"Sparely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... residence alone. She was a coarse-featured woman, with keen and rather cruel dark eyes, and an exceedingly sensual expression about her mouth and under jaw. She received me in perfect silence, in an apartment on the ground floor, very sparely furnished. In the centre of the room, close to where Mrs. Vulpes sat, there was a common round mahogany table. If I had come for the purpose of sweeping her chimney, the woman could not have looked more indifferent to my appearance. There was no attempt to inspire the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... the bachelor brothers applied successive keys from a ponderous bunch that he held in his hand. These doors led to vast suites of apartments, all unfurnished, like the upper rooms, with the exception of one suite, which the brothers had lent to a friend of theirs, and which was sparely supplied with some old Italian furniture, of so antique a fashion that each article might have been a family heirloom ever since the times of that famous Genoese gentleman, Christopher Columbus. One peculiarity the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... contrast. There stood the Englishman with his sturdy form inclining, with age, to corpulence, his broad honest face telling of many a civic banquet, and his short stubbly brown grizzled beard; his whole air giving a sense of worshipful authority and weight; and opposite to him the sparely made, dark, thin, aquiline-faced, white-bearded Moor, a far smaller man in stature, yet with a patriarchal dignity, refinement, and grace in port and countenance, belonging as it were to ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... light. About the middle of the afternoon, put to shore on the east bank of the river, as there appeared to be no villages in sight on the other shore, and we were in want of provisions. The country we saw to-day is very good, and covered with trees, but sparely inhabited. ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... sparely; he had fasted for many hours; and standing there he could feel the generous liquor coursing through him—nay could almost have reported its progress from ganglion to ganglion. He blessed it, and at the same moment breathed a prayer that it ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... successively smaller offices on the second floor of the converted warehouse, checking over a symbolic-logic analysis of a relay system and, at the same time, sharpening a pencil, his knife paring off tiny feathery shavings of wood. He was a tall, sparely-built, man of indeterminate age, with thinning sandy hair, a long Gaelic upper lip, and a wide, half-humorous, half-weary mouth; he wore an open-necked shirt, and an old and shabby leather jacket, to the left shoulder of which a few clinging flecks of paint showed ...
— Day of the Moron • Henry Beam Piper
... dark windows with a sort of steady gaze. Master Grimston fastened the door behind them, and they went all together, keeping close one to another, up to the house, the door of which opened upon a big parlour or kitchen, sparely furnished, but very clean and comfortable. Some vessels of metal glittered on a rack. There were chairs, ranged round the open fireplace. There was no sound except that the wind buffeted in the chimney. It looked a ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... dread voice is past That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse, And call the vales, and bid them hither cast Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues. Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks; Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes That on the green turf suck the honey'd showers And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, The white pink, and the pansy freak'd with jet, The glowing ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... where there are fields and fruit trees. Water is nowhere visible except in the wasteful river-beds. As we rise, we break into a wilder country, forested with oak, where oxen and goats are browsing. The turf is starred with lilac gentian and crocus bells, but sparely. Then comes the highest village, Berceto, with keen Alpine air. After that, broad rolling downs of yellowing grass and russet beech-scrub lead onward to the pass La Cisa. The sense of breadth in composition is continually satisfied through ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... where Grant and Breckenridge passed the bitter nights alone. The man's half-audible sigh was also very expressive, for after his grim life he found the brightness and daintiness of the little room very pleasant. It was sparely furnished; but there was taste in everything, and in contrast with Fremont its curtains, rugs, and pictures seemed luxurious. Without were bitter frost and darkness, peril, and self-denial; within, warmth and refinement, and ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... before a low door in a plain stone house which might have been the dwelling of an artisan of the better sort, and without announcing myself, entered. The room, rather sparely furnished, and lighted by a single window with small diamond-shaped panes, had but two occupants; a man and a woman. They took no notice of my intrusion, a circumstance which, in the manner of dreams, appeared entirely ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... chill, with small, deep windows looking out upon the hills of June, was but sparely set out with folk. Afternoon was not morning. Nor was there again the disciplinary vision of the forenoon. The sinners were not set the second time for a gazing-stock. It was just usual afternoon kirk. The prayer was made, the psalm was sung, Mr. M'Nab preached ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie! Your impudence protects you sairly: I canna say by ye strunt rarely, Owre gauze and lace; Tho' faith, I fear, ye dine but sparely On sic ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... doomed black dozen— No stealing away—nor cog nor cozen! You five, that were thieves, deserve it fairly; You seven, that were beggars, will live less sparely; You took your turn and dipped in the hat, Got fortune—and fortune gets you; ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... pelage is remarkable for its extreme woolliness, the hairy piles being few and sparely scattered amongst the woolliness, which is most abundant; the head as far as the ears, the ears, and the limbs are clad in close ordinary hair; the belly is thinly covered with longer hairs; but all the rest of the animal is clothed in a thick sheep-like coat, which is most abundant on ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... ships, and leaving river, sailed on in a bright blue sea. The next day we doubled a cape and found a great haven, but silent and sailless, with no maritime city thronging the shore. What was this world, so huge, so sparely, rudely peopled? ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... the girl was bewildering, overpowering, as she made her way through this underground world. The things she had glimpses of were very sparely illuminated, nay scarcely discernible, and yet appallingly real; what mysteries, what spells might not be hidden in all she did not see! She felt as if the end of life, which she was looking for, had already begun, as if she had already gone ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... middle stature,—lean, muscular, and strongly though sparely built. A plain black robe, something in the fashion of the Armenian gown, hung long and loosely over a tunic of bright scarlet, girdled by a broad belt, from the centre of which was suspended a small golden key, while at the left side appeared the jewelled hilt of a crooked ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... toward the new speaker—the young patrician whom his companion had called Lucius. He was a man perhaps twenty-five years of age, of middle height, sparely built but as if of tempered steel, with strong, commanding features and dark hawklike eyes that were now glittering with passion. It was not a handsome face except so far as strength and pride make masculine beauty, but it ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... Sicilian Muse, And call the vales, and bid them hither cast Their bells, and flowerets of a thousand hues. Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks; Throw hither all your quaint-enamelled eyes, That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers, And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, The white pink, and ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... peaks rise, phantom-like and pallid, into the grey air, scarcely distinguishable from their background. The pine-forests on the mountain-sides are of darkest indigo. There is an indescribable stillness and a sense of incubation. The wind has fallen. Later on, the snow-flakes flutter silently and sparely through the lifeless air. The most distant landscape is quite blotted out. After sunset the clouds have settled down upon the hills, and the snow comes in thick, impenetrable fleeces. At night our hair crackles and sparkles when we brush it. Next morning there ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... let that stranger see, if he will, in your looks, accents and behavior, your heart and earnestness, your thought and will, that which he cannot buy at any price in any city, and which he may travel miles and dine sparely and sleep ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... Pheraulas, "men who live by their hands, you mean. My father, I can tell you, had work enough to rear me and get me a boy's schooling; he had to toil hard and live sparely, and when I grew to be a lad he could not afford to keep me idle, he took me to a farm in the country and set me there to work it. [38] Then it was my turn, and I supported him while he lived, digging with my own hands and sowing the seed in a ridiculous little plot of ground, and yet it was not ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... blest the former age, their life Who in the fields contented led, And still, by luxury unspoiled, On frugal acorns sparely fed. ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... now past forty—he was sparely built, with speaking brown eyes in which shone the light of knowledge and self-confidence, while at the same time they made one think of that wondrous gentleness seen most often in the eyes of animals. A close beard ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... good Robin, none of these hath been my undoing. My ancestors have all been knights for over a hundred years, and I have not lived wastefully, but soberly and sparely. As short a time ago as last year I had over four hundred pounds saved, which I could spend freely among my neighbours, and my income was four hundred pounds a year, from my land; but now my only possessions are my wife and children. This is the work of God's ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... and rather sparely furnished room, but Miriam and Ralph took no note of anything except the table, which stood in the middle of the floor, lighted by a hanging lamp. It was a large table and arranged for eight people with chairs at every ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... winning pseudonym—was sparely built and under medium height, or maybe a slight droop of the shoulders made it seem so, with a fragile look about him and an aspect of youth that was not his. Encountering him casually on a street corner, you would, at the ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... looked out of the window upon a great stretch of open, rolling prairie, clothed sparely in grass that was showing faint green in the hollows, and with no water for miles—as he knew well—except for the rivers that hurried through narrow bottom lands guarded by high bluffs that were for the most part barren. The land ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... are epithets That suit with any word— As well as Harvey's Reading Sauce With fish, or flesh, or bird. Such epithets, like pepper, Give zest to what you write; And, if you strew them sparely, They whet the appetite; But if you lay them on too thick, You spoil the ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... for Javert, but did not see him; the seat of the witnesses was hidden from him by the clerk's table, and then, as we have just said, the hall was sparely lighted. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... our host, who had come down from New York specially in his magnificent private car, which was now awaiting his return on a siding of the little station. He was a hard-faced, elderly man, with a shrewd mouth and keen eyes, sparely built, yet a man you would be inclined to glance at twice in any assemblage. He wore a most unconventional evening suit, the waistcoat cut very high, and a plain black tie. Two footmen stood behind his chair, and a large florid lady, wearing a crown of diamonds, ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ye crowlin ferlie? Your impudence protects you sairly; I canna say but ye strunt rarely Ower gauze and lace, Tho', faith, I fear ye dine but sparely On sic ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... field adjoining the road, with an open gate. At the farther end, two carts were being loaded, but nearer the road, several men and women were busily making the rows of hay into cocks. Close at hand stood a tall, sparely built farmer with a cane in his hand and a fox-terrier by his side. He seemed to be trying to hurry everybody along, and there was an air of bustle and haste about the whole scene. Although the sun shone hotly, threatening clouds were coming ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... an immensely large rambling loft at top, I made no other discoveries. It was moderately well furnished, but sparely. Some of the furniture—say, a third—was as old as the house; the rest was of various periods within the last half- century. I was referred to a corn-chandler in the market-place of the county town ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... what we seek is here! Alight, and sparely sup, and wait For rest in this outbuilding near; Then cross the sward and reach that gate. Knock; pass the wicket! Thou art come To the ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... a porter, who seemed to be well acquainted with Amroth. Within, it was a big, bare place, with, stone-arched cloisters and corridors, more like a monastery than a castle. Amroth led me briskly along the passages, and took me into a large room very sparely furnished, where an elderly man sat writing at a table with his back to the light. He rose when we entered, and I had a sudden sense that I was coming to school again, as indeed I was. Amroth greeted him with a mixture of freedom and respect, as a well-loved pupil might treat ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... virgin prairie, pasturing a large mixed herd of cattle and horses. The two North-Countrymen had been managing it all in Anderson's Parliamentary absences, and were quite as determined as he to make it a centre of science and progress for a still remote and sparely peopled district. One of the kinsmen was married, and lived in a small frame house, a stone's throw from the main buildings of the farm. The other was the head of the "bothy" or boarding-house for hired men, a long low building, with cheerful white-curtained windows, which ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... administration—at this tall, black-haired man, for instance, with the mild and meditative eye, the equal, social or intellectual, of any Foreign Minister that Europe might pit against him, or any diplomat that might be sent to handle him; or this younger man, sparely built, with the sane, handsome face—son of a famous father, modest, amiable, efficient; or this other, of huge bulk and height, the sport of caricature, the hope of a party, smiling already a presidential smile as he passed, observed and beset, ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mountains, wild clans, and hunted Covenanters. Breaths come to him in song of the distant Cheviots and the ring of foraying hoofs. He glories in his hard-fisted forefathers, of the iron girdle and the handful of oat-meal, who rode so swiftly and lived so sparely on their raids. Poverty, ill-luck, enterprise, and constant resolution are the fibres of the legend of his country's history. The heroes and kings of Scotland have been tragically fated; the most marking incidents in Scottish ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... yet industrious, modest, quiet, neat, Such claim compassion in a night like this, And have a friend in every feeling heart. Warmed while it lasts, by labour, all day long They brave the season, and yet find at eve, Ill clad and fed but sparely, time to cool. The frugal housewife trembles when she lights Her scanty stock of brushwood, blazing clear, But dying soon, like all terrestrial joys; The few small embers left she nurses well. And while her infant race with outspread hands And crowded knees sit cowering o'er the sparks, Retires, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... time to fire: and a little after a pair of white rhinoceroses stood directly in our path. Casting my eyes to the right, I beheld within a quarter of a mile of me a herd of eight or ten cow elephants, with calves, peacefully browsing on a sparely-wooded knoll. The spoor we followed led due south, and the wind was as fair as it could blow. We passed between the twin-looking, abrupt, pyramidal hills, composed of huge disjointed blocks of granite, which lay piled above each other in grand confusion. To the summit ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... sat on either side of the table, Evelyn was attracted, and then absorbed, by the distinctive appearance of the priest. His mind was in his face. The long, high forehead, with black hair growing sparely upon it; the small, brilliant eyes, and the long, firm line of the jaw, now distinct, for the head was turned almost in profile. The face was a perfect symbol of the mind behind it; and the intimate concurrence of the appearance and the thought was the ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... no neck at all, was boxed up so stiff and tight that he could hardly move; while Fani was slender and nimble as a lizard, and, though he wore all summer long nothing more than a shirt and linen trousers, yet he looked so slight and so graceful that no one noticed how sparely he was clad. When with both hands he tossed his long dark brown locks back from his forehead, and looked about with great shining expectant eyes, then instantly some new plan of comradeship darted into Oscar's busy brain; some ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... style, appear to her? How did she like that genial, half humorous vein, which to me gave such delight? What did she think of the few kind words scattered here and there-not thickly, as the diamonds were scattered in the valley of Sindbad, but sparely, as those gems lie in unfabled beds? Oh, Madame Beck! how seemed these things ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... sparely built man of below medium height. He looked about thirty years of age. In reality he was nearly fifty. Having vainly attempted to obtain a commission in the R.N.R. and the Army, he had joined the V.T.C. in the hope that, perhaps, some day his services might be ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... Alpheus, the dread voice is past, That shrunk thy streams; Return Sicilian Muse, And call the Vales, and bid them hither cast Their Bels, and Flourets of a thousand hues. Ye valleys low where the milde whispers use, Of shades and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, On whose fresh lap the swart Star sparely looks, Throw hither all your quaint enameld eyes, That on the green terf suck the honied showres, And purple all the ground with vernal flowres. Bring the rathe Primrose that forsaken dies. The tufted Crow-toe, and pale Gessamine, The white Pink, and the Pansie ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... imitation of the feudal castle, turreted and moated, cut up into dark irregular rooms and yards, filled with noisy retainers and stinking hounds. On some gentle hillside a well-planned palace, its rooms spacious and lofty, and sparely windowed for coolness in summer; with a neat cloistered court in the centre, ventilating the whole house, and affording a cool place, full of scent of flowers and sound of fountains for the burning afternoons; a belvedere tower also, on which to seek a breeze on stifling nights, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... year 1788. Among the books translated by her was Necker "On the Importance of Religious Opinions." Among the books abridged by her was Salzmann's "Elements of Morality." With all this hard work she lived as sparely as she could, that she might help her family. She supported her father. That she might enable her sisters to earn their living as teachers, she sent one of them to Paris, and maintained her there for two years; the other she placed in a school near London as parlour-boarder ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... was cool and dark, and had an ancient holy smell; it was furnished sparely with seat and screen, and held monuments of old knights and ladies, sleeping peacefully side by side, heads pillowed on hands, looking out with quiet eyes, as ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... making mental notes of the cottage. It consisted apparently of two sitting-rooms, and a studio—in which they were to have tea—with two or three bedrooms above. It had been developed out of a Westmorland farm, but developed beyond recognition. The spacious rooms panelled in plain oak, were furnished sparely, with few things, but those of the most beautiful and costly kind. Old Persian rugs and carpets, a few Renaissance mirrors, a few priceless 'pots,' a picture or two, hangings and coverings of a dim purple—the whole, made by these various items and objects, expressed a taste perhaps originally florid, ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... summit the river bends westward, and the mountains sweep back to the right. As the head of the column emerged into open air it found itself on a small table-land, flanked on the left by the Garry, and on the right by a tier of low hills sparely dotted with dwarf trees and underwood. Above these hills to the north and east rose the lofty chain of the Grampians crowned by the towering peaks of Ben Gloe and Ben Vrackie. In front the valley gradually opened out towards Blair Castle, about three miles distant, and along this ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... two rooms sparely furnished—one as a bedroom, a larger room, with a long table, a sofa, and several chairs; and in one of the smaller rooms was found a stove, ladles and crucibles for the melting down of metals—gold or silver. It was in this same room also that the table stood, in the ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... guest up three flights of uncarpeted wooden staircase, down a long passage to a light, clean, but sparely-furnished room. The girl told him the hours of meals, brought some water, and left him alone. He hung his knapsack on a hook on the wall, opened the little window, and gazed long at the view. Underneath was the open space where he had been standing, to the left the tower, and ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... I pity you! No more will you impose your sovereign laws, concerning Suivez-moi-jeune-homme[63] and dog-skin gloves. No more will your boots and shirt-collars reach, by the force of their reputation, the sparely-dressed inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands. And, deepest of humiliations, it is your old rival, it is your tall and angular sister, it is the black city of London, who takes your glittering sword and ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... group of West India Docks, together with two smaller and much older basins called Import and Export respectively, both with the greatness of their trade departed from them already. Picturesque and clean as docks go, these twin basins spread side by side the dark lustre of their glassy water, sparely peopled by a few ships laid up on buoys or tucked far away from each other at the end of sheds in the corners of empty quays, where they seemed to slumber quietly remote, untouched by the bustle of men's affairs—in retreat rather than in captivity. They were ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... through the tangled wood-walks play, Where no rude urchin paces near, Where sparely peeps the sultry day, And light dews freshen ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe |
