"Embellish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... infinite wealth, would leave behind them a name renowned and glorious, if they possessed, together with their store of the goods of Fortune, a mind filled with grandeur and inclined to those things that not only embellish the world, but also confer vast benefit and advantage on the whole race of men! And what works can or should Princes and great persons undertake more readily than noble and magnificent buildings and edifices, ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... Bible House, the Cooper Institute, the Astor Library, the Mercantile Library. Farther down, the continuation of Canal Street affords the most commanding sites for future public edifices; while the neighborhoods of Franklin and Chatham Squares ought to be seized upon to embellish the city at imperial points with its finest architectural piles. The capacities of New York, below Union Square, for metropolitan splendor are entirely undeveloped; the best points are still occupied by comparatively worthless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... his four wives, who are kneeling one behind the other. The dates of their deaths are very clearly marked by the different fashions of their dresses—a compact and upstanding ruff adds to the stiff precision of the first wife's appearance; while the sloping lines of a 'Vandyke' collar embellish the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... story about a young bird, which, having left its nest, although its mother had forbidden it to do so, flew to the top of a chimney, fell down the flue into the fire, and died a victim to his disobedience. The person who told the story thought it necessary to embellish it from his own imagination. 'That's not right,' said the child at the first change which was made, 'the mother said this and did that.' His cousin, not remembering the story word for word, was obliged to have recourse to invention to fill up gaps. But the child could not stand it. ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... do not embellish matters in anticipation. You will find them very different from what you expect—even London itself, which, by the by, you would have to endure even if you were with Selina, whom I suspect to be rather too fine and fashionable a lady for such ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Marryun, I'll bet,' she remarked. Looking at her I thought she accompanied her words with a slight lowering of the left eyelid. I trust I was mistaken. Free as the girl is in her speech I have never given her any encouragement to embellish it by winking. ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... flowed like molten brass into the mould of the founder, and, to carry the simile farther, some would sputter over. He had in his storehouse of language, many queer phrases and sayings that he brought out to embellish his conversation, some of which were only used as a corps de reserve, or brought into action when ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... fortune, he abandoned that study and devoted himself exclusively to painting. For years he struggled desperately against the discouragements of poverty in himself and ignorance in his neighbors, but found his reward at last in this engagement to embellish the walls of the Watt ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... maxim, that every man is the architect of his own fortune. Apart from this consideration, the memory of Bewick should be cherished by all our readers; since he re-invented the ingenious means by which we are enabled to embellish unsparingly each ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... back dretful well-feelin', and thinkin' in his heart that it wuz his good looks that wuz wanted to embellish the room, and I kep on a wonderin' inside of myself what made Mr. Freeman so oncommon good to us, till one day he told us sunthin' that made it plainer to us, and Josiah Allen's pride had a fall (which, if his pride hadn't been composed of materials more indestructible ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... feelings, to inspire men with a scorn of mere temporal advantage, to give birth to living convictions, and to keep alive the spirit of honorable devotedness; if you hold it to be a good thing to refine the habits, to embellish the manners, to cultivate the arts of a nation, and to promote the love of poetry, of beauty, and of renown; if you would constitute a people not unfitted to act with power upon all other nations, nor unprepared for those ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... exile, by which the refugees of Strasburgh and Frankfort scandalized their brethren and afforded matter of triumph to the church of Rome. On the accession of Elizabeth he returned with alacrity to re-occupy and embellish the modest mansion of his forefathers, and "through the loopholes of retreat" to view with honest exultation the high career of public fortune run by his two illustrious sons-in-law, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Circus, was pitched upon, surrounded with commodious Seats, erected in an Amphitheatrical Manner, and richly embellish'd some few Leagues from the City. Thither the Combatants, or Champions were to repair, compleatly accoutred. Each of them had a distinct Apartment to himself behind the Lists, where no Soul could either ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... an old silk gown takes on quite a new value and becomes invested with absorbing interest. Spots and tarnish disappear in the metempsychosis, or serve for scattered variation, and if the weaver chooses to still further embellish it with a monogram or design in cross stitch embroidery, she has acquired a piece of drapery which might be a valuable inheritance ...
— How to make rugs • Candace Wheeler
... die? Why then did they come so far from home to throw away their lives and to fatten a foreign soil with their blood?" They added, that "this was a robbery of their native land, which, while living, it is our duty to cultivate, to defend and to embellish; and to which after our death we owe our bodies, which we received from it, which it has fed, and which in their turn ought ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... because they were, in the first century of our era, gradually beginning to understand the mystic power of the Chinese written character, and they would therefore naturally take an intense interest in all records, rumours, traditions, and fables about themselves, which they would embellish and "confirm" whenever it suited their interests to do so. Which of us does not begin to furbish up his pedigree when he is made ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... this planet—the life of feeling and thought; whence it follows perhaps that all that inclines to weaken the ardour of feeling and thought is, in its essence, immoral. Our task let it be then to foster this ardour, to enhance and embellish it; let us constantly strive to acquire deeper faith in the greatness of man, in his strength and his destiny; or, we might equally say, in his bitterness, weakness, and wretchedness; for to be loftily wretched is no less soul-quickening than it is to be loftily happy. After all, it matters ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Assumption in the Baroncelli Chapel, in the Santa Croce; and the fourth, turning his back, is David Ghirlandajo. These real personages are so managed, that, while they are not themselves actors, they do not interfere with the main action, but rather embellish and illustrate it, like the chorus in a Greek tragedy. Every single figure in this fine fresco is a study for manly character, dignified ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... have in this Character of Falstaff, not only a free Course of Humour, supported and embellish'd with admirable Wit; but this Humour is of a Species the most jovial and gay in all Nature.—Sir Jobn Falstaff possesses Generosity, Chearfulness, Alacrity, Invention, Frolic and Fancy superior to all other Men;—The Figure ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... near four months; and, though love was not the basis of my fidelity, honour, and a refined sense of feminine rectitude, attached me to the interest as well as to the person of my husband. I considered chastity as the brightest ornament that could embellish the female mind, and I regulated my conduct to that tenor which has principle more than affection to ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... mere identity of subject. The Assumption of the Virgin also offers very notable differences. The predella at Cortona is more intense and severe, more simple and hence more grand; while the little panel in the Uffizi shows that the effort to embellish the scene has been too much for the artist, and the intensity of sentiment is greatly lessened, being injured by useless accessories. In that of Cortona, on the contrary, the figures of the Apostles who hold the sheet on which the Virgin reposes are full of expression and natural ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... merely MY stupid idea of a very simple story she was once kind enough to tell me when we were talking of strange occurrences in real life, which she thought I might some time make use of in my work. I tried to embellish it, and failed. That's all. I will take it back,—it was written only ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... and senses: it was only of late that she had developed the subtle quality which calls up thoughts of love. Not marry? Why, the vagrant fire had just lighted on her—and the fact that she was poor and unattached, with her own way to make, and no setting of pleasure and elegance to embellish her—these disadvantages seemed as nothing to Amherst against the warmth of personality in which she moved. And besides, she would never be drawn to the kind of man who needed fine clothes and luxury to point him to the charm of sex. She was always finished and graceful in appearance, with ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... present to Your Majesties the homage of our respects, and to thank you for the noble present you have made to our land in the person of your illustrious daughter, Madame, Duchess of Berry. May the future Queen of Spain long embellish the throne on which she is about to take her seat, and reign over the hearts of her new subjects as her heroic sister reigns over ours. Long live the ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... all the streams of eloquence. If we have executed all other parts to advantage, here we take possession of the minds of the judges, and having escaped all rocks, may expand all our sails for a favorable gale; and as amplification makes a great part of the peroration, we then may raise and embellish our style with the choicest expressions and brightest thoughts. And, indeed, the conclusion of a speech should bear some resemblance to that of tragedy and comedy, wherein the actor courts the spectator's applause. In other parts the passions may be touched upon, as they ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... Johnstone and Emery displayed abilities of the very first rate in the two characters they represented in "John Bull."—But to the author of "John Bull," whose genius may be animated to still higher exertions in the pursuit of fame, it may be said—Leave the distortion of language to men who cannot embellish it ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... little man" in stature, comprehends all that is hypocritical and wicked. The great man, James Merrill, who is the subject of this note, by the above rule is of course, the most honorable, best informed and religious man of the whole group, who embellish the fair pages of that "book." It is proper that the public should know a little of his debut and ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... happier free than slaves. God forbid that I should so have read my Bible. But such cases as Susan's do occur, and far oftener than the raw-head and bloody-bones' stories with which Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe has seen fit to embellish that interesting ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... interest. There is no science in the personal study of human nature. All comprehension is creation; the woman I love is somewhat of my handiwork; and the great lover, like the great painter, is he that can so embellish his subject as to make her more than human, whilst yet by a cunning art he has so based his apotheosis on the nature of the case that the woman can go on being a true woman, and give her character free play, and show littleness, or cherish spite, or be greedy of common pleasures, and he continue ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there might be seen how much of life was left. Inferiority is ever sceptical and self-satisfied; it is only given to the really wise to know how much lies hidden from their view. Though the scope and object of all the imitative arts is the same, to dignify, elevate, and embellish nature—though the beauty of the ideal is the aim of the musician, equally as it is the aspiration of the poet, painter, and the sculptor, the character of these pursuits is in some respects essentially different. In the latter, material objects are imitated and embellished, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... the antiquities of Vienne, antiently called Vienna Allobrogum. It was a Roman colony, and a considerable city, which the antients spared no pains and expence to embellish. It is still a large town, standing among several hills on the banks of the Rhone, though all its former splendor is eclipsed, its commerce decayed, and most of its antiquities are buried in ruins. The church of Notre Dame de la Vie was undoubtedly a temple. On the left of the road, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... acquisitive turn of mind, despite his quaintness, recognised the fact that if he was not of the twentieth century the volume obviously was; seized pen and paper, and began to make notes with the speed of lightning. Being also something of a draughtsman he was able to embellish his notes with sketches from the engravings with which "Past Dictates of Fashion" was copiously furnished. These sketches appear ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... profound, allows he won't call it. Thar shall be peace between the Apache an' the paleface to the no'th'ard of that line. Then the Grey Fox an' Cochise shakes hands an' says "How!" an' Cochise, with a bolt or two of red calico wherewith to embellish his squaws, goes squanderin' back to his people, permeated to the toes ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... eagerness roused the hope that perhaps here they might find something with which to embellish a story in which, so far, they had uncovered little to add to that of yesterday. But first they must know who this lovely ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... see it is of no use to oppose her. For my part, I think her papa has acted wisely in permitting the engagement. Contradiction would embellish her hero; while, left to him, she will soon find him out. I do not concern myself, for Miss Martindale can get over a little ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were surely not exclusively dependent on him for this description of help, nor laid under any extraordinary obligation by reason of it. Whilst the "Lives of the Poets" was in progress, Dr. Johnson "would frequently produce one of the proof sheets to embellish the breakfast table, which was always in the library, and was certainly the most sprightly and agreeable meeting of the day." ... "These proof sheets Mrs. Thrale was permitted to read aloud, and the discussions to which they led were in the highest ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... hear of something that he did not have to understand that he was quite the happiest of the family whose parental heads embellish this chapter. Indeed it was necessary for the photographer to ask Rollo to please not look so pleasant before the picture could be taken. Mr. Bishop, the photographer, was anxious to take separate pictures of each, even ...
— Rollo in Society - A Guide for Youth • George S. Chappell
... usefulness or necessity, as in baths, amphitheaters, circuses, obelisks, triumphal pillars, arches, and mausoleums; for what they added to the aqueducts was rather to supply their baths and naumachias, and to embellish the city with fountains, than out of any real necessity there ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... govern governor, gubernatorial wages, salary nice, exquisite haughty, arrogant letter, epistle pursue, prosecute use, utility use, utilize rival, competitor male, masculine female, feminine beauty, esthetics beauty, pulchritude beautify, embellish poison, venom vote, franchise vote, suffrage taste, gust tasteful, gustatory tasteless, insipid flower, floral count, compute cowardly, pusillanimous tent, pavilion money, finance monetary, pecuniary trace, vestige face, countenance turn, revolve bottle, vial grease, lubricant oily, unctuous revive, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... heart, concerning a celebrated minister of Louis XVI. According to the sacred formula delivered by the "Debats" from 1810 to 1814, in praise of these glorious words, Gourdon's ode "borrowed fresh charms from poesy to embellish the tale." ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... produced in two distinct ways. One is to let every individual thread work alternately taffeta and float, while in the other method one thread weaves always taffeta, and a second thread is used for the cannele exclusively. These latter threads must come from a separate warp, which is introduced to embellish the ground or taffeta ...
— Theory Of Silk Weaving • Arnold Wolfensberger
... He was constructing vast works to embellish and improve the empire. Thousands of workmen were employed in cutting magnificent roads across the Alps. He was watching with intensest interest the growth of fortifications and the excavation of canals. He was in the possession of absolute power, was surrounded ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... prettily bound, called "Beauties of Ruskin," and who have substituted for the out-of-fashion "Daily Food" books, painted bits of cardboard with sweet sayings culled from popular idols of the day, with which they embellish the walls of their offices and bedrooms, in the hope that they may hoist themselves into a more hallowed frame of mind. This is the class—always with us, though more prosperous than the poor—who prefer a cut bouquet to the ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... least I wish it may be less spoken. Yet I love its artless and picturesque expressions, its lively recollections of customs and manners which have long ceased to exist, like those old ruins which still embellish our landscape. But the tendency which is gradually effacing the vestiges of our old language and customs is but the tendency ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... Mrs. B., and I had a pleasant drive in Hyde Park, as I used to read of heroines of romance doing in the old novels. It is delightful to get into this fairyland of parks, so green and beautiful, which embellish the West End. ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... competition lined the corridors, and discontent sat glum or rustled uneasily in each stone cell. Some of the inmates brought pictures, busts and ornaments to embellish their rooms. Friends from the outside world sent presents; the cavalier who played the guitar beneath the window varied his entertainment by gifts; flowers filled the beautiful vases, and these blossoms ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... exceeded my construction, Sir John, and I beg leave to amend my plea. All I mean is, that the leading consideration in this interview, is a monikin interest—that we are met to propound, explain, digest, animadvert on, and embellish a monikin theme—that the accessory must be secondary to the principal—that the lesser must merge, not in your sense, but in my sense, in ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... like a gentleman—very much like a gentleman—rather exorbitantly. That's the way a gentleman always pays. So now suppose you return to your own sort and coyly reappear amid certain circles recently neglected, and which, at one period of your career, you permitted yourself to embellish and adorn with your ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... deliverers of the Holy Sepulchre. To the rapacious and profligate she offered the plunder of fertile plains and wealthy cities. Unhappily, the ingenious and polished inhabitants of the Languedocian provinces were far better qualified to enrich and embellish their country than to defend it. Eminent in the arts of peace, unrivalled in the "gay science," elevated above many vulgar superstitions, they wanted that iron courage, and that skill in martial exercises, which distinguished the chivalry of the region beyond ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... education, language or religion. I now proceed to show, that these circumstances have engendered towards the colonists in the, mass of the Mexican nation, feelings of unconquerable jealousy and hostility. Yes! our superiority in enterprise, in learning, in the arts and in all that can dignify life, or embellish human nature, instead of exciting in them a laudable ambition to emulate, to equal, or excel us—excites the most hateful of all the passions—envy—and has caused them to endeavor for years past, by an unremitting ...
— Texas • William H. Wharton
... Arthur, he tells us, have been recounted so often that they have become fables. "Not all lies, nor all true, all foolishness, nor all sense; so much have the storytellers told, and so much have the makers of fables fabled to embellish their stories that they have made all seem fable." [4] He omits the prophecies of Merlin from his narrative, because he does not understand them. "I am not willing to translate his book, because I do not know how to interpret it. I would say nothing that ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... Perfect. Built by that only Law, that Use be suggester of Beauty; Nothing concealed that is, done, but all things done to adornment; Meanest utilities seized as occasions to grace and embellish.'" ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... permission to enquire after her health the next day; he came, he was enchanting; polite, lively, soft, insinuating, adorned with every outward grace which could embellish virtue, or hide vice from view, to see and to love him was almost the ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... not to be realized, for greater triumphs still than those she had enjoyed in Italy awaited Bonaparte in Paris. The days of quietude, and the pleasures of home, which Josephine so much loved, and which she so well understood how to embellish with friendships and joys, were now forever past away. Placed at the side of a hero whose fame already filled all Europe, she could no longer calculate upon living in modest retirement, as she would have wished to do: it was her lot to share his burden of glory, as she also was illumined ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... manes! may they enjoy more repose, than that troubled world which their extraordinary, yet different talents seemed equally destined to embellish and to embroil, though it would be difficult to name any two modern writers, who have expressed, with more eloquence, a cordial love of peace, and a zealous desire to promote ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... in his garret. She was about the middle height, still slight but beautifully formed; that exquisite roundness of proportion, which conveys so well the idea of woman, in its undulating pliant grace—formed to embellish life, and soften away its rude angles—formed to embellish, not to protect. Her face might not have satisfied the critical eye of an artist—it was not without defects in regularity; but its expression ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... without saying that such linguistic phenomena are often observed in the case of children and uneducated people. Not long ago the writer was urged by a gardener to embellish his garden with a ruskit arch. When metathesis extends beyond one word we have what is known as a Spoonerism, the original type of which ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... contrary, words exact and truthful in themselves seem always too thrilling, too great for the subject; seem to embellish it unduly. I feel as if I were acting, for my own benefit, some wretchedly trivial and third-rate comedy; and whenever I try to consider my home in a serious spirit, the scoffing figure of M. Kangourou rises up before me, the matrimonial ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... that for my own part I was thoroughly uneasy during the Old Boys' second innings, when Raffles made a selfish score, instead of standing by me to tell his own story in his own way. There was never any knowing with what new detail he was about to embellish it: and I have still to receive full credit for the tact that it required to follow his erratic lead convincingly. Seldom have I been more thankful than when our train started next morning, and the poor, unsuspecting ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... happy children, clambering about its crumbling top; little knots of men too in the road beyond—evidently expecting something. Even this is in keeping with the poet's grave, which should not be sombre and melancholy, like other graves; and what could better embellish and enliven its aspect than young, blushing life clustering around it? We linger awhile among the boisterous children playing on the churchyard wall, and then we hear a confused sound of voices ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... council of Newcastle ordered a sweet stop to be added to the organ. This was after Avison became organist, his appointment to that post having been in 1736. So we know that he at least had a "trumpet stop" and a "sweet stop," with which to embellish his organ playing. ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... in Odes and Epic Poems, are not introduced only to illustrate and embellish the Discourse, but to amuse and relax the Mind of the Reader, by frequently disengaging him from too painful an Attention to the Principal Subject, and by leading him into other agreeable Images. Homer, says he, excelled ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... mode of propagating it is by slips, or cuttings. As it is a small, shewy, hardy plant, and not disposed to over-run others, it is very suitable to embellish rock-work. ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. V - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... them to their home, and which can preserve them from the miseries of dissipation. Every sedentary occupation must be valuable to those who are to lead sedentary lives; and every art, however trifling in itself, which tends to enliven and embellish domestic life, must be advantageous, not only to the female sex, but to society in general. As far as accomplishments can contribute to all or any of these excellent purposes, they must be just objects of attention in ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... building the Ark, his embarking himself and all Nature's Stock for a new World on board it; the long Voyage they took, and the bad Weather they met with, tho' it would embellish this Work very well, and come in very much to the Purpose in this Place, yet as it does not belong to the Devil's Story, for I cannot prove what some suggest (viz.) that he was in the Ark among the Rest, I say, for that ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... intended Magnificence, and on their return from the Mosque, the Prince and Princess repair'd to a stately Scaffold, adorn'd with inventive Luxury, whence they might behold a Tournament, the Prize of which was a Sword richly embellish'd with Diamonds, to be given by the Princess to him that should overcome; the whole Court were there, endeavouring to outshine each other in the Costliness of their Apparel—within the Barriers were all the Flower of the adjoining Kingdoms, ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... Leicester Museum a very fine collection of the whole of the "British" Birds (totally devoid, however of a history of the specimens) called the "Bickley Collection"—bequeathed to the town under these conditions—which, could we have used it to embellish our present arrangement, would have saved money, and, what is still more important, the entire wall space of a small room now devoted to them.] It is far better to forego the possession even of a valuable series of specimens than ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... purling of your brooks. If sometimes I amuse myself in contemplating their anxious motions, I receive the same pleasure which you do in observing those men who cultivate your land; for I reflect that the end of all their labours is to embellish the city which I inhabit, and to anticipate all my wants. If you contemplate with delight the fruits of your orchards, with all the rich promises of abundance, do you think I feel less in observing so many fleets that convey to me the productions of either India? What ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... thrilling stories of the gentle ANNIE'S fierce exploits and deeds of daring. Among the best authenticated of these (stripped of the ornate figures of speech with which the pious newsboys are wont to embellish the simple facts) ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various
... streams and waterfalls; valleys and plateaus that spring into life when pricked by the harrow of the husbandman; forests of big trees, perpetually green, to adorn and protect; the greatest of oceans to temper with its breezes; inland seas and azure lakes to embellish and attract—such are a few of the elements that make the State of Washington and provide beauteous ...
— The Beauties of the State of Washington - A Book for Tourists • Harry F. Giles
... ideas. She had sent her 'Yseult la Blonde' to "Darling," with a letter inviting her to spend a month with her at Fiesole. She had written: "Come; you will see the most beautiful things in the world, and you will embellish them." ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 'I got POWER.' Nor is his delight only in the possession, but in the exercise. He rejoices in the crooked and violent paths of kingship like a strong man to run a race, or like an artist in his art. To feel, to use his power, to embellish his island and the picture of the island life after a private ideal, to milk the island vigorously, to extend his singular museum—these employ delightfully the sum of his abilities. I never saw a man more patently in ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mitre, the thurible, is a fulfillment of some dream of childhood, or aspiration of youth. Such poets as are born under her shadow, she takes into her service, she sets them to write hymns, or to compose chants, or to embellish shrines, or to determine ceremonies, or to marshal processions; nay, she can even make schoolmen of them, as she made St. Thomas, ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... if the Arabian Princess had recourse to genii, talismans, and monsters, to adorn her narratives, neither was Mrs. Dymock without her marvellous apparatus; for she had her ghosts, her good people, her dwarfs, and dreadful visions of second sight, wherewith to embellish her histories. There was a piety too, a reference in all she said to the pleasure and will of a reconciled God, which added great charms to her narratives, and rendered them peculiarly interesting to the little girl. Whilst Tamar was under her seventh year, ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... providing for their wants, the same minute and endless beauty of colour and of form,—you cannot but acknowledge the vastness and the magnificence of the Maker. In the same manner the flowers and shrubs, which embellish, as they cover the earth, are not all so much for use, as they are for ornament. What human ingenuity can approach to the perfection of the meanest effort of the Almighty hand? Has it not been pointed out in the Scriptures, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... nocturne; a dance, a ballada; a round dance, a rounde or rondo; a country love song, a pastorella. Even the words descant and treble go back to their time; for the jongleurs, singing their masters' songs, would not all follow the same melody; one of them would seek to embellish it and sing something quite different that still would fit well with the original melody, just as nowadays, in small amateur bands we often hear a flute player adding embellishing notes to his part. Soon, more than one ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... thirst-provoking sauce She brought them also in a brazen tray, Garlic[20] and honey new, and sacred meal. Beside them, next, she placed a noble cup Of labor exquisite, which from his home 760 The ancient King had brought with golden studs Embellish'd; it presented to the grasp Four ears; two golden turtles, perch'd on each, Seem'd feeding, and two turtles[21] form'd the base. That cup once fill'd, all others must have toil'd 765 To move it from the board, but it was light In Nestor's hand; he lifted it with ease.[22] ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... new details to his story, finding something to embellish it and heighten the effect, and now having succeeded in getting the false Iris into the house, he began already to devise schemes to ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... round him lowers, The charms of contrast wing his hours, And every scene embellish:— From prison, City, care set free, He tastes his present liberty With ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... to embellish his canvas, disfigured hitherto by an injudicious selection of models; a virtuous wife to be his crown; a prudent wife to save him from ruin; a cheerful wife to sustain his spirits, drooping at times by virtue of his artist's temperament; ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... author has been to throw over labor, home and agricultural life, their true dignity and charm; to introduce the farmer to the delights and privileges of his lot; to embellish the cares of toil with those kindly sentiments so naturally associated with the country and its employments. It is a pleasant book—one that will enliven the fireside, elevate and purify the thoughts, and, at the same time, impart a great deal of valuable agricultural knowledge. We know not how ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... side, to ask how she did, his cloaths appear'd adorn'd with such variety of dazling Colours, that she was fain presently to command him to withdraw, but the Images in her Hangings, did, for many daies after, appear to her, if the Room were not extraordinarily darken'd, embellish'd with several offensively vivid Colours, which no body else could see in them; And when I enquir'd whether or no White Objects did not appear to her adorn'd with more luminous Colours than others, and whether she saw not some which she could not now well describe ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... trouble of sowing, digging and harvesting to live, and thus deserve not to lack that bread which they have sown." This description, eloquently written by La Bruyere, has been quoted by a hundred authors. Some have used it to embellish their books with a sensational paragraph; others, and they are many, to show from what wretchedness the French nation has been delivered by ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... I extend my thanks to the distinguished ladies who have had the kindness to honor and embellish our tables with their presence; and permit me to invite you to drink with them and with me, hoping that the national harmonizing of individual rights and just liberties, which is called the United States of America, may be perpetuated in its increasing ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... mention what are the spring crops which now in a luxuriance not known for many years, from fine falls of rain in due season, embellish the surface over ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... neither a spiritual nor an artistic age. The novel was in its infancy; and as if a "true story" was more worthy of respect than an invention, it received from Defoe an air of verisimilitude and is usually based on some real events. He is careful to embellish his fictions with little bits of realism. Thus, Moll Flanders gives an inventory of the goods she took to America, and in the 'History of the Plague' Defoe adds a note to his description of a burial-ground:—"N.B. The author of this Journal lies ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... thought would be, that a good musician must be a good lover; that a broken heart alone can add the Master's degree to the usual conservatory diploma of Bachelor of Music; that all musicians must be sentimental, if musicians at all; and finally that only musicians can know how to announce and embellish that primeval theme to which all existence is but variations, more or less brilliant, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... slight difference between Me and my epic brethren gone before, And here the advantage is my own, I ween (Not that I have not several merits more, But this will more peculiarly be seen); They so embellish, that 't is quite a bore Their labyrinth of fables to thread through, Whereas this story 's ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Hugh Miller's "First Impressions of England," and Wm. Howitt's "Homes of the Poets" (1846), Vol. I. pp. 258-63. The last gives an engraving of the house and grounds. Miller, who was at Hagley—"The British Tempe"-and the Leasowes just a century after Shenstone began to embellish his paternal acres, says that the Leasowes was the poet's most elaborate poem, "the singularly ingenious composition, inscribed on an English hillside, which employed for twenty long years the taste and ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... abroad, in the studio of the painter or engraver. Had his natural talents, which were strong and elastic, been cultivated in early life, he would, in all probability, have attained a considerable reputation. How he loved to embellish—almost to satiety—a favourite work, may be seen by consulting a subsequent page towards the end of this volume. He planned and published the Physiognomical Portraits, a performance not divested of interest—but failing in general success, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... bewitching simplicity of character; but, in the cities, they have all the airs and ignorance of the ladies who give the tone to the circles of the large trading towns in England. They are fond of their ornaments, merely because they are good, and not because they embellish their persons; and are more gratified to inspire the women with jealousy of these exterior advantages, than the men with love. All the frivolity which often (excuse me, Madam) renders the society of modest women ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... educate their hands as well as their heads. Man is an animal very fond of construction of any sort; and a wise teacher, knowing the happiness that flows from handiwork, will seize upon opportunities for teaching even the most trivial accomplishments of a manual kind. They will come in, hereafter, to embellish a man's home, and to endear it to him. They will occupy time that would, otherwise, be ill spent. And, besides, there are many persons whose cleverness lies only in this way; and you have to ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... behold the cities of Strasburg and Frankfort, Friendly Mannheim, too, that is cheerful and evenly builded. He that has once beheld cities so cleanly and large, never after Ceases his own native city, though small it may be, to embellish. Do not the strangers who come here commend the repairs in our gateway, Notice our whitewashed tower, and the church we have newly rebuilded? Are not all praising our pavement? the covered canals full of water, Laid with a wise distribution, which furnish us profit ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... whose delightful compositions, somewhat in the "Hugh Thomson" manner, embellish several volumes of Messrs. Macmillan's Cranford series, has illustrated also "The Parachute," and "English Fairy and Folk Tales," by E. S. Hartland (1893), and also supplied two pictures to that most fascinating volume ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... common, was a doctor—had been to adopt the medical profession. Curiously enough, my brother also had a taste for caricaturing, and, like the illustrious John Leech in his medical student days, he was wont to embellish his notes in the hospital lecture-room with pictorial jeux d'esprit of a livelier cast than those for which scope is usually afforded by the discourses of the learned ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... judicious line—and kept it: no hankering after Mayfair, no talking about "Lord this" and "Lady that," to commercial gentlewomen; no amphibiousness. She accepted her place in society, reserving the right to embellish it with the graces she had gathered in a higher sphere. In her home, and in her person, she was little less elegant than a countess; yet nothing more than a merchant-captain's wife; and she reared that commander's children ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... of Louis de Maele, his son-in-law Philip the Hardy, Duke of Burgundy, assumed the government of Flanders. In the same year Philip founded the Carthusian Convent at Dijon and employed a Flemish painter named Melchin Broederlam to embellish two great shrines within it. To the strong-handed policy of Philip and his successors during the ensuing century may be attributed the rise of Netherlandish art which, though existing before their time, required their vigorous repression of intestine ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... garret. She was about the middle height, still slight, but beautifully formed; that exquisite roundness of proportion which conveys so well the idea of woman, in its undulating, pliant grace,—formed to embellish life, and soften away its rude angles; formed to embellish, not to protect. Her face might not have satisfied the critical eye of an artist,—it was not without defects in regularity; but its expression was eminently gentle and prepossessing; ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... manumission in the inn; the reed was still. And yet, to do him justice, there was even then the frank and suave exterior; no boorish awkward silence in his ancient gossips made him lose his jocularity; he continued to embellish his conversation with morals based on ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... standing over them? Does not every officer wear a sword instead of a cane? You live and move among twenty-four-pounders. White-Jacket; the very cannon-balls are deemed an ornament around you, serving to embellish the hatchways; and should you come to die at sea, White-Jacket, still two cannon-balls would bear you company when you would be committed to the deep. Yea, by all methods, and devices, and inventions, you are ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville |
