"Sybarite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... daylight shortened and we could no longer hold our parliaments on a bench outside, a couple of deck-chairs were mysteriously imported; and, as the authorities remained unshocked, a small table also appeared and was squeezed into a gap beside the stove. Some sybarite even goaded us into getting up a fund for a strip of linoleum to be laid in the aisle between the beds. This was done—I do not know why, for personally I have no objection to bare boards. I suppose linoleum is easier to keep clean than wood; and ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... glory. ROUSSEAU in early youth, full of his Plutarch, while he was also devouring the trash of romances, could only conceive human nature in the colossal forms, or be affected by the infirm sensibility of an imagination mastering all his faculties; thinking like a Roman, and feeling like a Sybarite. The same circumstance happened to CATHERINE MACAULEY, who herself has told us how she owed the bent of her character to the early reading of the Roman historians; but combining Roman admiration with English faction, she violated ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... enamelled manicure-tables and chairs, amber lights glowing with soft incandescence in deep bowers of fireproof tissue flowers. There was a delightful warmth about the place, and the seductive scents and delicate odours betokened the haunt of the twentieth- century Sybarite. ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... without waiting for their reply, I succeeded in making them happy. The syndic was radiant, he was pleased at having given me a present entirely to my taste; and I fancied that the entertainment was not displeasing to the three Graces, who were kept low by the Sybarite, as his powers were almost limited to desires. The girls lavished their thanks on me, while I endeavoured to assure them of my gratitude; but they leapt for joy when they heard the syndic asking me to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the house, and Madame Midas did not by any means object, as she was a perfect salamander for heat. Hence, when the outward door was closed, the faded red curtains of the window drawn, and the newly replenished fire blazed brightly in the wide fireplace, the room was one which even Cowper—sybarite in home comforts as he was- ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... to the house. Sir Stanley was a childless widower, who was wont to complain that he kept up his huge establishment in order to justify the employment of his huge staff of servants. Stafford suspected him of being something of a sybarite. His dinners were famous, his cellar was one of the best in London and because of his acquaintances and friendships in the artistic sets, he was something of a dabbler in ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... seems incredible, is another evil of perhaps as great magnitude. Of that Bilse's book gives a faithful impression. For these excessive drinking habits, and in an equal degree for the luxurious habits of life, more particularly the indulgence in sybarite banquets, the Kaiser himself must be held largely to blame, since, by force of example at the many "love feasts" (Liebesmaehler) and anniversary celebrations of every kind which he not only attends at the quarters of the various regiments throughout the German domain, ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... did not lie. After standing through that long and exciting sitting of the Chamber in the dust of the gallery, his legs ached as if he had spent two nights in a railway carriage; and as his resolve to die blended with his longing for a good bath, it occurred to the old sybarite to go to sleep in a bath-tub like What's-his-name—Thingamy—ps—ps—ps—and other famous characters of antiquity. It is doing him no more than justice to say that not one of those Stoics went forth to meet ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... but slightly injured, should be sitting up, with his shoulder in a frame and his arm in a sling, but he was mending only slowly, and had not a little fever. Harris, accustomed to self-denial, seemed to require no physical comforts. Willett, something of a Sybarite, craved iced drinks and cooling applications that gave more trouble, said Strong, than twenty Harrises. Willett had even gone so far as to suggest that the ladies must be tired of reading aloud, possibly Miss Lilian might relieve one or other, and possibly, ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... only be found in the everlasting sombre stress of the westward winter passage round Cape Horn." This is to make the profession of literature a branch of the heroic life. And that, for all his smiling disparagement of himself as a Sybarite, is ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... fitted up for himself was whitewashed and barely furnished; it made one's bones ache to look at the iron bedstead and chairs. Holmes's natural taste was more glowing, however smothered, than that of any saffron-robed Sybarite. It needed correction, he knew; here was discipline. Besides, he had set apart the coming three or four years of his life to make money in, enough for the time to come. He would devote his whole strength to that work, and so be sooner done with it. Money, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... about that, but I think he is the best cared for, on the whole, of any animal that I know of; and if I wasn't a man I believe I had rather be that little sybarite than anything that feasts at the board ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... mere automatic raising of the Income Tax strikes indiscriminately at the just and the unjust; it is just as likely to cripple the man who is supporting and educating a large family sybarite." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... as we get nearer right. The worse a man is the less it speaks to him, and the less he hears it. When it ought to thunder it whispers; when we need it most it is least active. The thick skin of a savage will not be disturbed by lying on sharp stones, while a crumpled rose-leaf robs the Sybarite of his sleep. So the practice of evil hardens the cuticle of conscience, and the practice of goodness restores tenderness and sensibility; and many a man laden with crime knows less of its tingling than some fair soul that looks almost spotless to all eyes but its own. One little stain of rust ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... screened off the rays of the sun; the appointments of the small boat—the polished wood of rare texture, morocco leather cushions, and elaborate fittings—bespoke the taste or at least the income of a Sybarite. A grizzly brown sailor and his curly-pated son were the oarsmen; in the stern sat a couple of Keith's attendants, whom Mr. Heard might have mistaken for two Green genii but for the fact that between them lay an enormous and hideously modern receptacle of wicker-work which impaired ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... lattices, little gateways with roses, white enamel with cute little diamond panes of glass for windows, inviting bowers of artificial flowers and dim yellow lights. It makes you feel like a sybarite just to see it. It's a cosmetic Arcadia for that ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... The Latin of the Sixteenth century was a recrudescence of the Roman of the First. He had not, like the Mongolian, lived long enough to become a stoic. He was mainly a cynic and an adventurer. Thence he flowered into a sybarite. Coming to great wealth with the discoveries of Columbus and the conquests of Pizarro and Cortes, he proceeded to enjoy its fruits according to his fancy and the fashion ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... have become accustomed to my Sybarite's couch of which you used to tell me. Would you be willing to give up all you have striven for and won—your life—the honors you have ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... every expectation, he scorned every other object, and, stretching forth his hand, he simply took hold of rouge, powder and a few hair-pins, with which he began to play. Mr. Cheng experienced at once displeasure, as he maintained that this youth would, by and bye, grow up into a sybarite, devoted to wine and women, and for this reason it is, that he soon began to feel not much attachment for him. But his grandmother is the one who, in spite of everything, prizes him like the breath of her own life. The very mention of what happened is even ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Love was my guest; They twined a fresh wreath for each day as it came, And the bosom of Beauty still pillowed my rest: And the harp of my country—neglected it slept— In hall or by greenwood unheard were its songs; From Love's Sybarite dreams I aroused me, and swept Its chords to the tale of her glories ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... material and immaterial, we shall conclude that the life of each man as an individual is immaterial, although the continuation and prospects of mankind as a race turn upon material conditions. The physical business of each man's body is transacted for him; like a sybarite, he has attentive valets in his own viscera; he breathes, he sweats, he digests without an effort, or so much as a consenting volition; for the most part he even eats, not with a wakeful consciousness, but as it were between two thoughts. His life is centred among other and more important considerations; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 'Sybarite,' commented Evdoksya, and she laughed. (When she laughed the gum showed above her upper teeth.) 'Isn't it true, ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... his taste. He sometimes steals into the lower valleys, where these are but sparsely cultivated; and gathers a meal of young maize, or potatoes, where such are grown. Of truffles he is as fond as a Parisian sybarite,—scenting them with a keenness far excelling that of the regular truffle dog, and "rooting" them out from under the shade of the great oak trees, where these rare delicacies ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... bay, In deserts far away, Over whose solitudes The dread malaria broods, No labor tills the land— Only the fierce brigand, Or shepherd, wan and lean, O'er the wide plains is seen. Yet there, a lovely dream, There Grecian temples gleam, Whose form and mellowed tone Rival the Parthenon. The Sybarite no more Comes hither to adore, With perfumed offering, The ocean god and king. The deity is fled Long-since, but, in his stead, The smiling sea is seen, The Doric shafts between; And round the time-worn base Climb vines of tender grace, And Paestum's roses still The air with ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... him. She had never seen him as his enemies had seen him, and even they confessed that he was always visible enough in action. Perhaps there was another man behind the personality of this deprecating, pleasant-spoken little sybarite—a man who only appeared (oh rara ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... inside; so hot that he may be said to construct an icehouse inside that. He turns himself into an icehouse and warms himself against the cold until he is warm enough to eat ices. But the point is that the same coat of fur which in England would indicate the sybarite life may here very well indicate the strenuous life; just as the same walking stick which would here suggest a lounger would in England suggest a plodder and almost ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... Shadow, and a softened smile Seemed to illume the coldness, void of guile, Of those phantasmal features. "When from the City's gloom shall flash to light This truth: The sleek and selfish sybarite Is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... plainness of the walls was but a luxury to set off the admirable collection of original sketches and clever caricatures that adorned them. One end of the room was curtained off to serve as a dining-room on necessity. No sybarite could have complained of the comfort of the chairs or the arrangement of the light. The great table at which Peter Masters sat, was not only of the most solid mahogany, but it was put together by an artist in joinery—a skilful, ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... quite as if he were addressing some one before him, "do you know that I am trudging through the mud of this infernal city all for you? And you, little sybarite, are among the fine ladies of the reading-room at the hotel, and listening to music, and the air all scented around you. Never mind; if only I had a little bird that could fly to you with a message—ah, would you not have pleasant dreams to-night? Did ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... knife and fork. Shepler, the man of mighty millions! The undisputed monarch of finance! The cold-blooded, calculating sybarite in his lighter moments, but a man whose values as a son-in-law were so ideally superb that the Milbrey ambition had never vaulted high enough even to overlook them for one daring moment! Shepler, whom he had known so long and so ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... not have recognised the writer of this, had you seen him on the boulevard this morning. I was a superb dandy, with the poses of a Sybarite and the smiles of a young sultan. I trod as one in the clouds, and looked so benevolently on my fellow man that three beggars sued for aid as if they recognised Providence in a black coat. ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin |
