"Extravagance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you had afterwards made many additions to the work, but nothing to the price, and that he had therefore given it up. I quite approve by Hercules, of your making the additions you had determined upon; although the villa as it stands seems to have the air of a philosopher, meant to rebuke the extravagance of other villas. Yet, after all, that addition will be pleasing. I praised your landscape gardener: he has so covered everything with ivy, both the foundation-wall of the villa and the spaces between ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... finally that she may lead them to the salvation which she offers to all beings in the Universe."[580] The two edicts are not consistent but such inconsistency is no reproach to a statesman nor wholly illogical. The Emperor reprimands extravagance in doctrine and ceremonial and commends Confucianism to his subjects as all that is necessary for good life and good government, but when he finds that Buddhism conduces to the same end he accords his patronage and politely admits the ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... will not be another sale," exclaimed Horace Walpole, "for I have not an inch of room nor a farthing left." A woman once bought an old door-plate with "Thompson" on it because she thought it might come in handy some time. The habit of buying what you don't need because it is cheap encourages extravagance. "Many have been ruined by buying ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... into the domestic consumption of all those who dwell near the water, in that part of the country; and, on that particular occasion, the uncle had, in the lightness of his heart, indulged in what, for him, was a piece of extravagance. In all such regions there are broken-down, elderly men, who live by taking fish. Liquor has usually been their great enemy, and all have the same generic character of laziness, shiftless and ill-regulated exertions, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... the labourers of the rural districts are as industrious as our own peasants (and that, too, in a very different temperature), as economical, provident, and orderly, though more hospitable and more charitable. If the lower orders in the towns have become addicted to extravagance, idleness, and mendicity, it is because they have discovered the impossibility, even by the most heroic efforts and the most rigid economy, of gaining either capital or independence or position. Let us not confound discouragement ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... shame, left the church crying bitterly, and I, feeling real sympathy for her, could not help saying aloud to Stephano that he was a madman. I ran after the girl to offer her my consolations, but she had disappeared, and could not be induced to join us at dinner. This piece of extravagance on the part of the monk exasperated me to such an extent that I felt a very strong inclination to thrash him. In the presence of all the family I told him that he was an impostor, and the infamous destroyer of the poor child's honour; I challenged him to explain his reasons for ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... spent! And then, what was given away did not do a quarter of the good it might have done, because I did not go and give it myself, and kind words with it, which are far more comforting than food or money. And if you will believe me, Edward, extravagance has become such a habit with me, that though I resolved last quarter to be economical and save up something for the new church, I had hardly anything left at the end of it. It is true I did teach at the school a little, and visit a few people, but what is that compared to what ...
— Adventures of a Sixpence in Guernsey by A Native • Anonymous
... study of the Holy Scriptures led Grotius to examine a question which made much noise at that time. Some Protestant Synods had ventured to decide that the Pope was Antichrist; and this extravagance, gravely delivered by the Ministers, was regarded by the zealous Schismatics as a fundamental truth. Grotius undertook to overturn such an absurd opinion, that stirred up an irreconcileable enmity between ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... all the formality of official despatches. In obedience to the summons, there was a general gathering of rank, wealth and beauty, and the wide door of the province-house had seldom given admittance to more numerous and honorable guests than on the evening of Lady Eleanore's ball. Without much extravagance of eulogy, the spectacle might even be termed splendid, for, according to the fashion of the times, the ladies shone in rich silks and satins outspread over wide-projecting hoops, and the gentlemen glittered ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was good, but tepid—he was commonplace. Had he loved the New Testament and the Saviour of mankind, he would have fought Hawes tooth and nail; he could not have helped it. But he did not love either; he only liked them—he was commonplace. When the thief cursed this man, he was guilty of an extravagance as well as a crime; the man was not ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... reached Naples, the marquis was yet living, but expired a few days after his arrival, leaving the count heir to the small possessions which remained from the extravagance of their ancestors. ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... others lands, from the time their ancestors came into Oude, a thousand years ago, except when they were united in resistance against the common enemy, the governor or ruler of the country—that one family got weak by the subdivision of the lands, among many sons or brothers, or by extravagance, or misfortune, while another became powerful, by keeping the lands undivided, and by parsimony and prudence; and the strong increased their possessions by seizing upon the lands of the weak, by violence, fraud or collusion with the local authorities—that the same ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... interposed the Young Doctor, who thought that Kitty, in her humorous extravagance, was treading very dangerous ground indeed. He was thinking of Crozier and Kitty; but Kitty was thinking of Crozier, and meaning John Sibley. Somehow she could not help playing with this torturing thing in the presence ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... anything Jehoiakim would do for himself or for Judah. Even while Josiah lived, the crown prince showed the type of man he was. Instead of applying himself to the work of succeeding to the throne, he spent his time in riotous pleasure, and his father's money in lavish extravagance. ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... dissatisfaction over the extravagance and inefficiency of our city governments, people's attention was first drawn to the rapid and alarming increase of city indebtedness in various parts of the country. A heavy debt may ruin a city as surely as an individual, for it raises ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... same restaurant as before the city's fall! Again the big grapes which are a luxury of the rich man's table or an extravagance for a sick friend with us! The hothouses still grew them. What else was there for he hothouses to do, though the export of their products was impossible? A shortage of the long, white-leafed chicory that we call endive in New York restaurants? There were piles of it in the ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... very inconsistency with her burst of youthful spirits. It was another face that he saw,—older and matured with an intensity of abstraction that struck a chill to his heart. It was not HIS Sue that was standing there, but another Sue, wrought, as it seemed to his morbid extravagance, by some ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... words, which first rose into popularity in 1835—the words rococo and decousu. All things which bore the stamp of the principles and sentiments of former generations were branded as rococo. Whatever partook of the extravagance of the Romantic school was termed decousu. Eventually this latter word was abandoned as wanting in vigour, and at first that of debraille was substituted; afterwards that of Bohemian, which, despite the injurious insinuation it conveyed, has been accepted and adopted ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... town and city might be authorized to undertake the improvement of its own harbor, and to tax its own commerce for the prosecution of the work. Under such a system the dangers of misuse and improper diversion of funds would be reduced to a minimum. The system would be self-regulative. Negligence, or extravagance, with the necessary imposition of higher duties, would punish a port by driving ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... from one extravagance to another, sinks deeper; everything he tries begins to fail him, and his doom approaches.—He begins to amuse himself with Zerlina, the young bride of a peasant, named Masetto, but each time, when he seems all but successful in his aim of seducing the little coquette, his enemies, who have united ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... unwilling to enfeeble his true valour with the tainted sweetness of sophisticated foreign dainties, or break the rule of antique plainness by such strange idolatries of the belly. He was also very wroth that they should go, to the extravagance of having the same meat both roasted and boiled at the same meal; for he considered an eatable which was steeped in the vapours of the kitchen, and which the skill of the cook rubbed over with many kinds of flavours, in ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... that luxurious living, extravagant dressing, splendid turn-outs and fine houses, are the cause of distress to a nation, No more erroneous impression could exist. Every extravagance that the man of 100.000 or 1,000,000 dollars indulges in, adds to the means, the support, the wealth of ten or a hundred who had little or nothing else but their labor, their intellect, or their taste. If a man of 1,000,000 dollars spends principal ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Prairie," we do not see. It is rather a big and an affected name for such a slight thing. But it is bright and pleasant, and well suited to the needs of those who cannot fix their attention long upon any subject. We regret to see in it marks of that extravagance and affectation in the use of language which are such common blemishes of style in our ephemeral literature. For example: a very sensible and much needed plea for the preservation of birds, is called "The Massacre of the Innocents;" ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... the red-carpeted steps and out into the palm-lined Place, at that hour thronged by the smartest crowd in Europe. Indeed, the war seemed to have led to increased extravagance and daring in the dress of those gay Parisiennes, those butterflies of fashion who were everywhere along the ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... every patient she passed, and left many in tears. After a thorough examination, he earnestly besought her to take the next boat to Grand Canary. Still she shrank from the prospect. It was a selfish thing to do; there were others more in need of a holiday than she, it was a piece of extravagance, it would involve closing up the stations. And yet might it not be meant? Might it not be of the nature of a good investment? Might she not be able for better work? Might it not do away with the necessity for a furlough in the following year? ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... the Thesaurus has described)—Ver. 10. Cook has the following appropriate remark upon this passage: "In the 'Thesaurus,' or 'Treasure' of Luscus Lavinius, a young fellow, having wasted his estate by his extravagance, sends a servant to search his father's monument: but he had before sold the ground on which the monument was, to a covetous old man; to whom the servant applies to help him open the monument; in which they discover a hoard and a letter. ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... directed to the prevention of waste or extravagance, and good results appear from the report to have already ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... sought to lift the mask from the timid selfishness which too often with us bears the name of Respectability. Purposely avoiding all attraction that may savour of extravagance, patiently subduing every tone and every hue to the aspect of those whom we meet daily in our thoroughfares, I have shown in Robert Beaufort the man of decorous phrase and bloodless action—the systematic self-server— in whom the world forgive the lack ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... were gazing or gossiping round about the royal remains. I would rather be quietly consigned to the grave by a few who cared for me (if any such there might be) than be the object of all this parade and extravagance. The procession moving slowly through close ranks of Horse and Foot Guards holding tapers and torches in their hands, whilst at intervals the bands played a dead march, had, however, a very imposing effect. The service was intolerably long and tedious, and miserably read by ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... cultivation of emotional expression is suspicious, if not dangerous; it leads to eccentricity, to the revelation of feelings which frequently are not worth experiencing, to sentimental flabbiness, to riot and extravagance. Perhaps in dread of the ridiculous the Classical school represses itself too far, creating characters of marble instead of flesh. These creations are at least worth looking at and bring no shame; they are better than the spectral psychological ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... aristocratic society of the time, and Shakespeare may have been aping the tone of his betters in putting to show a most lavish generosity. But even if his social superiors encouraged him in a wasteful extravagance, it must be admitted that Shakespeare betters their teaching. The lord was riotously lavish, no doubt, because he had money, or could get it without much trouble; but, put in Antonio's position, he would not press his ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... I learned that the Brunners had asked this nephew to come to them, and had sent him money to defray his expenses from Switzerland to California. Upon his arrival in Sonoma, he had settled himself in the proffered home, and at once begun a life of extravagance, at the expense of his relatives. He was repeatedly warned against trifling with their affection, and wasting their hard-earned riches. Then patience ceased, and he was forbidden the ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... alone excepted; for she grows young again every year in the spring. She is never wanting to men; but foolish men are wanting to themselves in neglecting to cultivate her. It is through their laziness and extravagance they suffer brambles and briars to grow instead of grapes and corn. They contend for a good they let perish. The conquerors leave uncultivated the ground for the possession of which they have sacrificed the lives ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... by one, certain ladies of particularly elastic virtue, who fondly dreamed that they 'managed' him; and among these, to her infinite rage and despair, went Madame Vantine, wife of Vantine the winegrower, a yellow-haired, sensual "femelle d'homme," whose extravagance in clothes, and reckless indecency in conversation, combined with the King's amused notice, and the super- excellence of her husband's wines, had for a brief period made her 'the rage' among a certain set ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... has the right to all our work; but yet there are heights of Christian consecration and self-sacrifice which a man will not be blamed if he has not climbed, and will be praised if he has. What we want, if I might venture to say so, is extravagance of service. Judas may say, 'To what purpose is this waste?' but Jesus will say, He 'hath wrought a good work on Me,' and the fragrance of the ointment will smell sweet ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... costumes; the feeling of the company was that Mr. Carmine was a mullah. The aunt-like lady with the noble nose stood out amidst these levities in a black silk costume with a gold chain. She refused, it seemed, to make herself absurd, though she encouraged the others to extravagance by nods and enigmatical smiles. Nevertheless she had put pink ribbons in her cap. A family of father, golden-haired mother, and two young daughters, sympathetically attired, had just arrived, and were discarding their outer wrappings with the ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... proficiency in those inquiries which he would proscribe as dangerous. After all, we can discover no more reason why sciolists in metaphysics should bring that study into discredit, than that religion itself should be disparaged through the extravagance of fanaticism. To have met the subject fully, he ought to have shewn that not only those opinions which he controverts are erroneous, but that all the systems of ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... unregulated and socially dangerous neglect of this class of unfortunates. Doctor Goddard's "Kallikak Family" and many other accurate showings of what it costs to leave uncared for one feeble-minded girl in unbefriended freedom should convince any sane person that the most wasteful extravagance any community can commit is such neglect of what Mr. Johnson has called "the ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... active, that ever informed a human frame. His love of beauty was entirely free from weakness; his love of truth untinged by severity; his industry constant, without impatience; his workmanship accurate, without formalism; his temper serene, and yet playful; his imagination exhaustless, without extravagance; and his faith firm, without superstition. I do not know, in the annals of art, such another example of happy, practical, unerring, ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... the 'mighty line' is still felt as the unit. All his volubility, his extravagance, his passion, his occasional tenderness did but develop the line to its fullest possibilities; the larger unit of the long harmonious period or 'blank verse paragraph' is rare and exceptional with him, though credit is due him for ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... was a soft creature, without this apology for extravagance, and what right had she to letters addressed to "Miss Fleming?" The farmer prepared to ask a question, and was further instigated to it by seeing Mrs. Sumfit's eyes roll sympathetic under a burden of overpowering curiosity and bewilderment. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... throwing up handfuls of dirt in the extravagance of their delight, and before Bill could realize the enormity of the sell one of his own partisans rose up and kicked the cracker box out from under him in token of utter defeat. For an hour after their precipitate retreat the visitors could hear the whoops ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... over, it became unpleasantly clear that he could not prosecute the campaign more than a very few days longer. Then he took out his pipe, and, filling it carefully, broke off a sulphur match from the block in his pocket. He felt that this was an extravagance, but he was in need just then of consolation. He had wandered up on the mountain, past the reservoir and the M'Gill University, after a singularly discouraging afternoon, to wait until supper should be ready at ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... would be a better statesman. Now, I do not repeat that in this place because I agree with it, but because it helps to illustrate, as sometimes a violent paradox will help to illustrate, a truth that does not lie all at once on the surface. But it is no paradox or extravagance or anything but the simple truth to say that if Little- Faith had had more and earlier discoveries made to him of the innate evil of his own heart, even if it had been by that innate evil bursting out of his heart ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... strength to the nation, showing it its weak spots and the remedy for removing them. It is a movement of self-reliance. It is the mightiest force for revolutionising opinion and stimulating thought. It is a movement of self-imposed suffering and therefore possesses automatic checks against extravagance or impatience. The capacity of the nation for suffering regulates its advance towards freedom. It isolates the force of evil by refraining from participation in it, ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... dissatisfied. Sri Yukteswar was never at a loss, never dismayed by unexpected visitors; scanty food would emerge a banquet under his resourceful direction. Yet he was economical; his modest funds went far. "Be comfortable within your purse," he often said. "Extravagance will buy you discomfort." Whether in the details of hermitage entertainment, or his building and repair work, or other practical concerns, Master manifested the originality of ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... Tacitus. But we may perhaps trace a similar Vergilian reaction in the verse of Silius, Statius, and Valerius.[84] Their faults do not nauseate to the same extent of those of their predecessors. But the mischief was done, and in point of extravagance and meretricious taste the differense ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... are to the same effect, but they prohibit horse-play, and the extravagance of tournaments. "Ultramontane" scholars are those from north, "Cismontane," those from south, of ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... set himself to raise the people to open resistance against their oppressors, while he disarmed the suspicions of the nobles by intentional buffoonery and extravagance of conduct. On May 20, 1347, the first blow was struck. Rienzi, with a chosen band of conspirators, and accompanied by the papal vicar, who had every interest in weakening the baronage, proceeded to the Capitol, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Meister" were written in Italy, and after Goethe's return, and the book was published in 1795. Goethe had long since outlived the extravagance of sentimentalism which overflowed in "Werther." He had himself ridiculed it in a little farce, much laughed at at the time. And if "Wilhelm Meister" were taken merely as a story, it would be found quite free ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... she died of a broken heart. When he grew up, the same character followed him. We need not be surprised, then, that, in the most critical period of his country's history, he betrayed his trust. He was a General in the American Army, in the Revolutionary War; and by his extravagance, and his overbearing behavior, he brought upon himself a reprimand from the American Congress. His temper, naturally impetuous, had never been controlled, and he could not bear reproof. He was bent on revenge; and to accomplish it, he entered into a negotiation, through Major Andre, ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... Boswell describes not only the witticism but the joyous gusto with which it was uttered. On no subject is the great talker's amazing ingeniousness of retort more conspicuous. When Boswell most justly criticized the absurd extravagance of his famous sentence about the death of Garrick eclipsing the gaiety of nations, Johnson replied, "I could not have said more nor less. It is the truth; eclipsed, not extinguished; and his death did eclipse; it ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... 'An impossibility! a monstrous extravagance! a thing unheard of! mania! mania!' he muttered. 'You are aware, sir, that you have been doing your worst to destroy the settled arrangements of my family? What does it mean? In common reason you cannot indulge any legitimate hope of succeeding. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 'Life' don't say," chuckled the Squire. "Why, Miranda, I do it for Marcia! There's never but one first day to an engagement. You know that as well as I do." In saying this, Squire Gaylord gave way to his repressed emotion in an extravagance. He suddenly stooped over and kissed his wife; but he spared her confusion by going out to his office at once, where he ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... both by the growing formality of life and the large increase in the numbers of the resident household, but tending, when once adopted, to draw the father of the family into that most useless type of extravagance which takes the form of a craze for building. The Hall or Atrium had once been practically the house. It opened on the street. It contained the family bed and the kitchen fire. The smoke passed through a hole in the roof and begrimed the family portraits ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... many successive generations to play a conspicuous role, first at the Court of Provence and later at the Court of France. The grandfather and father of the present Marquis lived to see the end of this proverbial opulence. They both led careers of extravagance and dissipation, taking part in all the gayeties and follies of the court. The grandfather was one of the favorite companions of Philippe d'Orleans; and wine, cards and women killed him when he should have been still in ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... strange reverse of fate must sure attend This vast profusion, this extravagance Of heaven, to bless me thus. 'Tis gold so pure, It cannot bear the stamp, without alloy.— Be kind, ye powers! and take but half away: With ease the gifts of fortune I resign; But let my love and ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... day, as we moved towards the city, our master-carrier, who was naturally well-disposed, and had been very kind to us all the way upon the road, advised me, very seriously, not to think of remaining in St Jago, where he said there was nothing but extravagance, vice, and folly, but to proceed on with them as mule-driver, which, he said, I should soon be very expert at; and that they led an innocent and happy life, far preferable to any enjoyment such a great city as that before us could afford. I thanked him, and told ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... agriculture offering something new at every step, and often things worth our imitation. But the accounts from our country give me to believe, that we are not in a condition to hope for the imitation of any thing good. All my letters are filled with details of our extravagance. From these accounts, I look back to the time of the war, as a time of happiness and enjoyment, when amidst the privation of many things not essential to happiness, we could not run in debt, because nobody would trust us; when we practised, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... should severally display every piece to her grandmother, and hold against her complexion the rich stuffs to see if the colours suited her. Madam Cavendish was pleased to express her satisfaction with them all, though with some demur at the extravagance. "'Tis rich enough a wardrobe for my Lady Culpeper," said she, at which innocent shrewdness I was driven to hard straits to keep my face grave, but Mistress Catherine was looking on with a countenance as calm as the moon which was ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... work began immediately after the four-o'clock dinner. Of all field-sports hunting was the favorite; and, of course, horses and hounds helped to run away with estates as well as cards and claret. Great pomp, however, of a certain semi-barbaric kind was the crowning extravagance. Everybody drove four horses,—the loftier grandees invariably six,—with due accompaniment of outriders and running footmen. Dresses, jewels, and lace were of course in keeping with the equipage, albeit the furniture of the finest houses was what we should deem a strange mixture of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... his brothers, horrified at this extravagance, 'are you mad? How do you ever mean ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... little Bonton Tootems enjoys their fragrance. Don't ever ask me again. I have completed the mural decoration with futurist extravagance in the color ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... in ocean's night, Like sunbeams radiantly bright, Thy strange and wonder-working ways Defeat extravagance of praise. ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... color against a dark yew hedge. The hedge was neatly clipped and the turf was very smooth. By and by Mordaunt turned and glanced about the room, which he knew well. Whitelees was modern, and although Mrs. Halliday sometimes grumbled about her poverty, its furniture and decoration indicated extravagance. Mordaunt, however, thought there was too much ornament and doubted if some of the pottery was genuine. The room was pretty, but he was a connoisseur and was not satisfied with prettiness. He liked Langrigg better than Whitelees. Langrigg was austere ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... foreign policy, and of James Buchanan, who, known to us as a spineless seeker after peace where there was no peace, was at this time riding into national leadership on a wave of expansionist enthusiasm. Buchanan and Palmerston mutually shook the stage thunder of verbal extravagance, but probably neither intended war. Poker was at this time the national American game, and bluff was a highly developed art. The American player won a partial victory. In 1856 Great Britain agreed to withdraw her protectorate over the Mosquitoes, to acknowledge the supremacy of Honduras ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... head is piled with laces and ribbons, whose dress is a mass of embroidery, and who is booted and gloved and otherwise oppressed by parental vanity and extravagance, is not picturesque, any further than its face goes. The portrait painter will cling to the face and let the clothes alone. All this I trickery of art, brought into comparison or contrast with the simple beauty of nature, is offensive. Yet a little ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... an unknown genius. Even the colonist car, which has done noble service in later days in the peopling of the Prairie West, was only in the early stages of its evolution. The purpose of immigrant trains was to move people. To supply comforts as well as locomotion was an extravagance ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... reader, thou hast already discovered Paul; and now we have to delight thee with a piece of unexampled morality in the excellent MacGrawler. That worthy Mentor, perceiving that there was an inherent turn for dissipation and extravagance in our hero, resolved magnanimously rather to bring upon himself the sins of treachery and malappropriation than suffer his friend and former pupil to incur those of wastefulness and profusion. Contrary therefore to the agreement made with ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "duds"—a changeable-silk skirt of her mother's over one, a moth-eaten camel's-hair shawl over another. The crack in the only mirror which a munificent landlord had provided was concealed by a kinikinick vine; a piece of Turkey-red at five cents a yard, their one bit of extravagance, converted Dan's cot-bed into a canopy of state. And having heard Dan chant the praises of her "ideas" with gratifying persistence for a month past, Polly had begun to wonder whether they might not be ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... all extravagance and mannerism, and be not over-timid at the outset. Be discreet and sparing of your words. Awkwardness is a great misfortune, but it is not an unpardonable fault. To deserve the reputation of moving in good society, something more is requisite than the avoidance of blunt rudeness. Strictly keep ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... the Romans maple wood, when knotted and veined, was highly prized for furniture. When boards large enough for constructing tables were found, the extravagance of purchasers was incredible: to such an extent was it carried, that when a Roman accused his wife of expending his money on pearls, jewels, or similar costly trifles, she used to retort, and turn the tables on her husband. Hence our expression ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... civilized community—spend his money recklessly. He went back to the hotel, called Donna on the long-distance phone and frittered away two dollars in inconsequential conversation. However, he felt amply rewarded for the extravagance when Donna's voice—deep, throaty, almost a baritone—came to him over the wire; the delighted, almost childish cry of amazement which greeted his "Hello, Donna girl" was music to ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... he in to luncheon. That was rank extravagance because he was paying at pension rates. His extravagance, however, was no affair of hers. Neither, she informed herself frigidly, was his appearance or his non-appearance. It was only rather dull of Jack to lose ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... ladies, who have drawing-rooms in which the things are pretty, good, and dear to you, think of what it would be to have two bailiffs rummaging among them with pen and ink-horn, making a catalogue preparatory to a sheriff's auction; and all without fault or extravagance of your own! There were things there that had been given to her by Lady Lufton, by Lady Meredith, and other friends, and the idea did occur to her that it might be possible to save them from contamination; but she would not say a word, lest by ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... his wives complained to Ali that Euphrosyne usurped their rights and caused their husband to neglect them. Ali, who complained greatly of his sons' extravagance, and regretted the money they squandered, at once struck a blow which was both to enrich himself and increase ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... scarlet galley in the middle distance, of which the chief use is to unite the two figures by a point of color. Both the saints are respectable Venetians of the lower class, in homely dresses and with homely faces. The whole picture is quietly painted, and somewhat slightly; free from all extravagance, and displaying little power except in the general truth or harmony of colors so easily laid on. It is better preserved than usual, and worth dwelling upon as an instance of the style of the master when ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... was, it did not take her long to understand that the household was managed—or allowed to run on—with the utmost extravagance and waste. She had prevailed upon Kate to set the greater part of the big house in order and to keep it tidy, and she tried to induce her to be less wasteful and reckless. But the girl was developing a certain ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... of youth, of rendering that stooping form upright and strong, of restoring fire to those glazing eyes, and beauty to that wrinkled, sunken, withered countenance—of endowing thee, in a word, with a fresh tenure of existence and making that existence sweet by the aid of treasures so vast that no extravagance ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... those which relate to the past, the future, and the remote. These effects have sometimes been produced by the worst superstitions that ever existed; but the Catholic religion, even in the time of its utmost extravagance and atrocity, never wholly lost the spirit of the Great Teacher, whose precepts form the noblest code, as His conduct furnished the purest example, of moral excellence. It is of all religions the most poetical. The ancient superstitions furnished the fancy ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... robbed of ideas by Bastiat, and who retook his own, not without inflicting punishment. He was a handsome, black-eyed, white-haired man, with a very piercing glance. During the war, when men were sad and dull, and indeed till his death, Mr. Carey's one glorious and friendly extravagance was to assemble every Sunday afternoon all his intimates, including any distinguished strangers, at his house, round a table, in rooms magnificently hung with pictures, and give everybody, ad libitum, hock which ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... symbol and expression of truth. Moderation is brought into disrepute, and justice, fairness, and honesty of opinion tendered as rare as they are difficult of attainment. The manner in which John Brown has been spoken of affords the plainest illustration of these facts. Extravagance in condemnation has been answered by extravagance in praise of his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... metaphor occur in several passages,—e.g. parocheteuein logois; ta men os tithemena ta d os paratithemena; oinos kolazomenos upo nephontos eterou theou; the plays on the word nomos nou dianome, ode etara: fourthly, there is a foolish extravagance of language in other passages,—'the swinish ignorance of arithmetic;' 'the justice and suitableness of the discourse on laws;' over-emphasis; 'best of Greeks,' said of all the Greeks, and the like: fifthly, poor ...
— Laws • Plato
... any distinctions between his attainments in algebra and their own. Neither did his poverty count against him with them. He sawed wood in every spare hour with desperate energy to make up for the sinful extravagance of his new fifteen ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... one other thing I wanted to ask," he said as he rose. "Is your allowance sufficient? It has sometimes occurred to me that you wanted more—for some feminine extravagance." ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... an equal play of such oppositions the book gathers an intensity that fairly adds to the dramatic—though the latter is supposed to be the sum of all intensities; or that has at any rate nothing to fear from juxtaposition with it. I consciously fail to shrink in fact from that extravagance—I risk it rather, for the sake of the moral involved; which is not that the particular production before us exhausts the interesting questions it raises, but that the Novel remains still, under the right persuasion, the most independent, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... Service together, and, on returning together to England, had started their conjuring business, first of all in Sloane Street, and subsequently in the Kingsway. From the very start their enterprise had met with success, and, had it not been for Davenport's wild extravagance, they would have been little short of millionaires. But Davenport, though a most lovable character in every respect, could not keep money—he no sooner had it than it was gone. His house in Sydenham was little short of a palace; whilst, it was said, he almost rivalled royalty, ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... house had not run into that extravagance of architecture which has lately become so common in our hotels. It was simply an ordinary house, with the words "Macpherson's Hotel" painted on a semi-circular board over the doorway. The front parlour had been converted into a bar, and in the back parlour the Macphersons lived. The staircase ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... impatiently from her pocket and handed it to him. As he read Daddy's characteristic extravagance and recognized the familiar idiosyncrasies of his old companions, he was unable to restrain a smile. He raised his eyes, to meet with surprise the fair stranger's leveled eyebrows and brightly indignant eyes, in which, ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... the tribunes and people was well nigh terminating in an extravagance of a by no means salutary tendency, a conspiracy being formed among the tribunes to have the same tribunes re-elected, and in order that their ambition might be the less conspicuous, to continue their office to the consuls. They pleaded, as a cause, the combination of the patricians by ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... probably resulting from this, which had been made in one of General Jackson's presidential messages.[324] In his later years the United States became his ideal, and he never tired of comparing its cheap and honest enactment with the corruption and extravagance at home. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... the reader on his guard against the assault of temptation. Mr. Moore has no such apology;—he takes care to intimate to us, in every page that the raptures which he celebrates do not spring from the excesses of an innocent love, or the extravagance of a romantic attachment; but are the unhallowed fruits of cheap and vulgar prostitution, the inspiration of casual amours, and the chorus of habitual debauchery. He is at pains to let the world know that he is still fonder of roving, than of loving; and that all the Caras ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... you drag me into a quarrel," said Venetia; "you are putting things into my mouth. I think mad extravagance is worse than intoxication, inasmuch as it is committed by reasonable people uninfluenced by drugs or alcohol. I think insults levelled at inoffensive people are worse than the wildest deeds committed under the influence of ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... by Gay to his duchess, or read after dinner to a party composed of Swift, Bolingbroke, and Congreve. That imaginary audience is always looking over his shoulder, applauding a good hit, chuckling over allusions to the last bit of scandal, and ridiculing any extravagance tending ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... and money burnt in his pocket; he wondered, as they toddled through the quadrangle and along the street, whether East would be insulted if he suggested further extravagance, as he had not sufficient faith in a pennyworth of potatoes. At last ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... pain at the thought of parting from money on such a scale. His earlier plans concerning Maggie had never contemplated any such extravagance. But he was silenced by the dominant force ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... which would have kept the whole family for two days. Pardon me, my God, pardon me, I beseech Thee, and receive the vow that I make never to fall into the same fault again. In future I will live even more abstemiously than I usually do, so as to repair the fatal traces in my poor cash-box of my extravagance, and not to be obliged to ask money of my mother before the day when she thinks of sending ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... resources were always being drained by relations other than those of his own immediate household, and on behalf of whom it is generally admitted that he worked himself to death, rode and hunted, as he said, not from extravagance, but in order that he might be fit and able to do his work. And his riding, which was a necessity to himself, was not less indispensable to Punch, for a very considerable amount of the Paper's support in the Country depends upon his "horsey ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... a thing that they had always wanted to do, but it needed the great excitement of a funeral pyre and a parting from a beloved Phoenix to screw them up to the extravagance. ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... as they consoom constant! The waste! The extravagance! Th' beer an' wine an' sperrits they swaller! Them is sure the thirstiest menials ever I heard tell of! An' the butler—such airs, such a appetite! An' sherry an' bitters t' make it worse! Lord, Mr. Geoffrey, your servants sure is ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... writing there need be no fear of speaking with extravagance; he had made himself, especially in his later work, through long practice and his inborn instinct for the significant and the fresh aspect, quite the best of all contemporary correspondents and reporters; and his rivals in the ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various
... mark the sufficiently modest beginning of his literary career. His enthusiasm for German literature was not at first tempered by any critical discrimination, if we may judge from the opinions of one or two of his friends who labored to point out to him the extravagance and false sentiment which he was too ready to admire along with the real genius of some of his models.[31] Apparently their efforts were useful, for in a review written in 1806 we find Scott, in a remark ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... left entirely dependent on the tender mercies of his successor. An unfortunate lawsuit had deprived his mother of the property which had become hers on the death of his father, and his own reckless extravagance had dissipated more than the annual revenue of his own property since it came into ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... great virtues, they naturally border on some imperfection; and it is often hard to distinguish exactly where the virtue ends, or the fault begins. As prudence may sometimes sink to suspicion, so may a great judgment decline to coldness; and as magnanimity may run up to profusion or extravagance, so may a great invention to redundancy or wildness. If we look upon Homer in this view, we shall perceive the chief objections against him to proceed from so noble a cause as the ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... countenance, and her behaviour to all the company, Harry included, was perfectly kind and cordial. She praised the cook this time, declared the fricassee was excellent, and that there were no eels anywhere like those in the Castlewood moats; would not allow that the wine was corked, or hear of such extravagance as opening a fresh bottle for a useless old woman like her; gave Madam Esmond Warrington, of Virginia, as her toast, when the new wine was brought, and hoped Harry had brought away his mamma's permission to take back an English wife with him. He did not remember his grandmother; her, Madame ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sofa when she returned from her rambles through the city, and gave a sufficiently strict account of what had happened. This was done light-heartedly and with touches of burlesque and extravagance at first; but the reports grew presently to have a more serious tone, and latterly Kitty had been so absent at times that she would fall into a puzzled silence in the midst of her narration; or else she would meet a long procession of skilfully marshalled questions with a flippancy ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... trick she had played. Jimmie had committed an extravagance, treating her to a new dress out of his increased earnings: a gorgeous contrivance of several colours, looking like silk, even if it wasn't. Lizzie had stated that the cost was fifteen dollars, and he, the dupe, had believed it! ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... director of Punsonby's Store, was a man of simple tastes. He had a horror of extravagance and it was his boast that he had never ridden in a taxi-cab save as the guest of some other person who paid. He travelled by tube or omnibus from the Bayswater Road, where he lived what he described as his private life. He lunched in the staff dining-room, punctiliously paying his ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... Egypt were in a most unsatisfactory condition. The army was wholly unreliable, and extravagance in high places had brought the exchequer to the verge of bankruptcy. In 1882 matters reached a crisis. A revolution broke out, headed by Arabi Pasha, and the situation looked desperate. Joint naval and ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... pageant all the trappings for two horses, worked in two hundred pounds of silver by Pollajuolo; thirty pounds of pearls were also used to trim the garments of the sergeants. No wonder Savonarola was enthusiastic in his denunciation of such extravagance. ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... sure of possessing the same aptitude. Unused tothe expression of personal emotion, she fluctuated between the impulse to pour out all she felt and the fear lest her extravagance should amuse or even bore him. She never lost the sense that what was to her the central crisis of experience must be a mere episode in a life so predestined as his to romantic accidents. All that she felt and said would be subjected to the test of comparison with what others ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... the entertainments of the theatre has been one cause of destroying that legitimate comedy, which such critics require. The eye, which has been accustomed to delight in paintings of caricature, regards a picture from real life as an insipid work. The extravagance of farce has given to the Town a taste for the pleasant convulsion of hearty laughter, and smiles are contemned, as the tokens of ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... under the church there is still a large double coffin, in which, according to tradition, lies a chain of gold of incalculable value. Some twenty years ago, the owner of Mellenthin, whose unequalled extravagance had reduced him to the verge of beggary, attempted to open the coffin in order to take out this precious relic, but he was not able. It appeared as if some powerful spell held it firmly together; and ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... extension of the suffrage in Prussia (though not its equalization), the equalization of the Reichstag electoral districts, and the reduction of the tariff that supports the agrarian landlords and large capitalists, put a halt to some of the excesses of military extravagance (though not to militarism), institute a government responsible to the Reichstag, provide government employment for the unemployed, and later take up the other industrial and labor reforms of capitalist collectivism as inaugurated in other countries, together ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... Victuals enough had been laid in to feed a regiment, and the variety of them was endless. But Old Colonial, once having given way to the mania of extravagance, was determined to lay under contribution every conceivable thing, and to turn out more dishes than even an American palace hotel would put on its bill ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... and followed them by a coon dance the like of which was not to be seen elsewhere in New York; for into it the child threw such an abandonment of enthusiasm that she carried herself and her audience to the verge of extravagance—the one in ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... greatest freedom of style and treatment was reached, the prevailing genius of architecture still enforced a certain calmness and continence in the statue. As soon as the statue was begun for itself, and with no reference to the temple or palace, the art began to decline: freak, extravagance, and exhibition, took the place of the old temperance. This balance-wheel, which the sculptor found in architecture, the perilous irritability of poetic talent found in the accumulated dramatic materials to which the people were already wonted, and which had a certain ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... voyager who records the fact, chuckles over it hugely; as evincing the simplicity of those heathens; not knowing that he himself was the simpleton; since that currency of theirs was purposely devised by the men, to check the extravagance of their women; cocoanuts, for spending money, being such a burden ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... seven years old, Carlo Verdi committed a great extravagance for an innkeeper; he bought a spinet for his son, something very unheard of for so poor a man ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... to the attendants. The prodigality of the Romans in matters of eating is well known, and it extended to all matters connected with the pleasures of the table. In their rooms, their couches, and all the furniture of their entertainments, magnificence and extravagance were carried to their highest point. The rich had several of these apartments, to be used at different seasons, or on various occasions. Lucullus, celebrated for his wealth and profuse expenditure, had a certain standard of expenditure for each triclinium, so that when his servants were told ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... which war, capital punishment, and pauperism will have disappeared. It is the religion and the city of progress; in a word, the Utopia of the eighteenth century revived on a great scale. There is a great deal of generosity in it, mixed with not a little fanciful extravagance. The fancifulness consists chiefly in a superficial notion of evil. The author ignores or pretends to forget the instinct of perversity, the love of evil for evil's sake, which is contained ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lived in a certain village a wealthy man who had three sons,—Suan, Iloy, and Ambo. As this man was a lover of education, he sent all his boys to another town to school. But these three brothers did not study: they spent their time in idleness and extravagance. When vacation came, they were ashamed to go back to their home town, because they did not know anything; so, instead, they wandered from town to town ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... men, by tearing and rending those that came near him; and all this in order to raise himself, and out of an ambitious desire of the royal dignity; and he hoped to obtain that as the reward not of his virtuous skill in war, but of his extravagance in doing injuries. ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... protesting [217] against all lower uses of love, barren, extravagant, antinomian. It is the love which is incompatible with marriage, for the chevalier who never comes, of the serf for the chatelaine, of the rose for the nightingale, of Rudel for the Lady of Tripoli. Another element of extravagance came in with the feudal spirit: Provencal love is full of the very forms of vassalage. To be the servant of love, to have offended, to taste the subtle luxury of chastisement, of reconciliation—the religious spirit, too, knows that, and meets just there, as in Rousseau, ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... a gude ane noo?" quo' Tammie, laughing. '"Od Jamie Bowie was a real ane. He wadna let them light a candle by his bedside to let him see to dee; he gied them a curse, and said that was needless extravagance." ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... follies as usual bring him to want; and when his unprincipled necessities drive him to dishonest practices, he is abhorred as a miscreant, and perishes by the justice of his country. But far otherwise is the lot of the man of family and fortune. His early follies and extravagance are spirit and fire; his consequent wants are the embarrassments of an honest fellow; and when, to remedy the matter, he has gained a legal commission to plunder distant provinces, or massacre peaceful nations, he returns, perhaps, laden with the spoils of rapine ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... to her happiness. Indeed, he had often denied himself many of the luxuries to which a man of his tastes and training was entitled, in order to add to her store. Nor had he ever restrained her in her whims or her extravagance, and never, in any way, had he curtailed her freedom. She had been free to come and free to go, and with whom she pleased. Her intimacy with Dalton had been proof of all this, as well as her friendships with various men to whose companionship many another husband ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... day more joyous and generous and affectionate. The change was most marked; and Nan, who was her sister's chief confidant, could not make it out at all. Her gaiety became almost hysterical; and her kindness to everybody in the house ran to extravagance. She bought trinkets for the servants. She presented Mr. Tom with a boot-jack mounted in silver; and he was pleased to say that it was the first sensible present he had ever known a girl make. But it was towards Nan that she was ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... absurdities, for which the circumstances they are engaged in afford but a very disproportionate vent. Accordingly, for our insight into their characters, we are indebted rather to their confessions than their actions. Lydia Languish, in proclaiming the extravagance of her own romantic notions, prepares us for events much more ludicrous and eccentric, than those in which the plot allows her to be concerned; and the young lady herself is scarcely more disappointed than we are, at the tameness with which her amour concludes. Among ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... The avarice of the deceased persons was so keen that for a long time they had hoarded their money for the pleasure of secretly looking at it. Old Monsieur de la Bertelliere called an investment an extravagance, and thought he got better interest from the sight of his gold than from the profits of usury. The inhabitants of Saumur consequently estimated his savings according to "the revenues of the sun's ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... are a man of good taste and judgment. Look over the furniture in the house and telegraph me what condition it is in. Everything about the place must be made cozy and comfortable, but I wish to avoid an appearance of vulgarity or extravagance." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... and injurious beyond calculation to the interests of our country. To what are the increasing beggary and discouraged exertions of the present period owing? A multitude of causes have no doubt tended to increase the evil; but the root of the whole matter is the extravagance of all classes of people. We never shall be prosperous till we make pride and vanity yield to the dictates of honesty and prudence! We never shall be free from embarrassment until we cease to be ashamed of industry and economy. Let ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... a man to express sentiment otherwise than by patting those he loved affectionately on the back, and the letter over which Anna hung with such tender gratitude, and such an extravagance of humility, was a mere bald statement of facts. Since Anna, with a perversity that he entirely disapproved, refused to marry, and appeared to be possessed of the obstinacy that had always been a peculiarity of her German forefathers, and which was well enough in a man, but ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... honour, or, to speak more correctly, who idolise boundless riches, can close the door of our souls against those evil spirits which grow up with them. For Wealth unmeasured and unbridled is dogged by Extravagance: she sticks close to him, and treads in his footsteps: and as soon as he opens the gates of cities or of houses she enters with him and makes her abode with him. And after a time they build their nests (to use a wise man's words[5]) in that corner ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... "Philura Rice certainly did not become engaged to be married during her stay in Boston. Neither has she been the recipient of funds from myself, nor, to the best of my knowledge, from any other member of the family. Personally, I have always been averse to the encouragement of extravagance and vanity in those destined by a wise Providence to pass their lives in a humble station. I fear exceedingly that Philura's visits to Boston have failed to benefit her as I wished ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley
... to compassion. Graham had, no doubt, suffered nothing he had not deserved, but the man had once been a social favourite, and it was painful to think of his dying alone in poverty. His extravagance and the shifts by which he evaded his creditors were known, and Blake could imagine how hard he would be pressed when he lay sick and helpless. It must have been a harrowing experience for a young girl to nurse him and at the same time to grapple ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... daily dependents were young men of birth, who (their means not answering to their extravagance) had been put in prison by creditors, and redeemed thence by lord Timon; these young prodigals thenceforward fastened upon his lordship, as if by common sympathy he were necessarily endeared to all such spendthrifts and loose livers, who, not being able to ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... doubt that things are not as well managed as they might be, and that there is a great deal of distress and misery. In some parts of France the taxation has been very heavy, and the extravagance of the court has excited an immense deal of anger. It is not the fault of the present king, who is a quiet fellow, and does not care for show or pageants; but it is rather the fault of the kings who preceded ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... lightly-balanced head; everything about her was neat and fresh and tight-fitting. A year ago she had been a damsel from the 'Earthly Paradise'; now, so far as an English girl can achieve it, she might have been a model for Tissot. In this phase, as in the other, there was a touch of extravagance. The girl was developing fast, but had clearly not yet developed. The restlessness, the self-consciousness of Long Whindale were still there; out they spoke to the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her to make us a pot of tea and bring it there. With her own hands she drew forward a handsome Pembroke table, and then we went together through the main rooms of the house. They were furnished in the time of the Regency, Jane said, and it was easy to recognize the rich, ornate extravagance of that period. In all this conversation, mother, we were drawing nearer and nearer to each other and I kept in mind that I had called her once 'my dear' and that she had shown no ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... entertaining too high an opinion of your own powers, and in cherishing something like a selfish blindness to the principles of the persons, with whom you have been concerned. Your indiscriminate approbation of all you wrote raised your expectations to extravagance. Your inordinate appetite for applause made you varnish over the picture which the earl gave you of himself; though it must otherwise have been revolting to a virtuous mind: and your expectation of preferment so entirely lulled your moral ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Hospitality without extravagance, kindness without insincerity of speech, marked the manners of our worthy friends. Every thing in the house was conducted with attention to prudence and comfort. The living was but small (the income arising from it, I should have said), but there was glebe land, ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... should hesitate to supply her with such things as she desired to make her entrance into Mr. Gibson's house respectable. But Mrs. French was obdurate, and Mr. Gibson was desired to speak to her. Mr. Gibson, in fear and trembling, told her that she ought to repress her spirit of extravagance, and Camilla at once foresaw that he would avail himself of this plea against her should he find it possible at any time to avail himself of any plea. She became ferocious, and, turning upon him, told him to mind his ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... economic conditions would come out clearly. It would disclose a strange mixture of worthy and unworthy motives in their statesmen and politicians, who were actuated sometimes by sympathy for the poor, sometimes by a desire for popular favor, by an honest wish to check extravagance or immorality, or by the fear that the discontent of the masses might drive them into revolution. We should find the Roman people, recognizing the menace to their simple, frugal way of living which lay in the inroads of Greek civilization, and turning in their helplessness to their ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott |
