"Homely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a small person to harbour so great a guest, and a trembling sense of insufficiency possessed her. She had no high musings to offer to the new companion of her hearth. Every one of her thoughts had hitherto turned to Evelina and shaped itself in homely easy words; of the mighty speech of silence she knew not ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... number of the women were assembled, each more lovely than the fairest woman man has ever seen, and all clad in such gauzelike glistening robes as would make the finest fabrics of this world look coarse and homely. ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... of architecture displayed in those first temples of the great God was homely indeed and humble. Nevertheless, it might favorably compare with similar buildings erected by wealthy Protestant congregations. This fact alone is sufficient to convict Protestantism of want of faith, namely, that its adherents have never been struck by the thought that the majesty ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... unlimited. Short of saluting the tricolour on Mont Blanc, or of echoing the Marseillaise four hundred and odd feet underground in the cave of Padirac, I think I may fairly say that I have exhausted France as a wonder-horn. But quiet beauties and homely graces have also their seduction, just as we turn with a sense of relief from "Notre Dame de Paris" or "Le Pere Goriot," to a domestic story by Rod or Theuriet, so the sweet little valley of the Loing refreshes after the awful Pass of Gavarni, and soothing to the ear is the gentle flow ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... fine place, they say; but, doctor, I am not worthy on't. I am contented with this homely world; 'tis good enough for such a poor, rascally Mussulman, as I am; besides, I have learnt so much good manners, doctor, as to let my betters be served ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... the scanty fare of a small purse in common with the family of his disciples? Who withdrew from the entertainments of Jerusalem to the humble cottage of Mary and Martha, cheerfully subsisting on the most homely and casual provision?—HE, who has taught us to limit our desires of temporal good within the narrow circle of one short request—"GIVE US THIS DAY ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... Union Village were evidently men who did their work thoroughly; the dwellings and houses they built early in the century, all of brick, have a satisfactory solidity, and are not without the homely charm which good work and plain outlines give to any building. Two of these old houses in the Church Family are now used as the boys' and the girls' houses, and are uncommonly good specimens of early Western architecture. The whole village is a pattern of neatness, with flagged walks and pleasant ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... Lincoln was more than a threat to confiscate three thousand millions of dollars which the South had invested in slaves. The homely rail splitter from the West was the prophecy of a new social order which threatened the foundations of the modern world. He himself was all unconscious of this fact. And yet this big reality was the secret of the electric tension which strangled men into silence and threw over the ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... to the no small wonder of her neighbor, Mrs. Sharp, the shack began to take on an air of homely brightness and comfort which that lady's more pretentious place lacked, even after a ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... the penalty of mortal presumption. The Superman who would shatter the homely decencies of mankind and set his foot on the world's neck is himself bound captive. He is the slave of the djinn whom he has called from the unclean deeps. There can be no end to his quest. Weariness does not ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... white man. At the door he dismounted, threw the reins on the ground, and walked past me into the store, lifting his slouch hat as he entered. A man rather short of stature, sturdy, with a wide-set jaw and flat features that would have been homely had they not been ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... under the narrow brim of a snug winter hat, great furs framing her beautiful face, and her slender figure wrapped in furs. Here also was a picture of Florence Haviland, her handsome face self-satisfied, her trio of homely, distinguished-looking girls about her, and a small picture of Gardner, and two of Clarence's dead mother: one, as they all remembered her, a prim-looking woman with gray hair and magnificent lace on her unfashionable gown, the other, taken thirty years before, showing ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... of action, integrity of character, temperance, chastity, moderation, sincerity, subordination to just authority, conjugal fidelity, filial love and honor—these duties, and others closely connected with them, bear old and homely names. But, Christian women, you can not ask for a task more noble, more truly elevating, for yourselves and your country, than to uphold these plain moral principles, first by your own personal example, and then by all pure influences ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... benediction, it was only with the greatest difficulty that her father could prevent the indignant congregation from seizing her and carrying her before the sheriff for violation of the church-peace. Had she been poor and homely, then of course nothing could have saved her; but she happened to be both rich and beautiful, and to wealth and beauty much is pardoned. Aasa's beauty, however, was also of a very unusual kind; not the ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... errors as faithfully as its perfections. But, such as it is, it is a fine specimen of fourteenth-century English. He translated not for scholars or for nobles, but for the plain people, and his style was such as suited those for whom he wrote—plain, vigorous, homely, and yet with all its homeliness full of a solemn grace and dignity, which made men feel that they were reading no ordinary book. He uses many striking expressions, such as (II Tim. ii. 4): "No man holding knighthood to God, wlappith himself with worldli nedes;" and many of the best-known ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... matter, we should not, surely, apply to a pickpocket to know what he thought on the point. It might naturally be presumed that he would be rather a prejudiced person—particularly as his reasoning, if successful, might get him OUT OF GAOL. This is a homely illustration, no doubt; all we would urge by it is, that Madame Sand having, according to the French newspapers, had a stern husband, and also having, according to the newspapers, sought "sympathy" elsewhere, her arguments ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... screen. Or the farm scenes,—the winter barnyards littered with husks and straw, the rough-coated horses, the cattle sunning themselves or walking down to the spring to drink, the domestic fowls moving about,—there is a touch of sweet, homely life in these things that the winter sun enhances and brings out. Every sign of life is welcome at this season. I love to hear dogs bark, hens cackle, and boys shout; one has no privacy with nature now, and does ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... accuse the girls of purloining it. After some pain and deliberate thought, he decided to go out and speak to the old servants, who were still up, in the kitchen. They received him respectfully, and yet with a sort of sour expression which was natural to their homely Scotch faces. ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... fair dame! I am not to you known, Though in your state of honor I am perfect. I doubt some danger does approach you nearly: If you will take a homely man's advice, Be not found here; hence, with your little ones. To fright you thus, methinks, I am too savage; To do worse to you were fell cruelty, Which is too nigh your person. Heaven preserve you! I ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... to the landscape painters we find that JAN VAN GOYEN, born at Leyden in 1596, was destined to exert a really powerful influence, inasmuch as he was the founder, as is generally acknowledged, of the Dutch school of homely native landscape. Beginning with figure subjects, he discovered in their landscape backgrounds his real metier, and seems only to have realized his great gifts when he looked further into nature than was possible when painting a foreground picture. He ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... The weather was clear and frosty. The snow creaked under the runners of the sledge and glittered and sparkled in the fields. Towards sunset the vast plain assumed pink and purple shades. The rooks, cawing and flapping their wings, flew in and out the lime trees. Winter, the strong, homely winter, is a beautiful thing. There is a certain vigor in it, and dignity, and what is more, so much sincerity. Like a true friend, who, regardless as to consequences, hurls cutting truths, it smites you between the eyes without asking leave. By way ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... boat-pullers and steerers have made their spritsails, bound the oars and rowlocks in leather and sennit so that they will make no noise when creeping on the seals, and put their boats in apple-pie order—to use Leach's homely phrase. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... transition from these homely scenes, which humor commends to our liking, to the chivalrous pageant unrolled for us in the "Conquest of Granada." The former are more characteristic and the more enduring of Irving's writings, but as ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... disappearance of the anemones as the season advances, their place is taken by blood-red poppies, by golden hawkweeds and by masses of tall magenta-coloured blooms of the wild gladiolus, the "Jacob's Ladder" of our own English gardens. Strange enough amongst these familiar homely flowers appear the sub-tropical clumps of prickly pear, and the hedges of aloe which here and there have thrown up a gigantic spike of blossom eight or ten feet in height, a triumphal favour of Nature that the plant itself must pay for by its ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... the children to bring dried corn husk to school, she brought brightly colored raffia, and taught them how to make baskets. The children were clamorous for more knowledge of basket making. The fascinating task of forming objects of beauty and usefulness from homely corn husk and a few gay threads of raffia was novel to them. Amanda was willing to help the children along the path of manual dexterity and eager to have them see and love the beautiful. Under her guidance they gathered ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... charming manner. Her greeting to her friends was sweet and familiar, and was accompanied with much kissing, of a sisterly, motherly, daughterly kind; and yet with this expression of simple, almost homely sentiment there was something in her that astonished and dazzled. She might very well have been, as the foreign young man said, the most distinguished woman in France. Dora had not rushed forward to meet ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... hands in silence; and in his own homely manner, brother Charles related the particulars he had heard from Nicholas. The conversation which ensued was a long one, and when it was over, a secret conference of almost equal duration took place between brother Ned and Tim Linkinwater in another room. ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... and the child reluctantly let it fly. It made straight for the distant roofs behind them, but the rest of the pigeons still strutted and pecked round the perambulator with tiny mincing steps, like court ladies practising the minuet. Malcolm looked on with unabated relish—the homely idyll always ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... a girl can have is "nice manners;" they will contribute more to her lasting popularity than beauty or wealth. Girls sometimes wonder how it happens that a girl they have regarded as "too homely" to be accounted dangerous, still carries off the matrimonial prize of "her set." Ten chances to one it is because she has that charm of manner that makes a man overlook her physical deficiencies. Her manners, in such ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... on her day off. There is no mistaking this. Nineteen or twenty years old, homely as a mud fence; ungraceful, doltish, she sits staring out of the window and her eyes blink at the rain. A peasant from southeastern Europe, a field hand who fell into the steerage of a transatlantic liner and fell out again. Now she has a day off and she goes riding into the country ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... The comparison may to a European reader seem a homely one. But Spenser likens an infuriate woman to a cow "That is berobbed of her youngling dere." Shakspeare also makes King Henry VI compare himself to the calf's mother that "Runs lowing up and down, Looking the way her harmless young ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... true prophet, but he did not live to see the verification of his predictions, which would have been to him a source of so much grief. In the midst of his anxieties about public affairs, and of the quiet, homely interests which made the days at Mount Vernon so pleasant, the end suddenly came. There was no more forewarning than if he had been struck down by accident or violence. He had always been a man of great physical vigor, and ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... first lesson, parts of the prophecy of Amos. They are somewhat difficult, here and there, to understand; but nevertheless Amos is perhaps the grandest of the Hebrew prophets, next to Isaiah. Rough and homely as his words are, there is a strength, a majesty, and a terrible earnestness in them, which it is good to listen to; and specially good now that Advent draws near, and we have to think of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and what His coming means. ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... the great ballet dancer, was a little girl, with skinny legs and a skinnier future, being extremely homely and with no prospects of success, ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... vases of red and white Bohemian glass. The Cuban girl could not know how eloquent were all these things to the exiled Vermont woman; but she looked sympathetic, and felt so, her heart warming to the homely soul, with her rugged ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... of old gold, with a great amethyst in the centre of the lid. Its splendour was in such contrast to his homely ways and simple life that I could not help commenting ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... instruct other nations, Belgian pencils have, for a century, caused the canvas to glow with colors and combinations never seen before. Flemish fabrics are exported to all parts of Europe, to the East and West Indies, to Africa. The splendid tapestries, silks, linens, as well as the more homely and useful manufactures of the Netherlands, are prized throughout the world. Most ingenious, as they had already been described by the keen-eyed Caesar, in imitating the arts of other nations, the skillful artificers of the country at Louvain, Ghent, and other places, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... trivial affairs passed away the short time between the coming of Natura, and dinner being brought in; on which, the yeoman intreated him to sit down, and partake of such homely food as he found there.—'That I shall gladly do,' answered Natura, 'but I waited for your fair daughter; I hope we shall have her company. I do not know,' said the yeoman, 'I think they told me she was not very well, had got the head-ach, or some such ailment;—go, however,' pursued he, ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... rushed (so that every board in the house shook) up to my lost Lorna's room, and tore the little wall-niche open and espied my treasure. It was as simple, and as homely, and loving, as even I could wish. Part of it ran as follows,—the other parts it behoves me not to open out to strangers:—"My own love, and sometime lord,—Take it not amiss of me, that even without farewell, I go; for I cannot persuade ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... finicky mothers!" he exclaimed. "Why will they turn up their noses at every poor girl? If Alice had rich parents she would be all right, no matter if she were as homely as ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... response of the English people to that sympathy—the recognition of that motherhood—is written, not only in the printed records of the reign, but on the "fleshly tables" of English hearts. Let one homely citation suffice as an illustration. It is taken from a letter of condolence addressed to the Queen in 1892, on the death of ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... and more congenial companionship of the young patriot and his warmly sympathizing Martha, who now kindly supplied their wants, and then conducted them to their attic chamber, where, it being now nearly dark, they immediately betook themselves to their homely but grateful couch. And, overcome by the fatigues and harrowing anxieties of the day, they soon fell asleep, expecting to be roused in the morning by the din of the battle, which they felt confident was yet to take place before the invaders would be permitted to advance farther on their ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... deformities lay deep down from a woman's vision, whilst his embellishments were upon the very surface; thus contrasting with homely Oak, whose defects were patent to the blindest, and whose virtues were ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... homely scheme for saving the labor of the copyist, has not only made modern democracy and nationality possible, but has helped by the extension of education to undermine the ancient foundations upon which human industry has rested from the beginnings ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... of many, that "the past, which still holds its ground in the back chambers of the brain, would persuade us that 'tis a demon-haunted world, where not God but the devil rules; we are not yet persuaded that this is a cheerful, homely, well-meaning universe, whose powers, if strict in their working, are nevertheless beneficent and not diabolic." Against these phantasmal fears the doctrine of God's immanence, rightly understood, offers the best of antidotes, ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... dollars reward for capture and return of one Sadler, that committed humiliatin' assault on one Hillary, and sp'iled the stomachs and b'iled the skins of patriotic municipal guardsmen, which shameful person is more'n six feet of iniquity, and his features homely beyond belief, complexion dilapidated, and conscience dyspeptic.' Of course, Excellency, there couldn't anybody give you points on a Proclamation. I ain't doin' that, but I was supposin' it was printed in the national colours, with a spectacular reward precedin' ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... would the burning of a borrel ignorant burgess like me serve? Men offer not up old glove leather for incense, nor are beacons fed with undressed hides, I trow. Sooth to speak, I have too little learning and too much fear to get credit by the affair, and, therefore, I should, in our homely phrase, have both the scathe and ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... ugliest face I ever saw was that of a woman whom the world calls beautiful. Through its "silver veil" the evil and ungentle passions looked out hideous and hateful. On the other hand, there are faces which the multitude at the first glance pronounce homely, unattractive, and such as "Nature fashions by the gross," which I always recognize with a warm heart-thrill; not for the world would I have one feature changed; they please me as they are; they are hallowed by kind memories; they are beautiful ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Toro as I sat on him and scratched him with a nail and as he was when he turned himself loose for a happy day in the country. In the stable he was as mild as milk. I could have almost imagined him purring like a cat. He chewed the cud and made homely sloppy noises with his tongue, and regarded me with a calm, bovine gaze, which was as gentle as that of any pet cow's. I could have fallen asleep beside him. It is reported that my predecessor Jack, on one occasion, came home much the worse for liquor and was found ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... the clown go over to a stool and place a homely, old-fashioned watch and a spoon and medicine bottle Miss Nellis had ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... remind us of Shagbag and Black Will in Arden) to murder his nephew; and again in the quarrel between these two ruffians. Allenso's affection for his little cousin and solicitude at their parting are tenderly portrayed with homely touches of quiet pathos. The diction of the Two Tragedies is plain and unadorned. In reading Arden we sometimes feel that the simplicity of language has been deliberately adopted for artistic purposes; ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... had remained some time in the Netherlands, in order to settle the affairs of that country, he embarked for Spain; and as the gravity of that nation, with their respectful obedience to their prince, had appeared more agreeable to his humor than the homely, familiar manners and the pertinacious liberty of the Flemings, it was expected that he would for the future reside altogether at Madrid, and would govern all his extensive dominions by Spanish ministers and Spanish counsels. Having met with a violent tempest on his voyage, he no sooner ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... signs, the lambs, the grapes, the eagles, and all the quaint devices that hung before the doors; covered lamps burned before the Nativities and Crucifixions painted on the walls or let into the wood-work; here and there, where a shutter had not been closed, a ruddy fire-light lit up a homely interior, with the noisy band of children clustering round the house-mother and a big brown loaf, or some gossips spinning and listening to the cobbler's or the barber's story of a neighbor, while the oil-wicks ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... the world." If set forth only as a novel and pleasing fancy, it may be classed with other ingenious fictions, that are published without a thought of deception. But if seriously proposed, it can be fitly characterized only by borrowing the homely but energetic language ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... of individual statues, and who could never be invoked in prayer. Out of sight of these effigies and paintings, however, the oppression was at once lightened. True, these model folk could not be permitted to decline from their prescribed standards, but they might be allowed companions of more homely tastes, and the duly authorized wicked ones, such as the Devil, Cain, and Herod, might display their iniquity to the full without offence. Thus it is that in this play we find great prominence given to the Devil and his brother demons. They would delight the common people: therefore ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... respect to the famed moral philosophy of Molire in his pretended master-piece. From what has been stated, I consider myself warranted to assert, in opposition to the prevailing opinion, that Molire succeeded best with the coarse and homely comic, and that both his talents and his inclination, if unforced, would have determined him altogether to the composition of farces such as he continued to write even to the very end of his life. He seems ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... in these familiar details, Devon's features unconsciously relaxed. He was very young, and rather cold, and the quick reaction from the emotions he had experienced in the outer hall was a relief. Also, Shaw's manner was as reassuring as his homely room. He dropped the visitor's coat and hat on a worn leather couch, which seemingly served him as a bed, and waved a hospitable hand toward an easy-chair. Simultaneously, he casually indicated a figure bending over a table on the ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... said, and again applied his lips to the mouth organ. The girl laughed then, throwing back her head. Her throat was long and slim and brown. She clasped her knees with her arms and looked at Nick amusedly. Nick thought she was a kind of homely ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... the inevitable in a very short time, and soon began to talk as mothers do—that is to say, homely mothers—for almost as soon as she had wiped ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... that chanced to have been made and carry her off for a day up the river, where a quiet little lunch, in the tranquil shade of overhanging trees, and the cosy, intimate talk that was its invariable concomitant, seemed like an oasis of familiar, homely pleasantness in the midst of the gay ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... So through those homely and familiar sounds they listened, listened, listened; and very gradually, so that they could neither of them have said at any moment 'Now it has begun,' yet quite beyond mistake the sound for which they listened was presently loud in their ears. And it was the sound of steel on steel; the ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... another class of friends who stand before young people, wooing them to noble things. They may be plain, perhaps homely, almost stern in their earnestness of purpose and in the seriousness with which they talk of life. They call to toil, to diligence, to self-denial, to heroic qualities of character, to purity, to usefulness, to ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... said Miss Grammont, surveying this gracious spectacle. "How full it is of homely and lovely and ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... Then the drawers, having cleared the tables, brought up a huge bowl of hot spiced wine, a dish of tobacco, and some pipes. The Don then offered us to smoke some cigarros, but we, not understanding them, took instead our homely pipes, and each with a beaker of hot wine to his hand sat roasting before the fire, scarce saying a word, the Don being silent because his humour was of the reflective grave kind (with all his courtesies he never smiled, as if such demonstrations ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... was kind, and loved to sit In the low hut or garnished cottage, And praise the farmer's homely wit, And share the widow's homelier pottage: At his approach complaint grew mild, And when his hand unbarred the shutter, The clammy lips of Fever smiled The welcome ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... you in a careless way, to please your Humour, know now, I do love thee beyond measure; thou shalt have Progeny innumerable; we'll walk to Church with our good Deeds after us; and let 'em be dull or homely, as we must suppose 'em, when they are lawfully begot, there is a Pleasure, a Tenderness in nursing Children, which ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... a wagon, from which the horses had been detached, and which now offered a tempting though homely shelter to those among the pedestrians who might choose to sit on the shady side, or to avail themselves of the accommodation afforded by the awning over the interior. Ferrers threw himself full length ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... you have taken fright on account of the case of diphtheria that is occurring here. I am an old man, as you see, and have had a hundred, perhaps five hundred cases as like this as two peas in a pod." (He stopped, expecting a smile at least for his homely comparison, but every face was as sober as if he had come to sound a death-knell.) "Miss Blair is sick, I might say is very sick, but I am not in the least anxious about her, or about any of you. Under ordinary ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... went off, the two ladies resumed their old homely life. But the homeliest life had now ceased to be repulsive to Elizabeth. Her common duties were no longer wearisome: for the first time, she experienced the delicious companionship of thought. Her chief task was still to sit by the window knitting soldiers' socks; but even Mrs. Ford ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... northern coast of Ireland. It has long been unroofed; and, though of considerable size, we could not, by any power of imagination, figure it as having been a suitable habitation for majesty[1006]. Dr. Johnson, to irritate my old Scottish[1007] enthusiasm, was very jocular on the homely accommodation of 'King Bob,' and roared and laughed till the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... all the day on the new stable, and he enjoyed the homely work. Sometimes he filled in the deeper places in the floor with chunks of dead wood and then heaped the leaves on top. When it was finished it was all in such condition that the animals could occupy it without ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... a soldier, purely brought up as such—and it is of such only I speak, and not of rare and even then perilous exceptions,—men educated in philosophy like Epaminondas, or in homely household virtues and citizenship like Washington—but there never was a soldier such as I speak of, who did more for the world than was compatible with his confined and arbitrary breeding. I do not speak, of course, with reference to the unprofessional part of his character. Circumstances, ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... the walls; quaint blue-and-white china holds the simple dinner; old furniture brings to mind the generations of the past. At the right as you enter is Mr. Emerson's library, a large square room, plainly furnished, but made pleasant by pictures and sunshine. The homely shelves that line the walls are well filled with books. There is a lack of showy covers or rich bindings, and each volume seems to have soberly grown old in constant service. Mr. Emerson's study is a ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... these homely chores was very effective in relieving the untrained and tired mother, it added little to the family income. Edward looked about and decided that the time had come for him, young as he was, to begin some sort of wage-earning. But how and where? The answer he ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... were beginning to feel the thirst often felt in childhood—the restless craving of the spirit for something new: no wonder, then, that they seized the fruit so "pleasant to the eye," and as it seemed to them "desirable to make one wise." Thus the poor girls were lured from the plain homely path, which, plain and homely as it is, always proves at last the way of pleasantness and the path of peace. They knew that people called them odd, and in this they gloried. Fanny Brighton they regarded ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... went about her homely tasks with an alacrity that Mrs. Grubbling, knowing nothing of the hope that had been let in upon her dreariness, attributed wholly to the salutary effect of a "good scolding" she had administered the day before. The work she got out of the girl that Thursday forenoon! Never once ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... me, while I tell The pleasures of that cell, Oh, little maid! What though its couch be rude, Homely the only food Within its shade? No thought of care Can enter ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... West End,—that sharply defined residential area of Vancouver which real estate agents unctuously speak of as "select." There was half a block of ground in green lawn bordered with rosebushes. The house itself was solid, homely, built for use, and built to endure, all stone and heavy beams, wide windows and deep porches, and a red tile roof lifting ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the privacy of her chamber, and the Widow Crane confessed her disappointment to the confiding ear of her bosom friend, Mrs. Merrill. Not many years later a man named Grant was to be in Springfield, with a carpet bag, despised as a vagabond. A very homely man named Lincoln went to Cincinnati to try a case before the Supreme Court, and was snubbed by a man ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Madame de Stael came to Weimar. * * * If she comes to pay me a visit, she shall be well received, and, if I know of her coming four-and-twenty hours beforehand, a part of Loder's house shall be furnished for her use; she would find homely fare, but we should really meet and speak to each other, and she could remain as long as she liked. What I have to do here can be done at odd quarters of an hour, and the rest of my time I would ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... elasticity of manner—"I am indeed a fool, and worse than a fool, for a moment to doubt my father's probity.—Confide in him, dearest lady; he is wise though he is grave, and kind though he is plain and homely in his speech. Should he prove false he will fare the worse! for I will plunge myself from the pinnacle of the Warder's Tower to the bottom of the moat, and he shall lose his own ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... parts of the abode presented much the same appearance as when Stephen Lord first established himself antiquated, and in primitive taste. Nancy's bedroom alone here. The furniture was old, solid, homely; the ornaments were displayed the influence of modern ideas. On her twentieth birthday, the girl received permission to dress henceforth as she chose (a strict sumptuary law having previously been in force), and at the same time was allowed to refurnish her chamber. Nancy pleaded ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... garb of the age, which is now a man's [Imprimis and all the Item.[40]] He has not humbled his meditations to the industry of compliment, nor afflicted his brain in an elaborate leg. His body is not set upon nice pins, to be turning and flexible for every motion, but his scrape is homely and his nod worse. He cannot kiss his hand and cry, madam, nor talk idle enough to bear her company. His smacking of a gentlewoman is somewhat too savoury, and he mistakes her nose for her lips. A very woodcock ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... Glazier is reputed to have been a man of fine countenance, wise in homely counsel, honest in all his dealings. Rachel Leah, his wife, had a reputation for practical wisdom even greater than his. She was the advice giver of the village in every perplexity of life. My father remembers his grandmother as a tall, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... touch, gently; and as the woman obeyed she thought the task an odd one, and in her curiosity tried the effect of the ointment upon one of her own eyes. At once a change was wrought in the appearance of everything around her. The new mother appeared no longer as a homely cottager, but a beautiful lady attired in white; the babe, fairer than before, but still witnessing with the elvish cast of its eye to its paternity, was wrapped in swaddling clothes of silvery gauze; while the elder children, who sat on either side of the bed, were transformed into ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... one of the most pathetic of histories, was at hand; the end was not the less pathetic because it came in so homely a fashion. On a cold day in March he stopped his coach in the snow on his way to Highgate, to try the effect of cold in arresting putrefaction. He bought a hen from a woman by the way, and stuffed it with snow. ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... in those days for superiors to address their inferiors in the third person singular. Directly to address a serving-man or maid was deemed incorrect, for it would have betokened an unfitting equality. However, Madame de Ruth's peasant lad responded with alacrity to his lady's homely speech, and in an astonishingly short time he reappeared with an enormous bowl of the steaming hot spirits—the punch, which Marlborough's army had brought into fashion on the Continent, and which the damp of South Germany in the autumn made a ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... dozen or two fine-looking creatures who had high brows, who said they were Co-eds. This did not mean that these fairies had ever been through college. "Certainly the college never went through them," said one very homely fairy, who was spiteful and jealous. The simple fact was that the one they called Betty, the Co-ed, and others from that Welsh village, called Bryn Mawr, and another from Flint, and another from Yale, and still others ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... two chieftains; who having travelled to Italy, and there tasted the sweet and stately measures and style of the Italian poesy, as novices newly crept out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch, they greatly polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesy from what it had been before, and for that cause may justly be said to be the first reformers of our English metre and style." The dull moralizings of the rimers who followed Chaucer, the ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... rich, such as the court of Louis XV. But now it happened suddenly and universally to all arts. There were no longer vulgar rich only but also vulgar poor and vulgar middle-classes. Everywhere there spread a kind of aesthetic snobbery which obscured real tastes. Of this I will give one simple and homely example. The beautiful flowers of the cottage garden were no longer grown in the gardens of the well-to-do, because they were the flowers of the poor. Instead were grown lobelias, geraniums, and calceolarias, combined in a hideous mixture, not because any ...
— Progress and History • Various
... shall never forget the fierce actions and utterances of one suffering from delirium tremens. Whether in its wrath, disdain, or its dismay, the countenance was infernal. I called once upon a time on a most respectable yeoman, and I was, in language earnest and homely, pressed to accept the hospitality of the house. I consented. The word to me was, 'Nah, Maister, yah mun stop an hev sum te-ah, yah mun, eah, yah mun.' A bountiful table was soon spread; at all events, time soon ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... his boyhood in the old Canadian city presented themselves unasked; the maple-foliage, incredibly dense and verdant, the shabby, comfortable houses behind the trees, and the homely, happy-go-lucky people who lived in the houses and sprayed their lawns on summer evenings; friendly people, like people everywhere prone to laughter and averse to thought. "People are so foolish and likeable, ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... handsome. He was, as Slim had said, a hammer-headed brute of imposing proportions. But for his eyes no turfman would have looked at him twice. They were large, clear, and unusually intelligent; they redeemed his homely face. Without them he would have been ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... it was not long before shrewd people began to see that this fine humor, with its home-thrusts, was not in reality written by a country bumpkin. Through the rough dialect and homely way of stating the case, there shone the fine intellect of a cultivated and skillful writer. The Post guessed that James Russell Lowell was the real author. This was regarded only as a rumor, however, and many people scouted the idea that a young ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... more than masculinely coarse she was in some ways, indeed, that Henry James once insinuated that, while she may have been to all intents and purposes a man, she was certainly no gentleman. Heine raved over her beauty, but, judging from her portrait, she later had a face as homely as that of George Eliot, who, as Carlyle said, looked like a horse. The poet De Musset, one of Sand's later lovers, said her dark complexion gave reflections like bronze; therefore De Musset found her very beautiful. Chopin was—well, some say he was not effeminate; and he could break ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... reading that passage and after making some allowance for an antiquated style, and a certain degree of quaintness, one of the characteristics of the age,—the impression produced upon the mind of any candid person, who admires strong good sense, though presented in a homely dress, is not in a very high degree favourable to the character and talents of the author (See Kirkton's History, pp. 227, 228). In the preface to Stevenson's History of the Church and State of Scotland, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... prisoner, who remained on deck, over-joyed at the recapture, and anticipating an immediate return to his own country; by which it would appear that the "L'homme propose, mais Dieu dispose" of France, is quite as sure a proverb as the more homely "Many a slip between cup and lip" ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... time they met; behind all her goodness and care lay the same touch of maidenly reserve as at that time. She received his caresses silently, she herself giving chiefly by being something for him. He noticed how every little homely action she did for him grew out of her like a motherly caress and took him into her heart. He was grateful for it, but it was not that of which ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... those very practices of which Bacon was guilty, and which, as Mr. Montagu seems to think, nobody ever considered as blamable till Bacon was punished for them. We could easily fill twenty pages with the homely, but just and forcible rhetoric of the brave old bishop. We shall select a few passages as fair specimens, and no more than fair specimens, of the rest. "Omnes diligunt munera. They all love bribes. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... however, to play at tropical forests properly, when homely accents of the human voice intrude; and all my hopes of seeing a tiger seized by a crocodile while drinking (vide picture-books, passim) vanished abruptly, and earth resumed her old dimensions, when ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... revolt again. Now all felt that there was nothing left but fight. In great haste the Dalecarlians sent after Gustavus and brought him back. They held a great meeting, and to it came Gustavus' wood-cutter friend, Liss Lars. He made a great homely speech, saying, "This Gustavus, son of Eric, is a man. He has threshed with me, and I know him. We can trust him, and sense has he, more than all of us put together. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... but the saw. For, as Epaminondas is reported to have said afterwards, of his table, "Treason lurks not under such a dinner," so Lycurgus perceived before him, that such a house admits of no luxury and needless splendour. Indeed, no man could be so absurd as to bring into a dwelling so homely and simple, bedsteads with silver feet, purple coverlets, golden cups, and a train of expense that follows these: but all would necessarily have the bed suitable to the room, the coverlet of the bed and the rest of their utensils ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... advanced towards a cliff, overhung with cedars, Emily following in trembling silence. They lifted her from her mule, and, having seated themselves on the grass, at the foot of the rocks, drew some homely fare from a wallet, of which Emily tried to eat a little, the better to disguise ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... to him that merrits curtesie, loathed of thee that doth deserue all loue, Basely reiected, scorn'd most churlishly, that honors thee aboue the Saints aboue. True loue is pricelesse, rare, and therefore deere, VVe feast not royall Kings with homely cheere. ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... flock to the museum in holiday times prove its attractions; and it is with the hope that these attractions may be enhanced by the help of a methodical and homely guide, chattering to the visitor various bits and scraps of pertinent information as he passes from one object to another, that these four visits have been presented to the public. They do not pretend to be scientific books, but simply companions of the hour, that urge little points of information ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... see "Boney," the foeman of his race - The great Sir Walter, this is he With that grave homely Border face. He claims his poem of the chase That rang Benvoirlich's valley through; And THIS, that doth the lineage trace And fortunes of the bold ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... was with Mandy Ann, and that she, too, was hurrying on to the clearing, still in the distance. Had there been any doubt of her identity, it would have been swept away when, through an opening in the trees, he caught sight of a slender girlish figure, clad in the homely garments of what Ted called poorwhite trash, and of which he had some knowledge. There was, however, a certain grace in the movements of the girl which moved him a little, for he was not blind to any point of beauty in a woman, and the beauty of this girl, hurrying on so fast, had been ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... for an utterly different reason than was in the child's mind. God was lonesome that day, left standing alone under the trees of the garden. He is lonesome for fellowship with every one who stays away from Himself. That homely human word may well express to us the ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... of the turkey, Bill?" began Master Robert Peabody, the flat-featured, rising from his pillow like a homely porpoise. ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... The latter accepted Loring's invitation to drink a cup of coffee with "the boys," but he disposed of it in great haste, hot as it was, as if he hoped by his example to induce them to do likewise. But Bob and his companions were in no hurry. They lingered a long time over their homely meal, and then the smokers were allowed to empty a pipe apiece before the order was given to "catch up." The squatter began to breathe easier after that, and when he saw the troopers in their saddles and ready to start, his delight was so apparent that ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... that Macaulay was so often content with an effect of an essentially vulgar kind, offensive to taste, discordant to the fastidious ear, and worst of all, at enmity with the whole spirit of truth. By vulgar we certainly do not mean homely, which marks a wholly different quality. No writer can be more homely than Mr. Carlyle, alike in his choice of particulars to dwell upon, and in the terms or images in which he describes or illustrates them, but ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... from Giotto to Raphael, amidst all diversities, is characterized throughout by a deference of Art to something extraneous. It is not beauty that Fra Angelico looks for, but holiness, or beauty as expressing this; it is not beauty that draws Filippo Lippi, but homely actuality. It is from this point of view that the Renaissance has been attacked as wanting in faith, earnestness, humility. The Renaissance had swallowed all formulas. Nothing was in itself sacred, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... little homely sparrows Chirping, in the cold and rain, Their impatient sweet complaining, Sing out from their hearts again; Bid them set themselves to mating, Cooing love in softest words, Crowd their nests, all cold and empty, ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... bedfellow? O polished perturbation! golden care! That keep'st the ports of slumber open wide To many a watchful night!—Sleep with it now, Yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet As he whose brow with homely biggin bound Snores ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... house to admit of a twist in the flue, and revealing darkly a little more, if that social rule-of-three inverse, the higher in lodgings the lower in pocket, were applicable here. However, the aspect of the room, though homely, was cheerful, a somewhat contradictory group of furniture suggesting that the collection consisted of waifs and strays from a former home, the grimy faces of the old articles exercising a curious and subduing effect on the bright faces of the new. An oval mirror ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... To a remarkable extent the local colorists passed by the immediate problems of Americans—social, theological, political, economic; nor did they frequently rise above the local to the universal. They were, in short, ordinarily provincial, without, however, the rude durability or the homely truthfulness of ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... the soldiers have gone on, but the members of our own immediate group are scattered about the valley, engaged chiefly in agricultural or other homely pursuits, while they await your recovery, and incidentally earn their bread. Sergeant Whitley, Captain St. Clair and Captain Mason are putting a new roof on the barn, and, as I inspected it myself, I can certify that they are performing the task in a most ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... old man's daughter is coming home wealthy and happy as never before, and the old woman's daughter is somewhere around as homely and ...
— Folk Tales from the Russian • Various
... of Dutch wagons, guarded by the homely soldiery, jolted slowly over the stumps and roots of the newly made road, and the regiments followed at their leisure. The hardships of the way were not without their consolations. The jovial Irishman who held the chief command made himself very agreeable to the ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... wherefore wilt thou go? Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on, Soon will the musk carnations break and swell, Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon, Sweet William with his homely cottage smell, And stocks in fragrant blow: Roses that down the alleys shine afar, And open, jasmined-muffled lattices, And groups under the dreaming garden trees, And the full moon, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... reason why neither we nor theology require much learning in women; and that Francis, Duke of Brittany, son of John V., one talking with him about his marriage with Isabella the daughter of Scotland, and adding that she was homely bred, and without any manner of learning, made answer, that he liked her the better, and that a woman was wise enough, if she could distinguish her husband's shirt from his doublet. So that it is no so ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... hunting and seising their prey. The sheriff being answerable for the misdemesnors of these bailiffs, they are therefore usually bound in a bond for the due execution of their office, and thence are called bound-bailiffs; which the common people have corrupted into a much more homely appellation. ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... come breaking through, And now and then the office hum Dies like a mist, ... and there will come An Oxford breakfast scene: the quad All blue and grey outside—O God— And there sits Twiston at the feast Proclaiming he will be a priest! I see his eyes, his homely neb— Ring, telephones, ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... for this part of the work, the stateliness and dignity of the Latin corresponded to the proud claims which he made for his conception of the knowledge which was to be. English seemed to him too homely to express the hopes of the world, too unstable to be trusted with them. Latin was the language of command and law. His Latin, without enslaving itself to Ciceronian types, and with a free infusion of barbarous but most convenient words from the ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... devoting herself so whole-heartedly to his career. She had an air—and it wasn't consciously assumed, either—of living wholly with reference to him, which people found exceedingly engaging. (A cynic might observe at this point that the same quality in a homely unattractive woman would fail ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... poets know, the charm that human association lends to the simplest English landscape, and he cherished the memory of these scenes long after he had gone to live among the richer beauties of the south. From the garners of memory he drew the familiar features of this homely land ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... purple velvet, which she called 'the Branciani dress,' and once attired in it, and the rich purges and swelling creases over the shoulders puffed out to her satisfaction, and the run of yellow braid about it properly inspected and flattened, she would not return to her more homely wear, though very soon her mother began to whimper and say that she had lost her so long, and now that she had found her it hardly seemed the same child. Emilia would listen to no entreaties to put away her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... country for a neighbor, but had promised to come to the old Corner House about four o'clock. Almost always he took supper Saturday evening with the girls. Mrs. MacCall usually had fishcakes and baked beans, and Neale was extravagantly fond of that homely New England combination. ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... field-flowers that gem the earth with beauty! And then in sickness! What, what is so refreshing as the perfume of sweet plants? We speak not of the glazed and costly things that come from foreign lands, but of the English nosegay—(how we love the homely word!)—the sweet briar, lavender, cowslip, violet, lily of the valley, or a sprig of meadow sweet, a branch of myrtle, a tuft of primroses, or handful of wild thyme! Such near the couch of sickness ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... The great philosopher, Dr. Franklin, inspired the mouthpiece of his own eloquence, "Poor Richard," with "many a gem of purest ray serene," encased in the homely garb of proverbial truisms. On the subject of frugality we cannot do better than take the worthy Mentor for our text, and from it address our remarks. A man may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, "keep his nose all his life to ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... cookery, they "neither affect to despise their native dishes nor squeamishly reject the solid joints which characterize our own repasts." I was astonished, at one Russian dinner, which I was assured was thoroughly national in style, to meet with the homely roast leg of mutton and baked potatoes of my native land. Like the English, the Russians take potatoes with nearly every dish—either plain boiled, fried, or with parsley and butter over them. Plum-pudding, too, and boiled rice-pudding with currants in it, and with melted butter, are known in Russia—at ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... further contemplation of her next step in advance—shrinking from the fast-darkening future, with which Noel Vanstone was now associated in her inmost thoughts—she looked impatiently about the room for some homely occupation which might take her out of herself. The disguise which she had flung down between the wall and the bed recurred to her memory. It was impossible to leave it there. Mrs. Wragge (now occupied ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins |
