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Benignant

adjective
1.
Pleasant and beneficial in nature or influence.  Synonym: benign.  "The benign sky" , "The benign influence of pure air"
2.
Characterized by kindness and warm courtesy especially of a king to his subjects.  Synonym: gracious.






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"Benignant" Quotes from Famous Books



... observer called him. His complexion was that of a man constantly exposed to the sun—sandy or freckled, contemporaries called it—but his features were clean-cut and strong and his expression was always kindly and benignant. ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... mutter and moan; but the divine song rises clearer and more clear. It is the voice of faith, silver-toned and sweet; and the very heavens themselves seem to listen; and the thunders rumble away into the valleys; and the stars, shining, and calm, and benignant, come out again over the mountain-peaks. And lo! once more she can descry the faint red rays above the snow; and she can almost see the choristers within the little building; and she listens to the silver-clear song; and her heart is filled with a strange ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black

... not at his companion. He had much to think of, in association with a print that hung up in another place, where, in the centre of a wondering group, one figure that he knew, a figure with a light about its head—benignant, mild, and ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... Mr. Carmyle was annoyed. The word is weak. The interruption coming at such a moment jarred every ganglion in his body. The clicking noise of the drumsticks maddened him. And the gleaming whiteness of Mr. Williams' friendly and benignant smile was the last straw. His dignity writhed beneath this abominable infliction. People at other tables were laughing. At him. A loathing for the Flower Garden flowed over Bruce Carmyle, and with it a feeling of ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... message of the Bell; thou didst swear thou wouldst not answer, yet art thou here in Kuttarpur. Am I to be blamed for taking this for a sign of thy repentance?... Hazoor, the Body is patient, the Will benignant and long-suffering. Still is ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... contemplating, and heeded not our presence. We stood still for a moment, unwilling to break a repose so peaceful and profound. At length, raising his eyes from the page, they caught the form and face of the princess, who stood nearest to him. A quick and benignant smile lighted up his features; and rising slowly to his full height, he bade her welcome, with sweet and tremulous ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... not the place to speculate on the good or evil which resulted from this change in the Roman government. Most historians and philosophers agree that the change was inevitable, and proved, on the whole, benignant. It was simply the question whether the Romans should have civil wars and anarchies and factions, which decimated the people, and kept society in a state of fear and insecurity, and prevented the triumph of law, or whether they should submit ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... benefit, young gentlemen. This skeleton I procured in person from the Hunterian department of the Royal College of Surgeons in London. It is a masterpiece of art. But we have no time to examine it now. Delicacy forbids that I should amplify at a juncture like this"—casting an almost benignant glance toward the patient, now beginning to open his eyes; "but let me point out to you upon this thigh-bone"—disengaging it from the skeleton, with a gentle twist—"the precise place where I propose to perform the operation. Here, young ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... fortune now or never, Shall be ensured for aye, or lost for ever. One stroke will end my life, or I shall gain The fairest woman e'er beheld, and reign An Emperor of Chang's celestial state. O smile upon my hopes, benignant Fate! ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

... strolls!" exclaimed Mrs. Portheris, with benignant humour. "I suppose we must condone them now!" and she waved her hand, rolling away, as if she gave us a ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... Lawgiver! Yet thou dost wear The Godhead's most benignant grace; Nor know we anything so fair As is the smile upon thy face: Flowers laugh before thee on their beds And fragrance in thy footing treads; Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... goat-faced creatures grouped in adoration round a smoking altar and youths piping to saffron-haired damsels on grass-banks set with poplars. The very strangeness of the fable set forth perhaps engaged the child's fancy; or the benignant mildness of the countenances, so unlike the eager individual faces of the earlier artist; for he returned again and again to gaze unweariedly on the inhabitants of that tranquil grassy world, studying every inch of the walls and with much awe and fruitless speculation deciphering on ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... he mounted the throne of the Caesars, he gave promise of a benignant reign. His first speech to the Senate made a good impression, and his first acts were beneficent. But he ruled only through his mother, who aspired to play the empress, a woman who gave answers to ambassadors, and sent dispatches to foreign courts. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... we human creatures heed the warnings of our good genius. I have no doubt that some benignant Power had precipitated Randal Leslie into the ditch, as a significant hint of the fate of all who choose what is, nowadays, by no means an uncommon step in the march of intellect—viz., the walking backward, in order to gratify a vindictive view of one's neighbor's property! ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... 82-86). Why, he is asked, has genius become so rare? There are many clever men, but scarce any highly exalted and wide-reaching genius. Has eloquence died with liberty? "We have learned the lesson of a benignant despotism, and have never tasted freedom." The author answers that it is easy and characteristic of men to blame the present times. Genius may have been corrupted, not by a world-wide peace, but by love of gain and pleasure, ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus

... him that reciteth the Holy Name, shall Brahma and Chakra the great king bring homage, and about him shall heavenly beings and benignant deities keep watch throughout the days ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin

... horrible idea crossed his mind. He believed that what he saw was Rosarita's spirit, and he would rather a thousand times have known her living, though pitiless and disdainful, than behold her dead, though she appeared in the form of a gentle and benignant apparition. ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... MacIan too much of a Northerner to know, slipped by among the tangle or ran pattering up the tree-trunks. Both the men, according to their several creeds, felt the full thunder of the psalm of life as they had never heard it before; MacIan felt God the Father, benignant in all His energies, and Turnbull that ultimate anonymous energy, that Natura Naturans, which is the whole theme of Lucretius. It was down this clamorous ladder of life that ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... seemed non-progressive, and his success as a writer no doubt interfered with his practice. His friend Professor Masson draws a pleasant picture of him when he first settled in practice, as a dark-haired man with soft, fine eyes and a benignant manner, the husband of a singularly beautiful woman, and much liked and sought after in the social circles of Edinburgh. This was partly owing to the charm of his conversation, and partly to the literary ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... it is true, Mr. Okada." Don Miguel's voice was unruffled, his manner almost benignant. "The old man is outside, and absolutely broken-hearted. His honor appears to be quite gone. I imagine," Don Mike continued, with a fleeting and whimsical glance at the potato baron, "that he has evolved some primitive plan for making his honor whole again. Direct methods ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... service the benignant Father Requireth at His earthly children's hands Not the poor offering of vain rites, but rather The simple duty man ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... thousand hot needles were being thrust into my cuticle. There are no words capable of expressing how torturesome this affliction is; to my physical suffering there was added a distinct mental disquietude arising from a sense of injustice that nature, supposed to be so benignant to her friends, should have punished me so grievously for having sought to cultivate and foster ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field

... of a benignant nature are to be found in the "Bisclaveret" in Marie de France's poem, composed in 1200 A.D.; and in the hero of "William and the Werwolf" (translated ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... "What a well-favoured countenance! Oh that the good seed might fall on that soil, for it would surely flourish." The agreeable impression must have been mutual, for Mr. Irwine bowed to her with a benignant deference, which would have been equally in place if she had been the most dignified ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... form and colour from the idiosyncracy of Java, and the goddess Parvati, or Kali, worshipped under these different names according to her attributes of glory or terror, becomes Lora Jonggran, the benignant goddess of Java, popularly known as "the maiden of the beauteous form." Four lofty stairways ascend to the hoary chapels within each sculptured pyramid, every dusky vault containing the broken image of the ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... such adventures, that into the regions of the atmosphere is by far the most interesting. Living immersed in this great ocean of air and moisture which surrounds the earth, and is the theatre of all the grand, beautiful, benignant, and often terrific phenomena of meteorology, it is no more than a very natural curiosity which induces us to seek by aerial exploration to understand its physical peculiarities, and to make use of the vast resources which it will ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... side. All my mother's relations kept shady when the lonely orphan looked about for protection; but Patience Pettibone, in her stately way, said,—"The boy belongs to a good family, and he shall never want while his three aunts can support him." So I went to live with my plain, but benignant protectors, in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... sweet and winning face, as beautiful a face as I have ever known. Reposeful, gentle, benignant; the face of a saint at peace with all the world and placidly beaming upon it the sunshine of love that filled ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... eye, whose philosophy was hated and feared because of its subtle denial of the God in high heaven, to Baruch Mendoza the universe had seemed empty with an emptiness from which glared no divine Judge—his own people's Jahveh—no benignant sufferer appeared on the cross. He saw no future life except in the commingling of his substance with the elements; and for this contumacious belief, and his timidly bold expression of it, he had ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... lie. Let me rest here: for I am way-weary and life-weary; I will rest here, were it but to die: to die or to live is alike to me; alike insignificant."—And again: "Here, then, as I lay in that CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE; cast, doubtless by benignant upper Influence, into a healing sleep, the heavy dreams rolled gradually away, and I awoke to a new Heaven and a new Earth. The first preliminary moral Act, Annihilation of Self (Selbst-todtung), had been happily ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... touches of stern and tender memory, 'The mute bird sitting on the stone,' 'A little and a lone green lane,' has a quality more thrilling than that of Wordsworth. There is none of his observation, and none of his sense of a benignant 'presence far more deeply interfused'; but there is the voice of the heart's roots, crying out to its ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... cancerous suspicions about all her friends, in spite, too, of her restless activities, Miss Mapp was not, as might have been expected, a lady of lean and emaciated appearance. She was tall and portly, with plump hands, a broad, benignant face and dimpled, well-nourished cheeks. An acute observer might have detected a danger warning in the sidelong glances of her rather bulgy eyes, and in a certain tightness at the corners of her expansive mouth, which boded ill for any who came within snapping ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... white hair, and blue eyes full of a wistful sympathy. She was younger than he, yet her acquired calmness had given her a matronly air and made her the one to assume protection and a gentle way of giving. As she stood there in the doorway, lamp in hand, she looked like a benignant mother waiting to greet a ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... sight, and till you have become familiar with his features, which are of a cast at once refined and aristocratic, yet full of goodness—an air of hauteur, which is very—very far from his real nature. He has in truth the soft heart and benignant temper of his mother, joined with the masculine firmness of character which belonged to his father; which, however, is in danger of being seriously impaired by inaction. Sensitive he is, perhaps to a fault. There is a tone of melancholy in his ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... tradition, the faith handed down by the homely elders, with THAT you never broke. Clean hands and a pure heart, these, with a sacred cake and shining grains of salt, you could offer to the Lares. It was a benignant religion, uniting old times and new, men living and men long dead and gone, in a kind of service and sacrifice solemn ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang

... and benignant sun, Wynnette, dear," said Miss Meeke, coming up behind them. "The sun is always shining for us. The earth turns around from the sun, and it is night—turns toward him, and it is day. The earth wanders far away from the sun, ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... paternal providence of Versailles, mindful of their needs, sent them, in 1704, a gift of twenty marriageable girls, described as "nurtured in virtue and piety, and accustomed to work." Twenty-three more came in the next year from the same benignant source, besides seventy-five soldiers, five priests, and two nuns. Food, however, was not sent in proportion to the consumers; and as no crops were raised in Louisiana, famine and pestilence followed, till the starving colonists were forced to live on shell-fish picked ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... like explosive laughter any better than Hawthorne did. None who met him can fail to recall that serene and kindly presence, in which there was mingled a certain spiritual remoteness with the most benignant human welcome to all who were privileged to enjoy ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... badinage—I hope far distant is the day When from these scenes terrestrial our friend shall pass away! We like to hear his cheery voice uplifted in the land, To see his calm, benignant face, to grasp his honest hand; We like him for his learning, his sincerity, his truth, His gallantry to woman and his kindliness to youth, For the lenience of his nature, for the vigor of his mind, For the fulness of that charity he bears to all mankind— That's ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field

... as follows. Punch has a row with Judy and knocks her out. (Laughter.) Various well-intentioned and benignant fools look in on Punch to pass the time of day, and get—very properly—knocked out for their pains. (Loud and prolonged laughter.) This is followed by the side-splitting incident in which a handy clown not only eludes the thirsty bludgeon, but ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... benignant beaming star, Guiding the homebound seaman from afar, Lighting the outbound wand'rer on his way, With all the lightsome perspicuity of day? Why not go out at once! and let be hurl'd Dark, dread, unmitigated darkness o'er the world? Why should the heavenly constellations shine? Why should the weather ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne

... assiduity, and learning at the Scottish bar, and during his frequent opportunities for display before the House of Lords. But it was his personal character, during a period of vacillating principles, and almost of disturbed national reason, which obtained that singular and benignant influence over his fellow-countrymen for which the life of Duncan Forbes is far more remarkable, far more admirable, than for the exercise of his brilliant and varied talents. He had "raised himself," observes the same discriminating commentator on his life and correspondence, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... hand] Nay, draw not Your hand away, Count Piccolomini! Not on mine own account alone I grasp it, And nothing common will I say therewith. Octavio, Max, Piccolomini! [Taking both their hands. Names of benignant solemn import! Never Can Austria's fortune fail while two such stars, To guide and guard her, gleam ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... the most benignant smile he could command at such short notice. He felt that the muscles round his eyes and the corners of his mouth were betraying too much of his real sentiments. 'You must be ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... further talk from him. He did not want the two men, sorry they had drawn up their chairs. His heart was very tender to them—Fallows and Abel, and the woman who had changed him. They were before him now as messengers from the benignant empire of the future—strange strong souls gathered together now in waiting at the end of a road.... He told them of the bomb-proof pit, the naked animalism of Kohlvihr, the infantry advances and of Samarc. Presently his ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort

... has no understanding: otherwise, among the innumerable conjectures with which my brain has been busied within this hour, the truth would certainly have suggested itself. But, instead of supposing I was transported to the benignant regions of science, I thought myself certain of being in the purlieus of the damned; in ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... ought not to be invaded or resumed, unless for misuser, or some legal ground of forfeiture. So shall a true reconcilement avert impending calamities, and this most solemn national accord between Great Britain and her colonies stand an everlasting monument clemency and magnanimity in the benignant father of his people; of wisdom and moderation in this great nation, famed for humanity as for valour; and of fidelity and grateful affection from brave and loyal colonies to their parent kingdom, which will ever ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... over-sensitive about everything that touches one so dear as your wife," replied the doctor. "But do not give yourself needless anxiety. Tumors in the neck are generally of the kind known as 'benignant,' and ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur

... the Governors-General of the Islands was, upon the whole, benignant with respect to the natives who manifested submission. Apart from the unconcealed animosity of the monastic party, the Gov.-General's liberty of action was always very much locally restrained by the Supreme Court and by individual officials. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... do it unto all of us. How many of us are badly shaved daily and taught the two-step imperfectly by ex-pupils of Bastien Le Page and Gerome? The most pathetic sight in New York—except the manners of the rush-hour crowds—is the dreary march of the hopeless army of Mediocrity. Here Art is no benignant goddess, but a Circe who turns her wooers into mewing Toms and Tabbies who linger about the doorsteps of her abode, unmindful of the flying brickbats and boot-jacks of the critics. Some of us creep back to our native villages ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... tangle of grotesque chimeras, as he is represented in the vignette of the French translation of his stories; and, to tell the truth, there was nothing of the kind in these subterranean shops whose proprietors were just opening their doors! The cats, of benignant aspect, rolled no phosphorescent eyeballs, like the cat Murr in the story, and they seemed quite incapable of writing their memoirs, or of deciphering a ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various

... staring, excitedly talking and gesturing among themselves, or gazing in a kind of fixed awe, asking of the least sailor with all reverence, bowing themselves before the Admiral, the over-god. The Admiral moved richly dressed, rapt and benignant, yet sparing a part of himself to keep all order, measure, rightness on the ship, and another part to find out with keen pains, "What of other lands? What of folk who ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... engrossing character. As one delicious morsel succeeded another he rolled his eyes towards his companion, and seemed to express that gratitude which he had not speech to utter, in looks of the most benignant nature. ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... no others care For our great Fathers' fame, oh, care thou still, Thou, to whom Fate hath so benignant been, That those old days appear again, When, roused from dire oblivion's tomb, Came forth, with all the treasures of their lore, Those ancient bards, divine, with whom Great Nature spake, but still behind her veil, And with her mysteries graced The holidays of Athens and of Rome. O times, ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi

... the rock, made him into a bird, and supported him, hovering {in the air} upon {these} sudden wings; and he gave him a curved beak, and crooked claws on his talons, his former courage, and strength greater {in proportion} than his body; and, now {become} a hawk, sufficiently benignant to none, he rages {equally} against all birds; and grieving {himself}, becomes the cause of grief ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... your children have room enough to increase and to multiply, and to become, with God's blessing, greater and more prosperous than yourselves. But I am confident that no spell less potent than the gentle and benignant control of those liberal institutions which it is Britain's pride and privilege to bestow on her children, will insure the peaceful development of its unrivalled resources, or knit together into one happy and united family the ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... named or known? Men only stammer of it in such words as Eternity, Fate, God. All the outcries of all creatures, living and dying, sink in its depth as in an unsounded ocean. Whether this listening silence, incurious, yet hearing all, is benignant or malevolent, who can say? The wistful dreams of men haunt this theme for ever; the creeds of men are so many keys that do not fit the lock. We ponder it in our hearts, and some find peace, and some find terror. The silence presses upon us ever more heavily until ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... benefit in inward growth and energy, then I can take and bear the inevitable burdens of this earthly life in the same spirit in which I often assume burdens not imposed upon me from without, for the more than preponderant benefit which I hope to derive from them. But if I have this faith in a benignant Providence which will not afflict me uselessly, I am under obligation not to let my faith, if real, remain inactive in my seasons of pain, loss, or grief. I am bound so to ponder on my assured belief, and on such proofs of it as may lie in my past experience, ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... am, pursuing you remorselessly," he said with a benignant smile. "You thought to escape my munificence, but it is in vain. Listen ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... independence, if they are the crown upon the head of a benignant despotism, are the very lifeblood in the veins of a ...
— Heart's-ease • Phillips Brooks

... into new vitality. So when one's affections keep in touch with the divinity of the world's authorship, fear and egotism fall away; and in the equanimity that follows, one finds in the hours, as they succeed each other, a series of purely benignant opportunities. It is as if all doors were opened, and all paths freshly smoothed. We meet a new world when we meet the old world in the spirit which this kind of ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... anywhere, if she won't go," said Mr. Hannay in a thick but penetrating whisper. He collapsed into a chair in front of Anne, where he seemed to spread himself, sheltering her with his supine, benignant gaze. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair

... this most interesting piece of devotion by Johnson, we are not informed; but I, whom it has pleased GOD to afflict in a similar manner to that which occasioned it, have certain experience of benignant communication ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... were noble gentlemen whose arms still waved in the air as they cheered for Italy. And there, high above all others, rose a familiar figure—the massive shoulders, the calm, shrewd, square face, the benignant glance and smile, which could ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... the old pastor, who a little before had seemed a prototype of John, the stern reformer from the wilderness, came out smiling and benignant, greeting his flock as a father might his children. The very hand that had been raised in denunciation, and in threatening a doom that would appall the heart of courage itself, was given to Gregory in a warm and cordial grasp. The man he had trembled before now seemed the personification ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... Thus varied and benignant are the aspects of winter on these sunny days. But it is impossible to claim this weather as the only type of our winter climate. There occasionally come days which, though perfectly still and serene, suggest more terror than any tempest,—terrible, clear, glaring days of pitiless cold,—when ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... And the down deadened it within the nest?" He moved her gently from him, silent still; And this, and this alone, brought tears from her, Although she saw fate nearer. Then with sighs: "I thought to have laid down my hair before Benignant Artemis, and not dimmed Her polished altar with my virgin blood; I thought to have selected the white flowers To please the nymphs, and to have asked of each By name, and with no sorrowful regret, Whether, since both my parents ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller

... which he held very much apart, rest his large white hands on the head, and enunciate the principles of spiritual art, as he hoisted them one by one, as you might say, out of the depths of his moral consciousness. His benignant and imperturbable pomposity gave Roderick the sense of suffocating beneath a large fluffy bolster, and the worst of the matter was that the good gentleman's placid vanity had an integument whose toughness no sarcastic ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... there was silence, while I sat immovable revolving the situation, and the Zulus regarded me with a benignant interest. Goza took his snuff-box from his ear, shook out some into the palm of his hand and, after offering it to me in vain, inhaled ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard

... box on the ears in the courtyard of the castle. Maddalo and his brothers, after this, attacked Tasso on the piazza, but ran away before they reached him with their swords. They were outlawed for the outrage, and the duke of Ferrara, still benignant to his poet, sent him a kind message by one of his servants. This incident weighed on Tasso's memory. The terror of the Inquisition blended now with two new terrors. He conceived that his exiled foes were plotting ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... gave freely. God is propitious, God is favorable to him who gives freely. God is honored with a banquet of eggs at the cross roads, the god of the world. God, with benignant spirit, desired in sacrifice a goat, a bull to be carried within the precincts of the holy place. God, twice propitiated, blesses the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... Bears benignant part In the ardent heaven's auroral pride of prime: If ever home on earth Were found of heaven's grace worth So God-beloved a birth As here makes bright the fostering face of time, Here, heaven bears ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... for all the lives Thy mercy spares, for all the tears thy ruth Stops at the source. Behold this poor old man, Last of a line of princes, stricken in years, As thy dead father would have been to-day. Was that white beard a rag for obscene hands To tear? a weed for lumpish clowns to pluck? Was that benignant, venerable face Fit target for their foul throats' voided rheum? That wrinkled flesh made to be pulled and pricked, Wounded by flinty pebbles and keen steel? Behold the prostrate, patriarchal form, Bruised, silent, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... of Battle Abbey is to vulgarise it. One comes away with confused memories of grey walls embraced by white clematis and red rose; gloomy underground caverns with double rows of arches, where the Brothers might not speak; benignant cedars blessing the turf with extended hands; fragrant limes waving their delicate leaves; an old rose garden with fantastic beds; a long yew walk where the Brothers might meditatively pace—turning, perhaps, an epigram, regretting, perhaps, the world. Nothing now remains of the ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... however, when the professor knocked the ashes out of his second pipe, and laid his hand upon the latch of Bressant's door, the expression upon his strongly-cut features was neither gloomy nor severe. There was a look in his eyes of benignant sweetness, all the more impressive because it made one wonder how it could find a place beneath such stern eyebrows and so deeply lined a forehead. But, cutting off an offending right hand, although a bitter piece of work ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... when the earth itself was young, to share the worldlier joys of his neighbor, to be aware of them, even himself to breathe deeply. You feel in the presence of these trees as you would feel in the presence of a kindly and benignant sage, too occupied with larger things to enter fully into your little affairs, but well disposed in the ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... nothing to James Ollerenshaw. They knew each other by sight, but their orbits did not touch. James would have gone by Mrs. Prockter as indifferently as he would have gone by a policeman or a lamp-post. As for Emanuel, James held him in mild, benignant contempt. But when, as the two pairs approached one another, James perceived Emanuel furtively shifting his gold-headed cane from his right hand to his left, and then actually raise his hat to Helen, James swiftly lost his indifference. He also nearly lost his presence ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett

... off linen and china again, pleasant to see old Blenkiron's benignant face and the way he tucked into his food, but it was delicious for me to sit at a meal with Mary across the table. It made me feel that she was really mine, and not a pixie that would vanish at a word. To Blenkiron she bore herself like an affectionate but mischievous daughter, ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... sprang to his feet in dismay. The sun was almost directly over his head, showing him how late it was. He looked at his horse as if to reproach his good comrade for not waking him sooner, but Old Jack's large mild eyes gave him such a gaze of benignant unconcern that the boy was ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler

... cometh when no man can work, as is the case with that mighty genius which seems now completely quenched. Well might he be styled 'a bright and benignant luminary,' for while all will deplore the loss of that bright intellect which has so long charmed a world, many will still more deeply lament the warm and steady friend, whose kind and genuine influence was ever freely diffused on all whom it could benefit. I trust, however, he may be spared ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... rich principalities, since he has now received the waters of baptism. It will not be out of place to remember under whose orders and by whom this conquest was effected. May Your Holiness attend with serene brow and benignant ear to the account of ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... Morgan Walladmor was sitting in his library, and reviewing the case of Captain Nicholas. Many noble traits of character, which had come to Sir Morgan's knowledge in past years,—his talents,—and his youth,—all pleaded for him powerfully: the benignant old man felt concerned that he should in any way have been made instrumental to his condemnation: for of that he had not much doubt; and he was considering through what channel he could best exert his ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey

... the interest of any sect, party or coterie; we have faith in the soul of man, in the universal soul of things, and trusting to the might of a benignant Providence which is over all, we are here sowing in weakness a seed which will be raised in power. But I need not dwell on these general considerations with which you ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... who ordainest for mankind Benignant toils and tender cares! We thank Thee for the ties that bind The mother ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... arm and conducted her to the grotto. Sophia Dorothea felt disarmed by her son's resolute bearing, and she was almost convinced that she had done him injustice, and that no one was concealed in the grotto. With a benignant smile she had turned to her son, to say a few soothing words, when she heard a low rustle among the shrubbery, and saw something ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... grunt of derisive and implacable bitterness, but the schoolmaster seemed much comforted by his apophthegm, and stood for several minutes surveying the back of McKnight's head, and wearing a benignant and thoughtful smile. ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... angel, I would be a leper again, a plague-stricken wretch, only to drink a cup of water from that dear hand—only to feel the touch of those light fingers on my forehead! There was a magic in that touch that surpassed the healing powers of kings. There was a light as of heaven in those benignant eyes. But, oh, she is changed since then. She is plague-stricken with the contagion of a profligate age. Her wings are scorched by the fire of this modish Tophet She has been taught to dress and look like the women around her—a little ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... I love and honor," he said, in a benignant tone, "who honestly earn their bread, who deserve all the success that comes to them, and always keep a warm corner in their noble hearts for those less blest than they. These are the men who serve the city in times ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... latter's return. The captain and his two chums had been inspecting the progress made by the carpenters and were leaning over the new fence, then just erected, but not yet painted. Down the gravel walk of the mansion across the road came strolling its owner, silk-hatted, side-whiskered, benignant. ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... and throughout eternity itself. All God could do He has done to render each sex superlatively happy in the other. Of all his beautiful and perfect work, this is the most beautiful and perfect. Of all his benignant devices, this is his most benign. All the divine attributes, all human happiness, converge in male and female adaptations to ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... delight. For some moments a spectator might have imagined that he beheld a family in deep affliction. But soon through these tears appeared on the countenance of each individual the radiance of joy, smiles of affection, tenderness, gratitude, and every delightful benignant feeling of the ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... "I thank benignant nature most for this,— A force of sympathy, or call it lack Of character firm-planted, loosing me From the pent chamber of habitual self To dwell enlarged in alien modes of thought, Haply distasteful, wholesomer for that, And through imagination to possess, As ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... a young man of unexceptionable character, and of a disposition mild, serious and benignant: his principles and blameless conduct obtained the universal esteem of the world, but his manners, which were rather too precise, joined to an uncommon gravity of countenance and demeanour, made his society rather permitted as a duty, than ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... slight shifting in the balance of opposing forces, will alter the character. I have observed a woman, for example, essentially the same at twenty and thirty—who is there who is not always essentially the same?—and yet, what was a defect at twenty, has become transformed and transfigured into a benignant virtue at thirty; translating the whole nature from the human to the divine. Some slight depression has been wrought here, and some slight lift has been given there, and beauty and order have miraculously emerged from what ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford

... Sterne was introduced into German life and letters.[1] He stood as a figure of benignant humanity, of lavish sympathy with every earthly affliction, he became a guide and mentor,[2] an awakener and consoler, and probably more than all, asanction for emotional expression. Not only in literature, but in the ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer

... that beloved form, Benignant, bland, and blessing all, Comes one begirt with fire and storm, The raging shell, the hissing ball! Type of the Prince of Peace, no more, Evoked by those who bear His name, THE FIEND, in place of SAINT of yore, Now hurls around ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... a benignant sound—it is better than something that is worse! It is a step upward from a darker quagmire of human condition. When Peter the Great, with his terrible broom, swept all the free peasants into the same mass with the unfree serfs, and when he established the empire upon a chain of service to ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele

... new-made Christians. Here, though exploded in physics, we have recourse to the 'horror vacui' as an efficient cause. This view of the subject can offend or startle those only who, in their passion for wonderment, virtually exclude the agency of Providence from any share in the realizing of its own benignant scheme; as if the disposition of events by which the whole world of human history, from north and south, east and west, directed their march to one central point, the establishment of Christendom, were not the most stupendous ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... travelers. That is not my business." He looked very hard indeed at the Persian, who decided that it might as well be supper-time and rose stiffly to his feet. The Persians rob and murder, and even retreat, gracefully. He bade us a stately and benignant good evening, with a poetic Persian blessing at the end of it. He bowed, too, to the Zeitoonli, who bared his teeth and bent his head forward ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... John Adams was not tall, scarcely exceeding middle height, but of a stout, well-knit frame, denoting vigor and long life, yet as he grew old inclining more and more to corpulence. His head was large and round, with a wide forehead and expanded brows. His eye was mild and benignant, perhaps even humorous when he was free from emotion, but when excited it fully expressed the vehemence of the ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... nature which are all the while working for us in our deepest pain. It is said, that, after the sufferings of the rack, there ensues a period in which the simple repose from torture produces a beatific trance; it is the reaction of Nature, asserting the benignant intentions of her Creator. So, after great mental conflicts and agonies must come a reaction, and the Divine Spirit, co-working with our spirit, seizes the favorable moment, and, interpenetrating natural laws with a celestial vitality, carries up the soul to joys beyond ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... violent rain-storm, seeming then fairly to agonize, so tossed and buffeted were they by the wind. But soon the storm ceased, the sun shone on the rounded head of the willow, turning the raindrops to quickly vanishing diamonds, and the great tree breathed only a gentle and benignant peace. When, in later years, I came to know the moss-hung live-oak of the Southland, the weeping willow assumed to me a new dignity and value in the northern landscape, and I have strongly resented the attitude of a noted writer on "Art Out of Doors" who says of it: "I never once have ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland

... in obedience to his careful monitor, bowed lowly before the dignified presence; and, hardly raising his eyes, he stands abashed at his awful situation, waiting the supreme pleasure of the supposed officer. A benignant smile lights up the tutor's grave countenance; he enters strangely enough into familiar talk with the recently admitted collegiate; in pathetic terms he describes the temptations of this great city, the thousand dangers to which he will ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... vermin, and he muttered a prayer in his first stride toward where he recalled the feeble light. The rats' compact column had figured in his dreams, and while they were led by the fair waltz-singer and dancer in order to devour him, unable to resist, the benignant fairy, for once dark—contrary to all precedent—wore ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... issuing from the cottage door; the coffin, carried by men, came first, the people pressing hurriedly after—among them one whom I instinctively felt to be the clergyman—a thick-set man with hair turning white, and a most noble, benignant face. As the procession formed he took his place at the head; Daniel and his mother climbing into a wagon directly behind the hearse; the former looked utterly broken down, as if the light of his ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter

... Adjustment to them was a practical, imperative necessity. They combined infinite capacity with human and finite caprice. The attention they received from humans was distinctly utilitarian in character. These forces of wind and sun and rain might be brutal or benignant. Primitive man established, therefore, a system of magic, sacrifice, and prayer, whereby he might minimize the precariousness of existence, and keep the ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... of day's decline was hard on dark When evening trembled round thy glowworm lamp That shone across her shades and dewy damp A small clear beacon whose benignant spark Was gracious yet for loiterers' eyes to mark, Though changed the watchword of our English camp Since the outposts rang round Marlowe's lion ramp, When thy steed's pace ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... not, be highly gratifying to yourself at the present time, and will redound to the future glory and distinction of your noble family. It is, in a word, the intention of the Holy Father to confer on your lordship the Grand Cross of the Most Noble Order of the Santo Spirito. And it is further the benignant purpose and wish of his Holiness to present you with this most honourable mark of his approbation with his ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... sweet accents, and the Puritan sang psalms to hornpipes, and the four-and-twenty shearers danced with nosegays in their bosoms, and chanted their three songs apiece at the old shepherd's festival; and one could not help picturing to oneself what havoc among good people's purses, and tribulation for benignant constable, might be worked here by the arrival, over stile and footpath, of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... from Dr. C. on the spirituality of man's nature. This was delightful! I came away in the most happy, hopeful, and heroic mood. The tone of the discourse was so dignified, his manner was so benignant and solemnly earnest, in his voice there was such a concentration of all his force, physical and moral, to give utterance to divine truth, that I felt purged as by fire. If some speakers feed intellect more, Dr. C. feeds the whole spirit. O for a more calm, more ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... robed in any other than their ordinary attire; perhaps that was one reason why their maintenance of their characters was not quite so perfect as that of the principal two. Hamilton stretched forward his wooden sceptre to the queen with benignant haste and dignity. Daisy, only too glad to shrink away, closed her eyes and lay back in the arms of her attendants in a manner that was really very satisfactory. But the attendants themselves ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner

... him to stop his warriors, lest one in the heat of excitement should do a mischief to the stranger. The canoe with its occupant was now very near, and it could be seen that the expression of his face was very gentle and even benignant. None could doubt his utter harmlessness; and the chief's son afterward declared that at this moment he felt a premonition of some event, but whether good or ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... thine! Never shall ruthless minister of death 75 'Mid thy soft glooms the glittering steel unsheath; No goblets shall, for thee, be crowned with flowers, No kid with piteous outcry thrill thy bowers; The mystic shapes that by thy margin rove A more benignant sacrifice approve— 80 A mind, that, in a calm angelic mood Of happy wisdom, meditating good, Beholds, of all from her high powers required, Much done, and much designed, and more desired,— Harmonious ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... subordinates, were then led into a large and lofty hall, surrounded by columns, and displaying three raised seats covered with canopies of rich drapery and design. On the one of these, which stood at the eastern end, sat the monarch himself, a personage of grave but benignant aspect, about sixty years of age, arrayed in scarlet and gold, and having a golden image of the rising sun, of extraordinary splendor, displayed on the back of his throne. On the seat on the southern ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez

... solicitude never ceases, and whose hearty and affectionate greetings never fail to welcome him home. In this cold, calculating, ambitious world of ours, there are few ties more heart-felt, or of more benignant influence, than those which mutually bind the master and the slave, under our ancient system, handed down from ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... conquest over heaps of slain, And reigned a little. Then, one day, They vanished into dust again. And other kings usurped their place, Who called themselves of Kintu's race, And worshipped Kintu; not as he, The mild, benignant deity, Who held all life a holy thing, Be it of insect or of king, Would have ordained, but with wild rite, With altars heaped, and dolorous cries, And savage dance, and bale-fires light, An unaccepted sacrifice. At last, when thousand years were flown, The great ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge

... a message from the captain, who desired to speak with me in his cabin. I went down; he received me with the benignant smile of our ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... a general, if rather languid, approval. There was not even a flavour of partisanship about the proceedings, and the delegates were impartially selected from both sides. The great Howe regarded the project with a benignant eye. At this time he was the Imperial fishery commissioner, and it was his duty to inspect the deep-sea fishing grounds each summer in a vessel of the Imperial Navy. He was invited to go to Charlottetown as a delegate, and declined in the ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun

... are of heavenly birth, Though sent down to our lowly earth To cheer the heart of man; They are only strong when the human soul Yields perfect trust and full control To heaven's benignant plan. ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite

... lenient, clement, benignant, gracious, benevolent, kind-hearted, forbearing, benign, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... themselves with the thoughts and concerns of the whole civilized world, for a quarter of a century, and have had a controlling influence over the age in which he lived. But when did a human being ever exercise an influence more salutary and benignant? Who is there that, on looking back over a great portion of his life, does not find the genius of Scott administering to his pleasures, beguiling his cares, and soothing his lonely sorrows? Who does not still regard his works as a treasury of pure enjoyment, ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving

... measures the wisdom of Congress may devise for the promotion of peace on this continent and throughout the world, and I trust that the time is nigh when, with the universal assent of civilized peoples, all international differences shall be determined without resort to arms by the benignant processes of arbitration. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Chester A. Arthur • Chester A. Arthur

... gorgeous flatteries, contrasting strangely with the bitter language of intense hatred and scathing contempt which Seneca poured out on the memory of Claudius after his death, were penned with the sole purpose of being repeated in those divine and benignant ears. No doubt the superb freedman, who had been allowed so rich a share of the flatteries lavished on his master, would take the opportunity—if not out of good nature, at least out of vanity,—to retail them in the imperial ear. If the moment were but favourable, who knows but ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... Peyton, a beautiful old lady, with wonderful white hair under the widow's ruching in her bonnet. The exquisite simplicity of her soul was reflected in the rose-leaf delicacy of her skin, in her benignant and innocent smile, in the serene and joyous glance of her eyes. Never in her life had she thought evil of any one, and she did not mean to begin on the verge of the grave, with the hope of a peaceful eternity before her. If dear Gabriella had "discarded" dear Arthur, then she could ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... namely, the horizon, the zodiac, theequator, and the equinoctial colure, meet, and, cutting each other, form three crosses. The sun is in the sign of Aries, "a better star," because the influence of this constellation was supposed to be benignant, and under it the earth reclothes itself. It was the season assigned to the Creation, and to ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri

... something like an hour before our melancholy-looking guest had fully improved the opportunity with which a benignant Providence had supplied him,—a freak in which, one might conclude, she seldom indulged. He ceased to eat, and sat for a moment gazing pensively at the dishes. It seemed to me—but in this I may possibly be mistaken—that a darker shade of sadness ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... A smile benignant kindling in his eyes, O happy realm! the glad Columbus cries, Far in the midland, safe from every foe, Thy arts shall flourish as thy virtues grow, To endless years thy rising fame extend, And sires of nations from thy sons descend. May no gold-thirsty race ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... different levels of that rugged country, men and women had planted their tent-poles and their hopes. Unacquainted with its rigors, they were unappalled by the hardships, which lay ahead of them, dimly understood. For that early autumn weather was benignant, and the sun was mellow on ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... strayed into an Italian Arcadia. But, as a matter of fact, Brian was probably less worldly in thought and aspiration at that moment than the serene-browed priest who stood before him and looked him in the face with such benignant friendly, interest. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... The benignant expression of old Van Quintem's face vanished instantly, and a just rage gleamed on every feature. "Unnatural son! monster! fiend!" he cried, raising his hands aloft; "at last you have gone too far. Leave my presence, sir, and never—never—let me see your face again. I ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... Spirit cried, Here, robed in shadows, dwells FUTURITY. There is no eye hath seen her secret form, For round the MOTHER OF TIME, unpierced mists Aye hover. Would'st thou read the book of Fate, Enter." The Damsel for a moment paus'd, Then to the Angel spake: "All-gracious Heaven! Benignant in withholding, hath denied To man that knowledge. I, in faith assured, That he, my heavenly Father, for the best Ordaineth all things, in that faith remain Contented." "Well and wisely hast thou said, ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey

... Martin's wide-open door first, but finding the kitchen empty, went quickly across to the other house, where Mrs. Jake was propped up in her rocking-chair and began to groan loudly when she saw Nan; but the tonic of so gratifying a presence soon had a most favorable effect. Benignant Mrs. Martin was knitting as usual, and the three women sat together in a friendly group and Nan asked and ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... as he was pretending to angle in the river that runs through the village. Immediately I had gazed upon his benignant countenance, I went and sat down by him. I could not help it. At once I understood the urbanity and the gentlemanliness that must have existed in the patriarchal times. There was no need of forms between us. He made room for me as a son, and I looked up ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... of benignant deities, with whom the priests hold communion on all occasions of impending danger, before all important undertakings, and whenever it is considered necessary to feast or to ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... alacrity of sound sense and single-eyed beneficence of aim could be more safely trusted than Franklin to draw light from the clouds and pierce the economic and political confusions of our time. We can imagine the amazement and complacency of that shrewd benignant mind if he could watch all the giant marvels of your mills and furnaces, and all the apparatus devised by the wondrous inventive faculties of man; if he could have foreseen that his experiments with the kite in his garden at Philadelphia, his tubes, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... Trenta's benignant face had gradually assumed as severe an aspect as it was capable of bearing. He pointed to Enrica, of whom he had up to this time taken no notice beyond a friendly smile—the marchesa did not like Enrica to be noticed—now he pointed to her, ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... was very dark, and curled in short, thick clusters; his whiskers were large and bushy, and met beneath his face; his upper lip was short, his mouth was beautifully formed, and there was a deep dimple on his chin; but the charm of his face was in the soft benignant expression of his eyes; he looked as though he loved his fellow-creatures—he looked as though he could not hear, unmoved, a tale of woe or oppression—of injuries inflicted on the weak, or of unfair advantages assumed by the strong. It was this which had made him so much ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... before a plain, fatherly hotel, and a motherly landlady appears at once to welcome us. We are won at once by Madame Baudot. Her benignant face is a benediction. She leads us in through the low, wide hallway, past the little windowed office at the end, and turning to the left into a short corridor brings us out to a set of rooms in the new extension. As we step out upon the tiny balconies ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... with sympathy, yet in a tone of superiority, and smiled with benignant understanding upon his naive penetration into the regions of the ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... first move in the historic controversy that has resulted in the extraordinary exposures that are being made as this book goes to press. When that first pebble was thrown, the surface of the insurance pond was as placid as a mountain lake, unruffled by a ripple, and in it were reflected the benignant faces of the noble philanthropists who consented to spend their days conserving the interests of the widows and the orphans of America. The people had grown so accustomed to regarding the McCalls, the Perkinses, the Hydes, the McCurdys, and the Alexanders, whose eminent ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... said Erica, laughing, as the benignant expression once more came over his lips. "You really must try to turn down the corners! Your character is a silent, morose misanthrope. I am the chatter box, pure ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... clustering with eager heads, what grim silence of foregone dissent!" To Concord came many kindred spirits, drawn by Emerson's magnetic attraction. Thither came, from Connecticut, Amos Bronson Alcott, born a few years before Emerson, whom he outlived; a quaint and benignant figure, a visionary and a mystic even among the transcendentalists themselves, and one who lived in unworldly simplicity the life of the soul. Alcott had taught school at Cheshire, Conn., and afterward at Boston on an original plan—compelling his scholars, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... figures stood up, marvellously alike in strength and beauty, yet absolutely different in expression and bearing, the one serene and benignant, the other fierce and threatening. The quiet one was still pleading, with a hand laid upon the other's shoulder. But he shook it off, and thrust his companion away with a proud, ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke

... evening we were in Philadelphia, the Captain at the house of the friends so often referred to, and I the guest of Charley, my kind companion. The Quaker element gives an irresistible attraction to these benignant Philadelphia households. Many things reminded me that I was no longer in the land of the Pilgrims. On the table were Kool Slaa and Schmeer Kase, but the good grandmother who dispensed with such quiet, simple grace these and more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... warmed her chilled hands at the fire, the silence seemed to her benignant. What was loneliness before had miraculously translated itself into peace. That worldly voice, strangely clothing her own longings with form and substance, had been stilled; only the clock, rich ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... words very quietly, his countenance gradually relaxing and smoothing into an amiable expression of forbearance. He looked up now at Aubrey with a smile that was almost benignant. ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... one feels the repose of a finished work before the first mellow touch of decay has come. The full, rich foliage still shelters the paths upon which the leaves have not yet fallen; the meadows are green; the skies soft and benignant. The conquest of summer is still intact, but here and there one sees slight but unmistakable evidence that the garrison, under cover of night, is beginning its long retreat. In such a moment one feels a sudden sense of loneliness, as if a friend were secretly preparing to desert one ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... hair, for her sun-bonnet lay on the turf beside her, her wistful eyes looking far away seaward, one could have compared her to a Norman or a Druidical priestess under the shadow of the sacred oak; there is at once something so benignant and strong, so full of pathos, ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... benignant day was yet to come. A quick footstep followed her, and erelong a voice, near at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... twelve smaller thrones, without rainbows, upon each side of the God of Jurgen's grandmother, in two semi-circles: upon these inferior thrones sat benignant-looking elderly angels, with long white hair, all crowned, and clothed in white robes, and having a harp in one hand, and in the other a gold flask, about pint size. And everywhere fluttered and glittered the multicolored wings of seraphs and ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... what had happened since the death of Sujah Dowlah—that prince who with a savage heart had still great lines of character, and who, with all his ferocity in war, had, with a cultivating hand, preserved to his country the wealth which it derived from benignant skies and a prolific soil—if, ignorant of all that had happened in the short interval, and observing the wide and general devastation of fields unclothed and brown; of vegetation burned up and extinguished; of villages depopulated and in ruins; of temples unroofed and perishing; of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... to his hut; but he hesitated, and moved slowly in the direction to which he had pointed. Consulting his apparent feelings they desisted, and parted in friendship. This was the first man they had seen in the island. His countenance, they describe as unusually benignant; his features less negro-like than common, and his manners frank and open. He exhibited neither curiosity nor fear, nor did he seem attracted by any part of their ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... was especially uncompromising in the maintenance of his political opinions; and to this peculiarity may be traceable some of his earlier misfortunes. In person he was under the middle height; his countenance was open and benignant, with a well developed forehead. He was much influenced by sincere religious convictions. His poetical works, with a memoir by Mr Leitch Ritchie, have been published by Mr Moxon for the benefit of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... door, and now, with it in his left hand rested on the floor, he stood by the bedside of his strangely fated little friend, a heroic smell of gunpowder and buckskin boisterous in the air about him, and on his face a look of benignant wonderment, as he gazed down into the newly reopened eyes, whose light had so well nigh been lost in the shadows of death. Bright and clear as were the eyes turned up to his own, they were still hardly capable of more than ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady

... awful pumshment for sin—as the friend and benefactor of mankind, not the remorseless tyrant and persecutor—to die would no longer be considered an evil. Let this hideous skeleton be banished into darkness, and replaced by a benignant angel, wiping away all tears, healing all pain, burying in oblivion all sorrow and care, calming every turbulent passion, and restoring man, reconciled to his Maker, to a state of purity and peace; young and old would then go ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... Ezekiel, whose faces she had studied in the large illustrated Bible that lay on a satin cushion in the sitting- room at Le Bocage. Sixty-five years of wrestling and conquests on the "Quarantma" of life had set upon his noble and benignant countenance the seal of holiness, and shed over his placid features the mild, sweet light of a pure, serene heart, of a lofty, trusting, sanctified soul. His white hair and beard had the silvery sheen which seems peculiar to prematurely gray heads, and the snowy mass wonderfully softened ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... These thoughts flashed through Don Sebastian's brain while George was still speaking; and by the time that the latter had finished, His Excellency had formulated his plans and was ready to reply. Hence his benignant smile, which was intended to suggest also a tinge ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood

... strange to see, amidst the peaceful, benignant faces, this woe-begone old man, with his thick white hair and his deeply furrowed placid cheeks, looking wistfully from one to the other, and listening anxiously, hoping some day to hear the words which should bring ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland

... late, Tante," she said, speaking in English and going to kiss her guardian's cheek, while Victor stood by, majestically benignant. ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... far-reaching schemes, and is very sure to fare better at the hands of large men than of small. The first and last impression which his personal presence always made upon one was of a nature wonderfully gentle, tender, and benignant. His culture, his intellect, was completely suffused and dominated by his humanity, so that the impression you got from him was not that of a learned or a literary person, but of fresh, strong, sympathetic human nature,—such an impression, I fancy, only fuller, as one might have got ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... robust and irrepressible vitality, the full-veined delight of living, the energy of observation and strength of satire, which characterise the one give place in the other to a calmer retrospection, a more compassionate humanity, a gentler and more benignant criticism of life. That, as some have contended, Amelia shows an intellectual falling-off cannot for a moment be admitted, least of all upon the ground—as even so staunch an admirer as Mr. Keightley has allowed himself to believe—that certain of its incidents are obviously repeated ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... and washed his brushes, and seated himself upon the sofa opposite the easel. There was no picture, of Diana or of Endymion any longer. In the place of Diana there was a full summer moon shining calmly in a cloudless heaven. Its benignant light fell upon a solitary grave upon a hill-top, which filled the spot where Endymion ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... the vast realm where tender memories brood O'er sacred haunts of time, That woo his spirit to a nobler mood And more benignant clime,— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various



Words linked to "Benignant" :   graciousness, kindly, benign, malign, harmless, benignity, kind, benignancy



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