"Ornament" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... iodine on his fingers to simulate the vicious stain of nicotine that was such a precious ornament to Slops' squat fingers. Only one thing distressed him, and that was his invincible dislike ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... factories on which we have already touched, a clear and powerful stream flows through a broad meadow land. Upon its margin, adorned, rather than shadowed, by some old elm-trees, for they are too distant to serve except for ornament, rises a vast deep red brick pile, which though formal and monotonous in its general character, is not without a certain beauty of proportion and an artist-like finish in its occasional masonry. The front, which is of great extent, and covered with many tiers ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... of me, a prisoner, when you fasten it in your wedding-gown?" He held out a jewel in the shape of the Hawk which spread its wings upon the wall above them. "It was found here, in this sanctuary—a priestly ornament? a pilgrim's offering? Who knows? Will you?—I have no right to it, for beneath my wings is the plumage of another race. I am not a pure-bred ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... would sell them. They become wrinkled with frowning and facing youth; they admire their old customs, even to the eating of red herring and going wetshod. They cast the thumb under the girdle, gravity; and because they can hardly smell at all their posies are under their girdles. They count it an ornament of speech to close the period with a cough; and it is venerable (they say) to spend time in wiping their drivelled beards. Their discourse is unanswerable, by reason of their obstinacy; their speech is much, though ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... of designs submitted for approval, the committee selected the design sent in by Mr. Barry (afterwards Sir Charles Barry), the famous architect, who has left many other monuments of his genius to the nation, but whose most conspicuous monument, assuredly, is found in the pile of buildings which ornament the ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of one ornament after the other symbolizes, evidently, the gradual decay of vegetation, not, as has been supposed, that ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... upon Steele, and his indefensible use of Addison's fame as a stalking-horse in the attack upon Dennis, it is not surprising that he should have been kept at arm's length. If the rod suspended by Philips at Button's be authentic (as seems probable), the talk about Pope, in the shadow of such an ornament, is easily imaginable. Some attempts seem to have been made at a reconciliation. Jervas, Pope's teacher in painting—a bad artist, but a kindly man—tells Pope on August 20, 1714, of a conversation with Addison. It would have been worth while, he says, for Pope to have been hidden behind a wainscot ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... said Denham, making an effort. "That's right, Val; we won't go into hospital, only let the doctor stick a bit or two of plaster about our heads for ornament. Now then, give me ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... yet so sweet, in her aspect, that were I to have the virtues and the graces all drawn in one piece, they should be taken, every one of them, from different airs and attributes in her. She was born to adorn the age she was given to, and would be an ornament to the first dignity. What a piercing, yet gentle eye; every glance I thought mingled with love and fear of you! What a sweet smile darting through the cloud that overspread her fair face, demonstrating that she had more apprehensions and grief at her heart ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... than he had anticipated. He had not known, before he tried it, that it was possible to be a prince with so small an expenditure of mental energy. As Mr. Scobell had hinted, to all intents and purposes he was a mere ornament. His work began at eleven in the morning, and finished as a rule at about a quarter after. At the hour named a report of the happenings of the previous day was brought to him. When he had read it the state asked no more of him ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... cooled the humane ardors of our politics. The right of political asylum has brought to this country many a man of noble character and elevated purpose who was marked as an outlaw in his own less fortunate land, and who has yet become an ornament to our citizenship and to our public councils. The children and the compatriots of these illustrious Americans must stand amazed to see the representatives of their Nation now resolved, in the fullness of our ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... integrity. So that he refused in his own mind to believe in the venality of a man who lived in such surroundings. Ushered into the advocate's waiting-room, a large parlor with curtains of starched muslin as fine as that of which surplices are made, its only ornament a large and beautiful copy of Tintoret's Dead Christ over the door, his uncertainty and anxiety changed to indignant conviction. It was not possible. He had been misled touching Le Merquier. Surely it was an impudent slander, such as Paris is so ready to spread; or perhaps ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... plates of sandwiches, and the two decanters containing that mysterious port and sherry which are peculiar to pastry-cooks. In the middle of this neat arrangement he had carefully let down the enormous load of white sugared cake which had been the huge ornament ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... beings are dependent upon one another for mutual assistance, and are exposed to mutual injuries. Society might exist without love or beneficence, but not without mutual abstinence from injury. Beneficence is the ornament that embellishes the building; Justice the main pillar that supports it. It is for the observance of Justice that we need that consciousness of ill-desert, and those terrors of mental punishment, growing out ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... across the windows, and the cut-glass chandeliers in both rooms emerged glittering from their brown paper-muslin bags. The table was rather overloaded with large pieces of silver which Blair had found in the big silver-chest in the garret; among them was a huge center ornament, called in those days an epergne—an extraordinary arrangement of prickly silver leaves and red glass cups which were supposed to be flowers. It was black with disuse, and Blair made Harris work over it until the poor fellow protested that he had rubbed the skin off ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... poetry and music has been more frankly accepted in the present century than ever before, and is nowadays scarcely opposed in serious criticism. If music were a necessary ornament of lyrical verse, the latter would nowadays scarcely exist; but we hear less and less of the poets devotion (save in a purely conventional sense) to the lute and the pipe. What we call the Victorian lyric is absolutely ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... of old, His free wild words and his laughter bold: So high and low all gathered together By the village well in the autumn weather, Lured by the gipsy's bargain-chatter And the reckless lilt of his hare-brained patter. And there the Revd. Salvyn Bent, The parish church's ornament, Stood, as it chanced, in discontent, And eyed with a look that was almost sinister The Revd. Joshua Fall, the minister. And the Squire, it happened, was riding by, With an angry look in his bloodshot eye, Growling, ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... charitable feeling, she said "really, my dear, although there is too much truth in the picture you have drawn, yet you have been a little too severe upon the clergy, when speaking of them in the mass. There are many excellent and worthy men, who follow the precepts of their great master, who are an ornament to that society to which they belong, and are, therefore, most deserving members of, and do great credit to, the profession which you ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... reputation? 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, ever happen ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... with a speculative eye into Northumberland Avenue. If, as Cartoner had suggested, the profession of which Mr. Joseph P. Mangles was a tardy ornament, needed above all things a capacity for leaving things unsaid, the American diplomatist was not ignorant in his art. For he did not inform his sister that the invitation to which she attached so flattering a national importance owed its ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... the following passage:—"It is a more important service to the public to contribute something not before known to the general fund of history, than to give new form and colour to what we are already possessed of, by superadding refinement and ornament, which too often tend to disguise the real state of the facts; a fault not to be atoned for by the pomp of style, or even the fine eloquence of the historian." This was an oblique stroke aimed at Robertson, to whom Birch had generously opened the stores of history, for the Scotch historian ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... authority, as well as that of all the branches of the legislature, are exercised by citizens selected at regular periods by their neighbors, to make and execute laws for the general good. Can any thing essential, any thing more, than mere ornament and decoration be added to this by robes or diamonds? Can authority be more amiable or respectable when it descends from accident or institutions established in remote antiquity than when it springs fresh from the hearts and judgments ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Miss Roxy in first-rate style, from a French fashion-plate; her golden hair was twined in manifold curls by Dame Pennel, who, restricted in her ideas of ornamentation, spared, nevertheless, neither time nor money to enhance the charms of this single ornament to her dwelling. Mara was her picture-gallery, who gave her in the twenty-four hours as many Murillos or Greuzes as a lover of art could desire; and as she tied over the child's golden curls a little flat hat, and saw her go dancing off along the sea-sands, holding ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... when they heard themselves called high-born damsels, they could not contain their laughter, which was so loud that Don Quixote was quite ashamed of them and rebuked them, saying: "Modesty is a comedy ornament of the beautiful, and too much laughter springing from trifles is great folly; but I do not tell you this to make you the more ashamed, for my desire is none other than to do you all the ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... cultivation has been obtained. This is H. paniculata grandiflora, in which the flowers are sterile and pure white, forming large panicles often a foot in length. It is a magnificent variety, and, being perfectly hardy, should be extensively planted for ornament. The flowers are produced in late summer, but remain in good form for fully two months, dying ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... shelf, and a hanging picture of the Amida Buddha within it—the expression one of rapt peace. Figures of Fugen and Fudo were placed before the curtain doors of the shrine, looking up in adoration to the Blessed One. A small and aged pine tree was in a pot of grey porcelain from Chosen—the only ornament ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... father's plantation, and is said to have been besides the sexton or grave-digger of the neighborhood; and was, I have my private reasons for thinking, a broken-down old soldier, with a big cocked hat that shaded a kindly and weather-beaten face, and a wooden leg,—an ornament for which he was indebted to a cannon-ball, and took more pride in than if it had been a sound one of flesh and bone. As it is rarely ever the case that men with wooden legs are called upon to fight the battles of their country, this worthy old man, who well knew how ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... up to tips if you're yearning to go on the platform," suggested Elsie. "She's A 1 at recitations, reels them off no end, I can tell you. You needn't hang your head, Mollums, like a modest violet; it's a solid fact. You're the ornament of St. Elgiva's when it comes to saying pieces. Have you got anything fresh, by the ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... her be the tutoress and model of my Intended, O General]. For I should prefer being made a"—what shall we say? by a light wife,—"or to serve under the haughty FONTANGE [Species of topknot; so named from Fontange, an unfortunate female of Louis Fourteenth's, who invented the ornament.] of my Spouse [as Ludwig Rudolf does, by all accounts], than to have a blockhead who would drive me mad by her ineptitudes? and whom I ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... his coat, dug both hands into his pockets, and began to wander about the rooms, halting sometimes to examine nondescript articles of ornament or bits of furniture as though politely interested. But she knew his thoughts were ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... Plaza would not be quite the Plaza. Obscured as it is in these days by the vast scaffolding, there is no true son of Manhattan who passes the corner on his way up the Avenue, or enters Central Park, who does not turn to look at the chief ornament of the broad square. The statue was made several years after Sherman's death, and the sculptor laboured on it for six years, from the time when he began the work in Paris, to its final unveiling, on Memorial Day, 1903. Of the statue and its surroundings as he saw them on ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... which generally constitutes their character—a small and harmless ambition, easily gratified, and involving no injury to their fellow-creatures. The second horseman, therefore, wore a wig, but the other, although he eschewed that ornament, if it can be called so, was by no means a man of that mild and harmless character which we have attributed to the eccentric and unfashionable class of whom we have just spoken. So far from that, he was a man of an obstinate and violent ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... state any additional advantage. An aristocracy, in the sense of families distinguished by birth, noble and patriotic services, wealth, cultivation, refinement, taste, and manners, is desirable in every nation, is a nation's ornament, and also its chief support, but they need and should receive no political recognition. They should form no privileged class in the ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... hour and go back into our business, into our offices, into the shops, into the crowded streets, bearing new thoughts of the lives that we might live, feeling the fetters on our hands and feet, feeling many things as fetters which we have thought of as the ornament and glory of our life, determined to be unsatisfied forever until these fetters shall be stricken off and we have entered into the full liberty which comes to those alone who are dedicated to the service ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... the Holy Spirit. This was one of the most famous cities of Asia Minor. By historians, it has been called the ornament of Asia—the greatest and most frequented emporium of the continent. Here stood one of the seven wonders of the world—the idolatrous temple of Diana. Paul paid two visits to this city: the first, a very short one. After some months, he returned, and continued for three years, and had ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2. No. 6., Nov. 1827 - Or Original Monthly Sermons from Living Ministers • William Patton
... last shining ornament into its proper place, she saw that part of the shelf near it held, not bright jewels, but rings and brooches and chains, as well as queer things that she did not know the names of, and all were of dull metal ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... read Benvenuto Cellini, pored over reproductions of ornament, and began to make pendants in silver and pearl and matrix. The first things he did, in his start of discovery, were really beautiful. Those later were more imitative. But, starting with his wife, he ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... Gryce interrupted me. "You talk when your attention should be directed to more important matters. That other woman, as you are pleased to designate the fairest ornament of New York society, sits over there in tears; ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... fish. Everything in the cook-room and the cabin, as well as on deck, was neat and nice. The cabin was covered with a handsome oil-cloth carpet, and the wood was white with zinc paint, varnished, with gilt moulding to ornament it. Edward Patterdale, who was to be the nominal owner and the real skipper of this beautiful craft, intended to have several framed pictures on the spaces between the deck lights, a clock in the forward end ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... orchards, gardens, pools, rillets, bowers, and such like places of pleasure; Inutiles domos, [1869]Xenophon calls them, which howsoever they be delightsome things in themselves, and acceptable to all beholders, an ornament, and benefiting some great men: yet unprofitable to others, and the sole overthrow of their estates. Forestus in his observations hath an example of such a one that became melancholy upon the like occasion, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... which able or popular song is already extant,—notably in case of Scotland,—I have in general avoided. In the rendering, my desire has been always to rest the poetry of each Vision on its own intrinsic interest; to write with a straightforward eye to the object alone; not studious of ornament for ornament's sake; allowing the least possible overt intrusion of the writer's personality; and, in accordance with lyrical law, seeking, as a rule, to fix upon some ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... this life, has disregarded all the pleasures and ornaments of the body as foreign from his nature, and who, having thought that they do more harm than good, has zealously applied himself to the acquirement of knowledge, and who, having adorned his soul, not with a foreign, but its own proper ornament—temperance, justice, fortitude, freedom, and truth—thus waits for his passage to Hades, as one who is ready to depart whenever destiny shall summon him. You, then," he continued, "Simmias and Cebes, and the rest, will each of you depart ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... part through the bounty of one of his country's leading business men, wondering why the great centre of learning seemed so little a part of the city. To him the University seemed something entirely apart, not in tune with its surrounding. It was like an expensive ornament worn on the soiled hand of a street urchin. He did ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... wanderings, to enter a Quaker Meeting-house; and as I thought I could no where make my first visit better than at Philadelphia, I went under the protection of a Quaker lady to the principal orthodox meeting of the city. The building is large, but perfectly without ornament; the men and women are separated by a rail which divides it into two equal parts; the meeting was very full on both sides, and the atmosphere almost intolerably hot. As they glided in at their different doors, I spied many pretty faces peeping ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... hanged if I would trust O'Hara with my bat," said Clowes, referring to the silver ornament on his own watch-chain; "he's probably pawned yours in the holidays. Why did you ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... Shakespeare used less and less rime as his taste and experience ripened. Rime is a valuable ornament for songs and lyric poetry generally; but from poetry which is actually to be acted on the English stage it takes away the most indispensable of all qualities, the natural, life-like tone of real speech. Notice this in the difference between the two extracts below. Observe how stilted ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... mountains, could not be otherwise, in such a climate. Our first stage was 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 rich morsel ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... to his daughter. "Look!" said he, "what a beauteous cherry-tree we have in our garden! Who can tell whence it sprung?"—But the moment the Tsarivna saw it, she cried, "That tree will be my ruin! Thou must cut it down."—"Nay!" said he, "how can I cut down the fairest ornament of my garden?"—"Down it must come, and down it shall come!" replied the Tsarivna. Then they sent for an axe and made ready to cut it down, but the damsel came running up, and said, "Oh, darling little cherry-tree, ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... on a low-backed seat in front of the fire with a child on each side of her. She was in white, her dark hair in a simple shining knot, a little pearl heart which had been Captain Morgan's parting gift, her only ornament. ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... with a start of surprise. "Where did you find it?" She reached impulsively for the ornament, but Peter closed his fingers ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... noiseless yielding folds. Hoops were the fashion of the day; but Mme. Ricard wore no hoops; she went with ease and silence where others went with a rustle and a warning to clear the way. The back of her head was covered with a little cap as plain as a nun's cap; and I never saw an ornament about her. Yet criticism never touched Mme. Ricard. Not even the criticism of a set of school-girls; and I had soon to learn that ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... gifts were a cunning sports handkerchief with a cluster of apples stamped in one corner, and a smart flat silk hat ornament in the shape of ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... incident, atmosphere, is observed almost invariably. Unfortunately Miss Sewell (she was actually a schoolmistress) let the didactic part of her novels get rather too much the upper hand: and though she wrote good English, possessed no special grace of style, and little faculty of illustration or ornament from history, literature, her own fancy, current fashions, even of the most harmless kind, and so forth. The result is that her books have a certain dead-aliveness—that the characters, though actually alive, are neither interestingly alive nor, as ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... blame which people lay upon their own faults has no deep root, and presently the noble lady Olivia so far forgot the inequality between, her fortunes and those of this seeming page, as well as the maidenly reserve which is the chief ornament of a lady's character, that she resolved to court the love of young Cesario, and sent a servant after him with a diamond ring, under the pretense that he had left it with her as a present from Orsino. She hoped ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... for so many years the brightest ornament of the Italo-American society, and equally admired and welcomed by the English colony, first at Florence and then at Rome, still lives for the equal delight of her friends on the other side of the Atlantic. ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... skins of wild animals, dressed with the hair on, and used as apparel, either for warmth, ornament, or distinction ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... Admirable Crichton who was ever at the school," said I: "captain of the eleven, the fastest man in the fifteen, athletic champion, and an ornament ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... part is coarser and heavier. It is made of oak, probably obtained from a whaling vessel. Instead of the fiddle-head at the distal end we have a declined and thickened prolongation of the stick without ornament. There is no distinct handle, but provision is made for the thumb by a deep, sloping groove; for the index-finger by a perforation, and for the other three fingers by separate grooves. These give a splendid grip for the hunter, but ...
— Throwing-sticks in the National Museum • Otis T. Mason
... afterwards, the retainers of the house of Egmont surprised Brussels by making their appearance in a new livery. Doublet and hose of the coarsest grey, and long hanging sleeves, without gold or silver lace, and having but a single ornament, comprised the whole costume. An emblem which seemed to resemble a monk's cowl, or a fool's cap and bells, was embroidered upon each sleeve. The device pointed at the Cardinal, as did, by contrast, the affected coarseness of the dress. There was no doubt ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... although surrounded by so splendid a court, wore a simple robe of gray cloth, with no ornament or other finery, and his strange and fearful appearance was strongly contrasted with the glittering raiment of his courtiers and the beauty ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... Come, do not protest. In faith, she is a maid of good ornament, and much modesty; and, except I conceived very worthily of her, ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... 508-m. Primitive revelation of God gives place to nature worship among—, 600-m. Primitive revelation seen through the idolatry of nature worship, 601-m. Primitive simplicity of revelation overlaid with poetic ornament, 600-m. Primitive Truth faded from men's Souls as time went on, 583-u. Primitive Truth falsified and confused during the ages, 599-u. Primitive Truths passed from the Egyptians to the Jews, preserved by the Essenes, 369-l. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Sulpice, and the dome of the Pantheon, under which lie the remains of so many of the great men of France, and the dark column of Place Vendome, wrought with figures in relief, and the obelisk brought from Egypt to ornament the Place Louis Quatorze, the associations with antiquity which the country presents, from being general, became particular and historical. They were recollections of power, and magnificence, and extended empire; of valor and skill in war ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... lady had raised her parasol he felt that a battle was imminent; but he had thought it prudent to abstain awhile from the combat himself. He hovered near, however, as personal protection might be needed on behalf of the favourite ornament of his window. ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... how the mines in Peru were discovered. Cinnabar, when ground very fine, will make a beautiful red paint. The Indians used this to ornament their bodies on grand occasions. This caused the country where they lived to be examined, and the cinnabar was found. The Romans used this paint hundreds of years ago in decorating their images and in ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... Henry III. There were also convents at Ardee, Drogheda, Galway, Kildare, and Thurles. The Convent of Kildare was the general seminary for the Order in Ireland; and one of its friars, David O'Brege, is styled "the burning light, the mirror and ornament of his country." ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... the labours of architecture, the spoils of Italy and Greece, which are now scattered from Inverary to Wilton, were accumulated in a few streets between Marylebone and Westminster. All superfluous ornament is rejected by the cold frugality of the protestants; but the catholic superstition, which is always the enemy of reason, is often the parent of the arts. The wealthy communities of priests and monks expend their revenues in stately edifices; ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... Oriental alabaster, several of them in the form of Isis; ostrich-eggs with painted or carved sphinxes and griffins; beads of glass and amber. These last may have come by the land-route from the north; but the other objects prove the import of perfumes and articles of ornament of all sorts from the East. Thence came linen and purple, ivory and frankincense, as is proved by the early use of linen fillets, of the purple dress and ivory sceptre for the king, and of frankincense in sacrifice, as well as by the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... admit that the effect does originate from the cause. For this argumentation does not stand the test of being set forth in definite alternatives. Does the mere gold, &c., by itself originate the svastika-ornament? or is it the gold coins (used for making ornaments) which originate? or is it the gold, as forming the substrate of the coins [FOOTNOTE 434:1]? The mere gold, in the first place, cannot be originative as there exists no effect different from ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... that I have been for some time acquainted with my friend Mr. Simon Sneed, and I believe him to be an honest and faithful young man, of gentlemanly bearing, pleasing address, and polite manners, who will be an honor and an ornament to any establishment that may be so fortunate as to secure his valuable services; and I cheerfully recommend him to any person to whom he may apply for a situation. ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... ornament or richness about these houses: no sofas, mirrors, or drapery, save that afforded by a few evergreens and creepers: the famous silks and damasks of Damascus have no place here; all is plain and homely; yet no Parisian Cafe, with its ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... lost to the world this unfortunate person, in the prime of life, without availing himself of fine abilities, which, properly improved, must have raised him to the top of any profession, and have rendered him a blessing to his friends, and an ornament ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... frequent, a new kind of outrage came to light, and again filled the city with dismay. It seemed as if a band of miscreant robbers were in league together for the purpose of getting into their possession all the jewellery they could. No sooner was any valuable ornament purchased than, no matter how or where kept, it vanished in an inconceivable way. But what was still worse, any one who ventured to wear jewellery on his person at night was robbed, and often murdered even, either in the ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... in Mr. Burton's house, and on 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 muffin, at the further side from the fire of the family table, while Florence had poured ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... a Turkey carpet. He was seated in a Chippendale chair. A glorious fire blazed behind a brass fender, and the receptacle for coal was of burnished copper. Photogravures in rich oaken frames adorned the roseate walls. The ceiling was an expanse of ornament, with an electric chandelier ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... feeling what happened just now too much to heed a convention." He sighed profoundly. "I have had influence with the good woman, as you would see; for years I've had it, because I was her only link with the gay world she was born to be an ornament in, and the only one free to be trusted with the tale of her misery. Well, you know—you are a man of the world, M. Montaiglon—you know the dangers of such a correspondence between a person of my reputation, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... toiler may betake himself periodically (or, more correctly, in relays) for purposes of refreshment and repose. The firing-trench, like most business premises, is severe in design and destitute of ornament. But the suburban trench lends itself to more imaginative treatment. An auctioneer's catalogue would describe it as A commodious bijou residence, on (or of) chalky soil; three feet wide and six feet deep; in the style of the best troglodyte period. ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... and sum of the passover which the children of Israel did eat when they came out from the land of Egypt, and the mark was set between their eyes.[92] This seal greatly added to their beauty, for it was an ornament to their faces. It also added to their gravity, and made their countenances more like them of angels[93] ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and magnificent than she had supposed. But what impressed and at the same time oppressed her most was the height of the walls from the richly inlaid floor to the gayly decorated ceiling overhead. It made her neck ache staring up fourteen feet and a half to the costly center ornament from which the heavy chandelier depended. All the rooms of the old house had been low, and when Peterkin built the new ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... quite unexpectedly and waving his arms in a sudden burst of fury. "Then if you are an American why don't you show a little more enterprise? Why don't you put something over? Why do you loaf about the place as though you were supposed to be an ornament? I want results—and ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... shouted; their voices were lost in the echoless air. They examined one by one the few thatched huts: they were open, contained one or two rude articles of furniture—a bed, a bench, and table—were scrupulously clean—and empty. They next inspected the chapel; it was tawdry and barbaric in ornament, but the candlesticks and crucifix and the basin for holy water were of heavily beaten silver. The same thought crossed their minds—the abandoned ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... in session when Franklin died, and when his death was announced, on motion of Madison, it was resolved that a badge of mourning be worn for one month, "as a mark of veneration due to the memory of a citizen whose native genius was not more an ornament to human nature than his various exertions of it have been precious to science, to freedom, and ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... your Majesty has here a cathedral and metropolitan church, and there is not a village church in Castilla so ill served, so lacking in ornament as this—to such an extent that although the quality of the ornaments is inferior, there are so few that they have not even the necessary colors for the feast-days, although they are in a place where silks are so cheap, as they are here. [12] Thus ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... he returned to his native town, and became a master, he built house after house—a whole street. It was a very handsome one, and a great ornament to the town. These houses built for him a small house, which was to be his own. But how could the houses build? Ay, ask them that, and they will not answer you; but people will answer for them, and ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... of their views they quoted long passages from memory, and whenever I indicated vaguely any text which I needed, they at once supplied it verbatim, so that the big folio Bible served merely as an ornament. Three or four of them seemed to know the whole of the New Testament by heart. The course of our informal debate need not here be described; suffice it to say that, after four hours of uninterrupted conversation, we agreed to differ on ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... judgment thought that a vice; for the ambush hurts more that is hid. He never forced his language, nor went out of the highway of speaking but for some great necessity or apparent profit; for he denied figures to be invented for ornament, but for aid; and still thought it an extreme madness to bind or wrest that ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... Are you going to ornament the royal palaces with nigger paw marks, too? By the date here, I was seven months old when this was done, and she was nursing me and her little nigger cub. There's a line straight across her thumbprint. How comes that?" and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... no more faithful executors of the will of the nation, than the women of Hungary. You know that in ancient Rome, after the battle of Cannae, which was won by Hannibal, the Senate called on the people spontaneously to sacrifice all their wealth on the altar of their fatherland. Every jewel, every ornament was brought forth, but still the tribune judged it necessary to pass a law prohibiting the ladies of Rome to wear more than half an ounce of gold, or particoloured splendid dresses. Now, we wanted in Hungary ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... Tartary, is the origin of your marmosets, and of all that train of animals with which your chamans ornament their magical robes. This is the origin of those figures of birds and of snakes which savage nations imprint upon their skins with ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... various tribes and nations—one with its barrel superbly damascened in gold with a poppy-flower pattern, another with a stock carved in ivory, with hunting-scenes in cameo. Enamelled and jewelled mountings are seen, with all the fanciful profusion of ornament with which the semi-barbarian will deck his favorite weapon. The splendor of Indian arms is largely due to the lavish use of diamonds, rubies, emeralds and other precious stones, mainly introduced for their effect in color, few of them being of great value as gems. Stones ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... he had a daughter, Tarpeia, who was so much attracted by the golden ornaments worn by the Sabines, that she promised to open the citadel to them if each soldier would give his bracelet to her. This was promised, and as each entered he threw his golden ornament upon the poor maiden, until she fell beneath the weight and died, for they wished to show that they hated treachery though willing to profit by it. Her name was fixed upon the steep rock of the Capitoline Hill from which traitors were in after ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... Phyllis's society in these days that she had learned to carry on all her affairs, even the housekeeping, out in her hammock by his wheel-chair or couch. She wore large, floppy white hats with roses on them, by way of keeping the sun off; but Allan, it appeared, did not think much of hats except as an ornament for girls, and his uncovered curly hair was burned to a sort of goldy-russet all through, and his pallor turned to ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... stuttering maid to wish her bon voyage. Yet I fancy she went glad enough, for she had no memories, not even an affaire to repent of, and to cherish. La, la! she wasn't so stupid, Sybil there, and she was an ornament to her own sex and the despair of the other. His Serene Highness Heinrich of Saxe-Gunden fancied the task of breaking that ice, and he was an adept and an Apollo, but it ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... is a slated house, without any ornament, except a set of wooden cuts, painted red and blue, that are placed seriatum around the square of the building in the internal side. Fourteen* of these suspind at equal distances on the walls, each set in a painted frame; ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... a large and spacious prairie in the middlemost whereof rose a castle of black marble; so he rode on at a foot pace and when close under the walls he espied a lady of passing beauty and loveliness who was seated at a window in melancholy plight and with no other ornament than her own charms. Her lovely hair hung down in dishevelled locks; her raiment was tattered and her favour was pale and showed sadness and sorrow. Withal she was speaking under her breath and Khudadad, giving attentive ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... washed clean, and purified from the odour of the filthy pigment with which it is bedaubed, the crop of hair is very abundant, and the appearance of it beautiful, being a silken, glossy, and curly black. Great pains are, however, used to destroy or mar this striking ornament of nature. ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... he come near to regretting his choice, and then not for his own sake, but for the sake of the young girl whom he had learned to love and whose love he had gained during his student days. Would she leave home and friends and the social circle of which she was the brightest ornament for all that he could offer? He had often written to her, picturing in the radiant colours of his own Western sky the glory of prairie, foot-hill, and mountain, the greatness and promise of the new land, and the worth of the work ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... forwarding this letter from the queen, Lord Parr's "gracious lady and kind sister," doubts not but that he will thank God, and frame himself to be more and more an ornament to Her Majesty. ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... observation was a most fortunate one for Cook, as it brought him to the favourable notice of the Royal Society, a body of eminent men, outside his own profession, which was able, soon after, to advance his interests, and in course of time to admit him into its own ranks as an ornament of which ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... of the Ottoman empire—clad in dark green European clothes, almost without ornament or insignia of rank; a red Turkish fez on his head; a short, stout, dark man, black-bearded, black-eyed, stupid, unprepossessing—a man whose whole appearance somehow suggested that if he only had ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... silken frock was painted an image of the sea-green lady, done with exquisite skill, and in a manner to preserve the whole of the wild and unearthly character of the expression. The wearer of this singular ornament leaned lightly against the little table, and as he bowed with entire self-possession to his guests, his face was lighted with a smile, that seemed to betray melancholy, no less than courtesy. At the same time he raised his cap, and stood in the rich jet-black ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... from this it is to be assumed that they wished to prevent it from possible ruin. Mr Dorney, speaking in 1653, recommends to the officers of the city then elected, "that they would, together with others, join their shoulders to hold up the stately fabric of the College Church, the great ornament of this city, which some do say is now in danger ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... may read mine." He compares himself to a drop of water who complains of being lost in the ocean and ignored: a genius had pity on it; he caused it to be swallowed by an oyster; it became the most beautiful pearl in the Orient, and was the chief ornament in the throne of the Great Mogul. Those who are only compilers, imitators, commentators, splitters of phrases, usurious critics, in short, those on whom a genius has no pity, will always ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... not believe in ornament, and this glimpse of character might be uttered in one sentence. Perhaps, however, a tendency to ornamentation might have made the poem at least decorative. After all, when one has emerged from the rarefied atmosphere of the Imagist, the Symbolist, and the vers librist, ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... may be observed belonging to the 12th century and reaching to the 17th; but some of the finest is that of the Norman era; the zigzags of the portals, and the billets, rose mouldings, &c., being of peculiar delicacy and boldness. There is a great deal of ornament composed of those extravagant forms of animals which, at a distance, are confounded with the foliage to which they are attached, but which, viewed nearly, are mysteriously extraordinary. The circular arch reigns throughout, but many in ogive also occur ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... it as the site of the new granite bridge I intend to build across the stream. And in case I have more land than is needed for this purpose, the extra area can be used for a park which will be an ornament to the spot rather than an eyesore. Therefore, take it altogether, I consider that ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett |
