"Gimcracks" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... utensils, a half dozen plates, cups and saucers and about a dozen other pieces for the table, four tablecloths, all the bed linen, all our clothes, including some old clothes we had been upon the point of throwing away, a few personal gimcracks, and for furniture the following articles: the folding wooden kitchen table, a half dozen chairs, the cot bed in the boy's room, the iron bed in our room, the long mirror I gave Ruth on her birthday, and a sort of china closet that stood in the dining-room. To this we added bowls, pitchers, ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... skipper modestly, "but thank God the new hospital-ship is cruisin' wi' the Short Blue just now. I saw her only yesterday, so we'll put you aboard of her and there you'll find a reg'lar shore-goin' surgeon, up to everything, and with all the gimcracks and arrangements of a reg'lar shore-goin' hospital. They've got a new contrivance too—a sort o' patent stretcher, invented by a Mr Dark o' the head office in London—which'll take you out o' the boat into the ship without movin' a bone or ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... Jack in the course of the week. Coral ornaments, forsooth! And pray, Miss, what of the other jewels with which your person was decorated,—the rubies, pearls, and sapphires? One by one Lizzie assumes her modest gimcracks: her bracelet, her gloves, her handkerchief, her fan, and then—her smile. Ah, that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... "the aim of culture is to bring forth in their due season the fruits of the earth." Any learning, any accomplishments, that do not serve a man to bring forth the fruits of the earth in their due season are merely mental gimcracks, flimsy toys, to admire perhaps, to play with, and to be thrown aside as useless when duty makes ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... pick-ax could reach."[9] "Walpole," writes Leslie Stephen, "is almost the first modern Englishman who found out that our old cathedrals were really beautiful. He discovered that a most charming toy might be made of medievalism. Strawberry Hill, with all its gimcracks, its pasteboard battlements and stained-paper carvings, was the lineal ancestor of the new law-courts. The restorers of churches, the manufacturers of stained glass, the modern decorators and architects of all varieties, the Ritualists and the High Church ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Scholar, that Diogenes walked on a day, with his friend, to see a country fair; where he saw ribbons, and looking-glasses, and nut-crackers, and fiddles, and hobby-horses, and many other gimcracks; and, having observed them, and all the other finnimbruns that make a complete country-fair, he said to his friend, "Lord, how many things are there in this world of which Diogenes hath no need!" And truly it is so, or might be so, with very many who vex and ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... three hours. Brunner offered his arm when Cecile went downstairs. As they descended slowly and discreetly, Cecile, still talking fine art, wondered that M. Brunner should admire her cousin's gimcracks so much. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... early part of the fifteenth century. Paint them in with the above colors; and if on a gold ground, the more "Catholic" your art is. Dress your apostles like priests before the altar; and remember to have a good commodity of crosiers, censers, and other such gimcracks, as you may see in the Catholic chapels, in Sutton Street and elsewhere. Deal in Virgins, and dress them like a burgomaster's wife by Cranach or Van Eyck. Give them all long twisted tails to their ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... suddenly grown up into booths and shanties, and looks very much like a temporary Western village. There are shops for the sale of Christmas articles, toys, cakes, and gimcracks; and there are, besides, places of amusement, if one of the sorry menageries of sick beasts with their hair half worn off can be so classed. One portion of the platz is now a lively and picturesque forest of evergreens, an extensive thicket ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... it, a jungle behind it, a river half-mooning it and a lagoon before it. In the rear room he bedded and baited himself. The more spacious front room into which his housekeeping quarters opened was a store of sorts where he retailed print goods staple, tinned foods assorted and gimcracks various to his customers, these mostly being natives. The building was crowned with a tin roof and on top of the roof there perched a round water tank, like a high hat on a head much too large for it. The use of this tank was to catch and store up rain water, ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... proceeding by Birmingham on his way home to Shrewsbury: "Birmingham," he says, "famous for its buttons and locks, its ignorance and barbarism—its prosperity increases with the corruption of taste and morals. Its nicknacks, hardware, and gilt gimcracks are proofs of the former; and its locks and bars, and the recent barbarous conduct of its populace,*[2] are evidences of the latter." His principal object in visiting the place was to call upon a stained glass-maker respecting a window for ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... musicians. He could say nothing. But one day, when Melchior had crashed into Jean Michel's old piano, he swore as he rubbed his knee, and said that there was no longer room to move about in his own house, and that he would rid the house of all such gimcrackery. Jean-Christophe cried aloud. It was true that the rooms were too full, since all Jean Michel's belongings were crowded into them, so as to be able to sell the house, that dear house in which Jean-Christophe had spent the happiest hours of his childhood. ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland |
