"Extravagant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... now the honour to submit the work to your Lordship, with the dedication; from which the duty I owe to his Majesty, and, if I may be permitted to add anything to that, the duty I owe to myself, have concurred to exclude the servile, extravagant, and indiscriminate adulation which has so often disgraced alike those by whom it has been given ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Gilbert was dead. In his mind, Henry could see him, careless, extravagant, always good-tempered and sometimes strangely wise and understanding ... and he could not believe that he would never see him again, that all that youth and generosity and promise should be turned so untimely to corruption. Gilbert's friends would not even know where his grave was ... ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... to live together, except where the welfare of their children comes in to override their desire to separate, and now we have to consider what may or may not be for the welfare of the children. Mr. Shaw, following the late Samuel Butler, meets this difficulty by the most extravagant abuse of parents. He would have us believe that the worst enemies a child can have are its mother and father, and that the only civilised path to citizenship is by the incubator, the creche, and the mixed school and college. In these matters he is not only ignorant, but ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... line. I had a letter the other day giving me a fearful scorching because of a speech I made in which I said that we women have Mr. Hoover looking into our refrigerators, examining our bread to see what kind of materials we are using, telling us what extravagant creatures we are, that we waste millions of money every year, waste food and all that sort of thing, and yet while we are asked to have meatless days and wheatless days, I have never yet seen a demand for a smokeless day! They are asking through the newspapers that we women shall dance, play bridge, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... power, indeed, as was in a manner equal to the power of the tyrant himself, by the dread that all men had of him, and by the great riches he had acquired; for he took bribes most plenteously, and committed injuries without bounds, and was more extravagant in the use of his power in unjust proceedings than any other. He also knew the disposition of Caius to be implacable, and never to be turned from what he had resolved on. He had withal many other reasons why he thought himself in danger, and the vastness of his wealth ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... assure you Tom would not have been in the least offended by the preference. Indeed, he would have assured you that Tiger was a most wonderful dog, and knew as much as any two boys, though this might be called extravagant. ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... people. King Charles landed amidst the acclamations of an infinite multitude from the neighbouring towns and villages, who threw themselves at his feet, exclaiming, "Long live the king!" and exhibiting all the marks of the most extravagant joy. The inhabitants of Barcelona were well affected to the house of Austria, but overawed by a garrison of five thousand men under the duke de Popoli, Velasco, and other officers devoted to the interest of king Philip. Considering the strength of such a garrison, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... by intellectual success likewise. I trust that these words may reassure those parents, if any such there be here, who may fear that these lectures will withdraw women from their existing sphere of interest and activity. That they should entertain such a fear is not surprising, after the extravagant opinions and schemes which have been lately broached ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... counsellor who had shut up the Exchequer and urged on the Dutch war. The whole political drama was of the same cast. No unity of plan, no decent propriety of character and costume, could be found in that wild and monstrous harlequinade. The whole was made up of extravagant transformations and burlesque contrasts; Atheists turned Puritans; Puritans turned Atheists; republicans defending the divine right of kings; prostitute courtiers clamouring for the liberties of the people; judges inflaming the rage of mobs; patriots pocketing bribes ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was a generous and almost extravagant monarch; but his enormous private wealth was sufficient even for so luxurious a prince. The inheritance which had made his reign stable and pleasant he secured for his son, strictly stipulating that it was ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... would ask you to say anything you could n't say with a clear conscience?" Susanna demanded, with a glance of reproach. "So, with a clear conscience, you go on: 'Your cousin is fantastic, unreasonable, sentimental, romantic, extravagant. And—to come to the point—she has got it into her unreasonable and romantic little head that she has no right to the position which she occupies. She has studied the history of her family, and she has got it into her perverse little head that by the changes which took place in ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... any mortal being, nor even so much as many in the humble walks of life who are devoted to their God. Let us look at his behavior and scan its effects on society. One day while in New York was spent in riding through the streets preceded by an extravagant number of military men and musicians, who were kept in exercise on that and succeeding days of the week until all were completely exhausted. On the next day, while he and his party were revelling in their tents on luxuries and the all-debasing ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... at some person unseen, and the other inmates of the room could see him making extravagant pantomime, which produced nothing ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... Puss-in-Boots, after the nuptials of his master, Jackeymo only now caught minnows and sticklebacks for his own amusement. Jackeymo looked much plumper, and so did Riccabocca. In a word, the fair Jemima became an excellent wife. Riccabocca secretly thought her extravagant, but, like a wise man, declined to look at the house bills, and ate ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... there is much that is plausible to be said on both sides of the question. Another query to be noticed in passing is in regard to the degree of exclusiveness and concealment really attached to the form of initiation. Lobeck, in his celebrated work, "Aglaophamus," borne away by a theory, assumes the extravagant position that the Eleusinian Mysteries were almost freely open to all.1 His error seems to lie in not distinguishing sufficiently between the Lesser and the Greater Mysteries, and in not separating the noisy shows of the public ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... "I don't know, Stephen. We're short of money, you know, and the fund is dwindling every day. Don't you think it's a little extravagant to have a turkey for two people? And somehow I don't feel a bit Christmassy. I think I'd rather spend it just like any other day and try to forget that it is Christmas. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... effect. Columbus was even accused of a design to cast off all allegiance to Spain, and either make himself sovereign of the countries he had discovered, or yield them into the hands of some other power: a slander which, however extravagant, was calculated to startle the jealous ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... contain himself no longer, and vented his satisfaction at the success of the enterprise in the most violent and extraordinary manner. He laughed till his eyes were filled with tears, and had nearly upset the overloaded boat by his extravagant demonstrations. ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... Emma and I came to Dunchester and took up our abode in a quaint red-brick house of the Queen Anne period, which we hired for a not extravagant rent of 80 pounds a year. Although the position of this house was not fashionable, nothing could have been more suitable from a doctor's point of view, as it stood in a little street near the market-place and absolutely in the centre of the city. Moreover, it ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... Varney gave a strange smile as he spoke, and shook his head, as if some most extraordinary and extravagant proposition had been mooted, which it was scarcely worth the while of anybody possessed of common sense to set ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... got into still more hilly and wild country. All signs of cultivation had ceased, and vegetation revelled in the most extravagant profusion. Our chief difficulty was to avoid the prickly pears, and the cacti, and the noose-forming creepers, which extended across our path. We were in the advance party; the rest of the white men followed at a distance ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... my dear," answered Mrs Latrobe, "you will not make extravagant speeches. There might be not another man in the world, that you should go into such a frenzy. We shall yet find you a ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... good, easy, rattling, gentlemanly fellow, and nobody's enemy but his own. His wife, they say, is dreadfully extravagant: and, indeed, since his marriage, and in spite of his wife's large income, he has been in the Bench several times; but she signs some bills and he comes out again, and is as gay and genial as ever. All mercantile speculations ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... man of large promises and few works. His popularity was great among a certain class. He was extravagant in his generosity, and as long as he had anything would divide it with his so-called friends, but never was a man of any administrative or military talent, and latterly, through the irritation caused by his unhealed wound and other causes, he was subject to ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... flashy people. You know one customer attracts her friends and so on. There is every class there from the demi-monde up to actresses and really truly society. And they have things for all prices from the comparatively cheap to the most extravagant. They're very accommodating and, in ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... they had had to content themselves with borrowing all they could from him in loans which they never intended to pay back; but the day when Edmond had been packed off to India, ostensibly to buy jute but in reality as a punishment for being too extravagant and getting into debt, the two women had schemed to take advantage of the situation. On each side they had made every preparation so that each could have her son alone, at any moment, take the place of ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... do, and nothing to wish for, she naturally imagined she must be ill—an impression which was most assiduously promoted by her medical attendant, Dr. Wosky, and her handmaid Agnes: both of whom, doubtless for good reasons, encouraged all her extravagant notions. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... some shattered memorials of their religion in writing, from whence the Sadder, Shaster, Vedam, and Zandavasta were compiled. These memorials seem to have been taken from antient symbols ill understood; and all that remains of them consists of extravagant allegories and fables, of which but little now can be decyphered. Upon these traditions the religion of the ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... is not true to nature—he is extravagant, high-wrought. Nobody ever met his heroes or his heroines in real life, nor lived the scenes told of in his poetry. His men and women are the men and women of an enthusiastic fancy; his scenes and incidents are the scenes and incidents of our romantic dreams. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... whom we give a complete cell, a cell filled with honey, makes no change in the order of her work: she builds first and then victuals. Only she shortens her work, her instinct warning her that the height of the cell and the quantity of honey are beginning to assume extravagant proportions. ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... he came and whispered in my ear, "Notes for 90,000 marks." It was the amount Wetter owed me with accrued interest. I was amazed. He could not have raised the money except at a most extravagant rate. I made no remark, but I knew that he had risked ruin by this repayment, and I knew well why he had made it. He would not have me for creditor as well as for king ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... the members of the House of Representatives will permit me to express the opinion that it will be impossible to deal in any but a very wasteful and extravagant fashion with the enormous appropriations of the public moneys which must continue to be made, if the war is to be properly sustained, unless the House will consent to return to its former practice of initiating and preparing all appropriation bills through ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... formed the chief subject of their inquiries of the gondoliers who conveyed them from terra firma to the floating city; and these people who are generally loquacious, were not at all backward in administering to the taste and humours of their passengers, relating to them the most extravagant and often unfounded stories. They took care to point out the house where he lived, and to give such hints of his movements as might afford them an ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... it so far now, as to address himself to all the posts in the streets, as if they were saints, lifting up his hands and eyes in a fervent though distracted manner to heaven, and making use of so many extravagant gestures, that he astonished the whole city. Going through Castle-street, he met the Rev. Mr. B—-c, a minister of that place, whom he accosted with his arms thrown round him; and insisted, in a raving manner, he should tell ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... had sent, and even to herself her story seemed too extravagant for credence. To her surprise, however, his Highness believed her ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... man upright upon another's shoulders, and in this posture marched round; sometimes they tumbled round the Sepulchre after the manner of tumblers on the stage. In a word, nothing can be imagined more rude or extravagant than what was ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... generation is sinfully extravagant. Forests, mines and soil fertility are wasted with wanton prodigality. We speak of our coal deposits and oil and gas wells as inexhaustible. We simply mean that it will be impossible for this and probably for the next generation to exhaust them. But coal mines are not inexhaustible. ...
— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst
... that the gardener got on with the local people? How was it that they stood on the road to speak with him, shouting their extravagant laughter at his keen, ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... personally conducted all the visitors about the bazaar, dilating in the extravagant oriental fashion upon the extraordinary merits of the captives he wished to turn into money. Many times he had paused before me where I stood cowering in a corner, volubly expatiating on my value and attractiveness, but hitherto not a single Turk had evinced the ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... contempt towards everybody else; the Stoical pride was a refinement upon this, but was still a grateful sentiment of superiority, which helped to make up for the surrender of indulgences. It was usual to bestow the most extravagant laudation on the 'Wise Man,' and every Stoic could take this home to the extent that he considered himself as approaching that ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... discovery that there is hardly a thing in the world of which Pope is so entirely destitute as a taste for Homer.... I remembered how we had been disgusted; how often we had sought the simplicity and majesty of Homer in his English representative, and had found instead of them puerile conceits, extravagant metaphors, and the tinsel of modern embellishment ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... liquor that does little more than muddy those intellects which in their sober state are none of the clearest; but men who are strangers to the vice of drunkenness as a habit, are more powerfully acted upon by intoxicating liquors. My spirits, once aroused, became extravagant; I talked a great deal, argued upon what I knew nothing of, told stories of which I forgot the point, then laughed immoderately at my own forgetfulness; I accepted several bets without having the least judgment; I challenged the giant John to wrestle with me, although he had kept the ring at Hexham ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... women crooned to each other in their soft voices over the bargains for babies displayed at the spring opening; factory girls compared notes, chattered, calculated, tried to resist, and ended by an extravagant choice; the German women looked and priced and bought nothing; the Hungarians had evidently spent their money on arriving. From the store window wax figures of the ideal woman, clad in latest Parisian garb, with golden hair and ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... the social and moral development of that age, and redolent of modern methodism. This, however, we mention only as an illustration, without wishing to hazard an opinion upon the justice of that criticism. But even such an anachronism is less startling and extravagant when it is confined to an ideal representation of things, than where it is practically embodied and brought into play amongst the realities of life. What would be thought of a man who should attempt, in 1833, to revive the ancient office of Fool, as it existed down to the reign, suppose, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... appearance and deportment in the office and outside always conveyed to me the suggestion that they were persons of some wealth and infinite leisure; but I have been assured that they were hard-working clerks, whose salaries, even in these simpler days, would not be deemed extravagant. These salaries, I have been told, worked out at an average of perhaps L120 or ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... one of the undying names in literature would hardly be extravagant. Not that I would endow Ariel with the stature and sinews of a Titan; this were to miss his distinctive qualities: delicacy, elegance, charm. He belongs to a category of writers who are more read and probably will ever exercise greater influence than some of greater ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... that hers was a nature incomprehensible to me in some respects. The soul of Karamaneh was a closed book to my short-sighted Western eyes. But the body of Karamaneh was exquisite; her beauty of a kind that was a key to the most extravagant rhapsodies of Eastern poets. Her eyes held a challenge wholly Oriental in its appeal; her lips, even in repose, were a taunt. And, herein, East is ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... about 400 B.C., during which period he wrote his history of Persia, and an account of India, which Professor Wilson, in a paper read to the Ashmolean Society of Oxford, has shown to contain notices of the natural productions of the country, "which, although often extravagant and absurd, are, nevertheless, founded ...
— On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art • James Mactear
... completely detach them, and give a due portion of fat to each. If you wish to be more economical, you must begin at the knuckle and gradually work onward, leaving a better appearance than when cut in the middle. A more extravagant method is by scooping a hole in the middle, and cutting circular slices round, on the principle of keeping the meat moist and retaining the gravy. This is ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... of primitive lawlessness recall at once to our attention the condition of affairs at some of our universities, colleges, and larger schools. The secret societies and student-organizations, with their initiations, feasts, and extravagant demonstrations, their harassing of the uninitiated, their despisal of municipal, collegiate, even parental authority, and their oftentime contempt and disregard of all social order, their not infrequent ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... to the king (June 30, 1598) a complaint against the conduct of the new governor, Francisco Tello: the latter has contracted an unlawful marriage, and is also very licentious; he has seized the property of a citizen; and he is cowardly, extravagant and reckless, even wasting the public stores for his own uses. Benavides asks that Luis Dasmarinas be appointed governor in Tello's place. A postscript to this letter (dated July 5) complains of the wrongs done to the Chinese by the Spanish officials, and for details refers the king to Fray Diego ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... authority of their professors and other men of learning. If a medical student would say, "I do not believe in microbes nor in contagion by disease germs," that would not kill the germs nor protect him against contagion. Nor would it show his superior wisdom, but rather his extravagant conceit and ignorance. So with those ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... been extravagant, and is said to be embarrassed; the truth is, sir, that the man values not your daughter, but the property to which he thinks he will become entitled, and which I have no doubt will be very welcome to his necessities. ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... spirit a poem, consisting of several stanzas, in four lines, in alternate rhyme, which he said he had composed some years before, on occasion of a rich, extravagant young gentleman's coming of age; saying he had never repeated it but once since he composed it, and had given but one copy of it. That copy was given to Mrs. Thrale, now Piozzi, who has published it in a Book which she entitles British Synonymy[1255], but ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... in old Rome, and the people spent extravagant sums on amusements and public celebrations," their guide told her. "One of the greatest of all the triumphs was given in honor of Julius Caesar, when he returned from conquering the Gauls. He wrote an account of his wars with those barbarians which ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... only hearsay evidence to give. They had heard this and that report, they suspected something else, they had been told that certain things had been said or done. Nothing definite could be obtained, and there was no proof whatever of any of the extravagant and incredible charges. Similar proceedings took place in Lincoln and York, and also in Scotland and Ireland; and in all places the results were the same, and the matter dragged ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... shortly. "You don't sound so keen, somehow. Don't know if I can afford a Marlowe or not. You've a pretty extravagant taste in automobiles. Only one of 'em higher ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... see it; as an extraordinary, quixotic act, to be wondered at blankly, or, perhaps, to be almost angrily condemned. She stood away from her own impulsive, enthusiastic nature, and stared at it critically—as even her friends had often stared—and realized that it was unusual, perhaps extravagant, perhaps sometimes preposterous. This readiness to sacrifice—was it not rather slavish than regally loyal? This forgetfulness of personal joy, this burnt-offering of personality—was it not contemptible? Could such actions bring into being the respect of others, the respect of any man? Had ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... had been used to some extent in Great Britain for heating steel and iron, but it was supposed to be too expensive. I well remember the criticisms made by older heads among the Pittsburgh manufacturers about the extravagant expenditure we were making upon these new-fangled furnaces. But in the heating of great masses of material, almost half the waste could sometimes be saved by using the new furnaces. The expenditure would have been justified, even if it had been doubled. Yet it was many years before we ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... a high degree of merit, of which he will reap the reward one day; and the demons are driven off from their prey by the drumming, the shouts, and the merit of the assembled people, to the great relief of the endangered gods. The most extravagant promises are held out to those who bathe in the Ganges, at any time in any part of it; but bathing on the occasion of an eclipse, and especially in so sacred a place as Benares, is meritorious in a degree which is incalculable. The Pundits, ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... but it was especially the animal, the giver very dimly. I alluded to our excursion—her eyes sparkled, all the details, even the most minute incidents came back to her, and she related with the utmost fluency, in a rapture of delight, a picnic with breakfast in a hut built of branches and an extravagant quantity of wine—which we had ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... nobody, and her fortune is made. The one who is now talked of will be as haughty as high birth can make her. She must have an allowance of a million francs a year, since she is said to be excessively extravagant; her relations must be made Dukes, Governors of provinces, and Marshals, and, in the end, will surround the King, and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... have cherished the hope, that a complete knowledge of the terms they had offered, operating on the disappointment of the extravagant hopes which had been founded on the arrival of a French fleet, would make a great impression on a large portion of the American people. This opinion induced them, before their departure, to publish a manifesto, addressed, not only to congress, but ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... simple enough. Robert was extravagant, and Ian was vicious and extravagant also. Both got into trouble. I was younger then, and severe. Robert hid nothing, Ian all he could. One day things came to a climax. In his wild way, Robert—with Jock Lawson—determined ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... felt