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More "Finesse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... proceeded to carry it out with considerable finesse. An ordinary schemer would have been content to work with a savage hound. The use of artificial means to make the creature diabolical was a flash of genius upon his part. The dog he bought in London from Ross and Mangles, the dealers in Fulham Road. ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... perfect type of the English nobleman and statesman. The years that he had spent in the diplomatic service at Constantinople, St. Petersburg, and Salt Lake City had given to him a peculiar finesse and noblesse, while his long residence at St. Helena, Pitcairn Island, and Hamilton, Ontario, had rendered him impervious to external impressions. As deputy-paymaster of the militia of the county he had seen something of the sterner side of military ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... your peace is much disturbed by the contrivance of that turbulent man. I shall only add that I will dispose several whom I know to wish him well to solicit for his establishment in power, that you may seem to yield to their entreaties, and the finesse be less liable ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... useful knowledge, that Emily did not possess; and then I could not but see that Lucy's tact in moral feeling, was much of the highest order of the two. But, in purely conventional attainments, in most that relates to the world, its usages, its finesse of feeling and manner, I could see that Emily was the superior. Had I known more myself, I could have seen that both were provincial—for England, in 1801, was but a province, as to mere manners, though on a larger scale than America is even now—and that either would have been remarked for ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... gentlefolk in the west of Ireland would have made hospitality a more spontaneous and less formal affair in any case. In Devon, as Gabrielle soon discovered, calling was a ritual complicated by innumerable shades of social finesse. Lady Halberton had already coached her in the list of people whom she must know, people she could safely know at a distance, and people whom it was her duty to discourage. As soon as she was settled in at Lapton the county ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... then!" exclaimed du Portail, impatiently; "you go round and round the pot as if I were a man it would do you some good to finesse with." ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... repeat the success with other plays of a religious type, but not with equal effect, and several of his later plays were failures. He died on the 22nd of July 1904. Wilson Barrett was a sterling actor of a robust type and striking physique, not remarkable for intellectual finesse, but excelling in melodrama, and very successful as the central ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... the interest of an indolent man to be honest: for it requires considerable trouble and finesse, to deceive ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various
... face. 340 From her his features caught the generous flame, And bid defiance to all sense of shame. Tutor'd by her all rivals to surpass, 'Mongst Drury's sons he comes, and shines in Brass. Lo, Yates[27]! Without the least finesse of art He gets applause—I wish he'd get his part. When hot Impatience is in full career, How vilely 'Hark ye! hark ye!' grates the ear; When active fancy from the brain is sent, And stands on tip-toe for some ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... the island. Five times in that distance he fell upon his face; he crawled like a man about to die. He performed an arduous task, a devilish task, and when at last he reached the balsams he cursed his luck until he was red in the face. No one had seen him. That quarter-mile of labor was lost, its finesse a failure. But he kept up the play, and staggered weakly through the sheltering balsams to the cabin. His artifice had no shame, even when played on women; and he fell heavily against the door, beat upon it with his fist; and slipped down into the snow, where he lay with ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... compare, to digest all that she knew of him, much that was subconscious impression rising late to the surface, a little that she heard from various sources. The sum total gave her a man of rank passions, of rare and merciless finesse where his desires figured, a man who got what he wanted by whatever means most fitly served his need. Greater than any craving to possess a woman would be the measure of his rancor against a man who humiliated ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... taciturn on the way to Chartley. Francis did not know whether he suspected her design was more than to see Mary or not, but summoning all the finesse of which she was mistress she made herself as agreeable as she could, relating stories and incidents of the chase, until long before the plain which lay between Stafford and Chartley was ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... or accomplish by finesse; effect: inf. dd e we ealle r ne meahton snyttrum be-syrwan (a deed that all of us could not accomplish before with all our wisdom), 943.—2) to entrap by guile and destroy: inf. mynte se mnscaa manna cynnes sumne be-syrwan ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... another man's message there may be some disinclination on the part of the officials to oblige you. There is so much red tape in these matters! However, I have no doubt that with a little delicacy and finesse the end may be attained. Meanwhile, I should like in your presence, Mr. Overton, to go through these papers which have been left upon ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... it is impossible to rest content with a plain natural conception of the universe. When any conception of matter, or of its affections, is pushed as far as analysis can take us, what we know resolves itself into affections of mind, into what without metaphysical finesse may be called ideas. But this empirical idealism must be taken positively as being merely the limits of our knowledge, and it must carry with it neither an undue exaltation of mind nor an undue depreciation ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... traveled more quickly than the extras which rolled damp from the presses could convey it through the avenues and alleys of the city, whose wealthiest citizen he had been, and through the highways and byways of the country, which his marvelous mentality and finesse had so manifestly strengthened in its position as ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... small attentive eyes and curls slowly waving from side to side. But for once in her life the vicar's wife was not communicative in return. That the situation should have driven even Mrs. Thornburgh to finesse was a surprising testimony to its gravity. What between her sudden taciturnity and Catherine's pale silence, the girls' sense of expectancy was roused to ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... has prevailed, which, together with the system of duplicity that the whole tenor of their political and civil government taught, have given a sinister sort of sagacity to the French character, properly termed finesse; and a polish of manners that injures the substance, by hunting sincerity out of society. And, modesty, the fairest garb of virtue has been more grossly insulted in France than even in England, till their women ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... these feats helped me to the subjugation of Nelly. Yet, after all, in sheer physical prowess, I could not really rival Fred, who stood a full head taller than I did. But I had a deal more of finesse than he had, made very much better use of my opportunities, and was a far more practised poseur. Fred was well supplied with self-esteem—a most valuable qualification in love-making—but he lacked the introspectively ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... phenomenon that, with the President and a majority of the Cabinet in this frame of mind, the South should have been permitted to organize rebellion. The solution seems to lie in the temporizing feebleness of Buchanan and in the superior finesse and daring conspiracy of Cobb, Thompson, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... table. Clearing his throat, Dove gazed at the sinner before him. He began to see that his errand was not going to be an easy one; where no hint was taken, it was difficult to insert even the thinnest edge of the wedge. He resolved to use finesse; and, for several of the precious moments at his disposal, he talked, as if at random, of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... force a war and thus settle once for all the entire question between the North and the South, no strategy could have been more effectual than that of sacrificing Sumter exactly as it was sacrificed. The whole affair could not have been arranged with greater shrewdness and finesse. Anderson and his officers—without an exception, gallant and competent—were made to appear as heroes and, in a sense, they were; the North was completely unified, and the same can be said of the South. The lines were now distinctly ...
— The Supplies for the Confederate Army - How they were obtained in Europe and how paid for. • Caleb Huse
... such a proof of sagacity in the twelfth year of his age, what might not be expected from his finesse in the maturity of his faculties and experience? Thus secured in the good graces of the whole family, he saw the days of his puerility glide along in the most agreeable elapse of caresses and amusement. ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... criticism made him often vindictive, unjust, and venomous. They led him also into frequent quarrels, and lost him many friends, including Lady M. Wortley Montagu, and along with a strong tendency to finesse and stratagem, of which the circumstances attending the publication of his literary correspondence is the chief instance, make his character on the whole an unamiable one. On the other hand, he was often generous; he retained the friendship of such men as Swift and Arbuthnot, and ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... than a wise man's judgment on a great man's conduct? In my writings you will find no rash censures, no undeserved encomiums, no mean compliance with popular opinions, no vain ostentation of critical skill, nor any affected finesse. In my "Parallels," which used to be admired as pieces of excellent judgment, I compare with perfect impartiality one great man with another, and each with the rule of justice. If, indeed, latter ages have produced greater men and better writers, my heroes and my works ought to give place to them. ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... would differ from him. Like Mr. Morris he quite underrates the art of Japan, and looks on the Japanese as naturalists and not as decorative artists. It is true that they are often pictorial, but by the exquisite finesse of their touch, the brilliancy and beauty of their colour, their perfect knowledge of how to make a space decorative without decorating it (a point on which Mr. Crane said nothing, though it is one of the most important things in decoration), and by their keen instinct ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... common gossip from Damascus to Beersheba. In a week it will be known from end to end of Egypt; then Arabia; then India! Ho! When the Indian Moslems get the news—the Indian troops in Palestine will send it by mail—then what a furor! Then what anger! That was finesse! That was true statesmanship! Never was a shrewder ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... hands of the emperor, who refused to send it into England, but offered to send it to Rome, the cause was virtually transferred to Rome, where Henry, as he knew, was unlikely to consent to plead, or where he could himself rule the decision. He had made a stroke of political finesse, which answered not only the purpose that he immediately intended, but answered, also, the purpose that he did not intend—of dealing the hardest blow which it had yet received to the supremacy of the ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... her shoulder. Pinking beats chopping. These English 'll have their lesson. It 's like what you call good writing: the simple way does the business, and that's the most difficult to learn, because you must give your head to it, as those French fellows do. 'Trop de finesse' is rather their fault. Anything's better than loutishness. Well! the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and a return to nature. Raffaelle represents the return to antiquity, and Leonardo the return to nature. In this return to nature, he was seeking to satisfy a boundless curiosity by her perpetual surprises, a microscopic sense of finish by her finesse, or delicacy of operation, that subtilitas naturae which Bacon notices. So we find him often in intimate relations with men of science,—with Fra Luca Poccioli the mathematician, and the anatomist Marc Antonio della Torre. His ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... in all conscience," says Mr. Barker, "but the finesse was successful, and a play most probably otherwise destined to neglect, ran like wild fire through all our theatres." On March 24, 1817, there was acted in Philadelphia, Barker's "The Armourer's Escape; or, Three Years at Nootka Sound," described by Mr. Barker as a melodramatic ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... divorced three. And Archie never will amount to a row of pins. He looks like a tailor's model, and acts like a Rolls-Royce. And, I don't see any supreme bliss about Mrs. Watts's married existence, although she's perfectly satisfied, I guess, poor thing. I love the subtle finesse with which she tried to arrange a match between me and Mr. Bethune. ''Ef I wus yo' I'd marry up with him'—just like that! Shades of Mrs. Stratford who spent two whole months trying to get Archie and ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... enough to cause suspicion. One would not have imagined, on looking at Mr. O'Dwyer, that he was a very crafty person, or one of whose finesse in affairs of the world it would be necessary to stand much in awe. He seemed to be thick, and stolid, and incapable of deep inquiry; but, nevertheless, he was as fond of his neighbour's affairs as another, and knew as much about ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... eagle different shields of arms were displayed in gold and colours, the eagle itself being painted upon the natural unpainted wood—oak, I think. The work belonged to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, I believe. It seemed the very antithesis of Italian finesse and fancy, but the fitness of such decoration entirely depends upon its relation to its surroundings, which in ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... the difference in their points of view, and the many other contrasts between them, these two remarkable persons the thoroughly trained master, in whom the gifts of knowledge, eloquence, faith, and finesse, were accumulated; and the meditative, earnest, consecrated young woman of twenty-one had no sooner met than they felt the parity and harmony of their souls. They formed an exalted friendship, full of solace and happiness to them both, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... of Miss Schley herself and Miss Schley's celebrity—or notoriety—had undoubtedly turned Lord Holme's head. Perhaps he had not the desire to conceal the fact. Certainly he had not the finesse. He presented his turned head to the world with an audacious simplicity that was almost laughable, and that had in it an element of boyishness not wholly unattractive to those who looked on—the casual ones to whom even the tragedies of a highly-civilised society bring ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... of rudeness, either of handling or of color, at first. Don't try for finesse. All these delicacies will come later. But you must get the important things first. Learn to be strong first, or you never will be. Delicacy comes ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... dreamed of entering the lists against a spirit of such a temper as his rival. Had he desired, after Luther's manner, to deal in caricature, he would certainly have failed. Sallies, play upon words, and conceits did not suit a mind like his, whose forte was finesse. By nature sober, he could not, like the Saxon monk, fertilize his brain in enormous pots of beer; moreover, beer was not as yet in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... the solution of the Ella's mystery. I have a certain quality of force, perhaps, and I am not lacking in physical courage; but I have no finesse of intellect. McWhirter, a foot shorter than I, round of face, jovial and stocky, has as much subtlety in his little finger as I have in my six feet and a fraction ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... espionage here," he remarked, "is painfully primitive. It lacks finesse and judgment. The fact that I have taken expensive rooms on the Campania, and that I have sent many packages there, that my own belongings are still in my rooms untouched, seems to our friends conclusive evidence that I am going to attempt to leave ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... as he said he would, and from the very first he had made plain in his grave, direct way the objects of his visits. There was no subtlety about Ted, no finesse. He was as frank as ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... and even lovely, this glorious-looking creature was, in spite of a very badly modulated voice, certain inroads upon the fitness of things in the way of expression, and a want of a knowledge of the finesse of fine life—now the beautiful Eudosia had an intimate friend named Clara Caverly, who was as unlike her as possible, in character, education, habits, and appearance; and yet who was firmly her friend. ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... political zeal was either the fierce excitement of an overmastering passion, an irresistible proclivity to gallantry, or an absorbing ambition, rather than any patriotic motive. This may go far to explain the singular sagacity, finesse, and energy displayed in their devotion to what otherwise appears alike mischievous and chimerical by those three high-born and splendidly-gifted women who figured so conspicuously in the civil war of the Fronde; and, though ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... ends of the index and thumb stroking the two sides of the nose from base to point. This means astute, attentive, ready. Sharpness of the nasal organ is popularly associated with subtlety and finesse. The old Romans by homo emunctae naris meant an acute man attentive to his interests. The sign is often used in a bad sense, then signifying ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... Each one returned to his vehicle and journeyed to his humble home, leaving Crutcher alone upon the platform. If the hackmen had taken his money it would have served as proof to him that they were no better than he, that they were not in a business like his simply because they lacked his skill and finesse. ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... was unusually vulnerable. He had made one ally. The countess he looked upon with a wise contempt. She was easier game than Etta. Catrina he understood well enough. Her rugged simplicity had betrayed her secret to him before he had been five minutes in the room. Paul he despised as a man lacking finesse and esprit—a truly French form of contempt. For Frenchmen have yet to learn that such qualities have remarkably little to do ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... for over two years. It took some skill to be seen with him frequently, to accept just the right portion of his tokens of regard, to keep him interested, and yet remain absolutely free and uninvolved. I couldn't manage it indefinitely; the time would come when all the finesse in the world would avail nothing. And come it did in the middle of ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... if I'd let them; but brains and resource and finesse all count for power. Granted that they have a hundred dollars to my one. Still, I have elements of strength they can't even estimate. David beat Goliath, you know, even though he didn't do ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... character of the soldier, with its virtues and faults, is portrayed with such delicacy, that to condense would ruin. The peculiar reserve, the habit of duty, the beauty of a character which cannot look forward, and need not look back, are given with distinguished finesse. ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Then, fortunately for both, his youth made up in directness what it lacked in finesse. "It's this-a-way, Miss Sally," he blurted savagely, "Ole Bruce Grierson is dead an' ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... too young to have acquired dignity. But lately sprung from the mob it now preys upon, it yet shows some of the habits of mind of that mob: it is blatant, stupid, ignorant, lacking in all delicate instinct and governmental finesse. Above all, it remains somewhat heavily moral. One seldom finds it undertaking one of its characteristic imbecilities without offering a sonorous moral reason; it spends almost as much to support the Y. M. C. A., vice-crusading, Prohibition and other ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... picture?' inquired Jeanne, when they met. 'Not yet,' said Paul. 'But they are delicate matters, these negotiations. I use finesse. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the dose was so tempered, as, from the weight of the principal ingredient, to be deadly only at the bottom, which she had artfully appropriated for his share. Even after all this finesse, she seized, we are told, his inheritance, and insulted his ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... in his triumph. "Yes. Yes!" And smiling, he kissed her, delicately, with a certain finesse of knowledge. She moaned in spirit, in his arms, felt herself dead, dead. And he kissed her with a finesse, a passionate finesse which seemed like coals of ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... see, when he went. Now prince, consider, why did he leave his address? Why do you suppose he went out of his way to tell Colia that he had gone to Wilkin's? Who cared to know that he was going to Wilkin's? No, no! prince, this is finesse, thieves' finesse! This is as good as saying, 'There, how can I be a thief when I leave my address? I'm not concealing my movements as a thief would.' Do ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... with a little patience, the fort would surrender without firing a shot, as Toolajee was already in their hands and ready to treat. Alarmed at the great armament coming against him, and cowed by recent reverses, Toolajee had come as a suppliant into the Mahratta camp to try if, by finesse and chicanery, he might escape utter destruction, while, in Gheriah, he had left his brother-in-law with orders to defend it to the last. The Peishwa's officers, on their side, were anxious to get the place into their ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... remarque (& j'en pourrais donner des exemples bien sensibles) que quand des esprits accoutumes aux cordes, comme dit Montagne, & qui n'osent tenter de franches allures, entreprennent de traduire & de commenter ces excellens Ouvrages, ou il y a plus de finesse & plus de mystere qu'il n'en paroist, tout leur travail ne fait que les gater, & que la seule vertu qu'ayent leurs copies, c'est de nous degouter presque des originaux. Comme j'ay pris la liberte de juger du travail de ceux qui m'ont precede, & ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... UNDERSTUDY by Johnson Morton (Harper's Magazine) is an ironic character study developed with much finesse in the tradition of Henry James. Its defect is a certain conventional atmosphere which demands an artificial attitude on the part of the reader. Its admirable distinction is its faithful rendering of a personality not unlike the "Tante" of Anne Douglas Sedgwick, if a novel portrait and a short story ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... hand, sir," the commodore suggested, "it may be an almost sophisticated method of permitting us to enjoy our superior finesse." ...
— The Outbreak of Peace • Horace Brown Fyfe
... own special care. She knew pretty nearly what he thought of her, and she was inclined to amuse herself—though at the same time making no considerable concession—by placing herself before him in a more favourable light. In her dress, her manner, her bearing there was a certain half-alien delicacy, finesse, aloofness. She would not lay this altogether aside, even at home, even in the informal country; but she would provide a homely medium, suited to Abner's rustic vision, through which her exotic airs and graces might be more ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... veritable Pascal, whose true words were so long concealed from the world. We cannot do better, in the first instance, than note what so great a mathematician has to say of geometry and the “mathematical mind,” compared with the naturally acute mind (“l’esprit de finesse”), betwixt which he draws an interesting parallel. The fragment on the “Mathematical” or “Geometric Mind” was, with the exception of a brief passage given by Des Molets {165} in 1728, originally published, although with numerous suppressions, in Condorcet’s edition ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... honest and industrious." But this plan,—which not even Swift, independent as was his humor of the artifices of style, could adhere to,—was soon abandoned, and there is in most of Sheridan's own papers a finesse and ingenuity of allusion, which only the most cultivated part of his readers could fully enjoy. For instance, in exposing the inconsistency of Lord North, who had lately consented in a Committee of the whole House, to a motion which he had violently opposed in the House itself,—thus "making ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... produce a terrible catastrophe. The Italians themselves, however, were far from comprehending this. Centuries of undisturbed internal intrigue had accustomed them to play the game of forfeits with each other, and nothing warned them that the time was come at which diplomacy, finesse, and craft would stand them in ill stead ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... was visibly snappish for three whole days, Justine remarked, in reply to an unjust reproach, and with a chambermaid's finesse: ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Declarer's Play of No-trump. Declarer's Play of a Suit Declaration. Play by Declarer's Adversaries. The Signal. The Discard. Blocking the Dummy. Avoid opening New Suits. How to return Partner's Bid. The Finesse. Table showing when Third ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... a sphere of life that will call forth and exercise the highest human capacities. Aristotle frankly pronounces "external goods" to be indispensable, and happiness to be therefore "a gift of the gods." The rational man will acquire a certain exquisiteness or finesse of action, a "mean" of conduct; and this virtue will be diversified through the various relations into which he must enter, and the different situations which he must meet. He will be not merely brave, temperate, ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... finesse, that when, late on a day, a message summoning Christian to a distance was transmitted by Sweyn, no doubt of its genuineness occurred. When, his errand proved useless, he set out to return, mistake or misapprehension was ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... of Court intrigue, I had thought my task sufficiently difficult and the disadvantages under which I laboured sufficiently serious before this interview. Conscious of a certain rustiness and a distaste for finesse, with resources so inferior to Bruhl's that even M. de Rosny's liberality had not done much to make up the difference, I had accepted the post offered me rather readily than sanguinely; with joy, seeing that it held out the hope of high ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... peas in a dovecote; they suck the sauces by mouthfuls; play with their knife and spoon as if they are only ate in consequence of a judge's order, so much do they dislike to go straight to the point, and make free use of variations, finesse, and little tricks in everything, which is the especial attribute of these creatures, and the reason that the sons of Adam delight in them, since they do everything differently to themselves, and they do well. You think so ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... Captive Andromache, exhibited in 1888; and we may further add that exquisite painting of Greek Girls playing at Ball, of 1889; or the still more exquisite Bath of Psyche, of the year following. All three are full of technical delicacy and finesse. For other qualities take that radiantly pictured myth, the Perseus and Andromeda, or the Return of Persephone (both of 1891); or the lovely Clytie of 1892, whose sunset background was painted at Malinmore, on the west coast of Donegal; or ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... now there 's nought but shy finesse, And mim and prim 'bout mess and dress, That scarce a hand a hand will press Wi' ought o' feeling free; A cauldrife pride aside has laid The hodden gray, and hame-spun plaid, And a' is changed since neebors said Just, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... course," he admitted. "You don't get much idea of it just going through those letters, but the real thing is the biggest kind of a game you ever saw. It's a finesse here and a forcing of the opponent's hand there, but it can never be the whole ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... conversation, convinced himself of one thing, which he must have remarked after the first words exchanged: that was, that he had to deal with a man of high distinction. He could not be an assassin, and it was repugnant to Monk to believe him to be a spy, but there was sufficient finesse and at the same time firmness in Athos to lead Monk to fancy he was a conspirator. When they had quitted table, "You still believe in your treasure, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... meet in the daytime, its members fresh and ready for the day's work, instead of giving all day to professional work and then with exhausted brains undertaking the work of governing the country after dinner. Cavendish, the authority on whist, being asked if a man could possibly finesse a knave, second round, third player, replied, after reflecting, "Yes, he ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... poor, cowering wretch. "You will never get another chance, I'll warrant me. Go, let the servants put you to work in the large music room first. Begin with the grands, then follow with the uprights. Thank you, gentlemen both, for the courage and finesse you displayed in this desperate quest. I'll see that you are both suitably rewarded." I fancied that Michael regarded me sardonically, but he held his peace ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... jumped in and seemed to be starting away without her, down the sweep of the driveway. Could he have forgotten her? The man must indeed be mad, as some of his actions indicated! But her aroused indignation was turned to admiration of his finesse, for suddenly he veered the lights of the car toward the garage door, throwing them in the faces of Jim and his servant. He leaped out again, walking past the ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... more serious forms of emulative life. Strategy or cunning is an element invariably present in games, as also in warlike pursuits and in the chase. In all of these employments strategy tends to develop into finesse and chicanery. Chicanery, falsehood, browbeating, hold a well-secured place in the method of procedure of any athletic contest and in games generally. The habitual employment of an umpire, and the minute technical regulations governing the ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... few shares," went on Rimrock without finesse, "you wouldn't have to work any more. Just ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... for her to send, and she copied them even to his mistakes in spelling. Very patient was he about this, and even when he was President and harried constantly we find him stopping to acknowledge for her "an invitation to take some Tea," and at the bottom of the sheet adding a pious bit of finesse, thus: "The President requests me to send his compliments and only regrets that the pressure of affairs compels him to forego the Pleasure ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Oui ... le nouveau prefet ... il a la finesse d'une femme, il est ruse comme un diplomate, et avec cela actif, perseverant ... et pensez que c'est a moi peut-etre qu'il ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve
... off immediately in different directions— looking for Bancroft Road, I expect. I had an idea that more finesse would be needed. I started off with the others, then pretended I had left my pipe, and came back to the Boar. I was going to look up the town directory, to find Kathleen's name— knowing the address, that would be easy. But there was Goblin doing the same thing! We both laughed and looked ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... parting to the toes of his boots. And, ma foi, he is clean—like all that redoubtable army of British officers—aggressively clean, inside and out, which one cannot always say with truth! But he has no finesse, no savoir faire where women are concerned. If he is in earnest let him try weapons more compelling than his beaux yeux. A man was not given lips and a pair of hands for eating and fighting merely; and if he cannot turn them to good account, ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... lois.' He had not thus read Bayle's Dictionary nor the Essay on the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. This ignorance of the Emperor's was not perceptible in conversation, and first, because he led in conversation, and next because with Italian finesse no question put by him, or careless supposition thrown out, ever betrayed that ignorance."—Bourrienne. I., 19, 21: At Brienne, "unfortunately for us, the monks to whom the education of youth was confided knew nothing, and were too ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... political game ascribed to Mac-Ivor was in reality played by several Highland chiefs, the celebrated Lord Lovat in particular, who used that kind of finesse to the uttermost. The Laird of Mac—-was also captain of an independent company, but valued the sweets of present pay too well to incur the risk of losing them in the Jacobite cause. His martial consort raised his clan and headed it in 1745. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... take it was from the first blow, with none of the finesse of a boxers' match, with less thought of escaping punishment than of inflicting it. More than once had Bud Lee felt that he was falling only to catch his balance and come back at Trevors; more than once had Trevors gone reeling backward, smashing ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... before they entered into these treaties with France. That the purpose of deceit was mutual, affords, however, no plea of justification—least of all to the stronger party. "It will be well," says Sir Walter Scott, "with the world, when falsehood and finesse are as thoroughly exploded in international communication as they are among individuals ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... wanting in discernment, penetration, finesse; in this light they are superior to many of the white girls in the lower classes of society, girls so impenetrably dull, that like that of Balsac's village, they are too stupid to be deceived by a man ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... might blow over. Finesse was required. Ruth had suggested a plan, which, although applauded by the major and his mother, they could not advise her to carry out. For, if it failed, her own peril would be as great as Tom Cameron's. In fact, the result ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... at the starting place counts two thousand to give the runners a full start, and then pursues them. The runners will use all possible finesse in making it difficult to find their arrows, although it is a rule of the game that the arrow must be in plain sight, though not necessarily from the point of view of the course taken. It may be marked on the farther side of a post, stone, etc., or at a considerable ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... personal and rather abrupt," agreed the midget in an appeasing tone. "I should have made the approach with more finesse. Abruptness is one of my defects. But now that I've blundered in, I'd just as well finish. You don't belong out here in the wide open spaces, in these sparse settlements. You belong in the congested areas, where big things are being done, where there's planning, execution, accomplishment. ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... that it does, Frank, though I think it is not at all unlikely. As its instinct teaches it to finesse in the way which I have told you, however, I should not expect to find that it does so with equal spirit. Even the pigeon, the very emblem of gentleness and love, boldly pecks at the rude hand which is extended towards its young, during the earlier ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... General Haig have not spoken too highly of you; and yet," here the American commander hesitated a moment before continuing; "and yet the piece of work I have in sight will entail, perhaps, more danger, more finesse, and more resourcefulness than any ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... fortunes of the treaty its chief protagonist was removed from the scene of action and the Democratic forces fighting for ratification were deprived of effective leadership. Had there been a real leader in the Senate who could carry on the fight with vigor and finesse, the treaty might even then have been saved; but Wilson's system had permitted no understudies. There was no one to lead and no one to negotiate a compromise. From his sick-room, where his natural obstinacy seemed to be intensified by his illness, ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... Charles Halle said that it was "clever but not Chopinesque." Yet Halle heard Chopin at his last Paris concert, February, 1848, play the two forte passages in the Barcarolle "pianissimo and with all sorts of dynamic finesse." This is precisely what Rubinstein did, and his pianissimo was a whisper. Von Bulow was too much of a martinet to reveal the poetic quality, though he appreciated Chopin on the intellectual side; his touch was not beautiful enough. The Slavic and Magyar races are your only true Chopin ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... the telephone, decided against it. It might take some diplomatic finesse to persuade the old scientist to hire himself out to a newspaper. He might feel it degrading and cheapening to do ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... morning to his hostess. As he could not well give the real reason for his decision, and had no experience in social finesse, he came off badly when asked why he had come to this sudden decision. He could not equivocate; and when Mrs. Wilson asked him point-blank if Berenice had been treating him badly, he could only take refuge in the reply that it was not for him to criticise what Miss Morison chose to do. He persisted ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... better than the world of dress And pompous dining, out, Better than simpering and finesse Is ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... struck the boy. Always Big James had addressed him as 'Master Edwin' or 'Master Clayhanger.' Now it was 'Mister.' He had left school. Big James was, of course, aware of that, and Big James had enough finesse and enough gentle malice to change instantly the 'master' to 'mister.' Edwin was scarcely sure if Big James was not laughing at him. He could not help thinking that Big James had begun so promptly to call him 'mister' because the foreman compositor expected that the son of the house ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... great distances that separated the houses of gentlefolk in the west of Ireland would have made hospitality a more spontaneous and less formal affair in any case. In Devon, as Gabrielle soon discovered, calling was a ritual complicated by innumerable shades of social finesse. Lady Halberton had already coached her in the list of people whom she must know, people she could safely know at a distance, and people whom it was her duty to discourage. As soon as she was settled in at Lapton the county descended on her and she was overwhelmed ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... like his forge-fire; though the heat might be intense for a time, it fluctuated with the breath of the bellows. Just now he was meekly quailing before the old woman, whom he evidently had not thought to find here. It was as apt an illustration as might be, perhaps, of the inferiority of strength to finesse. She seemed an inconsiderable adversary, as, haggard, lean, and prematurely aged, she swayed on her prodding-stick about the huge kettle; but she was as a veritable David to this big young Goliath, though she, too, flung hardly more than ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Surveyed it o'er and confidently thought, 'Twas there, of course, salvation should be sought. And when their faith had thoroughly been proved, To gain their point the monks the veil removed.— Good father Andrew scorned to use finesse, And in discourse the sex would ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... culture, of those graces which enable men to dispense with the more austere excellences of character,—which transform licentiousness into elegant frailty, and treachery and falsehood into pardonable finesse,—of these there was very much: and when a rough, coarse, vulgar Englishman was plunged among these delicate ladies and gentlemen, he formed an element which contrasted strongly with the general environment. Yet Bonner, perhaps, was not without qualifications which ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... There's no harm done—if you don't say anything about it to Mr. Lindsay. But I don't think you were intended for a match-maker. That takes quite a little finesse, doesn't it?" ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... impatient of their courtesies, thoroughly well meaning, thoroughly a gentleman, but about the last person that I should have expected to see in a position which is said to require much tact if not finesse. His success leads me to think, as I have often thought before, that if we attempt to deal with Orientals by their own methods, we are apt to find them more than a match for us, and that thorough ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... remarked after the first words exchanged: that was, that he had to deal with a man of high distinction. He could not be an assassin, and it was repugnant to Monk to believe him to be a spy, but there was sufficient finesse and at the same time firmness in Athos to lead Monk to fancy he was a conspirator. When they had quitted table, "You still believe in your treasure, then, monsieur?" ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Eudosia—for beautiful, and even lovely, this glorious-looking creature was, in spite of a very badly modulated voice, certain inroads upon the fitness of things in the way of expression, and a want of a knowledge of the finesse of fine life—now the beautiful Eudosia had an intimate friend named Clara Caverly, who was as unlike her as possible, in character, education, habits, and appearance; and yet who was firmly her friend. The attachment was one of childhood ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... had called, as he said he would, and from the very first he had made plain in his grave, direct way the objects of his visits. There was no subtlety about Ted, no finesse. He was as frank ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the consequences, and resolved to try and play off the French for their clever finesse. He looked about for a match for the redoubtable French gamester, and soon got information of a party who might serve his turn. This was a midshipman at Moscow, named Cruckoff, who, he was assured, was without an equal in ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... thought they did but finesse with him, that they might get the ass at their own price; but, when they went away from him and he had long in vain awaited their return, he cried out, saying, 'Woe!' and 'Ruin!' and 'Alack, my sorry chance!' and shrieked aloud and tore his clothes. ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... entirely lacking in finesse. He offered Patrick Henry a position after having first ascertained in a roundabout manner that it would be refused, and in many other ways showed that he understood good politics. Perhaps the neatest of his dodges was made ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... to compass or accomplish by finesse; effect: inf. dd e we ealle r ne meahton snyttrum be-syrwan (a deed that all of us could not accomplish before with all our wisdom), 943.—2) to entrap by guile and destroy: inf. mynte se mnscaa manna cynnes sumne be-syrwan (the fell foe thought to entrap some one ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... antiquity, and a return to nature. Raffaelle represents the return to antiquity, and Leonardo the return to nature. In this return to nature, he was seeking to satisfy a boundless curiosity by her perpetual surprises, a microscopic sense of finish by her finesse, or delicacy of operation, that subtilitas naturae which Bacon notices. So we find him often in intimate relations with men of science,—with Fra Luca Poccioli the mathematician, and the anatomist Marc Antonio ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... SVANHILD [with finesse]. O, among other things, the bold unreason Of modern Zacharies who seek for fruit. If the tree blossom'd to excess last season, You must not crave the blossoms back ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... inquisition, she was by training defenceless. She had plenty of pluck, plenty of adroitness; but she could only play the sex game with Alf very crudely because he was not fine enough to be diverted by such finesse as she could employ. All Jenny could do was to play for safety in the passage of time. If she could beat him off until Emmy returned she could be safe for to-night; and if she were safe now—anything might happen another day to bring about ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... event in Sir John Macdonald's career affords a more admirable illustration of his strategic ability, delicate finesse, and subtle power over men than his negotiations with Joseph Howe. Howe's opposition to Confederation was of no ordinary kind. He {80} had long been a conspicuous figure in Nova Scotia, and was passionately devoted to the interests of ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... and reservation as if they had been governed from a single brain-centre. It would be unfair to them to assume from their manner that they disliked him, or were even unfavourably impressed by him. The finesse of that manner was far too delicate a thing to call into use such rough characterizations. It was rather their action as a unit which piqued his interest. He thought he could see that they united upon a common ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... cold and purposeful, his look so derisive and comprehending, that the old fellows in some confusion sought comfort in each other. This Aoyama Shu[u]zen was a very devil of a fellow. He had a perspicacity in finesse that the plain, keen, and honest bluntness of former days could not deceive. Aoyama was not one to charge with effeminacy in any form. He had a wife—whom he neglected. He had a page, whom he favoured. He had all the harsh vices and capabilities of ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... "What finesse!" exclaimed the South American ladies. "These Germans are not so phlegmatic as they seem. It is an attention . . . something very distinguished. . . . And is it possible that some still believe that they and the French might come ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... as casual and indifferent and yet were made with utmost skill. She knew that Mrs. Alston's friend was something of a gossip; and she led her to speak of the subject of her thoughts with an indirect finesse that would have amused the young man exceedingly could he have been an unobserved witness. When she learned that he was Mr. Munson's intimate friend and that he was aware of her treatment of the latter, she was somewhat disconcerted. One so forewarned might not become ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... dovecote; they suck the sauces by mouthfuls; play with their knife and spoon as if they are only ate in consequence of a judge's order, so much do they dislike to go straight to the point, and make free use of variations, finesse, and little tricks in everything, which is the especial attribute of these creatures, and the reason that the sons of Adam delight in them, since they do everything differently to themselves, and they do well. You think so too. Good! ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... it up. Chiaja had many streets and he was wandering aimlessly, since the concierge of the hotel had not been able to give him any precise directions. The signora Talberg was evidently bent on outwitting all his finesse, trying to keep from him ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... her first program and drifted back into afternoon society by degrees; a plan of defensive campaign highly approved by Mrs. McLane, who detested lack of finesse. The winter was an unsatisfactory one for Madeleine altogether. Society would not have bored her so much perhaps if that secret enchanting background had remained intact. But her intercourse with Masters was necessarily sporadic. ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... that he had done with. They had always been in that position since the work began, yet on this day it seemed new; it was so different now for them to be opposite each other; so different for Tito to take a book from her, as she lifted it from her father's knee. Yet there was no finesse to secure an additional look or touch. Each woman creates in her own likeness the love-tokens that are offered to her; and Romola's deep calm happiness encompassed Tito like the rich but quiet evening light ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... friend of every virtue;[*] he had a soul no less capable of forming great designs than his predecessor, but was more gentle, pliant, and artful in employing means for the execution of them. The sole defect, indeed, of his character was too great finesse and artifice; a fault which, both as a priest and an Italian, it was difficult for him to avoid. By the negotiations of Leo, the emperor Maximilian was detached from the French interest; and Henry, notwithstanding his disappointments ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... emotional finesse the masculine instance is nowhere: it is blinded, befogged, befooled ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... are impressed with the qualities of those placed over them in authority. They generally imagine they could do better if they had the same opportunities. Caldew was no exception to that rule. It seemed to him that Merrington lacked finesse, and was out of touch with modern methods of criminal investigation. He had been spoilt by too much success, by too much newspaper flattery, by too many jaunts with Royalty. No man could act as sheep-dog for Royalty and retain skill as a detective. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... sat down, at the opposite side of the table. Clearing his throat, Dove gazed at the sinner before him. He began to see that his errand was not going to be an easy one; where no hint was taken, it was difficult to insert even the thinnest edge of the wedge. He resolved to use finesse; and, for several of the precious moments at his disposal, he talked, as if at random, of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... engaged in many blundering diplomatic quibbles in the final stages of preparation for the war; but it is also true that England quibbled, though with greater diplomatic finesse; for instance, "Sir Edward Grey went so far as to tell the German Ambassador that ... if Germany would make any reasonable proposals to preserve peace, and Russia and France rejected it, that 'his ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... thoughtfully, looking at the cards scattered on the floor. "We would have been set one trick. Club finesse fails." ...
— Competition • James Causey
... "M. Swift est Rabelais dans son bon sens, et vivant en bonne compagnie. Il n'a pas, a la verite, la gaite du premier, mais il a toute la finesse, la raison, le choix, le bon gout qui manquent a notre cure de Meudon. Ses vers sont d'un gout singulier, et presque inimitable; la bonne plaisanterie est son partage en vers et en prose; mais pour le bien entendre il faut faire un petit ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... confidential counsellor of Maurice, prince of Orange, and afterwards of Frederick Henry, prince of Orange, in their conduct of the foreign affairs of the republic. He was sent on special embassies to Venice, Germany and England, and displayed so much diplomatic skill and finesse that Richelieu ranked him among the three greatest ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... bade her do so," interposed Priscilla with an impatient glance at the English girl whose honesty had spoiled her little finesse. "We thought you looked but dull, and I would fain bring my new-arrived friend Philip De la Noye to ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... whiteness of his face was cruelly, craftily, and closely compressed, while he stood looking quietly at his nephew, with his snuff-box in his hand. Once again he touched him on the breast, as though his finger were the fine point of a small sword, with which in delicate finesse he ran him through the body, and said, "My friend, I will die perpetuating the system under ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... a not ungraceful stoop; looking quite like a refined gentleman, and quite like an urbane adventurer; smiling with an engaging ambiguity; cocking at you one peaked eyebrow with a great appearance of finesse; speaking low and sweet and thick, with a touch of burr; telling strange tales with singular deliberation and, to a patient listener, excellent effect. After all these ups and downs, he seemed still, like ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not wish to do this. But there was a mobility, a subtleness in his nature, an unconscious tact, —which the mode of life and of mixing with men in America fosters and perfects,—that made this sort of finesse inevitable to him, with any but a natural character; with whom, on the other hand, Redclyffe could be as fresh and natural as any ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that the dose was so tempered, as, from the weight of the principal ingredient, to be deadly only at the bottom, which she had artfully appropriated for his share. Even after all this finesse, she seized, we are told, his inheritance, and insulted his memory ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... not above employing a little finesse. He had expressed his intention of following Mr. Adams, and he did follow him, but so immediately that he not only took the same train, but sat in the same car. He wished to note at his leisure the bearing of this ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... a proof of sagacity in the twelfth year of his age, what might not be expected from his finesse in the maturity of his faculties and experience? Thus secured in the good graces of the whole family, he saw the days of his puerility glide along in the most agreeable elapse of caresses and amusement. He never fairly plunged into the stream of school-education, but, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... by factions, so as to balance two opposing interests, and reserve in her own hand the power of making either predominate, as the interest of the state, or perhaps as her own female caprice (for to that foible even she was not superior), might finally determine. To finesse—to hold the cards—to oppose one interest to another—to bridle him who thought himself highest in her esteem, by the fears he must entertain of another equally trusted, if not equally beloved, were arts which she used throughout her reign, and ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... your engagement," he echoed, dully; and continued, with a certain deficiency of finesse, "But I thought you wanted to ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... time it would have set him to putting his house in order for the final crash, but now it merely enraged him. He redoubled his activity, launching a new campaign of publicity so extravagant and ill-timed as to repel the assistance he needed. He had lost his finesse; his nicely adjusted financial sense ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... in pride, and endeavored to acknowledge the compliment in the manner of his well-meant but rude courtesy; for refinement did not then extend its finesse and its deceit among ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... cigar-case, chose and lighted a cigar to steady his nerve, and faced her with a smile—the worst tactic he could possibly have chosen in dealing with this woman. Supremely successful in handling men, he lacked finesse and insight with the other sex; and now that lack, in his moment of need, was bringing him moment by moment nearer the edge ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... than to repudiate him if anything so unpleasant should really arise. On the other hand, in case he was juggling with the truth, she must establish a hold, a bond that, being a man of honour, he would not be able to repudiate. The situation called for the exercise of all the finesse of which she was mistress. She put away her handkerchief and ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... tail-piece of morality, extracted from me by the force of truth, resulting from compared experiences: you think it, no doubt, out of character; possibly too you may look on it as the paultry finesse of one who seeks to mask a devotee to vice under a rag of a veil, impudently smuggled from the shrine of Virtue: just as if one was to fancy one's self completely disguised at a masquerade, with no other change of dress than turning one's shoes into slippers; or, as if a writer ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... had come with that airy, impersonal tone which permits nothing of what is said in it to be taken seriously. Something said by the others had recalled her to herself, and she was now returned very suddenly to the old position of alertness and social finesse. Something icy seemed to pass over her, and she immediately lost all self-consciousness, and began to speak to her husband with less reserve than she had shown since he had come. But he was not deceived. He saw that at that very instant she was further away from him than she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... timid in nature, fond of society, loving peace and quietude, delighting in warm and close friendships. There is much that is firm, steadfast and industrious, some self-love, a good deal of diplomacy, a little that is subtle, or what is called finesse. You are reserved with those you dislike. There is a serious and sad side to your character; you are very thoughtful and contemplative when in these moods. But you are not pessimistic. You have superior abilities, for ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... merely maintained its grip. All the wit and sprightliness of the fight was on the part of the lizard, who lashed its foe with its pliant tail, and endeavoured so to swerve as to bite. Both were light weights. One was all dash and sportive agileness; the other played a dull waiting game with admirable finesse. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... into music of the witty plays of Scribe, with whom he was associated all his life. To read a comedy by Scribe is to imagine Auber's music to it. No one has excelled Auber in the expression of all the finesse of wit and lightness of touch. What the union between the two men was may be inferred from the fact that Scribe wrote many of his librettos to Auber's music, the latter being written first, Scribe then adding the words. His principal works are "Masaniello" or "The Mute," and "Fra Diavolo." He was ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... bright, but robust and as strong as a giant. Then one day there arrived at the school a West Indian of the name of Muddie, dark of hue, with curly hair, as strong and slim as a savage, and with all the finesse and feints which he had at his command, irresistible, whether wrestling or when fighting with his fists. He beat all the strongest boys in the school. Only Ludvig and he had not challenged each other. But the boys ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... dash, an ease, that shows long and varied experience. Charley Abbott is a finished ladies' man. It almost discourages me when I contemplate the serried ranks of women that must have contributed to his perfect finesse." ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... accomplishment, acquirement, attainment; art, science; technicality, technology; practical knowledge, technical knowledge. knowledge of the world, world wisdom, savoir faire [Fr.]; tact; mother wit &c (sagacity) 498; discretion &c (caution) 864; finesse; craftiness &c (cunning) 702; management &c (conduct) 692; self-help. cleverness, talent, ability, ingenuity, capacity, parts, talents, faculty, endowment, forte, turn, gift, genius; intelligence ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... is revealed in her epistolary style, finesse, good-humor, and sprightliness were characterised in this note. Zibeline's finesse had divined Henri's self-deception; her good-humor sought to dissipate it; and her sprightliness was evidenced by her allusions to M. Desvanneaux and the loss ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... from Damascus to Beersheba. In a week it will be known from end to end of Egypt; then Arabia; then India! Ho! When the Indian Moslems get the news—the Indian troops in Palestine will send it by mail—then what a furor! Then what anger! That was finesse! That was true statesmanship! Never was a ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... unselfishness, her loyalty, and her strength of character; but if the truth were told she had no great opinion of Waitstill's ability to feel righteous wrath, nor of her power to avenge herself in the face of rank injustice. It was the conviction of her own superior finesse and audacity that had sustained patty all through her late escapade. She felt herself a lucky girl, indeed, to achieve liberty and happiness for herself, but doubly lucky if she had chanced to open a way of escape for her ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... send it into England, but offered to send it to Rome, the cause was virtually transferred to Rome, where Henry, as he knew, was unlikely to consent to plead, or where he could himself rule the decision. He had made a stroke of political finesse, which answered not only the purpose that he immediately intended, but answered, also, the purpose that he did not intend—of dealing the hardest blow which it had yet received to the supremacy of ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... wars and its commerce have led it, and these ancient fragments enter into its work without incongruity; for it is instinctively cast in the ancient mold, and only developed with a tinge of fancy on the side of finesse and the pleasing. Every antique form reappears, but reshaped in the same sense by ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... enough in all conscience," says Mr. Barker, "but the finesse was successful, and a play most probably otherwise destined to neglect, ran like wild fire through all our theatres." On March 24, 1817, there was acted in Philadelphia, Barker's "The Armourer's Escape; or, Three Years at Nootka Sound," described by Mr. ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... lui pris les mains et je lui dis qu'une pareille proposition venant d'un Anglais, et d'un Anglais de sa haute distinction, c'etait une victoire, dont je serais fier toute ma vie. Et nous commencions a user de cette nouvelle forme dans nos rapports. Vous savez avec quelle finesse il parlait le francais: comme il en connaissait tous les tours, comme il jouait avec ses difficultes, et meme avec ses petites gamineries. Je crois qu'il a ete heureux de pratiquer avec moi ce tutoiement, qui ne s'adapte pas a l'anglais, et qui est si francais. Je ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... did a horse play such a dangerous game, and surely none ever showed such finesse. Deliberately trailing behind him an enemy bent on taking either his life or freedom, not for a moment did Black Eagle show more than imperative caution. At the close of each day when, by a few miles of judicious galloping, he had fully winded ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... how he had offended the Consul, and uncertain as to whether the Consul had not offended him, Roddy helplessly rubbed his handkerchief over his perplexed and perspiring countenance. He wondered if, as a conspirator, he had not been lacking in finesse, if he had ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... regular poetry and—and Raymie Wutherspoon, he's not such an awful boob when you get to KNOW him, and he sings swell. And——And there's plenty of others. Lym Cass. Only of course none of them have your finesse, you might call it. But they don't make 'em any more appreciative and so on. Come on! We're ready for you ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... not in royal procession, for she knew too well the finesse of the regent's underlings; but entered the harbour in disguise in a small boat; and Apollodorus, her Sicilian confidant, carried her into Caesar's presence wrapped in a bale of bedding which he had ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... about come in from rural propriete and rustic chalet to exhibit their candidates. The method of procedure is eminently French, of course, and eminently naive, as even the intrigues and machinations of Balzac's bourgeoisie, although intended as marvels of finesse, seem so often naivete itself to our blunter and less-plotting minds. The mothers and daughters, or chaperons and charges, walk slowly arm in arm up and down one side the jetty, facing the counter-current of young men and men not young ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... aloud with an indecorous mirth. In spite of her instincts and traditions how lacking in feminine finesse, how utterly without subtlety of method she was! She had stood always for the unconquerable will in the fragile body, and she had used to the utmost her two strong weapons of obstinacy and weakness. He did not know whether ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... nothing of finesse about that attack; nothing of skill or of tactics: nothing but the sheer brute force of overwhelming superiority of numbers and of over-matching power. One instant all space was empty. The next instant it was full ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... disciplinarian first of all. He had ever in mind, however, the kind of education desired by his brother for Amerigo, which was to be commercial, and grounded him well in mathematics, languages, cosmography, and astronomy. His curriculum even embraced, it is said, statesmanship and the finesse of diplomacy, for the merchants of Vespucci's days were, like the Venetian consuls, "very important factors in developing ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... half follow it; enough, however, to be sure that, for all its humanity of irony, it wasn't so good as Moliere. The acting was capital—broad, free and natural; the play of talk easier even than life itself; but, like all the Italian acting I have seen, it was wanting in finesse, that shade of the shade by which, and by which alone, one really knows art. I contrasted the affair with the evening in December last that I walked over (also in the rain) to the Odeon and saw the "Plaideurs" and ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... broad human interest. It gives glimpses of the heights and depths of character and experience, setting him thinking and wondering even in the midst of amusement. To the most torpid and unobservant it exhibits the humorous in life and the sparkle and finesse of language, which in dull ordinary existence is stupidly shut out of knowledge or omitted from particular notice. To all it uncurtains a world, not that in which they live and yet not other than it—a world in which interest is heightened whilst the conditions ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... the question rhetorical, my little one, and the question interrogative. However, we'll not puzzle thee with Quintilian. Run away to thy lute. And so it is, Senhor da Costa. I love my Judaism more than my Portugal; but while I can keep both my mistresses at the cost of a little finesse—" ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... quizzically at the man who sat stolidly smoking in the deck-chair. No two people could have formed a stronger contrast—the yacht's captain, fair-bearded, with the features of a Viking—the yacht's owner, dark, alert, with a certain French finesse about him that gave a strange charm to a personality that otherwise might have been ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... differ with regard to the education he received. His earliest biographer, de La Porte, maintains that his father "ne negligea rien pour l'education de son fils, qui annonca de bonne heure, par des progres rapides dans ses premieres etudes, cette finesse d'esprit qui caracterise ses ouvrages."8] Lesbros de la Versane gives the same testimony: "Ses heureuses dispositions lui firent profiter de celle (the education) qu'il recut," and adds: "Il fut admire de ses maitres, et il a fait les delices de tous ceux qui l'ont connu."[9] There is no reason why ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... his determination next morning to his hostess. As he could not well give the real reason for his decision, and had no experience in social finesse, he came off badly when asked why he had come to this sudden decision. He could not equivocate; and when Mrs. Wilson asked him point-blank if Berenice had been treating him badly, he could only take refuge in the ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... did not dare make bad sales, awkward transactions. In spite of his best efforts, he could not succeed, without the aid of chance, in striking a blow from which Orde could not recover. The profits of the first year were not quite up to the usual standard, but they sufficed. Newmark's finesse cut in two the firm's income of the second year. Orde roused himself. With his old-time energy of resource, he hurried the woods work until an especially big cut gave promise of recouping the losses ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... very moment of my disaster, the enemy, suspecting our flight to be only a finesse, had halted, while only sixteen dragoons under colonel ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... Benvoglio toiled over his papers he was amazed at the imagination of his mistress which had first discerned the possibility of making the cause of Italian liberty serve her brother's ambitious imperialism, and the marvellous finesse with which she had vanquished Murat's gascon envy and resentment and made him once more a tool in the hand of the Emperor. Still more he admired Napoleon's acumen and resource as he saw order coming out ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... for all the entire question between the North and the South, no strategy could have been more effectual than that of sacrificing Sumter exactly as it was sacrificed. The whole affair could not have been arranged with greater shrewdness and finesse. Anderson and his officers—without an exception, gallant and competent—were made to appear as heroes and, in a sense, they were; the North was completely unified, and the same can be said of the South. The lines were now distinctly and definitely drawn, and every man from Maine ...
— The Supplies for the Confederate Army - How they were obtained in Europe and how paid for. • Caleb Huse
... in a man who expects to go through a long tournament, going "all out" for every match. Conserve your strength and your finesse for the times you need them, and win your other matches decisively, but not destructively. Why should a great star discourage and dishearten a player several classes below him by crushing him, as he no doubt could? A few games a set, well earned, would be a big factor in ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... me to get him married," he said frequently to himself, rather sadly. "I did it pretty well, too. It only shows that women have no particular monopoly in the realms of diplomacy and finesse; in fact, if a man really chooses to put his mind to such matters, he can make it no trumps and win out behind a bum ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... him, has left us the most finished portrait, "de croire M. Selwyn stupide, mais il est souvent dans les espaces imaginaires. Rien ne le frappe ni le reveille que le ridicule, mais il l'attrape en volant; il a de la grace et de la finesse dans ce qu'il dit mais il ne sais pas causer de suite; il est distrait, indifferent; il s'ennuierait souvent sans une tres bonne recette qu'il a contre l'ennui, c'est de s'endormir quand il veut. C'est un talent ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... not." Colonel Lilias put a hand on Henri's shoulder affectionately. "They have not your finesse, boy. And I doubt if, in all their army, they have so ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and gesture, and of an animation when speaking nearly fiery in its vivacity: neither pretty nor young, but neither ugly nor old; and her smile, which was rare, had a finesse very engaging; while her whole demeanour announced a person Of consequence, and all her discourse told that she was well-informed, well-educated, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... difficulties which he had in obtaining the right sort of cutlets rightly cooked at his club, and added: "But of course there's only one club in London that would be satisfactory in all this—shall I say?—finesse, and I'm afraid I ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... a similar tact in retiring to her own room to read or write letters, allowing her hostess to have her mornings or her afternoons to herself, as she pleases. Some people are "born visitors." They have the genius of tact to perceive, the genius of finesse to execute, case and frankness of manner, a knowledge of the world that nothing can surprise, a calmness of temper that nothing can disturb, and a kindness of disposition that can never be exhausted. Such a visitor is greatly in ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... exhibited in 1888; and we may further add that exquisite painting of Greek Girls playing at Ball, of 1889; or the still more exquisite Bath of Psyche, of the year following. All three are full of technical delicacy and finesse. For other qualities take that radiantly pictured myth, the Perseus and Andromeda, or the Return of Persephone (both of 1891); or the lovely Clytie of 1892, whose sunset background was painted at Malinmore, ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... and seemed to be starting away without her, down the sweep of the driveway. Could he have forgotten her? The man must indeed be mad, as some of his actions indicated! But her aroused indignation was turned to admiration of his finesse, for suddenly he veered the lights of the car toward the garage door, throwing them in the faces of Jim and his servant. He leaped out again, walking past the place ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... heard and understood all that passed, though with Indian gravity and finesse he had sat with averted face, seemingly inattentive to a discourse in which he had no direct concern. Thus appealed to, however, he answered his friend in ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... ordinary words that if she had been a perfect stranger to him he would have known her voice for the voice of a woman who was in love. Was she really lacking, he asked himself in amusement, in the quality which he called for want of a better phrase—"the finesse of sentiment?" or was the angelic candour of her emotion only the outward expression of that largeness of nature which inspired him at times with a respect akin to awe? The absence of any coquetry in her attitude impressed him as the final proof of her inherent nobility; and yet there ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... we miss the light geniality of Horace and the pure language of the Augustan age, but we mark the complexity and finesse of a later date, a form of thought bespeaking a comprehensive grasp, and suitable to subtle minds. But as regards his humour it depends much on exaggeration, and is proportionably weak, and beyond this we have little ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... get back. I have never talked seriously to you before; I may never do it again. The essence, the distinctive finesse, of breeding, lies in a trained gaiety and an implied sincerity. But what I must say to you is this: Even in this leveling age there are a few of us who look with terror upon an incipient socialism; who believe money as money to be despicable and food and clothing, incidental; who abhor equality, ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... talking about the coquetry of women; men also have their coquetry, but as they show less grace and finesse than we do, they do not get ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... "limb" for leg with the rather conscious air of escaping from an awkward situation only by the subtlest finesse. ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... turn, resorted to a bit of finesse, in order to learn whether or not Garson had been arrested. She spoke with a ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... playwright must cater to his public, the audience is an essential feature in our discussion. The audience of Plautus was not of a high class. Terence, even in later times, when education had materially progressed, often failed to reach them by over-finesse. Plautus with his bold brush pleased them. Surely a turbulent and motley throng they were, with the native violence of the sun-warmed Italic temperament and the abundant animal spirits of a crude civilization, tumbling into ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... all, that any hope for the Tocsin which he had built upon the Magpie was shattered, gone forever. And it meant, that gray seal on the sole of the dead man's boot, that the murder had been committed with even greater cunning and finesse, and an even greater security for the murderer, than he had attributed to the Magpie a moment since, when he had thought the Magpie the instigator, and not the victim, ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... had during the last two years, been insulated and saturated, and had then lost those embellishments, by operations; a quantity of the fluid having been substituted in their places so happily, that the patients fancied themselves more than ever conspicuous for the length and finesse of their caudce. An experiment had also been successfully tried on a member of the lower house of parliament, who, being married to a monikina of unusual mind, had for a long time been supplied with ideas from this source, although his partner ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... do well to leave the opening in the hands of a rather inexperienced man, who would very likely work his side more harm than good. So, somewhat to the horror of the solicitors, who thought with longing of the eloquence of the Attorney-General, and the unrivalled experience and finesse of Mr. Candleton, Geoffrey was called upon to open the case for the ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... disposed to be taciturn on the way to Chartley. Francis did not know whether he suspected her design was more than to see Mary or not, but summoning all the finesse of which she was mistress she made herself as agreeable as she could, relating stories and incidents of the chase, until long before the plain which lay between Stafford and Chartley was crossed, Will's ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... and had been trained with the sword. He completed this inquiry by requiring that I bring my foils and masks for a bout. In this test he did not fare well, for, though not untrained, he evidently knew more of the Schlager than of the rapier. He was heavy-handed, and lacked finesse. This, with my previous experience, led me to the conclusion that I had struck upon a kind of tutor in ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... Roman life, without any preoccupation, whatever one may say of it, with reform and satire, without the need of any studied end, or of morality; this story without intrigue or action, portraying the adventures of evil persons, analyzing with a calm finesse the joys and sorrows of these lovers and couples, depicting life in a splendidly wrought language without surrendering himself to any commentary, without approving or cursing the acts and thoughts of his characters, the vices ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... emphatically having the slightest interest in the person under surveillance. In these days, however, everything is changed. We play the game with the cards upon the table—all except the last two or three, perhaps—and curiously enough, I am not at all sure that it doesn't add finesse ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "you've told me all that I came here to know. You're a splendid young Briton, but finesse is not your strong point. You've acted like a quixotic young idiot in this case, and got yourself into a nice muddle for nothing. The girl is as innocent as you are, and you are a pair of simpletons! ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... He is immaculate, ce cher Malcolm, from his parting to the toes of his boots. And, ma foi, he is clean—like all that redoubtable army of British officers—aggressively clean, inside and out, which one cannot always say with truth! But he has no finesse, no savoir faire where women are concerned. If he is in earnest let him try weapons more compelling than his beaux yeux. A man was not given lips and a pair of hands for eating and fighting merely; and if he cannot ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... will call forth and exercise the highest human capacities. Aristotle frankly pronounces "external goods" to be indispensable, and happiness to be therefore "a gift of the gods." The rational man will acquire a certain exquisiteness or finesse of action, a "mean" of conduct; and this virtue will be diversified through the various relations into which he must enter, and the different situations which he must meet. He will be not merely brave, temperate, and just, as Plato would have him, but liberal, magnificent, gentle, ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... in a few days where the police had failed signally for years—had they sent him this, whatever it was, as some grim token that they had run Larry the Bat to earth? He shook his head. No; gangland struck more swiftly, with less finesse than that—the "cat-and-mouse" act was never one it favoured, for the mouse had ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... craft, finesse, invention, stratagem, blind, cunning, fraud, machination, subterfuge, cheat, device, guile, maneuver, trick, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... for what she got them. They gave Pop no praise for yielding—no credit for extracting somehow from the dry-soil of an arid town the money they extracted from him. They knew nothing of the myriad little agonies, the ingenuity, the tireless attention to detail, the exquisite finesse that make success possible in the melee of competition. Their souls were above trade ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... Miss Schley herself and Miss Schley's celebrity—or notoriety—had undoubtedly turned Lord Holme's head. Perhaps he had not the desire to conceal the fact. Certainly he had not the finesse. He presented his turned head to the world with an audacious simplicity that was almost laughable, and that had in it an element of boyishness not wholly unattractive to those who looked on—the casual ones to whom even the tragedies of a highly-civilised society ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... tickled. The effect of his speech upon Bo was stupendous. He had disarmed her. He had, with the finesse and tact and suavity of a diplomat, removed himself from obligation, and the detachment of self, the casual thing be apparently made out of his magnificent championship, was bewildering and humiliating to Bo. She sat silent for a moment or two while Helen tried to fit ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... self-respect to treat him with courtesy. Our pride will not permit us to accept this from him and make no return. It may be Yankee cunning which led him to foresee this, for I suppose it is pleasing to many of the tribe to gain their ends by finesse. Probably if this doesn't secure them, he will try harsher methods. Anyway, as long as he plays at the game of courtesy, we, as sister says, should teach him that we know what the word means. The mischief is that you never can know just what a Yankee ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... obliged to have recourse to every finesse, still kept his ground, and made peace with the most powerful chiefs, under one pretence or other. The actual losses of the crusaders by the sword he imputed to their own aggressions—their misguidance, to accident and to wilfulness—the effects produced on them ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... this is particularly so with the monstrous exaggerations which are in fashion; the authors are so intent on the patron-hunt that they cannot relinquish it without a full exhibition of servility; they have no idea of finesse, never mask their flattery, but blurt out ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... disregard of any minor charm notable upon this grand visage, which could not suffer a betrayal. You saw, and there was no effort to conceal, that the spirit animating it was intensely human; but it was human of the highest chords of humanity, indifferent to finesse and despising subtleties; gifted to speak, to inspire, and to command all great emotions. In fact, it was the masque of a dramatic artist in repose. Tempered by beauty, the robust frame showed that she possessed a royal nature, and could, as a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... d'un Anglais, et d'un Anglais de sa haute distinction, c'etait une victoire, dont je serais fier toute ma vie. Et nous commencions a user de cette nouvelle forme dans nos rapports. Vous savez avec quelle finesse il parlait le francais: comme il en connaissait tous les tours, comme il jouait avec ses difficultes, et meme avec ses petites gamineries. Je crois qu'il a ete heureux de pratiquer avec moi ce tutoiement, qui ne s'adapte pas a l'anglais, et qui est si francais. Je ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which as yet remains to be made, the absence of the Austrian Premier from Vienna at the time intervening between the issuance of the ultimatum and the expiration of the time limit seems like an extraordinarily petty piece of diplomatic finesse. He had without any warning to the great Powers of Europe, launched a thunderbolt, and if there ever was a time when a pacific foreign minister should have been at his post and open to suggestions of peace, it was in those two critical days. ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... allowed to be deep and sagacious; and what can be more useful to a reader than a wise man's judgment on a great man's conduct? In my writings you will find no rash censures, no undeserved encomiums, no mean compliance with popular opinions, no vain ostentation of critical skill, nor any affected finesse. In my "Parallels," which used to be admired as pieces of excellent judgment, I compare with perfect impartiality one great man with another, and each with the rule of justice. If, indeed, latter ages have produced greater men and better writers, my heroes and my ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... did not feel constrained to explain the finesse which prompted him to abandon the vocabulary which he had derived from a year's ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... Rebekah's interview with the servant of Abraham, a pattern of unaffected simplicity. It is this which throws an inexpressible charm over the narrative. We see nothing but nature; not a particle of false delicacy or finesse. There is no study, no aim to please, no acting a part to court esteem, no suspicions about her, and no concealments; but, in every word and motion, the most perfect artlessness. "When unadorned" she approaches ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... was the shrewdness and finesse with which the bonds were manipulated. The suction once applied, the great engine, Wall street, was pumped dry; and self-preservation made every bondholder a de facto emissary of the ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... have immeasurable resources of tradition behind them, to quell any such inquisition, she was by training defenceless. She had plenty of pluck, plenty of adroitness; but she could only play the sex game with Alf very crudely because he was not fine enough to be diverted by such finesse as she could employ. All Jenny could do was to play for safety in the passage of time. If she could beat him off until Emmy returned she could be safe for to-night; and if she were safe now—anything might happen another day to ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... could be accomplished without the worship of Satan,—whether men could be managed for such an end without more or less of the trickery practised by every ambitious leader, every self-serving conqueror—without double-dealing, tact, flattery, finesse. I will not inquire into this, because, on the most distant supposition of our Lord being the leader of his country's armies, these things drop out of sight as impossibilities. If these were necessary, such a career for him refuses to be for a moment imagined. But ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... pray and speak against it; scarcely any one beyond the mourners' room could hear his voice. It was a hard task that the poor young minister had. He was quite aware of the feeling against Deborah, and it required finesse to avoid jarring that, and yet display the proper amount of Christian sympathy for the afflicted. Then there were other difficulties. The minister had prayed in his closet for a small share of the wisdom of ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... first of all, that any hope for the Tocsin which he had built upon the Magpie was shattered, gone forever. And it meant, that gray seal on the sole of the dead man's boot, that the murder had been committed with even greater cunning and finesse, and an even greater security for the murderer, than he had attributed to the Magpie a moment since, when he had thought the Magpie the instigator, and not the ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... continent by discovery, and what has transpired in North and South America, were less than the small theatre of the antique, or the aimless sleep-walking of the middle ages!) The pride of the United States leaves the wealth and finesse of the cities, and all returns of commerce and agriculture, and all the magnitude of geography or shows of exterior victory, to enjoy the sight and realization of full-sized men, or one full-sized man unconquerable and simple. The American poets are to enclose old and new, for America ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... perfectly patent that every practical playwright must cater to his public, the audience is an essential feature in our discussion. The audience of Plautus was not of a high class. Terence, even in later times, when education had materially progressed, often failed to reach them by over-finesse. Plautus with his bold brush pleased them. Surely a turbulent and motley throng they were, with the native violence of the sun-warmed Italic temperament and the abundant animal spirits of a crude civilization, tumbling ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... Max said thoughtfully, looking at the cards scattered on the floor. "We would have been set one trick. Club finesse fails." ...
— Competition • James Causey
... this Shu[u]zen with the task." His laugh was so cold and purposeful, his look so derisive and comprehending, that the old fellows in some confusion sought comfort in each other. This Aoyama Shu[u]zen was a very devil of a fellow. He had a perspicacity in finesse that the plain, keen, and honest bluntness of former days could not deceive. Aoyama was not one to charge with effeminacy in any form. He had a wife—whom he neglected. He had a page, whom he favoured. He had all the harsh vices and capabilities of the warrior age. Turning to Endo[u] Saburo[u]zaemon—"Endo[u] ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... nature, fond of society, loving peace and quietude, delighting in warm and close friendships. There is much that is firm, steadfast and industrious, some self-love, a good deal of diplomacy, a little that is subtle, or what is called finesse. You are reserved with those you dislike. There is a serious and sad side to your character; you are very thoughtful and contemplative when in these moods. But you are not pessimistic. You have superior abilities, for they are intuitively intellectual. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... back. I have never talked seriously to you before; I may never do it again. The essence, the distinctive finesse, of breeding, lies in a trained gaiety and an implied sincerity. But what I must say to you is this: Even in this leveling age there are a few of us who look with terror upon an incipient socialism; who believe money as money to be despicable and food and clothing, ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... sauces by mouthfuls; play with their knife and spoon as if they are only ate in consequence of a judge's order, so much do they dislike to go straight to the point, and make free use of variations, finesse, and little tricks in everything, which is the especial attribute of these creatures, and the reason that the sons of Adam delight in them, since they do everything differently to themselves, and they do well. You think so ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... of business and much wit, had, by mere absurdity of judgment and a disposition to finesse, thrown himself out of all estimation, and out of all the views which his large fortune and abilities could not have failed to promote, if he had preserved but the least shadow of steadiness. He had two or three times gone all lengths of flattery, alternately with Sir ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... of espionage here," he remarked, "is painfully primitive. It lacks finesse and judgment. The fact that I have taken expensive rooms on the Campania, and that I have sent many packages there, that my own belongings are still in my rooms untouched, seems to our friends conclusive ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... very deftly done, and even Adams, the clear-eyed, could not help admiring the Rajah's skilful finesse. Of formal dinner-givings there might easily have been an end, since the construction camp had nothing to offer in return. But the formalities were studiously ignored, and the two young men were ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... as the author of some brilliant lines which have passed as proverbs into the French language. He was a man of vivid intelligence—courageous, independent, passionately devoted to literature, and a highly skilled worker in the difficult art of writing verse. But he lacked the force and the finesse of poetic genius; and it is not as a poet that he is interesting: it is as a critic. When the lines upon which French literature was to develop were still uncertain, when the Classical school was in its infancy, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... looked back. Madness held him. Finesse, saving, the crafty utilising of small advantages had had their day. It was the moment for brute strength. All day he swung on in a swirl of snow, tireless. The landscape swam about him, the white glare searched out the inmost painful recesses ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... of the Arrowhead Ranch, had butchered, cooked, and served two young roosters for the evening meal with a finesse that cried for tribute. As he replaced the evening lamp on the cleared table in the big living room he listened to my fulsome praise of his artistry as Marshal Foch might hear me say that I considered him a rather good strategist. Lew Wee heard but gave no sign, as one set above the petty ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... the idea he proceeded to carry it out with considerable finesse. An ordinary schemer would have been content to work with a savage hound. The use of artificial means to make the creature diabolical was a flash of genius upon his part. The dog he bought in London ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... culture and imagination, use them to understand and share the feelings of their fellows; as against those who use them to rise to what they call a higher plane. Crudely, the poet differs from the mob by his sensibility; the professor differs from the mob by his insensibility. He has not sufficient finesse and sensitiveness to sympathize with the mob. His only notion is coarsely to contradict it, to cut across it, in accordance with some egotistical plan of his own; to tell himself that, whatever the ignorant say, they are probably wrong. He forgets that ignorance often has the ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... reporter Platonov, his mouthpiece, say in Yama, "they write about detectives, about lawyers, about inspectors of the revenue, about pedagogues, about attorneys, about the police, about officers, about sensual ladies, about engineers, about baritones—and really, by God, altogether well—cleverly, with finesse and talent. But, after all, all these people are rubbish, and their life is not life, but some sort of conjured up, spectral, unnecessary delirium of world culture. But there are two singular realities—ancient as humanity itself: the prostitute and the ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... return to antiquity, and Leonardo the return to nature. In this return to nature, he was seeking to satisfy a boundless curiosity by her perpetual surprises, a microscopic sense of finish by her finesse, or delicacy of operation, that subtilitas naturae which Bacon notices. So we find him often in intimate relations with men of science,—with Fra Luca Poccioli the mathematician, and the anatomist Marc ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... I was going, too," said Mary Lou mildly, as they parted. "But I presume a certain young man is very glad I am not," she added, with deep finesse. Peter laughed out, but turned red, and Susan wished impatiently that Mary Lou would not feel these embarrassing inanities to be either welcome or ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... blurts out his plan with brutal coarseness, and urges it in language which he knows will rouse his son's anger. So when he appears in the Miller house he makes himself as odious as possible. Diplomacy and finesse are weapons not found in his armory, though he is a courtier and a successful politician. He is simply a cynical brute in high office. In truth his conduct is so very inhuman as to convey an impression of burlesque. He seems copied from some ogre in ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... Walter, I am sore and disgusted. What I should have done was to accept Burke's offer - surround the house with a posse if necessary, last night, and catch the counterfeiters by sheer force. I was too confident. I thought I could do it with finesse, and I have failed. I'd give anything to know what safe deposit vault they kept ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... bare presence, without making a scene and shocking Josephine's pride: and if so, was he there by his own impulse? No, it was rather to be feared that all this was done by order of the baroness. There was a finesse about it that smacked of a feminine origin, and the baroness was very capable of adopting such a means as this, to spare her own pride and her favorite daughter's. "The clandestine" is not all sugar. A more miserable party never went along, even ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... that we hate you all? You look on us to-day As lions look on antelopes,—their heaven-appointed prey; You know you have no lawful right to lands that you possess; You gained them all through violence, or lying and finesse; Your cursed opium alone, despite our prayers and tears, Has ruined millions of our race for more than two score years, And when we rose indignantly to right that bitter wrong, Your heavy guns bombarded us, and you annexed ... Hong Kong! You force yourselves on us, and ask concessions, favors, ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... separated the houses of gentlefolk in the west of Ireland would have made hospitality a more spontaneous and less formal affair in any case. In Devon, as Gabrielle soon discovered, calling was a ritual complicated by innumerable shades of social finesse. Lady Halberton had already coached her in the list of people whom she must know, people she could safely know at a distance, and people whom it was her duty to discourage. As soon as she was settled in at Lapton the county descended on her and ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... word, Lord Ventnor was most profoundly annoyed, and he cursed Anstruther from the depths of his heart. But he could see a way out. The more desperate the emergency the more need to display finesse. Above all, he ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... turn of the affair seems to give that poor, wretched wife and mother. But, to my mind, all this makes it doubly certain that the Elwoods have met with foul play. It looks exactly like one of Gaut's devilish schemes of finesse, to cause this canoe to be sent down the rapids, and be so found as to lead folks to suppose the owners were drowned, and to put the public on a false scent. Yes, friends, you may depend there has been foul play,—I dare not guess how ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... immediately responsive to injury; on the contrary he was exceedingly patient in his vindictiveness. For the longest time he would ruminate upon his vengeance, most astutely, and he would carry it out at the moment when he believed himself perfectly secure. Oh! His ruses were not of very great finesse and required very little talent; but by dint of considering and reconsidering the case, by dint of waiting patiently for the propitious opportunity to present itself, he finally would play some evil trick upon his comrades. So ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... an echo of her thoughts than intended for Kirkwood, was accompanied by a little shake of the woman's head, mute evidence to the fact that she was bewildered by his finesse. And this delighted the young man beyond measure, making him feel himself master of a difficult situation. Mysteries had been woven before his eyes so persistently, of late, that it was a real pleasure to be able to do a little mystifying on his own account. By adopting this reticent and ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... Rube's magnificent control. True as a plumb line he shot up the ball—once, twice, and Berne fouled both—two strikes. Grudgingly he waited on the next, but it, too, was over the corner, and Berne went out on strikes. The great crowd did not, of course, grasp the finesse of the play, but Berne had struck out—that was enough ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... Lake, makes into the Mackenzie. It is not an easy thing to handle the big steamer in a swift current and in the teeth of a storm like this, and we have been in more comfortable places at midnight. However, after running with the current, backing water, and clever finesse, we come safely to anchor against the shore opposite the Fort, under the lee of Bear Rock. This is a fourteen-hundred foot peak which starts up from the angle formed by the junction of the ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... their purpose; but being placed out of the reach of their shot, they allowed them to come to terms. The inhabitants agreed to pay six thousand dollars, which they were to collect by the time of our return down the river. This finesse had the desired effect, for during our absence they mounted a few guns on a hill, which commanded the passage, and gave us in lieu of the dollars, a ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... the excitement of his wine—from a haunch of venison, like the one of which we have partaken to-day, what noble and substantial measures might arise? From a saute de foie, what delicate subtleties of finesse might have their origin? from a ragout a la financiere, what godlike improvements in taxation? Oh, could such a lot be mine, I would envy neither Napoleon for the goodness of his fortune, nor S—for the grandeur ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bribed her minister. He is devoted to me. All was smiling. How could I possibly have anticipated that you would ever arrive here! When I saw you, I felt that all was lost. I endeavoured to rally affairs, but it was useless. Tan-cred has no finesse; his replies neutralised, nay, destroyed, all my counter representations. The Queen is a whirlwind. She is young; she has never been crossed in her life. You cannot argue with her when her heart is touched. In short, all is ruined;' and Fakredeen hid his weeping face in the robes ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... had said enough to cause suspicion. One would not have imagined, on looking at Mr. O'Dwyer, that he was a very crafty person, or one of whose finesse in affairs of the world it would be necessary to stand much in awe. He seemed to be thick, and stolid, and incapable of deep inquiry; but, nevertheless, he was as fond of his neighbour's affairs as another, and knew as much about the affairs ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... Mumsy! I'm going to use finesse about both things. You just see how tactful I am. Oh! Oh! Oh! I'm so excited! Just look at the streamers and flags and all the funny funeral wreaths, and only listen to the music! I'm about sure there are wings on my golden slippers. ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... have been remarkable anywhere for personal activity, for courage, readiness, hardihood, and all those qualities which render a man useful in the business to which he properly belonged; but he could hardly be termed a skilful leadsman, knew little of the finesse of his calling, and was wanting in that in-and-in breeding which converts habit into an instinct, and causes the thorough seaman to do the right thing, blow high or blow low, in the right way, and at the right ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... have to finesse a good deal. I can manage with Mrs. Fenwick. But—I wish I felt equally secure with Miss Sally." He feels very insecure indeed in that quarter, if the truth is told. And he is afflicted with a double embarrassment here, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... tears. But now a burly figure came rolling in; they drew back and silenced each other.—"The Doctor!" This was the remarkable person they called Jack Doubleface. Nature had stuck a philosophic head, with finely-cut features, and a mouth brimful of finesse, on to a corpulent and ungraceful body, that yawed from side ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... say, beams from his every limb. All day long he must be up and doing. For want of better business he will pursue a shrimp for hours at a time with the zest of a true sportsman. Now he darts after his intended prey like a fox-hound. Again he resorts to finesse, and sidles off, with eyes fixed in another direction, like a master of stratagem. To be sure, he never catches the shrimp—but what of that? The true sportsman is far removed from the necessity for mere material profit. I half suspect that ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... all his plans out of him, turn him inside out like a glove, pump him as dry as a pond in the summer, squeeze him like a lemon—and let him see whether the poor ignorant Iwish, as he softly calls us, are not an overmatch for him at the finesse upon which he seems ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... he laughed aloud with an indecorous mirth. In spite of her instincts and traditions how lacking in feminine finesse, how utterly without subtlety of method she was! She had stood always for the unconquerable will in the fragile body, and she had used to the utmost her two strong weapons of obstinacy and weakness. He did not know whether the dread ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... come to the services first—that is, if you—if you don't object," Letitia said with her usual directness and lack of any kind of finesse, thus bringing the situation to a ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... looked forward as to the crisis of his parliamentary fortunes. All his chances, financial or social, must now be calculated with reference to it. Every power, whether of combat or finesse, that he commanded must be brought ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that while she remained, the fuse would not be lighted. Saidee, who had come out from the dining-room into the courtyard, could see her on the wall, and Rostafel was babbling that she was "une petite lionne, une merveille de courage et de finesse." The Highlanders knew, too, and were doing their best to rid her of Maieddine, but, perhaps because of the superstition which made them doubt the power of their bullets against a charmed life, they could not kill him, though his cloak was pierced, and his ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... required more finesse on the part of the handy man. Bat strolled as if it were a matter of habit into the telegraph editor's room, where he lolled back in one of the two empty chairs. It was still early and the wires were silent. Bat laid ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... of glory and adventure, of emotion and of broad human interest. It gives glimpses of the heights and depths of character and experience, setting him thinking and wondering even in the midst of amusement. To the most torpid and unobservant it exhibits the humorous in life and the sparkle and finesse of language, which in dull ordinary existence is stupidly shut out of knowledge or omitted from particular notice. To all it uncurtains a world, not that in which they live and yet not other than it—a world in which interest is heightened whilst the conditions of truth are observed, in which the ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... understood all that passed, though with Indian gravity and finesse he had sat with averted face, seemingly inattentive to a discourse in which he had no direct concern. Thus appealed to, however, he answered his friend in ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... Morrison's preposterous winnings had been involved in the clashes of railroads and cataclysms on the exchange which had for years past been his major recreation. Vogelstein, though evidently of coarser fibre, belonged to the same formidable breed. The mastodon, we must suppose, lacked much of the finesse of the rogue elephant of later evolution. And Vogelstein's Semitism was of the archaic, potent, monumental type. His abundant fat looked hard. For all the sagging double chin, his jaw retained the character of a clamp. Among the strong race of ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... had listened to her suggestion at the tea-table, at first with scornful displeasure over her venturing an opinion of any sort on business. Then, as he comprehended the purport of her scheme, his instinct for finesse had caused him to seize on it impetuously, to act upon it immediately.... Surely, Cicily thought, since Uncle Jim had been won over, there remained only the working out of details to insure a glorious victory—her ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... experiments, without even the string of a far-reaching purpose to connect them. There is no intention of progress in it all. The race is barbarous, and then it changes to civilized; in the one case the strong rob the weak by brute force; in the other the crafty rob the unwary by finesse. The latter is a more agreeable state of things; but it comes to about the same. The robber used to knock us down and take away our sheepskins; he now administers chloroform and relieves us of our watches. It is a gentlemanly proceeding, and scientific, and we ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... leg with the rather conscious air of escaping from an awkward situation only by the subtlest finesse. ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... maintained its grip. All the wit and sprightliness of the fight was on the part of the lizard, who lashed its foe with its pliant tail, and endeavoured so to swerve as to bite. Both were light weights. One was all dash and sportive agileness; the other played a dull waiting game with admirable finesse. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... nasty thing to do!" said Lady Tressilvain sharply, as her brother's finesse went through, ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... Franck there were two important pioneers in the broadening tendency which finally became noticeable, Saint-Saens and Lalo. For great assimilative power, for versatility, for clarity of expression and a finish and finesse peculiarly French, Camille Saint-Saens (1835-still living) is certainly one of the most remarkable musicians of the nineteenth century. His works are numerous, always "well-made" and, though lacking in emotional depth, by no means without ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... blow over. Finesse was required. Ruth had suggested a plan, which, although applauded by the major and his mother, they could not advise her to carry out. For, if it failed, her own peril would be as great as Tom Cameron's. In fact, ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... hereditary instinct, and because the taste of the epoch is fortified by the national taste. Add to all this the exquisite art of the cooks, their talent in commingling, in apportioning and in concealing the condiments, in varying and arranging the dishes, the certainty of their hand, the finesse of their palate, their experience in processes, in the traditions and practices which, already for a hundred years, form of French prose the most delicate nourishment of the intellect. It is not strange to find them skilled in regulating human speech, in extracting from it its quintessence ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... was the greatest master of the anecdote this generation has known. He claimed the humorous story as an American invention, and one that has remained at home. His public speeches were little mosaics in the finesse of their art; and the intricacies of inflection, insinuation, jovial innuendo which Mark Twain threw into his gestures, his implicative pauses, his suggestive shrugs and deprecative nods—all these are hopelessly volatilized and disappear entirely from the printed copy of his speeches. ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... the uncompromising squareness of its towers, while altogether bad, is not altogether unpleasing. Standing before it the traveller was both bewildered and fascinated as he saw that even in the extravagance of their combinations, the builders, with true southern finesse, had avoided both the ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... the finesse of gunners' craft worthy of veterans in the way that these eighteen-pounders were concealed. The Germans had put some shells in the neighbourhood, but without fooling the old hands. They did not change ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... musical finesse was such, So nice his ear, so delicate his touch,— Made poetry a mere mechanic art, And every warbler has ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... the exiles, Jobson was equally deficient in finesse and secrecy. The first question he put to Isabel respecting the place of their retreat, discovered that he had a mysterious reason for wishing to be informed, and she soon drew from him that the benevolent ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... Sir John Macdonald's career affords a more admirable illustration of his strategic ability, delicate finesse, and subtle power over men than his negotiations with Joseph Howe. Howe's opposition to Confederation was of no ordinary kind. He {80} had long been a conspicuous figure in Nova Scotia, and was passionately ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... appear to have known nothing. The French have practised it with great success, and may have invented it. It appears particularly French in some of its phases,—in the manner that is necessary for its practice, in its wit and finesse. The affair of the Diamond Necklace, with which all the world is familiar, is the most magnificent instance of it on record. A lesser case, involving one of the same names, and playing excellently upon woman's vanity, illustrates ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... said, "there must be no mistake as to who is in command of this expedition. If we succeed it will be by finesse rather than force, and that is distinctly a feminine quality. Second, there is to be no unnecessary fighting. We are here to secure my nephew, not the ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... which rolled damp from the presses could convey it through the avenues and alleys of the city, whose wealthiest citizen he had been, and through the highways and byways of the country, which his marvelous mentality and finesse had so manifestly strengthened in its position as a ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... solitary existence, becomes insane at the idea that truth is inaccessible to human reason and that the reign of the Lie is invincible. The hero of "The Thought"[10] reveres but one thing in the world—his own thought. Wrapped up in this one idea, he admires the force and finesse of it, while his reason, detached from reality and having only him for an end, begins to weaken, becomes gradually perverted to the point where this man, harassed by a terrible doubt, begins to ask himself whether he is insane. In ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... snapped his fingers. "It's finesse, my boy, commercial finesse. Who's to trace it, I should like to know. I haven't worked out all the details—I want your co-operation over that—but here's a rough sketch of my plan. We send a man we can depend upon to some distant part of the world—Chimborazo, for example, ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... playing a game; and yet he did not wish to do this. But there was a mobility, a subtleness in his nature, an unconscious tact, —which the mode of life and of mixing with men in America fosters and perfects,—that made this sort of finesse inevitable to him, with any but a natural character; with whom, on the other hand, Redclyffe could be as fresh and natural as any Englishman of ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... retiring to her own room to read or write letters, allowing her hostess to have her mornings or her afternoons to herself, as she pleases. Some people are "born visitors." They have the genius of tact to perceive, the genius of finesse to execute, case and frankness of manner, a knowledge of the world that nothing can surprise, a calmness of temper that nothing can disturb, and a kindness of disposition that can never be exhausted. Such a visitor ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... the Gerad, accompanied by two men, who brought my servants' arms, and the revolver which I had sent to the prince. This was a contretemps. It was clearly impossible to take back the present, besides which, I suspected some finesse to discover my feelings towards him: the other course would ensure delay. I told the Gerad that the weapon was intended especially to preserve the Amir's life, and for further effect, snapped caps in rapid succession to the infinite terror of the august company. The minister returned ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... is, then!" exclaimed du Portail, impatiently; "you go round and round the pot as if I were a man it would do you some good to finesse with." ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... was all an eye and an ear for this verbal fencing-match. It was not that he admired his superior's skill, because such finesse was wholly beyond him, but his suspicious brain was storing up Grant's admissions "to be used in evidence" against him subsequently. His own brief record of the conversation would have been:—"The prisoner, after being duly cautioned, said he kept ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... ten, and was solicitously careful that the introduction of cards should appear accidental, and originate in the proposal of my contemplated dupe himself. To be brief upon a vile topic, none of the low finesse was omitted, so customary upon similar occasions that it is a just matter for wonder how any are still found so besotted ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... shoe of hers on the neck of rebellion, when she should have held out her soft white hand to make friends of her foes. Her beauty and her grace might have done much, had she inherited with the pride of the Medici something of their finesse and suavity. But he loved her, Denzil, forgave all her follies, her lavish spending and wasteful splendour. 'My wife is a bad housekeeper,' I heard him say once, when she was hanging upon his chair as he sat at the end of the Council table. The ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... do justice to this spirituel old man's mode of telling the story, or describe the finesse of his arch ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... Brady had called, as he said he would, and from the very first he had made plain in his grave, direct way the objects of his visits. There was no subtlety about Ted, no finesse. He was as frank as a music-hall ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... throat, Dove gazed at the sinner before him. He began to see that his errand was not going to be an easy one; where no hint was taken, it was difficult to insert even the thinnest edge of the wedge. He resolved to use finesse; and, for several of the precious moments at his disposal, he talked, as if at ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... weakness of that artistic dandy, always proper, always amiable, who consulted this master about everything, even if afterwards he did not pay much attention to his advice. When he criticized his fellow painters, he did it with a venomous suavity, with a feminine finesse. Renovales laughed at his appearance and his habits and Cotoner joined in. He was like china, always shining; you could not find the least speck of dust on him; you were sure he slept in a cupboard. These present-day painters! The two old artists recalled ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the various assurances I had at different times received from the Minister, adding, that whatever might be the consequence, I should think it my duty to pay a higher regard to the honor of the United States, than to the feelings of a Court by whose finesse that honor had ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
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