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Cherub   Listen
noun
Cherub  n.  (pl. cherubs; but the hebrew plural cherubim is also used)  
1.
A mysterious composite being, the winged footstool and chariot of the Almighty, described in "I knew that they were the cherubim." "He rode upon a cherub and did fly."
2.
A symbolical winged figure of unknown form used in connection with the mercy seat of the Jewish Ark and Temple.
3.
One of a order of angels, variously represented in art. In European painting the cherubim have been shown as blue, to denote knowledge, as distinguished from the seraphim (see Seraph), and in later art the children's heads with wings are generally called cherubs.
4.
A beautiful child; so called because artists have represented cherubs as beautiful children.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cherub" Quotes from Famous Books



... a slice of bread, and it made a charming little meal before going to bed. She often took him on her knees and covered him with kisses, murmuring in his ear with passionate tenderness. She called him: "My little flower, my cherub, my adored angel, my divine jewel." He softly accepted her caresses, concealing his head on the old maid's shoulder. Although he was now nearly fifteen years old, he had remained small and weak, and had a ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... my pretty Edith," he said, in a calmer voice, as a little cherub-looking child, with a head so like as if, after the fashion of Danaee's, it had been powdered by Jupiter with gold dust, and a pair of blue eyes, as if the said god, in making them, had tried to emulate ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various

... gracefully on one knee beside him. This brought her angelic face level with the fallen cherub's. "What is the matter, dear?" asked she, in a tone of ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... Fatalist's rash eye to Him In whom the issues are of life and death; He taught to whom the battle is—to whom The victory belongs. His cherub, that aloft Kept sleepless watch, ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... A cherub togged in sunburn an' a beard An' duds that shouted "'Ayseed!" fer a mile: Care took the count the minute 'e appeared, An' sorter shrivelled up before 'is smile, 'E got the 'ammer-lock on my good-will The minute that 'e sez, ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis

... sustain the losse that thou art gone, Un-essenc'd in the separation; And he that weeps thy funerall, in one Is pious to the widdow'd nation. And under what (now) covert must I sing, Secure as if beneath a cherub's wing; When thou hast tane thy flight hence, and art nigh In place to some related hierarchie, Where a bright wreath of glories doth but set Upon thy head an equal coronet; And thou, above our humble converse gon, Canst but be reach'd by contemplation. Our lutes (as thine was touch'd) ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace

... must hasten; one remains Who well deserves my ablest strains. This is my Alfred—lovely babe A smiling cherub sure art thou, How can I best describe thy charms? How can I write about thee now? Nearly four months have passed away Since thou first saw the light of day; And in that time we've hardly had One tedious night with thee, my lad. By day thy chirruping ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... Safe in the guidance of thy heavenly guard, While melting airs are heard, And soft-eyed cherub-forms around thee play: Simplicity, in careless flowers array'd, Prattling amusive in his accent meek; And Modesty, half turning as afraid, The smile just dimpling on his glowing cheek! Content and Leisure, hand in hand With Innocence and Peace, advance ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... square enclosure in the Greyfriars' Churchyard, guarded on one side by a veteran angel without a nose, and having only one wing, who had the merit of having maintained his post for a century, while his comrade cherub, who had stood sentinel on the corresponding pedestal, lay a broken trunk, among the hemlock, burdock, and nettles, which grew in gigantic luxuriance around the ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... have no trouble in finding it; all he had to do was to follow the tracks made by his mother and father when they left it. He wanted a little balsam from the tree of life that he might not die. Seth found there a cherub, with flaming sword, who would not let him pass the door. He moved his wings so that he could see in, and he saw the tree of life, with its roots running down to hell, and among them Cain, the murderer. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... world with whom you would have associated romance, and it was hard to see what there was in him to arouse love. In the clothes he wore now he looked podgier than ever, and his round spectacles gave his round face the look of a prim cherub. He suggested rather a curate who had gone to the dogs. His conversation was peppered with the quaintest Americanisms, and it is because I despair of reproducing these that, at whatever loss of vividness, I mean to narrate the story he told me a little ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... stands as firm as ever; Hollis, this very year a centenarian, is waiting with its honest red face in a glow of cordiality to welcome its hundredth set of inmates; Holden Chapel, with the skulls of its Doric frieze and the unpunishable cherub over its portals, looks serenely to the sunsets; Harvard, within whose ancient walls we are gathered, and whose morning bell has murdered sleep for so many generations of drowsy adolescents, is at its post, ready to startle the new-fledged freshmen from their first ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser

... Thou cherub, but of earth; Fit playfellow for fairies, by moonlight pale, In harmless sport and mirth, (That dog will bite him, if he pulls his tail!) Thou human humming-bee, extracting honey From every blossom in the world that blows, Singing in youth's Elysium ever sunny,— ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... Crowe and Cavalcaselle, History of Painting, Vol. iii. p. 500.] believe they have discovered it in a picture at Turin, the authorship of which is avowedly doubtful. They mention, however, a celestial group of the Eternal Father in a cherub- peopled cloud, sending his blessing in the form of a dove, with a ray of glory. Surely if this be the one described by Vasari [Footnote: Vasari, vol. iii. p. 336] so minutely, he would not have omitted a part of the subject so important to ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)

... was all of cedar, gilt, and adorned with crystal; save that the fore-end had panels of sapphires, set in borders of gold; and the hinder-end the like of emeralds of the Peru colour. There was also a sun of gold, radiant, upon the top, in the midst; and on the top before, a small cherub of gold, with wings displayed. The chariot was covered with cloth of gold tissued upon blue. He had before him fifty attendants, young men all, in white satin loose coats to the mid leg; and stockings of white silk; ...
— The New Atlantis • Francis Bacon

... &c., "till iniquity was found in thee" (Eze 28:13-18); till thou leftest thy station, and place appointed of God, and then thou wast cast as profane out of the mountain of God, yea, though a covering cherub. See it again in Cain, who while he continued in the church, he was a busy sacrificer, as busy as Abel his brother; but when he left off to fear the Lord, and had bloodily butchered his holy brother, then he seeks to be a head, or monarch; then he ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... wealth, her site of ancient days, But Cadiz, rising on the distant coast, Calls forth a sweeter, though ignoble praise. Ah, Vice! how soft are thy voluptuous ways! While boyish blood is mantling, who can 'scape The fascination of thy magic gaze? A cherub-hydra round us dost thou gape, And mould to every taste ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... Abbot. Amen. Behemoth. Cabal. Cherub. Cinnamon. Hallelujah. Hosannah. Jehovah. Jubilee. Gehenna. Leviathan. Manna. Paschal. Pharisee. Pharisaical. Rabbi. Sabbath. Sadducees. Satan. Seraph. ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn

... On his great expedition now appeared, Girt with omnipotence, with radiance crowned Of majesty divine: sapience and love Immense; and all his Father in Him shone. About his chariot numberless were poured Cherub and Seraph, Potentates and Thrones, And Virtues, winged Spirits, and chariots winged From the armoury of God, where stand of old Myriads, between two brazen mountains lodged Against a solemn day, harnessed at hand, Celestial equipage; ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... came near joining the ranks of the well-born angels. But for an accident I should now be a cherub of quality." ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... sad, dreamy, far-away gaze, so full of the pain and suffering of life. Behind him stood his Adonis of a son, the flush of genius making the countenance yet more beautiful. Perched on his shoulder was the cherub. He held out his arms as soon as he saw us, and seemed quite ready to go forth with us and, as Catherine would have said, see the world. Some of the old Louis Quatorze furniture had been transferred from the seclusion of the monastery ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various

... face of a cherub, if we can conceive a cherub with an habitual grime on his countenance. Curly yellow hair, innocent blue eyes, for ever twinkling, a dimple in each cheek; add to these a dilapidated suit of clothes, and a sorely battered hat, and you have Tim O'Neill, ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin

... A soul immortal in your charge, Maurine. From this most holy, sad and sacred eve, Till God shall claim her, she is yours to keep, To love and shelter, to protect and guide." She touched the slumb'ring cherub at her side, And Vivian gently bore her, still asleep, And laid the precious burden on ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... Schramm, that teacher of Heine's who was so busy inditing a study of Universal Peace that his boys had all the chance they could wish for pummeling one another. But I've been thinking, Reuben. And I'm going to see if I can't save what's left of the ship. I'm no Renaissance cherub on a cloudlet, but I'm going to knuckle down and see if I can't jibe along a little better with my old Dinky-Dunk. I've decided to back off and give him his chance. If he's set on selling Alabama Ranch, on the terms he's mentioned, ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... Empress's side to Claire and falling on his knees to her]. Pardon him, pardon him, little cherub! little wild duck! little star! little glory! little jewel in the ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw

... by that will which gives a giant's nerve to an infant's arm—has burst the monstrous mass of fraud that has endeavored to suppress it.—It calls now to Your Lordships, in the weak but clear tone of that Cherub, Innocence, whose voice is more persuasive than eloquence, more convincing than argument, whose look is supplication, whose tone is conviction,—it calls upon you for redress, it calls upon you for vengeance upon the oppressor, and points its heaven-directed ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... of wood beneath his hand. He had never done wood-carving before, and he was learning the technique that made it very different from clay. He had gone at this piece without any special intent and was shaping it into a cherub merely out of whim, but he was giving to the task every atom of his skill, and his hands worked with every nerve strained to detect ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades

... the pit, on to a bank. At the foot of the little hill on which I sat were some little children, and they called to me to come down. But I could not get down. Then the children raised a ladder for me, and I came down among them. A little cherub took me by the hand and led me in the River of Badjied of Jordan. I looked at my ankles and shoulders and discovered I had little wings. On the river was a ship. The children, the cherub and I got into the ship. When we reached a beautiful spot, the little cherub ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton

... which, in a costly crystal box, she preserved as the chief ornament of her principal drawing-room. He was painted anew and re-gilded. He had a black velvet robe purchased for him, and trimmed with deep gold lace. Hovering over him was a cherub. Every friend of Doa Juana had lent some part of her jewellery for the decoration of the holy man. Rings sparkled on his fingers; collars hung around his neck; a tiara graced his venerable brow. The lacings of his sandals were ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... "Cherub," a good hearted but not over refined young man is brought in touch with the aristocracy. Of sprightly wit, he is sometimes a merciless analyst, but he proves in the end that manhood counts for more than ancient lineage by ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... oath of love less solemn or impressive than his of hatred?—pledged as it was, too, in the presence of an angel too lately freed from earth's bondage not to hover still around her prison-house and above the sleeping cherub she ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... into Parliament. Everything the Veneerings had was brand new. They spent a great deal of money entertaining society people at dinners, but Mr. Veneering spent very little on his clerks. Bella's father, though he was always as happy as a cherub, was so poor that he never had been able to buy a whole new suit at once. His hat was shabby before he could afford a coat, and his trousers were worn before he got to new shoes. So he was glad enough indeed to ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

... my Ursula, and where Art thou departed, to what land, what sphere? High o'er the heavens wert thou borne, to stand One little cherub midst the cherub band? Or dost thou laugh in Paradise, or now Upon the Islands of the Blest art thou? Or in his ferry o'er the gloomy water Does Charon bear thee onward, little daughter? And having drunken of forgetfulness Art thou unwitting of my sore distress? Or, casting off thy human, ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski

... adorn again 125 Fierce War, and faithful Love, And Truth severe, by fairy Fiction drest. In buskin'd measures move Pale Grief, and pleasing Pain, With Horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast. 130 A voice, as of the cherub-choir, Gales from blooming Eden bear; And distant warblings lessen on my ear, That lost in long futurity expire. Fond impious man, think'st thou yon sanguine cloud, 135 Rais'd by thy breath, has quench'd the orb of day? To-morrow he repairs the golden flood, And warms the nations ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray

... be drifting slowly among them, sometimes behind them, and faintly veiled by their light vapor; but more often the little clouds made way for her, and clustered round, in a circle of vaguely outlined cherub-heads, golden brown in the halo she shed about her. These child-like angel-heads, floating over the greater part of the sky, seemed pressing forward, one behind the other, and hastening into the narrow ring of light, with a gentle eagerness; ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... industry and exertion, and the kindness of others, step by step progressed to competence, and every prospect of mundane happiness. Had I not, therefore, reason to be grateful, and to feel that there had been a little cherub who had watched over the life of Poor Jack? On my bended knees I acknowledged it fervently and gratefully, and prayed that, should it please Heaven that I should in after life meet any reverse, I might bear it without repining, and say, with all ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... his guardian angel prepare for departure. Through her mind also similar ideas flowed, as if they contained a concession of what she had considered as the summit of her wishes, but under conditions disgraceful to her lover, like the cherub's fiery sword of yore, which was a barrier between our first parents and the blessings of Paradise. Sir John de Walton, after a moment's hesitation, broke ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... considerable extent with his aggressive look. It was certainly latent, but only came to the surface when he fought with a brother savant over some tomb-dweller from Thebes. In the soft lamplight he looked like a fighting cherub, and it was a pity—in the interests of art—that the hairless pink and white face did not surmount a pair of wings rather than a rusty ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume

... her brisk way. She was holding something concealed in her little pinafore. She looked very mysterious. She had a round cherub face and two great big blue eyes, and short hair, which she wore in a curly mop all over her head. Dolly was the youngest girl in the school and a great pet with everyone. When Bertha saw her now she sprang to her feet and went forward in her ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade

... the family instinct for detail, too, this Fairy Godmother. Perhaps the electric light in your bedroom fails, and for three days you have to sit in the dark or purchase candles. An invisible but observant little cherub notes this fact; and long afterwards a postal order for tenpence flutters down upon you from Olympus, marked "light allowance." Once Bobby Little received a mysterious postal order for one-and-fivepence. ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... she politely, and from a certain innate interest, gave such attention to the baby as to win the mother's heart. It was but an ordinary baby, although the fattest and sturdiest member of a rather pinched household; but Lottie wonderingly saw that to the faded mother it was a cherub just from heaven. ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... and the Abbe Brice, and you add, 'And his son.' It is your fault, dear. He must be a choir-boy, that cherub. (More laughter.) ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... feelings by uttering "horrid curses." Barnes Newcome sends up "a perfect feu d'artifice of oaths." But he is entirely free from indelicacy, and merely elegantly shadows forth the Eton form of punishment, as that "which none but a cherub can escape." In this respect he seems to have set before him the example of Mr. Honeyman, of whom he says he had "a thousand anecdotes, laughable riddles and droll stories (of the utmost ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... was very ill. And the baby's father and mother, having left the little cherub sleeping peacefully, were motoring somewhere in the wide spaces of the world. The family doctor was out. She had called up another doctor, and he would come as soon as he could. But in the ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey

... joined us here. Among them was Miss Elizabeth Boott, afterwards Mrs. Duveneck, who came with her little sketch-book. She made a water-color portrait of my father, which, as the young artist was then but a girl, looked like a cherub of pug-nosed, pink good nature, with its head loose. I can see that little sketch now, and I feel still a wave of the dizziness of my indignation at its strange depiction of a strong man reduced to dollhood. Miss Boott being a true artist in the bud, there was, of course, the eerie ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... a still more serious consequence from the idolatrous practices introduced in the time of Enosh. When God drove Adam forth from Paradise, the Shekinah remained behind, enthroned above a cherub under the tree of life. The angels descended from heaven and repaired thither in hosts, to receive their instructions, and Adam and his descendants sat by the gate to bask in the splendor of the Shekinah, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... was very willing to "excuse" Dotty for her sweet sister's sake. But Prudy felt rather nervous. She made a place beside herself for Dotty, who folded her small hands and sat as still as a marble cherub; but what odd thing she might take it into her busy brain to do, no one ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May

... parents. He is at this moment so exquisitely enchanted with a little penny trumpet, and finding he can produce such harmony his own self, that he is blowing and laughing till he can hardly stand. If you could see his little swelling cheeks you would not accuse yourself of a misnomer in calling him cherub. I try to impress him with an idea of pleasure in going to see grandpapa, but the short visit to Bookham is forgotten, and the permanent engraving remains, and all his concurrence consists in pointing up to the print over the chimney-piece, and giving ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... dusky wing. But on the pillars Seraph eyes have seen The dimness of this world: that greyish green That Nature loves the best for Beauty's grave Lurk'd in each cornice, round each architrave— And every sculptur'd cherub thereabout That from his marble dwelling peered out Seem'd earthly in the shadow of his niche— Achaian statues in a world so rich? *Friezes from Tadmor and Persepolis— From Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss **Of beautiful Gomorrah! O, the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... who might direct his wand'ring flight To Paradise, the happy seat of man, His journey's end, and our beginning woe. But first he casts to change his proper shape, Which else might work him danger or delay: And now a stripling cherub he appears, Not of the prime, yet such as in his face Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb Suitable grace diffus'd, so well he feign'd: Under a coronet his flowing hair In curls on either cheek play'd; ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... Uriel gave what answers he could to the old man's questionings. His mother was dead; his brother Vidal had married, though his wife had died some years later in giving birth to a boy, who was growing up beautiful as a cherub. Yes, he was prospering in worldly affairs, having long since intrusted them to Joseph—that was to say, Vidal—who had embarked all the family wealth in a Dutch enterprise called the West India ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... flaunting weeds, Whose seeds the winds have strown So thick, beneath the line he reads, They shade the sculptured stone; The child unveils his clustered brow, And ponders for a while The graven willow's pendent bough, Or rudest cherub's smile. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... refinement for the uneducated. It has been prettily said that the melody of birds is the poor man's music, and that flowers are the poor man's poetry. They are "a discipline of humanity," and may sometimes ameliorate even a coarse and vulgar nature, just as the cherub faces of innocent and happy children are sometimes found to soften and purify the corrupted heart. It would be a delightful thing to see the swarthy cottagers of India throwing a cheerful grace on their humble sheds and small plots of ground ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... gravity when she found "John Gilpin" converted into a painted petticoat, "The Bay of Biscay, O," situated in the crown of a hat, and "Chevy Chase" issuing from the mouth of a triangular gentleman, who, like Dickens's cherub, probably sung it by ear, having no ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... thoughts in their essence diviner Than dreams of ambition and pelf; A cherub, no babe will be finer, Invented ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker

... love," said Prospero, "you were a little cherub that did preserve me. Your innocent smiles made me bear up against my misfortunes. Our food lasted till we landed on this desert island, since when my chief delight has been in teaching you, Miranda, and well have ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

... Within the walls of that small stone cottage, peeping forth from its screen of young hickory trees, I had left three dear children,—God only could tell whether we should ever meet on earth again: I knew that their prayers would follow me on my long journey, and the cherub Hope was still at my side, to whisper of happy hours and restored health and spirits. I blessed God, for the love of those young kindred hearts, and for having placed their home in ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... where I am!' I looked up. Hilda, she was sitting on the ridge-pole of the house, waving her bonnet by a loop of the pink quilled ribbon,—it was almost as bad as the green braid about coming off,—and smiling like a cherub. 'I came through the skylight,' she said, 'and the air up here is so fresh and nice! I wish ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards

... revive. Her ultimately realistic temperament told her this could never be. Though she had routed Rita Sohlberg, she was fully aware that Cowperwood's original constancy was gone. She was no longer happy. Love was dead. That sweet illusion, with its pearly pink for heart and borders, that laughing cherub that lures with Cupid's mouth and misty eye, that young tendril of the vine of life that whispers of eternal spring-time, that calls and calls where aching, wearied feet by legion follow, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... a tent which led out of the big tent, where she saw the Chief Jumper in full jumping costume, and the Dwarf, and the Fat Man, and the Clown, and the Flying Cherub; and the Remedy worked so well that the Chief Jumper thought he might jump ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... The boy has started from the bed Of flowers, where he had laid his head, And down upon the fragrant sod Kneels, with his forehead to the south, Lisping th' eternal name of God 90 From purity's own cherub mouth. ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... down the tattered quilt, and gazed with shining eyes of love and admiration at the sleeping face of a child, a baby girl of scarce two years, the cherub face rosy with sleep, smiling in her dreams; the long, silky black lashes sweeping the flushed cheek; the abundant, feathery, jet-black curls floating loosely about—an exquisite picture of blooming, ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... peered round over the sparkling substance she held, looking like a very ancient and red-faced cherub peeping over the rim of ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... Eve could be passionately loyal and basely deceitful simultaneously! The two-faced creature led the doctor forward with a candid smile that partook equally of the smile of a guardian angel and the smile of a cherub. She was an ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... child imaginable. His complexion was as fresh as a rose; his beautiful hair fell in golden curls on his shoulders; add to his clear blue eyes a straight nose, a small mouth, and a dimpled chin, and you have the portrait of a cherub. At twelve years of age this young marvel danced enchantingly, rode like a riding-master, and fenced to perfection. No one could have helped being won by his smile and the truly royal manner in which he ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various

... sailors are quite lively and frolicsome; their spirits even flow far into the first of the long "night-watches;" but upon its expiration at "eight bells" (midnight), silence begins to reign; if you hear a voice it is no cherub's: all exclamations ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... golden splendors of the "Paradise"; but is stern, disdainful, silent, waving from before his face all contact with the filthy gloom. His Lucifer is no flickering, gentlemanly, philosophic man of the world like Goethe's Mephistopheles, nor like Milton's Fallen Cherub, whose ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... And he himself one vile antithesis. Amphibious thing! that acting either part, The trifling head, or the corrupted heart; Fop at the hostel, flatterer at the board, Now trips a lady, and now struts a Lord. Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have expressed, A cherub's face—a reptile all the rest. Beauty that shocks you, parts that none can trust, Wit that can creep, and ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... could not fail to see in what had befallen their sisters a foreshadowing of the fate that they had to expect one day themselves. Beginning with the weakest cities, Assyria would naturally go on to absorb those which were stronger, and Tyre herself, the "anointed cherub,"[14136] could look for no greater favour than, like Ulysses in the cave of Polyphemus, to be devoured last. Luliya, or Elulaeus, the king of Tyre at the time,[14137] endeavoured to escape this calamity by gathering to himself a strength which would ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... come and look at Rosalind's coral! Oh, poor Polly! you must miss your ornaments; but I am obliged frankly to confess, my dear, that they are more becoming to this little cherub than they ever ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... not see his eye grow dim; or his little hand droop powerless; or the dew of agony gather on his pale forehead; I stood not with clasped hands and suspended breath, and watched the look that comes but once, flit over his cherub face. And yet, "little Benny," my tears are falling; for, somewhere, I know there's an empty crib, a vacant chair, useless robes and toys, a desolate hearth-stone, and a ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... the door between the two rooms just then, and I could hear nothing more, although I moved my chair quite close. After a discreet interval, I went into the other room, and found Louise alone. She was staring with sad eyes at the cherub painted on the ceiling over the bed, and because she looked tired ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... see the Chariot, and those rushing wheels, That whirl'd the Prophet up at Chebar flood, My spirit som transporting Cherub feels, To bear me where the Towers of Salem stood, Once glorious Towers, now sunk in guiltles blood; 40 There doth my soul in holy vision sit In pensive trance, and anguish, and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... flew to my relief, As on a cherub's wing he rode; Awful and bright as lightning shone The face ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts

... the five maidens, Meditation, Contrition, Compassion, Cleanness and Fruition, while near by await her seven teachers, Discretion, Devotion, Dilection, Deliberation, Declaration, Determination and Divination, a goodly company of Doctors indeed. Of all these intangible figures one only, Milton's 'cherub Contemplation', speaks, but the rest are quite obviously represented on the stage, though whether all in flesh and blood may be matter for uncertainty. Much more talkative, on the other hand, are similar abstractions in Scene 11. Here, in the presence of God, Contemplation and the ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... turned of eight years old, but so short of her age, that few people took her to be above five. It was not a dwarfish shortness; for she had the most exact proportioned limbs in the world, very small bones, and was as fat as a little cherub. She was extremely fair, and her hair quite flaxen. Her eyes a perfect blue, her mouth small, and her lips quite plump and red. She had the freshness of a milkmaid; and when she smiled and laughed, she seemed to show an hundred agreeable dimples. She was, in ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding

... library, on his way to the hall door, hope having died hard and his spirits being correspondingly depressed, when Fate at last intervened in his behalf. Fate took the form of young Mrs. Stephen Gray, descending the stairs with a two-year-old child in her arms, such a rosy, brown-eyed cherub of a child that an older and more hardened bachelor than Richard Kendrick need not have been suspected of dissimulation if he had stopped short in his course as Richard did, ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond

... cloud, Love gives it energy, love gave it birth. Where on thy dewy wing, Where art thou journeying? Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth. O'er fell and mountain sheen, O'er moor and mountain green, O'er the red streamer that heralds the day, Over the cloudlet dim, Over the rainbow's rim, Musical cherub, soar, singing, away! Then, when the gloaming comes, Low in the heather blooms, Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be! Emblem of happiness, Blest is thy dwelling-place— O to abide in the desert ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... the cradle nest Where she soothed her babe to his smiling rest; She watched the sleep of her cherub-boy, And her spirit throbbed with exulting joy. "Ah, me!" said she, "how happy I'll be, When he reaches manhood, proud and free, And the world bows down, in its rapture wild, It the earnest ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... darling; don't catch yourself on the sides of the doorway. Just look, Samson Silych, my dear lord and master, and admire how I've rigged up our daughter! Phew! go away! What a peony-rose she is now! [To her] Ah, you little angel, you princess, you little cherub, you! [To him] Well, Samson Silych, isn't it all right? Only she ought to ride ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky

... beside the priest's feet, and looked up to him as she spoke or listened; but now, as if animated by calm, yet settled, feelings of disapprobation, she rose up, and, extending her hand towards the monk as she spoke, addressed him with a countenance and voice which might have become a cherub, pitying, and even as much as possible sparing, the feelings of the mortal whose errors he is commissioned ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... coincidence, chanced to have her shrine at a boarding-school, some fifteen miles or so from the mill-pond on whose banks the Miller's Daughter had drawn into her lovely face so much of the beauty of the world. Alice Sunshine, shall we call her, was perhaps more of a cherub than a saint; a rosy, laughing, plump little arrangement of sunshiny pink and white flesh, with blue eyes and golden hair. Alice was not overburdened with intellectuality, and, like others of her sex, her heart was nothing like so soft as her ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard

... go with you anywhere you like, my cherub,' she answered; and in two minutes the weary little ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald

... doing. He was afraid that he could not discuss the vanished money without blushing, and it happened rarely that he lost control of his features, which indeed he could as a rule mould to the expression of a cherub whenever desirable. So he sat down in a chair, the first chair to hand, any chair, and began to reflect. Of course he was safe. The greatest saint on earth could not have been safer than he was from conviction of a crime. He might be suspected, but nothing ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... rum little youngster!" he exclaimed, taking me up in his open palms. "He is like Polly—that he is!" he added, as he gazed at me affectionately, the feelings of a father for the first time welling up in his bosom. "Yes, he is a sweet little cherub! Shouldn't wonder but he is like them as lives up aloft there to watch over us poor chaps at sea. Ay, that he must be. They can't beat him. Lord love ye, Sue, I am grateful to you for ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston

... came upon the scene; a short, rosy, round-faced little man in a white flat cap and bibbed apron—like an elderly cherub that had taken to cookery. He hung back upon the threshold, wiping his forehead, and evidently unwilling to ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... child! A cherub could not be more beautiful. Blue eyes and golden hair. A tiny mouth A dimple in her chin. (Shylock puts his arm ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... of the deep; Mild as the spirit of the dream whose power Bears back the infant's soul to heaven, in sleep Brightens the hues of summer's first-born flower Pure as the tears repentant mourners weep O'er deeds to which the siren, Sin, beguiled,— Art thou, sweet, smiling, bright-eyed cherub child. ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands

... from her looks that she was not a poor person's child, this also shows it," she observed to her husband; "and see what fine lace this is round her nightgown. It was a blessed thing, Adam, that you saved her life, the little cherub; though, for that matter, she looks as fit to be up in heaven as any bright angel there. But what can have become of those to whom she belongs? Of one thing I am very sure, neither father nor mother could have been aboard, for they would ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston

... must go over and see them again," said Anne Lisbeth. "I must go to my noble friends, to my darling child, the young count—yes, yes, for he is surely longing to see me. He thinks of me, he loves me as he did when he used to throw his little cherub arms round my neck and lisp, 'An Lis!' Oh, it was like a violin! Yes, I must go ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... knowledge that he was, after all, an ordinary being, one of themselves, had its consolations, particularly as no lustre from his glorification had shone on them. Mr. Ashburn felt less like an owl who had accidentally hatched a cherub, than he had done lately, and his wife considered that a snare and a pitfall had been removed from her son's path. Cuthbert thought his elder brother a fool, but probably had never felt more amiable ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... talk like a cherub, Jurgen, and you ought to have better manners. Do you suppose that we Apostles enjoy hearing jokes made ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... springs in his eyes, Henri had a lion's courage, a monkey's agility. He could cut a ball in half at ten paces on the blade of a knife; he rode his horse in a way that made you realize the fable of the Centaur; drove a four-in-hand with grace; was as light as a cherub and quiet as a lamb, but knew how to beat a townsman at the terrible game of savate or cudgels; moreover, he played the piano in a fashion which would have enabled him to become an artist should he fall on calamity, and owned a voice which would have been worth to ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac

... her his manly countenance, with the softest expression of which his large blue eye, which so often gleamed with insufferable light, was capable. Caressing her fair head, and mingling his large fingers in her beautiful and dishevelled locks, he raised and tenderly kissed the cherub countenance which seemed desirous to hide itself in his hand. The robust form, the broad, noble brow and majestic looks, the naked arm and shoulder, the lions' skins among which he lay, and the fair, fragile feminine ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... with a finger across his lips to remind her that Mrs. Triplett was still talking; but she was not to be silenced in such a way. Leaning over until her mischievous brown eyes compelled him to look at her, she smiled like a dimpled cherub. Georgina's smile was something irresistible when ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... household servant is contained in Eha's Behind the Bungalow, [358] from which the following extract is taken: "If you ask: Who is the Bhishti? I will tell you. Bihisht in the Persian tongue means Paradise, and a Bihishtee is therefore an inhabitant of Paradise, a cherub, a seraph, an angel of mercy. He has no wings; the painters have misconceived him; but his back is bowed down with the burden of a great goat-skin swollen to bursting with the elixir of life. He walks the land when the heaven ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... one says or thinks that the Word of God has become like to all heavenly orders, so that for the cherubim He was a cherub and for the seraphim a seraph, in short, like all the superior powers, ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... had all the softness of her sex, Her features all the sweetness of the Devil, When he put on the Cherub to perplex[305] Eve, and paved (God knows how) the road to evil; The Sun himself was scarce more free from specks Than she from aught at which the eye could cavil; Yet, somehow, there was something somewhere wanting, As if she ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... power of feeling and affection over the judgment on every hand. The mother of that ordinary-looking and troublesome child thinks it the most beautiful and engaging little creature under heaven; while she wonders how people can have patience with her neighbor's child, which, in truth, is quite a cherub or an angel compared with her's. You know how it is with natural light. You sit inside an ancient cathedral, and the light from the bright shining sun streams in through the painted windows. Outside the cathedral the light is all pure white; ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... a great height above it, by a huge sun with gilded rays. So far there was nothing to complain of. But when the car moved along, the rays of the sun, by an ingenious mechanism, turned as well; and at the end of each of these rays a poor little brat, dressed like a cherub, and crowned with roses, had been hung, in a sort of fireman's belt, by its barbarous parents. The tortures of the poor little creatures, hanging thus by their middles, under a burning sun, and shaken up by every jolt the machine gave as it ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... "you there!" He stared wildly at the boy, who, with his legs kicking to and fro in the vinery in search of support, looked down from the roof of the building like a sculptured cherub, with ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn

... stand at the corners of the crossings, or preside over the street lamps. On one of its church towers, over a gas light, is represented a candle stick with the rays emanating from its light. On each side, is a little cherub—one has a cross and the other an anchor. Over them, stand the mystical letters "IHS," the cross being combined with the H after the fashion of a monogram. Beneath is the ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner

... was addressed to a young man who roused himself from a brown study and looked up. Then he looked down to see whence the voice proceeded. Directly in his pathway stood a wee boy, a veritable cherub in modern raiment, whose rosy lips smiled up at him blandly, quite regardless of the sugary smears that surrounded them. One hand clasped a crumpled paper bag; the other held a rusty iron hoop and a cudgel entirely out of proportion to the size of ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray

... Filippino Lippis, both fine if with a little too much colour for this painter: one—No. 1257—approaching the hotness of a Ghirlandaio carpet piece, but a great feat of crowded activity; the other, No. 1268, having a beautiful blue Madonna and a pretty little cherub with a red book. Piero di Cosimo is here, religious and not mythological; and here are a very straightforward and satisfying Mariotto Albertinelli—the "Virgin and S. Elizabeth," very like a Fra Bartolommeo; ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... brain by a look at Dirty Fingers on the porch of his Good Old Queen Bess. He was a great soft lump of a man, a giant of flabbiness. Sitting in his smooth-worn, wooden armchair, he was almost formless. His head was huge, his hair uncut and scraggy, his face smooth as a baby's, fat as a cherub's, and as expressionless as an apple. His folded arms always rested on a huge stomach, whose conspicuousness was increased by an enormous watch-chain made from beaten nuggets of Klondike gold, and Dirty Fingers' thumb and forefinger were always twiddling at this chain. How he had come by ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood

... children," said the venerable John Eliot, of Roxbury, "are either with Christ or in Christ." Happy, happy man! The little ones, blighted soon by the touch of death, surely are with Christ; "for of such is the kingdom of God." The cherub boy, and the blooming, broken flower, the young daughter,—the young man in his strength, the young maiden in her beauty,—are there. As we commune together, in the pages which follow, on themes touching this ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams

... mangled heap His hurried search had missed, All glowing from his rosy sleep, His cherub-boy he kissed. ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various

... will send To the gate of Paradise forthwith, To the Cherub, the guardian. Ask him if there will be for me Oil of mercy at the last From the ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... a baby in her arms, and the innocent firstborn was busily taking its breakfast as the mother walked calmly along, bearing on her well-poised head the family wash. And a mile farther on, as if she had seen her rival and gone her one better, was another woman with a two-year-old cherub perched secure on top of the gently swaying basket, proud as a cardinal about to be consecrated. It was a study in balancing that I have never seen before nor since; and I only ask those to believe it who know things so true that they dare not tell them. As the day wore on, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... anxious sigh— I hear the moments rushing by, And think that life is fleeting fast, That youth with us will soon be past. Oh! when will time, consenting, give The home in which my heart can live? There shall the past and future meet, And o'er our couch, in union sweet, Extend their cherub wings, and shower Bright influence on the present hour, Oh! when shall Israel's mystic guide, The pillar'd cloud, our steps decide, Then, resting, spread its guardian shade, To bless the home which love hath made? Daily, my love, shall thence arise Our hearts' ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... swell'st the victor's pomp, nor ever Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power! Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee, (Nor prayer nor boastful name delays thee) From Superstition's harpy minions And factious Blasphemy's obscener slaves, Thou speedest on thy cherub pinions, The guide of homeless winds and playmate ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... he die, to Salem's streets shall come; And Canaan's vines for us their fruit shall bear, And Hermon's bees their honeyed stores prepare, And we shall kneel again in thankful prayer, Where o'er the cherub seated God full ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... The little cherub that sits up aloft guided them to a cheap and respectable boarding-house. Both found positions and became wage-earners. They remained chums. It is at the end of six months that I would beg you to step forward and be introduced ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... drew the baby closer. It looked like a rose dipped in milk, she thought, this pink and white blossom of girlhood, or like a pink cherub, with its halo of pale yellow hair, ...
— The Birds' Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... he substituted another shorter set of grievances, namely, that Hume would not suffer Theresa to sit at table with him; that he made a show of him; and that Hume had an engraving executed of himself, which made him as beautiful as a cherub, while in another engraving, which was a pendant to his own, Jean Jacques was made as ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... into paying the late tribute to their great-grandfather, or laying up a monument for themselves against the inevitable day of demand. His customers select from his samples a tasteful "set of stones"; and next summer he drives up and unloads the marble, with the names well spelt, and the cherub's head artistically chiselled by the best workmen of Boston. Cancut told us, as an instance of judicious economy, how, when he called once upon a recent widow to ask what he could do in his line for her deceased husband's tomb, she chose ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... them. I shall never forget a pretty boy we had once; he was called the "cherub," and had been a chorister—sang divinely. He was only four years in the regiment, and his case was brought to me before he was discharged. He came to us an angel, and departed a finished young blackguard. ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre

... not literally by his snub, though, but by the hand. They were a handsome pair, this lazy couple. Johnnie especially had the largest and roundest of foreheads, the reddest of cheeks, the brightest of eyes, the quaintest and most twitchy of chins, and looked altogether like a gutta-percha cherub in a chronic state of longitudinal squeeze. They were locked together by two grubby paws, and had each an armful of moss, which they deposited on the floor as ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... "and the father's a brute, too," said she. "He takes no more notice of me than if I was a kitchen-maid, and of Woolsey than if he was a leg of mutton—the dear blessed little cherub!" ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... looked the viscount, for he rode upon a cherub to-day. She appeared fresh, rosy, and strong, but dubious; though if mien was anything, she was a viscountess twice over. Her dress was of a dove-coloured material, with a bonnet to match, a little tufted white feather resting on the top, like a truce-flag between the blood of ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... studied also a new photograph on his mantel—of a pretty laughing-eyed young woman playing with a sailor-suited cherub. The young woman, she knew must be the wife of ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller

... a slightly domed center. Engraved on the flat rim, in addition to the inscription, is a crest at the top and the cherub's head at the bottom. The piece is marked by John Coburn, who lived in Boston from 1725 to 1803. Five trays matching this one are in the Boston Museum of ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor

... It would seem that the highest among the angels who sinned was not the highest of all. For it is stated (Ezech. 28:14): "Thou wast a cherub stretched out, and protecting, and I set thee in the holy mountain of God." Now the order of the Cherubim is under the order of the Seraphim, as Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. vi, vii). Therefore, the highest angel among those ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... in yon church amid the sands, Stay trouble from thy household? Or the carven cherub-hands Which hold thy shield to the font? Or the gauntlets on the wall Keep evil from its onward course as the great tides rise and fall? The great tides rise and fall, and the cave sucks in the breath ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various

... that he is not a pure knowing subject, not a winged cherub without a material body, contemplating the world from without. For he is himself rooted in that world. That is to say, he finds himself in the world as an individual whose knowledge, which is the essential basis of the whole world as idea, is yet ever communicated through ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... surrounded by gentleman-, lady-, and little-boy-angels. The languishing young men held spliced wax tapers that were like bits of rope; the coquettish hoydens had flowers stuck in their long hair; and the mischievous cherub-pages looked rapturously at the infant Jesus, who stood beside the Virgin and held ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... tendril ties Around thee still are thrown; Oh, while this cherub group is mine, Heaven's dearest gift I can resign, And say, ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney

... little boy of four was making a tremendous noise as he whipped the rocking-horse, whose two curved supports for the legs did not move fast enough to please him; his pretty face, framed in fair curls that fell over his white collar, smiled up like a cherub's at his mother when she said to him from the depths of an easy-chair, "Not so much noise, Charles; you will wake your ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac



Words linked to "Cherub" :   baby, babe, angel



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