"Frippery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... oval by There stands his idol-beetle-fly: Next in an arch, akin to this, His idol-canker seated is: Then in a round is placed by these His golden god, Cantharides. So that, where'er ye look, ye see, No capital, no cornice free, Or frieze, from this fine frippery. Now this the fairies would have known, Theirs is a mixed religion: And some have heard the elves it call Part pagan, part papistical. If unto me all tongues were granted, I could not speak the saints here painted. Saint Tit, Saint ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... to the Medici chapel—fine frippery in great slabs of various expensive stones, to commemorate fifty rotten and forgotten carcasses. It is unfinished, and will remain so" (Letter to Murray, April 26, 1817). The bodies of the grand-dukes lie in the crypt of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... opened, and to call at the openings of those dark streets where Wisdom herself hath stretched forth her hands and no man regarded,—thirty minutes to raise the dead in,—let us but once understand and feel this, and we shall look with changed eyes upon that frippery of gay furniture about the place from which the message of judgment must be delivered, which either breathes upon the dry bones that they may live, or, if ineffectual, remains recorded in condemnation, perhaps against the utterer ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... bent on being frivolous, is a bit of old lace that your Aunt Helen, or anybody else, would have to hunt a long time to equal. You will find a locket inside which I wore when your father was married. I shall never use such frippery again, and you might as well have them now as ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... better than Cibber's, and a little worse than Hayley's. Here and there a manly sentiment which deserves to be in prose makes its appearance in company with Prometheus and Orpheus, Elysium and Acheron, the plaintive Philomel, the poppies of Morpheus, and all the other frippery which, like a robe tossed by a proud beauty to her waiting-woman, has long been contemptuously abandoned by genius to mediocrity. We hardly know any instance of the strength and weakness of human nature so striking, and so grotesque, as the character of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in a riding habit, whom I soon found to be Mrs. Dobson;(120) below her sat a gentlewoman, prim, upright, neat, and mean; and, next to her, sat another, thin, haggard, wrinkled, fine, and tawdry, with a thousand frippery ornaments and old-fashioned furbelows; she was excellently nick-named, by Mrs. Thrale, the Duchess of Monmouth. On the opposite side was placed Mrs. Thrale, and, next to her, Queeny. For my own part, little liking the appearance ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... ladies, walking dandies, kings with their crowns, and queens in their rabbit-skins, and the rest, are poor pinch-bellied devils, caricaturing humanity for some twelve or fourteen shillings a-week, finding their own paint and frippery. Now, whenever you wish to form a correct idea of the two great classes of fashionable life, call to your remembrance the gentlemen who, like the late lamented Mr Richardson, are proprietors of shows, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... conversation happened to turn on dress, of which Miss Staunton spoke scornfully and disparagingly, as mere useless vanity and frippery—an empty substitute for real beauty of person as well as the higher beauty of mind. And I, emboldened by the courtesy with which I was always called on to take my share in everything that was said or done, ventured to object, humbly ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... And shadow all the zenith;" and yet again The madness of distrustful friendship gleamed From his fierce eyes, "Oh villain, damned villain, God's murrain on his heart! I know full well He hides what he can hide! He wears no fault Upon the gloss and frippery of his breast! It is not that! It is the hidden things, Unseizable, the things I do not know, Ay, it is these, these, these and these alone That I mistrust." And, as he walked, the skies Grew full of threats, and now enormous ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... black periwig, has a most vinegar-like aspect, and looks with great contempt at the frippery gentlewoman immediately before him. The woman, with a demure countenance, seems very piously considering how she can contrive to pick the embroidered beau's pocket. Two old sybils joining their withered lips ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... of yourself. But with my will, you shall make no more frippery of the kind. It is quite ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... if you wish to follow my advice you will have great care and regard for what you and I can afford to do, according to our estate. Have a care that you be honestly clad, without new devices and without too much or too little frippery. And before you leave your chamber and house, take care first that the collar of your shift, and of your blanchet, cotte and surcotte, do not hang out one over the other, as happens with certain drunken, foolish or witless women, who have no care for their honour, nor for the honesty ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... roll, In pleasing memory of all he stole, How here he sipp'd, how there he plunder'd snug, And suck'd all o'er, like an industrious bug. 130 Here lay poor Fletcher's half-eat scenes,[262] and here The frippery of crucified Moliere; There hapless Shakspeare, yet of Tibbald[263] sore, Wish'd he had blotted[264] for himself before. The rest on outside merit but presume, Or serve (like other fools) to fill a room; Such with their shelves as due proportion hold, Or their fond ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... fal-lal as we say, and for which she had an inborn turn, being of good draper family, and polished above the yeomanry. Nevertheless I could never bear it, partly because I felt it to be out of place in our good farm-house, partly because I hate frippery, partly because it seemed to me to have nothing to do with father, and partly because I never could tell the reason of my hating it. And yet the poor soul had put them on, not to show her hands off ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... clothes to be made, and have done with the subject; women make their own clothes, necessary or ornamental, and are continually talking about them; and their thoughts follow their hands. It is not indeed the making of necessaries that weakens the mind; but the frippery of dress. For when a woman in the lower rank of life makes her husband's and children's clothes, she does her duty, this is part of her business; but when women work only to dress better than they could otherwise afford, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... He disliked frippery, yet withal made a brave show in the sun. His plain black mail was covered with a surcoat of white and green linen; over this a narrow baldrick of red bore in gold stitches his device of a hooded falcon, and his legend on a scroll, many times repeated and intercrossed—I bide my time. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett |
