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Beautify   Listen
verb
Beautify  v. i.  To become beautiful; to advance in beauty.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Beautify" Quotes from Famous Books



... itself into the lives of those who go out from it. It is where the girl does not carry away a sense of an uninterrupted relation—a certainty that she is a part of that group and that achievement, that she is only carrying on, enlarging, helping to extend, beautify, and ripen its work, that she is not homeless. Nothing can so hold her in her isolation ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell

... that we were painting a statue, and some one came up to us and said, Why do you not put the most beautiful colours on the most beautiful parts of the body—the eyes ought to be purple, but you have made them black—to him we might fairly answer, Sir, you would not surely have us beautify the eyes to such a degree that they are no longer eyes; consider rather whether, by giving this and the other features their due proportion, we make the whole beautiful. And so I say to you, do not compel us to assign to the guardians a ...
— The Republic • Plato

... is well shaded in all parts by trees of different kinds, and fruit-trees which beautify it throughout the year, both along the shore and inland among the plains and mountains. It is very full of large and small rivers, of good fresh water, which flow into the sea. All of them are navigable, and abound in all kinds of fish, which are very pleasant to the taste. For the above reason ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

... some cases exceedingly correct) pronunciation of pulpit pleased me, yet my wrath was aroused at this scandalous revelation of the plans of the villagers to beautify their church at my expense. It was as bad as any ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... such a case of distress, which a young lady does, even if she happens to be a young gentleman, is to beautify her dress. Kate always attended to that, as we know, having overlooked her in the chestnut wood. The man she sent for was not properly a tailor, but one who employed tailors, he himself furnishing the materials. ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... dark workhouse gate Is besieged by a famishing crowd, Forge, hammer, and mine, with their mission divine, Lie dumb, like a corpse in a shroud. And Plenty, with beckon and smile, Points up at the golden rain That is ready to fall to beautify all, But is checked by the dread refrain: Strike! Strike! Strike! Let the bright wheels of Industry rust: Let us earn in our shame A pauper's name, Or ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... whether the valley was formed wholly by glacial action or by some gigantic convulsion of nature, which tore its frowning cliffs apart, leaving the Valley rough, unfinished and uncouth to the gentle, molding hand of Time to smooth it up and beautify its floor with its present growth of oaks and pines and shrub and bush and ferns and vines, ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves

... not meet the stranger so soon as the eager search she pursued might have allowed her to hope. She went several times to the "Bal de Sceaux" without seeing the young Englishman who had dropped from the skies to pervade and beautify her dreams. Though nothing spurs on a young girl's infant passion so effectually as an obstacle, there was a time when Mademoiselle de Fontaine was on the point of giving up her strange and secret search, almost despairing of the success of an enterprise whose ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac

... occupied by the Bourse; with a palace for the stock-exchange on the quay Desaix; with the restoration of the Sorbonne and the hotel Soubise; with a triumphal column at Neuilly; with a fountain on the Place Louis XV.; with tearing down the Hotel-Dieu to enlarge and beautify the Cathedral quarter; and with the construction of four hospitals at Mont-Parnasse, at Chaillot, at Montmartre, and in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, etc. All these plans were very grand; and there is no doubt that he who had conceived them would have executed ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... schools are doing excellent work in teaching children to beautify the school grounds. Some, of them go farther and interest their pupils in attacking the problem of improving outside conditions at home. Every child whose mind is thus turned in the direction of attractive home grounds has unconsciously ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson

... scent of his beautiful flowers on the altar, and to the harmony of colour and conventional design on the walls of his little church. He spent his life and his substance upon it, doing what he could to beautify it himself, in the name of the Lord, and finding in the act of worship a refinement of pleasure difficult of attainment, but possible and precious. And while all that sufficed for him, he honestly entertained the idea of celibacy as a condition necessary for the perfect ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... Coleridge has told in his "Biographia Literaria," how the "Lyrical Ballads," issued at that time, derived their inspiration from two sources; to wit, supernatural themes, which appealed to Coleridge, and homely every-day subjects, which Wordsworth loved to beautify. Occasionally Coleridge tried himself in the other field, as in his "Lines to a Young Ass." In the same year Coleridge brought out the famous "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," his "Odes," and wrote his first version of "Christabel." The period at Nether Stowey, from 1797 to 1798, was Coleridge's most ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... to a degree which permitted his daughter the enjoyment of the ordinary opportunities of ordinary people. If she had not known extravagance in the matter of dress, neither had she known penury; when her feminine instinct impelled her to brighten and beautify the little home on the Sawdust Pile from time to time, she had found that possible. She had been graduated with honors from the local high school, and, being a book-lover of catholic taste and wide ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... corner of this plot, and at the sound of Christina's call a girl came out of the shed; she was young and tall and strong-looking, but she did not beautify the scene. ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... beautifying; landscaping, landscape gardening; decoration &c. 847; calisthenics|!. [person who is beautiful] beauty; hunk [of men]. V. be beautiful &c. adj.; shine, beam, bloom; become one &c. (accord) 23; set off, grace. render beautiful &c. adj.; beautify; polish, burnish; gild &c. (decorate) 847; set out. "snatch a grace beyond the reach of art" [Pope]. Adj. beautiful, beauteous; handsome; gorgeous; pretty; lovely, graceful, elegant, prepossessing; attractive &c. (inviting) 615; delicate, dainty, refined; fair, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... the washing of the currents, consist of rich alluvial soil, producing grain, roots and grass in the greatest luxuriance. These islands may be considered as the gardens of the country, which they enrich and beautify. The rapidity of the rivers, swoln by the melting of the snow in the spring, tears away the soil in some parts, and deposits it in others; by which means their courses are gradually altered; new ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher

... or prairie, on which the grass waves like the waters of the sea. On one side it meets the horizon, on another it is bounded by the faint and far-distant range of the Sierra Nevada. Thousands of millions of beautiful wild-flowers spangle and beautify the soft green carpet, over which spreads a cloudless sky, not a whit less blue and soft than the vaunted sky of Italy. Herds of deer are grazing over the vast plain, like tame cattle. Wild geese and other water-fowl wing their way through the soft atmosphere, and little ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... at it. That's stupid, too; as stupid as all the rest." He rose from the chair he had dropped into, and went toward the door of the next room. "I must beautify my person with a clean collar and cuffs. I'm going down to make a call on the Back Bay, and I wish to leave a good impression with the fellow that shows me the door when he finds out who I am and what I want. I'm going to interview Mr. Hilary on the company's feelings ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... the memory of that worthy and lerned Francis Anthony, Doctor in Physick. There needs no verse to beautify thy praise, Or keepe in memory thy spotless name. Religion, virtue, and thy skil did raise A threefold pillar to thy lasting Fame; Though poisenous envye ever sought to blame Or hyde the fruits of thy intention, Yet shall they all commend that ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley

... "take care, according to his ability, that the monument shall become as like as possible to what it was when first erected." This appears to have been the idea of Mr. Greene. Another form of words was later adopted, directing Mr. Hall, the painter, "to repair and beautify, or to have the direction of repairing and beautifying, THE ORIGINAL MONUMENT of Shakespeare the poet." Mrs. Stopes infers, justly in my opinion, that Hall "would fill up the gaps, restore what was amissing as he thought it ought to be, and finally repaint it ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang

... Yet the ground is sprinkled with a few little flowers which, like those skulls, are known only to their Creator; their petals wear a pale smile and their fragrance is the fragrance of the tombs. The grass and creepers fill up the corners or climb over the walls and niches to cover and beautify the naked ugliness and in places even penetrate into the fissures made by the earthquakes, so as to hide from sight the ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... garden, it is only because the number of them is infinitely greater. It is like a copious nursery, which contains the seeds and first productions of every kind, out of which those who followed him have but selected some particular plants, each according to his fancy, to cultivate and beautify. If some things are too luxuriant it is owing to the richness of the soil; and if others are not arrived to perfection or maturity, it is only because they are overrun and oppressed by those of a ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... of their nature will be coloring all their activities. It will beautify their arts, and erotically confuse their religions. It will lend a little interest to even their dull social functions. It will keep alive degrading social evils in all their great towns. Through these latter evils, too, their politics will be corrupted; especially their best and most democratic ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day

... called the cat-bird. The trichillia and the ficus, before noticed, are abundant on these banks, and are all intricately connected with each other by climbing plants which grow to an incredible size, and hang down in rich clusters from the summit to the root of the tree, tending considerably to beautify the richness ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... are still discernible, uninjured by the mass of foreign substance in which they are embedded—even like those immortal marble figures which have been recovered from the ruins of an ancient world, and now beautify the museums of modern Europe. For years past I have thought that it was perhaps not impossible to exhume this buried Epic from the superincumbent mass of episodical matter, and to restore it to the modern ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous

... of the heart, like those of ivy, cling but the more closely to what they have clung to long, and even when that which they entwine crumbles beneath them, they still run greenly over the ruin, and beautify those defects which they can not hide. The past as well as the present, molds the future, and the features of some remote progenitor will revive again freshly in the latest offspring of the womb of time. Our earth hangs ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... dignity, and the Eternal City to the splendour worthy of the seat of Christendom. The accomplishment of the second part of his work he owed to the genius of Alberti. After doing thus much for Rome under Thomas of Sarzana, and before beginning to beautify Florence at the instance of the Rucellai family, Alberti entered the service of the Malatesta, and undertook to remodel the Cathedral of S. Francis at Rimini. He found it a plain Gothic structure with apse and side chapels. Such churches are common ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... with the principles of Ethics and Jurisprudence; human society cannot get along without them. Morality is the heart of civilization: its principles are the life-blood, which it sends forth to feed and warm and strengthen and beautify all the organs of its earthly frame. A flesh-wound may be healed, a bone may be set, it may knit and grow vigorous again; but you must not puncture the heart, nor attempt to change the natural channels of the circulating blood, under the penalty of having a ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens

... this but a repetition on a small scale of phenomena with which ancient history familiarizes us—a nation rising in arts and elegances amidst barbarous neighbours, but at length overpowered by the rude majority, leaving only a Tadmor or a Luxor as a monument of itself to beautify the waste? What can we suppose the nation which built Palenque and Copan to have been but only a Mandan tribe, which chanced to have made its way farther along the path of civilization and the arts, before the ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... hero would do. Such things a book can teach in a day. It is not enough to intend to live a noble life and then retire to a cell, there to brood over this intention. No wisdom thus acquired can truly guide or beautify the soul; it is of as little avail as the counsels that others can offer. "It is in the silence that follows the storm," says a Hindu proverb, "and not in the silence before it, that we should search for ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck

... who could presume To meddle in a lady's room. At which, embracing each in turn, With most affectionate concern, "My dears," he says, "ye may not pass A day without this useful glass; You, lest you spoil a pretty face, By doing things to your disgrace; You, by good conduct to correct Your form, and beautify defect." ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... smaller ones, an immense profit, amounting to twenty-five per cent., they do not make the bankers pay four or five per cent., and charge half a dollar or more to each individual who enters to gamble; with which money they might beautify the village, make a public pasoe, a good road, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... have been what he used to call a Brynhild. It was tall blondes he really admired. Hence, notwithstanding his love of the economies of gipsy life, his gipsy women are all mere “scenic characters”—they clothe and beautify the scene; they are not dramatic characters. When he comes to delineate a heroine, Isopel Berners, she is physically the very opposite of the Romany ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... rich folds of the silk gown with considerable art, although such taste as she possessed was outraged at the effect of the pale straw colour when worn by such an aged beauty. Another look into the tall mirror, and Clara von Greifenstein was satisfied. She had done what she could do to beautify herself, to revive in her own eyes some faint memory of that prettiness she had once seen reflected in her glass, and she believed that she had not altogether failed. She even smiled contentedly at her maid, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... the water. You might as well try to make water flow up-hill as to really revolutionize anything. I'd beautify the banks of the stream, and round the sharp turns in it, and weed it out, and sow water-lilies, and set the white swan with her snow-flecked breast afloat. That's ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... how to prolong the lease, what study can be compared with that of which the results may beautify the dwelling? What more can any man do for himself than make himself happy? The very question is absurd. What are you trying to do for yourself at the present moment? Is it for the sake of improving ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... lived, showed themselves just and liberal; but as soon as he was dead, they began to treat their former allies unkindly. The money which all the Greek states furnished was now no longer used to strengthen the army and navy, as first agreed, but was lavishly spent to beautify the city. ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber

... painting and adorning a shop seems to intimate, that the tradesman has a large stock to begin with, or else they suggest he would not make such a show; hence the young shopkeepers are willing to make a great show, and beautify, and paint, and gild, and carve, because they would be thought to have a great stock to begin with; but let me tell you, the reputation of having a great stock is ill purchased, when half your ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... victories, hang dusty half-pillar high. This nakedness, however, is not so much the fault of the architect as of the clergy, who aught to have adorned this noble pile more largely by the hand of the painter and the sculptor. It was the wish of Wren to beautify the inside of the cupola with rich and durable Mosaic, and he intended to have sought the help of four of the most eminent artists in Italy for that purpose; but he was frustrated by the seven commissioners, who said the thing was so much of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various

... protect your body, guard your mind. If you would renew your body, beautify your mind. Thoughts of malice, envy, disappointment, despondency, rob the body of its health and grace. A sour face does not come by chance; it is made by sour thoughts. Wrinkles that mar are drawn ...
— As a Man Thinketh • James Allen

... man, even to Huns. When Germany pays an indemnity of L2,000,000,000 I think we might knock off a tenner or so because the KAISER has done so much to beautify our banks. Once they were cold cheerless places. A suspicion of an overdraft always swept through them. Now I love to go to the bank and see the beautiful blonde and brown and auburn heads bent over the ledgers. ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various

... and inexpressive stare. And already the charm with which her name, like a cloud of incense, had filled that archway in the pink hawthorn through which she and I had, together, heard its sound, was beginning to conquer, to cover, to embalm, to beautify everything with which it had any association: her grandparents, whom my own had been so unspeakably fortunate as to know, the glorious profession of a stockholder, even the melancholy neighbourhood of the Champs-Elysees, where she ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... them that are bound, in vain? Did He promise to give beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness unto them that mourn in Zion, and will He refuse to beautify the mind, anoint the head, and throw around the captive negro the mantle of praise for that spirit of heaviness which has so long bound him down to the ground? Or shall we not rather say with the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... must have children. "To live and to cause to live, to eat food and to beget children, these were the primary wants of man in the past, and they will be the primary wants of men in the future so long as the world lasts." Other things may be added to enrich and beautify human life, but, unless these wants are first satisfied, humanity itself must cease to exist. These two things, therefore, food and children, were what men chiefly sought to procure by the performance of magical rites for the regulation of the seasons. They are the ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison

... Himself. Such characters as these are, however, the wonder and admiration of men. God bestows on them gifts upon gifts, graces upon graces, visions, revelations, inward voices, ecstasies, ravishments, &c. It seems as though God's only care was to enrich and beautify them, and to communicate to them His secrets. ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon

... proved to be wide, but only distempered in two colors, like the walls of a station waiting-room. Not the slightest attempt to beautify or furnish with carved chairs, and cabinets of china, and portraits and tapestry on the walls, as in an English house. In the passage all was as plain as ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn

... dew, and two wagtails strutted in the dewy sunshine. 'Thank God for loveliness!' he thought. 'Those poor boys at the front!' And kneeling with his elbows on the sill, he began to say his prayers. The same feeling which made him beautify his church, use vestments, good music, and incense, filled him now. God was in the loveliness of His world, as well as in His churches. One could worship Him in a grove of beech trees, in a beautiful garden, on a high hill, by the banks of a bright river. God was in the rustle of the leaves, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... encouraged. Usually the roadside is a mass of bloom in the fall, goldenrod, asters and other hardy annuals being especially beautiful. In some states wild roses and other low bushes are planted to serve the two-fold purpose of assisting to prevent erosion and to beautify the roadside. In humid areas trees of any considerable size shade the road surface and are a distinct disadvantage to roads surfaced with the less durable materials such as sand-clay or gravel. It is doubtful if the same is true of paved surfaces, but the trees ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg

... waters, restless waters, Sing their low, unchanging song Upon the pebbles all night long). Thou art a flower whose smile hath made A sunbeam pierce the forest shade; Thou art a rose that fragrant grows To beautify the darksome glade And sweeten every breeze that blows. Anpetusapa! wilt thou give The promise that shall make me live As I have never lived before? I love thee, and the powers divine Shall teach thy heart to pulse with ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... and mothers ask your boy or girl the meaning of the word, they will probably turn to the dictionary, and tell you something like this: 'To "adorn" is to set off to advantage, to add to the attractiveness, to beautify, to decorate as with ornaments'. Now that is exactly what the Apostle meant, and the application is that you and I must set off to advantage, add to the attractiveness of the Gospel which ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard

... not prosper; after some generations the abbey fell into ruins, and then they sold the abbey to the Taynes, who had long wished for it on account of the similarity of names. Our ancestors built the present mansion called Tayne Abbey; each succeeding Tayne had done something to beautify it—one had built the magnificent picture gallery, and had made a magnificent collection of pictures, so magnificent, indeed, as to rob the Taynes for many years afterward of some part of their revenue. There they stood still, a fortune in themselves. Another Tayne had devoted ...
— My Mother's Rival - Everyday Life Library No. 4 • Charlotte M. Braeme

... For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted. The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir-tree, the pine-tree, and the box together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary; and I will make the place of my feet glorious. The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee; and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... mansion are the carriage-house and the school-room of Dickens' sons. In another portion of the grounds are his tennis-court and the bowling-green which he prepared, where he became a skilful and tireless player. The broad meadow beyond the lawn was a later purchase, and the many limes which beautify it were rooted by Dickens. Here numerous cricket-matches were played, and he would watch the players or keep the score ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... discussed the comparative blessedness of single and married life. Or if a notable person happened to die, his dirge was sung, and the poet composed an encomium on him, full of wise reflections on destiny, and the fate that awaits all. There was, in fact, no public occasion which the Greeks did not beautify with song. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... little drops I bless again And beautify the fields which thou didst blast! Rend, wither, waste, and ruin, what thou wilt, But call not Greatness what the Gods call Guilt. Blossoms and grass from blood in battle spilt, And poppied corn, I bring. 'Mid mouldering ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Wordsworth or Thomas Campbell. Entered into rest the protestants put it. Old Dr Murren's. The great physician called him home. Well it's God's acre for them. Nice country residence. Newly plastered and painted. Ideal spot to have a quiet smoke and read the Church Times. Marriage ads they never try to beautify. Rusty wreaths hung on knobs, garlands of bronzefoil. Better value that for the money. Still, the flowers are more poetical. The other gets rather tiresome, never withering. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... the Sparrow flew about the house gilding the lily of cleanliness, Mary, with Elliston at her skirts, picked the flowers destined for Stefan's room. These she arranged in every available vase—the studio sang with them. Every now and then she would think of some trifle to beautify it further —a drawing from her sitting room—her oldest pewter plate for another ashtray—a pine pillow from her bedroom. Elliston's fat legs became so tired with ceaselessly trotting back and forth behind her that he began to cry with fatigue, and was put to bed for his ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... and who was to the builders what Leonardo became to the painters of Milan. "Signor Lodovico loved Bramante greatly, and rewarded him richly," writes Fra Gaspare Bugati, a Dominican friar of S. Maria delle Grazie, the Moro's favourite church, which this great architect did so much to beautify. During this year, Bramante, having finished the palace of Vigevano and completed the new buildings at the royal villas of Abbiategrasso, Cuzzago and other places, upon which he had been long engaged, began several important ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... cling to thee; the snow From swinish footprints takes no staining, But, leaving the gross soils of earth below, Its spirit mounts, the skies regaining, And unresentful falls again, To beautify the world with dews ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... "civilization." The Lord's saints are not, for the most part, to be found amongst the line of inventors. The seed of Cain, and not the seed of Seth, produces them. The former make the earth their home, and naturally seek to beautify it, and make it comfortable. The latter, with deepest soul-thirst, quenched by rills of living water springing not here; with heart-longings satisfied by an infinite, tender, divine Love, pass through the earth strangers and pilgrims, to the Rest ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings

... was one which all her life long Erica looked back to with the loving remembrance which can gild and beautify the most sorrowful of lives. It is surely a mistake to think that the memory of past delights makes present pain sharper. If not, why do we all so universally strive to make the lives of children happy? Is it not because we know that happiness in the ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... . All idealisation makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity—it is to destroy it. Leave that to the moralists, my boy. History is made by men, but they do not make it in their heads. The ideas that are born in their consciousness play an insignificant part ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... lone island dweller led them into his hut. It was rough inside but scrupulously clean. Some attempts had been made to beautify it by hanging up on the walls shells and curiosities of the beach. Here and there, too, were panels of rare woods, which the island-dweller explained had come from the cabins of wrecked ships. A big cat, his only companion, ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham

... re-established the canals and the roads, encouraged agriculture, favoured the development of the population. The ruined towns were gradually repaired and rebuilt, and vast efforts made everywhere to restore, and even to enlarge and beautify the sacred edifices. At Memphis, Psamatik built the great southern portal which gave completeness to the ancient temple of the god Phthah, and also constructed a grand court for the residence of the Apis-Bulls, surrounded by ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... that high and responsible capacity in our country. Both of these gentlemen, so eminently calculated to elevate the standard of education, were summoned from the career of the most active usefulness, from the scenes they had labored to brighten and beautify by the aid of their transcendant intellects, to unseen realities in the world of spirits; where mind communes with mind, and soul mingles with soul, disenthraled from error, and embosomed in the light and love ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... Dickens's manner. What the highest exercise of the intellect had missed is found in the simplest form of the affections. The wife of the custodian of the college where the chemist is professor, in whom are all the unselfish virtues that can beautify and endear the humblest condition, is the instrument of the change. Such sorrow as she had suffered had made her only zealous to relieve others' sufferings: and the discontented wise man learns from her example that the world is, after all, a much happier compromise ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... daughter's new attention to the details of personal appearance. Burdened with her inability to furnish the clothes the family needed, she complained monotonously over every evidence of the young girl's desire to beautify herself. When the mother's complaints became unendurable, the father usually growled out a stern, "Let the child alone," but for the most part the growing girl lived a life apart from her family, thought along different lines, and built ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... to enrich and beautify the shrine of his patron saint, Edward the Confessor, and with this end in view he made various extravagant demands: for instance, at one time he ordered all the gold in London to be detailed to this object, and at another, ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... perfect finishing; growth of all kinds of plants, the up-springing of tall trees, both productive and unfruitful, flowers' sweet scents and fair colors, and all that which, a little later, at the voice of God came forth from the earth to beautify ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various

... won. It is the promise of a brighter day, when the skill of invention and of handicraft may be once more directed, not to the devices which destroy life, but to the sciences which prolong it, and the arts which beautify it. Above all, it is the promise of a return, through blood and fire, to the faith which made England great, and the law which yet may wrap the world ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... many ways: a red ribbon had tied up her hair, a gay but faded shawl was thrown over the bed, and the gifts sent her were arranged with care upon the table by her side among her own few toys and treasures. There was something pathetic in this childish attempt to beautify the poor place, and Mrs. Minot's eyes were full as she looked at the tired woman, whose one joy and comfort lay there ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... nourish it and continue its growth. Such is the important and wonderful work of the leaf, the tender, delicate leaf, which we crumple so easily in our fingers. It builds up, atom by atom, the tree and the great forests which beautify the world and provide for us a thousand comforts and conveniences. Our houses and the furniture in them, our boats and ships, the cars in which we fly so swiftly, the many beautiful and useful things which are manufactured from wood of various kinds, all these, by the help of the sun, are furnished ...
— Arbor Day Leaves • N.H. Egleston

... and many a stately street. A sword-hilt, starred with jasper, graced his side, A scarf, gold-broidered by the queen, and dyed With Tyrian hues, was o'er his shoulders thrown. "What, thou—wilt thou build Carthage?" Hermes cried, "And stay to beautify thy lady's town, And dote on Tyrian ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... white—most delicately wanton, with long tresses and velvet hands, filling out her dress at the least movement, for she was gracefully plump, with a laughing mouth, and eyes moist in advance, a woman to beautify hell, and whose first word had such cordial power that the king's garment was cracked by it. On the morrow, after the fair one had slipped out after the king's breakfast, the good captain came radiant and triumphant into ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... from violations of natural models and must not permit them. In paintings or mouldings or carvings in mineral or wood, or in the illustrations of books and newspapers, or in any comic or tragic prints, or in the patterns of woven stuffs or anything to beautify rooms or furniture or costumes, or to put upon cornices or monuments or on the prows or sterns of ships, or to put anywhere before the human eye indoors or out, that which distorts honest shapes or which creates unearthly beings or places or contingencies, is a nuisance ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... grave. The other parts of the funeral rites are thus: As soon as the party is dead they lay the corpse upon a piece of bark in the sun, seasoning or embalming it with a small root beaten to powder, which looks as red as vermilion; the same is mixed with bear's oil to beautify the hair. After the carcass has laid a day or two in the sun they remove it and lay it upon crotches cut on purpose for the support thereof from the earth then they anoint it all over with the aforementioned ingredients of the powder ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow

... cyclopean stones, with the same surface draftings as at Jerusalem. Why Herod built this edifice seems clear. Hebron was the centre of Idumean influence, and Herod was an Idumean. He had a family interest in the place, and hence sought to beautify it. No Jew or Christian can enter the enclosure except by special irade; even Sir Moses Montefiore was refused the privilege. Rather, one should say, the Moslem authorities wished to let Sir Moses in, but they were prevented by the mob from carrying out their amiable intentions. ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... being interested only in pictures and statues representing ourselves, our rulers, our gods, or our neighborhood, we enjoy imitations of people who have had no effect upon our lives whatever and scenes which we have never visited, and we repair to museums to see them; instead of employing music to beautify our daily life, we leave that life for the concert hall, where we shut ourselves away for a few hours of "absolute" musical experience. Prose literature and the drama, when inspired by contemporary social problems, offer exceptions to this isolation, for through their ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... to the orchard as soon as the news came of Molly's approaching wedding, and superintended the planting of many flowers to beautify the little home; and even stern old Aunt Clay unbent to the extent of lending her gardener to do the work. She had also donated a clump of Adam's and Eve's needles and threads that proved very decorative, but quite as ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed

... conspicuously than they do in this grouping us in families. The result has been, that society has been preserved, even though the authority of God has been condemned; and even the annals of heathenism afford us very many displays of those kindly feelings, which adorn and beautify human nature. These would not have existed, had not the heart been cultivated in the family; and where religious principle is added as the guiding influence of the circle, the family becomes the nursery of all that ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... the cascade was white, reflecting the colors of the rainbow on its facets of liquid diamonds. The sky was a rose tint, with distant music and mild perfumes. Something trembled mysteriously, invisible, and at the same time smiling, in this fantastic atmosphere; a supernatural force which seemed to beautify it with its contact. It was ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... of those words, since, most unhappily as I think, these master-arts, these arts more specially of the intellect, are at the present day divorced from decoration in its narrower sense. Our subject is that great body of art, by means of which men have at all times more or less striven to beautify the familiar matters of everyday life: a wide subject, a great industry; both a great part of the history of the world, and a most helpful instrument to ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris

... the capital of the Roman empire to the ancient Byzantium, he sought to beautify it by all means in his power, and for this purpose he removed a great number of works of art from Rome to Constantinople, and among them these ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various

... vermilion, and in some, caves of red arsenic like unto the evening clouds and in some, red chalk of the hue of the rabbit, and in some, minerals like unto white and sable clouds; and in some, those effulgent as the rising sun, these minerals of great lustre beautify the mountain. O Partha, as was said by Vrishaparva, the Gandharvas and the Kimpurushas, in company with their loves, are visible on the summits of the mountain. And, O Bhima, there are heard various songs of appropriate measures, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... thus produced and thus delivered, with perfect breath-control, will set the whole body sympathizing, from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head. And it is only tones like these—that it is possible to so adorn, and decorate, and beautify, with the due amount of emphasis, and accurate intensity of emotional feelings, and exquisitely shaded and ever-varying tinges of color in expression—that can prove capable of captivating the heart of the hearer, that can graphically impress ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer

... own personality would fall suddenly from his eyes. Then he would see, as Evelina, the poor, worn, humble face of his home, and his heart would sink. "I don't see how I ever can bring her here," he thought. He began to save, a few cents at a time, out of his pitiful salary, to at least beautify his own chamber a little when Evelina should come. He made up his mind that she should have a little dressing-table, with an oval mirror, and a white muslin frill around it, like one he had seen in Boston. ...
— Evelina's Garden • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... our existing circumstances. In close connection with this forward projection of our present selves, there betrays itself a tendency to look on future events as answering to our present desires and aspirations. In this way, we are wont to soften, beautify, and idealize the future, marking it off from ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... is fairly level, and for mile after mile, and league beyond league, the road is beneath avenues of plane and poplar, which, crossing the plain in every direction like emerald walls of nature's own building, here embellish and beautify an otherwise rather monotonous stretch of country. The villages are little different from the villages of Normandy, but the churches have not the architectural beauty of the Normandy churches, being for the most part massive structures without any pretence to artistic ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... exercise your promised patience by saying a little of the caterpillar, or the palmer-fly or worm; that by them you may guess what a work it were, in a discourse, but to run over those very many flies, worms, and little living creatures, with which the sun and summer adorn and beautify the river-banks and meadows, both for the recreation and contemplation of us anglers; pleasures which, I think, myself enjoy more than any other man that is not ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... ghost, Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale, and bloodless, Being all descended to the labouring heart, Who, in the conflict that it holds with death, Attracts the same for aidance 'gainst the enemy, Which with the heart there cools and ne'er returneth To blush and beautify the cheek again. But see, his face is black and full of blood, His eyeballs further out than when he liv'd, Staring full ghastly like a strangled man; His hair uprear'd, his nostrils stretch'd with struggling, His hands abroad display'd, as one that grasp'd And tugg'd for life and ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... expand Into an empire huge, unwritten yet On hist'ry's page, and shall surpass the dreams Of warriors bold in times of old, and like The creepers that, entwined around the oak, Luxuriant grow, safe from the storms that blow, And flow'rs give forth to beautify the scene, Her sons shall everlasting peace enjoy, And blessings, hitherto unknown to man— The grandest scene for God to ever cast His loving eyes upon, and for the world Of man to wonder at, and there shall be One sway, the sway of reason and of truth; One ...
— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna

... serious apostle of art for the nursery, who strove to beautify its ideal, to decorate its legends with a real knowledge of architecture and costume, and to mount the fairy stories with a certain archaeological splendor.... As a maker of children's books, no one ever attempted the task he fulfilled so gayly, and ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold

... committed, not, long since, a similar error. Her husband could spare her a couple of hundred dollars for re-furnishing purposes; but, as his business absorbed nearly all of his time and thoughts, he left with her the selection of the new articles that were to beautify their parlors and chambers, ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur

... thing. We are now lodged in a palace belonging to the grand signior. I really think the manner of building here very agreeable, and proper for the country. 'Tis true, they are not at all solicitous to beautify the outsides of their houses, and they are generally built of wood; which, I own, is the cause of many inconveniencies; but this is not to be charged on the ill taste of the people, but on the oppression ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... gets here, he can hardly tear himself away; every inch of ground is utilized, or serves to beautify the place. The tobacco grown here has the most exquisite aroma, and, when properly treated, is a first-class product; the bee-hives look from a distance like a small town, with one-storied houses and many-shaped roofs. The ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... delight writ there with beauty's pen; Examine every married lineament And see how one another lends content, And what obscur'd in this fair volume lies Find written in the margent of his eyes. This precious book of love, this unbound lover, To beautify him, only lacks a cover. The fish lives in the sea, and 'tis much pride For fair without the fair within to hide. That book in many's eyes doth share the glory, That in gold clasps locks in the golden story." —Romeo and ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto thee, The rams of Nebaioth shall minister unto thee; They shall come up with acceptance on mine altar, And I will beautify the ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various

... plant, this evergreen tapestry of innumerable leaves, should cover and partly hide and partly reveal the "strange defeatures" the centuries have set on man's greatest works? I would have no ruin nor no old and noble building without it; for not only does it beautify decay, but from long association it has come to be in the mind a very part of such scenes and so interwoven with the human tragedy, that, like the churchyard yew, it seems the most human of ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... a wig, but it was one of the fussy kind, and made my head look as though guiltless of a comb or brush for many months. To beautify my complexion I smeared it over with soot, and when I regaled myself with a glance at our six by nine glass, I was satisfied that no living man could tell whether I was a dirty white ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... thus, right eloquent: 'Did you admire my lamp,' quoth he, 'As much as I your minstrelsy, You would abhor to do me wrong, As much as I to spoil your song: For 'twas the self-same Power Divine Taught you to sing, and me to shine; That you with music, I with light, Might beautify and cheer the night.' The songster heard this short oration, And warbling out his approbation, Released him, as my story tells, And ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... "I should not mind being a slave in my husband's house, and to him, if there were love to beautify and sanctify it. But it would not be slavery then, and now I am afraid that you, mother, have perhaps took it unkind that I did not tell you more about that shot. If so, let me make all good again between us by telling ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... for a long time, and then he, raising one of her hands, presses the palm against his lips. Looking up at him, she smiles, uncertainly but happily, a very rainbow of a smile, born of sunshine, and, raindrops gone, it seems to beautify her lips. But Felix, while acknowledging its charm, cannot smile back at her. It is all too strange, too new. He is afraid to believe. As yet there is something terrible to him in this happiness that has fallen ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... my dear child. You know that the rain which the clouds take from the lakes and rivers comes back to refresh and beautify our fields and gardens; and so it is with our little Nelly's good deeds and kind, loving words. She gives away more than a handful of violets, for with them goes a bright smile, which is like sunshine ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... the golden mines, Inestimable wares and precious stones, More worth than Asia and all the world beside; And from the Antarctic Pole eastward behold As much more land, which never was descried. Wherein are rocks of pearl that shine as bright As all the lamps that beautify the sky." ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... stranger entering a Bagobo house, in the absence of its owners, it appears that the people have little artistic development. He sees no paintings, no drawings, and few, if any, attempts to beautify the house with carvings. The pots sitting by the fire, show no decoration nor do the other household utensils exhibit embellishment of any kind. A closer study of the field baskets, however, shows a slight attempt to produce ornamentation by changing the weave of the central ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole

... to dress my hair and fasten my new kid boots, and otherwise bore me with endeavors to beautify me for my reception. It was a task, however, that was soon ended, and half an hour later I was seated in the drawing room below listening passively to the small talk of some very well dressed girls who had opened the list of ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... be many windows to your soul, That all the glory of the universe May beautify it. Not the narrow pane Of one poor creed can catch the radiant rays That shine from countless sources. Tear away The blinds of superstition; let the light Pour through fair windows broad as Truth itself ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... is just loaded down with nuts, except filberts. Last year I had so many filberts that I have half a ton left over yet. And I want to see people beautify the country. I started off one day with a thought that came to my head. I heard that there were a half a million widows and orphans buried in the Hudson Hill Cemetery. And I thought: Why, those dead people can be working; they can be doing something. Let them feed the roots of the Japanese ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various

... mould could be seen gleaming on the walls, as if it wished to give a little colour to the sombre surroundings. Great cobwebs flung their streaming banners from the beams and rafters overhead, whilst smaller ones, with delicate lace-like tracery, tried to beautify the corners of the windows, through which the light from the outside world struggled to ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan

... sold to the highest bidder. Gold and silver had been melted down in the Great Rebellion; but art treasures would not serve to pay soldiers or to buy ammunition; so these had escaped the melting-pot. At home and abroad the storehouses of curiosity merchants had been explored to beautify Lady Fareham's reception-rooms; and in the fading light Angela gazed upon hangings that were worthy of a royal palace, upon Italian crystals and Indian carvings, upon ivory and amber and jade and jasper, upon tables of Florentine mosaic, and ebony cabinets incrusted with rare agates, and upon pictures ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... expect his own ideal Evangeline or Sir Launfal to appear before him on the page, but every reflective mind will find, we think, such a parallelism between poetry and picture as is not only consistent with exactness, but will further serve to illuminate and beautify the text. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... I dare reveal my private woe, The secret blots of my imperfect heart, Nor strive to shrink or swell mine own desert, Nor beautify nor hide. For this I know, That even as I am, thou also art. Thou past heroic forms unmoved shalt go, To pause and bide with me, to whisper low: "Not I alone am weak, not I apart Must suffer, struggle, conquer day by day. Here is my very cross by ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... prosperity and embellishment of Ceylon, or with any undertaking for the permanent improvement of the island. Unlike the Gangetic race, who were the earliest colonists, and with whom originated every project for enriching and adorning the country, the Malabars aspired not to beautify or enrich, but to impoverish and deface;—and nothing can more strikingly bespeak the inferiority of the southern race than the single fact that everything tending to exalt and to civilise, in the early condition of Ceylon, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... from the Revolution with a strong desire to beautify his estate, a desire in part due no doubt to seeing beautiful homes elsewhere and to contact with cultured people, both Americans and foreigners. One of his first tasks was to rebuild and enlarge his house. From a small house of eight ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth

... superfluous, smooths and polishes what is rough, and never desists until he has given it all the beauty his art is able to effect. In this manner must you proceed, by lopping what is luxuriant, directing what is oblique, and, by purgation, illustrating what is obscure, and thus continue to polish and beautify your statue until the divine splendour of Virtue shines upon you, and Temperance seated in pure and holy majesty rises to your view. If you become thus purified residing in yourself, and having nothing any longer to impede this unity of mind, and no farther mixture to be found within, ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus

... muttered Gabriel, 'that's out of the 'Prentice's Garland or the 'Prentice's Delight, or the 'Prentice's Warbler, or the Prentice's Guide to the Gallows, or some such improving textbook. Now he's going to beautify himself—here's ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... that he became one of the greatest botanists of his day. In autumn, when his farm labors were finished for the year, he journeyed extensively about the colonies, gathering specimens with which to beautify his grounds. His greatest enjoyment in life was to make his collection of rare species ever more complete, and his remarkable accomplishments in this direction, despite many handicaps, entitle him to be known as the father of American botanists. After Bartram's ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins

... increase efficiency. A woman in her home where calls are infrequent may hide her telephone behind a lacquered screen or cover it with pink taffeta ruffles, but in a business office it is best to make no attempts to beautify it. It is when it is unadorned that the ugly little instrument gives ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney



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