisen. In his hands the docile oar had become a raging termagant, and, when he would have been rid of it, the baubles had opposed his will. He had been dragged and battered unspeakably. Over all, the lash had been laid upon his bare shoulders; and that with a nicety of judgment which should have been foreign to so white a wrist and to eyes that could look so tender. Now that he had escaped out of hell, it was not surprising that he was loth to discover his refuge. Still, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... and broad obscenities in words, ought in good manners to be avoided: expressions therefore are a modest clothing of our thoughts, as breeches and petticoats are of our bodies. If I have kept myself within the bounds of modesty, all beyond it is but nicety and affectation; which is no more but modesty depraved into a vice. They betray themselves, who are too quick of apprehension in such cases, and leave all reasonable men to imagine worse of them, than of ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... understood a little German after all. More likely he had divined Abdul Ali's purpose to make use of me. Certainly he had poured the proper poison in Anazeh's ear, and the old man understood my value to a nicety. ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... something of anticipation, something more of doubt; and her several thoughts and fractions of thoughts, as signalled by the changes on her face, were exhibited by the light to the utmost nicety. An ingenuous, transparent life was disclosed, as if the flow of her existence could be seen passing within her. She understood the ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... purposes the old handicraft implements were clearly obsolete. The immediate result of this requirement was the bringing to the front a number of remarkable men, Brindley, Smeaton, Maudsley, Clements, Bramah, Nasmyth, etc., to supply mechanism of a proportionate capacity and nicety for the new motive-power to act upon and with, and the ultimate result was the adoption of the modern factory system in the larger tool-making and engineering workshops, as well as in metal manufactories proper. Thus there gradually grew up," says Jevons, "a ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... earthly salvation and sustenance not worth buying at such a cost. The remainder of his history was not tangible enough to afford a narrative. There seemed, from what he said, to have always been a certain kind of refinement in his race, a nicety of conscience, a nicety of habit, which either was in itself a want of force, or was necessarily connected with it, and which, the Doctor silently thought, had culminated in the ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... come while he was sketching and sit beside him for five minutes, fifteen minutes, half an hour, remaining silent, or merely exchanging a few frank words with him before she went her way. In these matters she was gifted with an unerring tact; without a hint on Durant's part she seemed to know to a nicety how far her presence ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... spectre of the catacombs," and Miriam's persecutor, is the outcome of a continual choice of evil and of utter degradation. These two extremes, more widely asunder than Prospero and Caliban, Hawthorne has linked together in his immense grasp of the inmost laws of life, and with a miraculous nicety of artistic skill. Then comes Donatello's fall, illustrating the genesis of sin from crime, in accordance with the Biblical story of Cain; and this precipitates an examination, not only of the result upon Donatello himself, but of the degree in which others, even the most guiltless, are involved. ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... had told on them both. He had forgotten his delicate habits, his nicety of dress. A cheap suit once in six months was all that he could afford. His mind had become stolidly fixed, so that he did not notice the gradual change. It was a grim fight! The elements were relentless; day by day ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... carry with them horse-hair nooses of different sizes and strength, which they fasten to the rod: likewise bird-lime, and a variety of calls for the different kinds of birds, with which they imitate them to the greatest nicety. They take with them likewise two lines to which horse-hair nooses are attached for catching larger birds, and a bag or net to ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... powers being at once more extensive, and less susceptible of precise limits, it can, with the greater facility, mask, under complicated and indirect measures, the encroachments which it makes on the co-ordinate departments. It is not unfrequently a question of real nicety in legislative bodies, whether the operation of a particular measure will, or will not, extend beyond the legislative sphere. On the other side, the executive power being restrained within a narrower compass, and being more simple in its nature, and the judiciary being described by ...
— The Federalist Papers
... square was the farm house belonging to Mr. Wright. It was quite a respectable building, two stories high, with flat roof, and constructed entirely of rough logs, yet fitted together with considerable pretensions to skill and nicety. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... hear no good of her,' returned Gotthold; 'and if you wish your wife to be the pink of nicety, you should clear your court ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... perhaps, no great writer who has made a more extensive use of music to illustrate character and create incident than Charles Dickens. From an historical point of view these references are of the utmost importance, for they reflect to a nicety the general condition of ordinary musical life in England during the middle of the last century. We do not, of course, look to Dickens for a history of classical music during the period—those who want this will find it in the newspapers and magazines; but ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... science that fills our scientific volumes with coloured pictures true as life itself, and letter-press of prose description—that same science that anatomises the physical frame with microscopic nicety,—in the hand of its master, found in the soul, that which had most need of science; and his 'illustrated book' of it, the book of his experiments in it, comes to us filled with his yet living, 'ever living' subjects, and resounding with ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... peg, with great nicety, into the ground, at the precise spot where the beetle fell, my friend now produced from his pocket a tape-measure. Fastening one end of this at that point of the trunk of the tree which was nearest the peg, he unrolled it till it reached the peg, and thence ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... doubts because he does not know the grounds of credibility, is no better than an ignoramus. The true sceptic has counted and weighed the reasons. But it is no light matter to weigh arguments. Who of us knows their value with any nicety? Every mind has its own telescope. An objection that disappears in your eyes, is a colossus in mine: you find an argument trivial that to me is overwhelming.... If then it is so difficult to weigh reasons, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... Banks' class. Mr Banks was a master who simply cried out to be ragged. Everything he did and said seemed to invite the members of his class to amuse themselves, and they amused themselves accordingly. One of the advantages of being under him was that it was possible to predict to a nicety the moment when one would be sent out of the room. This was ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... grew to be allowed that there must be courage in the fortress, and a gift of leadership. All was seen confusedly, but with a mounting, mounting interest. The world gaped at the far-borne clang and smoke and roar. Military men in clubs demonstrated to a nicety just how long the fortress might hold out, and just how it must be taken at last. Schoolboys fought over again in the schoolyards the battles with the heathenish names. The Emperor of the French and ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... night and day than that which they deem it convenient to make for themselves,—do not, of course, arrive at their divisions of time by the same process that we do; but I found it easy by the aid of my watch, which I luckily had about me, to compute their time with great nicety. I reserve for a future work on the science and literature of the Vril-ya, should I live to complete it, all details as to the manner in which they arrive at their rotation of time; and content myself here with saying, that in point of duration, their year differs very slightly ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Testament we find several passages more elevated and sublime than any in Homer. At the same time that we allow a greater and more daring genius to the ancients, we must own that the greatest of them very much failed in, or, if you will, that they were much above the nicety and correctness of the moderns. In their similitudes and allusions, provided there was a likeness, they did not much trouble themselves about the decency of the comparison: thus Solomon resembles the nose of his beloved to ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... had set her was quite to her heart. If, in addition to helping the Lorrimers, she could by this means get out of her own scrape, why, so much the better. It was one of Annie's gifts to be able to discriminate character with great nicety; and while Antonia spoke to her, she acknowledged a sudden respect and even admiration for the power ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... He even figured to a nicety what would happen in the two hours when she would come to his apartment for tea: how the good Bounds would have the windows wide to let in the fresh breeze—but a fire going also lest there be chill in the air—and how there would be clusters of flowers about in big cool bowls that he would ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... artist's touch. He added a rug; the bed, simple in character but exquisite in taste, had something monastic about it; the walls, hung with a cheap glazed cotton selected with taste, of a color which harmonized with the furniture and was newly covered, gave the room an air of elegance and nicety. In the hallway he added a double door, with a "portiere" to the inner one. The window was shaded by a blind which gave soft tones to the light. If the poor mother's life was reduced to the plainest circumstances that the life of any woman could have in Paris, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... is a gigantic task to lift thousands of tons of steel and literally carry it a quarter of a mile to forty feet of water in less than a minute. Everything has to be calculated to a nicety. It's a matter of mathematics—the moment of weight, the moment of buoyancy, and all that. This launching apparatus is strong, but compared to the weight it has to carry it is really delicate. Why, even a stray ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... done. In order to verify with greater strictness the results drawn from the Bradley and Piazzi catalogues, a third term of comparison was wanted, and this Bessel undertook to supply. By a course of 75,011 observations, executed during the years 1821-33, with the utmost nicety of care, the number of accurately known stars was brought up to above 50,000, and an ample store of trustworthy facts laid up for the use of future astronomers. In this department Argelander, whom he attracted from finance to astronomy, and trained ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... dinner had been excellent. The clear soup hot, and the ninety-two Ayala, extra dry, chilled to a nicety—and so with the rest of the menu. Glass, silver, china, were set forth daintily upon the fine white damask, under the glow of scarlet-shaded candles. The double doors connecting the small drawing-room and dining-room stood open; this, combined with the fact that lights were limited to the ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... test, to pass which a man must not only express his spirit with sincerity, but must also have a strong and original spirit. It will be our business now to search out, delimit and define, not only Mr. Belloc's nicety and felicity of expression, but also the value of the thing ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... numbers of people can do good black and whites! So few can illustrate a story, or apparently read it. You have shown that you can do both, and your creation of Wiltshire is a real illumination of the text. It was exactly so that Wiltshire dressed and looked, and you have the line of his nose to a nicety. His nose is an inspiration. Nor should I forget to thank you for Case, particularly in his last appearance. It is a singular fact - which seems to point still more directly to inspiration in your case - that your missionary actually resembles the flesh-and-blood person from whom ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be understood in different senses, even abstracted from chastity, which has been already treated of. It sometimes means that tenderness and nicety of honour, that apprehension of blame, that dread of intrusion or injury towards others, that Pudor, which is the proper guardian of every kind of virtue, and a sure preservative against vice and corruption. ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... position as an officer of the government; what was the course prescribed for him to do, how he was doing it, and concluding with a most clear and intelligible exegesis of the resumption act; what it was, its intent, purpose and meaning; and with convincing nicety and clearness, and evident satisfactoriness, was his explanation given, that he was frequently interrupted by spontaneous applause from the crowd. He told how the credit of the country was advancing as we near the solid foundation of hard money; how the American ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... in the clock and case which now filled, fitting to a nicety, the niche in the back wall. Outwardly there was nothing very unusual about the clock itself. A gilt box enclosing the mechanism and carrying the plain white face, the hands at twelve, occupied the topmost third of the case, which was of thick plate-glass bound and backed with gilt metal. There ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... that within two months he would be placed in the same difficult position from which he had formerly so signally failed to extricate himself. That he and Contini had executed the terms of the contract with scrupulous and conscientious nicety did not better the position. That they had made the most strenuous efforts to find purchasers for the property, as they had a right to do if they could, and had failed, made the position hopeless or almost as bad as that. ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... the European Rook, which he resembles in many of his habits, performing similar services, and being guilty of the same mischievous deeds. It is remarkable that in Europe, where land is more valuable than in this country, and where agriculture is carried on with an amount of skill and nicety that would astonish an American farmer, the people are not so jealous of the birds. In Great Britain rookeries are regular establishments, and the Rooks, notwithstanding the mischief they do, are protected, on account of their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... his grounds. His wickets were fastened to hard pine planks, and these were then carefully buried two feet deep. The surface of the ground, he was wont to descant, must be of a particular sort of gravel, sifted just so, and rolled to a nicety. The balls must be of hard rubber, and have just one-eighth inch clearance in passing through the wickets, with the exception of the two wires forming the "cage," where it was imperative that this clearance should be reduced to one-sixteenth of an inch—but I need not state more to show how he came ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... it all. Mind you, this is no speculation which I have in my mind. It may seem like it, but I have calculated everything to a nicety. I've made inquiries at the bank, and I know to a penny how we stand, and what the bank will back us for. And I've been making inquiries about ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... with my simile), a boudoir, a hall, or a staircase; and fix a critical eye upon a recess badly contrived, an oval badly turned, or pillars weakly put together:—the builder says, Don't look at these parts of the fabric with such fastidious nicety; they are subordinate. If my boudoir will hold a moderate collection of old-fashioned Dresden China, if my staircase be stout enough to conduct you and your company to the upper rooms; and, if my hall be spacious enough to hold the hats, umbrellas ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Great Britain;" and Mr. Watson found in a few of the books Porson's handwriting, consisting of critical remarks and notes. In a copy of the Aldine "Herodotus," he has marked the chapters in the margin in Arabic numerals "with such nicety and regularity," says his biographer, "that the eye of the reader, unless upon the closest examination, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... its shortcomings, they could find a biting satire ready-made by the children of Under Town. A fat small boy comes round here, who has attentively studied the meetings; who can copy the canting, up-and-down, gentle-explosive, the Behold I am saved, ye sinners! tone to a nicety. He marches at the head of a band of serious infants who bear rags, tied to sticks and parasols, as banners. Every now and then he circles them to a standstill for an harangue about blood, fire and Jesus. (It is the ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... not unworthy, in his love for the progress of the human race, and the piquant and ingenious turn he knew how to give to good sense. From this first employment as printer Beranger acquired and retained great nicety in language and grammar. He insisted on it, in his counsels to the young, more than seems natural in a poet of the people. He even exaggerated its importance somewhat, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... dissect the various parts of the scene, to comprehend how the one bore upon the other, to estimate the effect which various features of the view had in producing its leading and general effect. I have never, indeed, been capable of doing this with precision or {p.043} nicety, though my latter studies have led me to amend and arrange my original ideas upon the subject. Even the humble ambition, which I long cherished, of making sketches of those places which interested me, from ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... comparison. 1] Discrimination. — N. discrimination, distinction, differentiation, diagnosis, diorism[obs3]; nice perception; perception of difference, appreciation of difference; estimation &c. 466; nicety, refinement; taste &c. 850; critique, judgment; tact; discernment &c. (intelligence) 498; acuteness, penetration; nuances. dope*, past performances. V. discriminate, distinguish, severalize[obs3]; recognize, match, identify; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... a life of intelligent selfishness. He had usually got what he wanted because he was strong enough to take it. No scrupulous nicety of means had ever deterred him. Nor ever would. He played his own hand with a cynical disregard of the rights of others. It was this that had made him what he was, a man who bulked large in the sight of the city and ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... and ill-assorted as our cargo may have appeared to the crowds of curious onlookers, Captain Davis had arranged for the stowage of everything with a nicety which did him credit. The complete effects of the four bases were thus kept separate, and available in whatever order was required. Furthermore, the removal of one unit would not break the stowage of the remainder, nor disturb the trim ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... a garment is to take out unnecessary fullness at the top; reducing the weight, making the garment less clumsy, and giving a nicety of finish which could not be done in heavy material if all the goods were left to fit into a band. Skirts may be lined or unlined, gored ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... because of the noise he made in trudging up a hill, or because his mud-guard was broken off, or his tire wounded in the great cause, or his polished headlight knocked into a tin can. You will not ridicule the old splint of a shingle which was bound with such surgical nicety among his rusting spokes. If you do, then you are the kind of a boy who would laugh at a wounded soldier and you had ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... evil things for the shooting-party of the day. Mr. Marsham senior had apparently laid out his park and grounds on the same principles as those on which he had built his house. Everything was large and expensive. The woods and plantations were kept to a nicety; not a twig was out of place. Enormous cost had been incurred in the planting of rare evergreens; full-grown trees had been transplanted wholesale from a distance, and still wore in many cases a sickly and invalided ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... place i' the state, Will so your accusation overweigh, That you shall stifle in your own report, And smell of calumny. I have begun; And now I give my sensual race the rein: 160 Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite; Lay by all nicety and prolixious blushes, That banish what they sue for; redeem thy brother By yielding up thy body to my will; Or else he must not only die the death, 165 But thy unkindness shall his death draw out To lingering sufferance. Answer me to-morrow. Or, by the affection that now guides me most, I'll prove ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... do absurdly confound order, decency, and the like, which have the same use and praise in civil things which they have in the worship of God, with religious and sacred ceremonies. Yet Dr Burges(889) rejecteth this distinction betwixt circumstances and ceremonies, as a mere nicety or fiction. And would you know his reason? "For that (saith he) all circumstances (I mean extrinsical) which incur not the substance of the action, when they are once designed or observed purposely in reference to such a matter, of whose substance they are not, they are ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... the rock the most difficult part was still to perform, as it required the greatest nicety of management to guide her in a rolling sea, so as to prevent her from being carried forcibly against the man whom they sought ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... ready to go to her room on the third story to dress for the afternoon. This process was that day important, for she put on a new black silk gown. It was beflounced and befrilled according to the fashion of the time. When she had arranged it to a nicety in her own room, she descended to one of the parlours to survey herself in the pier-glass. No one was there. The six red velvet chairs and the uniform sofa stood in perfect order round the room. The table, with figured cloth, had a ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... travellers would have landed had not that unlucky bolide drawn them off the track. The Moon was therefore strictly up to time, arriving at the instant rigidly determined by the Cambridge Observatory. She occupied the exact point, to a mathematical nicety, where our 28th parallel crossed the perigee. An observer posted in the bottom of the Columbiad at Stony Hill, would have found himself at this moment precisely under the Moon. The axis of the enormous gun, continued upwards vertically, would have struck ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... ice in their territory. On days when I talk with them Boston centres about the Quincy Market, where bait is sold and pickerel are displayed, and the sporting goods stores, the merits of whose tackle are known to a nicety. Thus are worlds multiplied to infinity, each one of us having his own. But to step into that of the pickerel fishermen of a midwinter day adds ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... indispensable to a tramp in this neighbourhood, the charming illustrations by the late Mr. William Hull, the author, and others rendering the identification of places perfectly easy. Dickens says, "If anybody knows to a nicety where Rochester ends and Chatham begins, it is more than I do." "It's of no consequence," as Mr. Toots would say, for the High Street is one continuous thoroughfare, but as a matter of fact, a narrow street called Boundary ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... ourselves she showed that exquisite nicety of discrimination in studying our characters, habits and tastes which comes by instinct with women, and which even the longest practice rarely teaches in similar perfection to men. She saw at a glance all the underlying tenderness and generosity concealed beneath Owen's external shyness, ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... first burst of the sunlight over the world, I sat at my task. Each instrument, each lens I used, I spent an hour or hours over, giving it the finest polish or nicety of adjustment to which it could be brought. Into that day I had distilled my past; into it I was willing to distil the eternity that was before me. With each now application, the field of the planet shrank a thousand leagues, but each time the light deepened. According to my principle, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... people). This man I employed to be a constant and particular attendant upon his person and motions; and he was especially employed and ordered to haunt him as a ghost, that he should scarce let him be ever out of his sight. He performed this to a nicety, and failed not to give me a perfect journal of all his motions from day to day, and, whether for his pleasure or his business, ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... of the sea-wind were in the velvet of the mosses which lay along its inaccessible ledges and angles. Here and there the marble plates had slipped from their places, where the delicate weeds had forced their way. The graceful wildness which prevailed in garden and farm gave place to a singular nicety about the actual habitation, and a still more scrupulous sweetness and order reigned within. The old Roman architects seem to have well understood the decorative value of the floor—the real economy there was, in the production of rich interior ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... the pride I felt in my father's personal appearance. He was not a dandy, I think; but there was a certain quiet nicety and delicacy about his dress and manner which impressed me greatly. The hair about his ears and temples was silvery grey; one of the marks of his superiority, in my eyes. He always raised his hat in leaving a shop in which ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... grand ball at court in honor of H. H. the Prince of Dummerland and his Princess, and THEN I determined I would come out in public. I dressed myself with unusual care and splendor. My hair was curled and my moustache dyed to a nicety; and of the four hundred gentlemen present, if the girls of Kalbsbraten DID select one who wore an English hussar uniform, why should I disguise the fact? In spite of my silence, the news had somehow got abroad, as news ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... God knows I never was that. But now the foreign lady, or lady's maid, as it might be, who had been busy with little dark eyes, turned upon all this going-on, and looked me straight in the face. I was about to salute her, at a distance, indeed, and not with the nicety she had offered to me, but, strange to say, she stared at my eyes as if she had never seen me before, neither wished to see me again. At this I was so startled, such things beings out of my knowledge, that I startled Peggy also with the ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... from her eyes and re-clothed herself,—and with her usual calm, immovable aspect—though smarting from the injuries she had inflicted on herself—she descended to the kitchen, there to prepare Mr. Dyceworthy's tea with all the punctilious care and nicety befitting the meal of so good a man and ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... very useful, not only as they may contribute to the Satisfaction of such Gentlemen as are already Proficients in the Art, and to the better Discipline of those who intend to become so, but also in regard that the Nicety and Exactness of his Rules, for the most Part, and their great Consistency with Reason, may, and will in all Probability, lay a regular and good Foundation for future Masters, who tho' accustom'd ...
— The Art of Fencing - The Use of the Small Sword • Monsieur L'Abbat
... him to a nicety; it had, in fact, no chance to do otherwise, for his great back and shoulders stretched it tight, and would have done so had it been made like a sack. Of all the big men who had gone by that day Jack Duck was the biggest; his back was immense, and straight, too, ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... this season proved in general bad, the wheat being almost every where mixed with a weed named by the farmers Drake. Every care was taken to prevent this circumstance from happening in the ensuing season, by cleaning with the greatest nicety not only such wheat as was intended for seed, but such as was received into the public store from settlers. It was occasioned by the ground being overwrought, from a greediness to make it produce golden harvests every season, without allowing it time to recruit itself ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... individual bagman is often not without his charm. He knows, if not courts and princes, at least hotels and railway companies. He is on terms of easy familiarity with every 'boots' in several counties. He can calculate to a nicety how long a train is likely to be delayed by a fair 'somewhere along the line.' He is also full of information about local politics. In Connaught, for instance, an experienced member of the profession will gauge for you the exact strength of the existing ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... the rules of evidence in favor of the convenience of trade: an exception which on a similar principle had before been admitted in the Civil Law, as to mercantile causes, in which the books of the party were received to give full effect to an insufficient degree of proof, called, in the nicety of their distinctions, a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Connecticut (which differed in no essential respect from those of the other colonies) has survived almost unchanged to the present day. Statesmanship, during two and a half centuries, has multiplied details and improved the nicety of adjustments; but it has not discerned any principles which had not been seen with perfect distinctness by the clear and venerable ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... time, it was so arranged as not to come in contact with the wings of the bee and hinder its flight. All this did Cudjo with an expertness which surprised us, and would have surprised any one who was a stranger to the craft of the bee-hunter. He performed every operation with great nicety, taking care not to cripple the insect; and, indeed, we did not injure it in the least—for Cudjo's fingers, although none of the smallest, were as delicate in the touch as those of a ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... she found, on her departure, that she had the honour of carrying upon her some companions who must have been inhabitants of the palace. The court of Elizabeth was celebrated occasionally for its magnificence, and always for its nicety. James was singularly effeminate; he could not behold a drawn sword without shuddering; was much too partial to handsome men; and appears to merit the bitter satire of Churchill. If wanting other proofs, we should only read the second volume of "Royal Letters," 6987, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of privileges, in the House of Lords; appeals to the High Court of Parliament, from all the superior courts, both of law and equity, in the United Kingdom, involving questions of the greatest possible nicety and complexity—and that, too, in the law of Scotland, both mercantile and conveyancing, so dissimilar to that prevailing in other parts of the kingdom; appeals before the Privy Council, from the judicial decisions of courts in every ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... plays were acted that week, which is the finest song in the opera, who was intolerable at the last assembly, and what games are most in fashion. Flavia thinks they are atheists who play at cards on the Sunday, but she will tell you the nicety of all the games, what cards she held, how she played them, and the history of all that happened at play, as soon as she comes from church. If you would know who is rude and ill-natured, who is vain and foppish, who lives too high and who ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... grunted, at last. "These two are in love, Dantor. It is as you explained. It is good, and fits in with my plans to a nicety. I shall spare the life of the Earth man on account of his knowledge of the inner planets; I can use him later. The girl I shall spare for a different reason, and that fits in ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... The rest of her programme was carried out to a nicety. At a quarter to nine she complained of fatigue, bade Mrs. Tennant an affectionate good-night, nodded to Alice, ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... tennis-party at Mena House Hotel. It is typical of Englishmen in the East that the young men in the excavating camps, and especially in the one to which Michael belonged, showed as much regard for their personal appearance and nicety of dress, even when their day's work was to be done in the bowels of the earth, down a shaft as deep as a mine, as they did in the golden days of their life at Oxford or Cambridge. Michael Amory was perhaps as ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... were soon fast asleep on the deck, with the exception of the man at the helm, who, instead of thirty-two, could clearly make out sixty-four points in the compass, and of course was able to steer to a much greater nicety. Fortunately, the weather was fine, for when the man at the helm had steered till he could see no more, and requested to be released, he found that his shipmates were so overpowered with fatigue, that it was impossible to wake them. He kicked them one ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... Christ to be present with His sacrament, inasmuch as He is alway with His people to the end of time. But as I am not skilful in matters of such nicety, I would ask of this reverend casuist, who is more able to answer in questions of such weight than I; who am, as I said before, unlearned in disputed points; and truly I am in nothing more wishful than to come at a right knowledge and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... moreover, you set him down either for the gentleman by birth fallen a victim to some degrading habit, or for the man of small independent means whose expenses are calculated to such a nicety that the breakage of a windowpane, a rent in a coat, or a visit from the philanthropic pest who asks you for subscriptions to a charity, absorbs the whole of a month's little surplus of pocket-money. If ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... light and sportive; their resentments were satisfied with pinching or scratching the objects of their displeasure; their peculiar sense of cleanliness rewarded the housewives with the silver token in the shoe; their nicety was extreme concerning any coarseness or negligence which could offend their delicacy; and I cannot discern, except, perhaps, from the insinuations of some scrupulous divines, that they were vassals ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... resources. Taking but little interest in public affairs, they beguiled their time chiefly with such amusements as the Peacock afforded, which were limited to a bagatelle-board in the first floor, and a sequestered skittle-ground in the back yard. In the science and nicety of both these recreations, which are far more abstruse than ordinary men suppose, they were gradually initiated by Mr. Weller, who possessed a perfect knowledge of such pastimes. Thus, notwithstanding that ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... much as to say that he would keep exactly amid channel, and then made a sign to cut the bush-rope that held the canoe to the fallen tree. The canoe drove down the torrent with inconceivable rapidity. It did not touch the rocks once all the way. The Indian proved to a nicety: "medio ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... entirely on innocuous things. The trouble with that was that it made it extremely difficult to think about some way to get out of the jam he was in. Thinking on two levels at once, while not impossible, required a nicety of control that made wire-walking over Niagara ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... in the rope with one impatient gesture. He coiled it swiftly, but with nicety. Then round and round he swung the gaping loop—and ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... amongst us. Not ill-used certainly, for she was fed and taught as we were; and some forty shillings a year more expended upon the trifles, gloves, and shoes, and ribbons, which make the difference between nicety and shabbiness in female dress, would have brought her apparel upon an equality with ours. Ill-used she was not: to be sure, teachers, and masters seemed to consider it a duty to reprimand her for such faults as would have passed unnoticed ...
— Honor O'callaghan • Mary Russell Mitford
... the contrivance thus made it possible to wheel a person into a bath and out again without necessitating the slightest effort or change of position in the body. In the bedroom the windows were arranged so that the light and air could be regulated to a nicety. The walls were covered with fine basket work, apparently adapted in panels; but these panels were in reality movable trays, as it were, forming shallow boxes fitted with closely-woven wicker covers, and filled with charcoal and other porous substances intended ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... therefore, that if it were not anchored in some way it would instantly rise. So Fraser had anchored it with four of his magnetic rays! He had told us that he could regulate the pulling power of the ray, so what he had obviously done was to calculate to a nicety the lift of the Fleotite against the magnetism ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... bludgeon to a nicety, I laid it by, and sat brooding, the knife betwixt my knees; now a beam of sun falling athwart the leaves lit upon the broad blade of the knife and made of it a glory. And beholding this and the hand ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... Government sent to its naval commanders. These German rules are now in the possession of the State Department. While no mention is made in them of submarine warfare, the extent and method of the exercise of the right of search and the stoppage of ships is prescribed with great nicety, and provision is made for the safety of passengers and crew. After outlining the purpose of visiting and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... workshop each time a volume is published. To register a pattern is by no means advisable in the case of a really well-bound series of books. It may do well enough for scientific and other journals, when great nicety of detail is not so much required. In the case of well-bound volumes, a pattern should accompany the order. A book like Murray's Dictionary, volumes of which are slow in completing themselves, the parts of the volumes, current ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... found them. But I am determined to report everything just as it is, or at least just as it appears to me; and those who have a curiosity to see courts and courtiers dissected, must bear with the dirt they find in laying open such minds with as little nicety and as much patience as, in a dissection of their bodies, if they wanted to see that operation, they must ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... at worst occasional; the embarrassment of the man's talk incessant. He was plainly a practised conversationalist; the nicety of his inflections, the elegance of his gestures, and the fine play of his expression, told us that. We, meanwhile, sat like aliens in a playhouse; we could see the actors were upon some material business ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... they had been assisted by your Lordship's Skill and Knowledge therein, as well as Patronage and Protection; so the Translator of this Greek Historian in particular must lament, that notwithstanding all his Industry and Pains, he is faln infinitely short of that great Judgment, Nicety and Criticism in the Greek Language, which your Lordship has in your Writings ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... supper could not be more fitly bestowed than on them. One, to steady himself, placed unobserved his fore-paw on the edge of the table, his well-padded toes leaving a vague imprint as of fingers upon the coarse white cloth; but John Dundas was a sportsman, and could the better relax an exacting nicety where so pleasant-featured and affable a beggar was concerned. He forgot the turmoils of his own troubles as he gazed at Millicent, the dreary aspect of the solitudes without, the exile from his accustomed sphere of culture and comfort, the poverty and ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... the exact height and breadth of the triglyphs between them were considered of the greatest importance. The exquisite drapery of caryatids and canephorae, no English artist, a hundred years ago, thought fit to imitate; but the cornices which they supposed were measured inch by inch with the utmost nicety. Ingenious devices were invented for enabling the artificer to reproduce, by a series of complicated curves, the profile of a Doric capital, which probably owed its form to the steady hand and uncontrolled taste of the designer. To put faith in many of the theories ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... things for the shooting-party of the day. Mr. Marsham senior had apparently laid out his park and grounds on the same principles as those on which he had built his house. Everything was large and expensive. The woods and plantations were kept to a nicety; not a twig was out of place. Enormous cost had been incurred in the planting of rare evergreens; full-grown trees had been transplanted wholesale from a distance, and still wore in many cases a sickly and invalided air; and elaborate contrasts in dark and light foliage had been arranged by ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... old lady doesn't come to," Rawdon said to his little wife as they sat together in the snug little Brompton lodgings. She had been trying the new piano all the morning. The new gloves fitted her to a nicety. The new shawl became her wonderfully. The new rings glittered on her little hands, and the new ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... Girl gets into her teens, and her self-consciousness is born. After a certain interval passed in infantine helplessness it begins to act. Simple, young, and inexperienced at first. Persons of observation can tell to a nicety how old this consciousness is by the skill it has acquired in the art necessary to its success—the art of hiding itself. Generally begins career by actions which are popularly termed showing-off. Method adopted depends in each case upon the disposition, rank, residence, of the young ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... shower-bath had done him good: the testiness was gone: the loss of the umbrella, the smell of paint at the Club, were forgotten under the superior excitement. "Confound the insolent villain!" thought the old gentleman. "He understood my wants to a nicety: he was the best servant in England." He thought about his servant as a man thinks of a horse that has carried him long and well, and that has come down with him, and is safe no longer. How the deuce to replace him? Where can he get ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which was denied her in his court. The king, sometimes furious with anger, sometimes relenting at her tears, and sometimes terrified at her menaces, was so greatly agitated that he knew not how to answer either the nicety of a creature who wanted to act the part of Lucretia under his own eye, or the assurance with which she had the effrontery to reproach him. In this suspense love had almost entirely vanquished all his ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... at the distinction drawn with such nicety by his companion, between words which he had hitherto been taught to conceive synonymous, or nearly so; and the reasons, such as they were, by which the woodman sustained his free use of the one to the utter rejection of the other. He did not think it important, however, to make up ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... he does not know the grounds of credibility, is no better than an ignoramus. The true sceptic has counted and weighed the reasons. But it is no light matter to weigh arguments. Who of us knows their value with any nicety? Every mind has its own telescope. An objection that disappears in your eyes, is a colossus in mine: you find an argument trivial that to me is overwhelming.... If then it is so difficult to weigh reasons, and if there are no questions which have not two sides, and nearly always in equal measure, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... presumed that the above illustrations of what the machine will do under certain heads and rise, will be sufficient for all practical purposes, to enable purchasers of the article to determine, with a sufficient degree of nicety, as to the head or fall to apply to the ram for a given rise and distance, which they may wish to overcome in raising water from springs or brooks to their premises, or other places where water is required. Yet, we have the pleasure of copying the following article, which we find in the 'American ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... world should have wrought in it. Perhaps this was nothing more than a slight perversion which he had contracted in the school of Warburton. What was a coarse arrogance in the master himself, assumed the form of nicety and superciliousness in the less confident and better regulated tempers of Mason and Hurd. His harmless vanity cleaved to him longer. As a proof of this, it is related that, several years after the publication of Isis, when he was travelling through Oxford, and happened to pass over Magdalen Bridge ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... cast seven devils out of the man in the scriptures because his nature was big enough to hold seven devils. Most of us, laddie," he went on, "are not big enough to hold half a devil," which explains the thought I have of Burns to a nicety, for it was surely the very bigness of his nature, the instant sympathy with all who lived, which brought many of the troubles to him for which he has been greatly blamed. But this can be said of him: that no man I ever ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... many a game at romps with these birds, and knew their haunts and habits to a nicety. The covey consisted of thirteen at first, but by repeated blazings into the 'brown of 'em,' he had succeeded in knocking down two. Jog was not one of your conceited shots, who never fired but when he was sure of ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... them. What was the spark? It was, Raven concluded again, in this quick scrutiny, like that in the eyes of inventors and visionaries. He wore clothes so threadbare that it seemed as if he must have been cold. But they were patched with a scrupulous nicety that made some revulsion in Raven rise up and dramatically spur him to a new resentment. She had patched them. Her faithful needle had spent its art on this murderer of her peace. He had reached the woodpile now and Tenney came a ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... bread and onions, and began eating very heartily. In the middle of them sat King Agesilaus himself, in nowise distinguished from the rest, neither by his clothing nor his fare; nor was there in the whole army an individual who more exposed himself to every species of hardship, or discovered less nicety than the king himself, by which means he was beloved and reverenced by all the soldiers, who were ashamed of appearing less brave or patient than ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... Bay natives at Red Point; and they were showing themselves to the others, and persuading them to follow their example. Whilst, therefore, the powder was drying, I began with a large pair of scissors to execute my new office upon the eldest of four or five chins presented to me; and as great nicety was not required, the shearing of a dozen of them did not occupy me long. Some of the more timid were alarmed at a formidable instrument coming so near to their noses, and would scarcely be persuaded by their shaven friends to allow the operation to be finished. But when their chins ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... removed, and Sophia had fallen into the way of thinking a good deal of all he said. She was busy weighing him in the scales of her approval and disapproval, and the scales, she hardly knew why, continued to balance with annoying nicety. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... hers to do as she likes with?" he said, pleasantly, tipping back, in his chair, and beginning to pare his nails with an air of nicety that fascinated Amanda into watching him. "They're hers, I s'pose?" he continued, looking suddenly and keenly ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... and he winked, and gesticulated, and pointed to his head, crying, 'Fall not, O man of the nicety of measure, into the trap of error; for 'tis I that am a barber, and a rarity in this city, even Shibli Bagarag of Shiraz! Know me nephew of the renowned Baba Mustapha, chief barber to the Court of Persia. Languishest thou not for my art? Lo! with three sweeps I'll give thee a clean poll, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fragments and sobered down licentious strains so much in the olden spirit and feeling, that the new cannot be distinguished from the ancient; nay, he inserted lines and half lines, with such skill and nicety, that antiquarians are perplexed to settle which is genuine or which is simulated. Yet with all this he abated not of the natural mirth or the racy humour of the lyric muse of Scotland: he did not like her the less because she walked like some of the maidens of her strains, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... does it as a lady should. She does not cut blundering and uneven slices; she does not burn the edges; she does not deluge it with bad butter, and serve it cold; but she arranges and serves all with an artistic care, with a nicety and delicacy, which make it worth one's while to have a lady friend ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... of being left to take care of itself, and, with its huge white sails bulged out, strutted off like a vain turkey. I had been standing by my father near the wheel-house all this while, observing things with that nicety of perception which belongs only to children; but now the dew began falling, and we went below ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... out again in a moment, bearing a great chair, which they set with nicety at the door of the carriage. This done, the gapers saw what they had come to see. For an instant, the face that all England knew and all Europe feared—but blanched, strained, and drawn with pain—showed in the opening. For a second the crowd was gratified ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... twenty-four, with black hair and eyes and a swarthy complexion. From the jack-knife beside him, and the shavings scattered around, it was clear that he had been whittling out the piece of pine that he was adjusting, with some nicety, to a wooden model of some mechanical contrivance which stood upon the floor beside him. They were a strikingly handsome ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... of the dress-coat is of paramount importance, that being the garment which decorates the gentleman at a time when he is naturally ambitious of going the entire D'Orsay. There is great nicety required in cutting this article of dress, so that it may at one and the same moment display the figure and waistcoat of the wearer to the utmost advantage. None but a John o'Groat's goth would allow it to be imagined ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various
... ruthless exercise of power, and on the other hand mistrust stupidity and ignorance and baseness and selfishness and suspiciousness. The study of high literature is valuable not as a mere exercise in erudition and linguistic nicety and critical taste, but because the great books mirror best the highest hopes and visions of human nature. The precise extent of the intellectual range matters very little, compared with the perceptiveness and emotion by which the realisation of other lives, other needs, other ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this Nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again." The Novelist himself was depicted there to a nicety. No need, therefore, was there for even one syllable of this in the Reading. Scrooge's Nephew was visibly before us, without a word ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... times, though not often, the reading aloud of a Confederate newspaper, to a group of fifty or more listeners; at evening, sweet singing, riddles, jests, or loud-voiced sarcastic conundrums and satirical responses. Many found interest and pleasure in carving with the utmost nicety ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... leader. He banked round and ran into a thicker pall of fog and began climbing. As he turned he saw a quick, red, angry flash appear in the clouds and something whistled past his head. The guns had got the altitude of the bombers to a nicety and Tam grinned. ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... note it as a nicety, that the membrane must be moist through which this transudation is to take place; and I admit that there are men whose enveloping sheath of individualism and egotism is so hard and dry, so little interpenetrated by candor and the love of truth, as to be nearly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... engraved meridians, make a difference of ten guineas in their price. For furniture they are not so beautiful; for use they are quite as valuable. There is only one other process which requires great nicety. The axis of the globe revolves on the meridian ring, and of course it is absolutely necessary that the poles should be exactly parallel. This is effected by a little machine which drills each extremity at one and the same instant; and the operation ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... some of its shrewdness. It was as if the white frontier had seized and shaken him into a new conception of life. He moved restlessly along the bench, then stepped softly to the side of the bed and straightened the coverlet into greater nicety while his ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... herself from a fall, then gathered her skirts more closely and rushed on, measuring with instinctive nicety the length of every stride. It was not an easy path over which she dashed, for the ties were unevenly spaced; gaping apertures gave terrible glimpses of the river below, and across these ghastly abysses she had ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... and are distinguished for nicety of epithet and elaborate scholarly finish. He has feeling, a rich imagination, and a cultivated ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... and neural operations of great delicacy, many of which had resulted in what could have been agonizing pain without the use of suppressors. As a result, he possessed a biological engine that, for sheer driving power and nicety of control, surpassed any other known to exist or to have ever existed on Earth—with the possible exception of the Nipe. But those five years of rebuilding and retraining had left a gap ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... white, the color of old ivory, is slightly convex, and its top is a brownish gray to harmonize with its surroundings, and slightly concave. Its edges are beveled so that it fits into the flaring or beveled end of the chamber with the utmost nicety. No joiner could have done it better. A faint semicircular raised line of clay as fine as a hair gave the only clue. The whole effect, when the door was held open, was of a pleasing secret ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... the inventor had turned his attention to the construction of an entirely new police force, composed exclusively of automaton figures, which, with the assistance of the ingenious Signor Gagliardi, of Windmill-street, in the Haymarket, he had succeeded in making with such nicety, that a policeman, cab-driver, or old woman, made upon the principle of the models exhibited, would walk about until knocked down like any real man; nay, more, if set upon and beaten by six or eight noblemen or gentlemen, after it was down, the figure would utter divers groans, mingled ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... in making use of these tables, were found to be very laborious and inconvenient; to obviate this difficulty, the nautical almanack, suggested by Dr. Maskelyne, was published, which is now annually continued. The longitude is thus ascertained to such a nicety, as to secure the navigator from any danger arising from the former imperfect modes of finding it; "he is now enabled to make for his port without sailing into the parallel of latitude, and then, in the seaman's phrase, running down the port, on the parallel, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... your own head," said Raffles later; "infinitely easier to cut your own throat. Chloroform's another matter; when you've used it on others, you know the dose to a nicety. So you thought I was really gone? Poor old Bunny! But I hope Mackenzie saw ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... great nicety, into the ground at the precise spot where the beetle fell, my friend now produced from his pocket a tape-measure. Fastening one end of this at that point of the trunk of the tree which was nearest the peg, he unrolled it till it reached the peg, and thence farther unrolled it, in the direction ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... excellent Temple held that "the Epistles of Phalaris have more race, more spirit, more force of wit and genius, than any others he had ever seen, either ancient or modern." So much for what Bentley calls Temple's "Nicety of Tast." The greatest of English scholars readily proved that Phalaris used (in the spirit of prophecy) an idiom which did not exist to write about matters in his time not invented, but "many centuries younger than he." So let the Nicety of Temple's Tast and its ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... the ascetic—and all affected. His conversation bore out the summary. It astonished us. It encircled the earth, embraced history and letters since the world began. And added to all this, he had a thousand anecdotes on his tongue's tip. His words he chose with too great a nicety; his sentences were of a foreign formation, twisted around; and his stories were illustrated with French gesticulations. He threw in quotations galore, in Latin, and French, and English, until the captain began ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... be danger of bursting the pipe if the water were suddenly shut off at the nozzle itself. For this reason it is necessary to use a needle valve, similar to that in an ordinary garden hose nozzle; and by such a valve the amount of water may be regulated to a nicety. Where the head is so great that even such a valve could not be used safely, provision is made to deflect the nozzle. These wheels have a speed variation amounting to as much as 25 per cent from no-load to full load, in generating electricity, and since ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... is one extremely well adapted for bread baskets, as well as for papier-mache trays of the usual forms; but it requires a little nicety to produce even edges at the sloping sides. The way it is done is this. The whole pattern, it will be perceived, is done in square crochet, and in the increasing sides a close square is added at each end. This is done by making one chain extra at ...
— The Ladies' Work-Book - Containing Instructions In Knitting, Crochet, Point-Lace, etc. • Unknown
... to remark, that even if the apostles had gone on the opposite extreme of what I meant I should not think them 'deserving of no credit.' Supposing they had descended into minutiae, and related, to an exact nicety, every particular circumstance (which is exactly the reverse of what I mean to state), would they on this account have been deserving of no credit? I think not. Considering the time, however, which ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... the snow of the drift which sloped down into the field and which the horses had churned into slabs and clods, had struck the fence wire and, lifting the whole of the conveyance, had placed me; cutter and all, balanced for a moment to a nicety, on top of the post. But already we ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... this particular roadway I never fully comprehended the nicety and the force of the phrase "to drive in." I had heard people say that they had driven into such and such places, and I had wondered why they employed this figure of speech when, it seemed to me, it would have been more exact to say that they entered upon or drove over. But ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... extreme left and reached almost exactly the point from which he started the first time. He pauses, panting, but with the scowl of determination still more intense, and concentrated chiefly in his right eye. Very cautiously extending his dexter hand, that he may not destroy the nicety of his perpendicular balance, he points with a finger at the knob of the door, and suffers his stronger eye to fasten firmly upon the same object. A moment's balancing, to make sure, and then, in three irresistible, rushing strides, he goes through the glass doors with a burst, without stopping ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... All his desires depend on things within his power; he transfers all his aversions to those things which Nature commands us to avoid. His appetites are always moderate. He is indifferent whether he be thought foolish or ignorant. He observes himself with the nicety of an enemy or a spy, and looks on his own ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... Colonel Rawdon Crawley, a brainless sensualist, whom Becky marries, and in some degree reforms, but who, by having an occasional twinkle of genuine sentiment in his heart, always was her superior, is drawn both with a breadth and a nicety of touch which is rare in such delineations. The exact amount of humanity which coexists with his rascality and stupidity, is given with perfect accuracy. Sir Pitt Crawley, coarse, uneducated, sordid, quarrelsome, his small, sharp mind an epitome of vulgar shrewdness, is a personation ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... of his person, to such a degree, as to make use of the most lascivious means to that end then in use, as to have all the hairs of his body twitched off, and to wipe all over with perfumes with the extremest nicety. And he was a beautiful person in himself, of a fair complexion, tall, and sprightly, full faced, with quick hazel eyes, if we may believe Suetonius; for the statues of him that we see at Rome do not in all points answer this description. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... where the outriggers cross, on which is carried the fishing gear, and, invariably, also fire. The canoes are propelled by short paddles, or a sail of palm-leaf matting when the wind is fair. Considerable nicety is also shown in the making of fishing lines and hooks. The former are made from the fibres of a species of climber very neatly twisted. The fish-hooks are made of tortoise-shell, or nails procured from wreck timber. ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... always to achieve the same happy results in the white loaf. He who plants a strawberry seed will find that the tiny seed will construct a plant, lay in the red tints according to rule and mix the flavor of the berry to a nicety that is the despair of the chef. In the tropic forests there is a flower with a deep cup and the pollen at the bottom. This pollen lies upon a little platter, and underneath the platter is that form of trap known as a figure four, much loved by boys. When the bee, creeping down ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Hargraves to watch him make it. He took rank among artists when he began, and he never varied the process. With what delicacy he bruised the mint; with what exquisite nicety he estimated the ingredients; with what solicitous care he capped the compound with the scarlet fruit glowing against the dark green fringe! And then the hospitality and grace with which he offered it, after the selected oat straws had been plunged ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... supposed to be able to feel the pulse of the University move about with the weight of much knowledge upon their brows, throwing out hints as to the probable majority one way or the other. Some profess to know it to a nicety. Others shake their heads and remark vaguely that there is not much to choose either way. So week after week goes by, until the excitement reaches a climax when the date of the ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... mountainous boundary; and lastly, again without any ridge, it flows towards the southern breach in these same mountains. Hence the surface of this one basin-like plain, appearing to the eye so level, has been modelled with great nicety, so that the drainage, without any conspicuous watersheds, is directed towards three openings in the encircling mountains. ((It appears from Captain Herbert's account of the Diluvium of the Himalaya, "Gleanings of ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... mind in most of us does not even know of the existence of the organs and secretions involved, but something sends the messages and it is something that has a remarkable likeness to mind as we usually think of mind,—something which takes advantage of the past and gages means to an end with a nicety ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... is given these British volumes by the presentation card, tipped in after the front cover. A really exquisite little thing is this one: it bears, placed with great nicety, its coat of arms above, delicately reduced in size; across the middle, in beautiful sensitive type, it reads: "With the City Accountant's Compliments"; in the lower left corner, in two lines, ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... calls at Manila, and has a commission to explore the rivers and lagoons of China with his canoe, left us, in that surprising craft, plying his paddle in the fashion of the Esquimaux, pulling right and left, hand over hand, balancing to a nicety on the waves and going ashore dry and unruffled, with his fieldglass and portfolio, his haversack and typewriter machine that he folds in a small box as if it was a pocket comb, and his kodak, with ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... I don't believe that these competitions are ever conducted fairly. I don't see how they can be. I don't see how any man, or any set of men, can wade through a cartload of MSS. in such a manner as to be able to judge, with critical nicety, which is the best one in the truckful. But I'm sure of this, I don't believe that any man sent in a better story than 'The Beggar'—a more original one, I mean. I know the sort of people who enter for these competitions-a lot ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... the previous evening, muddy and torn, its sticks broken by the heavy wagons which had passed over it. A glance at the hostile boarding-house assured her that all was quiet there; so, after arranging her dress with studied nicety, and disposing her hair in the most enchanting style—and Ann Harriet was really neat and winsome—she descended to the breakfast room. Her cousin Gregory was the only person present—he sat by the window, reading. After the customary greeting, Ann Harriet ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... neatness; the fire, the wood-fire, was taken care of; Miss Fortune seemed to know by instinct when it wanted a fresh supply, and to be on the spot by magic to give it. Ellen's medicines were dealt out in proper time; her gruels and drinks perfectly well made and arranged with appetising nicety on a little table by the bedside where she could reach them herself; and Miss Fortune was generally at hand when she was wanted. But in spite of all this there was something missing in that sick room—there was ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... The little princess, whose nicety as to her dress and sensitiveness as to anything unpleasant about her pretty person we have seen, was lifted up streaming with tears and broken eggs, but otherwise not seriously injured, having fallen on the very substantial substratum of hay which Dame Poulet had selected ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... country is rarely well roasted; and in this consists its chief excellence. Dr. Moseley long since observed—"The roasting of the berry to a proper degree requires great nicety: the virtue and agreeableness of the drink depend upon it; and both are often injured by the ordinary method. Bernier says, when he was at Cairo, where coffee is so much used, he was assured by the best judges, that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... what the riddle was intended to tell you!" rejoined Allan. "But if you will have it in so many words, my own impression is that you would have done better not to disturb me under that tree in the park. I've been calculating it to a nicety, and I beg to inform you that I have sunk exactly three degrees lower in the estimation of the resident gentry since I had the pleasure of seeing ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... trunks but twice—when we sailed from New York, and when we returned to it. Whenever we made a land journey, we estimated how many days we should be gone and what amount of clothing we should need, figured it down to a mathematical nicety, packed a valise or two accordingly, and left the trunks on board. We chose our comrades from among our old, tried friends, and started. We were never dependent upon strangers for companionship. We often had occasion to pity Americans whom we found traveling ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... affected, in the first period of measles, and before there is the slightest appearance of eruption, we conceive it often so be our duty to bleed freely, without reference to the subsequent disease of the skin, or any nicety of calculation about this latter going through its regular stages. Indeed, we have usually reason to congratulate ourselves for having, by this means, rendered the subsequent disease milder and more ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... From head to heels he was adjusted with mathematical nicety. Every organ in his shapely body did its work silently, easily, accurately. Silver-gray hair covered his head, falling gracefully away from a parting in the middle of it. It never seemed to grow long, and yet it never looked as if it had been cut. Mr. Maddledock's ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... how could we indeed anywhere within the range of Greek conceptions?— anything rude, uncomely, or unadorned. No one who reads carefully in this very book of The Republic those pages of criticism which concern art quite as much as poetry, a criticism which drives everywhere at a conscientious nicety of workmanship, will suppose that. If kings and knights never drink from vessels of silver or gold, their earthen cups and platters, we may be sure, would be what we can [254] still see; and the iron armour on their bodies exquisitely fitted to them, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... very honest man, Mr. Steele. I commend the nicety of your scruples and am quite ready to trust myself to them. I own to no blot, in my past or present life, calling for public arraignment. If my statement of the fact is not enough, I here swear on the ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... calling to mind Tom Paine's happy expression, "That the principles of the American Revolution opened the Bastile is not to be doubted, therefore the key comes to the right place;" the black velvet coat worn when the farewell address to the Army was made; the rooms all in nicety of preparation as if expectant of the coming host—we move among these memorials of days and men long vanished—we stand under the great trees and watch the solemn river, in its never-ceasing flow, we gaze upon the simple tomb whose silence is unbroken save by the low murmur of ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... would call, in order that being presently responsible for the beef, greens, and sundries, he might take to be in the way at the time. Mr Swiveller, after mentally calculating his engagements to a nicety, replied that he should look in at from two minutes before six and seven minutes past; and the man disappearing with this feeble consolation, Richards Swiveller took a greasy memorandum-book from his pocket and ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... deliberately, and with an overemphasised nicety. As she carried her soup-spoon to her lips, Maurice Guest felt that she was observing him; and throughout the meal, of which she ate but little, he was aware of a peculiarly straight and penetrating gaze. It ended by disconcerting ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... for so long exactly how they looked and the words that they would say, that they were, to him, rather like the stone images of the Twelve Apostles in the niches round the West Door. Today they jumped in a moment into new life. Yesterday he could have calculated to a nicety the attitude that they would have; now they seemed to have been blown askew with a new wind. Because he noticed these things it does not mean that he was generally perceptive. He had always been very sharp to perceive anything ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... vast square was the farm house belonging to Mr. Wright. It was quite a respectable building, two stories high, with flat roof, and constructed entirely of rough logs, yet fitted together with considerable pretensions to skill and nicety. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... Jewells to my Wife, which I was to know nothing of; but she came quickly and discovered them to me and asked me whither she should keep them, which I advised her to do for the present. For I reflected that my shewing an over-nicety might do hurt, before I had made a full discovery what goods and treasure were in the Sloop. All this whole matter, even to my writing my Letter to Kid, was transacted with the privity and advice of ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... or less ingenious traps, independent yet inter-dependent, and so arranged that while yet trapping they carry forward the plot or theme without a break. These traps of scene, of situation, of climax, of acts and tableaux or of whatever they are, require to be set and adjusted with the utmost nicety and skill so that they will spring at the precise instant and in the precise manner to seize and hold the admiration—sympathy—interest—or whatever they may be intended to capture, of an audience. Their ...
— How to Write a Play - Letters from Augier, Banville, Dennery, Dumas, Gondinet, - Labiche, Legouve, Pailleron, Sardou, Zola • Various
... hundred women and boys. Their diseases and deaths arise from poisoning by lead. The file rests on a bed of lead during the process of cutting, which might more correctly be called stamping; and, as the stamping-chisel can only be guided to the required nicety by the finger-nail, the lead is constantly handled and fingered, and enters the system ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... any one to rely on aneroids alone for the exact measurement of mountain heights. There were in my outfit three artificial horizons—one with mercury, the others constructed with a plate glass. The latter had a special arrangement by which they could be levelled to a nicety. I found that for taking observations for latitude and longitude by the sun the mercury horizon was satisfactory, but when occultations had to be taken at night the plate-glass horizons were easier to work, and gave a more clearly defined reflection of stars and planets in such a bitterly ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... are not nice in their eating, quantity being more closely considered by them than quality. There is, I admit, something in the good man's concluding conjecture, that "the sort of diet men observe influences their style." I should know an "heavy-wet" man at the third line; and I can tell to a nicety when Theodore Hook writes upon claret, and when he is inspired by the over-heating and acrimonious stimulus of Max. Hayley obviously composed upon tea and bread and butter. Dr. Philpots may be nosed a mile off for priestly port and the fat bulls of Basan; and Southey's Quarterly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... Jupiter and Saturn, though further complicated by four moons in the case of Jupiter, and eight in the case of Saturn, and also by perturbations caused by other planets, can be calculated with exceeding nicety. ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... draughting; indeed this was proved by the ease with which she appeared to glide along the surface of, rather than through, the water, her progress being marked by singularly little disturbance of the element, considering her very high rate of speed. Her sails were magnificently cut, setting to a nicety, and drawing to perfection, and they were white enough to have graced the spars of a yacht. I noticed, too, that the inside of the bulwarks, her deck-fittings, brass-work, and guns, were all scrupulously clean and bright, while ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... empress, and behaved as the last in the house, being persuaded that she was so before God. She feared nothing more than what ever could bring to her mind the remembrance of her former dignity. She prayed and read much, worked with her hands, abhorred the least appearance of worldly nicety, and took a singular pleasure in visiting and comforting the sick. Thus she passed the fifteen last years of her life, never suffering the least preference to be given her above anyone in the community. Her mortifications at length reduced her to a very weak condition, and brought ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... "even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal," "where shall in no wise enter anything that defileth, neither what worketh abomination nor maketh a lie," would alone satisfy him, or rather alone not give him actual pain. It may give an idea of this exquisite nicety of feeling to mention, that one day he took in his fingers a half-bloomed rose, without blemish, and, smiling with an infinite joy, remarked, "This is perfect. On earth a flower only ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the application that might have daunted Archimedes. We durst not drop any considerable pebble lest the sentinels should hear, and those that we dropped we could not hear ourselves. We had never a watch—or none that had a second-hand; and though every one of us could guess a second to a nicety, all somehow guessed it differently. In short, if any two set forth upon this enterprise, they invariably returned with two opinions and often with a black eye in the bargain. I looked on upon these proceedings, although not without laughter, yet with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to the door and tugged at the handle. The door would not open; built with air-tight nicety, it did ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... shift for ourselves. In this forlorn state, we had to range about the woods in search of fruits and roots, which last we had to dig from the ground with our fingers for want of any instruments. Hunger had quite abated the nicety of our palates, and we were glad to feed on every thing we could find that was eatable. Necessity soon reconciled us to going naked, for our clothes becoming rotten with our sweat fell from our backs by degrees, so that at length ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... find a biting satire ready-made by the children of Under Town. A fat small boy comes round here, who has attentively studied the meetings; who can copy the canting, up-and-down, gentle-explosive, the Behold I am saved, ye sinners! tone to a nicety. He marches at the head of a band of serious infants who bear rags, tied to sticks and parasols, as banners. Every now and then he circles them to a standstill for an harangue about blood, fire and Jesus. (It is the gory part which delights him.) Then the procession re-forms, imitating brass ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... out of the cats' home quietly, mounted, rode quickly down the road till they were out of hearing of the house, and then slackened their pace in order to reach their destination cool and tidy. They timed their arrival with such nicety that as they dismounted before the door of Deeping Hall, Sir James Morgan, in the content inspired by an excellent dinner, was settling himself comfortably in an easy ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... they make profession of an apostolic charity, yet they will pick a quarrel, and be implacably passionate for such poor provocations, as the girting on a coat the wrong way, for the wearing of clothes a little too darkish coloured, or any such nicety not worth the ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... strongest surface thoughts entirely on innocuous things. The trouble with that was that it made it extremely difficult to think about some way to get out of the jam he was in. Thinking on two levels at once, while not impossible, required a nicety of control that made ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... men, but which most others, perhaps all others, feel too. It is more popular, perhaps, than any English poem, because that sort of feeling is the most diffused of high feelings, and because Gray added to a singular nicety of fancy an habitual proneness to a contemplative—a discerning but unbiassed—meditation on death and on life. Other poets cannot hope for such success: a subject, so popular, so grave, so wise, and yet so suitable to the writer's nature is hardly to be found. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... one of the monks possesses any property of his own, even of a purely transitory kind, such as a bed or a suit of clothes. They have all in common, and they have not that nicety or necessity of privacy which would compel an Englishman to claim the right to wear the same coat and trousers two days running. But the monks are even less diffident of claiming their own separate mugs and plates at table, and are unoffended by miscellaneous eating ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... five years has been a uniform alacrity in going under; the offices in the gift of the President might very well be reckoned on to supply the beef which should lead by their noses the weary expectants whose hunger might be too strong for their nicety of stomach; and the pinch of salt,—why could not that be found in the handful of Republicans who might be drawn over by love of notoriety, private disgusts, or that mixture of motives which has none of the substance of opinion, much less of the tenacity of principle, but which is largely operative ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... shown to us. The characters are so perfectly natural, so precisely as we know them and have seen them day after day. The secret lies in the artist's power of restraint. He exaggerates, he caricatures,—he must do so to bring his point home to our dull wits. But he does it with such nicety that the exaggeration and the caricature are unnoticed. Indeed, the terms are misleading. It is better to say ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson
... You see, I have an old friend here in town, ——; you've no doubt heard of him—ex-member of Congress, and as good as appointed Minister to Venezuela right now. A scholar of the deepest erudition; a speaker and writer of great force and nicety, and of exquisite literary taste. Yesterday we met, and during our talk he told me that his book, the result of many years of thought, was completed. Now, for my part, I never believed that a rose ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... images; but the world in his mind was a colourless world. He understood and has explained the secrets of the human heart, the workings of the human passions; but he performs all these moral dissections with the coolness of an anatomist, engaged in a delicate operation. The nicety of his distinctions, and his deep insight into the nature of man, are displayed without passion, while his constant effort after the discovery of new truth, never for one moment betrays him into mysticism, or tempts him to substitute shadows for realities. One would think, that such a philosopher ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... his paper, and gave his head a curious, consequential toss. He had been shaved himself, and his little tuft of yellow beard was trimmed to a nicety. He looked sleek and well-dressed, and he had always his indefinable air of straining himself furtively upon tiptoe to reach some unattainable height. Lee's consequentiality had something painful about it ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... government; what was the course prescribed for him to do, how he was doing it, and concluding with a most clear and intelligible exegesis of the resumption act; what it was, its intent, purpose and meaning; and with convincing nicety and clearness, and evident satisfactoriness, was his explanation given, that he was frequently interrupted by spontaneous applause from the crowd. He told how the credit of the country was advancing as we near the solid foundation of hard money; how the American people were the most favored, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... tough edge and a long handle. When placed in the head of the screw, to drive in, it should be turned from left to right, and in taking out, from right to left. There is a particular way of getting out a screw, which is only to be learned by a little practice. The knack consists in combining with nicety the pressure on the screw-head and the turning of the driver. The young carpenter will now and then find a very stubborn screw and fancy it quite impossible to get it out; but by a little perseverance, he soon finds out the knack of doing it; ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... Nigel did not think so. He had calculated matters with some nicety. He was not exactly on such terms with Mount Dunstan as would make a casual call seem an entirely natural thing, and he wished to drop in upon him for a casual call and in an unpremeditated manner. He meant to reach the Mount about the time the storm broke, under ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the bottom of the water to {230} the top, in what proportion of time and swiftness it rises. He seems not to have considered, that in this Experiment, the times of the descent and assent are both taken and computed together; so that for this purpose, there needs not that nicety, he ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... just it. Put her on her guard—that is all that is necessary. She is a dear, good, clever girl, and it would be very sad if anything were to interrupt our comfortable way of getting on with her." Mrs. Robarts knew to a nicety the exact meaning of this threat. If Lucy would persist in securing to herself so much of Lord Lufton's time and attention, her visits to Framley Court must become less frequent. Lady Lufton would do much, very much, indeed, for her ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... cunning; the Andalusian, laughing and merry;—in short, he was all things to all men. Nor was he incapable of passing off, when occasion required, for a Frenchman; but as he spoke the language with a strong German accent, he called himself an Alsatian. He maintained that character with the utmost nicety; and as there is a strong feeling of fellowship, almost equal to that which exists in Scotland, amongst all those who are born in the departments of France bordering on the Rhine, and who maintain their Teutonic originality, he always found friends and supporters in every ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... conspired to bestow on her the best and choicest gifts in their power. The Sky gave her the perfection of its light; Venus, matchless beauty of form; Love, the first dart of his power; Nature, the flower of manners. She never set about any work that it did not go off to a nicety; she never took anything in hand that it did not succeed to a hair; she never stood up to dance, that she did not sit down with applause. On which account she was envied by her jealous sisters and yet not so much as she was loved and wished well ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... Fleet-ditch; and could at any time—no trifling task—tell the amount of corruption in the House of Commons, by taking up a handful of water at Westminster-bridge. On his stolen visit to England—for the honour he has done our country has never been generally known—he calculated to a nicety how many puppies and kittens were annually drowned in the Thames, and how many suicides—particularising the sex and dress of each sufferer—were committed in the same period, from a bottlefull of Thames water brought to him wherewith to dilute his brandy at the Ship public ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various
... these such force of comprehension, and such nicety of observation as Locke or Pascal might be proud of. This I say with intention to have you think that I ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds
... of his physiognomy, so that he can always look as if he really were what he pretends to be; and since he makes his calculations always within the lines of his individual nature, the appearance he puts on suits him to a nicety, and its effect is extremely deceptive. He dons his mask whenever his object is to flatter himself into some one's good opinion; and you may pay just as much attention to it as if it were made of wax or cardboard, never forgetting ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... off the smaller twigs and branches of the bough, and as he does so, it is gradually lowered till all are removed, and the bough, bereft of its clothing, is laid on the ground. Then comes the difficult task of felling the trees between the rows of coffee, a work of great nicety, which is partly effected by the final stroke of the axe, and partly by hauling a rope attached to the top of the tree. When a tree cannot be felled between the rows, it may often be felled so as to fall into the fork of an adjacent tree, and there it may be ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... figures of men or animals a large number of units was required, and in order that it might preserve its fidelity it was necessary not only that the separate pieces should exactly coincide but that they should be fixed and fitted with extreme nicety. At Babylon they were attached to the wall with bitumen. On the posterior surface of several enamelled bricks in the Louvre a thick coat of this substance may be seen; it has preserved an impression of all the roughnesses on the surface ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... can illustrate a story, or apparently read it. You have shown that you can do both, and your creation of Wiltshire is a real illumination of the text. It was exactly so that Wiltshire dressed and looked, and you have the line of his nose to a nicety. His nose is an inspiration. Nor should I forget to thank you for Case, particularly in his last appearance. It is a singular fact—which seems to point still more directly to inspiration in your case—that your missionary actually resembles the flesh-and-blood person from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... substances, particularly in complicated compounds, are not detected with sufficient nicety in the dry way of analysis, it will often be necessary to resort to the wet way. It is therefore necessary to have prepared the reagents required for such testing, as every person, before he can become an expert blowpipe analyst, must be acquainted with the characteristic ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... gasoline is always a pretty fair indication of the character of the roads. Our machine was supposed to make twenty miles to the gallon, and so it would on level roads, with the spark well advanced and the intake valve operating to a nicety; but under adverse conditions more gasoline is used, and with the hill-climbing gear four times the gasoline ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... in the way of small-talk—for the hostess felt a certain unwilling hesitation to approach the topic of daughters—but it happened to suit the social purpose of Miss Chetwynd to a nicety. Miss Chetwynd was a vessel brimming with ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... and at meals is brought in small bright-looking tubs kept for this exclusive purpose and scrupulously clean; it is then helped to each individual in small quantities, and steaming hot. The humblest meal is served with nicety, and with the rice various tasty condiments, such as pickles, salted fish, and numerous other dainty little appetizers, are eaten. To moisten the meal, tea without sugar is taken. A hibachi, or charcoal basin, generally occupies the central position, round which the meal is enjoyed, ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... was quite mysterious. He lived in a lodging that was modest, to say the best of it, in the rue du Cours, on the second floor of a house belonging to Madame Lardot, the best and busiest washerwoman in the town. This circumstance will explain the excessive nicety of his linen. Ill-luck would have it that the day came when Alencon was guilty of believing that the chevalier had not always comported himself as a gentleman should, and that in fact he was secretly married in his old age to a certain Cesarine,—the mother of a child which had had the impertinence ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... approaches, with how much nicety and attention does she help the chick to break its prison? Not to take notice of her covering it from the injuries of the weather, providing it proper nourishment, and teaching it to help itself; nor to mention her forsaking the nest, if after the usual time of reckoning the ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... well proportioned—and as he went forward along the dusty road he bore himself with the unconscious air of one more accustomed to crowded streets than to that rude and unpaved highway. His clothing bore the unmistakable stamp of a tailor of rank. His person was groomed with that nicety of detail that is permitted only to those who possess both means and leisure, as well as taste. It was evident, too, from his movement and bearing, that he had not sought the mile-high atmosphere of Prescott with the hope that it holds out to those in need of health. But, still, there ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... shaded, the fire trimmed to a nicety, the table covered deep with orderly documents, the backs of law-books made a frame upon all sides that was only broken by the window ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not much to say except as regards the work of the Ecole Imperiale Technique de Moscou. This is a remarkable exemplification of tools, methods of work, parts of engines and machines, all finished with extreme care and fitted with great nicety. It is fuller than it was in Philadelphia, but many of the portions are readily recognizable. The machine tools, hydraulic presses, stationary engines and hand fire-engines are closely associated with the military and naval objects, cannons, ambulances, field-forges ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... delicate, and those of the nervous system by far the most delicate of these—differences in the effect depend as much on differences of quality in the physical agents, as on their quantity: and if the quality of an instrument is to be tested by the nicety and delicacy of the work it can do, the indications point to a greater average fineness of quality in the brain and nervous system of women than of men. Dismissing abstract difference of quality, a thing difficult to verify, the efficiency ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... his hands the docile oar had become a raging termagant, and, when he would have been rid of it, the baubles had opposed his will. He had been dragged and battered unspeakably. Over all, the lash had been laid upon his bare shoulders; and that with a nicety of judgment which should have been foreign to so white a wrist and to eyes that could look so tender. Now that he had escaped out of hell, it was not surprising that he was loth to discover his refuge. Still, a promise must ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... descended upon him with an air carried from his supper hour, bland, dispensing. Well! Let us have it. "What did you wish to see me about?"—with a use of the past tense as connoting something of indirection and hence of delicacy—a nicety customary, yet unconscious. Bobby had arrived in his best clothes and with an air of such formality that Mr. Deacon had instinctively suspected him of wanting to join the church, and, to treat the time with due solemnity, had put him in the ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... unerring exactness, never broken, are seen on the genuine medallion heads, or shields, upon which the designation of the note is sometimes stamped. This nicety cannot be given by hand, or with the use of imperfect machinery. By close scrutiny the lines will be found to break off in the pattern, or appear forked, irregular in size, and ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... gauged it to a nicety,' says someone; ''e won't come out till we're demobbed, an' 'e'll be orf before ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... father, looking carelessly up. "Let him take care not to shoot himself then. He has no nicety ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... daffing I succumbed, and fell into an extraordinary ease with the world. Here I sat in a snug little tavern with the two most taking comrades in the world drinking a hot punch brewed to a nicety, while outside the devil of a storm roared ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... also be increased by dividing its roots, but more plentifully by cuttings of the stalk, put in in June, before the flowers make their appearance; in striking of these, however, there requires some nicety. ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 8 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... substantial form on the stone bench, and gave the most decided tokens of profound repose, long ere the monk had done speaking.—"Forms and fashions of respect," she continued, "are for times of ease and nicety;—when in danger, the soldier's bedchamber is wherever he can find leisure for an hour's sleep—his eating-hall, wherever he can obtain food. Sit thou down by Rose and me, good father, and tell us of some holy lesson which may pass away these ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... would call her back, and that they would all come into the hall with David to see the effect of his surprise upon her. She had planned to a nicety just which stair she could reach before they got there, and where she would pause and turn and poise, and what pose she would take with her round white arm stretched to the handrail, the sleeve turned carelessly back. She had ready ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... sister, of course. But——Well, to put it frankly, a woman who's been married three times might just as well never have been married at all. Looks as though she'd only squandered her money in rising to the nicety of a marriage-license. I hope you don't mean to marry her, old chap, because she's ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... of culinary processes is not often performed in perfection; it does not require quite so much nicety and attendance as roasting; to skim your pot well, and keep it really boiling, or rather, simmering, all the while—to know how long is required for doing the joint, &c., and to take it up at the critical moment when it is done enough—comprehends almost ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... with great nicety, into the ground, at the precise spot where the beetle fell, my friend now produced from his pocket a tape-measure. Fastening one end of this at that point of the trunk of the tree which was nearest the peg, he unrolled it till it reached the peg, and thence further unrolled ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... Blow might have married a South Sea Islander, and would have been none the worse as regarded his official duties. Mr. Blow did not want the services of a wife in discovering and reporting all the secrets of the Belgium iron trade. There was no intricacy in that, no nicety. There was much of what, in his lighter moments, Mr. Anderson called "sweat." He did not pretend to much capacity for such duties; but in his own peculiar walk he thought that he was great. But it was very fatiguing, and he was sure that a wife was necessary ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... learning fencing with the foils should precede all the above-named exercises, for in this way a delicacy of touch and nicety in the matter of guarding are acquired, which may lay ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... practice of catching fish by means of a rod, line, hook, and bait, which by its mixture of idleness and chance forms recreation; but however simple the art appears, it requires much nicety. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... her way with the utmost nicety, Mrs. Drumblade wound the net of flattery round and round Miss Pink until her hold on that innocent lady was, in every sense of the word, secure. Before half the horses had been passed under review, Hardyman and Isabel were out of sight, and Mrs. Drumblade and ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... must add yet another test, to pass which a man must not only express his spirit with sincerity, but must also have a strong and original spirit. It will be our business now to search out, delimit and define, not only Mr. Belloc's nicety and felicity of expression, but also the value of the thing ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... of his hand, and, after looking at the cog, he stared the captain in the face, who upon this made up to him (the landlord being in the room), and whispered him softly in the ear to drink out of it without any ceremony; for though the cog looked ill, yet it was clean; and, if he should show any nicety, it might raise a suspicion about him in the landlord's mind. The Prince said, 'You are right,' and took a hearty draught of water out of the rough cog, and then he put ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... inch thick, with a four-ounce steel-tipped cone, with the small charge (for that rifle) of four drachms of powder. The proper charge for that gun is one-fourth the weight of the ball, or one ounce of powder, with which it carries with great nicety and terrific effect, owing to its great weight of metal (twenty-one pounds); but it is a small piece of artillery which tries the shoulder very severely ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
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