"Ornament" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... regulated measure; as it is with the beauty of a lady when the splendour of the jewels and of the garments excite more admiration than she herself. He, therefore, who wishes to judge well of a lady looks at her when she is alone and her natural beauty is with her, free from all accidental ornament. So it will be with this Commentary, in which will be seen the facility of the syllables, the propriety of the conditions, and the sweet orations which are made in our Mother Tongue, which a good observer will perceive to be full of most sweet and most amiable beauty. But, ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... and thence led him to the stables, where he showed him some of the finest horses in the world, and the grooms busy in dressing them; from thence they went to the store-houses, which were filled with all things necessary, both for food and ornament. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... the book as more or less traced over the Arcadia: and it may be said to have all the defects of Sidney's scheme—which, it is fair once more to observe, we do not possess in any form definitely settled by its author—with none of the merits of his ornament, his execution, and his atmosphere ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... allowed that conform to the perfect facts of the open air, and that flow out of the nature of the work and come irrepressibly from it and are necessary to the completion of the work. Most works are most beautiful without ornament ... Exaggerations will be revenged in human physiology. Clean and vigorous children are jetted and conceived only in those communities where the models of natural forms are public every day ... Great genius ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... lavished compliments on Elise on account of her children. "They are positively the ornament of the room," said she;—"charmant! and your son a most prepossessing young man—so handsome and comme ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... form my judgment from the Eskimo tribe at Port Clarence. The members of this tribe were still heathens, but a few of them were far travelled, and had brought home from the Sandwich Islands not only cocoa-nuts and palm mats, but also a trace of the South Sea islander's greater love for ornament and order. Next come the Chukchis, who have as yet come in contact with men of European race to a limited extent, but whose resources appear to have seriously diminished in recent times, in consequence of which the vigour and vitality of ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... Later on the little steamer, Sankaty, plying between New Bedford and Nantucket, he was so shining and splendid that he was much observed by the other passengers. His Jap servant, trotting after him, was perhaps less martial in bearing than the ubiquitous Kemp, but he was none the less an ornament. ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... the table of the room there was burning a single candle. It was a dull, dingy, brown room, furnished with horsehair-covered chairs, an old horsehair sofa and heavy, rusty curtains. I don't know that there was in the room any attempt at ornament, as certainly there was no evidence of wealth. It was now about seven o'clock in the evening, and tea was over in Mrs. Burton's establishment. Harry Clavering had had his tea, and had eaten his hot ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... appointed that His servant, enriched by an abundant harvest of merits, illustrated by triumphal honors, and glorified by miracles, should also enjoy upon earth a name glorious in the estimation of mankind, and should thus be a new ornament to the church militant. The process of canonization was commenced in the time of Gregory XVI., and completed by Pius IX., when in March, 1859, the name of John Baptist de Rossi was inscribed ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... retain the persuasion that wives are virtuous? Are they not the supreme flower of the country? Are they not all blooming creatures, fascinating the world by their beauty, their youth, their life and their love? To believe in their virtue is a sort of social religion, for they are the ornament of the world, and form the ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... have gotten together all the necessaries for comfort, we have taken nothing for adornment," said he, "and 'twere pity the prison were duller than it need be. Choose thou a pretty face or two from among these old pictures, my little Gretchen, and an ornament for his mantelshelf. Young as thou art, thou hast the ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... lady was entering, dressed in plain silk, and the color of it was a pale blue! Excepting a white rose at her breast, she wore no ornament of any sort. Doubly distinguished by the perfect simplicity of her apparel, and by her tall, supple, commanding figure, she took rank at once as the most remarkable woman in the room. Moving nearer to her through the crowd, under the guidance of the complaisant Major, young Linwood gained a clearer ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... are content with the maintenance of a Navy Department simply as a shabby ornament to the Government, a constant watchfulness may prevent some of the scandal and abuse which have found their way into our present organization, and its incurable waste may be reduced to the minimum. But if we desire to build ships for present usefulness instead of naval reminders of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... thoughts, for the moment, had flown elsewhere, but Mr. Crewe did not appear to notice this. He fell back into the rounded hollow of the bench, and it occurred to him that he had never quite realized that profile. And what an ornament she would ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Richard, I must keep moving, with papa's eyes there. He is a tall man, very