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Ornate   Listen
verb
Ornate  v. t.  To adorn; to honor. (R.) "They may ornate and sanctify the name of God."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ornate" Quotes from Famous Books



... reviews. Editors often turned to him for that kind of light and knowledge that the public needed when grave issues were before the church, the city, the commonwealth, the nation. In speaking or writing thus, he used a less ornate style, less fervid rhetoric, and spoke or wrote with direct, business-like precision. In a word, he suited his style to the work in hand. But, because he attracted and delighted, while teaching, his young readers, that critic ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... system as it existed in England he saw many instances of ignorance, laziness, and corruption; and he agreed with the Puritans in denouncing them. His pictures of the "formal priest," with his excuses for doing nothing, his new-fashioned and improved substitutes for the ornate and also too lengthy ancient service, and his general ideas of self-complacent comfort, has in it an odd mixture of Roman Catholic irony with Puritan censure. Indeed, though Spenser hated with an Englishman's hatred all that he considered ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... 1820. The building was consecrated Jan. 23, 1823, and opened for services March 16 following. The cost was L14,325, and the number of sittings provided 1,500, half to be free. The services have from the first been markedly of a Ritualistic character, and the ornate decorations of the church have been therefore most appropriate. The living (value L230) is a vicarage in the gift of trustees, and is at present held by the Rev. A.H. Watts, who succeeded the Rev. R.W. Enraght after the latter's suspension and ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... effort, and his last. Without even waiting to be paid, the illustrious craftsman departed this life, and was buried under an ornate tombstone, whose winged cherubs would have afforded singularly little scope for the exercise of his favourite art. There remained, however, the widow Pincini, to whom the six hundred francs were due. And thereupon arose the great crisis in the life of Henri Deplis, traveller of commerce. ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... sheet. There were many more of the closely written lines, but he read no farther, for a check was folded there. His trembling fingers pulled the ends apart and his astounded eyes rested on its ornate face. ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... of the churches which thus came into being were those at Brighton, Bath, and Spa Fields. The first named stood upon the site in North Street, now occupied by a later, larger, and more ornate structure. Whitefield visited Brighton, first preaching there in the open air in 1759. This led to the formation of a Christian Society, and in 1761 Lady Huntingdon built a chapel, to defray the cost of which she sold her jewels, realising in this way the sum of nearly L700. The ...
— Excellent Women • Various

... and no wise——."[282] But I stick to the rule "Follies of those in power," etc.[283] But, by Hercules, that other friend of yours, Hortalus—with what a liberal hand, with what candour, and in what ornate language has he praised me to the skies, when speaking of the praetorship of Flaccus and that incident of the Allobroges.[284] I assure you nothing could have been more affectionate, complimentary, or more lavishly ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... extolled. But the best work that ever issued from the hands of this master, and the most highly praised, was a little study wrought in stucco for the Duchess Margherita of Austria in the Palace of the Medici at Rome—a thing so beautiful and so ornate that there is nothing better to be seen; nor do I believe that it is possible, in a certain sense, to do with silver what L'Indaco did in this work with stucco. From these things it may be judged that if this man had taken pleasure in work and had made use of his intelligence, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari

... interested Betty, for she had never seen anything like it, except once in a chateau near Arras. It was First Empire, and on the pin-cushion, lying on the ornate dressing-table, someone had written in a fine Italian hand on an envelope, the words: "This room was furnished from Paris in 1810. The bed is a replica of a bed made for the ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes

... whisper; and the only sound that is heard above the suppressed buzz of conversation, the muffled jingle of the money on the green cloth, the "sweep" of the croupiers' rakes, and the ticking of the very ornate French clocks on the mantel-pieces, is the impassibly metallic voice of the banker, as he proclaims his "Rouge perd," or "Couleur gagne." People are too genteel at Hombourg-von-der-Hohe to scream, to yell, to fall into fainting fits, or go into ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... The ornate heavy furniture and the upholstered parlor sets are passing away because they are no longer considered good taste, besides they are too heavy for cleanliness and are harmful to the health of women who ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley

... Elevated road, was erected independent of the enclosing walls, and occupied the full width of 257 Pearl Street, and about three-quarters of its depth. This change in the internal arrangements did not at all affect the ugly external appearance, which did little to suggest the stately and ornate stations since put up by the New York Edison Company, the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... November 15, that brave soldier Albert King of the Belgians was thirty-nine, and a solemn Mass was celebrated at Westminster Cathedral. Cardinal Bourne assisted at the service, and the ceremonial was of a most impressive and ornate character, gorgeous vestments, beautiful music, and the gleam of many lights combining to make a tout ensemble that suggested some great occasion of national thanksgiving, as, indeed, it was. Scarlet and green were the brilliant colour-notes of the function. The celebrant of the Mass ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 15, Nov. 18, 1914 • Various

... French windows, framed in the uncertain outlines of the old ornate balcony rail and the tossing leaves and branches of the vine, there appeared, as if it had come floating out of the liquid blackness of the night, detached ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... "What a fool!" said Marietta, addressing herself, and she walked to the bars with great determination, let down one, "scooched" to go through, and, picking up her basket, went on to the amphitheatre. Jerry need not have wondered whether she remembered his ornate poem. She did, every word of it, and as she walked she said it to herself in a murmuring tone. When she was within the beloved inclosure she paused a moment before setting down her basket, and looked about her. The place was not so grand ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... shall send you an official copy, but I shall appeal to the tenderness of Jane Carlyle, and excuse your formidable self, for the benefit of us both. Where all writing is such a caricature of the subject, what signifies whether the form is a little more or less ornate and luxurious? Meantime, I think to set a few heads before me, as good texts for winter evening entertainments. I wrote a deal about Napoleon a few months ago, after reading a library of memoirs. Now I have Plato, Montaigne, and Swedenborg, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... conciones, homilias, orationes, opuscula, disceptationes Patrum, in quibus ex apparato graviter et ornate nostra catholicorum dogmata roborarunt. Quamdiu apud bibliopolas ista venierint, tamdiu frustra nostrorum codices prohibentur; frustra servantur aditus oraeque maritimae; frustra domus, arcae, scrinia, capsulae disquiruntur; frustra tot portis minaces tabulae suffiguntur. ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion

... Paris or at Saint Raphael, on the Mediterranean, the master lives, like Leonardo of old, the existence of a grand seigneur, surrounded by his family, innumerable guests, and the horses and dogs he loves,—a group of which his ornate figure and expressive face form the natural centre. Each year he lives more away from the world, but no more inspiriting sight can be imagined than the welcome the president receives of a “varnishing” day, when he makes his entry surrounded by his pupils. ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... approaching interview might yield new information. The cabin was unoccupied, the table swung up against the beams of the upper deck, the heavy chairs moved back leaving a wide open space. The furnishings were rich, in excellent taste, the carpet a soft, green Wilton; the hanging lamp quite ornate, while a magnificent upright piano was firmly anchored against the butt of the aftermast. It was a yacht-like interior, even to the sheet music on the rack, and a gray striped cat dozing on one of the softly cushioned chairs. ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish

... kept jingling, and so did his spurs, and so did his bracelet. I almost forgot the bracelet. It was an ornate affair of gold links fastened on his left wrist with a big gold locket, and it kept slipping down over his hand and rattling against his cuff. The chain bracelet locked on the left wrist is very common ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... our proverbs— such as, "Cats hide their claws"; "Fair words please fools"; "He that has most time has none to lose." Great poets, like Tennyson and Matthew Arnold, understand well the fine effect to be produced from the mingling of short and long words— of the homely English with the more ornate Romance language. In the following verse from Matthew Arnold the words are all monosyllables, with the exception of tired and contention ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn

... eyes—eyes, that is, which assert their seeing, and so render themselves incapable for the time of submitting to impressions, I am as blind as any Sadducee could desire. I see blue, and white, and gold, and, in short, a tent-roof somewhat ornate. I dare say if I were in a miserable mood, having been deceived and disappointed like Hamlet, I should with him see there nothing but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. But I know that when I am passive ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... it. An ornament, like a cube held flat against his shirt front—a little golden cube, ornate with tiny bars. ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings

... well thereafter until we were settled in the new building, and Vicar No. 3 was in possession of the living. He was young and inexperienced in the conduct of a parish, and was imbued with ideas of what he considered a more ornate and elaborate form of worship. Innovations followed—lighted candles over the altar and the appointment of a Server at the Communion Service. Almost immediately I heard objections from the villagers; they could ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... followed Simmons up the grand staircase. The great rooms of the castle were on the first floor, but he passed the entrance to them, following his guide up and up to the second floor, where the earl had his own apartment. Here he was shown into a small room, richly furnished after a sombrely ornate fashion, the drapery and coverings much faded, worn even to shabbiness. It had been for a century or so the private sitting-room of the lady of the castle, but was now used by the earl, perhaps in memory ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... not make him less interesting as a figure in that amusing literarified society; and we may be glad to see him in Parma with Signor Torelli's eyes, as he "issues smug, ornate, with his well-fitting, polished shoe, his handsome leg in its neat stocking, his whole immaculate person, and his demure visage, and, gently sauntering from Casa Caprara, takes ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... tendency has been to make the dress of ministers of religion ornate.[246] This tendency has arisen partly from love of ornament, and partly, doubtless, it is the transference of court ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... and there was no ferryman in sight, so, after fuming up and down the shore, he swallowed a mighty draught of Dutch courage,—for he was as accomplished a performer on the horn as on the trumpet,—and swore with ornate and voluminous oaths that he would swim the stream "in spite of the ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... speculation in the Press, but we are in a position to state that he does not intend to re-enter politics or to resume his practice at the Bar, but has resolved to return to his first love—journalism. Sport is the only department in which the ornate and orotund style of which Mr. ASQUITH is a master is still in vogue, and the description of classic events in classical diction will furnish him with a congenial opening for the exercise of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various

... an ornate verbal picture, florid in its descriptive phraseology, but cognate enough to convince Crane it was Mortimer who had made one of the bets. His preconceived plan of the suspected man's ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... The huge and ornate modern mansion which he had built, putting to shame every other house in the place, gave an effect of ostentation to the Maddens as a family; it seemed only to accentuate the air of humility which enveloped Jeremiah ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... houses in particular set their mark on the High Street. One is dated 1663; both are of rich brickwork, almost extravagantly ornate with ledges, patterned courses, elaborate parapets and casements. The unhappy addition is the paint. If they had never been painted, or if the paint could be done away with, the pattern would take on ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... was in full flow—turgid, studiedly ornate, egotistical, and bombastic, but the final effect, even upon Weissmann, was that of one deluded, rather than of one carrying on a deep and far-reaching system of deception. He bodied forth the emotional moralist ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... last, insults. Pancracio brought his stony face close to Manteca, who looked at him with snake's eyes, convulsive, foaming at the mouth. Another moment and they would have been exchanging blows. Having completely exhausted their stock of direct insults, they now resorted to the most flowery and ornate insulting of each other's ancestors, male and female, paternal or maternal. Yet ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela

... was to be the school itself, an ornate building of crossed rafters and overhanging eaves. Then the dormitories, two long, parallel buildings with halls, individual rooms, and baths—one for the women and one for men—the two to be connected by a common dining-hall in such a manner ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx

... worthy of the highest praise. The other division does not aim at a frequent use of pithy sentiment, but at rapidity and rush of expression; this now prevails throughout Asia, and is characterised not only by a stream of eloquence but by a graceful and ornate vocabulary: Aeschylus of Cnidos, and my own contemporary Aeschines the Milesian, are examples of it. They possess a fine flow of speech, but they lack precision and grace of sentiment. Both these classes of oratory suit young men well, but in older persons they show a want of dignity. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... apartment; the Renaissance sought to produce big decorative pictures to hang in place of frescoes; and the French idea—beginning with that same ideal—fell at last into the production of something that should accompany the other arts in making minutely ornate the home of man. Therefore, the Gothic artist placed the point of interest high; the artists of the Renaissance followed the rules of modern painting (even to the point of becoming academic); and the last good period of the Gobelins ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... British ambassador at Washington when the Prince of Wales—now King Edward—was betrothed to the Princess Alexandra, of Denmark, since queen regent of England. He used the most stilted, ornate, and diplomatic language to carry the simple fact. The President replied offhand with trenchant advice to ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... face to face with a little fast-ticking cheaply ornate clock. Its hands indicated eleven, and the man grimaced tolerantly. As in the living-room, no human was present, but here the indications for material sustenance were more hopeful. It was the dining-room, and, although ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... Continental churches, where the revolt of the Reformation extended to the tune-worship as notably as to the sacraments and sermons. This difference created a division of method and practice even in England, and extreme Protestants who repudiated everything artistic or ornate formed the Puritan or Genevan School. Their style is represented among our hymn-tunes by "Old Hundred," while the representative of the Anglican is "Tallis' Evening Hymn." The division was only temporary. The two ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... professional or public life in any country. Chief among his qualifications may be mentioned a comprehensive, subtle intellect, high scholastic and professional attainments, a style of eloquence which was at once ornate and logical, a noble and handsome countenance, a voice of silvery sweetness and great power of modulation, and an address at once impressive, dignified and ingratiating. His keenness of perception and his faculty for detecting ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... from a foreign language can with reason ask, if the story as told in the translation is sometimes but a plain, simple, and homely narrative. For any artistic decoration I have neither the inclination nor the necessary qualification. The crisp and ornate style, the quaint expression, the chiselled word, the new-coined phrase, in which modern English poetry is rich, would scarcely suit the translation of an old Epic whose predominating characteristic ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous

... image wearing them in the cracked mirror by the side of the big fireplace. She had to make experiments with dripping tallow dips before she got a light which would enable her to get the full effect of an ornate old poke-bonnet which was the chief treasure from the chest, but finally she did so, and exclaimed in pleasure ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... highly ornate style of architecture combined with sculpture; it flourished in Spain in ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos

... to the room she called her own! The very atmosphere was different, for mingled with the odour of burning logs she detected a suggestion of tobacco smoke, so faint that only a woman would have perceived it. The simplicity of the place, the absence of ornate decoration, was like him, she reflected. Artistic herself to an exceptional degree, she had never cared for men who possessed an equal knowledge of such things; they were either professional artists, ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... imagination: the one lean, long-limbed, uncommonly tall; the other scarce five feet high, but compact, manful, instinct with energy, and topped with its massive head. In voice and gesture and manner, Douglas was incomparably the superior, as he was, too, in the ready command of a language never, indeed, ornate or imaginative, and sometimes of the quality of political commonplace, but always forcible and always intelligible to his audience. Lincoln had the sense of words, the imagination, the intensity of feeling, which go to ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown

... his eyes wandered furtively up and down the endless ornate table, and he felt he had been, in a sort of way, right in thinking these people were the handiest instrument to prise open the national conscience with. The shining red faces of the men, the shining white necks and arms of the women, ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm

... which a lower window was vacated simultaneously with their coming into view; and a small but ornate figure in pale gray crash hurried down the steps and attached itself to the second row of Madisons. "Good-morning," said Mr. Wade Trumble. "Thought I'd take a look-in at church this ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... recesses of the noble walls were lined with books in rare editions, a heavily carved table of dull black wood from some foreign land sprawled in the center of the room and held a great bronze lamp of curious pattern, bearing a ruby light. Ornate bronzes lurked on pedestals in shadows, unexpectedly, and caught the eye alarmingly, like grim ones set to watch. A throbbing fire like the heart of a lit ruby burned in a massive fireplace of grotesque tiles, as though it were ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... Berlin. The impression produced by Mr. Tower on Republican America was not quite the same. When Ambassador in St. Petersburg, Mr. Tower had invented a Court uniform for himself and staff of a highly ornate, not to say fantastic, kind, and when in Berlin was thought to take too little trouble to win popularity among his American fellow-colonists. This non-republican attitude, as it seemed to be, met with a good deal of adverse criticism ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... "He Wolf" among the outlaws, a man of quick intelligence who did not seem to care much whether he or the other fellow died. To him who wants the ornate trappings of the motion-picture bad man or the dialect which makes some desperadoes popular in fiction, Ringo would prove a disappointing figure as he showed up ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... art, two most orthodox origins for art, and have no relation whatever to cubism, post-impressionism, or futurism.... I have been very fond of Swinburne all my life, and I should say my drawing is nearer to his ornate mood than any of my writing has been. But that is a matter for your judgment." I find his pictures so interesting that I earnestly hope he will some day publish a large collection of them in ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... Fifty-seventh Street, and his wife, also young and energetic, had gone out "to get whatever she liked." Trained in a simple school during the war, and brought up in the formal purity of high-ceiled rooms furnished in Chippendale and Sheraton, her natural tastes were, nevertheless, as ornate as the interiors of the New York shops. Though the blood of colonial heroes ran in her veins, she was still the child of her age, and her age prided itself upon being entirely modern in all things from religion ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... principle of relatively blank external walls, like a castle, with an interior courtyard, on which all the apartments open, and almost all the decoration is lavished. Reminiscences of defense lurk about the Louvre. It can best be understood by comparison with such ornate, yet fortress-like, Italian palaces as the Strozzi at Florence. Notice the four opposite portals, facing the cardinal points, which can be readily shut by means of great doors; while the actual doorways of the various suites of apartments ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... still in waiting, the Archduchess was making few demands on her. A very fever of preparation was on Annunciata. She spent hours over laces and lingerie, was having jewels reset for Hedwig, after ornate designs of her own contribution, was the center of a cyclone of boxes, tissue paper, material, furs, and fashion books, while maids scurried about and dealers and dressmakers awaited her pleasure. She ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... ordinary roofs, combined in many plateaus, dotted with short iron chimneys from which curled wisps of steam, arose other mountains like the Eclipse Building. They were great peaks, ornate, glittering with paint or polish. Northward they subsided ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... the gigantic work of Solovyoff—or Solovief, as the name is sometimes unphonetically written—which is simply a vast collection of valuable but undigested material, I was much less severe on the picturesque descriptions and ornate style of his illustrious predecessor. The first work of fiction which I read was a collection of tales by Grigorovitch, which had been given to me by the author on my departure from St. Petersburg. These tales, descriptive of rural life in Russia, had been written, as ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... attention, her husband turned to Miss Beaver. As he did so, his staring eyes fell upon the ornate plush album on ...
— Old Mr. Wiley • Fanny Greye La Spina

... your mirror frame, Ornate with photographs of them. Place mine therein, for, all the same, I'll have ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... of this tedious moralizing is that Lyly, wit and euphuist, possessed the Nonconformist conscience: "Beneath the courtier's slashed doublet, under his ornate brocade and frills, there stood the Puritan." This I believe to be a mistaken view of the case. As we shall later see reason to suppose, Lyly never became, as did his acquaintance Gosson, a very seriously-minded person. Certainly Euphues does not ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson

... hat Colonel Dodd carefully stripped the tissue-paper from the damp flowers. There were two huge bouquets. He set these into vases of ornate bronze, one on each end of his desk. He patted and stroked the flowers until they appeared to best advantage. He stood back and bestowed affectionate regard on them. No human being had ever reported the receipt of such a look from Colonel Symonds Dodd. It was ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... Brahmanism. Local tradition is doubtless quite wrong in assigning to Raja Bikram the noble gateway which is the only monument of Hindu architecture at its best that Ujjain has to show to-day. But to that period may, perhaps, be traced the graceful, if highly ornate, style of architecture, of which the Bhuvaneshwar temples, several centuries more recent, are the earliest examples that can be at all accurately dated. To the credit of Brahmanism be it said that in its ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... Twelve million dollars' worth of property was condemned to make way for this splendid street. It cuts across a peninsula through the heart of the city from shore to shore, and is magnificent, indeed, with its sidewalks wrought in beautiful geometrical designs, with its ornate street lamps, with its generous width appearing broader by contrast with other narrow streets, with its ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray

... over each eye and another at the angles of the mouth are the most conspicuous. Sharp spines project on the crown and on the side of the gill-apparatus, as in the other sea-perches, Scorpaena, Serranus, &c., of which these are only a modified and ornate form. The extraordinary expansion of their fins is not, however, accompanied by a similar development of the bones to which they are attached, simply because they appear to have no peculiar function, as in flying fishes, or in those where ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... merely, but a great degree of urbanity and kindness is everywhere shown, whether owing to the naturally placable disposition of the people, or to the effects of their early instruction in the forms of politeness." (Mid. Kingdom, II. 68.) As regards the "ornate style of speech," a well-bred Chinaman never says I or You, but for the former "the little person," "the disciple," "the inferior," and so on; and for the latter, "the learned man," "the master," or even "the emperor." These phrases, however, are not confined to China, most ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... compared with the simplicity of our private and home life, and the contrast which, in this respect, the twentieth bears to the nineteenth century. To save ourselves useless burdens, we have as little gear about us at home as is consistent with comfort, but the social side of our life is ornate and luxurious beyond anything the world ever knew before. All the industrial and professional guilds have clubhouses as extensive as this, as well as country, mountain, and seaside houses for sport ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... begawd^, titivate^; dress, dress up; spangle, bespangle, powder; embroider, work; chase, emboss, fret, emblazon; illuminate; illustrate. become &c (accord with) 23. Adj. ornamented, beautified &c v.; ornate, rich, gilt, begilt^, tesselated, festooned; champleve [Fr.], cloisonne, topiary. smart, gay, trickly^, flowery, glittering; new gilt, new spangled; fine as a Mayday queen, fine as a fivepence^, fine as a carrot fresh ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... This presents an agreeable variety to that facing it in the opposite transept. In the upper stage, instead of a triforium and clerestory, there are three tall windows of two lights each, the central being carried above the others, and distinguished by a more ornate tracery, here taking a cruciform pattern above the trefoil-headed divisions, instead of a foliated circle as in the side windows. The arcading in which they are all placed is severely simple in character, the slightly pointed ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley

... wait an hour in a lofty anteroom with no other company but a statue of Pocahontas. He was oppressed by the gorgeousness of the surroundings—by the frowning pictures, the gilt furniture, the onyx-topped tables, the vases, the mirrors, the ornate clocks. He was in a fever of expectation, and could not fight down his growing timidity. He had not seen Florence for a year, and his heart would have been as much in his mouth had the meeting been set in ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne

... difference. How flashy and shallow Macaulay's periods seem, as we listen to the fine ground-base that rolls in the melody of the following passage of Burke's, and it is taken from one of the least ornate of all his pieces:— ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley

... bed was lumpy. There was a dingy-looking oak bureau with a rather small but pretty good plate-glass mirror on it; a marble topped, black walnut wash-stand; a pitcher of the plainest and cheapest white ware standing in a bowl on top of it, and a highly ornate, hand-painted slop-jar—the sole survivor, evidently, of a much prized set—under the lee of it. The steep gable of the roof cut away most of one side of the room, though there would be space for Rose's trunk ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... principally, to a low, yellow house about a mile away, displaying above its door the appropriate motto, "Lust en Rust." There, either in the cool, vine-shaded garden, in the long, low-ceilinged dining-room, or in some smaller and more ornate apartment, one might breakfast, dine, what not, in the fashion of the country—which, for the most part, meant the drinking of a muddy liquid with an unpronounceable name and the eating of wafelen and poffertjes, and of little cheeses calculated to ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson

... seat beside the Egyptian, and wonderingly gazed around an apartment whose elaborate and costly luxuries shamed even the ornate enrichment of her father's mansion; fearfully, too, she regarded the hieroglyphical inscriptions on the walls—the faces of the mysterious images, which at every corner gazed upon her—the tripod at a little distance—and, above all, the grave and ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... Winkle resorted, after his adventure with the valorous Dowler, for the purpose of escape to Bristol by the branch coach, probably never existed—at any rate, by that name. Dickens may have had the "York House" in his mind, for he stayed there himself on one occasion, and it was one of those ornate hotels, accustomed to receiving royal and distinguished visitors, suggesting such a title as ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz

... the world is starvation an agreeable business; but I believe it is admitted there is no worse place to starve in than this city of Paris. The appearances of life are there so especially gay, it is so much a magnified beer-garden, the houses are so ornate, the theatres so numerous, the very pace of the vehicles is so brisk, that a man in any deep concern of mind or pain of body is constantly driven in upon himself. In his own eyes, he seems the one serious creature moving in a world of horrible unreality; voluble people issuing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... A brass eagle was perched on his helmet. Altogether, here was a glittering bit of flotsam from the new Mexican Empire. But a narrowness between the man's eyes affected one unpleasantly. It was a mean and a sour scowl, of a fellow lately come into authority. The other man graced the ornate uniform of an aide in Maximilian's ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... existence, the wide-minded lover of art will find something to reward his attention even in their exteriors. In many instances their architects have succeeded admirably in steering a middle course between the ornate style of a palace on the one hand and the packing case with windows on the other; and the observer might unreservedly admire the general effect were it not for the crick in his neck that reminds him most forcibly that he cannot get far enough away for a proper estimate of the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... the "goat room." Once there, the president mounted a dais; a "brother" stood on each side of him. Hugh was so much impressed by the ritual, the black hangings of the room, the fraternity seal over the dais, the ornate chandelier, the long speeches of the president and his assistants, that he failed to notice that many of the brothers ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks

... their wings suffused with crimson and orange, and spotted with black. The plainer males of these species closely resemble each other, shewing that here the females have been modified; whereas in those cases, where the males are the more ornate, it is these which have been modified, the females ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... chose plus belle." Here is an Alexandrine written three hundred years ago, as simple as bon jour. Professor Aytoun is more ornate. After elegantly complimenting the spring, and a description of her Royal Highness's well-known ancestors ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... equal to any task; he planned great works in prose and verse which he never executed. His poetical works, of which his Ancient Mariner is the most striking and original, have been collected and published in three volumes. His language is often rich and musical, highly figurative and ornate. His Ode on France was considered by Shelley to be the finest English ode of modern times. His Hymn on Chamouni ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... Captain, there was indeed a great blotch of deep red across his cheek; he was a large, powerful fellow, with a bold, insolent face, and fierce, pitiless eyes. To make his sobriquet the fitter, he wore a suit of crimson, very rich and ornate. His beard and hair, however, ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens

... time, proceeding across a gorgeous lobby and traversing an impressive corridor, passing lackeys in livery and guests in evening finery, we arrived at the doorway of the most elaborately ornate dining hall I had ever seen. The Promoter paused in the doorway to let ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond

... Leader: King Solomon made answer to the lady, <They bow and confer. The Queen reserved, but taking cognizance. The King wooing with ornate gestures of respect, and courtly animation.> Bowing most politely: "They bloom forever thinking of your beauty, Your step so queenly and your eyes so lovely. These keep the roses fair, Young and without a care, Making so sweet ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay

... person of an exquisite distinction. She loved everything that in any way is elegant and ornate in society: names, manners, talents, titles. Madcap as I assuredly was, I looked upon all this as vanity, and went in quest of intimacy and simplicity combined with poesy. Thanks to God, I found them in Zoe, who was really a person of merit, and, moreover, a woman with a heart as eager ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... signal piece of construction in which he engaged was the wretched architecture of small houses. As he travelled through the United States he was appalled by it. Where the houses were not positively ugly, they were, to him, repellently ornate. Money was wasted on useless turrets, filigree work, or machine-made ornamentation. Bok found out that these small householders never employed an architect, but that the houses were put up by builders from their ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... readers against a natural disappointment. That which they are about to see has nothing in it of what will at first strike them as brilliant. The pulpit eloquence of the Augustan age of France was distinctly "classic," and not at all "romantic," in style. Its character is not ornate, but severe. There is little rhetorical figure in it, little of that "illustration" which our own different national taste is accustomed to demand from the pulpit. There is plenty of white light, "dry light" and white, for the reason; but there is almost no bright color for the fancy, and, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... John Lyly published his curious romance, "Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit," a work which attained a great popularity, and made the word Euphuism an abstract term in the language to express the ornate and antithetical style of which this book is the most marked example. In Lyly's own day it was said by Edward Blount that the nation was "in his debt for a new English which hee taught them." Since then, the verdict ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... Chaucer. CAXTON gives us the following reasons that induced Chaucer to translate, and himself to print it:—"Forasmoche as the stile of it is harde, and difficile to be understoode of simple persones, therefore the worshipful Fader and first founder and embelisher of ornate eloquence in our English, I mene Maister Geffrey Chaucer, hath translated it out of Latyn, as neygh as is possible to be understande; wherin, in myne oppynon, he hath deserved a perpetual lawde and thanke of al this ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.22 • Various

... Germany in England, with a more distant echo of Hanoverian whores and deformed firebrands. His guest sat with a harsh, implacable countenance framed in the long shadows of his elaborate wig, his ornate coat tails falling stiffly on either ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... a far corner of the room a large gentleman in a brown frock coat was quietly eating his breakfast and reading the "Herald." He was of an ornate presence, though entirely neat. A sumptuous expanse of linen exhibited itself between the lapels of his low-cut waistcoat, and an inch of bediamonded breastpin glittered there, like an ice-ledge on a snowy mountain side. He had a steady, blue eye and a dissipated, iron-gray mustache. This ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... house it was not much gayer. The front hall, with its steep, narrow stairway, and floor-covering of highly ornate landscape oilcloth, was in a perpetual twilight. An occasional glint from white woodwork, or the gold molding of a picture, strove in vain to dispel the gloom. The parlor, at the right of the hall, was sepulchral ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... moved up to Clive, on the Dutch border. After Carl went in search of a pension, it started to drizzle. The boys, baggage, and I found the only nearby place of shelter in a stone-cutter's inclosure, filled with new and ornate tombstones. What was my impecunious horror, when I heard a small crash and discovered that Jim had dislocated a loose figure of Christ (unconsciously Cubist in execution) from the top of a tombstone! Eight marks charges! the cost of sixteen Heidelberg sprees. On his return, Carl reported ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... result followed. Instead of the ten-line paragraph with which patent churns and washing machines are ordinarily turned loose on society, the "Cosmopolitan Window Fastener" received notices so long and ornate, that it was quite impossible to derive from them a correct idea of the matchless simplicity ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... the priceless jewel which George I., spurred on by an overmastering passion, ordered to be transferred from its rough and homely setting to the ornate luxury of life at Court, where he immediately bestowed upon her the title of Eighth Duchess ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward

... to Kanus' huge, elaborate office. The leader walked across the plushly ornate room and sat at the elevated desk, while his followers arranged themselves in the chairs and couches placed about the floor. Odal remained standing, ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova

... Spirit of the noble Red Man," Jakey was apostrophising the distant mountains in ornate language; "what kind of a low-down bird are you, to be gathered in by a goose, and a blue one at that?" Jakey paused, gazing earnestly at the retreating figure of the miner. Then, shaking his fist at the man's back, "Look here, you down-trodden serf of capitalistic ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... and unadorned within; and this for other reasons than the poverty of the community, the lack of the best building-materials, and the absence both of architects and of artistic tastes. It was a simple ritual which most of them were to house, and the absence of an ornate service demanded the absence of ornamentation, which would be meaningless because it would symbolize nothing. The influence of the Puritans in Massachusetts, the Baptists in Rhode Island, the Dutch Reformed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... sports trophies in the collection is an ornate belt (fig. 19) made of blue velvet upon which are mounted five engraved silver plates connected by silver straps. On the center plate is ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor

... minerals and medicines and precious stones, of commerce and the fine arts. He is full of errors; but his work is among the most valuable productions of antiquity. Buffon pronounced his natural history to contain an infinity of knowledge in every department of human occupation, conveyed in a dress ornate and brilliant. It is a literary rather than a scientific monument, and as such it is wonderful—a compilation from one hundred and sixty volumes of notes. In strict scientific value, it is inferior to the works of modern research; but there ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... former was inhabited by a harmless effeminate race, who enjoyed many of the refinements of civilisation; their knowledge of the arts, for instance, as shown to us in the ruins of their cities, was considerable; they possessed extensive buildings in a bold and ornate style of architecture; they made a lavish use of the precious metals, of which the land was extremely rich, and they wore dresses which showed a certain perfection in the manufacture of textile fabrics, and no slight degree of taste and ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat

... through the living light, I carried my eyes over the ranks, now up, now down, and now circling about. I saw faces persuasive to love, beautified by the light of Another and by their own smile, and actions ornate with every dignity. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri

... simplicities and thunderous veracities of Tolstoy. We feel that a man cannot make himself simple merely by warring on complexity; we feel, indeed, in our saner moments that a man cannot make himself simple at all. A self-conscious simplicity may well be far more intrinsically ornate than luxury itself. Indeed, a great deal of the pomp and sumptuousness of the world's history was simple in the truest sense. It was born of an almost babyish receptiveness; it was the work of men who had eyes to wonder and men who ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton

... eyes. Barter broke off short, while Bentley's mind seemed to rock with the shock of Barter's last statement. He saw a picture ... a great office filled with many desks occupied by white-faced men and women ... an ornate desk where a "manape" sat.... It was ghastly beyond comprehension. It must never ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks

... strapped over big saddle cloths of crimson silk, edged with stout gold cord and adorned at the corners with tassels of gold bullion. There was a standard-bearer with them whose trappings were even richer and more ornate than those of the rank and file, and who bore aloft upon a slender lance a small standard of crimson silk, deeply edged with gold fringe, and beautifully emblazoned in gold thread with a device which seemed to be a hieroglyphic of some ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... of gilded leaves, adorn both end walls, and beneath one of them remains an ornate fireplace and mantelpiece of bologna coloured marble, surmounted with a gilt cock of wondrous design. Beneath the other mirror madame has placed her buffet, on which the boy who explores the dusty caves below places the cobwebbed bottles of red wine for the last cork pulling. Large gold ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... other man of his times; and he possessed the faculty of adapting himself to his audience, and to the changing feelings of an audience, to a degree which few men ever attain. In a moment he could melt a popular audience to tears or convulse it with laughter. He could be plain or ornate, coarse or courteous. The eloquence of invective and vituperation was carried by O'Connell to a very inglorious perfection. His eulogies were as dextrous and expressive as they were, nevertheless, morally repugnant to honest minds. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... a long, airy hall, with a row of tables on either hand, covered with glass, whose icy glitter and lack of color gave a deliciously cool aspect to the whole place. Glass in every graceful form and design, some heavy and crystalline, enriched with ornate workmanship by cutter and engraver, some delicate and fragile as a soap-bubble; hock-glasses as green and lucent as sea-water, and with an edge not too thick to part the lips of Titania; glasses of amber, that should turn pale Johannisberger to the true ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... in conventional Chinese style—a square table with scarlet embroidered table-skirt, and backed by an ornate arrangement of banner, scrolls, vases, and teacups, with stiff chairs on either side. Our guests' first observation is to remark upon the surprising cleanliness of the apartment, the next is to ask where we sleep, and the ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable

... statu pupillari, one may say. A learned gathering: Timocles with counsel by his side to interpret his ideas. Damis speaking in propria persona with his own tongue, his opponent employing a go-between into whose ears he privately pours inspiration, and the go-between producing ornate periods, without, I dare say, understanding what he is told—most entertaining for the listeners! We shall get nothing ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... returning to speak with me on some matter of tomorrow's work; but when I raised my eyes to the doorway that connects the two rooms I saw framed there the figure of a bronzed giant, his otherwise naked body trapped with a jewel-encrusted harness from which there hung at one side an ornate short-sword and at the other a pistol of strange pattern. The black hair, the steel-gray eyes, brave and smiling, the noble features—I recognized them at once, and leaping to my feet I ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... name. The part of Clerkenwell Road bounding this district to the north was formerly called by the appropriate name of Liquorpond Street. In it there is a Roman Catholic Church of St. Peter, built in 1863. The interior is very ornate. Just here, where Back Hill and Ray Street meet, was Hockley Hole, a famous place of entertainment for bull and bear baiting, and other cruel sports that delighted the brutal taste of the eighteenth century. One of the proprietors, named Christopher Preston, ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... him I had fought with swords in Phoenix Park five years before. I had not known he was governor here. I came to know it when I first saw him riding over the unpaved street into Kingston from Spanish Town with his suite, ornate with his governorship. He was a startling figure in scarlet, with huge epaulets on his lieutenant-general's uniform, as big a pot as ever boiled on any fire-chancellor, head of the government and of the army, master ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Chief Rabbi went toward the Ark in his turn, she saw that he wore a strange scarlet and white gown (military, too, she imagined in her ignorance), and—oh, even rarer sight!—he was followed by a helmeted soldier, who drew the curtain revealing the ornate Scrolls of ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... even useful! And it is not only the lives of the well-to-do that are choked and cluttered with things. I wish you could see the house of our Polish farmer. He's been saving money, and filling up his house with perfectly worthless ornaments—ornate clocks, gorgeous plush furniture, impossible rugs—and yet he is only doing what we are all doing on a more ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson

... many travel talks you must have been impressed by the painful extremes to which the lecturers go—with a few notable exceptions, their language is either over-ornate or crude. If you would learn the power of words to make scenery, yes, even houses, palpitate with poetry and human appeal, read Lafcadio Hearn, Robert Louis Stevenson, Pierre Loti, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... Well, the ornate and excellent Temple held that "the Epistles of Phalaris have more race, more spirit, more force of wit and genius, than any others he had ever seen, either ancient or modern." So much for what Bentley calls Temple's "Nicety of Tast." The greatest of English ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang

... logic which preparation alone can impart to language, became irresistible to a people that had itself become a Pericles. Universal civilization, universal poetry, had rendered the audience susceptible and fastidious; they could appreciate the ornate and philosophical harangues of Pericles; and, the first to mirror to themselves the intellectual improvements they had made, the first to represent the grace and enlightenment, as Themistocles had been the first to represent the daring and enterprise, of his time, the son of Xanthippus began already ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... walking among the ruins of this ancient flora, the Palaeontologist almost feels as if he had got among the broken fragments of Italian palaces, erected long ages ago, when the architecture of Rome was most ornate, and every moulding was roughened with ornament; and in attempting to call up in fancy the old Carboniferous forests, he has to dwell on this peculiar feature as one of the most prominent, and to see, in the multitude of trunks darkened above by clouds of foliage, that rise upon him in the prospect, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... the ornate entrance where he'd first emerged as a pariah. He'd meant to walk down those steps as if he were still a man. But each step had drained his resolution, until he'd finally covered his face and slunk off, knowing himself for what the ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey

... sceptre. In "Verwaltungsbericht des Magistrats der Koniglichen Haupt- und Residenzstadt Hanover, 1906-7," the frontispiece, the armorial bearings, "Wappen der Koniglichen" and so forth is a powerfully coloured lithograph, a very ornate affair, of lions (of egg-yolk yellow), armour, and leaves and castles. These German publications are filled with excellent photographs of public places and buildings, and extensive unfolding coloured maps and diagrams. A gentleman ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday

... although very luxurious in its fittings, was not so richly ornate as had been anticipated by the English groom, whose conceptions of everything had been derived from the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, or rather from a fanciful imagination fed by that romantic work. The appearance of the Turkish ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... heart of Matanzas and were facing the public square, the Plaza de la Libertad it was called. O'Reilly knew the place well; every building that flanked it was familiar to him, from the vast, rambling Governor's Palace to the ornate Casino Espanol and the Grand Hotel, and time was when he had been a welcome visitor at all of them. But things were different now. Gone were the customary crowds of well-dressed, well-fed citizens; gone the rows of carriages which at this hour of the day were wont to circle the Plaza laden ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... his way into Primrose Meadows. The vague directions of a farmer's son lost him nearly eight precious minutes, during which his friend, Captain Strawn of the Homicide Squad, might be bungling things rather badly. But at last he found the ornate pair of pillars spanned by the painted legend, "Primrose Meadows," and drove through them into what soon became a rutted lane. Almost a quarter of a mile from the entrance he found the isolated house, unmistakable because of the line-up of private cars parked before the short stretch of ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin

... boots," she said. "Let us go," and she pointed to the tower of Batz, which arrested the eye by its immense pile placed there like a pyramid; but a slender, delicately outlined pyramid, a pyramid so poetically ornate that the imagination figured in it the earliest ruin ...
— A Drama on the Seashore • Honore de Balzac

... Val Prinsep, isn't it, with a suggestion of a Drury Lane pantomime about it? Good heavens! And there's the Fairy Palace all complete," he added, as, the mists still rising, was discovered on the slope of the other side a long and extremely ornate building, the pure whiteness of which was reflected in the marvellous blue and opal of the lake. "Can that be Sir ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... Sacred Carpet, was leaving Cairo on its long pilgrimage of thirty-seven days to Mecca and Mahomet's tomb. Great guns boomed from the Citadel, as the gorgeous procession, forming itself beneath the Mokattam Hills, began its slow march to where, seated in the shade of an ornate pavilion, Prince Kaid awaited its approach to pay devout homage. Thousands looked down at the scene from the ramparts of the Citadel, from the overhanging cliffs, and from the tops of the houses that hung on the ledges of rock rising abruptly from the level ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... bandilleros, carrying various ornate articles of girls' clothing (daisy-hat with blue ribbons, pink sash, lace jabot, etc.) which will, one by one, be hung on the bull when he isn't looking. In order to accomplish this, one of the bandilleros ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley

... invention; all I could manage to say was that if it was ever proper to wrap a napkin round a dial it was certainly in a dining-room. On the sideboard were two huge lamps like those on the counter of a restaurant. Above the other sideboard hung a barometer, excessively ornate, which seems to play a great part in their existence; Rogron gazed at it as he might at his future wife. Between the two windows is a white porcelain stove in a niche overloaded with ornament. The walls glow with a magnificent paper, crimson and gold, such as you see in the same restaurants, where, ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac

... inconsiderable companion seeing that its stature is some seven hundred small quarto pages closely packed with verses in double columns. Part of this volume is, however, devoted to the "Epicurean," a not unremarkable example of ornate prose in many respects resembling the author's verse. Indeed, as close readers of Moore know, there exists an unfinished verse form of it which, in style and general character, is not unlike a more serious "Lalla Rookh." ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... exceedingly beautiful city," said Cleek, as the carriage which had been sent to meet them at the station rolled into the broad Avenue des Arcs, which is at once the widest and most ornate thoroughfare the capital city of Mauravania boasts. "Ah, what a heritage! No wonder King Ulric is so anxious to retain his sovereignty; no wonder this—er—Madame Tcharnovetski, I think you ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... the beauty of brown bark and the salmon tints of old rough boards, and its furniture, wrought painstakingly by an unskillful hand, had the charm of all handwork even when unskilled. Some of the chairs were rudely carved, one great throne especially, awkward, pretentious, and carefully ornate. ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt

... was made to harmonize with its supporting columns. The general characteristics of the several orders are well portrayed by the terms we use when we speak of the "stern" Doric, the "graceful" Ionic, and the "ornate" Corinthian. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... of the two sides of the principal square, was now beginning the ascent of the steep zigzag road to the Palace, which stood on the terraced height of the plateau that commanded the city. The party in the coach caught glimpses of its massive but ornate towers with fantastic spires and turrets, and its great arched and columned wings of rose-tinted marble. As it was rather larger than Windsor Castle, King Sidney's commendation was ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... no signs of haste or discomposure. The letter was neatly written in the somewhat large calligraphy, firm, bold, ornate, which Sir John had insisted on Jack's learning. The stationery bore a club crest. It was an eminently gentlemanly communication. Sir John read it and gravely tore it up, throwing it into the fire, where ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... jolly old Confusicus says: 'The moving finger writes, and that's all about it.' Will you deign to honour me with your presence in my sanctorum, and may I again beg of you"—he leant his bony knuckles on the ornate desk which he had provided for her, and looked down upon her soberly—"may I again ask you, dear old miss, to let me change offices? It's a little thing, dear old miss. I'm never, never goin' to ask you to dinner again, but this is another ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... in our nostrils, we talked about the past and future of Cordova, and of all the wide region of northern Andalusia, fertile irrigated plains, dry olive-land stretching up to the rocky waterless mountains where the mines are. In Azorin's crisp phrases and in the long ornate periods of the editor, the serfdom and the squalor and the heroic hope of these peasants and miners and artisans became vivid to me for the first time. Occasionally the compositor, a boy of about ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... address to the "mery May" is but of three plain lines, and they suffice; in Dryden, of ten ornate, and they suffice too—"alike, but oh! how different!" The plain three are more in character, for Arcite was thinking of Emelie all the while—but the ornate ten are in season now, for summer has come at last, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... across the tarmac and into the gloom of the reception building. The gray-skinned Yill guide who had met the arriving embassy at the foot of the ramp hurried away. The councillor, two first secretaries and the senior attaches gathered around the ambassador, their ornate uniforms bright in the ...
— The Yillian Way • John Keith Laumer

... The ornate, rococo elevator, as a matter of fact, was running away, upward, slowly at first. Its astonished occupant turned to ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers

... with age, was probably the dial of the abbot of Malmesbury, and counted his hours when at the adjoining lodge; for it was taken from the garden of the farm-house, which had originally been the summer retirement of this mitred lord. It has the appearance of being monastic, but a more ornate capital has been added, the plate on which bears the date of 1688. I must again venture to give the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various

... find no men able to answer us heretics at least in a manner wise and accomplished. Sed omnia conscripta erant Cochleice et Fabriliter et Eccianice. Commentum sane stupidissimum, ut pudeat me Romani nominis, quod in sua religione non conquirant viros, qui saltem prudenter et ornate nobis haereticis responderent." (245.) August 15 Luther answered: "We received all of your letters, and I praise God that he made the Confutation of the adversaries so awkward and foolish a thing. However, courage to the end! Verum frisch ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... epitaphs, according to our notion, are generally the shortest and the plainest. In no description of composition is elaborate and ornate phraseology so much out of place. Where a world-wide reputation has been achieved, the name alone, with the addition perhaps of a date, is often calculated to produce a more impressive effect than an ostentatious inscription. It has been ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... is a symbol that provides excellent material for clues to tricks and mannerisms. It varies in form from a mere v-shaped tick of almost indeterminate character to an ornate thing of loops and flourishes. It is very sparingly employed by illiterate persons, and some educated writers avoid its use under the impression that, like the abbreviation of words, it is vulgar. In a few high-class ladies' schools its use is sternly repressed, and there are many fluent and ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn

... striving to reproduce, "Hate—the right foot advanced, the face turned to the sky, the gaze directed upward with a fierce expression, the eyes full of a baleful light," or other phases of passion duly set down. Not for Truman was the ornate full-arm flourish; he had observed that ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... upholstered, having large pendant chandeliers, glittering with all the known prismatic colors, the whole overarched by fancy scroll-work in pleasing combination with the supports to the ceiling and floor above; and, as is frequently the case, all being highly ornate, makes a fancy scene not unworthy of association with the famous palace of Aladdin, as given us in the charming stories of the ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill

... The highly-ornate initial of this name is not difficult to work, requiring only great regularity and evenness in embroidering the tendrils and eyelet-holes. The veinings of the letter must be carefully defined. The remainder of the name is executed ...
— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton

... studio, the front of which, on the street corner, semi-circular in shape, gave the room one whole wall of glass, with pilasters at the sides, a large, well-lighted bay, opal-coloured just then by reason of the fog. More ornate than are usually such work-rooms, which the stains of the plaster, the boasting-tools, the clay, the puddles of water generally cause to resemble a stone-mason's shed, this one added a touch of coquetry to its artistic purpose. Green plants in every corner, a few good pictures suspended ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... yawn, or to gabble like the beggar whose tongue (as he says) was cut out by the Turks, or to affect deafness or blindness, or any other infirmity of the organs. But though the embroidery of his conversation was different, the groundwork was the same, and the high-flown and ornate compliments with which the gallant knight of the sixteenth century inter-larded his conversation, were as much the offspring of egotism and self-conceit, as the jargon of the coxcombs of our ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... older, drawing about her her more ornate garb of witchery. Across her bosom fell a wondrous tissue, trembling with exuberance of unprismed light. These were the gems in thousands of the skies, all fair against the blackness of the robes of Night, and I knew that the blackness of the one was as lovely as the radiance of the other. ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough

... use the word "dithyrambic" we certainly do not ordinarily think of spring. We say a style is "dithyrambic" when it is unmeasured, too ornate, impassioned, flowery. The Greeks themselves had forgotten that the word Dithyramb meant a leaping, inspired dance. But they had not forgotten on what occasion that dance was danced. Pindar wrote a Dithyramb ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison

... windows, and running the entire width of the chamber, was a platform or dais, some three feet high, the front portion of which was occupied by a long table, behind which were ranged nine chairs, the middle chair being of a much more ornate character than the rest, the carving of it being ecclesiastical in character, and upon the table, before each chair, was a supply of paper, pens and ink. The dais was a wooden structure, and was carpeted with black material; the tablecloth also ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood

... stairs caused the head to disappear and the door to close. Miss Phipps appeared, her hand clasping a highly ornate document. ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln

... procured his railway tickets and checked his baggage and then came out into Forty-second street. After a few minutes of bewildered turning he located himself and made his way without further trouble to his hotel. But the place seemed strange to him now; not as spacious as when he was a boy, not as ornate, not as wonderful. It was only after he had eaten his dinner and come out again into the lobby that it took on any kind of a familiar air, and not until he was ready to depart that he could have imagined the erect form of Colonel Butler, with ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene

... on the second floor was the great hall of meetings, the former ball-room of the Institute. A lofty white room lighted by glazed-white chandeliers holding hundreds of ornate electric bulbs, and divided by two rows of massive columns; at one end a dais, flanked with two tall many-branched light standards, and a gold frame behind, from which the Imperial portrait had been cut. Here on festal occasions had been banked brilliant military ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... midway, spreads still wider, forming a spacious square, are thickly clustered the public buildings of the town and county,—together with the meeting-houses, the taverns, the bank, the shops, and a few handsome dwellings, whose large dimensions and ornate style show them to be the abodes of people of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... An astonishing impulse was almost at once given to investigation. The philosopher had his adherents all over France. Viewed as a species of prophet, he was, properly speaking, a madman, who in his ravings had glanced on the truth, but only glanced. Among men of sense, his ornate declamations concerning nature and reason would have excited little more attention than that which is usually given to poetic ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various

... becoming familiar with history, is to delve into the origin and development of periods in furniture. The story of Napoleon is recorded in the unpretentious Directoire, the ornate Empire of Fontainebleau, while the conversion of round columns into obelisk-like pilasters surmounted by heads, the bronze and gilded-wood ornaments in the form of the Sphynx, ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood

... was a two-storied brick, ornate and palpably assertive, with no suggestion of the homely country comfort of the old. Yet, when his mother had wept over him in the wide hall, and there was time to go about, taking it all in like a cat exploring a strange garret, it was ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... credited him with fabulous wealth. It was said that he drove through London in a gold coach, and outshone the king himself in the splendor of his attire. No report was too highly colored to find easy credence among the simple country folk. Clive was indeed rich: he had a taste for ornate dress, and though neither so wealthy nor so gaily appareled as rumor said, he was for a season the lion of London society. The directors of the East India Company toasted him as "General" Clive, and presented him with a jeweled sword as a token of their sense of his services ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... theism; he was so far from being a "hard egoist" in ethics that he declared that he would burn in hell for ever rather than lie at the supposed bidding of a Deity. Robert Ingersoll, the most popular Rationalist of that age, was—I judge from his private letters, not his ornate speeches—a man of the most tender and fine sentiment. It is simply ludicrous to suppose that, because we do not admit emotion to be a test of the accuracy of statements of fact (as all religious dogmas claim to be), we do not find any room for ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe

... Imperial Sun and Cogwheel flag, and began transmitting views of its interior up to the Empress Eulalie. It was considerably smaller than the Imperial Palace at Asgard on Odin, but room for room the furnishings were rather more ornate and expensive. By the next afternoon, the counter-espionage team that had gone down reported the Masterly living quarters clear of pickups, microphones, and other apparatus of servile snooping, of ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper

... destination, Nuka-hiva, whelmed in cloud; and betwixt and to the southward, the first rays of the sun displayed the needles of Ua- pu. These pricked about the line of the horizon; like the pinnacles of some ornate and monstrous church, they stood there, in the sparkling brightness of the morning, the fit signboard of a ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... which we should blame as violent, if they were not so eminently successful that we adopt them at once, as we do Shakespeare's. La Bruyere passes from mysterious ironies to bold and coarse invective, from ornate and sublime reflections to phrases of a roguish simplicity. He suddenly drops his voice to a shuddering whisper, and the next moment is fluting like a blackbird. The gaiety with which he mocks the ambitions of the rich is suddenly relieved by the ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... as something upon one of the vessels—it was a drinking goblet of ornate design—caught the light and shone back at him like imprisoned fire, "Encrusted with ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory



Words linked to "Ornate" :   flowery



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