“She had a very agreeable smile; it did not light up her face suddenly, but seemed rather to suffuse it by degrees with charm. It hesitated for a moment about her lips and then slowly travelled to those great shining eyes of hers and there softly lingered.”

—  W. Somerset Maugham

"The promise", p. 407
Short Stories, Collected short stories 1

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "She had a very agreeable smile; it did not light up her face suddenly, but seemed rather to suffuse it by degrees with …" by W. Somerset Maugham?
W. Somerset Maugham photo
W. Somerset Maugham 158
British playwright, novelist, short story writer 1874–1965

Related quotes

Walter Scott photo

“She look'd down to blush, and she look'd up to sigh,
With a smile on her lips, and a tear in her eye.”

Walter Scott Marmion

Canto V, st. 12 (Lochinvar, st. 5).
Marmion (1808)

Samuel Lover photo

“Reproof on her lip, but a smile in her eye.”

Samuel Lover (1797–1868) Irish song-writer, novelist, and painter

Rory O' More, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“It seemed to travel with her, to sweep her aloft in the power of song, so that she was moving in glory among the stars, and for a moment she, too, felt that the words Darkness and Light had no meaning, and only this melody was real.”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

John Fante photo

“All at once I loathed her, because she had hurt me. This girl! She had torn up my sonnet by Dowson, she had shown my telegram to everybody in the Columbia Buffet. She had made a fool of me at the beach. She suspected my virility, and her suspicion was the same as the scorn in her eyes. I watched her face and lips and thought how it would be a pleasure to strike her, send my fist with all force against her nose and lips.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

John Fante photo

“She rose and looked at me with delirious black eyes, black and wanton and in a dream, her neck stretched and defining the bulging cords at her throat. she had nothing to say with her lips, but the ghastly cast of her face, the teeth too white and too big now, the frightened smile, these spoke too loudly of the horror shrouding her days and nights…As I walked toward the bed, she pulled up her knees, slipping into a crouched frightened position, as though she expected me to strike her.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Emily Brontë photo

“Her position before was sheltered from the light: now, I had a distinct view of her whole figure and countenance. She was slender, and apparently scarcely past girlhood: an admirable form, and the most exquisite little face that I have ever had the pleasure of beholding: small features, very fair; flaxen ringlets, or rather golden, hanging loose on her delicate neck; and eyes — had they been agreeable in expression, they would have been irresistible.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Mr. Lockwood on Catherine Linton (Ch. II).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Kate Bush photo

“Emma's come down.
She's stopped the light
Shining out of her eyes.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Lionheart (1978)

Edith Wharton photo

“He had come on her that morning in a moment of disarray; her face had been pale and altered, and the diminution of her beauty had lent her a poignant charm. That is how she looks when she is alone! had been his first thought; and the second was to note in her the change which his coming produced.”

Edith Wharton book The House of Mirth

"The House of Mirth" http://www.readprint.com/chapter-10542/The-House-of-Mirth-Edith-Wharton (1905), bk. 1, ch. 6

Anthony Trollope photo

“But as we do not light up our houses with our brightest lamps for all comers, so neither did she emit from her eyes their brightest sparks till special occasions for such shining had arisen.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 5

Related topics