"Opulence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sincerity. His disposition was easy-going, although his intellect was such a high-flyer; in pagan times he would have believed in ridiculous divinities rather than set himself up as an atheist. He did not believe that excess of knowledge gives firmness to the judgment, and he remarks that the opulence of learned men often leads to more errors than the poverty of those who depend on the native virtues of instinct and experience. He has phrases which seem meant to condemn the mechanical emptiness of the modern German ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma,—literally and truly, like the smell of spring violets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky meadow; I forgot all ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... "we in America have so far got out of the way of a womanhood that has any vigor of outline or opulence of physical proportions that, when we see a woman made as a woman ought to be, she strikes us as a monster. Our willowy girls are afraid of nothing so much as growing stout; and if a young lady begins to round into proportions like the women in Titian's ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... us gibe at us and throw our sins in our teeth. But this mightiest of democracies is at last awakening, is casting out the evil genii of opulence, is girding on its sword for the great work. Soldier of freedom, thou camest to us in the time of our greatest need. "Now," thou saidst, "is precisely the moment to serve your cause." Symbol of the united democracies of the world, symbol of a union which will make ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... misery, was not the only object in the embrace of the whirl. Both above and below were visible fragments of wreckage—significant wreckage—plumed hats, sword-sheaths, portfolios, epaulettes, decorations, insignia of honour, as if here a national Argosy, laden with Opulence, Rank Intelligence, and Honour, had gone, dismally and desperately, down to—what? Let those Phlegethon walls, that Tophet-like mist, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various
... Durbar Hall as she spoke—a long room overloaded with gilt furniture, gilt-framed mirrors, and the inevitable chandeliers and musical boxes that are the insignia of semi-civilised opulence throughout India. No self-respecting Maharajah, or Rana, or Nawab would dream of living in ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... it, Georgino, and you know how I hate display," she said. "Shakespeare was content with the most modest scenery for his masterpieces, and it would be a great mistake if we allowed ourselves to be carried away by mere wasteful opulence. In all the years I have lived here, and contributed in my humble way to the life of the place, I have heard no complaints about my suppers or teas, nor about the quality of entertainment which I offer my guests when they are so good as to say ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... they? Delinquents by nature, such as are to be found in most of our large cities; people born with savage instincts; men who would rather pass their days in the midst of vice and open corruption than live a life of honour and opulence. ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... you shall seem meet, all and every such servant or servants of the Company who may by you be found guilty of any of the above offences." "We had" (say the Directors) "the mortification to find that the servants of the Company, who had been raised, supported, and owed their present opulence to the advantages gained in such service, have in this instance most unfaithfully betrayed their trust, abandoned the Company's interest, and prostituted its influence to accomplish the purposes of individuals, whilst the interest of the Company is almost wholly ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and benevolence, they became rich, honoured, and respected by all who knew them. Their cotton-mills and print-works gave employment to a large population. Their well-directed diligence made the valley teem with activity, joy, health, and opulence. Out of their abundant wealth they gave liberally to all worthy objects, erecting churches, founding schools, and in all ways promoting the well- being of the class of working-men from which they had sprung. They afterwards ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... mind, and is impossible with a mental attitude which is hostile to it. We can not attract opulence mentally by a poverty-stricken attitude which is driving away what we long for. It is fatal to work for one thing and to expect something else. No matter how much one may long for prosperity, a miserable, poverty-stricken, mental attitude ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... The whole opulence of an Indian Court was unfolded at the Maharajah's banquet. At the table covered with red velvet and luxuriously laid with gold and silver plate, the Russian officers sat in gay-coloured ranks with the chiefs of the Prince's retinue. The viands were excellent, and champagne flowed ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... new plate, Sevres porcelain, and white damask, was redolent of opulence. The dishes were from Chevet, the wines from a celebrated merchant on the Quai Saint-Bernard, a personal friend of Matifat's. For the first time Lucien beheld the luxury of Paris displayed; he went from surprise to surprise, but he ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... liberties, now common to all; and the apprehension of their approach dictated to the reluctant Bonaparte the immediate signature of the treaty of Leoben. The Romish hierarchy of Hungary exists in all its former splendour and opulence; never has the slightest attempt been made to diminish it; and those revolutionary principles, to which so large a portion of civilised Europe has been sacrificed, have here failed in making ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... prettier village than this. If you doubt my word, come and see it. Yonder we discern a portion of the Basin of Minas; around us are the rich meadows of Nova Scotia. Intellect has here placed a crowning college upon a hill; opulence has surrounded it with picturesque villas. A ride into the country, a visit to a bachelor's lodge, studded with horns of moose and cariboo, with woodland scenes and Landseer's pictures, and then—over the bridge, and over the Avon, towards ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... might reasonably have been expected. This will be understood when the general financial condition of the city is called to recollection. Every one who has known the country but for a few years back must remember the almost general bankruptcy occasioned by the failure of land speculating men of opulence and high credit. During that time commerce in all its classes sensibly felt the shock, and business languished in all its branches. No wonder that the theatre, which can only be fed by the superflux of all other departments of society, should droop, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... cupola days; but the herd of cast-iron deer that once guarded these lawns, standing sentinel to all true gentry: Whither were they fled? In his boyhood, one specimen betokened a family of position and affluence; two, one on each side of the front walk, spoke of a noble opulence; two and a fountain were overwhelming. He wondered in what obscure thickets that once proud herd now grazed; and then he smiled, as through a leafy opening of shrubbery he caught a glimpse of a last survivor, ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... Southern California resort a world-weary woman, young and beautiful but disillusioned, meets a girl who has learned the art of living—of tasting life in all its richness, opulence and joy. The story hinges upon the change wrought in the soul of the blase woman by this ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... in brilliancy, and illumined the landscape with all the opulence, splendour and superabundance of radiance common to the south,—the air was soft and balmy, and one great white cloud floating lazily under the silver orb, moved slowly to the centre of the heavens,—the violet-blue of night falling around ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... historian Josephus, Hist. vi. 1. Procopius of Caeserea, who lived in the sixth century, says that Chosroes, king of Persia, had a great desire to make himself master of Palestine, on account of its extraordinary fertility, its opulence, and the great number of its inhabitants. The Saracens thought the same, and were afraid that Omar. when he went to Jerusalem, charmed with the fertility of the soil and the purity of the air, would never return to Medina. (Ockley, Hist. of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... exorbitant exactions upon the farmers, he confiscated many estates to his own use, and reaped the crops. Even travellers were attacked to enrich this extraordinary thief, and six vessels were afterward dispatched to Rome with the plunder, which he asserted was sufficient to permit him to revel in opulence the remainder of his life, even if he were obliged to give up two thirds in ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... short space of time, by the exercise of that art, to his natural gifts for which he had now added the wholesome tonic of experience, Peace passed from a poor and obscure lodging in a slum in Lambeth to the state and opulence of a comfortable suburban residence in Peckham. These were the halcyon days of Peace's enterprise in life. From No. 25 Stangate Street, Lambeth, the dealer in musical instruments, as Peace now described himself, sallied ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... Rusticucci.] Giacopo Rusticucci, a Florentine, remarkable for his opulence and the generosity ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... inhabited by our most extensive and wealthy agriculturists. It was a large, whitewashed, ornamentally thatched building, that told by its external aspect of the good living, extensive comforts, and substantial opulence which prevailed within. Stretched before its hall-door was a small lawn, bounded on the left by a wall that separated it from the farm-yard into which the kitchen door opened. Here were stacks of hay, oats, and wheat, all upon ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... was once my own, I might find myself a pied a terre in Paris or Vienna, and finish life pleasantly enough among some of the friends I liked when I was young. Six or seven hundred a year would be opulence for a man of ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... was beautifully situated on the river Pactolus, in the middle Hermus valley, at the foot of Mount Tmolus, and was once the capital of the kingdom of Lydia, the place of residence of Croesus and other Lydian kings. It was a city of great opulence and splendor, and "distinguished for the voluptuous and debauched ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... good deal of her first interview with Lady Arabella, of her first return to the house; but she had resolved to carry herself as though the matter were easy to her. She would not allow it to be seen that she felt that she brought with her to Greshamsbury, comfort, ease, and renewed opulence. ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... opulence and splendour, even to an extreme old age. He had several losses in his trade, according to the chance of things which are depending on the sea; but his friends continually relieved him in his necessities, and gave him ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... to lose and feared nothing, who believed implicitly in himself and his star; who could say to himself as did Croustillac, "In risking death during a moment—for death can be but a moment's agony—I may live in luxury and opulence"—such a man can perform miracles above all when he undertakes a project with such a grand object and as stimulating ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... and property of his father, whose health had been failing for years, and who died quite unexpectedly. His mother never recovered from the shock, but in a short time followed her loved husband to the grave. So the son was left with a good business and ample means, seeming to be on the road to opulence. ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... the purple of the bass, and these, the souls of the carven stone, like birds hovering, like birds in swift flight, like birds poising, floated from the arches. Then the organ intoned the massive Gregorian, and the chant of the mass moved amid the opulence of gold vestments; the Latin responses filled the ear; and at the end of long abstinences the holy oil came like a bliss that never dies. In the ecstasy of ordination it seemed to him that the very savour and spirit of God had descended ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... best work, Saint Thomas of Villanueva distributing Alms, to my mind offers the entire impression of that full life of Andalusia. In the splendour of mitre and of pastoral staff, in the sober magnificence of architecture, is all the opulence of the Catholic Church; in the worn, patient, ascetic face of the saint is the mystic, fervid piety which distinguished so wonderfully the warlike and barbarous Spain of the sixteenth century; and lastly, in the beggars covered with ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... your devoted husband? Take this—fear not—why should love have suspicions? When she is gone, I shall have a wife of whom I may not be ashamed—yet, is she not a stranger in a foreign land? Has she not left her country, her relations, her friends, her gods, for me, whom she has raised to opulence? Cease, cease—I cannot stand these thoughts—there is a strife in this heart between the powers of hell and heaven—when will it terminate, and who ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... gift by a structure dedicated to his service, corresponding with the magnificence of private mansions, and the natural beauties of local scenery." We can only wonder that, in a neighbourhood abounding with men of rank and opulence, such ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... Hippoclus, was descended, as likewise Epaminondas was, from an honorable family in Thebes; and, being brought up to opulence, and having a fair estate left him whilst he was young, he made it his business to relieve the good and deserving amongst the poor, that he might show himself lord and not slave of his estate. For amongst men, as Aristotle observes, some are too narrow-minded to use their wealth, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... perceived between the English and the people among whom he had hitherto lived, such essential difference in customs, appearance, and way of living, as inspired him with high notions of that British freedom, opulence, and convenience, on which he had often heard his mother expatiate. On the road, he feasted his eyesight with the verdant hills covered with flocks of sheep, the fruitful vales parcelled out into cultivated enclosures; the very cattle ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... the more ready to listen to Josephine's suggestion of the marriage of Louis and Hortense. This union in every respect seemed exceedingly desirable. Napoleon could gratify their highest ambition in assigning to them posts of opulence and honor. They could also be of great service to Napoleon in his majestic plan of redeeming all Europe from the yoke of the old feudal despotisms, and in conferring upon the peoples the new political gospel of equal rights ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... lived in them; for them he found apt imagery or symbol; and in verse which has the dignity of reserve and of passion controlled to sobriety, he let them as it were involuntarily escape from the seclusion of his soul. He is the thinker among the poets of his time, and when splendours of colour and opulence of sound have passed away, the idea remains. In fragments from his papers, published in 1867, with the title Journal d'un Poete, the inner history of Vigny's ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... Amelia, is it you, the object of grief, the daughter of opulence, of wisdom and philosophy, that thus complaineth? It cannot be you are the child of misfortune, speaking of the monuments of former ages, which were allotted not for the reflection of the distressed, but ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... awe-stricken. How had he dared come here? Neither in the Hotel de Soto, with its many divinities, nor in the palace of Nelse Ackerman, the king, had he felt such a sense of his own lowliness as the sight of this calm, slow-moving great lady inspired. She was the embodiment of opulence, she was "the real thing." Despite the look of kindliness in her wide-open blue eyes, she impressed him with a feeling of her overwhelming superiority. He did not know it was his duty as a gentleman to rise from his chair when a lady entered, but some instinct brought him to his ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... governed by a set of worthy gentlemen who know little about Kentucky and her wants, and think less [cries of "Ay, ay!"]. I am not decrying General Washington and his cabinet; it is but natural that the wants of the seaboard and the welfare and opulence of the Eastern cities should be uppermost in their minds [another interruption]. Kentucky, if she would prosper, must look to her own welfare. And if any credit is due to me, gentlemen, it is because I reserved my decision ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... complexion, and her blue eyes were so pale that she appeared to look at the world with the empty white candour of a statue. You could not call her good-looking. It was something much more impressive. The simplicity of her apparel, the opulence of her form, her imposing stature, and the extraordinary sense of vigorous life that seemed to emanate from her like a perfume exhaled by a flower, made her beautiful with a beauty of a rustic and olympian order. To watch her reaching ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... the intercourse with mankind on a large scale, which such meetings secure. A fine time of year is chosen, when days are long, skies are bright, the earth smiles, and all nature rejoices; a city or town is taken by turns, of ancient name or modern opulence, where buildings are spacious and hospitality hearty. The novelty of place and circumstance, the excitement of strange, or the refreshment of well-known faces, the majesty of rank or of genius, the amiable charities of men pleased both with themselves and with each other; ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... being Stadtholder of Holland) the Dutch discovered this island. The enterprise of that people had raised them to the zenith of their power: unless by England, they were unrivalled in nautical science and commercial opulence. More for the purposes of trade than the acquisition of knowledge, they were anxious to discover unknown countries, and to conceal the information they possessed from ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... travelled to Egypt, Persia, and Babylon. He almost seemed a compound of two different characters, uniting the intellectual energy of the sage with the social feelings of a man of the world. Living in ease and opulence, he was not inclined to be censorious or morose; having mingled much in society, he was not very emotional or sympathetic; not tempted to think life a melancholy scene of suffering, but callous enough to find amusement in the ills he could not prevent. He regarded man, generally, as a curious ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... per hour; or six and twenty dollars for every minute that flew. Thus the usual track of supposition was thoroughly broken up. Men knew not what to imagine. There were some who even conceived that Mr. Ellison would divest himself of at least one-half of his fortune, as of utterly superfluous opulence—enriching whole troops of his relatives by division of his superabundance. To the nearest of these he did, in fact, abandon the very unusual wealth which was ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... careful calculation and rigid economy, thrifty, prudent, just, and eminently conscientious; of Portia one can only think as of a creature born in the very lap of luxury and nursed in the midst of sunny magnificence, whose very element was elegant opulence and refined splendor, and by whose cradle Fortune herself stood godmother. She seems like a perfect rose, blooming in a precious vase of gold and gems and exquisite workmanship. Camiola's contemptuous rebuff of her insolent ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the Hacienda del Venado. The proprietor, Don Augustin Pena, was a man of great opulence. In addition to a rich gold mine which he worked, at no great distance off, he was the owner of countless herds of horses, mules, and cattle, that in a half-wild state roamed over the vast savannahs ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... were discussing the budget of 1898, and one of the members called attention to the fact that for several years past advances to the amount of L2,400,000 had been made to various officials, and were unaccounted for. That is a specimen of what the Boer regime has become in this school of opulence."[36] M. Naville continues:—"We do not consider the Boers, as a people, to be infected by the corruption which rules the administration. The farmers who live far from Pretoria have preserved their patriarchal ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... superior culture and refinement, fell from opulence to extreme poverty, within four years. No less ready when at the bottom of fortune's ladder, than at the top, to do good as she had opportunity, she paid another poor woman's way to a neighboring State, where employment awaited ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... air of calm and reserved opulence about the Weightman mansion that spoke not of money squandered, but of wealth prudently applied. Standing on a corner of the Avenue no longer fashionable for residence, it looked upon the swelling tide of business with an ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... first shock of his appearance, it soothed Mr. Gunning to see Prothero sitting there, smoking, his long legs stretched out, his head thrown back, his eyes half closed. It established him in the illusion of continued opulence, for Mr. Gunning was not aware of the things that had happened to him four years ago. But there had been lapses and vanishings, unaccountable disturbances of the illusion. In the days of opulence people ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... joint-stock banks, and the proprietors are liable to the public for the whole of the bank responsibilities to the last shilling of their private fortunes. The number of persons connected with these banks as shareholders is very great, almost every man of opulence in the country being a holder of stock to a greater or a less amount. That some jealousy must exist among so many competitors in a limited field, is an obvious matter of inference. Such jealousy, however, has only ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... a rustler, but always a dude, rode from El Paso in deep disgust at his steady losses at faro and monte. The pecuniary side of these caused him no worry, for he was flush. This pleasing opulence was due to his business ability, for he had recently sold a claim for several thousand dollars. The first operation was simple, being known in Western phraseology as "jumping"; and the second, somewhat more complicated, was ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... the blinds now (put in Otway) under the Lighting Order: but in those days the Ritz was given—I won't say to advertising its opulence—but to allowing a glimpse of real comfort to the ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... understood and reddened. The winter had been a fairly prosperous one for the sisters, and their slowly accumulated savings had now reached the handsome sum of two hundred dollars; but the satisfaction they might have felt in this unwonted opulence had been clouded by a suggestion of Miss Mellins's that there were dark rumours concerning the savings bank in which their funds were deposited. They knew Miss Mellins was given to vain alarms; but ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... was the thought that awakened Harry Cresswell to a sense of endless well-being. Rich! No longer the mirage and semblance of wealth, the memory of opulence, the shadow of homage without the substance of power—no; now the wealth was real, cold hard dollars, and in piles. How much? He laughed aloud as he turned on his pillow. What did he care? Enough—enough. Not less than half a million; ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... writers of classic times, and is chiefly valuable as showing the estimation in which the classic writers were held in that day. This is also in octosyllabic verses, and is further remarkable for the opulence of its imagery and its variety of description. The poet is carried in the claws of a great eagle into this house, and sees its distinguished occupants standing upon columns of different kinds of metal, according to their merits. The poem ends ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... existence ten days before it had gone on record as a thoroughly "first-class" establishment. No wonder, then, that an air of peculiar respectability attached itself to the "wheel" itself which revolved in a corner of the barroom night after night, whirling into opulence or penury, such as entrusted their fortunes to its revolutions. Despite its high-toned patronage, however, the terms "roulette" and "croupier" found small favor with the devotees at that particular shrine of the fickle goddess, and Dabney Dirke, its presiding genius, was familiarly known among "the ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... aggrieved by the illegal opulence of the profiteers, but we are all liable to the infection. The feudalistic Fronde awaits its opportunity. The aristocracy of office endeavours to monopolize the State-machine. The emigres of culture find themselves looked askance at, on suspicion of intellectual arrogance, and ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... two hundred thousand people, judging from the length of this street and the wonderful quantity and richness of the goods displayed in the shops. Along this street I see a more lavish display of rich silks, furs, tiger-skins, and other evidences of opulence than was shown me at Canton. The pressure of the crowds reduces me at once to the necessity of drifting helplessly along, whithersoever the seething human tide may lead. Sometimes I fancy the few officiously interested persons about me, whom I endeavor to question ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... one so clearly demanded by the most ordinary humanity as this. The Liverpool merchants declared that the absence of restrictions on the slave-trade had been the chief cause of the prosperity and opulence of their town, and obtained leave to be heard by counsel against the bill. But Fox united with Pitt on this subject, and the bill was carried. But this was all the practical success which the efforts of the "Abolitionists," ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... Atwater twelve years to reach this Wilson Avenue, though they carried it with them all the way. They had begun their married life in this locality before it had become a definite district. Twelve years ago the neighbourhood had shown no signs of mushrooming into its present opulence. Twelve years ago Raymond, twenty-eight, and Cora, twenty-four, had taken a six-room flat at Racine and Sunnyside. Six rooms. Modern. Light. ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... purpose; for we had distanced the monarch and his eight carriages. The royal party had not yet entered the house; and I enjoyed, for a few minutes, one of the most striking displays that the opulence and animation of a great country can possibly produce—the coup-d'oeil of a well-dressed audience in a fine and spacious theatre. Multitudes spread over hill and dale may be picturesque; the aspect of great public meetings may be startling, stern, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... wandered about the narrow streets of Paris. Ronald was somewhat disappointed in the city of which he had heard so much. The streets were ill paved and worse lighted, and were narrow and winding. In the neighbourhood of the Louvre there were signs of wealth and opulence. The rich dresses of the nobles contrasted strongly indeed with the sombre attire of the Glasgow citizens, and the appearance and uniform of the royal guards filled him with admiration; but beyond the fashionable quarter it did not appear to him ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... all that I saw which seemed to intimate that I was rather in the abode of a decayed gentleman, who clung to a few of the forms and observances of former rank, than in that of a common peasant, raised above his fellows by comparative opulence. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... of L800,000,000: did she not give L20,000,000 to free her West India slaves; did she not expend L7,000,000 to combat the famine of Ireland? Is not the proposed expenditure for the National Executive of the present year an evidence of her boundless opulence? And yet to save a trifling outlay compared with the injustice now done, the representative of Her Majesty is compelled to carry about under his skirts a parcel of convictism; to deposit these tokens of imperial interest he is driven to have recourse to artifice, trickery and falsehood. ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... was brought in, Charles Townshend concluded a speech in its favor with words to the following effect: "And now will these Americans, children planted by our care, nourished up by our indulgence, till they are grown to a degree of strength and opulence, and protected by our arms—will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy weight of that burden which we lie under?" To which Colonel Barre replied: "They planted by your care? No, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... situation. Upon her arrival in London, fresh trains of ideas were quickly forced upon her mind, which were as dissimilar as possible from those associated with love, friendship, and Elmour Grove. At Sir Thomas Stock's, every thing she saw and heard served to remind, or rather to convince her, of the opulence of the owner of the house. Here every object was estimated, not for its beauty or elegance, but by its costliness. Money was the grand criterion, by which the worth of animate and inanimate objects was alike decided. In this society, the worship of the golden idol was avowed without ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... the least known squares in London is Hexham Square, though it is one of the oldest. Not that it is very remote from the throng of existence, but it is isolated in a dingy district of silent and decaying streets. Once it was a favored residence of opulence and power, and its architecture still indicates its former and prouder destiny. But its noble mansions are now divided and broken up into separate dwellings, or have been converted into chambers and offices. Lawyers, and architects, and agents, dwell in apartments where the richly-sculptured ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... of the scene—the marble-topped tables, the range of leather-upholstered wall seats, the gay company, the ladies dressed in demi-state toilets, speaking in an exquisite visible chorus of taste, economy, opulence or art; the sedulous and largess-loving garcons, the music wisely catering to all with its raids upon the composers; the melange of talk and laughter—and, if you will, the Wuerzburger in the tall glass cones that bend to ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... maritime enterprise; consequently there is no reason to infer that the vast sum of money which must of necessity have been expended in the improvement of the harbour, has been unprofitably sunk. During the late war the islanders rapidly increased in opulence, as the island was filled with troops and emigrants, who greatly enhanced the value of home produce; but the cessation of hostilities restored matters to their natural order, and the Jerseymen bewail the return of peace and plenty with as much sincerity as any half-pay ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... add that the count de Tendilla redeemed his promises like a loyal knight; and this miracle, as it appeared in the eyes of Fray Antonio Agapida, is the first instance on record of paper money, which has since inundated the civilized world with unbounded opulence. ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... borrowed plate were on his table he was terribly afraid that the whole transaction would fail; as one of the people invited was a painter, and painters are an "observant, malicious, profound race, who take in everything at a glance."[*] Everything else in his rooms would represent the opulence, ease, and ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... kind." All was indeed going happy as a marriage bell. Did I not rightly say that the world was conspiring to spoil this young man of thirty, whose youth had certainly not been passed in the splendour of opulence or power? What wonder if in the dawn of his American experiences, and of such a reception, everything assumed a roseate hue? Is it matter for surprise if he found the women "very beautiful," the "general breeding ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... of an opulence which we must do Raleigh the credit to say was expended not on debauchery or display, but in the most enlightened efforts to extend the field of English commercial enterprise beyond the Atlantic. We need not suppose him to have been unselfish beyond the fashion ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... a most accomplished artist, holds that he has "long since surpassed" Randolph Caldecott.[34] I doubt whether Mr. Thomson himself would concur with his eulogist in this. But he has assuredly followed Caldecott close; and in opulence of production, which—as Macaulay insisted—should always count, has naturally exceeded that gifted, but shortlived, designer. If, pursuing an ancient practice, one were to attempt to label Mr. Thomson with a special distinction ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... production, of France, - the bright, cheerful, smokeless industry of the wonderful country which produces, above all, the agreeable things of life, and turns even its defeats and revolutions into gold. The whole town has an air of almost depressing opulence, an appear- ance which culminates in the great place which sur- rounds the Grand-Theatre, - an establishment in the highest style, encircled with columns, arcades, lamps, gilded cafes. One feels it to be a monument to the virtue of the well-selected bottle. If I had not for- bidden ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... were ever greater lovers of peace. Some philosophers have seen or tried to see in the War a judgment on the luxury and frivolity of pre-War England, on her neglect of defence, and her absorption in opulence. Were this the case, it would be ironical to reflect how the North Country homes, first and most cruelly scourged by the War, were homes to which the so-called "sins of society" were least known and most repugnant, and where military training had been long pursued in the teeth of ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... and sweet-smelling harvests of clover and hay in the background and weeds and wild grass in the foreground, the area of vegetation in the opulence of midsummer was demarked from the area of shell-craters, trenches and explosions. You had the majesty of battle and the desolation of war; nature's eternal seeding and fruiting alongside the most ruthless forms of destruction. In the clear air the black bursts of the German high explosives hammering ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... letters. Count DE CAYLUS expended a princely income in the study and the encouragement of Art. He passed his mornings among the studios of artists, watching their progress, increasing his collections, and closing his day in the retirement of his own cabinet. His rank and his opulence were no obstructions to his settled habits. CICERO himself, in his happier moments, addressing ATTICUS, exclaimed—"I had much rather be sitting on your little bench under Aristotle's picture, than in the curule chairs of our great ones." This wish was probably sincere, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... quarter of square miles, inhabited by about one hundred and thirty-four millions of souls, with a sea-coast of immense extent, washed by two oceans, and bordering on vast countries of hitherto unexplored opulence. The resources of Birmah, Siam, and the Eastern Archipelago, have been scarcely touched by the hand of man. Savage governments, savage nations, and savage indolence, have left those countries almost in a state of nature; yet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... with opulent business houses and luxurious mansions, most of the latter being surrounded by gardens and embowered in groves of flowering trees. Nor do these magazines and dwelling-houses stand merely for taste and opulence. Within the bounds of the Concessions is the reign of law—not, as elsewhere in China, the arbitrary will of a magistrate, but the offspring of freedom and justice. Foreigners live everywhere under the protection ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... promising future opulence, her skin a warm cream deepening to shades of coral, her hair a blonde cloud, hanging misty round her brows. She was as unsubtle as a chromo, as fragrantly fresh as a newly wakened baby. Her hands, large, plump, with flexible broad-tipped fingers, ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... immediately accepted the situation of a governess in the family of an Irish nobleman. The mansion was only to be approached, as Miss Edgeworth would have said, 'through eighteen sloughs, at the imminent peril of one's life', and when one had reached it, the mixture of opulence and squalor, of civility and savagery, was unspeakable. But my Mother was well paid, and she stayed in this distasteful environment, doing the work she hated most, while with the margin of her salary she helped first one of her brothers and then the other through ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... labelled "Harbor Castle. Residence of Fletcher Farrell." I need not say that I studied it intently. According to the post-card, Harbor Castle stood on a rocky point with water on both sides. It was an enormous, wide-spreading structure, as large as a fort. It exuded prosperity, opulence, extravagance, great wealth. I felt suddenly a filial impulse to visit the home of ...
— The Log of The "Jolly Polly" • Richard Harding Davis
... few lying speeches," she answered, "and Tom Allonby taught me the worth of all such commerce." There was a smile upon her lips, sister to that which Clytemnestra may have flaunted in welcome of that old Emperor Agamemnon, come in gory opulence from the sack of Troy Town. "I gave it—" Her voice rose here to a despairing wail. "Ah, go, before I lay my curse upon you, son of Thomas Allonby! But do you kiss me first, for you have just his lying mouth. So, that is better! And now go, my lord marquis; it ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... insignificant-looking man of about forty. All his characteristics might be described as being of medium quality. He was five feet nine in height, his brown hair was neither fair nor dark, his dress suggested neither poverty nor opulence, and his features were of the type known as ordinary. In a word, he was not one whose appearance would provoke a second glance or who would be credited with taking an important part in anything that might be ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... unwieldly was the treasure with which the soldiers were loaded, that it is solemnly averred that creditors avoided their debtors fearing lest the latter should pay them what they owed in further heaps of the bulky treasure; and it is certainly a fact that even the animals shared in the opulence of the conquest, for the horses were shod with silver. Silver was cheaper and easier to get ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... this an exaggeration. Deep as science and research have explored, extensive as is the field which genius and art have occupied, they have an Herculean labor yet to perform before India will have yielded up all her opulence of learning. The literature of the world in all ages has been richly furnished, if not actually inspired, from that fountain. The Wisdom of the Ancients, so much lauded in the earlier writings of Hebrews, Greeks, and Phoenicians, was ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... Towns-refused to advance money for the pay of the French troops. The men were absolutely destitute. I declared that it was urgent to put an end to this state of things. The Hanse towns had been reduced from opulence to misery by taxation and exactions, and were no longer ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of opulence in air and attire, came briskly forward and held up his hand to receive both sticks, with a harlequin bow from the dark-eyed Oriental, who wore a spruce black broadcloth suit, in honour of America, and a red fez, in loyalty, doubtless, to ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... whom the general and public good was regarded as the standard by which the use of public power was to be measured; the life of a man who had struggled hard and successfully for the material prosperity and opulence which makes work easy and gives a man room and force for carrying out his purposes. All his life long his first and never-sleeping passion was the romantic and splendid ambition after knowledge, for the conquest of nature and for the service of man; gathering up in himself the spirit ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... terrorists of Vaucluse.) "These carnivorous fellows, regretting the times when they could rob and massacre with impunity.... Who, six months ago, were starving and who now live in the most scandalous opulence... Squanderers of the public funds, robbers of private fortunes... Guilty of rapine, of forced contributions, of extortions," etc.—Prudhomme, "Les crimes de la Revolution," VI., 79. (On the Revolutionary committee installed by Fouche at Nevers.) The local investigation shows that the eleven ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... be a mountebank, a clown, a circus Hercules. By stiffening one of his senseless arms he could bring down roars of applause. By years of bitter labour with his pen he earned the barest living. The muscles that a porter might have, offered him opulence, because it was tougher by a few degrees than the flesh of other men. The knowledge he had striven for just kept ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... sorts hurried to the new centre of opulence. Already an obsequious personage from Paris had taken up his abode in a room of one of the new houses, and a painted board hanging from his window informed the passers-by that he was permitted to style himself Coiffeur to her Excellency the Landhofmeisterin, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... septuagenarians sat smoking short pipes and playing nap on trays in the sun. From several doorways came the reek of fish frying. The houses looked ineffably petty and shabby. Esther wondered how she could ever have conceived this a region of opulence; still more how she could ever have located Malka and her family on the very outskirt of the semi-divine classes. But the semi-divine persons themselves had long since shrunk ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Merse, Roxburgh, &c.; and for this, among other reasons, I think that a man of romantic taste—'a man of feeling'—will be better pleased with the poverty but intelligent minds of the peasantry of Ayrshire (peasantry they all are, below the Justice of Peace), than the opulence of a club of Merse farmers, when he at the same time considers the Vandalism of their plough-folks." The deteriorating effect of the large-farm system, remarked by the poet, is inevitable. It is impossible that the ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... vicinity of his own palace. The known virtues of the murdered prince caused his shrine to be visited as that of a martyr; and such was the fame of his miracles, that the city and cathedral attained a degree of opulence from the pious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... those great golden globes which made one end of the window like the remove from a mine, those satin-smooth spheres, those cuts as of red and white marble? She had eaten apples, but these were as the apples of the gods, lying in a heap of opulence, with a precious light-spot like a ruby on every outward side. The turnips affected her imagination like ivory carvings: she did not recognize them for turnips at all. She never afterwards believed them to be turnips; and as for cabbages, they were green inflorescences of majestic ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... plantation, at this present moment a sheet of bluebells, towards the level of the river. There was a dainty and yet sober brightness about the whole picture. Summer in the North is for Nature a time of expansion and of joy as it is elsewhere, but there is none of that opulence, that sudden splendour and superabundance, which mark it in the South. In these bare green valleys there is a sort of delicate austerity even in the summer; the memory of winter seems to be still lingering about these wind-swept fells, about the farmhouses, with their rough ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to be estimated by their appearance of neatness and opulence, Chalons deserves to be marked on the map in more capital letters than the imposing names of Sens or Auxerre. To no town indeed does it bear a greater resemblance than to Tours, both from the modern air of its houses, and from its noble river, adapted for every ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... and diminish the power, of the lord. [92] The Colonna and Ursini vied with each other in the decoration of their palaces and chapels; and their antique splendor was rivalled or surpassed by the sudden opulence of the papal families. In Rome the voice of freedom and discord is no longer heard; and, instead of the foaming torrent, a smooth and stagnant lake reflects the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... commercial interests. The citizens copy after the State, and regard wealth, pomp, and luxury as the great goods of life. Such a nation creates wealth rapidly, and distributes it badly. Thence the two extremes, of monstrous opulence and monstrous misery; all the enjoyment to a few, all the privations to the rest, that is to say, to the people; Privilege, Exception, Monopoly, Feudality, springing up from Labor itself: a false and dangerous situation, which, making Labor a blinded and chained Cyclops, in the mine, at ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... very naturally presumed, that the injuries which they had suffered, and the dangers which they still apprehended from his most inveterate enemy, would secure the fidelity of a party already considerable by their numbers and opulence. Even the conduct of Maxentius towards the bishops of Rome and Carthage may be considered as the proof of his toleration, since it is probable that the most orthodox princes would adopt the same measures with regard to their established ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... day, we, of the easier classes, are in a state of surfeit and disgrace after meat. Plethora has filled us with indifference; and we are covered from head to foot with the callosities of habitual opulence. Born into what is called a certain rank, we live, as the saying is, up to our station. We squander without enjoyment, because our fathers squandered. We eat of the best, not from delicacy, but from brazen habit. We do not keenly enjoy or eagerly desire the presence of a luxury; we are unaccustomed ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stately banquets, but the furniture of the table was not after the manner of feasts, though the best the country afforded, and the supply of meat improved daily, while the fruit told of the kindly opulence ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... that the courier introduced him. He is evidently immensely charmed with Miss Miller. If she thinks him the finest gentleman in the world, he, on his side, has never found himself in personal contact with such splendor, such opulence, such expensiveness as this young lady's. And then she must seem to him wonderfully pretty and interesting. I rather doubt that he dreams of marrying her. That must appear to him too impossible a piece of luck. He has nothing but his handsome face to offer, and there is a ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... days in great joy, in the company of Duryodhana, O bull of Bharata's race! Once on a time, O monarch, many kings repaired to a self-choice at the capital of Chitrangada, the ruler of the country of the Kalingas. The city, O Bharata, full of opulence, was known by the name of Rajapura. Hundreds of rulers repaired thither for obtaining the hand of the maiden. Hearing that diverse kings had assembled there, Duryodhana also, on his golden car, proceeded thither, accompanied by Karna. When the festivities commenced ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... distant lands the produce of this commercial nation. Thus all the mercantile glories crowd on my fancy, emblazoned in the most effulgent colouring of an ardent imagination. Borne on her soaring pinions, I wing my flight to the time when Heaven shall have crowned my labours with success and opulence. I see sumptuous palaces rising to receive me; I see orphans, and widows, and painters, and fidlers, and poets, and builders, protected and encouraged; and when the fabrick is pretty nearly finished by my shattered pericranium, I cast my eyes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... rooms, which Trevor furnished in a stately manner, hanging a selection of his mezzotints on the walls—ladies of old years, after Romney, Reynolds, Hoppner, and the rest. A sober opulence and comfort characterised the chambers; a well-selected set of books in a Sheraton bookcase was intended to beguile the tedium of waiting clients. The typewriter (Miss Blossom accepted the situation) ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang |
