"Tinsel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and tinsel and silk attire, of cheap sentiment and high and mighty dialogue! Will there not always be rosin enough for ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... hoary Nereus wrincled look, And the Carpathian wisards hook, By scaly Tritons winding shell, And old sooth-saying Glaucus spell, By Leucothea's lovely hands, And her son that rules the strands, By Thetis tinsel-slipper'd feet, And the Songs of Sirens sweet, By dead Parthenope's dear tomb, And fair Ligea's golden comb, 880 Wherwith she sits on diamond rocks Sleeking her soft alluring locks, By all the Nymphs that nightly ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... know is not my due. I meant to express this apprehension as respectfully as I could, but my words failed me-a misfortune not too common to me, who am apt to say too much, not too little! Perhaps it is that very quality which your ladyship calls wit, and I call tinsel, for which I dread being praised. I wish to recommend myself to you by more essential merits-and if I can only make you laugh, it will be very apt to make me as much concerned as I was yesterday. For people to whose approbation I am indifferent, I don't care whether ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... 30lb. are counted as grilse. The cohoe salmon will take a fly; white with silver tinsel, I found best. They take in the sea at sunrise and sunset when they are jumping—in fact, more could be got in this way while they are actually jumping than by trolling, only they must be jumping and also fairly plentiful. I have got an odd one casting, but nearly all by ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert
... criticism here. But on all sides in the social conversation of the young people of this day, it seems to be agreed to give good, plain, strong English the go-by and to indulge in the embroidery of adjectives. Tawdry adjectives such as 'beautiful', 'lovely,' 'horrid', 'awful', and the like worn tinsel. I suppose I might venture the assertion without fear of contradiction, that this is the stock in trade in most young girls in qualifying their conversation. The use of that tinsel gives a wholly unreal tone to what is being said ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... by the Spanish writer, Cervantes (1547-1616 A.D.), is a famous satire on chivalry. Our American "Mark Twain" also stripped off the gilt and tinsel of chivalry in his amusing story entitled A Connecticut Yankee at the ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... wickedness, and the devil, may of course commit murder, or forge bills, or become a fraudulent director of a bankrupt company. And so may a man be untrue to his troth,—and leave true love in pursuit of tinsel, and beauty, and false words, and a large income. But why should one tell the story of creatures so base? One does not willingly grovel in gutters, or breathe fetid atmospheres, or live upon garbage. If we are to deal with heroes and heroines, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Edgarton in one wild panic-stricken surge of terror went tearing off through a blind alley of palms, dodging a cafe table, jumping an improvised trellis—a hundred pursuing voices yelling: "Where is she? Where is she?"—the telltale tinsel scarf flapping frenziedly behind her, flapping—flapping—till at last, between one high, garnished shelf and another it twined its vampirish chiffon around the delicate fronds of a huge potted fern! There was a jerk,—a blur,—a ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... and an attitude of constant flattery and suavity from the men and women in whose eyes he was always haloed by a crown of thousand-rouble pieces. To-day, how different his estate! He saw his world now with the eyes of the outsider. And what a thing it was!—This stolid dummy, from which both tinsel robe and leering mask had now been stripped for him, exposing the brutal, heartless machine that had taken such delight in ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... bank some forty feet we find we are again in the track of the Royal Procession! There are tiny decorations going up amongst the trees. A triumphal arch, quite twenty feet high, is being covered with coloured paper and tinsel, and a line of flags and freshly cut palm leaves leads to the little siding on the line that goes to Rangoon. The place is so pretty that you feel it is a pity that its natural features should be disturbed by ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... to the field the fresh, young gallants and noblemen, gorgeously apparelled with curious devices of arts and of embroideries, "as well in their coats as in trappers for their horses; some in gold, some in silver, some in tinsel, and divers others in goldsmith's work goodly to behold." Such was the array in which the young knights came forth at Richmond, in the splendid tournament which immediately succeeded Henry's coronation, "assuming the name and devices of the knights or scholars of Pallas, clothed ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... in verse,—I think he said 'Twas verses the ingenious Dryden made, And trust 'twill save me from entire disgrace To cite 'em in his foolish Prologue's place. Yet, scattered here and there, I some behold, Who can discern the tinsel from the gold; To these he writes; and if by them allowed, 'Tis their prerogative to rule the crowd, For he more fears, like, a presuming man, Their votes who ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... love, thy beauty far outshineth them; The tinsel they are, thou the living gem. Great gift of Gods! Shall flowers of earth despise Those flowers of heaven—thy tresses, and thine eyes? Away with gloom I let no ill-boding make My heart to falter, or my hand to shake. One hour is all I crave. If that be long, Sweet ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... which make temple decorations a specialty are brilliant in the extreme. As every shop, house or boat contains an altar, which, as well as those in the public temples, must be freshly decorated at the beginning of every year, the extent of this trade is surprising, and all that tinsel can do with the most gorgeous coloring imaginable is seen in this branch to perfection. One thing appears very strange: even in the principal streets various manufactures are carried on, the workmen being so close that you can touch them from the pavement with your cane. ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... imagination, or on any other faculty. It may be the case also that the stock poetical diction and mechanism of Addison's time, with the "Delias" and "Phyllises," "nymphs," "swains," "lyres," and other tinsel elegancies in which it delights, will be—nay, are already—the abomination of a discerning world. But if by "poetry" is meant what should be meant—the vivid, impassioned and rhythmical expression of rare emotions and exquisite thoughts, the revelation by genius of the ideal and spiritual side ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... red-hot goose, basting him with the sleeve-board, and sticking him to the road with wax—Clown dissolving partnership by walking off, in a new wrap-rascal, with the cash-box, that no one may rob them. The best things must come to an end!—and so does the Pantomime—with a gorgeous display of red fire, tinsel and gold, real water and the electric light—all chopped off in the middle by the descending curtain. The box-fronts have been enveloped in their night-gowns; the Columbine is clattering, in pattens, to her lodgings; the Harlequin has been ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... no shadow. It is a real thing," said Mrs. Mayflower. "It does not project itself in advance of us; but exists in the actual and the now, if it exists at all. We cannot catch it by pursuit; that is only a cheating counterfeit, in guilt and tinsel, which dazzles our eyes in the ever receding future. No; happiness is a state of life; and it comes only to those who do each day's work peaceful self-forgetfulness, and a calm trust in the Giver of all good for the blessing that lies stored for each one prepared to receive ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... hearse it could be called. It was really an enormous catafalque, decorated with gold tinsel and costly embroideries. Peacocks and birds of paradise were depicted on its silken hangings. A dozen men, in elaborate robes of blue, carried this gaudy structure upon their shoulders, while other gorgeously attired attendants bore great ribbon-banners of satin, say twenty ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... qualities adapted to the highest achievements of oratory, would be congenial to the rough encounters of war. Especially when the mind is already preoccupied with inward thirstings after the glory of the rostrum; it will not be apt to sigh for the camp, or the noise and tinsel ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... idols of this superstition are the foolish and hideous dolls which people bow to in most of the Venetian temples, and of which the most abominable is in the church of the Carmelites. It represents the Madonna with the Child, elevated breast-high to the worshipers. She is crowned with tinsel and garlanded with paper flowers; she has a blue ribbon about her tightly corseted waist; and she wears an immense spreading hoop. On her painted, silly face of wood, with its staring eyes shadowed by a wig, is figured a pert smile; and people come constantly and kiss the cross that ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... spring morning,—it was in May, 1841,—a long column of troops entered Paris with a celerity hitherto unknown. There was no false glitter, no tinsel; everything was neat and martial, with bugles for their only music, and a uniform that was sombre, indeed, but of such harmonious simplicity as to be by no means devoid of elegance. This column consisted of the Chasseurs, coming ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... the shadows were falling. In the west the sun was slipping down behind the hills, leaving the strong day with a rosy and radiant glamour, that faded away in eloquent tones to the grey, tinsel softness of the zenith. Out in the yard a sumach bush was aflame. Rich tiger-lilies thrust in at the sill, and lazy flies and king bees boomed in and out of the window. Something out of the sunset, out of the glorious freshness ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... life to study the art of composition, most likely he would have frowned on his adviser. He would have urged the "haste" which "the King's business" requires, and might have reminded us that viands are as wholesome on a wooden trencher as on a plate of gold. He would have told us that truth needs no tinsel, and that the road over a bare heath may be more direct than the pretty windings of the valley. Or, rather, he would have said, as he has written—"Know that you have to do with a person who, provided his words but clearly express the sentiments of his ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... to be more than Friedland, to unite some shadow of command with the substance, to wear some crown of tinsel, as well as the crown of power? We do not know, we know only that his ways were dark, that his ambition was vast, and that he was thwarting the policy of the Jesuits and Spain. Great efforts were made in vain to get up a case ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... "I'd rather be a man's horse than his wife. Men treat women like little tinsel queens before, and afterwards they answer to save a cook's wages and drudge their lives out feeding a hunch of half-starved hands—or else go to the other extreme. Wives are either work horses or pets. I was raised like a boy and I want to have a ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... "engages," having spent their season's gains in carousal, packed their blanket capotes and were ready for the wilderness again. They made a picturesque crew in their gaudy turbans, or hats adorned with plumes and tinsel, their brilliant handkerchiefs tied sailor-fashion about swarthy necks, their calico shirts, and their flaming worsted belts, which served to hold the knife and the tobacco pouch. Rough trousers, leggings, and cowhide shoes or gaily-worked moccasins completed the costume. The trading birch ...
— The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin • Frederick Jackson Turner
... carnage, war; The pomp and tinsel of unrighteous power; Bloated oppression in its awful ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... are dead, but in their name Humanity is sold to shame, While (then as now!) the tinsel'd priest Sitteth with robbers at the feast, Blesses the laden, blood-stained board, Weaves garlands round the butcher's sword, And poureth freely (now as then) ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... Addition, and the moon of Mr. Amberson's delight was overlaid by a slender Gothic filagree; the branches that sprang from the shade trees lining the street. Through the windows of many of the houses rosy lights were flickering; and silver tinsel and evergreen wreaths and brilliant little glass globes of silver and wine colour could be seen, and glimpses were caught of Christmas trees, with people decking them by firelight—reminders that this was Christmas Eve. The ride-stealers had disappeared ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... some old instinct of his race, the gentle Jew had spread a carpet. Seated on it, against no more romantic object than a blackened chimney-stack, over which some humble creeper had been trained, they both pored over one book, while a basket of common fruit, and another basket of strings of beads and tinsel scraps ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... before or after. He said he thought a speech of Webster's delivered during the war or soon after it, probably the speech on the currency, superior to his speech in reply to Hayne, and altogether free from the tinsel of his later speeches. The speech of Pinkney on the Missouri question, which he heard, he thought the ablest ever delivered in the senate. For the intellect of Calhoun he had the highest respect and admiration, and, while differing ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... spirit of Knox. It was not difficult for him to set aside this weak scruple of loyalty. The lantern of his analysis did not always shine with a very serviceable light; but he had the virtue, at least, to carry it into many places of fictitious holiness, and was not abashed by the tinsel divinity that hedged kings and queens from his contemporaries. And so he could put the proposition in the form already mentioned: there was Christ's Gospel persecuted in the two kingdoms by one anomalous power; plainly, then, the "regiment of women" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the character thus "drawn" losing all individuality as soon as speech and action are called upon. Indeed, there are two mistakes very common among reviewers: one is the overvaluation of what is usually considered as literary ability ("brilliant writing" it is called; "literary tinsel" would be more descriptive) to the prejudice of Invention and Individuality; the other is the overvaluation of what they call "solid acquirements," which really mean no more than an acquaintance with the classics. As a fact, literary ability and solid acquirements ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... certain vulgarity is inseparable from even the most respectable forms of magic,—an atmosphere of tinsel, of ostentation, of big cry and little wool. A child might have told us that matter is not almighty, that minds are sometimes transparent to one another, that love and faith can work wonders. And we also ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... truth, Agnes could scarcely understand how a boy could so dislike circus life as to really want to run away from even Twomley & Sorber's Herculean Circus and Menagerie. There was a glitter and tinsel to the circus that ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... clattered husky and dry like the rattles of a snake; there an argument sprouting into green declamation, like a damaged ear of corn in a wet harvest; yonder a piece of delightful egotism, set full in sentiment like a miniature of Mr. Clark in a tinsel frame. What seemed most remarkable, however, in at least his earlier productions, was their ceaseless glitter of surface, if we may so speak. We found them literally sprinkled over with little bits ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... and silver; men have dreamed at night of fame; In the heat of youth they've struggled for achievement's honored name; But the selfish crowns are tinsel, and their shining jewels paste, And the wine of pomp and glory soon grows bitter to the taste. For there's never any laughter, howsoever far you roam, Like the laughter of the loved ones in the ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... its noisy phantasms, its poor paper-crown's tinsel-gilt, is gone; and divine everlasting Night, with her star-diadems, with her silences and her veracities, is come! What hast thou done, and how? Happiness, unhappiness; all that was but wages thou hadst; thou hast spent all that, in sustaining thyself hitherward; not ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... casements and roofs and footways were agrin with faces, half a dozen Jews or so were assembled pell-mell. They had just been given a hearty meal, but they did not look grateful. Almost naked, save for a white cloak of the meagrest dimensions, comically indecent, covered with tinsel and decorated with laurels, they stood shivering, awaiting the command to "Go!" to run the gauntlet of all this sinister crowd, overwelling with long-repressed venom, seething with taunts and lewdness. At last a mounted officer gave the word, and, amid a colossal shout of glee from the mob, the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... o'clock she had begun to dress. Never had she made a toilet more superb, more careful. She disdained a "costume" on this great evening. It was not to be "Theodora" now, nor "Juliet," nor "Carmen." It was to be only Laura Jadwin—just herself, unaided by theatricals, unadorned by tinsel. But it seemed consistent none the less to choose her most beautiful gown for the occasion, to panoply herself in every charm that was her own. Her dress, that closely sheathed the low, flat curves ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... thrusting index, and will be found again next December); the dining-room floor is thick with fallen needles; the gay little candles are burnt down to a small gutter of wax in the tin holders. The floor sparkles here and there with the fragments of tinsel balls or popcorn chains that were injudiciously hung within leap of puppy or grasp of urchin. And so you see him, the diligent parent, brooding with a tender mournfulness and sniffing the faint whiff of that fine Christmas tree odour—balsam and burning candles ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... that most of the neighbors found acceptable strung with a few strands of dingy popcorn and pasteboard ornaments. No, the Robson tree was always an opulent work of art, freighted with bursting cornucopias and heavy glass balls and yards of quivering tinsel. The money for all this dazzling beauty usually came a fortnight or so before the eventful day in the shape of a ten-dollar bill tucked away in the folds of Gertrude Sinclair's annual letter to Mrs. Robson. As Claire had grown older she ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... crushed, wrinkled and dirty, which had at first bedecked a lady of quality, then descended to her Abigail, and dazzled the inmates of the servants' hall. A tawdry scarf of yellow silk, trimmed with tinsel and spangles, which had seen as hard service, and boasted as honourable a transmission, was next flung over one shoulder, and fell across her person in the manner of a shoulder-belt, or baldrick. ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... at the theatre at the time, and had only just arrived when the deceased had fallen into his last sleep. There, silent and shocked, she stood by the bed, opposite Godolphin. She had not stayed to change her stage-dress; and the tinsel and mock jewels glittered on the revolted eye of her quondam lover. What a type of the life just extinguished! What a satire on its ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Christian public generally will feel under great obligations to the publishers of this work for the beautiful taste, arrangement, and delicate neatness with which they have got it out. The intrinsic merit of the Bible recommends itself; it needs no tinsel ornament to adorn its sacred pages. In this edition every superfluous ornament has been avoided, and we have presented us a perfectly chaste specimen of the Bible, without note or comment. It appears to be just what is needed in every ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... Plassenburg, and even the tiny dresses of her childhood, all torn and confused together. And in the midst, what affected me more than everything else, a tiny puppet of wood my father had hewn her with his knife, and which she had dressed as a queen with red ribbons and crown of tinsel—ah, so long ago—and in ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the cathedral. It was St. John's eve. "At twelve o'clock to-night," said H., "the spirits of all who are to die this year will appear to any who will go alone into the dark cathedral and summon them"! We were charmed with the interior. Twilight hid all the dirt, cobwebs, and tawdry tinsel; softened the outlines, and gave to the immense arches, columns, and stained windows a strange and thrilling beauty. The distant tapers, seeming remoter than reality, the kneeling crowds, the heavy vesper chime, all combined to realize, H. said, her dreams of romance more ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... candlesticks. It is unknown where they were invented, so uncommon were these holders and candlesticks, so fantastic. They were so peculiar in style that it would seem as if they had been brought from the dream-world of an excited fancy to the world of existence. There was no color, no tinsel, no emblem of death, nothing in that sea of snowy whiteness save an avalanche of snow-covered flowers and the dazzling gleam of burning tapers, with the odor of lilies-of-the-valley, roses, alder-blossoms, hyacinths, to which was added incense of some kind, as peculiar as was everything in that ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... some one suddenly grasped her vigorously by the elbow; she turned round and fairly screamed; behind her stood Gerasim. With a foolish smile, making inarticulate caressing grunts, he held out to her a gingerbread cock with gold tinsel on his tail and wings. She was about to refuse it, but he thrust it forcibly into her hand, shook his head, walked away, and turning round, once more grunted ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... white, and blue, were fastened to the different boughs. Dolls that looked exactly like real people—the tree had never seen such before—swung among the foliage, and high on the summit of the Tree was fixed a tinsel star. It ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... general characteristic is lucidness and transparency: he is never obscure, unless in the Ode to Liberty, and, perhaps, in a few passages of the Ode on the Manners. Campbell's criticism is, otherwise, worthy of this beautiful poet, whom he praises with congenial spirit. When Hazlitt speaks of the "tinsel and splendid patchwork" of Collins, "mixed with the solid, sterling ore of his genius," he speaks of a base material not to be found there. In Collins there is no tinsel or patchwork, one of his excellencies is, that the whole of every piece is of one web; there are no joinings or meaner ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... assembles, but it is ofttimes not the beauty of life. It is the glaring show and tinsel array of society that attracts great numbers, who, like the beautiful colored night moths, are enamoured of the gleaming light, venturing nearer until they scorch their wings, or blinded by the brilliant rays plunge headlong into the flames and are burned to death. "The allied ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... be attained could thus be stated: to devise a sombre effect by means of cheerful objects, or rather to give a tone of elegance and distinction to the room thus treated, meanwhile preserving its character of ugliness; to reverse the practice of the theatre, whose vile tinsel imitates sumptuous and costly textures; to obtain the contrary effect by use of splendid fabrics; in a word, to have the cell of a Carthusian monk which should possess the appearance of reality without ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... not quite so well off as the three former; though not altogether so unhappy neither, in her way. She could not indeed conquer her love of dress and tinsel, and so became the lady of Col. Wilson: and they are thus far easy in the marriage state, that, being seldom together, they have probably a multitude of misunderstandings; for the colonel loves gaming, in which he is generally a winner; and so passes his time mostly ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... about! But women and fools always will be fools; there is no help for that! Those that set them on have most to answer for; and most of all, Mr. Clare. He is a man that ought to know something of the world, and past being duped by gewgaws and tinsel. He seemed, too, to have some notion of things: I should not have suspected him of hallooing to a cry of mongrels without honesty or reason. But the world is all alike. Those that seem better than their neighbours, are only more artful. ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... on business had to dismount and kneel in obeisance, and farmers, instead of cultivating the fields, had to act as bearers of the dogs' sedan-chairs. Thus, the city of Kamakura presented the curious spectacle of a town filled with well-fed dogs, clothed in tinsel and brocades, and totalling from four to five thousand. Twelve days in every month used to be devoted to dog-fights, and on these occasions, the regent, the nobles, and the people inside and outside the mansion used to ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... had come to assume a vastly different aspect from what it had displayed in times past. Heretofore it had been a plaything which like a juggler's tinsel ball might be tossed from hand to hand at will. Now it was no plaything—no glittering bauble. It was something big and serious and splendid—because Billy lived in it; something that demanded all his powers to do, and be—because ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... little garden. Tonight the contrast between Yokohama, with its pitiful western vulgarity obtruding at every turn, and the quiet beauty of his surroundings struck Craven even more sharply than usual. It seemed impossible that only two miles away was Theatre Street blazing and rioting with all its tinsel tawdriness, flaring lights and whining gramophones. Here was another world—and here he had found more continuous contentment than he had known in the last ten years. The garden was an old one, planned by a master ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... growing old and find themselves broken in body and in spirit, who are thrust aside in the fierce competition of their trade in favour of younger rivals; those who find the wine in their tinsel cup turning, or turned, to gall, the case is different. They are sometimes, not always, glad to creep to such shelter from the storms of life as the Army can offer, and there work out their moral and physical salvation. ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... does this passage of tinsel stand alone. When the iron cools and Hubert says he can revive it, Arthur ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... they are simple who prize The tongue that is smooth to deceive; Yet sure she had sense to despise, The tinsel ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... said, smiling too; 'but it does not turn to tinsel. Would it if I saw more of it?' and he looked ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and artifice to obtain the mere reputation of it. Men do not affect a conduct that tends to their discredit. Let us, then, get the better of Monsieur Necker in his own way; let us do in reality what he does only in pretence; let us turn his French tinsel into English gold. Is, then, the mere opinion and appearance of frugality and good management of such use to France, and is the substance to be so mischievous to England? Is the very constitution of Nature so altered by a sea of twenty miles, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... mastery to dissect With long and tedious havoc fabled knights In battles feigned (the better fortitude Of patience and heroic martyrdom Unsung), or to describe races and games Or tilting furniture, emblazoned shields, Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds, Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights At joust and tournament; then marshalled feast Served up in hall with sewers and seneshals: The skill of artifice and office mean; Not that which justly gives heroic name To person or to poem! Me, of these Nor skilled ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... the parade ground in more than Solomonic splendor of uniform. His inflated form bore upon it all the blue and tinsel prescribed by the Army Regulations for the raiment and insignia of a First Lietenant of Infantry, with such additions as had been suggested by his exuberant fancy. His blue broadcloth was the finest ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... bearing. As luck would have it he came straight to where we stood together, and stayed to look upon me as something unwonted to him, for I was wholly unarmed, save for a little knife in my girdle; and I was clad in a black gown and a cotehardy of green sprigged with tinsel, and had my fiddle and bow at my back. We louted low before him, and he spake to my friend: 'Is this big fellow a minstrel?' 'Yea, lord,' said the other. Said the Baron: 'Looking at his inches, 't is a pity of him that he hath not jack and sallet and a spear over his shoulder. ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... weapons a la Waterloo suggests "scalping trophies." The china is curious—there is even an empty ginger jar—picked up in country places, of a rare and valuable old-fashioned type. He has the finest collection of old tinsel pictures of the Richard III. and Dick Turpin order in the kingdom, and values an old book full of tinsel patterns of the most exquisite design and workmanship. Old glass pictures are scattered about, "Lord Nelson's ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... duties are never properly fulfilled, unless the understanding enlarges the heart; and that public virtue is only an aggregate of private. But, the distinctions established in society undermine both, by beating out the solid gold of virtue, till it becomes only the tinsel-covering of vice; for, whilst wealth renders a man more respectable than virtue, wealth will be sought before virtue; and, whilst women's persons are caressed, when a childish simper shows an absence of mind—the mind will lie fallow. Yet, true voluptuousness must proceed from the mind—for what ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... many of the guests also were seated on the floor. Miss Ingate, intoxicated by the rapture of existence, and Miss Thompkins were carefully examining the frescoes on the walls. A young woman covered from head to foot with gold tinsel was throwing chocolates into Musa's mouth, or as near to ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... Seward as “all tinkling and tinsel—a sort of Dr. Darwin in petticoats.” Edgeworth described her as “a handsome woman of agreeable manners, she was generous, possessed of good sense, and capable of strong affection”; and Sir Walter Scott thought that she must have been, “when young, exquisitely beautiful; for, in ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... of silver-lustrous Chinese silks and waves of tinsel, which an oblique sunbeam shot through with luminous beads, while portraits of every era, in frames more or less tarnished, smiled ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... dresses the same rule holds good. Under robes that are overladen with gold lace, I only see a rich man; what I want to see is a man. Pretty and simple draperies of severe tints are what we need, not a mass of tinsel and embroidery. "A courageous actress has just got rid of her panier, and nobody has found her any the worse for it. Ah, if she only dared one day to show herself on the stage with all the nobility and simplicity of adjustment that her characters ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... 'I suppose tinsel or gold depends on the using,' said he, thoughtfully; 'there are some lumps of solid gold among those papers, I am sure, one, in particular, about a trifle. May I ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... occasion, the splendidly-embroidered uniform which the board of general officers had adopted as the costume of the commander-in-chief of the armies of the United States, but he could not be persuaded to wear a suit bedizened with tinsel. He preferred the plain old continental blue and buff, and the modest, black-ribbon cockade. Magnificent white plumes, which General Pinckney had presented to him, he gave to the bride; and to the Reverend Thomas Davis, rector of Christ church, Alexandria, who performed ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... contrast than between the rich fertility of the last epoch and the barrenness of the present one. The age of Tiberius forms an interval of silence during which the dead are buried, and the new generation prepares itself to appear. Under Nero it will have started forth in all its panoply of tinsel armour; at present the seeds that will produce it are being sown by the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... whether of landscape or of architecture, the panoply of war, or the luxury of royal courts. That is fun—pleasure and amusement. No; the real work of the stage lies in the creation of a character. A great character will live forever, when paint and canvas and silks and satins and gold foil and tinsel shall have gone the ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... means 'a star'. Steingass (Persian Dictionary) defines Kaukaba as 'a polished steel ball suspended to a long pole, and carried as an ensign before the king; a star of gold, silver, or tinsel, worn as ornament or sign of rank; a concourse of people; a royal train, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... long the northern guests of southern slaveholders will see next to nothing of the reality of slavery. Those visitors may still keep up their autumnal migrations to the slave states, and, after a hasty survey of the tinsel hung before the curtain of slavery, without a single glance behind it, and at the paint and varnish that cover up dead men's bones, and while those who have hoaxed them with their smooth stories and white-washed ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of spangled white; and side by side bowed the dark Kings of Iron and Lead, the one mighty in black, the other sullen in blue; and after them were the Copper King, gleaming ruddy and brave, and the Tin King, strutting in his trimmings of gaudy tinsel which looked nearly as well as silver, but were more economical. And this fine troop of lackey kings most politely led Thor and Loki into the palace, and gave them of the best, for they never suspected who these seeming maidens ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... country, and passed the night weeping by the wayside. (Ah! how they have calumniated the love of Louis XV.'s time!) She was so unused to see the sunrise, that she hailed it with one of her finest songs. Her attitude, quite as much as her tinsel, drew the peasants about her; amazed at her gestures, her voice, her beauty, they took her for an angel, and dropped on their knees around her. If Voltaire had not existed we might have thought it a new miracle. I don't know if God gave her much ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... woman takes her place beside the man in the governance and arrangement of external affairs of her race will also be that day that heralds the death of war as a means of arranging human differences. No tinsel of trumpets and flags will ultimately seduce women into the insanity of recklessly destroying life, or gild the wilful taking of life with any other name than that of murder, whether it be the slaughter of the million or of one by ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... the specious is more striking than the genuine. The best writing is apt to be too plain, too simple, too unaffected, and too delicate to stir the callous organs of the generality of critics, who see nothing but the tawdry glare of tinsel; and are deaf to every thing but what is shockingly noisy to a true ear. They are struck with the fierce glaring colours of old Frank; with attitudes and expressions violent, distorted, and unnatural: while the true, just and easy, the graceful, the moving, ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... tongue, was not likely to attain any very large share of popular favour or to be esteemed a companionable sort of person. The fabric of social life is interwoven with a multitude of delicate evasions, of small hypocrisies, of matters of tinsel sentiment; social intercourse would be impossible, if it were not so. There is no sort of social existence possible for a person who is ingenuous enough to say always what he thinks, and, on the whole, one may be thankful that ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... kept a coach and eight or ten servants. Up to the moment of his advent in the colonies, Mr. Wyseman Clagett had evidently not been able to keep anything but himself. His wealth consisted of his personal decorations, the golden frogs on his lapels, and the tinsel at his throat; other charms he had none. Yet with these he contrived to dazzle the eyes of Lettice Mitchel, one of the young beauties of the province, and to cause her to forget that she had plighted troth ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... wardrobe contained, and she was bright and cheery and exceedingly incompetent. It was her costume that shocked him. Not only was she attired in a low-necked, rose-coloured evening gown, liberally bespangled with tinsel, but she wore a vast top-heavy picture-hat whose crown of black was almost wholly obscured by a gorgeous white feather that once must have adorned the king of all ostriches. She was not at all his idea of a chambermaid. He started to back out of the ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... John was a sure-enough duke and could muster quite a retinue of his own on occasion, yet he had small taste for tinsel parades. Men who have a real good bank-balance do not have to wear fashionable clothes. Don John was a plain, blunt man who liked books and pictures. He wanted to see the painter, not a courtier: and when he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... gates the lark's shrill song ascends, But grovelling on the earth the carol ends. In all the clam'rous cry of starving want, They dun Benevolence with shameless front; Oblige them, patronise their tinsel lays— They persecute you all your future days! Ere my poor soul such deep damnation stain, My horny fist assume the plough again, The pie-bald jacket let me patch once more, On eighteenpence a week I've liv'd ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... exhibited the taste and skill which the French, more than any other people on earth, exhibit in temporary things. Nothing could exceed the elegance with which the Parisian decorators had fitted up this silk and tinsel abode, which was to be superseded, within a few months, by the solid majesty of marble. But, on this memorable and melancholy night, the ornaments bore, to me, the look of those sad frivolities with which France is fond of ornamenting her tombs. The chandeliers burned dim; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... chief who can array himself in this ancient garb struts out of the fort the envy and admiration of all beholders. Sometimes the tall felt chimney-pot is graced by a large feather which has done duty in the turban of a dowager thirty years ago in England. The addition of a little gold tinsel to the coat collar is of considerable consequence, but the presence of a nether garment is not at all requisite to the completeness of the general get-up. For this most ridiculous-looking costume a Blackfeet chief will readily exchange ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... earth ever passed to his tomb through such a storm of human tears. The pageants of Alexander, Caesar, and Wellington were tinsel to this. Nor did the spirit of Napoleon, the Corsican Lieutenant of Artillery who once presided over a congress of kings whom he had conquered, look down on its ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... suggest anything for the people to negative it, whether it were good or bad. They not only avowed their natural right to do as they pleased, but deemed it due to their self-respect not to do what was pleasing to their tinsel sovereigns in London. And finally, when Colleton, one of the sovereigns in question, tried to declare martial law in the colony, on the plea of danger from Indians or Spanish, the indomitable freemen treated him as their brethren at Albemarle had treated Sothel. The next year saw ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... be real," suggested Nellie. "Everybody will be all make-believe. I saw lots of people getting ready, and I'm sure they will all look like Christmas-tree things, tinsel ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... necks, their feet dangling. There were smiling masks, like men beheaded and smiling in their death. Near the base of the Tree there was a drum. And all over the Tree from pinnacle to base glittered a tinsel like golden fleece—looking as the moss of old Southern trees seen at ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... homely, plain] fare we dine, Wear hoddin [Footnote: homespun] gray, an' a' that; Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine— A man's a man, for a' that. For a' that, an' a' that, Their tinsel show, an' a' that, The honest man, though e'er sae poor, Is king o' men ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... 'then ye know the Prince?' and he: 'The climax of his age! as though there were One rose in all the world, your Highness that, He worships your ideal:' she replied: 'We scarcely thought in our own hall to hear This barren verbiage, current among men, Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment. Your flight from out your bookless wilds would seem As arguing love of knowledge and of power; Your language proves you still the child. Indeed, We dream not of him: when we set our hand ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Philadelphia as they marched through the city by the brilliancy of their rose-and-violet-faced uniforms, and by the display of their graceful and accurate military movements. Now they were to have an opportunity to show whether their warlike spirit was expressed chiefly in ruffles and tinsel trimmings, or whether they could win ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... spectacular, pageant, ostentatious, pompous; garish, gaudy, meretricious, gorgeous, flashy, bedizened, gay, conspicuous, tinsel. Antonyms: inconspicuous, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... spandrels—and was freeing a column from its wealth of scarlet calico. Much scarlet calico also lay upon the floor—for the church can look as fine as any theatre—and the sacristan's little daughter was trying to fold it up. She was wearing a tinsel crown. The crown really belonged to St. Augustine. But it had been cut too big: it fell down over his cheeks like a collar: you never saw anything so absurd. One of the canons had unhooked it just before the FIESTA began, and had given ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... the barber to shave off their beards and hair, except one tuft on the side of their heads. He also ordered their finger-nails and toe-nails to be cut with scissors, the uses of which they admired. Queiroz caused them to be dressed in silk of divers colours, gave them hats with plumes, tinsel, and other ornaments, knives, and a mirror, into ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... of good Tory folk, And common talk on King and loyalty Had in your ears a meaning and a place Quite strange to mine. For my Rhode Island stock, Grown far afield, and long acclimated, Had dropped all meanings for the name of King, Of Church, of mother country. Such appeals Were like a tinsel fringe of superstition, Alien imposture. ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... store—that thy elastic mind Might long have gladden'd life's monotony. Thine was a princely heart, a joyous soul, The charm of reason, and the sprightly wit Which kept dull letter'd ignorance in awe, Shook the pretender on his tinsel throne, And claim'd the glorious dignity ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... have been prevailed on to indulge her with it. At her first obtaining it, what joy hath sparkled in her countenance! with what raptures hath she taken possession! but how little satisfaction hath she found in it! What pains to work out her amusement from it! Its dress must be varied; the tinsel ornaments which first caught her eyes produce no longer pleasure; she endeavours to make it stand and walk in vain, and is constrained herself to supply it with conversation. In a day's time it is thrown by and neglected, and some less costly toy preferred ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... about a man as I did was exactly a 'stranger' to him. And then, twice as suddenly, to great, grown-up, cool-blooded, money-staled, book-tamed me—it swept over me like a cyclone that I should never be able to decide anything more in all my life—not the width of a tinsel ribbon, not the goal of a journey, not the worth of a lover—until I'd seen the Face that belonged to the Voice in the ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the other with diversion. At last the Colonel, slower of foot than the rest, arrived on the scene, just as the pride of his heart, the old King Chanticleer of the yard, made his exit, draped in a royal red paper robe and a species of tinsel crown, out of which his red face looked most ludicrous as he came halting and stupefied, haying evidently been driven up in a corner and pinched rather hard; but close behind him, chuckling forth his terror and flapping his wings, came the pert little white bantam, belted and accoutred ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... brandy and a huge ring of wheaten bread with which to treat those they meet on their way home. The bride is dressed by her particular friend, or by the pastor's wife, and wears a black, beribboned gown, ornamented with mock gems, tinsel, and artificial flowers. She has a myrtle wreath or a crown like her Norwegian sister. Her shoes have some symbolical reference to possible motherhood. In the left one her father places a silver coin, while her mother puts gold in the ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... What we believe to be precious it regards as of no account. What we believe to be fundamental truth it passes by as of little importance. Much which we feel to be wrong it regards as good. Our jewels are its tinsel, and its jewels are our tinsel. We and it stand in diametrical opposition of thought about God, about self, about duty, about life, about death, about the future; and that opposition goes right down to the bottom of things. However it may be covered over, there is a gulf, as in some of those ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... now it was I who possessed at least all but the personal part of my brother's advantages? Our sweet illusions are half of them conscious illusions, like effects of colour that we know to be made up of tinsel, broken glass, ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... dines with opera-bouffe, To-morrow breakfasts with burlesque, And tights and tinsel, face to face, Encounters, pink and picturesque. Nor frown, if, in next week's review, His gropings after the artistic Should crop out into verse, and take The form of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... the pretty young heiress, we knew a sweet orphan girl whose grief for the death of her mother, to whom she was devotedly attached, lay deeper than this hollow tinsel show; and yet the painful thought that she was too poor to pay this mark of respect to the memory of her beloved parent, in a manner suited to her birth and station, added greatly to the poignancy of ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... won me,—the sweetness and ingenuousness that enchained me!" he cried impetuously. "Wait till she has been flattered and spoiled by a vain and deceiving world; till she learns to prize the admiration of many better than the true love of one; till she becomes that tinsel thing my soul abhors, a false and worldly woman. No! give her to me now," he added, clasping me to his heart with irresistible tenderness and passion. "Give her to me now, in the bloom of her innocence, the flower of her ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... your kind had better not press the men you have wronged. You have made a brave show of your power to-night. Well, you are mistaken if you believe you can longer awe the imagination of the world with its tinsel. You have begun to stir deeper thoughts. Look to your skin. I've always said this is God's world, and it must come out right in the end. I've begun to think to-night there's something wrong. God can't look down and see what's going on here—the God I've tried to serve and worship, whose ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... no article just now; I am PIOCHING, like a madman, at my stories, and can make nothing of them; my simplicity is tame and dull - my passion tinsel, boyish, hysterical. Never mind - ten years hence, if I live, I shall have learned, so help me God. I know one must work, in the meantime (so says Balzac) COMME LE MINEUR ENFOUI ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... happy pair. Great in themselves, 360 They smile superior; of external show Regardless, while their inbred virtues give A lustre to their power, and grace their court With real splendours, far above the pomp Of eastern kings, in all their tinsel pride. Like troops of Amazons, the female band Prance round their cars, not in refulgent arms As those of old; unskilled to wield the sword, Or bend the bow, these kill with surer aim. The royal offspring, fairest of the fair, 370 Lead on the splendid train. Anna, more bright Than ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... targets are discovered the airman drops a smoke ball directly over it or lets fall some strips of tinsel, which glitter in the sun as they slowly descend to the earth. The range to the target is apparently ascertained by those near the guns by a large telemeter, or other range finder, which is kept trained ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... to the spectators, to the laughter, to the applause, to the frightened scream of the hysterical women in the audience, to the close air and to the narrow stage behind the bars. The tamer in his tights and tinsel has grown used to his tiger, to his emotions, to his hourly danger. He even finds at last that his mind wanders during the performance, and that at the very instant when he is holding the ring for the leap, or thrusting his head ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... other speeches that approach it are Paul's appeal to the Athenians on Mars Hill, and the speech of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. These have no tricks, no devices, no tinsel gilt. They do not attempt to "split the ears of the groundlings," and yet they are addressed to the commonest of ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... knees! Look back in fancy at the faces blending there—the old man's and the boy's—and, with the nimbus of the smoke-wreaths round the brows, the gilding of the firelight on cheek and chin, and the rapt and far-off gazings of the eyes of both, why, but for the silver tinsel of the beard of one and the dusky elf-locks of the other, the ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... piety with which these grounds are kept up, their sequestered situation apart from any town, the profound veneration with which they are saluted by the natives, added to the dark and sepulchral shade of the groves, lend them an interest with which the tinsel ornaments of more gorgeous cemeteries ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various
... own merits. We are all of us snobs after a fashion and love high society. The glory of entering the splendid portals of the real English dukes and duchesses seems to be ours when Disraeli throws open the magic door and ushers the reader in. The decorations do not seem tawdry, nor the tinsel other than real. We move with pleasurable excitement with Lothair from palace to castle, and thence to battle-field and scenes of dark intrigue. The hint of the love affair with the Olympian Theodora appeals to our romance; the circumventing of the wily ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... invites, the truth may be brought to you. But if these twenty years have only filled you with the pride of inventing arguments and detecting analogies, if they have only given you the petty skill of a petty scholar, why then dally on with a tinsel variety of superficial attainments, and give others the blessed privilege you are not strong ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... comforted them, but I was not free to speak. Would Joan be disturbed by this cheap spectacle, this tinsel show, with its small King and his butterfly dukelets?—she who had spoken face to face with the princes of heaven, the familiars of God, and seen their retinue of angels stretching back into the remoteness of the sky, myriads upon myriads, like a measureless ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... has it; and much peace of mind it gave him!' answered Lancelot. 'I have grown sick lately of such dreary tinsel abstractions. When you look through the glitter of the words, your "spirit of beauty" simply means certain shapes and colours which please you in beautiful ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... veneration for titles. She considered them a tinsel, and the devotee on his knee-caps to them a lump for a kick. Adding: 'Of course I stand for my class; and if we can't have a manlier people—and it 's not likely in a country treating my brother so badly—well, then, let things go on as they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... comfortable thing he can put on for all kinds of wear; and the evolutions of a good infantry soldier can be perfectly well gone through by whoever wears it. The shoulders, if they require external ornament, should have something that is really useful at the same time; not merely tinsel or cotton lace; and, therefore, it should be the adaptation of a thick woollen pad, ornamented with metal or coloured lace, calculated to take off the pressure of the musket and of the knapsack-straps from the bones of the neck and arm. Whoever has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... devilish glee; they hung about every French post, warmed themselves by the Frenchman's fire, ate his food, and patted their stomachs with delight; and they swarmed by thousands to Quebec, bringing their peltries for trade, received gewgaws and tinsel decorations from the Governor, and swore eternal allegiance to his master, the Sun of ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... great world came and called me I deserted all to follow, Never knowing, in my dazedness, I had slipped my hand from His— Never noting, in my blindness, that the bauble fame was hollow, That the gold of wealth was tinsel, as I since have learned it is— I have spent a life-time seeking things I've spurned when I have found them; I have fought and been rewarded in full many a petty cause, But I'd take them all—fame, fortune and the pleasures that surround them, And exchange ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... would be hard to find the old squaw, who was perhaps at this moment cutting glittering stars out of the old moons. The difficulty of hanging them up did not once occur to her. Possibly the moon and the stars were not like tinsel, but she had no doubt of the squaw. She had heard that squaws made baskets: would it not be a nice thing to buy a little one for Quillie, and a great big one for nurse?—she would pick out the very prettiest. ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... first dignity.' But what praise is that, unless the first dignity were adorned with the first merit?—Dignity! gew-gaw!— First dignity! thou idiot!—Art thou, who knowest me, so taken with ermine and tinsel?—I, who have won the gold, am only fit to wear it. For the future therefore correct thy style, and proclaim her the ornament of the happiest man, and (respecting herself and sex) the greatest conqueror ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... "It is all tinsel, not worth looking at. That is the quality of all you will see at court; gold foil, king ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... these words were scarce out of his mouth, when three uncommonly large coaches, loaded with lackeys, as tall as Swiss, with most gaudy liveries, all covered with lace, appeared in the court, and disembarked the whole wedding company. Never was country magnificence more naturally displayed: Rusty tinsel, tarnished lace, striped silks, little eyes, and full swelling breasts, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... sovereign, the eagle. "Now," said I to the Welshman, "to you and me, as men of refined sensibilities, how painful it would have been that this poor Brummagem brute, the 'Tallyho,' in the impossible case of a victory over us, should have been crowned with Birmingham tinsel, with paste diamonds and Roman pearls, and then led off to instant execution." The Welshman doubted if that could be warranted by law. And, when I hinted at the 6th of Edward Longshanks, chap. 18, for regulating the precedency of coaches, as being probably the statute relied on for the ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... ship, and the water soon washing off the paint, reduced them to the appearance of shapeless logs. There were still several cases of crucifixes of all sizes, having the appearance of silver but were found to be of iron, covered with the thinnest tinsel. The priests pleaded hard to ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... gifts and accomplishments, he had not failed to find favour, while his money lasted, with the young aristocracy of the "Gentle Mother." And, though the very reverse of an ambitious or calculating man, he had certainly nourished the belief that some one of the "hats" or "tinsel gowns"—i.e., young lords or fellow-commoners, with whom he was on such excellent terms, and who supped with him so often, would do something for him in the way of a living. But it so happened that when Mr. Caleb Price had, with a little difficulty, scrambled through his degree, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... preachers all used literally the same discourse; but I suppose that in the seminaries there are supplied certain skeleton discourses for the whole year, and these skeletons are dressed up sometimes in homely fustian, sometimes in rhetorical tinsel: yet they never remain other than ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... dangerous influence. But this is not the worst.... A man who is fond of office, and has his eye upon reelection, will be courting favor and popularity at the expense of his duty.... There is a barbarism crept in among us that extremely shocks me: I mean those tinsel epithets with which (I come in for my share) we are so beplastered,—'his excellency,' and 'his honor,' 'the honorable president of the honorable congress,' or 'the honorable convention.' This fulsome, nauseating ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... as she pulled her clothing furiously from her, and stood with nothing but a plain coloured shawl of gauze covered in tinsel twined about her slim waist, "why hast thou wasted precious moments? Why has thou imperilled my chance by infuriating the great man? Out of ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... imitating the theatre in its paper glories and plaster painted like marble. The real, living religious spirit insists on bringing, as in St Mark's, a gift of precious material, of delicate antique ornament, with every shipload. The crown of the Madonna is not, like the tragedy queen's, of tinsel, the sacrament is not given in an empty chalice. The priest, even where he makes no effort to be holy as a man, is at least sacred as a priest; whereas there is something uncomfortable in the sense ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee |
