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More "Gimcrack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... breeders did talk! Yo'd ha thowt they'd throw their jaws off the hinges. An a lot o' gimcrack notions as iver wor—wi their new foods, an their pills an strengthening mixtures—messin wi cows as though they wor humans. Why conno they leave God Awmighty alone? He can bring a calvin cow through beawt ony o' their meddlin, I'll ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to right and left, and they saw a small, rather flashy hotel, such as is common in resorts—the hotel of the Saloon Bar rather than the Bar Parlour. Almost the whole frontage was of gilt plaster and figured glass, and between that grey seascape and the grey, witch-like trees, its gimcrack quality had something spectral in its melancholy. They both felt vaguely that if any food or drink were offered at such a hostelry, it would be the paste-board ham and empty mug of ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... be sure!" says the leering archer. "You do not suppose I am such a flat as to choose that velvet gimcrack there?" Otto laughed in scorn, and began to prepare his bow. The trumpets sounding proclaimed that the sports were ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the interior arrangement adapted to modern convenience. Such changes have in some instances been made; and when so, how often does the old mansion, with outward features in good preservation, outspeak, in all the expression of home-bred comforts, the flashy, gimcrack neighbor, which in its plenitude of modern pretension looks so flauntingly ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... "politicians"—save the mark! that would have us pull down the old constitutional machine, (lumbering it may be,) which has served our purpose for generations, and whose working and capabilities we have tested some odd thousand years; to replace it with the newfangled gimcrack model which is continually getting out of gear across the Atlantic; and I have no patience with them. I do not particularly desire to run America and its people down; but, when we are in the habit of criticising the deeds ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... word "trangram" or "tangram" ordinarily means a toy or gimcrack, or trumpery article. Cf. Wycherley (Plain Dealer, iii. 1), "But go, thou trangram, and carry back those trangrams which thou hast stolen or purloined." Apparently "trangum" ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... manufactures. Thus Cosimo I. of Tuscany induced the old Florentine families to withdraw their capital from trade, sink it in land, create entails in perpetuity on eldest sons, and array themselves with gimcrack titles which he liberally supplied. Even Venice showed at this epoch a contempt for the commerce which had brought her into a position of unrivaled splendor. This wilful depression of industry was partly the result of Spanish aristocratic ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... was washing myself there below with the glove get on your nerves then doing the loglady all day put her in a glasscase with two at a time to look at her if he knew she broke off the hand off that little gimcrack statue with her roughness and carelessness before she left that I got that little Italian boy to mend so that you cant see the join for 2 shillings wouldnt even teem the potatoes for you of course shes right not to ruin her hands I noticed he was always ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... smile to think of other men being poisoned and robbed as well as myself; as to the good ones—why, only a fool would reveal their whereabouts. Since, however, I hope so to order my remaining days of life as never to be obliged to return to these gimcrack regions, there is no inducement for withholding the name of the Merle Blanc at Monte Carlo, a quite unpretentious place of entertainment that well deserves its name—white blackbirds being rather scarcer here than elsewhere. ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... case in which John Hunter figured as a witness. I would give Samuel Hahnemann a place by the side of Samuel Thomson. Am I not afraid that some student of imaginative turn and not provided with the needful cerebral strainers without which all the refuse of gimcrack intelligences gets into the mental drains and chokes them up,—am I not afraid that some such student will get hold of the "Organon" or the "Maladies Chroniques" and be won over by their delusions, and so be lost to those that love him as a man of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... visit to Cheltenham, did she approve of it. It wasn't the way, she said, to make such a girl as Mary like her life at Chowton Farm, going and sitting and doing nothing in old Lady Ushant's drawing-room. It was cocking her up with gimcrack notions about ladies till she'd be ashamed to look at her own hands after she had done a day's work with them. There was no doubt some truth in this. The woman understood the world and was able to measure Larry Twentyman and Lady Ushant and the ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... created in the tube on the other side of the piston by the working of a stationary engine. Great was the popularity of the atmospheric system; and still George Stephenson said "It won't do: it's but a gimcrack." Engineers of distinction said he was prejudiced, and that he looked upon the locomotive as a pet child of his own. "Wait a little," he replied, "and you will see that I am right." It was generally supposed that the locomotive system was about to ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... can you think of risking yourself in such a gimcrack contrivance as that? I must absolutely send a couple of my men along with you to see no ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... ponderous, substantial, tufted here and there with flowering weeds, and surmounted with mediaeval machicolations, proving it to have sometimes stood for city gate or fortress, it contrasts most favourably with the slight and somewhat gimcrack arch of Trajan in the sister city of Ancona. Yet these remains of the imperial pontifices, mighty and interesting as they are, sink into comparative insignificance beside the one great wonder of Rimini, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... grew beside the walled-up cavern, and I was picking the ripest of the fruit when I heard a voice from the road below calling upon me to come down. Peering through the boughs, I saw a man seated in the smallest and most gimcrack of donkey-carts. It was something like a grocer's box on wheels. The owner gave violent smacks to the plank on which he was sitting, to let me understand that there was room for another person. I did not think there could be, but I left the figs ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... I love to speak in such, and the above types have been presented to my mind while sitting opposite a gimcrack coat-of-arms and coronet that are painted in the Invalides Church, and assigned to one of the ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... at Weston was the most prosaic scene in the world, a long esplanade with an asphalt path running its full length, and ugly jerrybuilt houses glaring out upon it, a gimcrack pier with a gingerbread sort of band-stand and glass house at the end;—all that could have been done to ruin nature had been determinedly done there. But you cannot ruin a spring day, nor youth, nor the colour of the ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... house, except poor Amelia, that Rebecca should take her departure, and high and low (always with the one exception) agreed that that event should take place as speedily as possible. Our good child ransacked all her drawers, cupboards, reticules, and gimcrack boxes—passed in review all her gowns, fichus, tags, bobbins, laces, silk stockings, and fallals—selecting this thing and that and the other, to make a little heap for Rebecca. And going to her Papa, that generous British merchant, who had promised to give her as many guineas ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... flat on the top of a huge pile of buildings in Kensington, and it was furnished in a gimcrack way, with more show than real value, and with more color than taste. Every room was of a different hue, with furniture and hangings to match. The drawing-room was pink, the dining-room green, her bedroom blue, the entrance hall yellow, and the extra sleeping apartment used ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... of champagne from a Concord friend whose company is as exhilarating as the sparkling wine he sent us. With the other gifts came a small tin box, about as big as a common round wooden match box. I supposed it to hold some pretty gimcrack, sent as a pleasant parting token of remembrance. It proved to be a most valued daily companion, useful at all times, never more so than when the winds were blowing hard and the ship was struggling with the waves. There must have been ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... cringes; look in thy head, and 'twill appear a foot-ball full of fumes and rotten smoke. Lady, I pity you; you are a handsome and a sweet young Lady, and ought to have a handsom man yok'd t'ye, an understanding too; this is a Gimcrack, that can get nothing but new fashions on you; for say he have a thing shap'd like a child, 'twill either prove a Tumbler ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... It has but two objects of interest (in Persian eyes)—the lighthouse (occasionally lit) and a palace of the Shah, built a few years since as a pied-a-terre for his Majesty on the occasion of his visits to Europe. It is a tawdry gimcrack edifice, painted bright blue, red, and green, in the worst possible taste. The Shah, on returning from Europe last time, is said to have remarked to his ministers on landing at Enzelli, "I have not seen a single building in all Europe to compare ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... knack, n. gimcrack, trinket, toy, plaything, knickknack, kickshaws, gewgaw, bauble; skill, readiness, aptitude, proficiency, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... or "tangram" ordinarily means a toy or gimcrack, or trumpery article. Cf. Wycherley (Plain Dealer, iii. 1), "But go, thou trangram, and carry back those trangrams which thou hast stolen or purloined." Apparently "trangum" here means ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... loser—considerable for me, that is to say. I told my antagonist I should send him the money to-day. He's a kind of man I can't afford to trifle with; and you know the Caballero connection is of too much use to be jeopardised. So I've been thinking, Bess, that if you'd let me have that gimcrack locket my sister gave you, I could raise a tenner on it. Clary can afford to give you plenty of such things, even if it were lost, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... space, and everything, to waste it by Mrs. Grosvenor Green. She had conformed to a law for the necessity of turning round in each room, and had folding-beds in the chambers, but there her subordination had ended, and wherever you might have turned round she had put a gimcrack so that you would knock it over if you did turn. The place was rather pretty and even imposing at first glance, and it took several joint ballots for March and his wife to make sure that with the kitchen there were only six rooms. At every door hung a portiere from large rings on a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
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