good-looking, very fond of dress and ornament, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of my sermons increased by the use of every good illustration I could get hold of, but I tried to be careful that they illustrated something. Where such are lugged into the sermon merely for the sake of ornament, they are as much out of place as a bouquet would be tied fast to a plough-handle. The Divine Teacher set us the example of making vital truths intelligible by illustrations, when he spoke so often in parables, ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... glad to take refuge in the half-comic, half-serious comments of the Fool, just as the mind under the extreme anguish of a surgical operation vents itself in sallies of wit. The character was also a grotesque ornament of the barbarous times, in which alone the tragic ground-work of the story could be laid. In another point of view it is indispensable, inasmuch as while it is a diversion to the too great intensity of our disgust, it carries ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... the same pattern,—large, enclosed courts, paved, and quite bare of grass, shrubbery, or any beautiful thing,—dark, stern, brick walls, without the slightest show of architectural beauty, or even an ornament over the square, commonplace windows, looking down on those forlorn courts. A carriage-drive passes through it, if I remember aright, from the principal front, emerging by one of the sides; and I suppose that the carriages ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... attended service in the old church at Bala. The interior of the edifice was remarkably plain; no ornament of any kind was distinguishable; the congregation was overflowing, amongst whom I observed the innkeeper and his wife, the little freckled maid and the boots. The entire service was in Welsh. Next to the pew in which I sat was one filled with young singing women, all of whom seemed to have ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... wherein text and gloss were mingled in inextricable confusion, and the Scriptures were made to countenance the most absurd abuses.[153] The best furnished libraries rarely contained more than a few detached books of the Bible, and these intended for ornament rather than use.[154] Lefevre resolved, therefore, to apply himself to the translation of the Sacred Scriptures from the Latin Vulgate into the French language. In June, 1523, he published a version of the four gospels, and in the autumn of the same year ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... the snood, confined her hair, which fell over it in a profusion of rich dark curls. The scarlet plaid, which formed part of her dress, was laid aside, that it might not impede her activity in attending the stranger. I should forget Alice's proudest ornament, were I to omit mentioning a pair of gold ear-rings, and a golden rosary, which her father (for she was the daughter of Donald Bean Lean) had brought from France, the plunder, probably, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... shoulders. "I'm nearly dead-broke now, and of course I am miserable. However, my story comes next in order. I was a bank teller, appropriated part of the funds of the bank, fled with it, spent it, and then became an ornament ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... the calligraphy of the Middle Ages, & of the earlier printing which took its place. As to the fifteenth-century books, I had noticed that they were always beautiful by force of the mere typography, even without the added ornament, with which many of them are so lavishly supplied. And it was the essence of my undertaking to produce books which it would be a pleasure to look upon as pieces of printing and arrangement of type. Looking at my adventure from this point of view then, I found I had ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... pig, and would have made a frog or a toad ashamed of himself. I have never heard what became of the little boy, nor have I looked in the books or journals to find out if there are similar cases on record, but I have no doubt that there are others. And if boys may have this additional ornament to their vertebral columns, why not men? And if men, why not giants? So I may not have made a very bad blunder, after all, and my reader has learned something about the homo caudatus as spoken of by Linnxus, and as shown me in photograph ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... ma'am, lamented it. She told Papa I was the chief ornament of her school. But he was very angry,—I don't know why; but he questioned me so closely, that I might as well have been before a court-martial. Indeed I am certain he would have ordered me, had I been a private soldier, to the ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... baldaquin surrounded by saints. Here the Gothic surroundings become very florid, and have a gingerbread-cake effect, which Italian taste would hardly have tolerated. Many features are characteristic of the German; the huge crown worn by the Mother, the floriated ornament of the quadrangle, the almost baroque appearance of the throne. Through it all, heavily repainted as it is, shines the dawn of the tender expression which came into Venetian ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... only four leagues to Orange; this is the last town in the Pope's territories; and within a quarter of a mile of it stands, in a corn field, a beautiful Roman triumphal arch, so great in ruins, that it would be an ornament even in Rome. The Palais Royal at this town, has nothing to recommend it, but that it affords a prospect of this ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... planned his Frederick the Great. Their works are not a momentary inspiration; they are the result of forethought, long and painstaking. The absolute essential in the structure of an essay, that without which it will fail to arrive anywhere, that compared to which all ornament, all fine writing, is but sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, that absolute essential is the total effect secured ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... not permit within its limits factories to make bird skins or bird feathers into articles of ornament or wearing apparel. Ordinary birds, and especially song birds, should be rigidly protected. Game birds should never be shot to a greater extent than will offset the natural rate of increase. . . . Care should be taken not to encourage the use ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... their readers an El Dorado at the cheap cost of a good lie. Hence the kings, dukes, and earls who were so plenty among the red men. Pride of descent takes many odd shapes, none odder than when it hugs itself in an ancestry of filthy barbarians, who daubed themselves for ornament with a mixture of bear's-grease and soot, or colored clay, and were called emperors by Captain John Smith and his compeers. The droll contrast between this imaginary royalty and the squalid reality is nowhere exposed with more ludicrous unconsciousness than in the following passage of a letter ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... certain definite things, and also with lunius, whom I think you know, an intimate friend of Avianius. I have constructed some new sitting-rooms in a miniature colonnade on my Tusculan property. I want to ornament them with pictures: for if I take pleasure in anything of that sort it is in painting. However, if I am to have what you have bought, I should like you to inform me where they are, when they are to be fetched, and by what kind of conveyance. For if Damasippus ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... poorly, attired; but in the carriage of her head and body there was something flexible and noble that would have lent distinction to the meanest toilette. Even her basket, so aptly did she carry it, became her like an ornament. It seemed to Francis, as he slipped into a doorway, that the sunshine followed and the shadows fled before her as she walked; and he was conscious, for the first time, of a bird singing in a cage ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... period of affliction in a letter to Miss Smith: "Your dear sister but a little while ago had a full nursery, and the dear blooming creatures sitting around her table filled her breast with hope that one day they should fill active stations in society and become an ornament in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... summer's bliss! Sun, storm, rain, dew, to him their tribute bring, Which he with such benignant royalty Accepts, as overpayeth what is lent; All nature seems his vassal proud to be, And cunning only for his ornament. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... educate the public taste, and are ornaments for the most part much too costly for the people. But the same love of ornament which is shown in their public places of resort, appears in their houses likewise; and every one of our readers who has lived in Paris, in any lodging, magnificent or humble, with any family, however poor, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Almeria Carpenter was famous for her beauty. She was lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Gloucester and mistress to the Duke. "The Duchess remained indeed its nominal mistress, but Lady Almeria constituted its ornament and its pride." (Wraxall, vol. ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... the Ancients devoted the first hours of the next morning to the arrangement of his fire-fighting gear in the front hall, and when all the items had been suspended, so that they would be ready to his hand as well as serve as ornament, he went out on the porch and sunned himself, revelling in a certain snug and contented sense of importance, such as he hadn't felt since he had stepped down from the quarter-deck of his own vessel. He even gazed at the ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... days of yore "Le Grand Ecuyer Tranchant," or the MASTER CARVER, was the next officer of the mouth in rank to the "Maitre d'Hotel," and the technical terms of his art were as singular as any of those which ornament "Grose's Classical Slang Dictionary," or "The Gipsies' Gibberish:" the only one of these old phrases now in common use is, "cut up the TURKEY:"—we are no longer desired to "disfigure a PEACOCK"—"unbrace a DUCK"—"unlace ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... view happily chosen and arranged, gave a charming effect; the house of one story, raised on steps of sixteen stairs, appeared to us elegant from its novelty; but the King blamed his cousin for not having put a little architecture and ornament on the facade. ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... the young lady. "Your rings are safe, my lady. I would ill requite the kindness shown by your father to the son of an old friend if I deprived your white fingers of a single ornament." ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... hardy greenhouse plant, and may be kept well enough through the winter in a common hot-bed frame, or planted against a south wall, and matted as myrtles usually are in such situations; we have known the glauca, treated in prove a charming ornament. ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 6 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... she rapidly, in a low but quite a naked tone with no lisping ornament, "this is a night. To think I should have to come back here to this God-forsaken spot for a minute of the old game. Hundreds hanging on my voice—" he fancied she had forgotten now whether she had not sung to them—"and feeling what ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... my faculty of giving a just representation of Dr. Johnson I could not conceal. Nor will I suppress my satisfaction in the consciousness, that by recording so considerable a portion of the wisdom and wit of 'the brightest ornament of the eighteenth century[67].' I have largely provided for the instruction and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... vegetable fiber are sometimes seen but are not common. These strands are woven over a piece of cane, the lengthwise strands being of one color, perhaps yellow, and the crosswise strands black, giving a very pretty effect and making a durable ornament which the Negritos ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... retreated bore out the character she had given of the interior of her home. The fashion of its ornament and decoration was foreign to that adopted by the Moors of Granada. It had a more massive and, if we may use the term, Egyptian gorgeousness. The walls were covered with the stuffs of the East, stiff with ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book I. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... custom indeed! and no ornament could better become a loyal soldier," said Charteris, with just sufficient meaning in his voice to leave the traitors uncertain whether he had penetrated their designs or not. He took advantage of their uncertainty to ride back in safety, knowing ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... ornament can be made in this way: Take a white sponge of large size, and sow it full of rice, oats and wheat. Then place it, for a week or ten days, in a shallow dish, in which a little water is constantly kept, ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... as scoops for the excavation. Under her neck was discovered the first manufactured object found, a single rude bead of white wampum of the prehistoric form, and which is now deposited in the Chateau de Ramezay. As white wampum was the gift of a lover, this sole ornament tells the pathetic story of early love and death. Mr. Chas. J. Brown again protographed the remains in situ. The work will still proceed and no doubt more important discoveries are ...
— A New Hochelagan Burying-ground Discovered at Westmount on the - Western Spur of Mount Royal, Montreal, July-September, 1898 • W. D. Lighthall
... offended her. Mostly he let her alone, and saw Peter when he could outside his home. Rodney, himself a celibate, thought matrimony a mistake, though certainly a necessary mistake if the human race was to continue to adorn the earth—a doubtful ornament ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... you and for the welfare of your kingdom. May my offering remain forever an ornament. May peace and happiness be the lot of your people and your own.—SARA ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... murmured the Duchess, taking off a most valuable diamond ornament and handing it to the Yellow Dwarf. "Please make this disappear too. I shall value it more highly than ever if I know that it has been ...
— The Mysterious Shin Shira • George Edward Farrow
... indications in your character of better things, I do not despair even yet (after you have received a public lesson at my hands, which you will never forget) of rearing you to become in time an ornament to the society in which it will be your lot to move. I will not give up in despair—I will persevere ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... private disgust if his meritorious efforts in directing man's attention to another world are not rewarded by substantial preferment in this. His secular man believes in cambric bands and silk stockings as characteristic attire for "an ornament of religion and virtue;" hopes courtiers will never forgot to copy Sir Robert Walpole; and writes begging letters to the King's mistress. His spiritual man recognizes no motives more familiar than Golgotha and the skies; it walks in graveyards, or it soars among the stars. His religion exhausts ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... especially handsome—who took little steps with their little feet, whereon they wore canvas shoes, straw sandals, and clogs of worked wood, and who displayed tight-looking eyes, flat chests, teeth fashionably blackened, and gowns crossed with silken scarfs, tied in an enormous knot behind an ornament which the modern Parisian ladies seem to have borrowed ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... for long believed to form the canopy of an ancient Saxon tomb, which the monks moved here from the Norman Chapter House and called by the name of King Sebert, their traditional founder. We can see this better from the ambulatory, also the curious skull and cross-bone ornament which is all that is left of the tomb of Anne of Cleves, Henry {62} the Eighth's repudiated wife, the only one of all his wives who was buried in the Abbey. She was interred here with a pompous funeral service by order of her friend and ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... of this ecclesiastical edifice, Colonel Macpherson had to select as simple and easy a form of architecture as he could, and with as little ornament as possible, and therefore within the capacity of his workpeople; so he chose the Gothic, or rather, we should say, the Early English style of about the 12th century, and in so doing he said he had somewhat ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... so delighted with his trip, that nothing would satisfy him till he was allowed to enter his father's noble profession, to which he promises to be an ornament, and is now a lieutenant of two years' standing. Among other accomplishments, he is a first-rate hand at spinning a yarn, and often amuses his shipmates with an account of his father's adventures in chase of ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... Do we not wish to be remembered with honour after death? And what a share of it has this excellent man in his life! —May nothing, for the honour-sake of human nature, to which he is so great an ornament, ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... place does. The hall is like a Methodist chapel in low spirits, and with a cold in its head. A few blue people shiver at the corners of the streets. And this house, which is outside the town, looks like an ornament on an immense ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... embraces, and all that, May look like what is—neither here nor there, They are put on as easily as a hat, Or rather bonnet, which the fair sex wear, Trimm'd either heads or hearts to decorate, Which form an ornament, but no more part Of heads, than their ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... are practically unanimous in accepting Aristotle's contention that it is not the metrical form that makes the poem. "Verse," says Sidney, "is an ornament and no cause to poetry, since there have been many most excellent poets that never versified, and now swarm many versifiers that need never answer to the name of poets." Wordsworth apologizes for using the word "Poetry" as synonymous ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... EDUCATORS, educates humanly. Man is the brain, but woman is the heart of humanity; he its judgment, she its feeling; he its strength, she its grace, ornament and solace. Even the understanding of the best woman seems to work mainly through her affections. And thus, though man may direct the intellect, woman cultivates the feelings, which mainly determine the character. While ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... few beery speeches uttered at the Hautefeuille Cafe cannot turn his past into a revolutionary one, and an order refused for the simple reason that it is more piquant for a man to have his button-hole without ornament than with a slip of red ribbon in it, when it is well known that he disdains whatever every one else admires, is but a poor title to fame. To your last, Napoleon Gaillard![57] To your paint-brushes, Gustave Courbet! And if we say this, it is not only from fear that the ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... tapers, he could not restrain a smile. The abbe turned round, saw them, and continued to say the prayers slowly. The post master was the first to abandon the kneeling posture; his wife followed him. Massin, fearing that Zelie and her husband might lay hands on some ornament, joined them in the salon, where all the heirs were presently assembled one ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... he was in the village, where the women and old men were pounding and drying the flesh of the buffalo, but only the most skilful were permitted to scrape the vast skin, which, when it was finally cured, would make such an ornament as was never before seen in the lodge of a Sioux chief. But Will, Pehansan and Roka were not allowed to have a share in any work for a long time. They were three heroes who had fought with demons ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... an evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit." By Enoch here, we are to understand, one taught in, and dedicated unto, God. This Enoch therefore was a son that would hear the rules, and submit to the government of his father Jared. "As an ear-ring of gold, and an ornament of fine gold, so is a wise reprover upon ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... become a virtuous woman. But there was an evil-minded fellow, one my lord Duke of Ferrara, who said to l'Ile Adam that his great fortune had not cost him much. At this first offence Madame Imperia showed what a good heart she had, for she gave up all the money she had received from her lovers, to ornament the dome of St. Maria del Fiore, in the town of Florence, which turned the laugh against the Sire d'Este, who boasted that he had built a church in spite of the empty condition of his purse. You may be sure he was reprimanded for this joke by his ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... truth a beautiful present. The rifle, designed with that plainness of ornament and simplicity of form peculiar to English weapons, was of the finest finish. Like the pistols, of which Roland had had opportunity to test the accuracy, the rifle was made by the celebrated Manton, and carried a twenty-four calibre bullet. That it had been ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... spirit governed Europe, expressing itself in useless ornament and wanton brutality, the more delicate crafts had no hope of exercise. Even the adventurer upon the road threatened his victim with a bludgeon, nor was it until the breath of the Renaissance had vivified the world that a gentleman and an ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... heavy red curtains. As the eyes got accustomed to the dimness, one observed that the floor was covered with very old oil-cloth, and that the articles of furniture were few, only the most indispensable, and all very shabby. Everything seemed to be dusty and musty. The only approach to an ornament was a framed diploma hanging over the mantelpiece, certifying that John Alfred Smales was a duly qualified pharmaceutical chemist. A low fire burned in the grate, and before it, in a chair which would probably have claimed the title ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... soon looking lovelier than ever at her worktable, enjoying drives in her father's phaeton and thinking it likely that she might be invited to Quallingham. She knew that she was a much more exquisite ornament to the drawing-room there than any daughter of the family, and in reflecting that the gentlemen were aware of that, did not perhaps sufficiently consider whether the ladies would be eager ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... mediaeval in spirit, fall, as regards their manner, into two very different classes. Pieces like "The Blessed Damozel," "The Bride's Prelude," "Rose Mary," and "The Staff and Scrip" (from a story in the "Gesta Romanorum") are art poems, rich, condensed, laden with ornament, pictorial. Every attitude of every figure is a pose; landscapes and interiors are painted with minute Pre-Raphaelite finish. "The Bride's Prelude"—a fragment—opens with the bride's confession to her sister, in the 'tiring-room ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... in order that they may be crushed to death — a mode of death which they say is very acceptable to their god. Others, making an incision in their side, and inserting a rope thus through their body, hang themselves to the chariot by Nay of ornament, and thus suspended and half-dead accompany their idol. This kind of sacrifice they consider the best ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... the armor which Abradates was accustomed to wear, and had caused the artificers to make the golden pieces with the utmost secrecy. Besides the substantial defenses of gold which she provided, she added various other articles for ornament and decoration. There was a purple robe, a crest for the helmet, which was of a violet color, plumes, and likewise bracelets for the wrists. Panthea kept all these things herself until the day arrived when her husband was going into battle for the first time with ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... idealistic and romantic in his literary tastes; it may be that he has not the intellectual life required for any utterances or forms of his own, and that he consequently accepts poetry as a ready-made ornament, something pretty and exotic, which is valued in proportion to its prettiness and rarity. Be the reason whatever it may, certain it is that nothing can be too artificial or high-flown to please the Italian peasantry: its tales are all of kings; princesses, fairies, knights, winged horses, marvellous ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... of being nearly related to the illustrious families of Maitland, Duke of Lauderdale and Drummond, Earl of Perth." The Jacobite fourth Earl of Perth seems to have been the patron of Captain Trotter, of whom he wrote in 1684 that he was "an ornament to his country." Apparently the gallant captain was attached to Trinity House, where his probity and integrity earned him the epithet of "honest David," and where he attracted the notice of George, first Lord Dartmouth, when that ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... a dooryard tree, an ornament rather than a business, makes it possible to include many more species as suitable for growing in the north. For this purpose, I suggest heartnuts, chestnuts, pecans and hiccans. The heartnut tree is always one to draw attention and interest, ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... before he came home from his office, I had gathered up various bits of old carpetting to cover the floor; and, to a little break the blank look of the bare walls, I hung up a few old prints that used to ornament the kitchen, and after dinner, with great boast of what an improvement I had made, I took Charles once more into his new study. A week of busy labours followed, in which I think you would not have disliked to have been our assistant. My brother and I almost covered the wall with prints, for ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... want to tell you!" No major on parade ever felt so overwhelming. Hughes was more than a martinet. He was a dilemma. The phenomenal was always about him. War was not even hell to Sam Hughes. It was more often a chance to show a civilian minister that he was a mere conventional ornament. Hughes may have hated the necessity, but he loved the spirit and the fire, ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... his sister often said, knew nothing accurately except Spenser's Faery Queen. He had never applied himself steadily to any branch of knowledge. He was a wretched financier. He never became familiar even with the rules of that House of which he was the brightest ornament. He had never studied public law as a system; and was, indeed, so ignorant of the whole subject that George the Second, on one occasion, complained bitterly that a man who had never read Vattel should presume to undertake the direction of foreign affairs. But these defects were more ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... themselves, are supported by the public, and repose in singular comfort upon all the passengers near them; I, myself, contribute an aching back to the common charity, and a genteelly dressed young lady takes one of them from time to time on her knee. But they are comparatively an ornament to society till the conductor objects to the amount they offer him for fare; for after that they wish to fight him during the journey, and invite him at short intervals to step out and be shown what manner of men they are. ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... instead of Virtue, Honour and Noble Sentiments being Sown in the Minds of Youth they are tainted with Fraud and Treachery; and those, who should be the Support and Ornament of their Country, are the Confederates of Men, who would be a disgrace to the worst of Countries, ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... in the scene, etc. In conclusion, Starkey appears to have been one of those mild spirits, which, not originally deficient in understanding, are crushed by penury into dejection and feebleness. He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament to society, if Fortune had taken him into a very little fostering; but wanting that, he became a Captain,—a by-word,—and lived and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... from their listening to the groans and lamentations of lost souls in hell. Nor can we doubt, that if he had been born and educated a member of the Church of Rome, he would have lived and died, like Fenelon or Pascal, a splendid ornament of that impure communion, a conscientious ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... the jewels, and particularly the conically formed variety, which develops a strong capillary attraction. To prevent this capillary attraction of the oil, the back-slope is formed next to the shoulder, although many persons seem to think that this back-slope is merely added by way of ornament, to make the pivot more graceful in appearance. It is very essential, however, for if too much oil is applied the staff would certainly draw it away if its thickness were not reduced, by means of the back-slope. Before leaving the subject of capillarity let ...
— A Treatise on Staff Making and Pivoting • Eugene E. Hall
... young woman, with a thin, muslin Quaker cap over her brown hair, and not the slightest attempt at ornament; a great worker and very thrifty in her methods. In her opinion idleness was a sin. Faith had grown tall, but ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... is furnished in a style most creditable as to both quantity and quality of the viands. There may not be such a show of plate and glass and ornament as there would be at a London hotel of similar status, but there is a plenteous profusion of varied eatables, fairly cooked and served up, to which profusion the home establishment is an utter stranger. Fish, fowl, butcher's meat, vegetables, breads ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... trees, relics of the primeval forest, had been left for shade and ornament in the great Market Place. A little rivulet of clear water ran sparkling down the slope of the square, where every day the shadow of the cross of the tall steeple lay over it like ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... covering rocks were under 3 feet of detritus, washed in since they were placed there. Near the knees was a piece of antler, neatly perforated, with rounded ends, giving it the shape of a reniform bannerstone (fig. 8). This may have been an ornament, an arrow-shaft straightener, or the holder for a drill or a fire-stick. Near it was a polishing stone deeply worn on both sides ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... heart—that is, as far as the field-officers: all below them he scorned. A bugle at Gorgon Castle always sounded at breakfast, and dinner: a gun announced sunset. He clung to his pigtail for many years after the army had forsaken that ornament, and could never be brought to think much of the Peninsular men for giving it up. When he spoke of the Duke, he used to call him "MY LORD WELLINGTON—I RECOLLECT HIM AS CAPTAIN WELLESLEY." He swore fearfully in conversation, ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Peckovers' parlour. It was richly furnished. In the centre stood a round table, which left small space for moving about, and was at present covered with refreshments. A polished sideboard supported a row of dessert-plates propped on their edges, and a number of glass vessels, probably meant for ornament alone, as they could not possibly have been put to any use. A low cupboard in a recess was surmounted by a frosted cardboard model of St. Paul's under a glass case, behind which was reared an oval tray painted with flowers.. Over the mantel-piece was ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... on the sacred territory of the bountiful Isis. Nectanebo I. restored the sanctuaries of Nekhabit at El-Kab, and of Horus at Edfu, in which latter place he has left an admirable naos which delights the modern traveller by its severe proportions and simplicity of ornament, while Nectanebo II. repaired the ancient temple of Minu at Coptos; in short, without giving a detailed list of what was accomplished by each of these later Pharaohs, it may be said that there are few important sites in the valley of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... an adherent of King John, and not of the barons, and in the next place the barons marching to Runemede never came near Reigate at all. Mr. Tupper errs. But the passages and chambers hollowed out of the yellow sandstone are interesting, and so are the rough carvings of heads of horses which ornament the walls. Mr. Malden, the Surrey historian, thinks the caves are merely sand-quarries, sand being valuable for making mortar. It is pleasanter, though probably wholly incorrect, to imagine them ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... world. It is six or seven years since you were thrown on the Continent with a full purse. You have been able to indulge every whim and fancy. You have had enough of wild oats. Fill your niche in Society and Clubdom, if you like. Be a butterfly and an ornament, if you feel no inclination for anything better. But be a gentleman—be honorable. If you ever forget yourself, and bring a shadow of shame upon the unsullied names of Chesney or Nevill, by gad, sir, you shall never touch a penny of my money. ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... did a thing to offend me. It was but this morning I gave him his first lesson in Que Genus. This was the very book he learnt; poor child! it is of no further use to thee now. He would have made the best scholar, and have been an ornament to the Church;—such parts and such goodness never met in one so young." "And the handsomest lad too," says Mrs Adams, recovering from a swoon in Fanny's arms. "My poor Jacky, shall I never see thee more?" cries the parson. "Yes, ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... fortune of this ancient monarchy, together with the ancient laws and liberties of this great and illustrious kingdom,—may you stand as unimpeached in honor as in power! May you stand, not as a substitute for virtue, but as an ornament of virtue, as a security for virtue! May you stand long, and long stand the terror of tyrants! May you stand the refuge of afflicted nations! May you stand a sacred temple, for the perpetual residence ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... better-hearted man than Mr. Micawber, but he seemed to be always unlucky. He had a head as bald as an egg, wore a tall, pointed collar, and carried for ornament an eye-glass which he never used. He never had any money, was owing everybody who would lend him any, and was always, as he said, "waiting for something to turn up." With this exception David had not a friend in London, and finally Mr. Micawber himself ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... interview between the Angel and Lord Bathurst in 1775, it is surely a most unjust disparagement of the eloquence of Burke, to apply to it, at any time of his life, the epithet "flowery,"—a designation only applicable to that ordinary ambition of style, whose chief display, by necessity, consists of ornament without thought, and pomp without substance. A succession of bright images, clothed in simple, transparent language,—even when, as in Burke, they "crowd upon the aching sense" too dazzlingly,—should never be confounded with that mere verbal opulence of style, which mistakes ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... equally in store for all. The big easy-going ship proved to be nothing more or less than an ordinary Spanish merchantman, who, with more regard for personal appearance than maritime etiquette, had quietly appropriated to herself the distinguishing ornament of a man-of-war. So the guns of the Alabama, which had been cast loose and loaded, were again secured, and the crew dismissed from quarters; while the disconsolate Tonawandas, balked of their fondly anticipated rescue, shook their fists at the deceptive Spaniard, and went below to digest as best ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... thou sayst. I must have her. I have turned to thee for aid; but if thou wilt not find it, I shall find it myself. Aulus considers Lygia as a daughter; why should I look on her as a slave? And since there is no other way, let her ornament the door of my house, let her anoint it with wolf's fat, and let her sit at ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... were sung; but the weightiest and most eloquent words uttered anywhere that day were those of the second inaugural, which the committee had wisely ordained to be read over his grave, as the friends of Raphael chose the incomparable canvas of the Transfiguration to be the chief ornament of his funeral. ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... daily where the same painfully unnatural gravity exasperates us, when its cause can not be traced up to either guilt or sorrow. Ah! Lilla, there are many who think that your wild-flower wreath was a more becoming ornament than that diamond circlet—bridal gift of the powerful baron. Sweet Eugenia! faces that were never absent from your levees in old times you have missed at your court since ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... retired station, I still hope I shall live to see my Evelina the ornament of her neighbourhood, and the pride and delight of her family; and giving and receiving joy from such society as may best deserve her affection, and employing herself in such useful and innocent occupations as may secure and merit the tenderest love of her friends, ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... they did, my lad; they took his weppuns, and then they set him on his knees, and pulled all the hair off his head to make an ornament for one of their belts, and then, because he hollered out and didn't like it, they took their lariats and tethering pegs, and after fixing the pegs in the ground, they put a rope round each of his ankles and his wrists, and spread-eagled him out tight, and then they lit a fire to warm themselves, ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... of a particularly bright, beautiful red color which contrasts well with the bright green leaves, and this abundance of beautifully colored and gracefully poised fruit makes the plant worthy of more general cultivation as an ornament, though the fruit is of little value for culinary use. This species, when pure, has not varied under cultivation, but it readily crosses with other species and with our garden varieties, and many of these owe their bright ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... eighteenth century when the old civilisation of the country had grown stale. The king in the days of Louis XIV had become EVERYTHING and was the state. The Nobility, formerly the civil servant of the federal state, found itself without any duties and became a social ornament ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... statesman. Life is a whole, and every man works his love up into life—his life is revealed in his work, and his love is mirrored in his life. For myself I can not see why the Parthenon may not have been a monument to a great and sublime passion, and the statue of Athena, its chief ornament, be the sacred symbol of a great woman ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... the tangle of the hedge he strolled across a triangle of obscure kitchen garden, and approached a dismal shed or lodge a yard or two beyond it. It was a weather-stained hut of grey wood, which with all its desolation retained a tag or two of trivial ornament, which suggested that the thing had once been a sort of summer-house, and the place probably a sort ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... than the Pythian. Solon in his legislation proclaimed the large reward of 500 drams for every Athenian who gained an Olympic prize, and the lower sum of 100 drams for an Isthmiac prize. He counts the former as pan-Hellenic rank and renown, an ornament even to the city of which the victor was a member—the latter as partial and confined ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... contemporary of Euripides, and is mentioned in terms of praise by Aristotle for his delineation of the character of Achilles, presumably in his tragedy of 'Telephus.' From the fragments which remain of this author it appears that his style was replete with ornament, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... is of red tiles. All the window arches are plain semicircles. Plain, rounded, heavy mouldings about three feet from the floor, and the same distance from the ceiling, extend around the inside of the church, making a simple and effective structural ornament. ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... ring as simply an ugly ornament that my father ran across and took a fancy to; but now I believe ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish |
