"Tinsel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wore an anomalous garment, slashed with various colors, like a harlequin's coat. Upon one shoulder was sewed the semblance of a door cut out of blue cloth; on the other, a crescent cut out of green. Upon the head was set a tinsel crown, amid tangles of disordered hair. Above was a huge brass key, suspended by a tow string from the ceiling. Table and floor were littered with manuscripts and papers; under the former I observed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... desire to be thought a fine writer. Without making long extracts, it is impossible to give any conception of the absurdities into which this childish ambition has led him. The tropes and metaphors, the tawdry tinsel, the common tricks of feeble rhetoricians are reproduced here as if they were the highest results of rhetorical art. The display is often amusing. Thus, in describing Mrs. John Adams, Mr. Randall says: "Her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... hand, you may be holding what has come thousands of miles over sea and land from the hands of other children in distant countries? Whole families make a living by manufacturing these toys. The material—wood, paper, tinsel, wire, or what not—is given out at the factory, and the worker takes it home. There every one is busy; one cutting out pieces of paper of a given shape, one whittling pieces of wood to fit together, one gumming up the various parts, till the whole toy is finished and added to a growing pile. Nearly ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Mary and Susan Jenks brought up to Roger a little tree. It was just a fir plume, but it was gay with tinsel and spicy with the fragrance of the woods, and it was topped by a wee ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... following morning the transformation was complete, and the coffin moving unsheltered up the course of the river, as though to take possession of the stream, was much more striking than all the tinsel and canopies imaginable. The whole voyage up to Courbevoie, the point of arrival, was a mere classic reproduction of the usual official journey—flags, authorities girt with tricolour sashes, clergy pronouncing blessings, shaking ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... divan was gorgeous with silk curtains and cushions embroidered with gold thread and embossed with tinsel ornaments, the work of the bride herself. The seat for the bridegroom was somewhat higher and larger than the bride's. At last the bridegroom approached in a large barge, which held about two hundred people. A small boat preceded ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... dress, rushed into the 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 ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... weigh 'gainst love That's true? Tell me with what you'd turn the scale? Yea, make the index waver? Wealth? A feather! Rank? Tinsel against bullion in the balance! The love of kindred? That to set 'gainst love! Friendship comes nearest to't; but put it in, Friendship will kick the beam!—weigh nothing 'gainst it! Weigh love against the world! Yet are they happy that have ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... That is not true to nature, Marion. I would not bid thee take a man's hand because he is rich and great if thou couldst not give him thy heart in return. I would not have thee break any law of God or man for the glitter of gold or tinsel of rank. But the good things of this world, if they be come by honestly, are good. And the love of an honest man, if thou lovest him thyself in return, is not of the less worth because he stands high in ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... 1730, the amusements of the stage rose in a superior stile of elegance, and entered something like a stable in Castle-street. Here the comedian strutted in painted rags, ornamented with tinsel: The audience raised a noisy laugh, half real and half forced, at three-pence ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... hamely fare we dine, Wear hodden gray, and a' that: Gie fools their silks and knaves their wine, A man's a man for a' that; For a' that and a' that, Their tinsel show, and a' that, The honest man, though e'er sae poor, Is king o' men, ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... Alice's attitude was that of sympathy and pity, but little Pat saw in him, the failure, those attributes which belong to the Knight Courageous, undaunted by the hostile flings of Fortune. As she grew older, she too would discover that the gold was paint and the silver, tinsel; but until then, he knew her faith was in him. He pressed his hands against his aching temples—"God bless her for that," he said, softly, "God bless her ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... 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. It was ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... tempted the crowds with vulgar indecencies, and the booths that had sheltered the petty games of chance where loud-voiced criers had persuaded the multitude with the hope of winning a worthless bauble or a tinsel toy, were being cleared away from the borders of the plaza, the beauty of which their presence had marred. In the plaza itself—which is the heart of the town, and is usually kept with much pride and care—the ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... continuing on the Broad Highway, entered the Valley of Temptation with all its gaiety and outward happiness. This valley is known by the pilgrims of the King's Highway as the Devil's Heaven, for here the tinsel of the world, the pomp of society, and the wealth of material grandeur are ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... the waters by old experience, there is very much skill in salmon- fishing. It is all an affair of muscle and patience. The choice of flies is almost a pure accident. Every one believes in the fly with which he has been successful. These strange combinations of blues, reds, golds, of tinsel and worsted, of feathers and fur, are purely fantastic articles. They are like nothing in nature, and are multiplied for the fanciful amusement of anglers. Nobody knows why salmon rise at them; nobody knows why they will bite on one day and ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... the hearse, if 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 ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... smiling too; 'but it does not turn to tinsel. Would it if I saw more of it?' and he ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little later a marriage procession would strike into the Grand Trunk with music and shoutings, and a smell of marigold and jasmine stronger even than the reek of the dust. One could see the bride's litter, a blur of red and tinsel, staggering through the haze, while the bridegroom's bewreathed pony turned aside to snatch a mouthful from a passing fodder-cart. Then Kim would join the Kentish-fire of good wishes and bad jokes, wishing the couple ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... wrapped in tissue-paper; inside their jacket pockets were pleasant-smelling new white gloves, and inside their heads solemn timidity commingled with glittering anticipations. Before them, like a Christmas tree glimpsed through lace curtains, they beheld joy shimmering—music, ice-cream, macaroons, tinsel caps, and the starched ladies of their hearts Penrod and Sam walked demurely yet almost boundingly; their faces were shining but grave—they were on their way to ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... there, and more than a hundred little red, blue, and white tapers were stuck fast into the branches. Dolls that looked for all the world like men—the Tree had never seen such things before—fluttered among the leaves, and at the very top a large star of gold tinsel was fixed. It was ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... sense of religion," Mrs. Gould pursued, "was shocked and disgusted at the tawdriness of the dressed-up saints in the cathedral—the worship, he called it, of wood and tinsel. But it seemed to me that he looked upon his own God as a sort of influential partner, who gets his share of profits in the endowment of churches. That's a sort of idolatry. He told me he endowed churches ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... would exchange the rapture of such a reflexion for all the gaudy tinsel which the world ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... could have secured an immense amount of popularity if I had gone in for a crescendo of anti-clericalism after the Vie de Jesus. The general reader likes a strong style. I could easily have left in the flourishes and tinsel phrases which excite the enthusiasm of those whose taste is not of a very elevated kind, that is to say, of the majority. I spent a year in toning down the style of the Vie de Jesus, as I thought that such a subject ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... from Florence to Rome. But M. Dumas scorns such commonplace dramatis personae, and is satisfied with nothing less than transporting a French ballet-dancer into the Appenines, with all her paraphernalia of gauze drapery, tinsel decorations, and opera airs and graces; not forgetting the orchestra, in the person of the luckless bass player. Yet so ingeniously does he dovetail it all together, so probable does he make his improbabilities appear, that we become almost reconciled to the idea of finding Mademoiselle Zephyrine ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... 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 ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that Santa Claus, never having visited Hannah before, had a mind to make up for lost time. An overflowing stocking hung from the mantel; a tree loaded with presents and tinsel stood by her bed; about the room were placed large gifts, everything a little girl might wish for. Hannah was dazed. She didn't see her mother and father standing in the doorway of the nursery, their arms about each other, and smiling. She tugged at her window until it opened and then ...
— The Little Mixer • Lillian Nicholson Shearon
... Abbotsford; they were used in Ireland by Sir Walter Scott's eldest son. The controversy as to whether fish can distinguish colours was unknown to our ancestors. I am inclined to believe that, for salmon, size, and perhaps shade, light or dark, with more or less of tinsel, are the only important points. Izaak stumbled on the idea of Mr. Stewart (author of The Practical Angler) saying, 'for the generality, three or four flies, neat, and rightly made, and not too big, serve ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... draped; and none of the dark suspicious stuffs showed a clear pattern. The faded chairs were hidden by faded antimacassars; the little futile tables concealed their rickets under vague needlework, on which were displayed in straw or tinsel frames pale portraits of dowdy people who had stood like sheep before fifteenth-rate photographers. The mantelpiece and the top of the piano were thickly strewn with fragments of coloured earthenware. At the windows hung heavy dark curtains from great rings that gleamed ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... a difficult place, and filled it well; but the court of the Second Empire was all spangles and tinsel. It was composed of men and women all more or less adventurers. It was the court of the nouveaux riches and of a mushroom aristocracy. There were prizes to be won and pleasures to be enjoyed, and it was "like as it was in the days of Noe, ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... Christmas tree occupied the spot where the pulpit and the minister's chair usually held sway. The tree was likewise adorned with silver paper and tinsel, and pink and white tarlatan in the shape of plump stockings filled with candy and nuts. Each of the little girls was to have one of these, and each boy a candy cane. These also hung in red and white ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... devastated civilization. And then, impatient of their intoxicating and tantalizing search, suddenly grown desperate, they clutched and stored away everything, and returned home tattered, soiled, bedecked with gold and with tinsel, laden with an immense uncouth burden of jewels, and broken wealth, and refuse and ordure, with pseudo-antique philosophy, with half-mediaeval Dantesque and Petrarchesque poetry, with Renaissance science, with humanistic pedantry ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... 