as if I must die if I did not hold her in my arms again, and I bought a magnificent pier-glass and a splendid breakfast service in Dresden china, and sent them to her with an amorous epistle which must have made her think me either the most extravagant or the most cowardly of men. She wrote in answer that she would expect me to sup with her in her room, that she might give me the tenderest proofs ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... disputing, and purchasing, the vendor pockets the golden honey, and marches off. As dress-makers in Havana are scarce, dear, and bad, our fair friends at the hotel make up these dresses mostly themselves, and astonish their little world every day by appearing in new attire. "How extravagant!" you say. They reply, "Oh! it cost nothing for the making; I made it myself." But we remember to have heard somewhere that "Time is Money." At four in the afternoon, a negress visits in turn every bedroom, sweeps out the mosquitoes from the curtains with a feather-brush, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... whimsical manner she lavished presents upon her whenever she had a new fancy. In truth, her generosity was constitutional, and she had been generous enough toward Pamela, but she had never been so extravagant as she was with Theodora. Theodora was an actual beauty, of an uncommon type, in the face of her ignorance of manners and customs. Pamela had never, at her best, been more than ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... it was not difficult to disentangle a thread of truth here and there, or to detect under the most extravagant of these fictions, a substratum of fact. Among other significant circumstances, my father, chancing one day to see a portrait of the late minister in a shop-window at Cologne, discovered that his former visitor, the Count von Rettel, and the Baron von Bulow were one and the same person. He then ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... I don't need it," Victor interrupted, with a stroke of inspiration. "My income keeps me going all right. It is only in trifles that I am extravagant. I have inherited a taste, sir, for good ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... Their continued vogue in that department maintains the tradition that adultery is the dramatic subject par excellence, and indeed that a play that is not about adultery is not a play at all. I was considered a heresiarch of the most extravagant kind when I expressed my opinion at the outset of my career as a playwright, that adultery is the dullest of themes on the stage, and that from Francesca and Paolo down to the latest guilty couple of the school of Dumas fils, the romantic adulterers ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw
... represent a part of such a population, which was driven on by the pressure of Malays to seek a new country in which to practise its extravagant system of PADI culture, is in harmony with the probability as to the date of their immigration to the southern rivers of Borneo; for the rise and expansion of the Menangkabau Malays began in the middle of the twelfth century A.D.; and the ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... hatred have been a fertile source of these vehicles of popular feeling—which discover themselves in severe or grotesque caricatures. The French and the Spaniards mutually exhibit one another under the most extravagant figures. The political caricatures of the French in the seventeenth century are numerous. The badauds of Paris amused themselves for their losses by giving an emetic to a Spaniard, to make him render up all the towns his victories had obtained: ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... same time? What anxieties, what responsibilities, but at the same time what bliss! She did not even let Wilhelm see the whole depth of her feelings, knowing that he would not follow her in these extravagant raptures. She did not let him see her kneel two or three times a day at the altar or on her priedieu, and cover the silver Madonna del Pilar with ecstatic kisses. He knew nothing of her having sent for the priest of the diocese and ordered a number of masses. ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... but regard with fear and trembling the future possible fate of their wives and children. "The world," once said Mr. Cobden to the working men of Huddersfield, "has always been divided into two classes,—those who have saved, and those who have spent—the thrifty and the extravagant. The building of all the houses, the mills, the bridges, and the ships, and the accomplishment of all other great works which have rendered man civilized and happy, has been done by the savers, the thrifty; and those who have wasted their resources have always been their slaves. ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... water from the boiler into the teapot, turned the tap and received the scalding liquor upon his hand. Finding himself burnt, he uttered most frightful screams, and ran round the cabin making most extravagant gestures. His companions, unable to imagine what had happened to him, stared at him with mingled astonishment and fear. The surgeon hastened to interfere, but for a long time the poor Tahitian refused to ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... fed on what he vomited, and was sold in the market. The boy continued in this condition for a year, and at last reports was fast failing. Burroughs mentions a laborer at Stanton, near Bury, who ate an ordinary leg of veal at a meal, and fed at this extravagant rate for many days together. He would eat thistles and other similar herbs greedily. At times he would void worms as large as the shank of a clay-pipe, and then for a short period the bulimia ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... praying silently for the Divine mercy, never before felt to be so essential. The negroes were more demonstrative, and their loud prayers and singing of hymns continued without abatement or hindrance. The expressions of some were so extravagant and uncouth as to grate harshly on all natures possessing any refinement; but when such men as Mr. Birdsall exhorted or prayed, there were but few among the whites who did not listen reverently, and in their hearts acknowledge ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... great a degree as is possible under existing circumstances. One of the causes for the mad rush for money is the desire to excel our friends and neighbors in our manner of living, our entertainments and the like. Everyone has been trying to keep up with the most extravagant of his set: the result must, in the end, be unhappiness for all and disaster for many. What a pitiful ambition it is! How soul-lowering! How it narrows the horizon! We cannot help the poor, we cannot aid our neighbor, for, if we do, we cannot keep our places ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... back among my pillows, and wished that Lillian would return to the room. I began to wonder if Mr. Gordon's brain was not slightly turned. Surely, the fact that he had once known and loved my mother was no excuse for the extravagant attitude he ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... the only foreigner accredited. I purpose to call this struggle the battle of the Labyrinth, for "labyrinth" is the name applied to the vast system of intrenchments all through that region, and from which the Germans are being literally blasted almost foot by foot by an extravagant use of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the recherche de l'absolu in one form or another, for the hero is a wicked old person who every now and then refreshes his hold on life by immolating a virgin under a copper-bell. It is one of the most extravagant and "Monk-Lewisy" of the whole. L'Excommunie, L'Israelite, and L'Heritiere de Birague are mediaeval or fifteenth century tales of the most luxuriant kind, L'Excommunie being the best, L'Israelite the most preposterous, and L'Heritiere de Birague the dullest. But it is not nearly so ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... across an open space where, about a mile distant, the tracks of the Midland Central paralleled those of the Shelby division of the Great Northern. The young engineer again glanced at the clock. His eye brightened, into his face came the most extravagant soul of hope. It was dashed somewhat as Fogg, feeding the furnace and closing the door, leaned ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... determined that justice should take its course. It was in vain that the Gitanos exerted all their influence with the authorities in behalf of their comrade, and such influence was not slight; it was in vain that they offered extravagant sums that the punishment of death might be commuted to perpetual slavery in the dreary presidio of Ceuta; I was credibly informed that one of the richest Gitanos, by name Fruto, offered for his own share of the ransom the sum of five thousand crowns, whilst ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... lamentably show." He continues in this hard-hearted strain: but I have too much humanity to make further extracts. He admits, however, the utility of most of Hearne's publications—"of which he was forced to publish a few copies, at an extravagant subscription." The remarks of this (anonymous) writer, upon the neglect of the cultivation of ENGLISH HISTORY, and upon the want of valuable editions of OUR OLD HISTORIANS, are but too just, and cannot be too attentively perused. See Gentleman's Magazine, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... shop," said Margaret, "and nothing else save her best hat. No, my lady, we cannot be so extravagant. If you will not help me, I must e'en do the best I can. I never could understand ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... the merchant; selfish, vain, extravagant, and self-indulgent. He was engaged to Amelia Sedley, while her father was in prosperity, and Captain Dobbin induced him to marry her after the father was made a bankrupt. Happily, George fell on the field of Waterloo, or one would never vouch for his conjugal fidelity.—Thackeray, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... to worry about bird-of-paradise aigrettes and pearl pendants for herself, I'll believe she's extravagant. As long as she spends only what she can afford and bestows it all upon others, I'll not begin to ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... an arm-chair covered with cushions, devoted to the princess's use; she sank into it; Katya in pouring out the tea handed her first a cup emblazoned with a heraldic crest. The old lady put some honey in her cup (she considered it both sinful and extravagant to drink tea with sugar in it, though she never spent a farthing herself on anything), and suddenly asked in a hoarse voice, 'And what does ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... Mrs. Jervis said, I must be low in pocket, for what I had laid out; and so would have presented me with two guineas of her five; but I could not take them of her, because, poor gentlewoman, she pays old debts for her children, that were extravagant, and wants them herself. This, though, was very ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... the new. On the one hand, their economic independence is still full of conditions, and on the other hand they are in revolt against the immemorial conventions. The result is a general unrest, with many symptoms of extravagant and unintelligent revolt. One of those symptoms is the appearance of intellectual striving in women—not a striving, alas, toward the genuine pearls and rubies of the mind, but one merely toward the acquirement of ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... derived our impressions of the French people, as well as of Italian skies, from English literature. The probability was that our earliest association with the Gallic race partook largely of the ridiculous. All the extravagant anecdotes of morbid self-love, miserly epicurism, strained courtesy, and frivolous absurdity current used to boast a Frenchman as their hero. It was so in novels, plays, and after-dinner stories. Our first personal acquaintance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... termination to a flirtation which Lieutenant Stubble of the regiment had commenced with the Surgeon's wife, threatening to come down upon Stubble for the money which he had borrowed from her (for the young fellow was still of an extravagant turn) unless he broke off at once and went to the Cape on sick leave. On the other hand, she housed and sheltered Mrs. Posky, who fled from her bungalow one night, pursued by her infuriate husband, wielding ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a mild clerk, entering on the tips of his toes as if there were not enough of him to warrant so extravagant an expenditure as the use of his whole sole. Did I ring? I who had been doing nothing else for half an hour! I who had but forty-five minutes in which to eat my supper and dress for ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... instructively examine the history of literature with special attention to this fault, and we find it in all cases to have been fatal. It was fatal to the poetry of Alexandria, which closed, as you know, in an obscurity to which the title of Lycophrontic darkness has been given from the name of its most extravagant exponent. It was fatal to several highly-gifted writers of the close of the Elizabethan period, who endeavoured to give freshness to an outworn scheme of poetic ornament; I need only remind you of the impenetrable cloud or fog, by Cyril Tourneur, ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... some of the common stock, though I think you justly might, considering how much you have put into it. What, then, shall we do? Work we cannot, beg we will not; and, between you and me, we are cursedly extravagant! What remains but marriage?" ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the Middle Ages were fantastic and extravagant. The people had their chief interest in the future world, about which there could be no reality. They lived in a world of phantasms. The phantasms were dictated to them upon authority in the shape of dogmas of world philosophy and precepts of conduct. In discussing the world ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... and intriguing fancies in mind he slipped into bed and soon dozed off into dreams wilder and even more extravagant. He slept soundly and awoke with a bewildered cry when a knock came ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... the unidentified, to the engine-house, with a broader grin than ever. He managed to convey the idea that he wished to congratulate the hose-cart driver on his recovery and to apologize for having caused the accident. This he accomplished by so many extravagant gestures and explosive noises that the company was diverted for half an hour. Then they kicked him out again, and on the next day he came back grinning. How or where he lived no one knew. And then John Byrnes's nine-year-old son, Chris, who brought him ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... I think of it? So bright and delicate and becoming? It will last better than flowers; and no one can think I'm extravagant, since it ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... for David's return. He went back to his own lodging, and, taking the note out of his pocket-book, spread it before him. His first thought was that he had wared L89 on his enemy's fine clothes, and James loved gold and hated foppish, extravagant dress; his next that he had saved Andrew Starkie L89, and he knew the old usurer was quietly laughing at his folly. But worse than all was the alternative he saw as the result of his sinful purchase: if he used it to gratify his personal hatred, he deeply wounded, perhaps killed, his dearest ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... at his son steadily. "Harold," he said at last, "you know I dislike violent language, and it never has any influence with me. If I could honestly approve of this proposition of yours, I'd let you have the money; but I can't; it's extravagant and useless. But you have your Christmas check for a thousand dollars coming to you to-morrow. You can use it as you please. I never interfere with ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... my criticisms on Brougham's Bill, and has acknowledged since he came to town that it would not do at all as it now stands. The King has been delighting the Whigs, and making himself more ridiculous and contemptible by the most extravagant civilities to the new Peers—that is, to Western and about Lord Stafford. He now appears to be ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... at, and not a little despised, as an extravagant enthusiast. But those who laughed found it hard to say for what he was enthusiastic. It seemed hardly for education, when he would even do what he could sometimes to keep a pupil back! He did not care to make the best of any one! The truth was, Donal's best was so many miles a-head of theirs, ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... several arts to set up an ideal of disinterestedness, inspired by a lofty curiosity, which shall scorn nothing as insignificant, and which is ever eager after knowledge ascertained for its own sake. As it abhors the abnormal and the freakish, the superficial and the extravagant, it helps the creative artist to strive for a more classic directness and simplicity; and it guides the critic toward passionless proportion and moderation. Altho it tends toward intellectual freedom, it forces ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... he was glad to say that at present he had no announcement to make. Lady Pilkey told me she thought it very romantic—like marrying a newspaper correspondent—but I pointed to a lifelong task, with a pension attached, of teaching fat young Bengalis to draw, and asked her if she saw extravagant romance ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... exhibition. The cows came home to be milked, and there seemed but few of them after the great procession at Monks Barton. Yet Will demanded her separate praises for each beast. In the little garden he had made, budding flowers, untimely transplanted, hung their heads. But she admired with extravagant adjectives, and picked a blossom and set it in her dress. Anon the sun set, with no soft lights and shadows amidst the valley trees she knew, when sunset and twilight played hide-and-seek beside the river, but slowly, solemnly, in hard, clean, illimitable ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... that one thing I am a little concern'd for you, Tories, that your Absoloms and Achitophels, and the rest of your Grinning Satyres against the Whiggs, have this one unpardonable Fault, That the Lash is more against a David, than an Achitophel; whilst the running down of the PLOT at so extravagant a rate, savours of very little less (pardon the Expression) than ridiculing of Majesty it self, and turning all those several Royal Speeches to the Parliament on that Subject, onely into those double-tongu'd Oracles that ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... that your aristocracy may render as great a service to the extravagant plutocracy of this country as your democracy has rendered to our democracy. To make life better, that's the work of all intelligent people. That's what our democracy is after, and, because your democracy is after the same thing, that's why we are on your side in this war. Under all the sentiment ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... regenerated mankind. He had read Karl Marx and other socialistic writers, and while his essentially practical mind could hardly approve all their programme for reorganizing the State, some of which seemed to him utopian, extravagant and even undesirable, he realised that the socialistic movement was growing rapidly all over the world and the day was not far distant when in America, as to-day in Germany and France, it would be a formidable factor to ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... restoration to health. The exact nature of that renunciation I cannot explain to you. The whole transaction lies beyond the range of ordinary endeavour; and savours of the transcendental—or the superstitious, if you please to take it that way. But call it by what name you will, his extravagant gamble with the Lords of Life and Death worked, apparently. For you got well; and you have stayed well, dear witch—thanks to those same Lords of Life and Death, whose favour your father attempted to buy ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... being thus defeated in their first onset in both points of attack, became exasperated to an extravagant pitch of fury, and determined upon the most savage revenge. A large party contrived to penetrate into the garden, by the rere, and some of them immediately rushed into the Turret. The Yeomen stationed there were ...
— An Impartial Narrative of the Most Important Engagements Which Took Place Between His Majesty's Forces and the Rebels, During the Irish Rebellion, 1798. • John Jones
... possibilities of a preface. In this spirit of genuine discrimination, I became aware how easy it would be for any one who does not share my faith to find apparent contradictions of statement and errors in thought—much that is feeble here, extravagant there; to notice some salient fault and to take it as decisive of the writer's incompetence. I am tempted to point these out myself to ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... entered myself as plain "Mister" in the book. We found this hotel very comfortable, and might doubtless have made it luxurious, had we chosen to go to five times the expense of similar luxuries in America; but we merely ordered comfortable things, and so came off at no very extravagant rate,—and with great honor, at all events, in the estimation ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fact that Shakespeare has never been better praised than in Johnson's Preface. But he will not say what he does not mean about Shakespeare any more than about himself. There is in him nothing at all of the subtle trickery of the common critic who thinks to magnify his own importance by extravagant and insincere laudation of his author. He is not afraid to speak of the poet with the same simplicity as he speaks of the editor. "Yet it must be at last confessed that, as we owe everything to him, he owes ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... to cook; if the maid is well trained, and correctly attired in white cap and apron and black dress; if the table is laid according to the rules of dinner etiquette; if the welcome is cordial and the company congenial—the simple dinner may rank with the most extravagant and elaborate formal dinner. The cover may contain fewer pieces and the menu may contain fewer courses, the setting may be less fashionable, though not less harmonious, and still the dinner may be extremely tempting ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... us, life does not break its sad news in advance. Dreams are free, and in their flights of fancy young folks may be as extravagant as they wish. There may be breakers ahead, and trials, days of discouragement and despair, but life tells us nothing of ...
— Making the House a Home • Edgar A. Guest
... East has in nowise for its object to satisfy the ambitious tendencies of a race. Modern civilization is in danger of being overrun by the furious waves which threaten to carry away everything in the Russian Empire. Those fundamental principles of Russian Society, those ideas (extravagant and anti-social in all points of view) of a Panslavist Caesarism, and the principles of Nihilism, and of other social and religious sects, so absurd and so contrary to human nature, between which there is just now raging a combat so keen and so barbarous, are symptoms fatal to civilization ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... that Mrs. Falconer had been first tempted to these practices by the distress for money into which extravagant entertainments, or, as she stated, the expenses incident to her situation—expenses which far exceeded her income—had led her. It was supposed, from her having kept open house at times for the minister, that she and the commissioner ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... weary you with letters, but do not answer this, for in truth and without flattery, I so value your letters, that after a heavy batch, as of late, I feel that I have been extravagant and have drawn too much money, and shall therefore have to stint ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... and Benjamin were not behind the rest in their greeting. Indeed they were extravagant in ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... attacks him that he flies into extravagances, such as when he writes that "she has more than robbed him of his soul," and that "she is devouring his blood." He writes to his brother Joseph that he loves her to madness, and to Carnot even he does the same thing. Perhaps the most extravagant outburst of all is when he begs that she is to let him see some of her faults, and to be less kind, gracious, and beautiful. "Your tears drive away my reason and scorch my blood." "You set my poor heart ablaze." He complains of her letters being ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... another cake-boy in his arms, and thus embraced, to whirl through a wild inspiration of figures, in which there was something grotesquely rhythmic, something of indescribable barbaric magnificence, spiritualized into a grace of movement superior to the energy of the North and the extravagant fervor of the East. It was coffee and not wine that I drank, but I fable all the same that I saw reflected in this superb and artistic superation of the difficulties of dancing in that unfriendly foot-gear, something of ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... Liechtenstein.[53] These were quite as truly beyond his sphere as a church legend like the life of Saint Margaret or the quest of the Sangreal. In the "Talisman" he praises in terms only less eloquent than Burke's famous words, "that wild spirit of chivalry which, amid its most extravagant and fantastic nights, was still pure from all selfish alloy—generous, devoted, and perhaps only thus far censurable, that it proposed objects and courses of action inconsistent with the frailties and imperfections of man." In "Ivanhoe," too, there is something like a dithyrambic lament over ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers |
