"Lapidary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are well worth visiting. Besides diamonds and precious stones, rock crystal, and various kinds of imitations, and paste jewellery are here worked up; also jasper, agate, malachite, cornelian, lapis-lazuli, jet, &c. The work is done by the piece, and the whole family of the lapidary is generally employed. ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... mineralogist would tell me that its commercial value is naught, or something infinitesimal; which is doubtless true enough, as tens of thousands of tons of the same material lie close to the surface under the green turf and golden blossoming furze at the spot where I picked up my specimen. The lapidary would not look at it; nevertheless, it is the only article of jewellery I possess, and I value it accordingly. And I intend to keep this native ruby by me for as long as the lords of Abbotsbury continue in their present mind. The time may come when I shall be obliged ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... singular in his belief; it was entertained by many of his zealous and learned admirers. The erudite lapidary, Jayme Ferrer, in the letter written to Columbus in 1495, at the command of the sovereigns, observes: "I see in this a great mystery: the divine and infallible Providence sent the great St. Thomas from the west into the east, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... be, and has gathered one or two memorials of its famous tenant, including his poor clavecin and his watch. In an outside wall, Herault de Sechelles, when Commissioner from the Convention in the department of Mont Blanc, inserted a little white stone with two most lapidary stanzas inscribed upon it, about genie, solitude, fierte, gloire, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... have to find them. You can buy gems in the rough or in blanks, then cut and polish them to make your own jewelry or decorations. This takes practice, plus a cutting and polishing outfit, wood vise, maybe a diamond wheel. (Or you can join a lapidary club that might already have ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company
... or even a thicket was to find perfect comfort. The sea off Manomet was no longer chaotic and menacing, but was stippled with dancing light on a soft, rich blue that was as soothing to the sense as the other had been disquieting. Along the south of White Horse Beach the lapidary surf had strewn quartz pebbles that gleamed in the clear sun like precious stones. It took little effort of the imagination to find pocketfuls of rubies, pearls, sapphires, and amethysts among these, and had it indeed been "bright jewels of the mine" which the voyagers sought they might have been ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... wont to speak of him in such a manner as this:—"He is a highly cultivated artist, but not one thought of any vivid novelty did he put out in all his many books. You become placid reading him, but think of Ossian and Shakspeare, and be silent. He is a lapidary polishing pebbles,—a pretty art, but not vested with the glories of sculpture, nor the mathematical magnitude of architecture. He does not walk a demigod, but a stiff Anglicised imitator of French paces. He is a symmetrical, but a small invisible personage at rapier practice." ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... as ornaments of dress, or rare objects of art, but they are employed for several useful purposes, as for cutting glass by the glazier, and all kinds of hard stones by the lapidary. ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... way, tell me candidly how you relish This, which they call The lapidary style? Opinions vary. The late Mr. Mellish Could never abide it. He thought it vile, And coxcombical. My friend the Poet Laureat, Who is a great lawyer at Anything comical, Was the first who tried it; But Mellish could never abide it. But it signifies very little what Mellish said, Because he ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... the capacity for co-ordination. He wants concentration and continuity. It is not that he has no claims to be considered a philosopher or an artist, but rather that he is both imperfectly, for he thinks and writes marvelously, on a small scale. He is an entomologist, a lapidary, a jeweler, a coiner of sentences, of adages, of criticisms, of aphorisms, counsels, problems; and his book, extracted from the accumulations of his journal during fifty years of his life, is a ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... house, Bertha Holcomb. It's all up to you, Harry. Find out all that is possible; but go slow. Trace down that ring; find out everything that you can. Go and see Bertha Holcomb. Perhaps she can give you some data. Watson said no; but perhaps you may uncover it. Take the ring to a lapidary; but don't let him cut it. Last of all, and most important, buy the house of the Blind Spot. Draw on me. Let me ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... design; which he accordingly imparted to one of his comrades: whereupon the two men drew nigh the place where Calandrino sate alone, and feigning not to see him fell a talking of the virtues of divers stones, of which Maso spoke as aptly and pertinently as if he had been a great and learned lapidary. Calandrino heard what passed between them, and witting that 'twas no secret, after a while got up, and joined them, to Maso's no small delight. He therefore continued his discourse, and being asked by Calandrino, where these ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... expression it may be inferred, that besides his mercantile speculations in jewels, Cesar Frederick was a lapidary.—E.] ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... being uniformly black. The garnets are large trapezohedral-faced crystals of an intense color, but penetrated with rifts and flaws. Many, no doubt, will afford serviceable gem material, but their resources have not yet been tested by the lapidary. ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... a finished stone whether or not the lapidary has cut it properly as regards its optical properties one may use the dichroscope, and if there is little or no dichroism in evidence when looking through the table of the stone it is ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... here, carved by John of Bologna, at least begun by him, are a wonderful work; and the marbles in the baptistery beat those of Florence for value and for variety. A good lapidary might find perpetual amusement in adjusting the claims of superiority to these precious columns of jasper, granite, alabaster, &c. The different animals which support the font being equally admirable for their composition as ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... in higher honor and more widely Cultivated in Castile than in any other European state, began to lay aside the garb of chronicle, and to be studied on more scientific principles. Charters and diplomas were consulted, manuscripts collated, coins and lapidary inscriptions deciphered, and collections made of these materials, the true basis of authentic history; and an office of public archives, like that now existing at Simancas, was established at Burgos, and placed ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... their readiness to lend themselves to improper uses. But Latin—ah, Latin was different! Even at his preparatory school, where he was known as a swot of the first water, he had displayed an unhealthy infatuation for that tongue; he loved its cold, lapidary construction; and while other boys played football or cricket, this withered little fellow used to lark about with a note-book, all by himself, torturing sensible English into its refractory and colourless periods and elaborating, without the help of a ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... on a low pillow, his right hand grasping the handle of his drawn sword. The more I looked at it, both during and after the service, the more convinced I became that this was no mere conventional figure made by some lapidary long after the subject's death, but was the work of an inspired artist, an exact portrait of the man, even to his stature, and that he had succeeded in giving to the countenance the very expression of the living Sir Ranulph. And what it expressed was power and authority ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson |