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 family—'the ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... the Bishop," we see a man, good and simple, the son of peasants. This man, thanks to his intelligence, has raised himself to the rank of bishop. During all his life he has suffocated in this high ecclesiastical position, the pompous tinsel of which troubles him to such an extent that the cordial and sincere relationship existing between him and his old mother, who is so full of respect for her son, is broken off. After his death he ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... the deep, with its plains, and hills, and forests, and rocks, and streams, and strange, new races of men;—these are incidents in which the authentic history of the discovery of our Continent excels the specious wonders of romance, as much as gold excels tinsel, or the sun in the heavens outshines the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... orbs are purged from film, and lo! "Instead of Anster's turnip-bearing vales "I see old fairy land's miraculous show! "Her trees of tinsel kissed by freakish gales, "Her Ouphs that, cloaked in leaf-gold, skim the ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... silver paper. The waist must be cut quite low, and decorated in the same manner; the sleeves flowing, and trimmed with spangles and pink ribbons; large gauze wings, decorated with spangles and silver tinsel, should be fastened to the back of the waist. The hair must be done up in a neat coil, and encircled with a band of white flowers. Make the wands four feet in length, and one half an inch in diameter; cover ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... 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 ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... nature and of old romance. The deep incisions into character are "skinned and filmed over"—the details are lost or shaped into flimsy and insipid decorum; and the truth of feeling and of circumstance is translated into a tinkling sound, a tinsel common-place. It must be owned, there is a power in true poetry that lifts the mind from the ground of reality to a higher sphere, that penetrates the inert, scattered, incoherent materials presented to it, and by a ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... science of Homoeopathy, to which you are asked to trust your lives and the lives of those dearest to you. A mingled mass of perverse ingenuity, of tinsel erudition, of imbecile credulity, and of artful misrepresentation, too often mingled in practice, if we may trust the authority of its founder, with heartless and shameless imposition. Because it is suffered so often to appeal unanswered to the public, because it has its journals, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... culminating at last, when the storm burst, in complete mutual understanding, and a joint determination that carried all before it—when, I say, Aunt Rennie, defeated, prepared to take her leave, she said a word to me which I often thought of afterwards. "She is choosing blindfold, tinsel for gold." I thought of it, not on account of the expression, but of Aunt Rennie herself. There was something in the pallor of her face, and in her tone, that made me ask myself whether there could be anything in this matter ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... this fictitious hero of the modern, Neapolitan, operatic stage? Weighed in the balances, he and his whole occupation and calling were lighter, surely, than vanity itself? Rightly considered, he and his singing were but as a spangle, as some glittering trifle of tinsel, upon the veil still hiding the awful, yet benign, countenance of that tremendous and so surely approaching event.—Let him sing away, then, sing in peace. For the sound of his singing might help to lighten the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... prided herself on keeping airily apart from the country of her exile. Natives gave her 'the creeps.' Useless to argue. Her retort was unvarying and unanswerable. "East is East—and I'm not. It's a country of horrors, under a thin layer of tinsel. Don't talk to me——!" Lance Desmond had achieved fame among the subalterns by christening her the Banter-Wrangle; but he liked her well enough, on the whole, to hope she ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... young man to the contempt of superior minds if I say that all this seemed to him an insuperable impediment to his making up to Verena. His scruples were doubtless begotten of a false pride, a sentiment in which there was a thread of moral tinsel, as there was in the Southern idea of chivalry; but he felt ashamed of his own poverty, the positive flatness of his situation, when he thought of the gilded nimbus that surrounded the protegee of Mrs. Burrage. ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... succeeded anywhere, if by "succeeding" is meant the attainment of position and power. But after all, such men are splendid failures. They give themselves and others a great deal of trouble—they wear the tinsel crown of temporary success and then fade from public view. They astonish the pit, they gain the applause of the galleries, but when the curtain falls there is nothing left to benefit mankind. Beaconsfield held convictions somewhat ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... make 'em stop; An' Willie an' Wallie they yelled with glee, An' jumped right into that Christmas tree! They let down a ladder for them two girls That didn't darst jump for spoilin' their curls! They was toys an' games an' wagons an' dolls, All trimmed with tinsel an' fol-de-rols! For Santa Claus had just drove away, An' Wallie he said that he seen the sleigh! Well, when they'd eat all the candy they could, They loaded their house with things up good. (But they hurried for fear that the old man'd ...
— The Purple Cow! • Gelett Burgess
... shoulders were frequently lost in the clouds; and they clanked down again upon the sandy shore two or three feet in front of where they had stood—or behind, just as it happened; and their swords banged against their breast-plates and shields, proving that they were real metal and not merely tinsel; and they twirled round and round like beef on a roasting-jack, until at last Michele dealt the inevitable blow and the giant fell dead on the sand with a thud that jolted the coast, shook the islands, rippled across the sunset sky and restored animation to ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... that Lapo had on a new, short, sleeveless surcoat, or vest, of whitish leather, trimmed on its edges with vair, and laced down the sides with tinsel. In this festive garment, so different from his usual attire, the grim tyrant was ill at ease, secretly anxious, almost timid. Avoiding her eye, he assumed an elaborate carelessness, like that of a boy who had been up to some ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... them; they had an absorbing labor, love and home and children, the church, yet they were unsatisfied. They were discontented with the primary facts of existence, the serious phases, and wanted, above everything, tinsel and laughter. If a girl passing on the street smiled boldly at such youths they were fired with triumph and happiness; they nudged each other violently and made brazen declarations which, faced by the girls, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... 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
... 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 and fist-warmed peppermint—as ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... any which might be lying upon the table. These candles are made of the purest white wax: of a spiral, or twisted, or square, or circular form; of considerable length and width. They are also decorated with fillagree work, and tinsel of various colours. Upon that which I chose, there were little rosettes made of wax. The moderate sum for which they are obtained, startles an Englishman who thinks of the high price of this article of trade in his own ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... to the territory of another great chief, Katema, who received them hospitably, sending food and giving them solemn audience in his kotla surrounded by his tribe. A tall man of forty, dressed in a snuff-brown coat with a broad band of tinsel down the arms, and a helmet of beads and feathers. He carried a large fan with charms attached, which he waved constantly during the audience, often laughing heartily—"a good sign, for a man who shakes his sides with mirth is seldom difficult ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... let loose to play, Lay waggish traps for girls that pass that way; Then shout to see in dirt and deep distress 150 Some silly cit in her flower'd foolish dress: So have I mighty satisfaction found, To see his tinsel reason on the ground: To see the florid fool despised, and know it, By some who scarce have words enough to show it: For sense sits silent, and condemns for weaker The finer, nay sometimes the wittier speaker: But 'tis prodigious so much eloquence Should be acquired by such little sense; For ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... horses, on which rode two old postilions dressed as devils, was raised a downright pyramid of men and women, sitting, standing, leaning, in every possible variety of odd, extravagant, and grotesque costume; altogether an indescribable mass of bright colors, flowers, ribbons, tinsel and spangles. Amid this heap of strange forms and dresses appeared wild or graceful countenances, ugly or handsome features—but all animated by the feverish excitement of a jovial frenzy—all turned with an expression of fanatical admiration towards the second carriage, in which the Queen was ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the dainty oddments which a woman of means and taste collects in the course of years; trimmings and laces, and scraps of fine brocades; belts and buckles, and buttons of silver and paste; glittering ends of tinsel, ends of silk and ribbons that were really too pretty to throw away, and cunning little motifs which had the magic quality of disguising deficiencies and making both ends meet. Claire gave with a lavish hand, and Cecil's gratitude was pathetic in its intensity. More and more as the weeks ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... family determine the needs of citizens. Its conversation, its reading, its customs, set the standard of social needs. Where the father laughs at the smartness of the artful dodge in politics, where the mother sighs after the tinsel and toys that she knows others have bought with corrupt cash, where the conversation at the meal-table steadily, though often unconsciously, lifts up and lauds those who are out after the "real thing," the eager ears about that board drink it in and childish hearts resolve what they will ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... laws which were far from mild. Food was regulated, minstrels were not allowed to sit at the same table with ladies and gentlemen, most rigid rules were formulated against the abuse of gold, silver, and tinsel trimmings on the dresses of the women, and of the men as well, and the use of ermine and of all fine and Costly furs was carefully restricted. In Castile the same movement was taking place, and Alfonso X., who followed Fernando, issued ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... barbaric entertainments with which a noted San Francisco millionaire distracted his rare moments of reflection in his gorgeous palace on the hills. Here they could at least be once more in the country they loved, albeit of a milder and less heroic type, and a little degraded by the overlapping tinsel and scattered ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... suit, but whom mitre and crosier determine to be a bishop, kneels to a figure in spangles, a virgin as fond of fine clothes as the Greek Panageia; while on the other side, with one or two priests in his train, is seen a crowd in civil costume. A paper cloud above, surrounded by glories of glass and tinsel, is supported by two solid cherubs equal to the occasion, and presents to the intelligent a representation of—we know not what! Fire-works here divide the public with the drum—to one or other all advertisement ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... Native, is in the words put into the mouth of Eustacia and Yeobright in the perfectly imagined scene before the mirror, a scene which should be the culminating scene of the book; and it is, all but the words: the words are crackle and tinsel. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... was Costa-mongered; finally even the late eminent Macfarren, the worst enemy music has ever had in this country, did not disdain to prepare "a performing edition," and to improve Mozart's improvements on Handel. One wonders whether Mozart, when he overlaid the "Messiah" with his gay tinsel-work, dreamed that some Costa, encouraged by Mozart's own example, and without brains enough to guess that he had nothing like Mozart's brains, would in like manner desecrate "Don Giovanni." Like "Don Giovanni," there the "Messiah" lies, almost unrecognisable ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... hamely fare we dine, Wear hoddin-gray,[1] and a' that; Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, A man's a man for a' that! For a' that, and a' that, Their tinsel show, and a' that; The honest man, though e'er sae poor, Is king o' men for ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... should discard the more distasteful fruits to be painfully harvested by following her mother's tuition, and accept the easily gathered luscious golden fruit offered her by her father. Like all children and many adults, the glitter and the tinsel of the present enjoyment were too powerful and seductive to be resisted, or to be postponed for ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... glanced hastily out of the corner of my eye at Kennedy. Involuntarily his hand which held the telltale sequin had sought his waistcoat pocket, as though to hide it. Then I saw him check the action and deliberately examine the piece of tinsel between his thumb ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... fly in the deeper corners on either shore. So I took off the vulgar bait-hook and put on a delicate leader with a Queen of the Water for a tail-fly and a Yellow Sally for a dropper,—innocent little confections of feathers and tinsel, dressed on the tiniest hooks, and calculated to tempt the appetite or the curiosity of the ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... all this there was something sordid, something forced,—a certain feverish unrest and recklessness; for was not all this show and tinsel built upon a groan? "This land was a little Hell," said a ragged, brown, and grave-faced man to me. We were seated near a roadside blacksmith shop, and behind was the bare ruin of some master's home. "I've seen niggers drop dead in the furrow, but they were kicked aside, and the plough never ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Let who will heed them. But here on the open hill-top we know fresher and more wholesome delights. Those feverish joys allure us not. O decadents of the town, we have seen your sham idyls, your tinsel Arcadias. We have tired of their stuffy atmosphere, their dazzling jets, their weary ways, their gaudy dresses; we shun the sunken cheeks, the lack-lustre eyes, the heart-sick souls of your painted goddesses. We love not the fetid air, thick and hot with human breath, and reeking ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... "What a load of tinsel for a poor little woman to carry around! How it must have shocked you to find me so commonplace! None of us escape the common fates. It is always a surprise to me to discover how simple the men of great literary fame are. A friend of mine once spent a whole evening with a great novelist ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... is in his eyes and heart only. He is accustomed to the lights, 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 into the beast's fearful jaws, he is thinking of his ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... for her safeguard here rode in splendid cavalcade through the city and distributed the most costly presents to the crowd. Engines were erected in all the squares which cast forth showers of confectionery among the people, while the artisans in chariots[185] adorned with tinsel and flying streamers exhibited the badges of their respective trades through the streets. Such brilliant displays of life and pageantry among the palaces and domes and gilded minarets of Lahore made the city altogether like a place of enchantment;—particularly ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Lady, who stood at the open door of the castle; she was also cut out in paper, but she had a dress of the clearest gauze, and a little narrow blue ribbon over her shoulders that looked like a scarf; and in the middle of this ribbon was a shining tinsel rose, as big as her whole face. The little Lady stretched out both her arms, for she was a dancer, and then she lifted one leg so high that the Tin Soldier could not see it at all, and thought that, like himself, she had ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... entering and calling the virgins with a flute; these appeared from a green-room, to the number of thirty or forty, of all ages and sizes. Each had her hair dressed in a topknot, and her head covered with a veil; a scarlet petticoat loaded with tinsel concealed her naked feet, and over this was a short red kirtle, and an enormous white shawl was swathed round the body from the armpits to the waist. A broad belt passed over the right shoulder and under the left ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... sudden turn of his disease. She was 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 ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pointed forward. Leonard peered through the gloom. The crescent moon and the stars filtered down a tinsel light. The faint shine merely made the darkness more evident Madden seemed to catch a glimmer of a bulk at the end of the anchor line some hundred yards distant. He listened but heard only the gurgle of the Vulcan's wake and the creak ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... she had 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 are.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 it in ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... to look for it, and I gave it him, telling him, that it was without design; that is, according to them, from no interested motive. The natives put as great a value on a pipe of peace as on a gun. Mine was adorned with tinsel and silver wire: so that in their estimation my pipe was worth two guns. He appeared to be extremely well pleased with it; put it up hastily in his case, squeezed my hand with a smile, and called me his ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... 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
... but a night-gown in respect of yours: cloth o' gold, and cuts, and laced with silver, set with pearls, down sleeves, side sleeves, and skirts round, underborne with a blush tinsel; but for a fine, quaint, graceful, and excellent fashion, yours ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... already known as the most sarcastic of men, and Maury, by far the most powerful debater of France since Mirabeau—figured among the chief ornaments of the salons of De Stael. Roland, and the showy and witty Theresa Cabarrus, and even the flutter of La Fayette, the most tinsel of heroes, and the sullen sententiousness of Robespierre, then known only as a provincial deputy, furnished a background which increased the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... her sparkling coryphean tinsel, and, putting on a quiet gown and natty little cap, appointed herself nurse-in-chief to her dear husband, and no one was better fitted for the post. Torquato Tasso, her Poet-Laureate, noted her tender, ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... forsooth! The illustration is worthy of the doctrine taught. "An entire clause of a sentence" substantively possessed, is sufficiently like "the meaning of a lady's dress, &c." Cobbett despised andsoforths, for their lack of meaning; and I find none in this one, unless it be, "of tinsel and of fustian." This gloss therefore I wholly disapprove, judging the position more tenable, to deny, if we consequently must, that either a phrase or a participle, as such, can consistently govern the possessive case. For whatever word or term gives rise to the direct relation of property, and ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... scandalized at certain propositions of the orator, and among others at one concerning justification by faith alone in Christ—an old error, which, for many ages, has been trailed along in all the writings of heretics; often dead and resuscitated—and which Calvin, in Cop's discourse, dressed out in tinsel in order to give it some appearance of novelty. But our Franciscans had sight and hearing equally as good; they detected the heresy easily, and denounced to the parliament the evil-sounding propositions, which they had taken pains to note down in writing. Cop was greatly embarrassed by ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... in very fine robes, the women bearing coloured flags and lighted tapers, and the men playing on violins, flutes, and drums. All had garlands of flowers to hang on the altars; and for these lights and ornaments, and silk and tinsel robes, they save up all their money. They were playing a pretty air, but I doubt its being original. It was not melancholy and monotonous, like the generality of Indian music, but had something wild and gay in it; it was probably Spanish. The organ was played ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Oxford issued from the Clarendon Press: "Epicedia Oxoniensia in obitum celsissimi et desideratissimi Frederici Principis Walliae." Here an {277} obsequious vice-chancellor displayed all the splendors of a tinsel Latinity in the affectation of offering a despairing king and father such consolations for his loss as the Oxonian Muses might offer. Here Lord Viscount Stormont, in desperate imitation of Milton, did his best ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... submits, the advantages will be that, after exposing himself to all the humiliation and performing all the barbarities required of him, he may, if he escapes being killed, get a decoration of red or gold tinsel to stick on his clown's dress; he may, if he is very lucky, be put in command of hundreds of thousands of others as brutalized as himself; be called a field-marshal, and get ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... than he knows or intends. He may put on his boxing gloves, and yet forget that the older they grow, the more plainly may the knuckles inside be felt. Moreover, in the heat of contest, the eye is insensibly drawn to the crown of victory, whose tawdry tinsel glitters through the dust of the ring which obscures Truth's wreath ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... Hall, and she had heartened Miss Molly through the long lonely hours they had spent in trimming it; but as the tiny handful of forlorn celebrants gathered about the tall tree, glittering in all the tinsel finery which was left over from the days when the big hall had rung to the laughter of a hundred children and as many more young people, even Miss Abigail felt a catch in her throat as she quavered through "King ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... walked the 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 like ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... to change horses at Hof, a handfulof houses on the brow of a breezy hill, the church and tavern standing opposite to each other, and nothing between them but the dusty road, and the churchyard, with its iron crosses, and the fluttering tinsel of the funeral garlands. In the churchyard and at the tavern-door, were groups of peasants, waiting for divine service to begin. They were clothed in their holiday dresses. The men wore breeches and long boots, and frock-coats with large ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... practice in ancient story to give the reader a description of the arms and equipments of every noted warrior, I will bestow a word upon the dress of this redoubtable commander. It comported with his character, being so crossed and slashed, and embroidered with lace and tinsel, that he seemed to have as much brass without as nature had stored away within. He was swathed too in a crimson sash, of the size and texture of a fishing-net; doubtless to keep his swelling heart ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... epidemic returned upon us, she stood by, efficient, deft, and gallant, though still imperious, until the day when she clashed her lath-and-tinsel sword of theory against the tempered steel of the Little Red Doctor's experience. Said the Little Red Doctor (who was pressed for time at the moment): "Take orders. ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... sufficiently brilliant to dazzle their eyes for a moment. In one corner of the dining room stood the great tree, radiant with gilt and silver ornaments. At the top was a huge silver star, while the branches were wound with glittering tinsel, and heavily laden with beribboned bundles of all shapes and sizes, while the space around the base of the tree was completely ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... of ceremony is a funeral without a legacy; an assembly is a mob, and a ball a compound of glare, tinsel, noise, and dust. However amusing in their freshness, after a few repetitions, they are only rendered endurable by the prospect of some collateral gain, or the gratification of personal vanity. To exhibit the beauty of a young ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... my love, And thou art a tinsel thing, And I in my play Broke thee easily, And from the little fragments Arose my ...
— War is Kind • Stephen Crane
... He is not led away by the cry of the mob, and the gleam of gold so pure and solid almost changes into indignation our regret that he has ever suffered himself to be deceived by the glare of tawdry tinsel. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... eager to relieve it, and then as careful (perhaps too careful) to conceal what he had done; that his house, his furniture, his gardens, his table, his private hospitality, and his public beneficence, all denoted the mind from which they flowed, and were all intrinsically rich and noble, without tinsel, or external ostentation; that he filled every relation in life with the most adequate virtue; that he was most piously religious to his Creator, most zealously loyal to his sovereign; a most tender husband to his wife, a kind relation, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... it ill becomes those in the middle rank to imitate such an example. Nothing can be more ludicrous than the contrast exhibited between two families of this description; the one living in the dignified splendour, and with the liberal hospitality, that wealth can command; the other in a stile of tinsel show, without the real appropriate distinctions belonging to rank and fortune. They are lavish, but not liberal, often sacrificing independence to support dissipation, and betraying the dearest interests of society for the sake of personal vanity, and gratifying what is significantly ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... the melancholy mass of papers, faded photographs, seals, diaries, withered flowers, and such like, Jocelyn drew a little portrait, one taken on glass in the primitive days of photography, and framed with tinsel in ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... 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 ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... tinsel! why we see The old mark of rouge upon your cheeks. You prate of nature! you are he That spilt his ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... A strange, sad story clings About the memory of this mindless man; A tale that strips war's tinsel off, and brings Its horrors out, as ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... 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
... really did come from a freshly opened cask just brought up from the cellar. But as the niche was illumined only by the tiny oil lamp burning beneath the image of the Virgin, bedizened with flowers and gold and silver tinsel, fastened against the wall, Biberli asked the weary bar-maid for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... even without the tinsel of court dress and the romance of French or Spanish setting, were acceptable to Eliza Haywood's public is shown by the two parts of "The Masqueraders: or, Fatal Curiosity" (1724-5), which in the most luscious language of passion narrate the philanderings of a "charming Rover" ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... child's heart, Chapman, and that phrase Crowns, not dis-crowns, his manhood. Well—he turned An honest penny, taking some small part In plays at the Red Bull. And, all the while, Beyond the paint and tinsel of the stage, Beyond the greasy cock-pit with its reek Of orange-peel and civet, as all of these Were but the clay churned by the glorious rush Of his white chariots and his burning steeds, Nay, as the clay were a shadow, his great ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... in the fashionable compositions: nature and good sense are neglected: labored ornaments studied and admired: and a total degeneracy of style and language prepares the way for barbarism and ignorance. Hence the Asiatic manner was found to depart so much from the simple purity of Athens: hence that tinsel eloquence which is observable in many of the Roman writers, from which Cicero himself is not wholly exempted, and which so much prevails in Ovid, Seneca, Lucan, Martial, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... blocks had sheaves in them, and the sails were made to hoist up and down, and his yachts sailed remarkably well and could beat any of those opposed to them. Then he made little theatres capitally, and painted the scenes and cut out the characters, and stuck tinsel on to them; and if not as good as a real play, they afforded a vast amount of amusement. These talents, however, were not discovered for ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... to heaven's 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, patronize 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 eighteen-pence a week I've liv'd before. Tho', thanks to Heaven, I ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... protects the heart, arrogance lays it open to every blow and every sarcasm, and corrodes even an originally noble-minded spirit. It is throughout, moreover, the distinguishing characteristic of such natures as that of Scipio—strange mixtures of genuine gold and glittering tinsel—that they need the good fortune and the brilliance of youth in order to exercise their charm, and, when this charm begins to fade, it is the charmer himself that is most painfully ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... just where Jeffrey is apt to fail; though he affects to be a dictator, he is really a follower of the fashion. He could put up with Rogers's flattest 'correctness,' Moore's most intolerable tinsel, and even Southey's most ponderous epic poetry, because admiration was respectable. He could endorse, though rather coldly, the general verdict in Scott's favour, only guarding his dignity by some not too judicious criticism; ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... brandishing a sweep's broom and she a ladle. Jim Crow and a fancifully bedizened ballet-dancer in white muslin, often swelled the ranks, and the rest of the party rigged out in a profusion of gilt paper, flowers, tinsel and gewgaws, their faces and legs colored with brick-dust, made up a comical crowd. But even these mild remains of the great festival are almost entirely banished to the rural districts, and are ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... whom, after all, it can feel but a qualified enthusiasm: but it surely might have employed the large sum voted for the purpose more wisely and generously, and recorded its respect for Napoleon by some worthy and lasting memorial, rather than have erected yonder thousand vain heaps of tinsel, paint, and plaster, that are already cracking and crumbling in the frost, at three ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... issued thence purified with love in their hearts. Emmy, Septimus, Sypher, all in their respective ways, had grappled with essentials. She alone had done nothing—she the strong, the sane, the capable, the magnificent. She had been a tinsel failure. So far out of touch had she been with the real warm things of life which mattered that she had not even gained her sister's confidence. Had she done so from her girlhood up, the miserable tragedy might not have happened. She had failed in ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... kings of the earth—they, and they only. All other kingships, so far as they are true, are only the practical issue and expression of theirs; if less than this, they are either dramatic royalties,—costly shows, set off, indeed, with real jewels instead of tinsel,—but still only the toys of nations; or else, they are no royalties at all, but tyrannies, or the mere active and practical issue of national folly; for which reason I have said of them elsewhere, "Visible governments are the toys of some nations, the diseases ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... sat on a low-cushioned seat, and there were a lot of other ladies with her—all in trousers and veils, and sparkling with tinsel and gold and jewels. And the brown, turbaned gentleman stood behind a sort of carved screen, and interpreted what the children said and what the queen said. And when the queen asked to buy the carpet, the children ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... harsh note struck upon their enchanted ears, nor jarring sight upon their sun-dazzled vision. Where in that moment was the duty and the honour that was a part of the man's very self? What to Vera was the rich marriage and the life of affluence, and all the glitter and tinsel which it had been her soul's desire to attain? She remembered it not; like a house of cards, it had fallen shattered ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... comparatively without resources. I detest this man so thoroughly that I cannot hate him. I abhor him. It is you who must save me from him; it is you who must also save me my principality. Oh, they envy me, these poor people, because I am a Princess, because I dwell in the tinsel glitter of the court. Could they but know how I envy their lives, their homes, their humble ambitions! Believe me, monsieur, as yet I love no man; but that is no reason why I should link my life to that of a man to whom virtue in a woman means nothing. He caused my mother ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... figure-head to remind them of a vessel's sex. There are minds which find a certain romance in figure-heads. To me they seem a frigid, unintelligent device, not to say idolatrous. I have known a crew to set so much store by one that they kept a tinsel locket and pair of ear-rings in the forecastle and duly adorned their darling when in port. But this is materialism. The true personality of a ship resides in no prefiguring lump of wood with a sightless smile to which all seas ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
