Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




More "Embellishment" Quotes from Famous Books



... distant blue mountains, and the furthest reaches of the azure sky, and the sombre depths of the wooded valley, and the sheeny splendors of the afternoon sun, and every incident of crag or chasm—all appeared through a soft purple haze that possessed the air, and added an ideal embellishment to the scene. Down the ravine the "lick" shone with the lustre of a silver lakelet. He saw the old oak-tree hard by, with the historic scaffold among its thinning leaves, and further along the slope were ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)

... his story as directly as possible, but minus many details of his heart struggle of which his reserved nature made it impossible to speak. But, bare of all embellishment, the story gave great joy to his father. His own example as a Christian had not been a brilliant one. His principles were just, as men count equity, and his life irreproachable by their standards. But the business man seemed often to hold the ascendency over the ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock

... the embellishing art must be sought in that stage of animal development when instinct began to discover that certain attributes or adornments increased attractiveness. When art in its human sense came into existence ideas of embellishment soon extended from the person, with, which they had been associated, to all things with which man had to deal. The processes of the growth of the aesthetic idea are long and obscure and cannot be ...
— Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. • William Henry Holmes

... this little obscure home the two lived entirely alone. They had neighbors, of course, but none of them could tell how they contrived to subsist. The mother did no work, except for herself and her child; she had but a small garden in front of the house, the embellishment of which was her particular care; and she was surrounded with books, in the reading of which she spent all her leisure time, having little intercourse with her neighbors. The gossips that exist everywhere in society, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... the Capitol and the very money which they received without taking that fortress. The account of Polybius throws light upon many discrepant statements, and all of them, not even excepting Livy's fairy-tale-like embellishment, may be explained by means of it. The Romans attempted to prove that the Gauls had actually been defeated, by relating that the gold afterward taken from the Gauls and buried in the Capitol was double the sum paid to them ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... outline distinctly revealed against sky and water, cannot but realize how harmoniously sculpture may illustrate and heighten the architecture of the bridge. More quaint than appropriate is pictorial embellishment; a beautiful Madonna or local saint placed midway or at either end of a bridge, especially one of mediaeval form and fashion, seems appropriate; but elaborate painting, such as one sees at Lucerne, strikes us as more curious than desirable. The bridge which divides the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... which cannot always be distinctly traced; and where the metaphor was born of the hand or of the foot, we inevitably associate it with the practice of finger counting. But races as fond of metaphor and of linguistic embellishment as are those of the East, or as are our American Indians even, might readily resort to some other source than that furnished by the members of the human body, when in want of a term with which to describe the 5, 10, or any other number of the numeral scale they were unconsciously forming. ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant

... of the things for which I had the least aptitude was French composition; I generally composed a mere rough draught without a particle of embellishment to redeem it. In the class there was a boy who was a very eagle, and he always read his lucubrations aloud. Oh! with what unction he read out his pretty creations! (He is now settled in a manufacturing town, and ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti

... to advantage; her hands were rather large and not very white; her feet, though not of the smallest, were well shaped; she trusted to Providence, and used no art to set off those graces which she had received from nature; but, notwithstanding her negligence in the embellishment of her charms, there was something so lively in her person, that the Chevalier de Grammont was caught at first sight; her wit and humour corresponded with her other qualities, being quite easy and perfectly charming; she was all mirth, all life, all complaisance and ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... missing the point of a joke of which he was unconscious. As a rule, his 'Johnsoniana' are better than those of Sir John Hawkins or Mrs. Piozzi, because they are more literal. In one or two instances an embellishment which improved a story was rejected by him because it was not true. These powers—observation, scrupulous accuracy and industry, and enthusiastic admiration of his hero—were all that he needed for the production of a great book; for Dr. Johnson was so unaffected, so outspoken, and so entertaining ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... people of fortune and refinement in the country, has diffused a degree of taste and elegance in rural economy that descends to the lowest class. The very laborer, with his thatched cottage and narrow slip of ground, attends to their embellishment. The trim hedge, the grass-plot before the door, the little flower-bed bordered with snug box, the woodbine trained up against the wall, and hanging its blossoms about the lattice; the pot of flowers in the window; the holly, providently planted about the house, to cheat winter of its dreariness, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... is very generally looked upon as the Gog of the prophet Ezekiel. This honor is, however, more properly attributable to Cambyses, the son of Cyrus. And, indeed, the character of the Syrian monarch does by no means stand in need of any adventitious embellishment. His accession to the throne, or rather his usurpation of the sovereignty, a hundred and seventy-one years before the coming of Christ; his attempt to plunder the temple of Diana at Ephesus; his implacable hostility to the Jews; ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... he would so look upon me," answered Miss Bellairs, more seriously, "I cannot but dread an old age without great means of embellishment. Old people, except in poetry and in very primitive society, are dishonored by wants and cares. And, indeed, before we are old—when neither young nor old—we want horses and ottomans, kalydor and conservatories, books, pictures, and silk curtains—all quite ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... it is necessary to bend and strain everything into conformity with it; a little leaven, of the genuine kind, will go a good way towards leavening the whole lump. And so it is in the Faerie Queene; for one stanza of direct allegory there are perhaps fifty of poetical embellishment; and it is in these last, after all, that the chief moral excellency of the poem lies; as we are ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... affections be higher mounted than ours yet when they stoop they stoop with like wing." And, in truth, the really kingly speeches which Shakespeare assigns to him, as to other kings weak enough in all but speech, are but a kind of flowers, worn for, and effective only as personal embellishment. They combine to one result with the merely outward and ceremonial ornaments of royalty, its pageantries, flaunting so naively, so credulously, in Shakespeare, as in that old medieval time. And then, the force of Hotspur is but transient youth, the common heat of youth, in him. The character of Henry ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... but to call Maleotti himself, who, with great seeming reluctance and with many protestations of regret, that must have made him seem like a particularly mischievous monkey apologizing for stealing nuts, repeated, with a cunning lack of embellishment, the plain statement that he had made to the retainer. Thereupon, Messer Folco, in a great rage which it took all his boasted philosophy to keep under control, called to him two or three of his old cronies that were still lingering about the deserted tables. These folk were, indeed, also his ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... embrace all branches of science and of natural history, and depict the most famous and remarkable features of scenery, architecture, and art, as well as the various processes of mechanics and manufactures. Although intended for instruction rather than embellishment, no pains have been spared to insure their artistic excellence; the cost of their execution is enormous, and it is believed that they will find a welcome reception as an admirable feature of the Cyclopaedia, and worthy ...
— The Electoral Votes of 1876 - Who Should Count Them, What Should Be Counted, and the Remedy for a Wrong Count • David Dudley Field

... verse, which probably prevailed among the natives of Provence (the Roman Provencia) and into which at a later period, rhyme was introduced as an embellishment, the Troubadours derived the metre of their ballad poetry, and thence introduced it into ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis

... of the soldier, as adopted by the war department at Richmond, never omitting anything, even to the trappings of his horse, bridle and saddle. His hat was decorated with a star and feather, his coat with every star and embellishment, and he wore a bright new sash, big gauntlets, and silver spurs. He was the ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... call of Zarathustra is free both from miraculous embellishment and from undue exaltation of the person of the prophet, and forms a great contrast to later statements in the Avesta, where the prophet is placed in secret conclave with Ahura, asking him questions and receiving detailed replies which at once rank ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... found. Flocks might be turned out upon its hills, or the plough at once set to work in the plains. No primeval forests required to be first rooted out, although there was enough of wood for all purposes of utility and as much also for embellishment as ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... spared the "restorers" were guilty of strange enormities in the embellishment and decoration of the sacred building. Whitewash was vigorously applied to the walls and pews, carvings, pulpit, and font. If curious mural paintings adorned the walls, the hideous whitewash soon obliterated every trace ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... disdain the embellishment of humbler objects. As Rufe Kinnicutt approached a little log cabin nestling in a sheltered cove he realized that a year had gone by since Renfrow had seen it first, and that thus it must have appeared when he beheld it. The dew was bright on ...
— A Chilhowee Lily - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... attempted, but seldom attained it; for he is too frequently driven into transpositions. The poets, from the time of Dryden, have gradually advanced in embellishment, and consequently ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... infant liberty in the New World, as in the Memoirs of the patriot Miller;—the daring and recklessness of crime, as in the vivid sketch of First and Last;—the picturesque country and ceremonies of Arabia and its religious people, as drawn by Burckhardt;—and the architectural embellishment of the Metropolis, as shown in Britton's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various

... materially reduced the amount that could be annually devoted to the sustentation of the fabric. In the time of the civil war much wanton destruction took place. Nearly everything in the nature of ornamentation or embellishment was destroyed. A full account of the mischief wrought has been preserved. Without particularly naming such things as books, documents, vestments, and the movable ornaments, we find the damage done to the fabric ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting

... chiefly of the causes and events which culminated in secession, while the second volume (1866) depicts, without embellishment, the military and political victories which ended in the restoration of peace. The author cherished the belief that the war was "the unavoidable result of antagonisms imbedded in the very nature of our heterogeneous institutions: that ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various

... religious fidelity every word of this tale, so thoroughly life-like, surrendering her perfect faith and her loving sympathy to the different persons in the tale, and the natural distresses in which they are involved, without suspecting, for a moment, that by so much as a breathing of exaggeration or of embellishment the pure gospel truth of the narrative could have been sullied. She listened, in a kind of breathless stupor, to my frank explanation—that not part only, but the whole, of this natural tale was a pure invention. Scorn and indignation ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... my entertainers conducted me about the building, of which the extent, the magnificent architecture and richness of embellishment, astonished me. It seemed that it was not merely a dining-hall, but likewise a great pleasure-house and social rendezvous of the quarter, and no appliance of ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... interesting relics, while they are effectually concealed from view by a species of curtain reaching from the bed to the floor. The drapery which thus hangs down is dignified by the name of a "valance," and though originally intended for the purpose of embellishment and ornamentation, it is better that decorative art should be more limited in its application, so as not to interfere with the free circulation of air throughout the room. The sleeping apartment is also considered as being particularly well adapted for the storage of old clothes, ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... substance of a letter from his precious nephew, in which the Barbizon episode as it appeared to the inhabitants of No. 7 Rue Chantal and to the students of Taranne's atelier de femmes was related, with every embellishment of witticism and blague that the imagination of a French rapin could suggest. Mademoiselle Delaunay was not yet restored, according to the writer, to the atelier which she adorned. 'On criait au scandale,' mainly because she was such a clever little animal, and the others envied ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... lessons of the author or instigator of the Philobiblon were never entirely lost by the prince who took Chaucer and Froissart into his service. More conspicuous was his love of art, his taste for sumptuous buildings and their magnificent embellishment, which left memorials in the stately castle of Windsor and its rich chapel of St. George, in St. Stephen's chapel at Westminster, and the Eastminster for Cistercian nuns hard by Tower hill. A fluent and eloquent speaker in French and English, Edward was also conversant with Latin, and perhaps ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... offer any production of mine to the world, had I not conceived it possible that information and reflections collected and made on the spot, during a period when France exhibited a state, of which there is no example in the annals of mankind, might gratify curiosity without the aid of literary embellishment; and an adherence to truth, I flattered myself, might, on a subject of this nature, be more acceptable than brilliancy of thought, or elegance of language. The eruption of a volcano may be more scientifically described and accounted for by the philosopher; but the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... series has made it his special object to confine himself very strictly, even in the most minute details which he records, to historic truth. The narratives are not tales founded upon history, but history itself, without any embellishment or any deviations from the strict truth, so far as it can now be discovered by an attentive examination of the annals written at the time when the events themselves occurred. In writing the narratives, ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... he taught among the first rudiments and fixed them in their minds:—the value of order; what is praiseworthy in embellishment and in [choice of] words; where there is tenuity and, as it were, emaciation of speech; where, a pleasing abundance; where, excess; and where, a due limit ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton

... delicious odours, appertaining to M. Blanche, whose dealings I can assure them are as pure as his name; he has besides the merit of being an excellent chymist, and the still greater merit of having devoted his talents to the fair sex, and in that point which they appreciate most highly, the embellishment and preservation of their personal attractions; he has therefore invented a peculiar description of vegetable soap, called Savon Vegetal de Guimauve, which is so renowned amongst the Paris belles, that I should not be surprised at their forming ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve

... quiet and solitude in the bosom of our western forests. But he brought with him taste, and science, and wealth; and "lo the desert smiled!" Possessing himself of a beautiful island in the Ohio, he rears upon it a palace, and decorates it with every romantic embellishment of fancy. A shrubbery, that Shenstone might have envied, blooms around him. Music, that might have charmed Calypso and her nymphs is his. An extensive library spreads its treasures before him. A philosophical apparatus offers to him all the secrets and mysteries of Nature. Peace, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... men came into a high-ceiled apartment, cylindrical in shape, with plastered walls painted green everywhere save for the quaint embellishment of a large oval, wherein a woman, having an eagle's beak, grasped in one hand a serpent and in the other a knife. Sir Thomas Browne seemed to recognize this curious design, and gave an ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... of the semi-civilization along the Arkansas. After that had been accomplished, he would consider his own safety. He wondered if Hope really was her name, and whether it was the family cognomen, or her given name. That she was Christie Maclaire he had no question, yet that artistic embellishment was probably merely assumed for the work of the concert hall. Both he and Hawley could scarcely be mistaken as to her identity in this respect, and, indeed, she had never openly denied the fact. Yet she did not at all seem to be that kind, and Keith mentally contrasted her with numerous ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... the women may not sew, spin, weave, embroider sufficiently for the embellishment of their persons, and even enough to raise envy in each other, without being ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley

... better—you'll be able to approach the matter with an unbiased viewpoint. Don't read that hooey put out by an inspired reporter who blames the laxness of the city government; I'll give you the facts without embellishment. Nothing beyond the bare fact of the disappearance is known about the first case. Robert Prosser, aged eleven, was sent to the grocery store by his mother about six-thirty last night and failed to return. That's all we know about it, except ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... the manner of kings, as we have heard, consenting to the privileges acted on by cats. These may not address their Majesties, but they may stare; nor will it be contested that the attentive circular eyes of the humble domestic creatures are an embellishment to Royal pomp and grandeur, such truly as should one day gain for them an inweaving and figurement—in the place of bees, ermine tufts, and their various present decorations—upon the august great robes back-flowing and foaming over the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Spanish conquistadores, in particular, lived in an atmosphere of fancy. They looked at American savages and their ways through Spanish spectacles; and knowing nothing of the modern science of ethnology, quite misunderstood the import of what they saw. Beset by the national vice of flowery embellishment, they were also pardonably ignorant of savage life, and had an indiscriminating thirst for the marvelous. Thus, we see plainly how the Cibola myth arose and grew; and why most official Spanish reports of the ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various

... to illustrate MY GRANDFATHER? He mentions as excellent a portrait of Scott by Basil Hall's brother. I don't think I ever saw this engraved; would it not, if you could get track of it, prove a taking embellishment? I suggest this for your consideration and inquiry. A new portrait of Scott strikes me as good. There is a hard, tough, constipated old portrait of my grandfather hanging in my aunt's house, Mrs. Alan Stevenson, 16 St. Leonard's Terrace, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... papists. They admit that faith is the foundation of salvation. But they add the conditional clause that faith can save only when it is furnished with good works. This is wrong. The true Gospel declares that good works are the embellishment of faith, but that faith itself is the gift and work of God in our hearts. Faith is able to justify, because it apprehends Christ, ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther

... Lichterfelde, five miles from Berlin, where conspicuous buildings are the seat of the chief cadet-school in Germany. Here are accommodations for eight or nine hundred cadets, the flower of German youth. Neither pains nor expense has been spared in the erection and embellishment of these extensive buildings. The "Flensburg Lion," erected by the Danes to commemorate a former victory in Schleswig-Holstein over the Prussians, and later captured by the latter, stands here before the ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton

... a waistcoat pocket and, fumbling therein, touched caressingly a little pellet of soft paper. Its possessor did not require to examine it to reassure himself as to its legitimacy as a work of art, nor as to the prominence of the Roman C in its embellishment of ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... inducements occur at times when he is writing of the Indians, for he recognized that Europe was eager to hear in full detail of their traits and customs. Thus set passages of description, inserted with a sparing hand, seemed to him a proper element of the text, but anything like conscious embellishment of the narrative he avoids—probably more through ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby

... conscience, it developed more fully the sense of sin and guilt, and it made man conscious of his inability to save himself from sin and guilt; and "the day that humanity awakens to the want of something more than mere embellishment and culture, that day it feels the need of being saved and restored from the consequences of sin" by a higher power. AEsthetic taste had found its fullest gratification in Athens; poetry, sculpture, architecture, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... my reader: not for a moment did I imagine thee capable of such a mean calling! It is left to a certain school of weak enthusiasts, who believe that such growth, such embellishment, such creation, is all God cares about; these enthusiasts can not indeed see, so blind have they become with their fixed idea, how God could care for anything else. They actually believe that the very Son of the life-making God lived and ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... held up in the air for fifteen years; the tiger hunt; the method of catching the elephant in Ceylon; the pearl fishery; Sepoy establishment; in short I must have appeared to them a Ulysses or a Sindbad, and I dare say that they thought I added from time to time a little embellishment from my imagination, tho' I can safely and solemnly aver that I did not extenuate nor exaggerate any thing, but simply related what I had ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... already on his feet, of course. He plunged into an accurate narrative of what had happened, and what he had overheard, on Saturday night. He told it all without embellishment or flourish, and wound up by calling attention to Jordan's plain enough desertion ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock

... Difference in Nature, than between driving a Chariot over a Plain, and moving enthron'd, amidst That rolling, and terrible Perplexity of Motions, which we figure to our Imagination, from a 'Chariot of Clouds'? But the mistaken Embellishment of the Word 'flies,' in the last Verse, is an Error almost unpardonable; Instead of improving the Conception, it has made it trifling, and contemptible, and utterly destroy'd the very Soul of its Energy! ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill

... ease his situation. Kerr turned on hearing this outburst and inquired what it meant. Hargus repeated the prisoner's request with obscene embellishment. They made no secret of each other's identity, speaking familiarly, as if in the presence of one who would make no future charges. Kerr found the request reasonable, and ordered Hargus to tie Lambert's hands ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden

... frustrated, I sunk into dreariness and inactivity. I felt as if no dependence could be placed upon my courage, as if any effort I should make for self-destruction would be fruitless; yet existence was as void as ever of enjoyment and embellishment. My means of living were annihilated. I saw no path before me. To shun the presence of mankind was my sovereign wish. Since I could not die by my own hands, I must be content to crawl upon the surface, till a superior fate should ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... a group of architects have lately met and discussed plans for the embellishment of our neglected city. There is a certain poetical justice in the proposition coming from those who have worked so much of the harm. Remorse has before now been known to produce good results. The United States treasury yearly receives large ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... the time we did, his feelings must have been the same with regard to the monuments of ancient magnificence, or of modern taste, which it contained. All that the vanity or patriotism of a long series of Sovereigns could effect for the embellishment of the capital in which they resided; all that the conquests of an ambitious and unprincipled Army could accumulate from the spoils of the nations whom they had subdued, were there presented to the eye of the stranger with a profusion which ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... we then took to the Primer: and then there was, first, the looking over the system of theological and ethical teaching, commencing, "In Adam's fall we sinned all," and extending through three or four pages of pictorial and poetic embellishment. Next was the death of John Rogers, who was burned at Smithfield; and for a while we could entertain ourselves with counting all his "nine children and one at the breast," as in the picture they stand in a regular row, like a pair of stairs. ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... his imagination, the starting-point of the figure of Zenobia; and Zenobia is, to my sense, his only very definite attempt at the representation of a character. The portrait is full of alteration and embellishment; but it has a greater reality, a greater abundance of detail, than any of his other figures, and the reality was a memory of the lady whom he had encountered in the Roxbury pastoral or among the wood-walks of Concord, with strange books in her hand and eloquent ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... of the composer: "Of all that particularly characterizes Rossini's early operas nothing is discoverable in 'Tell;' there is none of his usual mannerism; but, on the contrary, unusual richness of form and careful finish of detail, combined with grandeur of outline. Meretricious embellishment, shakes, runs, and cadences are carefully avoided in this work, which is natural and characteristic throughout; even the melodies have not the stamp and style of Rossini's earlier times, but only their ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... plain enough, now. When you talked about notching ears and slitting noses I judged that that was your own embellishment, because white men don't take that sort of revenge. But an Injun! That's a different ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... are thought to date from as early as the eleventh century, having been built by Odo, the half-brother of William the Norman. The splendidly proportioned Norman nave, with its decorated spandrels and archivolts, a worthy decorative embellishment developed before the days of coloured glass, possesses that bright and fresh appearance which is usually associated with a recent work, whereas, as a matter of fact, it can hardly be, in its five circular arches at least, later than the late eleventh or early twelfth century. If it were ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... embellishment, I went out with the gravity and pride becoming one who feels that he has the ineffable advantage over all the passers-by whom he elbows, of possessing a piece of the Princess ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier

... your difficulties," he said. "I have money, papers, clothing, everything I will need, outside the reservation. Suppose you just let me leave here. Then, if there is any trouble, you can use this fiction about the indiscreet underlings, without the unnecessary embellishment ...
— The Mercenaries • Henry Beam Piper

... and even the embellishment of towns, is a work which both the central and local governing bodies in a country should keep a steady hand upon. It especially concerns them. What are they there for but to do that which individuals cannot do? It concerns them, ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps

... taken on the spot they depict, sometimes by a hand that had momentarily laid down a rifle to take them, and always by a draughtsman who drew in overt or covert peril of his life, gain in verisimilitude what they must lose in elaboration or embellishment; are the richer in their realism by reason of the absence of the imaginary and ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey

... therefore silent before Minard. During the critical period of retirement from office, he had held his own admirably, for the following reason. Never until now had that worthy and excellent man been able to indulge his own tastes. He loved the city of Paris; he was interested in its embellishment, in the laying out of its streets; he was capable of standing for hours to watch the demolition of houses. He might now have been observed, stolidly planted on his legs, his nose in the air, watching for the fall of a stone which some mason was loosening at the top ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... Hill, Farringdon Road, the service being held in a barn-like room, which on weekdays serves for school, and is capable of accommodating a thousand children. No money has been expended in architectural embellishment, and no question of a controversial character is likely to arise in connection with accessories in the shape of altar, surplice, or candles. The Ragged Church avoids these stumbling-blocks by the simple expedient of doing without candles, ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy

... hammer of the carpenter, little is thought by the public, and little need be said by the committee. Truth, however, is not to be sacrificed for the accommodation of either; and he who should pronounce that our edifice has received its final embellishment would be disseminating falsehood without incurring favour, and risking the disgrace of detection without participating the ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith

... vain distinction; a name that had been soiled by so much ignoble use? Elinor had prided herself all her life on an indifference to, almost a contempt for, the distinctions of rank: and that it should occur to her to think of that title as an embellishment to Pippo—nay, to think furtively, without her own knowledge, so to speak, that Pippo looked every inch a lord and heir to a peerage, was an involuntary weakness almost incredible. She blushed for herself as she realised it:—a peerage which had meant so little that ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... of man's actually attained faculties and that seemingly divine particle of reason or spirit in him. Such a doctrine, at more leisurable moments, would of course have its precepts to deliver on the embellishment, generally, of what is near at hand, on the adornment of life, till, in a not impracticable rule of conduct, one's existence, from day to day, came to be like a well-executed piece of music; that "perpetual motion" in things (so ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... a smaller scale, were finely wooded to the water's edge. Little art appeared, yet sublimity everywhere gave place to elegance. The road had often assumed the appearance of a gravelled one, made in pleasure-grounds; whilst the trees excited only an idea of embellishment. Meadows, like lawns, in an endless variety, displayed the careless graces of nature; and the ripening corn gave a richness to the landscape analogous with ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... excellence of workmanship and purity of design, although it may fall below the standard of Hadrian's age, yet, for a certain air of grandeur, and luxuriance of invention in its details, and lavish profusion of embellishment in gold and silver, no temple, nor other edifice, of any preceding age, ever perhaps resembled it. Its order is the Corinthian, of the Roman form, and the entire building is surrounded by its graceful columns, each composed of a single piece of marble. Upon the front, is wrought ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... object of which seems to be to record the erection of a statue of Prajna-paramita by Kavindrarimathana we are told that the king charged him with the embellishment of Yasodharapura because "though an eminent Buddhist" his loyalty was above suspicion.[302] The same minister erected three towers at Bat Cum with inscriptions[303] which record the dedication of a tank. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... accordance with the provisions of this act, the Chief of Engineers has selected four eminent bridge engineers to submit competitive designs for a bridge combining the elements of strength and durability and such architectural embellishment and ornamentation as will fitly apply to the dedication, "A memorial to American patriotism." The designs are now being prepared, and as soon as completed will be submitted to the Congress by the Secretary of ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley

... cents per double-columned quarto page for shaking my young boughs over his foolscap apron? Was it not an intoxicating vision of gold and glory? I should doubtless have revelled in its wealth and splendor, but for learning the fact that the fifty cents was to be considered a rhetorical embellishment, and by no means a literal expression of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... no more as she gazed out into the dusty grass. There were tears in her eyes, hot blinding ones that wouldn't drop for pride, but stayed and scalded. She knew the story, with all its embellishment of heartaches. She knew the ring, too. She remembered the day she had kissed and wept and fondled it, until it seemed her heart must burst under its load of grief before she took it to the pawn-broker's that another might be eased before ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar

... causes. And because it has been explained with some diligence in the former book, in what manner argumentations ought to be handled, in this book it will be sufficient to set forth the arguments which have been discovered for each kind of subject simply, and without any embellishment, so that, in this book, the arguments themselves may be found, and in the former, the proper method of polishing them. So that the reader must refer the precepts which are now laid down, to the topics of ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... said Gervaise gently, "but surely you cannot call putting on a fresh paper, instead of this that hangs in strips, an embellishment. Whitening the curbing, too, comes under, the head of necessary repairs." She only required these ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... and possessing handsome features, decked with jewelled earrings and wearing a beautiful garland and crown, entered the Asoka woods, like an embodiment of the vernal season. And dressed with care, Ravana looked like the Kalpa tree in Indra's garden. But though adorned with every embellishment, that inspired her only with awe, like a beautified banian in the midst of a cemetery. And that night wanderer, having approached the presence of that slender-waisted lady, looked like the planet Saturn in the presence of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... exercised upon the Tartuffe of sentiment, Joseph, is another service to the cause of morals, which should more than atone for any dangerous embellishment of wrong that the portraiture of the younger brother may exhibit. Indeed, though both these characters are such as the moralist must visit with his censure, there can be little doubt to which we should, in real life, give the preference;—the levities ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... well-furnished apartment, opening on one side into an ante-room, on the other into a music-room. It had several tables stationed at convenient distances; one consecrated to the novelties of literature, another to the novelties of embellishment; others unoccupied, and at the disposal of the company. The walls were covered with a copious collection of ancient and modern books; the ancient having been selected and arranged by the Reverend Doctor ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock

... filled, neat, and tastefully fitted up. There was no show, however—no empty glare to catch the eye; on the contrary, the whole concern was marked by an air of solid, warm comfort, that was much more indicative of wealth and independence than tawdry embellishment ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton

... and sofas of various shapes—all designed to give repose to the limbs; but I am sure they tend towards lazy habits, and very often interfere with work. Surely there has lately risen a custom of overdoing the embellishment and ornamentation of our houses. We fill our rooms too full of all sorts of knick-knacks, so much so that we can hardly move about for fear of upsetting something. "I have a fire [in my bedroom] all day," writes Carlyle. ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... resumed our journey, gratified at this glimpse of the interior of a native home. The Parsees are generally rich, and their houses or bungalows are large and handsome. Their adoration of light tends greatly to the embellishment of their dwellings, as to every upper panel of the wainscoting they attach a branch for wax-candles, which are lighted every night, and give to the building the appearance of being illuminated. These 'children ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various

... stripped of such ornamental embellishment, there can be little doubt that it was within the Tower's grim walls that Dudley first learnt to love the lady who was to be his Queen, and in whose life he was destined to play such a romantic part, when she should wear her crown, and he should be her avowed lover and aspirant ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... This passage, at the same time, points out the EVIL and suggests the REMEDY. PUBLIUS. 1 Aspasia, vide "Plutarch's Life of Pericles.'' 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 ] Ibid. Phidias was supposed to have stolen some public gold, with the connivance of Pericles, for the embellishment of the statue of Minerva. 5 P Worn by the popes. 6 Madame de Maintenon. 7 Duchess of Marlborough. 8 Madame de Pompadour. 9 The League of Cambray, comprehending the Emperor, the King of France, the King of Aragon, and most of the Italian princes ...
— The Federalist Papers

... everlasting scraping and shuffling of slippers up and down the room; a period of continually hearing a well-known, strident voice exclaim: "So you have been playing the fool again!" at times when the child, weary of the mortal monotony of his task, had added a superfluous embellishment to his copy; a period of experiencing the ever-familiar, but ever-unpleasant, sensation which ensued upon those words as the boy's ear was painfully twisted between two long fingers bent backwards at the tips—such is the miserable picture of that youth of which, in later life, Chichikov preserved ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... with the rosy tint so natural to all discoverers. They speak of the island as being sixteen miles long, which recent surveys show nearly correct. Many of the trees, animals, and fish were new to them, and like all travelers, they did not neglect to give a fair embellishment in their report to Raleigh. Their stay in the country was brief, less than sixty days, and on their return, they carried with them two of the Indians, named Wanchese and Mantco, who were regarded as a great curiosity by the English. They were ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... a work[79] which he commenced upon the antiquities of Normandy, and in which he has figured the west front of this church, tells us, that but a few years since, Lery could boast of several specimens of domestic architecture of unusual size and embellishment. Of one of these, an engraving has lately been given by M. Willemin, in his exquisite Monumens Inedits de la France. It was known by the name of the Palace of Queen Blanche; and if, by the Blanche in question, is to be understood the Princess ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... "All embellishment," said Beechnut. "My father had no such clock, in point of fact. He put his money in a bag, his bag in his chest, and his chest in the hold, and it came as ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... toilet up to the point of embellishment, he proceeded to tear away the soiled surface, and in doing so discovered not only the clean bosom beneath, but that the rear of the one just detached was covered with a block of ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... keen rivalry in the embellishment of these crude homes. Upon completing ours I decided upon a "Tradesmen's Entrance" and carved this out, together with a winding approach, the entrance being flanked by two mounds on one of which I planted a small flag improvised from a piece of cardboard which I unearthed. ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... under which they fill the beholder with a sort of admiring awe, akin to the feeling which is called forth by the contemplation of the great works of nature. Rude and inartificial in their idea and general construction, without architectural embellishment, without variety, without any beauty of form, they yet affect men by their mere mass, producing a direct impression of sublimity, and at the same time arousing a sentiment of wonder at the indomitable perseverance which from materials so unpromising ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson

... omit to mention, what I trust may be considered as a change belonging to religious feeling—viz., that conversation is now conducted without that accompaniment of those absurd and unmeaning oaths which were once considered an essential embellishment of polite discourse. I distinctly recollect an elderly gentleman, when describing the opinion of a refined and polished female upon a particular point, putting into her mouth an unmistakable round oath as the natural language in which people's sentiments and opinions would be ordinarily conveyed. ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... a ledge-stone wall provides a delightful neutral background against which trellises of roses, wistaria, honeysuckle and other flowering climbers delight the eye, and to which the spreading English ivy clings in the most charming intimacy. White-painted woodwork, however, furnishes its prime embellishment,—doors, windows, porches, dormers and such necessary appurtenances of comfortable living punctuating its various parts with high lights which brighten the effect, balance the form and mass and lend ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins

... of both mordent and double-mordent the tones are sounded as quickly as possible, the time taken by the embellishment being subtracted from the value of the ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens

... so lavish in the decoration as the men, and that whereas at Otaheite the breech is the choice spot for the display of their beautifying ingenuity, in New Zealand, on the contrary, it is almost entirely neglected as unworthy of embellishment. So much for the capricious partiality ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... through the brilliancy of his courage, the generous though superficial instincts of his soul, and the charm of a mind animated by a sincere though ill-regulated sympathy for all the beautiful works of mankind in literature, science, and art, and for all that does honor and gives embellishment to the life ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... the leading facts. We will add whatever is necessary in the way of amplification and embellishment. It will ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce

... men of the north, delight in swilling liquors and battening upon gross and luscious meats, which help to swell out their tall and goodly figures. Many of them have died possessed of considerable riches, part of which they have not unfrequently bequeathed to the erection or embellishment ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... do not live to-day, or if they do they have become so "practical" that a drainage canal or an overhead or underground railway is more of a civic improvement than the laying out of a public park, like the gardens of the Tuileries, or the building and embellishment of a public edifice—at least with due regard for the best traditions. When the monarchs of old called in men of taste and culture instead of "business men" they builded in the most agreeable fashion. We have not improved things with our "systems" ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield

... under tail-coverts white, and his breast in high feather, black, prettily skirted with gray or invaded with white from below; but his yellow spots, set like gleaming gold in various parts of his plumage, constitute his most marked embellishment, being found on the crown, rump, throat, and each ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... these two persons only did Clotilde reveal her secrets and convey the thoughts of her spotless soul. She spent her time in voluntary seclusion, not in the luxuries of the court or the gaieties of society, but in embroidery, knitting, and in the unnecessary embellishment of her ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... was given to the embellishment of open spaces in the cities, for which the classic style was admirably suited. The most important work of this kind was that on the north side of the Place de la Concorde, Paris. This splendid square, perhaps, ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... beginning—with her daughter's engagement to young Andrew McCrae, her happiness, her security—and quietly, with only now and then a slight tension of her body and her voice, she told it all to them, exactly as it happened, without plea or embellishment. She had only one stress, and that she tried to make reasonable ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... in which he printed the name Francis Todd, to the small caps in which appeared the words, "sentenced to solitary confinement for life," and which he flanked with two terrible indices. But the articles did not need such embellishment. They were red hot branding irons without them. One can almost smell the odor of burning flesh as he reads the words: "It is no worse to fit out piratical cruisers or to engage in the foreign slave-trade, than to pursue a similar trade ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... was popular with the Roman inhabitants of Italy. It might well be so, for this princess, born under an Italian sky, and accustomed from her childhood to gaze upon the great works which Rome had constructed for the embellishment of the peninsula, was no Goth at heart, but enthusiastically, even unwisely, Roman. In religious matters we are almost surprised to find that she adhered to the Arian creed of her father and her husband, but all talk of persecution of the Catholics ceased, and no more was heard of the ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... indication that there was in Philo's own day communication between Alexandria and Palestine. The Jewish historian marks the influence of Hellenic ideas in Palestine in fullest measure, and like Philo he seeks by embellishment to recommend the histories and Scriptures of his people to the non-Jew and to bring home their thought to the cultured Roman-Greek world. Thus, in the preface to his "Antiquities," he notes, as Philo noted in his commentary, that Moses begins his laws with a philosophical ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... appeal to those quiet, domestic, secluded feelings, which endear the still undercurrent of existence—in short, to my being content to make the best I could of the homely and confined materials to which my situation has given me access, without affecting scholarship, or aiming at romantic embellishment. There is nothing like simple truth and nature, after all; and he who is satisfied with simply and faithfully describing what he actually sees, feels, and, thinks, may always hope to appeal successfully ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various

... honourable name of history from the truths contained in them, as I shall prefer truth to embellishment. In fact, to embellish my story I have neither leisure nor ability; I shall, therefore, do no more than give a simple narration of events. They are the labours of my evenings, and will come to you an unformed ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... narrated once more the story of her capture. He stated facts just as they had occurred, without embellishment, his voice as expressionless as his face, and his story was received in the same manner that it was delivered. The creatures seemed totally lacking in emotion, or, at least, the capacity to express it. It was impossible to judge what impression the story made upon ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... into the heart of things, both human and divine, far deeper than most men. He had an extraordinary facility for grasping the essential and discarding the extraneous. His language was simple and direct, without elegance or embellishment, and yet no one has excelled him in crystallising great principles in a single phrase. The few maxims which fell from his lips are almost a complete summary of the art of war. Neither Frederick, nor Wellington, nor Napoleon realised more deeply ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... the sense of beauty. No edifices in the world —not even the Pyramids—are more deficient in external ornament. The buttresses and the air-holes, which alone break the flat uniformity of the walls, are intended simply for utility, and can scarcely be said to be much embellishment. If any efforts were made to delight by the ordinary resources of ornamental art, it seems clear that such efforts did not extend to the whole edifice, but were confined to the shrine itself—the actual abode of the god—the chamber which crowned the whole, and ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson

... recorded in the Pitakas differ from those of later works, whether Mahayanist literature or the Hindu Puranas and Epics, chiefly in their moderation. They may be classified under several heads. Many of them are mere embroidery or embellishment due to poetical exuberance, esteemed appropriate in those generous climates though repugnant to our chilly tastes. In every country poetry is allowed to overstep the prosaic borders of fact without criticism. When an ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... is not a fair way of using a story," said the doctor. "You should take a story as you get it, and not play the dissector upon it, mangling its poor body to discover the bit of embellishment; and as long as a raconteur maintains vraisemblance, I contend you are bound to receive the ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... many a page before he dies that a thoughtful review would pronounce worthless. This is the fate of all men. But the reading of Pope, as a general result or measure of his judicious choice, is best justified in his writings. They show him well furnished with whatsoever he wanted for matter or for embellishment, for argument or illustration, for example and model, or for direct ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... and the Young Duke,—with much more of the crust and wing of age and experience than was found in either of the fashionable novels. The real charm of Contarini is in its abstractedness, and consists in being pleased and puzzled at the same moment. The embellishment which the playful genius of the writer has gracefully, not tawdrily, thrown over his pages will attract, but the main purpose and merit of the work lies in its undercurrents, or, rather it would consist ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various

... caused itself to be felt. My cousin has undertaken them, regardless of expense; she has asked me to come and stay with her—board and lodging gratis—and keep an eye on the grammatical eccentricities of her pensionnaires. I am the extension, my good Prosper; I am the embellishment! I live for nothing, and I straighten up the accent of the prettiest English lips. The English lips are not all pretty, heaven knows, but enough of them are so to make it a ...
— A Bundle of Letters • Henry James

... of France, by Letters Patents, in the Year 1635, having mention'd the Great Things done for the Glory and Embellishment of France, by his dearly belov'd Cousin the Cardinal Richlieu, His Principal Minister of State, gives that Minister Power and Authority to call himself the Chief, and the Protector of the French Academy: And doubtless the Scheme of this British Academy is ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon

... the medley just at that point where the narrator, having brought his listeners all agape to the hazardous edge of ambush and battle subsides into the possible; the story now rising of itself into the wonderful, and having no great need of exaggeration or embellishment to make it spicy. ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... the normal mature human being before taking deliberate action, or in making studied provision for possible future action, are natural procedures, in that they employ the intellectual powers bestowed by nature, without artificial modification or embellishment. ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College

... stoop with like wing." And, in truth, the really kingly speeches which Shakespeare assigns to him, as to other kings weak enough in all but speech, are but a kind of flowers, worn for, and effective only as personal embellishment. They combine to one result with the merely outward and ceremonial ornaments of royalty, its pageantries, flaunting so naively, so credulously, in Shakespeare, as in that old medieval time. And then, the force of Hotspur is but transient ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... But it awakened and educated the conscience, it developed more fully the sense of sin and guilt, and it made man conscious of his inability to save himself from sin and guilt; and "the day that humanity awakens to the want of something more than mere embellishment and culture, that day it feels the need of being saved and restored from the consequences of sin" by a higher power. AEsthetic taste had found its fullest gratification in Athens; poetry, sculpture, architecture, had been carried to ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... once more the story of her capture. He stated facts just as they had occurred, without embellishment, his voice as expressionless as his face, and his story was received in the same manner that it was delivered. The creatures seemed totally lacking in emotion, or, at least, the capacity to express it. It was impossible to judge what ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... not seek ornamentation either, but aims to make clear and concise statements without any elaboration or embellishment. Locke and Whately ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin

... rather large and not very white; her feet, though not of the smallest, were well shaped; she trusted to Providence, and used no art to set off those graces which she had received from nature; but, notwithstanding her negligence in the embellishment of her charms, there was something so lively in her person, that the Chevalier de Grammont was caught at first sight; her wit and humour corresponded with her other qualities, being quite easy and perfectly charming; she was all mirth, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... with this embellishment, I went out with the gravity and pride becoming one who feels that he has the ineffable advantage over all the passers-by whom he elbows, of possessing a piece of the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... women may not sew, spin, weave, embroider sufficiently for the embellishment of their persons, and even enough to raise envy in each other, without being beholden ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley

... "Will he make choice of some prominent tree in view?" The visitor usually selects one back from the water's edge, often on some far hilltop, the more prominent the better; then an active young fellow is sent up with an axe to trim the tree. The more embellishment the higher the honor. On the trunk they then inscribe the name of the stranger, and he is supposed to give each of the men a plug of tobacco and a drink of whiskey. Thus they celebrate the man and his monument, and ever afterwards it is pointed out ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... head and tail pieces, etc., add much to the embellishment and rich holiday appearance ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... in the exhibition of manners, which, in the idle and expensive society dwelling in them, are raised to a high art. The maxim of courts is, that manner is power. A calm and resolute bearing, a polished speech, an embellishment of trifles, and the art of hiding all uncomfortable feeling, are essential to the courtier: and Saint Simon, and Cardinal de Retz, and Roederer, and an encyclopaedia of Memoires, will instruct you, if you wish, in those potent secrets. Thus, it is a point of pride with kings to remember ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... story, so far as that he never doubted that Eustacie had perished, and he looked on Berenger's refusal to accept the tale as the mournful last clinging to a vain hope. In his eyes, the actual sight of Eustacie, and the total destruction of the house, were mere matters of embellishment, possibly untrue, but not invalidating the main fact. He only said, 'Well, my friend, I will not press you while the pain of ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... who understands every note will, if he also possesses a proper taste, more thoroughly enjoy the whole, so he who examines each part of a fine view may also thoroughly comprehend the full and combined effect. Hence, a traveller should be a botanist, for in all views plants form the chief embellishment. Group masses of naked rock even in the wildest forms, and they may for a time afford a sublime spectacle, but they will soon grow monotonous. Paint them with bright and varied colours, as in Northern Chile, they will become fantastic; clothe them with vegetation, they must ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... and women should not be judged by the same rules. There are many radical differences in their affectional natures. Man is the creature of interest and ambition. His nature leads him forth into the struggle and bustle of the world. Love is but the embellishment of his early life, or a song piped in the intervals of the acts. He seeks for fame, for fortune, for space in the world's thoughts, and dominion over his fellow-men. But a woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world; it is there ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... such obviously useful labor went desirable embellishment of life. State palaces were restored and enlarged, so that, under Bonaparte, St. Cloud, Fontainebleau, and Rambouillet came to rank with the majesty of Versailles. The city of Paris was beautified. Broad avenues were projected. The Louvre was completed and adorned with precious ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... satisfaction that a group of architects have lately met and discussed plans for the embellishment of our neglected city. There is a certain poetical justice in the proposition coming from those who have worked so much of the harm. Remorse has before now been known to produce good results. The United States treasury yearly receives large ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... unprecedentedly rapid, (a fourth edition being called for within two years) in comparison with the usual slow sale of scientific works. This success may easily be traced. The title of the work is not extraordinarily inviting, illustration, not embellishment, is attempted in a few outline diagrams, and the only external inducement to read, is a plain, legible type, to suit all sights. Looking further, we find the great cause in the manner as well as the matter of the volume, which is throughout a text-book of plain-spoken philosophy, or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various

... there seemed to be at least as much of affection as of deference and respect. They appeared to derive an ardent pleasure from the services which they rendered to their lovely mistress. One would have thought that they attached to the dressing and embellishment of her person all the merits and the enjoyment arising from the execution of a work of art, in the accomplishing of which, fruitful of delights, they were stimulated by the passions of love, of pride, and ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... that runs on and on without a sign of fatigue or uncertainty. The trill has to be practiced very slowly at first, later with increasing rapidity, and always with a firm pressure of the fingers. It is a very beautiful embellishment, and one much used; one finds it in Beethoven, Mendelssohn, ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens

... struggle in his mind? At any rate she seemed anxious to cut short their tete-a-tete. She asked him to come and look at some engravings which the Duchess had sent round for the embellishment of the dining-room. Then she summoned Madame Bornier, and asked him a number of questions on Leonie's behalf, with reference to some little investment of the ex-governess's savings, which had been dropping in value. Meanwhile, as she kept him talking, she leaned herself against the ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... plundering the hedges, far and wide, for nosegays of wild flowers, with which he would return laden, home; and which it took great care and consideration to arrange, to the best advantage, for the embellishment of the breakfast-table. There was fresh groundsel, too, for Miss Maylie's birds, with which Oliver, who had been studying the subject under the able tuition of the village clerk, would decorate the cages, in the most approved taste. When the birds were made ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... entrance into the room. It has been already intimated that Jack had an excessive passion for finery; and it might have been added, that the chief part of his ill-gotten gains was devoted to the embellishment of his person. On the present occasion, he appeared to have bestowed more than ordinary attention on his toilette. His apparel was sumptuous in the extreme, and such as was only worn by persons of the highest ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... establishments transplanted. There is a tendency in these pieces of architecture to shoot upward unexpectedly, like Jack's bean-stalk, and to be ornate in spires of Chapels and lanterns of Halls, which might lead to the embellishment of the air with many castles of questionable beauty but for the restraining consideration of expense. However, the manners, being always of a sanguine temperament, comfort themselves with plans and elevations of Loomings in the future, and are influenced in the present ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... in a small company; the interest never flagged when he talked. Then, too, Millard had a knack of repeating in a way that seemed almost accidental, or at least purely incidental, what this or that noted person had said to him. It was in appearance only an embellishment of his talk, but it served to keep up a belief in the breadth, and especially the height, of his acquaintance. If he had only been presented to Mrs. Manorhouse, and she had repeated her stock witticism in his presence, Millard knew how to quote it as a remark of ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... the work of Josephus, another indication that there was in Philo's own day communication between Alexandria and Palestine. The Jewish historian marks the influence of Hellenic ideas in Palestine in fullest measure, and like Philo he seeks by embellishment to recommend the histories and Scriptures of his people to the non-Jew and to bring home their thought to the cultured Roman-Greek world. Thus, in the preface to his "Antiquities," he notes, as Philo noted in his commentary, that Moses begins ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... just witnessed, the most terrific pictures of slaughter and destruction presented themselves to her imagination; among which, a full-length portrait of Mr. Peter Magnus borne home by four men, with the embellishment of a whole barrelful of bullets in his left side, was among the very least. The more the middle-aged lady meditated, the more terrified she became; and at length she determined to repair to the house of the principal magistrate of the town, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... of rendering their work the more elegant, and giving it a finish, masons chip this stone into small fragments about the size of the head of a large nail; and then stick the pieces into the wet mortar along the joints of their freestone walls: this embellishment carries an odd appearance, and has occasioned strangers sometimes to ask us pleasantly, 'whether we fastened our walls together with ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... found in the old guilds, altars, shrines, vestments and sacred vessels were given in incredible quantities for the furnishing and embellishment of the chapel or church; funds also for the maintenance of priestly offices especially ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... miraculously vivid; his blue eyes were infinitely more arresting than of old; and the touch of physical weakness in his aspect, left evidently by severe illness, was not only not disfiguring, but a positive embellishment. He had been too ruddy in the old days, too hearty and splendid—a too obvious and supreme king of men—for our fastidious modern eyes. The grief and misfortune which had shorn some of his radiance ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... related to me with much embellishment and flourish all that had passed since the maids left London, most of which I already knew, yet was not loth to ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... renders it one of the most attractive illustrations of our series. It is likewise worthy of remark, that this portion of the Regent's Park, from its natural beauties, is entitled to the first-rate embellishment of art, inasmuch as the basement of Clarence Terrace commands a "living picture" of extraordinary luxuriance; and from the drawing-room windows the lake may be seen studded with little islands, and environed with lawny slopes and unusual ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various

... was elected Pope as Sixtus IV. The magnificence which characterized the poor peasant's son in his dealings with Italy, in his embellishment of Rome and the Vatican, was not lacking in his treatment of Wessel. 'Ask what you please as a parting gift', he said to the scholar, who was preparing to set out for Friesland. 'Give me books from ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... soldier, as adopted by the war department at Richmond, never omitting anything, even to the trappings of his horse, bridle and saddle. His hat was decorated with a star and feather, his coat with every star and embellishment, and he wore a bright new sash, big gauntlets, and silver spurs. He was the very picture of ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... belly and under tail-coverts white, and his breast in high feather, black, prettily skirted with gray or invaded with white from below; but his yellow spots, set like gleaming gold in various parts of his plumage, constitute his most marked embellishment, being found on the crown, rump, throat, and ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... virtue.'[49] What the repairs then made exactly involved is unfortunately not stated. But, according to Scylitzes, they were so extensive that 'to tell in detail what the emperor and empress did for the embellishment of the church would surpass the labour of Hercules.'[50] Probably they concerned chiefly the decoration of ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... They admit that faith is the foundation of salvation. But they add the conditional clause that faith can save only when it is furnished with good works. This is wrong. The true Gospel declares that good works are the embellishment of faith, but that faith itself is the gift and work of God in our hearts. Faith is able to justify, because it ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther

... philosophies according to the convenience of the moment. Great events and actions do not kindle in him any imaginative sympathy; they are greedily seized as opportunities for more and more immoderate flights of extravagant embellishment. He "prates of mountains;" his "phrase conjures the wandering stars, and makes them stand like wonder-wounded hearers;" freedom, virtue, fate, the sea and the sun, gods and men before whom the gods themselves stand ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... discharges—the site of which may be described as a semicircular termination of a valley on a natural platform half way up a cliff—the water tumbles down in short cascades for some distance; the grotto inside is untouched by chisel squarings or embellishment, just as Juvenal wished the grot of ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... the undulation of the motion, in that suspension and unrest [Hangen und Bangen], in the rubato as he understood it, Chopin was captivating, every note was the outcome of the best taste in the best sense of the word. If he introduced an embellishment, which happened only rarely, it was always a kind of miracle of good taste. Chopin was by his whole nature unfitted to render Beethoven or Weber, who paint on a large scale and with a big brush. Chopin was an artist in crayons [Pastellmaler], but an INCOMPARABLE one! By the side of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... &c.—the rope by which the animal was guided being attached to these rings. It is probable, therefore, that the early Hebrews who dwelt in tents, and who, in the barrenness of desert scenery, drew most of their hints for improving their personal embellishment from the objects immediately about them, were indebted for their nose-rings to this precedent of their camels. Sometimes a ring depended from both nostrils; and the size of it was equal to that of the ear-ring; so that, at times, its ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... scenic embellishment should be simple and inexpensive, and should be subordinated to ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... of plain wood—black letters painted on a white ground. It is an unostentatious memorial, which has been respected amidst the extensive alteration and embellishment of the grounds by the late Mr. Hope. To our minds, neither of the treasures of art which are assembled within the splendid saloons of the adjoining mansion, or sculpture gallery, will outvie the interest of this humble tribute to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various

... It is said that the illustrious architect, Giuliano da San Gallo, who had worked for Julius while he was cardinal, and was now his principal adviser upon matters of art, suggested to the Pope that Buonarroti could serve him admirably in his ambitious enterprises for the embellishment of the Eternal City. We do not know for certain whether Julius, when he summoned Michelangelo from Florence, had formed the design of engaging him upon a definite piece of work. The first weeks of his residence in Rome are said to have been spent in inactivity, until ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... life. This gentleman, now in the decline of life, has an exquisitely beautiful place, situated in a park of some sixty acres. The railroad has been run through his estate, and, of course, has made it very much more valuable for building; but as it injures the park for the embellishment of the mansion, it was a fair subject for damages, and the jury of reference gave its proprietor the pretty verdict of eleven thousand pounds. At the table we had the finest dessert which the hothouse can furnish. Our host gave us a very interesting account ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various

... wealth of imagination which a host of imitators could not exhaust,—still I am far from wishing to deny that the author of these great poems found a rich fund of tradition, a well-stocked mythical storehouse, from whence he might derive both subject and embellishment. But it is one thing to use existing romances in the embellishment of a poem, another to patch up the poem itself from such materials. What consistency of style and execution can be hoped for from such ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... Leipsic passes Lichterfelde, five miles from Berlin, where conspicuous buildings are the seat of the chief cadet-school in Germany. Here are accommodations for eight or nine hundred cadets, the flower of German youth. Neither pains nor expense has been spared in the erection and embellishment of these extensive buildings. The "Flensburg Lion," erected by the Danes to commemorate a former victory in Schleswig-Holstein over the Prussians, and later captured by the latter, stands here before ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton

... her: to these two persons only did Clotilde reveal her secrets and convey the thoughts of her spotless soul. She spent her time in voluntary seclusion, not in the luxuries of the court or the gaieties of society, but in embroidery, knitting, and in the unnecessary embellishment of ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... seeming calmness, but when Bissell returned the foreman got his revenge. He outlined with full detail and considerable embellishment the constant progress that Larkin was making with Juliet. Disclaiming any interest of his own in the matter, he explained that the reason for his complaint was the ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan

... the cost may be roughly computed by taking the number of seats at a price per seat. In the case of churches and chapels, taking a minimum area of 8 ft. each, the cost varies from L10 upwards, the difference being due to the amount of architectural embellishment or the addition of a tower. Schools may be estimated as averaging L9 per scholar; we find that, taking schools of various sizes erected by the late London School Board, their cost varied from L7:12:4 to L10:1:10 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... heartily we must have reality," writes Marmontel, and it is remarkable that most good comic situations have been taken from the author's own experience. The best kind of humour is the most artistic embellishment of the ludicrous. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... these affections are in the heart of the worshipper, they receive an external complement of goodness and perfection by being blazoned forth in vocal utterance, singing, bending of knees,—by the erection and embellishment of temples, and offerings of gold, silver, precious stones, and incense,—and by men thronging those temples in multitudes for social worship,—provided always that the inward devotion of the heart ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... or Minnesota, as the case may be, but their figures of speech, which give an essential picturesqueness to their language, are almost entirely local—the cattle and sheep industries, prospecting, the Indians, poker, faro, the dance-halls, all contribute their printable or unprintable embellishment. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... with designs obnoxious to the peace of the fair Sophia, who, arrayed in virgin white, embellished by no ornament but one blushing rose, received him on his arrival, in the midst of very elegant not to say brilliant preparations; such as the embellishment of the room with the little flower-pots which always stood on the window-sill outside, save in windy weather when they blew into the area; the choice attire of the day-scholars who were allowed to grace the festival; the unwonted curls of Miss Jane Wackles who had kept her head during the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... any object. Each portion of the nave to which the attention was directed appeared too finely, spotlessly radiant, ever to have been touched by mortal hands. Entranced and bewildered, the observation roamed over the surface of the brilliant scene, until, wearied by the unbroken embellishment of the prospect, it wandered for repose upon the dimly lighted aisles, and dwelt with delight upon the soft shadows that hovered about their distant pillars, and the gliding forms that peopled their dusky recesses, or ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... and unknown gems, That wind to capital with blooming stems Of lilies, honeysuckles, and the rose. An avenue of columns in long rows Of varied splendor, leads to shining courts Where skilful spirit hands with perfect arts Have chiselled glorious forms magnificent, With ornate skill and sweet embellishment. Their golden sculpture view on every hand, Or carved images in pearl that stand In clusters on the floor, or in long rows; And on the walls of purest pearl there glows The painting of each act of kindest deed Each soul performs on ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... sense of beauty. No edifices in the world —not even the Pyramids—are more deficient in external ornament. The buttresses and the air-holes, which alone break the flat uniformity of the walls, are intended simply for utility, and can scarcely be said to be much embellishment. If any efforts were made to delight by the ordinary resources of ornamental art, it seems clear that such efforts did not extend to the whole edifice, but were confined to the shrine itself—the actual abode of the god—the chamber which crowned the whole, and was alone, strictly ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson

... has made the subject for our embellishment occurred with Lord Ossulston's stag-hounds, on Tuesday, the 1st of May, when the stag, after a fast run of an hour, jumped over a precipice, and broke his neck. The hounds were, at this time, close to his haunches, and a couple and a half of the leading dogs went over with the stag. ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... can paint like nature dying; Whose dissolving struggle lent Wealth of hues so richly blent That, through weary years of trying, Artist skill pre-eminent May not copy or invent Such divine embellishment. ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... emperor by the Praetorians. He took Augustus for his model, was well disposed, and contributed greatly to the embellishment of the capital. But he was gluttonous and intemperate, and subject to the influence of women and favorites. He was feeble in mind and body. He was married to one of the worst women in history, and Messalina has passed into a synonym for infamy. By this woman he ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... which probably prevailed among the natives of Provence (the Roman Provincia), and into which, at a later period, rhyme was introduced as an embellishment, the Troubadours derived the metre of their ballad poetry, and thence introduced it into ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... luxury, both betokening and accelerating the degeneracy of the times. They carried this luxury so far with respect to the theatre itself, that the perfection in essentials was sacrificed to the accessories of embellishment. Even among the Greeks dramatic talent was far from universal. The theatre was invented in Athens, and in Athens alone was it brought to perfection. The Doric dramas of Epicharmus form only a slight exception to the truth of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... the tragic story related by the skipper of the ill-fated Wyvern, a story that was replete with every element necessary for the weaving of a thrilling romance; yet it was told baldly and concisely, without the slightest attempt at embellishment; told precisely as though to be attacked by pirates, to have one's ship rifled and scuttled, one's boats stolen, and then to be left, bound hand and foot on deck, to helplessly perish, were one of the most ordinary and commonplace incidents imaginable. Truly, they who go down to the sea in ships, ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood

... looks, and the Athenians laughed at the jest. "My sullenness," said Phocion, "never yet made any of you sad, but these men's jollities have given you sorrow enough." In like manner Phocion's language, also, was full of instruction, abounding in happy maxims and wise thoughts, but admitted no embellishment to its austere and commanding brevity. Zeno said a philosopher should never speak till his words had been steeped in meaning; and such, it may be said, were Phocion's, crowding the greatest amount of significance into the smallest allowance ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... the delicate constraint between them relaxed as they sauntered slowly into the house where Shiela presently went away to dress for the Ascott function, and Hamil sat down on the veranda for a while, then retired to undertake the embellishment of his ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... Arkansas. After that had been accomplished, he would consider his own safety. He wondered if Hope really was her name, and whether it was the family cognomen, or her given name. That she was Christie Maclaire he had no question, yet that artistic embellishment was probably merely assumed for the work of the concert hall. Both he and Hawley could scarcely be mistaken as to her identity in this respect, and, indeed, she had never openly denied the fact. Yet she did not at all seem to be that kind, and Keith mentally contrasted her ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... past in which travellers could add much to the improvement, the comfort, or the embellishment of this country by imparting anything which they have newly observed in foreign parts. We have happily more to communicate now than to receive. Yet when I tell you that since the commencement of the present century there have been every year, upon an average, more than a hundred ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey

... city of America. The country immediately about it is naturally beautiful and romantic, especially up the Potomac, in the region of the Great Falls; and, though the soil be poor as compared with that of my present home, it is susceptible of easy improvement and embellishment. The social advantages cannot be surpassed even in London, Paris, or Vienna; and among the resident population, the members of the Supreme Court, Senate, House of Representatives, army, navy, and the several executive departments, may be found an intellectual class one cannot encounter ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... for a minute or two. What an embellishment children are! Ha! don't you see—the little maid is fluttering and reddening—now! How pretty she looks! Ah! I see! here's the favoured! Don't you see that fine bronzed lad—Eton—one can see at a glance! It is a little drama. They are pretending to be strangers. He is turning over the goods with ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... from everybody. One by one they had dropped out, each meaning to go home, and all lingering to see the luck turn. It was an extraordinary run, a rare specimen, a breaker of records, something to refer to in the future as a standard of measure and an embellishment of reminiscence; quite enough to keep the Idaho Legislature up all night. And then it was their friend who was losing. The only speaking in the room was the brief card talk of ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... Samarra' with one long paragraph, from which the reader could get no other meaning except the one that this day also was won by the same units as did the fighting of the 21st. This was a handling of fact which appealed neither to the Black Watch, whose achievements need no aid of embellishment from imagination, nor to the Leicestershires, who were made to appear spectators through the savage fighting of two days. If the reader turns to the chapter in this book entitled 'The Battle for Samarra,' he will learn what actually happened on April 22, 1917. The only other reference ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson

... who had "turned out" growled or chaffed, according to temperament, as they followed suit, and the natives spent half an hour in uproarious merriment over Booby's dramatic representation of the whole incident, which he performed with graphic power and much embellishment. ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... and human skill advanced By almost imperceptible degrees Of slow, experimental tutorage, Along a nobler, more artistic plane, He hewed the stones in form of ornament, Sculptured device of various design, Embellishment of cunning symmetry, Man's first attempt to ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... amidst preparations for war. The publisher apologized for lack of variety in the year's work, by saying that we in America "are deprived of one considerable fund of entertainment which contributes largely to the embellishment of the magazines in Europe, viz., discoveries of curious remains of antiquity.... We can look no further back than to the rude manners and customs of the savage aborigines of North America ... but the principal difficulty in our way is the present importunate situation ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth

... part of the ancient city. It was adorned with temples, porticoes, and theatres, and other buildings devoted to amusement and recreation. It had not many private houses, but these were of remarkable splendor. Other courtiers of Augustus followed his example for the embellishment of the city. Statilius Taurus built the first permanent amphitheatre of stone in the Campus Martius. L. Cornelius Balbur built at his own expense a stone theatre. L. Marcius Philippus rebuilt the temple of Hercules Musarum, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... over his foolscap apron? Was it not an intoxicating vision of gold and glory? I should doubtless have revelled in its wealth and splendor, but for learning that the FIFTY CENTS was to be considered a rhetorical embellishment, and by no means a literal expression of past fact ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... her sisters being invited guests, and Vera in a continual state of agitated expectation. Had not Wilfred Merrifield always been a cavalier of her own? And here he was, paying no attention to her, with all the embellishment of her bridesmaid's adornments, and squiring instead that little insignificant Felicia, in a simple hat, and hair still on her shoulders; whilst she had to put up with nothing better than a young Varney, who was very shy, and had never probably ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... just now, and I hope you will be able to decipher so much; for it contains matter. Really, the whole of yesterday's work would do in a novel without one little bit of embellishment; and, indeed, few novels are so amusing. Bough, Miss Amy, Mrs. Ross, Blackie, M—— the parson—all these were such distinct characters, the incidents were so entertaining, and the scenery so fine, that the whole would have made ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to the overgrowth of eastern empire. Nor was the reign of Darius undistinguished by the cultivation of the more elegant arts—since to that period may be referred, if not the foundation, at least the embellishment and increase of Persepolis. The remains of the palace of Chil-Menar, ascribed by modern superstition to the architecture of genii, its graceful columns, its mighty masonry, its terrace-flights, its marble basins, its sculptured designs stamped with the unmistakeable emblems of the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... church was spared the "restorers" were guilty of strange enormities in the embellishment and decoration of the sacred building. Whitewash was vigorously applied to the walls and pews, carvings, pulpit, and font. If curious mural paintings adorned the walls, the hideous whitewash soon obliterated every trace ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... shame, or of parading a pride that apes humility. I pretend to no talent, but if a too true story of suffering may interest, and at the same time alarm, I can promise matter enough, and unembellished, too, for no embellishment is needed, as all my sketches are from the life. The incidents will not be found to be consecutive, but set down as certain scenes occur to my recollection—heedless of order, style, or system. Each is a record of shame, ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson

... human endeavors, the lofty and serious place of which I have spoken above, to defend it from the petty point of view of those who, mistaking its dignity, and the pedantic attitude of those who, mistaking its peculiar character, regard it only as a trifling adornment and embellishment of life or else ask an immediate moral effect and teaching from it—this, as one cannot repeat too often, is deeply rooted in the German habit of thought and feeling. Schiller in his poetry gave utterance—in his ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... prompts the decoration, at whatever cost, of interiors in colder climes suggested to the Oriental the embellishment of his house-top. The parapet ordered by Moses became a potter's triumph; above that, later, arose towers, plain and fantastic; still later, kings and princes crowned their roofs with summer-houses of marble and gold. When the Babylonian hung gardens in ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... which led him to avoid the vice of rhetorical amplification. It also prevented him from missing the point of a joke of which he was unconscious. As a rule, his 'Johnsoniana' are better than those of Sir John Hawkins or Mrs. Piozzi, because they are more literal. In one or two instances an embellishment which improved a story was rejected by him because it was not true. These powers—observation, scrupulous accuracy and industry, and enthusiastic admiration of his hero—were all that he needed for the production ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... interesting event which he did not witness, may be favorably received by the people of Kentucky. The class of readers who will be gratified by an account of such adventures as will be herein related, will readily forgive any lack of embellishment. My practical countrymen prefer the recital of substantial facts, and the description of scenes which their own experience enables them to appreciate, to all the fictions of which the Northern war literature has ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... heard no more as she gazed out into the dusty grass. There were tears in her eyes, hot blinding ones that wouldn't drop for pride, but stayed and scalded. She knew the story, with all its embellishment of heartaches. She knew the ring, too. She remembered the day she had kissed and wept and fondled it, until it seemed her heart must burst under its load of grief before she took it to the pawn-broker's ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar

... of Madame S. de R——d is not more distinguished by its profuse decoration, than by the fine taste which has guided the vast expenditure. Its halls of arabesque are almost without a rival; there is not the slightest embellishment in which the hand and feeling of art are not recognised. The rooms were very crowded; everybody distinguished in Paris was there: the lady of the Court, the duchess of the Faubourg, the wife of the financier, the constitutional Throne, the old Monarchy, the modern ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... edifice built upon a foundation already laid for us away back in the ages—a carrying out of plans already perfected for us, and requiring little of originality for their development; forgetting that oftentimes the laying of the foundation is the easiest part of the work, while the erection and embellishment of the superstructure has taxed the efforts of the loftiest genius. In so far as regards the development of the national mind, the strengthening of the originating and energetic faculties, and the capability of profound and well directed thought arising therefrom, we are, as ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... pine, The great Argoan ships brave ornament, 210 Whom golden fleece did make an heavenly signe; Which coveting, with his high tops extent, To make the mountaines touch the starres divine, Decks all the forrest with embellishment; And the blacke holme that loves the watrie vale; 215 And the sweete cypresse, signe of ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser

... the Tartuffe of sentiment, Joseph, is another service to the cause of morals, which should more than atone for any dangerous embellishment of wrong that the portraiture of the younger brother may exhibit. Indeed, though both these characters are such as the moralist must visit with his censure, there can be little doubt to which we should, in real life, give the preference;—the levities and errors ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... any such embellishment did take place history sayeth not, but it is certain that Darsie Garnett made a very charming picture on the following Sunday afternoon, and that her dainty style of beauty showed to peculiar advantage against the oak panelling of the stately ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... narratives of previous expeditions. Hence the number of the specimens warranted their publication in a separate form, under the able superintendance of Dr. Richardson, surgeon and naturalist to the expedition, aided by Mr. Swainson. The great expense of the requisite embellishment of the ornithological portion, however, threatened a formidable obstacle to its completeness; but this was met by a liberal grant of one thousand pounds by the British Government, to be applied solely towards the expense of the engravings—the present ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various

... strip yourself: let the old women strip you; that is their delight laying out a chap; that is the time they brighten up, the old sorceresses." He concluded this amiable rhapsody, the latter part of which was levelled at a lugubrious weakness of his grandmother's for the superfluous embellishment of the dead, by telling her it was bad enough to be tied by the foot like an ass, without settling down on his back like a cast sheep. "Give me the armchair. I'll sit in it, and, if I have any ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... could have gained nothing further than the Capitol and the very money which they received without taking that fortress. The account of Polybius throws light upon many discrepant statements, and all of them, not even excepting Livy's fairy-tale-like embellishment, may be explained by means of it. The Romans attempted to prove that the Gauls had actually been defeated, by relating that the gold afterward taken from the Gauls and buried in the Capitol was double the sum paid to them as a ransom; but it is much more probable that the Romans ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... had found, from a newspaper, the owner of the purse, who was a boy and the son of a distinguished artist living in the suburbs. As he described the low-storeyed house, with its wealth of natural beauty without and tasteful embellishment within, William's heart beat loudly; surely that boy was one of the happy children whom he had seen on the day he peeped into the school-room; and a feeling of disappointment stole over him that he ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers

... more than a good farm in extent, so it is little more than a particularly good farm in cultivation and embellishment. All the buildings are of stone, even to the hog-sties and sheds, with well-pointed joints, and field walls that would do credit to a fortified place. The house is generally esteemed one of the best ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... two men came into a high-ceiled apartment, cylindrical in shape, with plastered walls painted green everywhere save for the quaint embellishment of a large oval, wherein a woman, having an eagle's beak, grasped in one hand a serpent and in the other a knife. Sir Thomas Browne seemed to recognize this curious design, and gave ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... treating this matter, it is important to make known to our readers the ancient superstitions, the vulgar or common opinions, and the prejudices of nations, to be able to refute them, and bring back the figures to truths, by freeing them from what poesy had added for the embellishment of the poem, and ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... looked upon as the Gog of the prophet Ezekiel. This honor is, however, more properly attributable to Cambyses, the son of Cyrus. And, indeed, the character of the Syrian monarch does by no means stand in need of any adventitious embellishment. His accession to the throne, or rather his usurpation of the sovereignty, a hundred and seventy-one years before the coming of Christ; his attempt to plunder the temple of Diana at Ephesus; his implacable hostility ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... to Israel—I do not see how such magnificent egoists could contract to the necessary state of awe—and I do not know that there are any legends proper to Greece which are divorced from real myths. For where a myth is the incarnation of the spirit of natural fact, a legend is the embellishment of an historical event: a very different thing. A natural fact is permanent and elemental, an historical event is transient and superficial. Take one instance out of a score. The rainbow links heaven ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... might merit the honourable name of history from the truths contained in them, as I shall prefer truth to embellishment. In fact, to embellish my story I have neither leisure nor ability; I shall, therefore, do no more than give a simple narration of events. They are the labours of my evenings, and will come to you an unformed mass, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... I didn't say anything about it to the Tenderfoot, but I hitched my six-shooter around to the front, resolved to find out how good I was at wing-shooting horses. But Tunemah declared he would die for his convictions. "All right," said we, "die then," with the embellishment of profanity. So we stripped him naked, and stoned him into the raging stream, where he had one chance in three of coming through alive. He might as well be dead as on the other side of that stream. He won through, however, and now I believe ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... some of these gardens, in the season of fruit and flowers, are inimitably beautiful. Where is it that I have read, that a Frenchman has no idea of gardening? Nothing can be more false: the French peasants infinitely excell the English of the same order in the knowledge and practice of this embellishment. ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney

... divine pity toward sinning man; and a greater than MILTON assures us that the transport and festival of angelic joy occurs when Pity lifts the penitent from his prostration and forgives his folly.' . . . EMBELLISHMENT would seem to be the literary order of the day, in more ways than one. It has come to be the mode to express the most simple thought in the most magniloquent phrase. This propensity to lingual Euphuism has given rise to ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various

... reaction against paganism began to die out when the Christian religion was more firmly established, and representations of Christ and the Saints executed in mosaic became more and more to be regarded as a necessary, or at any rate a regular embellishment of the numerous churches which were built. For these mosaics panel paintings began in time to be substituted; but it was long before any of the human feeling of art was to be found in them. The influence of S. Francis of Assisi was needed to prepare the way, and ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... 1617. Why he had not told it before is difficult to explain. Perhaps he had promised Powhatan to keep it secret, lest the record of his sentimental clemency should impair his authority over the tribes. Or it may have been an embellishment of some comparatively trifling incident of Smith's captivity, suggested to his mind as he was compiling his "General History of Virginia." It can never be determined; but certainly his relations with the Indian girl were always cordial, and ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... followed. Coffee being presently served up stairs, he kept a watch on Fledgeby until Miss Podsnap's cup was empty, and then directed him with his finger (as if that young gentleman were a slow Retriever) to go and fetch it. This feat he performed, not only without failure, but even with the original embellishment of informing Miss Podsnap that green tea was considered bad for the nerves. Though there Miss Podsnap unintentionally threw him out by faltering, 'Oh, is it indeed? How does it act?' Which he was ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... in the manner of kings, as we have heard, consenting to the privileges acted on by cats. These may not address their Majesties, but they may stare; nor will it be contested that the attentive circular eyes of the humble domestic creatures are an embellishment to Royal pomp and grandeur, such truly as should one day gain for them an inweaving and figurement—in the place of bees, ermine tufts, and their various present decorations—upon the august great robes back-flowing and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... nothing is discoverable in 'Tell;' there is none of his usual mannerism; but, on the contrary, unusual richness of form and careful finish of detail, combined with grandeur of outline. Meretricious embellishment, shakes, runs, and cadences are carefully avoided in this work, which is natural and characteristic throughout; even the melodies have not the stamp and style of Rossini's earlier times, but only their graceful charm ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... the rocks, on a smaller scale, were finely wooded to the water's edge. Little art appeared, yet sublimity everywhere gave place to elegance. The road had often assumed the appearance of a gravelled one, made in pleasure-grounds; whilst the trees excited only an idea of embellishment. Meadows, like lawns, in an endless variety, displayed the careless graces of nature; and the ripening corn gave a richness to the landscape analogous with ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... feet, of course. He plunged into an accurate narrative of what had happened, and what he had overheard, on Saturday night. He told it all without embellishment or flourish, and wound up by calling attention to Jordan's plain enough desertion from ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock

... themselves to view in stages rising above each other, the mountains clustering together towards the central point; and next, that an observer familiar with the several vales, must, from their various position in relation to the sun, have had before his eyes every possible embellishment of beauty, dignity, and splendour, which light and shadow can bestow upon objects so diversified. For example, in the vale of Winandermere, if the spectator looks for gentle and lovely scenes, his eye is turned towards the south; if for the grand, towards ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... with 300,000 francs have been able to provide for the extensive repairs, the embellishment, and the furnishing of his house in the Rue Chantereine? How could he have supported the establishment he did with only 15,000 francs of income and the emoluments of his rank? The excursion which he made along the coast, of which I have yet to speak, of itself cost near 12,000 ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... excommunicated her. Except what was absolutely necessary for his subsistence, he employed the revenues of his own estate, and those of his bishopric, in charities. He was accused to the emperor Charlemagne, among other things, of wasting his income, and neglecting the embellishment of churches within his jurisdiction. And this prince, who loved to see churches magnificent, giving ear to the information, ordered him to appear at court. The morning after his arrival, the emperor's chamberlain brought him word that his attendance was required. The ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... the jury, I humbly do conceive I have the authority to declare that I am counsel in this case for the defendant; therefore, my Lord, I shall not flourish away in words; words are no more than filligree work. Some people may think them an embellishment; but to me it is a matter of astonishment how any one can be so impertinent to the detriment of all rudiment. But, my Lord, this is not to be looked at through the medium of right and wrong; for the law knows no medium, and {69}right ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens

... away, repeating, as they walked, the substance of a letter from his precious nephew, in which the Barbizon episode as it appeared to the inhabitants of No. 7 Rue Chantal and to the students of Taranne's atelier de femmes was related, with every embellishment of witticism and blague that the imagination of a French rapin could suggest. Mademoiselle Delaunay was not yet restored, according to the writer, to the atelier which she adorned. 'On criait au scandale,' ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... ordained to the Priesthood and to the several offices comprized within both the Lesser or Aaronic, and the Higher or Melchizedek Priesthood; but though one be thus made an Elder, a Seventy, a High Priest, a Patriarch or an Apostle, he should not court the usage of the title as a mere embellishment of his name. (See "The Honor and Dignity of Priesthood" by the author in Improvement Era, Salt Lake ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... Indeed, the recent embellishment of several mansions in Park Lane is already indicative of the improved taste of their distinguished occupants. A few years since the Lane for the most part consisted of unsightly brick fronts; but stone and plaster encasements have given it the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various

... has its variants, but in every instance I have retained that particular version which seemed to me to be the most characteristic, and have given it without embellishment ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris

... not live to-day, or if they do they have become so "practical" that a drainage canal or an overhead or underground railway is more of a civic improvement than the laying out of a public park, like the gardens of the Tuileries, or the building and embellishment of a public edifice—at least with due regard for the best traditions. When the monarchs of old called in men of taste and culture instead of "business men" they builded in the most agreeable fashion. We have ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield

... affairs of a nation to the best advantage, nor to advance its individuals to the happiness of which they were susceptible, by improvements in their minds, their morals, their health, and in those conveniences which contribute to the comfort and embellishment of life. All the efforts of the society, therefore, were directed to the increase of learning, and the inducements of respect, ease, and profit were held up for its encouragement. Even the charities of the nation forgot ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... "he has given a large sum towards the embellishment of our new temple, expressly, (I use his own words) for the promotion ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... on his own mind. He calls things by their right names; no euphuism or transcendentalism,—the plainer and commoner the better. He tells us of his farm life, its joys and sorrows, its mirth and care, with no embellishment, with no concealment of repulsive and ungraceful features. Never having seen a nightingale, he makes no attempt to describe the fowl; but he has seen the night-hawk, at sunset, cutting the air above him, and he tells of it. Side by side ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier









Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com




Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar