"Extravagance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chance she did not avail herself. Instead, with nervous zeal she began to prepare for her masquerade. It was as though her promise to Winthrop to abandon her old friends had filled her with remorse, and that she now, by an extravagance of loyalty, was endeavoring to ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... that things are not as well managed as they might be, and that there is a great deal of distress and misery. In some parts of France the taxation has been very heavy, and the extravagance of the court has excited an immense deal of anger. It is not the fault of the present king, who is a quiet fellow, and does not care for show or pageants; but it is rather the fault of the kings who preceded ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... The eastern arm, strange to say, suddenly expands, and one side of it, for no earthly reason, is set back with an open space in front of it, partitioned by low palings. Immediately beyond, as if in a fit of sudden contrition for such extravagance, the passage or gutter contracts itself to its very narrowest and, diving under a printing-office shows itself in Shoe Lane. The houses in these trenches were not by any means of the worst kind. In the aforesaid expansion they were even genteel, or at any rate aspired to be so, and each had its ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... now proceeded in her literary career with redoubled ardour; but, dazzled by the false metaphors and rhapsodical extravagance of some contemporary writers, she suffered her judgment to be misled and her taste to be perverted; an error of which she became afterward sensible. During her poetical disguise, many complimentary poems were addressed to her; several ladies of the Blue Stocking Club, ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... where everybody gets nervous prostration trying to outdo everybody else in originality and extravagance, it wouldn't be like Mrs. Ess Kay to ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... visited Florence in 1638-9, but then a leading spirit in the literary Academies of the city, and especially enthusiastic in his attentions to strangers, he had outgone all the others, except Francini, in his admiration of the Englishman who had come among them, and in the extravagance of his parting adieu. The admiration was real; and, after Milton had gone, young Dati had often thought of him, often talked of him among his companions of the Delia Crusca and of Gaddi's more private Academy of the ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the Restoration Sir Heneage Finch, afterwards Earl of Nottingham, kept his "reader's feast" in the great hall of the Inner Temple. At that time of universal vice, luxury, and extravagance, the banquet lasted from the 4th to the 17th of August. It was, in fact, open house to all London. The first day came the nobles and privy councillors; the second, the Lord Mayor and aldermen; the third, the whole College ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... was called, either without or within. Painters do not appear in any of the early lists of workmen. A Salem citizen, just previous to the Revolution, had the woodwork of one of the rooms of his house painted. One of a group of friends, discussing this extravagance a few days later, said: "Well! Archer has set us a fine example of expense,—he has laid one of his rooms in oil." This sentence shows both the wording and ideas of ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... Another Instance of the Extravagance of her Passion was this: You must know, that during the Course of our mutual Love and Tenderness, some envious female Sprite whispered in her Ear, that I had at that very time a Bastard, and was obliged to maintain both Mother ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... friend sagely, "needs to be managed just as a circus is managed. Of good family, with an independent income large enough to make him free from the necessity of work, and small enough to keep him from the time-using diversions of extravagance, with a knowledge of wines, and a bent for selecting the proper kind of buttons for the coat in which to attend a cock-fight, he was the man for his circle and age. A Brummel? Hardly that. There was nothing of the ill-starred Beau in his appearance. His influence ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... wanted him to start with every advantage, to have a gentleman's education. At home he's seen nothing of extravagance and self-indulgence." ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... of a present, are given to the commander, at the end of every round voyage. He cannot in any way interfere in the choice or qualities of the vessel, notwithstanding his property is to be risked in her; and what completes the extravagance of the system, is, that before anything is done he must pay down twenty-five or forty per cent for freight, according to circumstances, which money is distributed among certain canons of the church, aldermen, subalterns ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... respect to almost every great question that ever divided mankind has happened also with respect to the Reform Bill. Wherever great interests are at stake there will be much excitement; and wherever there is much excitement there will be some extravagance. The same great stirring of the human mind which produced the Reformation produced also the follies and crimes of the Anabaptists. The same spirit which resisted the Ship-money, and abolished the Star Chamber, produced the Levellers and the Fifth Monarchy men. And so, it ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... set up her own notions, her own customs, he had better marry a poor girl without fortune! This one will simply ruin him. My dear, I am continually amazed at the way people are living whose incomes I know to the last sou. What an example for Jacqueline! Extravagance, fast living, elegant self-indulgence.... Did you observe the Baronne's gown?—of rough woolen stuff. She told some one it was the last creation of Doucet, and you know what that implies! His serge costs more than one of our velvet gowns . . . . And then her artistic tastes, her bric-a brac! ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... miss carrying music and wearing eye-glasses; and a clergyman discussing stocks with one of the business men; I alone in my corner being, of course, the one occupant for whom Nature had been at the expense of casting a special mould, and at the extravagance of ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... she laughed. "I'm not worth so much, nor anything near it. And even though I were, I'd not permit the wasteful extravagance." ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... breaking away in her, it would be so pleasant to live on board, and cruise up and down the beautiful lake. But it was satisfactorily shown that our finances, however they might be improved by letters from home, would not warrant such a piece of extravagance. ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... her looks so innocent, and discretion so deep, yet seeming so softly) may be greatly relied upon. She will accompany the mother, gorgeously dressed, with all her Jew's extravagance flaming out upon her; and first induce, then countenance, the lady. She has her cue, and I hope will make her ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... characterize her best impersonations. Wherever the idea of fate inspires the tragedy, or can properly be introduced as the motive, there Rachel is unsurpassed and unapproachable. Her stillness, her solemnity, her intensity; the want of mouthing, of ranting, of all extravagance; the slight movement of the arms, and the subtle inflections of the voice which are more expressive than gestures, haunt the memory and float through the mind afterwards as the figure of Francesca di Rimini, in ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... plenty, once we leave here in the morning," he told Bandy-legs when the latter showed a disposition to murmur against the seeming extravagance; "and I'd hate to kill that dog. I'm sure from his looks he must be of fine stock, and worth a heap to his owner. Besides, I've knocked one over, and that's one too many to please me. Now watch ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... anonymously a "History of England in a Series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son." To various noblemen credit for this popular work was given, including Lord Chesterfield. Growing success was only an excuse for growing extravagance, and in 1764 Goldsmith was placed temporarily under arrest for debt, probably by his landlady, Mrs. Fleming, with whom he had been living at Islington under an arrangement made by Newbery. His withdrawal from the town had given him ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... 'fort gros et fort prs'—the sarcasm of a Roman emperor applies, that to miss under such conditions implied an original genius for stupidity, and to hit was no trial of the case. After all, the sentimentalist had youth to plead in apology for this extravagance. He was hypochondriacal; he was in solitude; and he was possessed by gloomy imaginations from the works of a society in the highest public credit. But most readers will be aware of similar appeals to the mysteries of Providence, made in public by illustrious ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... many journalistic absurdities which fall in the way of celebrities, two which happened this year are worth recording; the one on account of its intrinsic extravagance, which succeeded nevertheless in taking in quite a number of sober folk; the other on account of the letter it drew from Huxley about his cat. The former appeared in the shape of a highly-spiced advertisement about ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... least another L100,000 per annum, which should be saved the country. As the revenue of the corporation now exceeds L2,000,000 a year, of which only half is expended in working costs, the estimate we have taken does not err upon the side of extravagance. By its neglect of its duties towards the commercial and mining community enormous losses are involved. Thus, in the coal traffic, the rate—which is now to be somewhat reduced—has been 3d. per ton per mile. According to the returns of the Chamber of Mines, the coal production ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... that she does lead poor John Stevens a miserable life. What with her extravagance, her temper, and the way she does hate his old mother whom he loves, his life must be ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... died within a short time of each other, and to have been buried in the same coffin. For in the vault under the church there is still a large double coffin, in which, according to tradition, lies a chain of gold of incalculable value. Some twenty years ago, the owner of Mellenthin, whose unequalled extravagance had reduced him to the verge of beggary, attempted to open the coffin in order to take out this precious relic, but he was not able. It appeared as if some powerful spell held it firmly together; and it has remained unopened down to the present time. May it remain so until the ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... collected and paid out for the support of the State Government are more than double what they were a few years ago, thus showing extravagance, if not recklessness, in the administration of the affairs of the State,—the natural result of a condition by which the existence of but one political ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... particular preference, the daughter of a rich London merchant, whose fortune nearly doubled his own. The fruits of this union were two sons, who happened in the economy of nature to be twins. This double blessing rather alarmed the parsimonious Squire; but as the act of maternal extravagance was never again repeated on the part of Mrs. Hurdlestone, he used to rub his hands and tell as a good joke, whenever his heart was warmed by an extra glass of wine, that his wife was the best manager in the world, as the same trouble ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... do for himself or for Judah. Even while Josiah lived, the crown prince showed the type of man he was. Instead of applying himself to the work of succeeding to the throne, he spent his time in riotous pleasure, and his father's money in lavish extravagance. ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... an example of universal benevolence; but then he represents him an entire rustic, living constantly in the country, shunning all public concourse of men, the court especially, and never going thither, but when obliged to supply the riotous luxury and extravagance of the suitors. Mr. Fielding has imitated these circumstances, as far as was consistent with our manners, in the character of Allworthy, and has with admirable judgment denied him an university education, made him a great lover of retirement, seldom ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... Ermyntrude, I cannot afford to maintain you in your present extravagance. [He goes to a flight of steps leading to the stalls and sits down disconsolately on the top step. A fashionably dressed lady comes through the curtains and contemplates him with patient obstinacy. He continues, ...
— The Inca of Perusalem • George Bernard Shaw
... government were increased by a spirit of extravagance, speculation, and even of corruption. Washington wrote, "Unless extortion, forestalling, and other practices which have ... become exceedingly prevalent can meet with proper checks, we must inevitably sink under such a load of accumulated oppressions." The whole cost ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... the window. She looked old and odd and drawn just for the moment. And yet that face could ripple with delighted smiles, the little red mouth was made for laughter. Beatrice's eyes swept over the wealth of good taste and criminal extravagance. ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... prayer nor repentance could profit him. If his sin was not to death, then he was on the same ground as other sinners. If they might pray, he might pray, and might look to be forgiven on the same terms. He still saw that his 'selling Christ' had been 'most barbarous,' but despair was followed by an extravagance, no less unbounded, of gratitude, when he felt that Christ ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... commanders lived in half civilized, half barbaric luxury, and shared with the priests absolute rule over the people roundabout. The American lieutenant, used to the simplicity of his own service, was struck by the extravagance and luxury of the Spanish officers, who always travelled with sumpter mules laden with delicacies; and he was no less struck with the laxity of discipline in all ranks. The Spanish cavalry were armed with lances and shields; the militia carried not only old fashioned carbines but lassos and ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... document and commenced my labors. My voice was tremulous at first, but I soon became accustomed to its sound, and as, by this time, I knew the greater portion of the book by heart, I got through the tissue of extravagance with great credit, not only to the ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... but intrigues in the province and the palace prevented its execution, and in the place of public works useful to Gaul, Nero caused a new census to be made of the population whom he required to squeeze to pay for his extravagance. It was in his reign, as is well known, that a fierce fire consumed a great part of Rome and her monuments. The majority of historians accuse Nero of having himself been the cause of it; but at any rate he looked on with cynical indifference, as if amused at so grand a spectacle, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... which they deem themselves perhaps more assured, as that we have a body, and that there exist stars and an earth, and such like, are less certain; for, although we have a moral assurance of these things, which is so strong that there is an appearance of extravagance in doubting of their existence, yet at the same time no one, unless his intellect is impaired, can deny, when the question relates to a metaphysical certitude, that there is sufficient reason to exclude entire assurance, ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... son, a bad husband, a perfidious friend, with little sense of truth or honour, and destitute of that public spirit which atoned for the political obstinacy of his father. No one sincerely regretted his death, except the favourites who had been enriched by his extravagance, and actually succeeded in carrying off a large booty out of the valuables that he had amassed. Nevertheless, his regency is identified with a glorious period in our military history, and his reign ushered in a new age of reform and national prosperity. In the great struggle against ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... I have sought to lift the mask from the timid selfishness which too often with us bears the name of Respectability. Purposely avoiding all attraction that may savour of extravagance, patiently subduing every tone and every hue to the aspect of those whom we meet daily in our thoroughfares, I have shown in Robert Beaufort the man of decorous phrase and bloodless action—the systematic self-server—in ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... more easy prey to their flattery, and his kind and jovial disposition led him into company from which he had much better have been away. In fact, as the Colonel did not attempt in any way to check him in his youthful career of extravagance and experiences which were the result of an excessive high spirit, our young gentleman at this time brought down upon himself much adverse criticism for his behaviour, especially from his uncles. Because of this and other reasons ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... of which Augustin later on recalled the plentiful and sweet-tasting fruits. In short, he lived in considerable style. It is true that in Africa household expenses have never at any time been a great extravagance. Still, the sons of Patricius had a pedagogue, a slave specially engaged to keep them under his eye, like all the children of ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... is something a little like extravagance in "How the Old Horse won the Bet," which taxes the credulity of experienced horsemen. Still there have been a good many surprises in the history of the turf and the ...
— The One Hoss Shay - With its Companion Poems How the Old Horse Won the Bet & - The Broomstick Train • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... care-lined, miserable face. How ridiculous were Julia's suspicions! She not only did not lock her door to-night, but left it ajar. At intervals I peeped through mine to see if her light was extinguished; she had not—so poorly dressed she was—the appearance of one who would indulge in the extravagance of a candle burning all night. Yet, long after I knew by the creaking of the spring mattress Mrs Ragg had lain down, I saw the streak of light shining through ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... entertainments that came under my observation, a note of almost wanton luxury appeared to be aimed at. Evening dress is worn whenever possible, and the costumes of the ladies are invariably the last word in ultra-fashionable extravagance. Food is as yet obviously plentiful; what is not consumed being frequently flung about, especially by the humorous elements of the population, and wasted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... she will believe whatever the artist tells her because he is an artist, not because he is a man of sense; and she encourages him to be more of an artist than a man of sense. She encourages him to be extravagantly aesthetic, and enjoys all his extravagance as a diversion from the sound masculinity of her own mankind. There is room in her prosperous, easy world for these diversions from business, just as there is room for charity or, perhaps, religion. ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... gardeners. And it was not an unusual sight to see a merchant drive in his carriage to the vegetable garden, select his vegetables, and carry them to his table, showing the economy and simple manners of the people of that older day as compared with our present extravagance. ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... statesman. Now, I do not repeat that in this place because I agree with it, but because it helps to illustrate, as sometimes a violent paradox will help to illustrate, a truth that does not lie all at once on the surface. But it is no paradox or extravagance or anything but the simple truth to say that if Little- Faith had had more and earlier discoveries made to him of the innate evil of his own heart, even if it had been by that innate evil bursting out of his heart and laying waste his good life, he ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... unarmed, and (as I thought) bound; and when the first four or five of them were jumped on shore, they took those three out of the boat as prisoners: one of the three I could perceive using the most passionate gestures of entreaty, affliction, and despair, even to a kind of extravagance; the other two, I could perceive, lifted up their hands sometimes, and appeared concerned indeed, but not to such a degree ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... romantic writers.) This, her first portrait of Shelley in fiction, gave Mary considerable trouble: revisions from the rough drafts are numerous. The passage on Woodville's endowment by fortune, for example, is much more concise and effective than that in S-R fr. Also Mary curbed somewhat the extravagance of her praise of Woodville, omitting such hyperboles as "When he appeared a new sun seemed to rise on the day & he had all the benignity of the dispensor of light," and "he seemed to come as the God ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... of a well-managed hospital, from the record files and wheel stretchers to the hand-power washing machine, is neglected. Nevertheless the hospital is conducted with true economy. Dr. Stone defines economy as "the art which avoids all waste and extravagance and applies money to the best advantage. It is not economy to buy cheap furniture that has to be replaced all the time. It is poor economy to buy cheap food and let patients suffer for lack of nourishment.... It is poor economy ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... forced to consider the probability of foreclosure eventually, he knew they would not consider the loan. Don Mike was bitterly aware of the fact that the history of his family bad been one of waste, extravagance, carelessness and inefficiency. In order to place the ranch on a paying basis and take up John Parker's mortgage, therefore, he would have to have a new loan of not less than half a million dollars, and at six per cent., the lowest ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... mare, knowing that she was going home to her lines, opened out like a winner racing up the straight. The extravagance of her speed exactly fitted my extravagant mood. I promised myself that, just as I was letting my animal have its head, so I would slacken all moral reins, and let my life run uncontrolled. There was not more beauty in things than ugliness, nor more happiness in life than pain. Have done ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... at this time floating in an atmosphere of rationalistic negation, and the moral of his piece, as he hints, points first to the extravagance of Catholicism, next to the vanity of the pleasures of the world, and lastly, to the unfathomable uncertainty of philosophy. Still, we may discern a significant leaning towards the theory of the eternity of matter, which has arranged itself and assumed variety of form by virtue of its inherent ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... good. In its fallen condition the poor soul undoubtedly makes wondrous mistakes in its romantic strainings, but these mistakes are comparatively seldom on the side of exaggeration. Our dictionary says that romance is extravagance—a fiction which passes beyond the limits of real life. Now, we maintain that no one—not even the most romantic of individuals—ever comes up to real life. We have been a child—at least we incline to that belief—and we have been, ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... moral force to resist. He suffered her to compute the cost of their stay at Niagara without allowing those three dollars to enter into her calculation; he even began to think what justificative extravagance he could tempt her to. He suggested the purchase of local bric-a-brac; he asked her if she would not like to dine at the International, for old times' sake. But she answered, with disheartening virtue, that they must not think of such a thing, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... credit to his sex and his family—a remark which has passed about ribaldly in town for a dozen years, though Mortimer Conklin never knew that he was the subject of a town joke. Once he rebuked a man in the barber shop for speaking of feminine extravagance, and told the shop that he did not stint his wife, that when she asked him for money he always gave it to her without question, and that if she wanted a dress he told her to buy it and send the bill to him. And we are such a polite people that no one in the crowded shop laughed—until ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... character of detail and matter of fact in their talk which concealed the extravagance of its purport, insomuch that the wildest schemes had the aspect of everyday realities. Thus the listener was not startled at the idea of cities to be built, as if by magic, in the heart of pathless forests; and ...
— The Hall of Fantasy (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dream, the more confused because so vivid. His wits did not come so readily about him as usual; there may have been a slight delusion, which mingled itself with his sober perceptions, and by its leaven of extravagance made the whole substance of the scene untrue. Thus it happened that, as it were at the same instant, he fancied himself years back in life, thousands of miles away, in a gloomy cobwebbed room, looking out upon a graveyard, while ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... frenzy, transport, devotion, extravagance, inspiration, vehemence, eagerness, fanaticism, intensity, warmth, earnestness, fervency, passion, zeal. ecstasy, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... certain ladies of particularly elastic virtue, who fondly dreamed that they 'managed' him; and among these, to her infinite rage and despair, went Madame Vantine, wife of Vantine the winegrower, a yellow-haired, sensual "femelle d'homme," whose extravagance in clothes, and reckless indecency in conversation, combined with the King's amused notice, and the super- excellence of her husband's wines, had for a brief period made her 'the rage' among a certain set of exceedingly ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... watch over their goods, and were looking with great interest and many earnest remarks upon this first appearance of their new home. Not far from them a collection of newly imported African negroes, naked, save a strip of cloth about their loins, were rivaling in volubility and extravagance of gesture even the Frenchmen. Native islanders, from the mountains, in picturesque, brigand-like dresses, with long knives stuck jauntily in their girdles, gazed with stupid wonder at the crowd of foreigners. Soldiers from the barracks, with most ferocious looking whiskers and mustaches, ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... afford nobler passages of description and reflection. Few are wiser, deeper, manlier in their strain of thinking. But when we turn to the dramas from which these grand things have been detached, we find extravagance, confusion, huge thoughts lying in helpless heaps, sublimity in parts conducing to no general effect of sublimity, the movement lagging and unwieldy, and the plot urged on to the catastrophe by incoherent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... brass, rose the temple of the Carthaginian Venus, the mistress of the land. She seemed to fill it with her soul. In such convulsions of the soil, such alternations of temperature, and such plays of light would she manifest the extravagance of her might with the beauty of her eternal smile. The mountains at their summits were crescent-shaped; others were like women's bosoms presenting their swelling breasts, and the Barbarians felt a heaviness that was full of delight weighing ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... fifty different minds in half an hour. Tri. And, by that, shown the versatility of my genius. Old F. Don't tell me of versatility, sir. Let me see a little steadiness. You have never yet been constant to anything but extravagance. Tri. Yes, sir, one thing more. Old F. What is that, sir. Tri. Affection for you. However my head may have wandered, my heart has always been constantly attached to the kindest of parents; and, from this moment, I am resolved to lay my follies ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... gratified vanity and pleasure at the thought that he was the master of the house. But how and by whom the magic wand had been waved he no longer sought to remember. Florine and Coralie, dressed with the fanciful extravagance and magnificent artistic effect of the stage, smiled on the poet like two fairies at the gates of the Palace of Dreams. And Lucien was almost ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... the arena as to a bridal bed! See how Lawrence jests upon his gridiron." And yet again, "They must be bewitched, because of their morbidity and their love of darkness, the enemies of joy and human mirth and common pleasure. In either case they are not true men at all." Their extravagance of joy when others would be weeping, and their extravagance of sorrow when all the world is glad—these are the very signs to which their enemies appealed as proofs that a power other than that of this world was inspiring them, as ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... these sailors! They have no care for the morrow, but spend lavishly the hard-earned wages of their adventurous life. To one like myself, who early knew the value of money, this thoughtless extravagance certainly appeared unaccountable, and nearly allied to madness; but, when I reflected that they are sometimes imprisoned in a ship for years, without touching land, and frequently in peril of losing their lives—that they have scarcely time to scatter their wages and ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... Cosconius and Galba, who had been praetors, he gave them only the slight reprimand of calling them Citizens, instead of Fellow-Soldiers, and afterwards assigned to each man a thousand drachmas, besides a share of lands in Italy. He was also reflected on for Dolabella's extravagance, Amantius's covetousness, Antony's debauchery, and Corfinius's profuseness, who pulled down Pompey's house, and rebuilt it, as not magnificent enough; for the Romans were much displeased with all these. But Caesar, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... in our own humble entertainments." In spite of the gross flattery and coarseness of this address, Madame Danglars could not forbear gazing with considerable interest on a man capable of expending six millions in twelve months, and who had selected Paris for the scene of his princely extravagance. "And when did you arrive here?" ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... The late Chaplitsky— the same who died in poverty after having squandered millions—once lost, in his youth, about three hundred thousand roubles—to Zoritch, if I remember rightly. He was in despair. My grandmother, who was always very severe upon the extravagance of young men, took pity, however, upon Chaplitsky. She gave him three cards telling him to play them one after the other, at the same time exacting from him a solemn promise that he would never play at cards again as long as he lived. Chaplitsky then went to his victorious ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... set himself to raise the people to open resistance against their oppressors, while he disarmed the suspicions of the nobles by intentional buffoonery and extravagance of conduct. On May 20, 1347, the first blow was struck. Rienzi, with a chosen band of conspirators, and accompanied by the papal vicar, who had every interest in weakening the baronage, proceeded to the Capitol, and, amid ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... exaggeration. But this is to measure him by a Sophoclean scale. The simplicity of the antique tragedy is by no means that of expression, but is of form merely. In the utterance of great passions something must be indulged to the extravagance of Nature; the subdued tones to which pathos and sentiment are limited can not express a tempest of the soul. The range between the piteous "no more but so," in which Ophelia compresses the heartbreak whose compression was to make her mad, and that sublime appeal ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... censure, must cease to exist.—The dead have no sex; they can surprise by no new miracles; they can confer no privilege: Corinna has ceased to be a woman—she is only an author; and it may be foreseen that many will repay themselves for former complaisance, by a severity to which the extravagance of previous praises may perhaps give the colour of truth. The latest posterity—for to the latest posterity they will assuredly descend—will have to pronounce upon her various productions; and the longer the vista through which they are seen, the more accurately minute ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... and broken his connecting links with the net-work of human life; or else it was that nightmare-feeling which we sometimes have in dreams, when we seem to find ourselves wandering through a crowded avenue, with the noonday sun upon us, in some wild extravagance of dress or nudity. He was conscious of estrangement from his towns-people, but did not always know how nor wherefore, nor why he should be thus groping through the twilight mist in solitude. If they spoke loudly to him, with cheery voices, the greeting translated itself faintly and mournfully ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... deeper in a life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor sufficient for her comfortable maintenance, and I learnt from my brother that the power of receiving it had been made over some months before to another person. He imagined, and calmly could he imagine it, that her extravagance, and consequent distress, had obliged her to dispose of it for some immediate relief. At last, however, and after I had been six months in England, I did find her. Regard for a former servant of my own, who had since fallen into misfortune, carried me ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... travelling 'n' I've got to consider a lot afore I c'n decide 's to anythin'. 'N' I only feel plum sure o' one thing, 'n' that is 's I don't want to buy no new bonnet. Bonnets is a awful waste o' money, 'n' I've got nothin' inside o' me 's cries out to extravagance. But speakin' o' waste reminds me over again 's I don't want to throw no more time away on you, so, 's I'm always frank 'n' open, I'll jus' say so ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... marriage with Catharine Susan Ann Macnab. Men's wives bulk less largely in their biographies than in their lives. Mrs Howe's sweetness and charm were an unfailing strength to her husband. She moderated his extravagance, and bore cheerfully with his habit, so trying to a housekeeper, of filling the house with his friends at all hours and at every meal. Above all, she never nagged, or said 'I told you so.' She believed in him and in his work, and cheered him in his hours of depression. A man of ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... estate. "The proud prediction of their father," continues Mrs. Grant, "was soon amply fulfilled with regard to the daughters of this extraordinary family." "Their history," she adds, "unites the extravagance of romance with the sober reality ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... formal and solemn assurance for the security and enjoyment of his property, and a warrant given, as it were uno flatu, to another, to rob him of that property, or to subject him to proscription and disfranchisement for possessing or for endeavoring to retain it? The injustice and extravagance necessarily implied in a supposition like this, cannot be rationally imputed to the patriotic or the honest, or to those ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... our mature. When his wife deemed it necessary to make those hospitable preparations for their child's christening, which are so usual in the country, he treated her intention of complying with this old custom as a direct proof—of unjustifiable folly and extravagance—nay, his remonstrance with her exhibited such remarkable good sense and prudence, that it was a matter of extreme difficulty to controvert it, or to perceive that it originated from any other motive than a strong interest in the ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... dependents were young men of birth who (their means not answering to their extravagance) had been put in prison by creditors and redeemed thence by Lord Timon; these young prodigals thenceforward fastened upon his lordship, as if by common sympathy he were necessarily endeared to all such spendthrifts and loose livers, who, not being able to follow him in ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... duly appreciated by some even of those who lamented the extravagance of my views on other subjects. Others looked on me with unmitigated horror. And the feelings of the richer classes generally against me rose to such a pitch at length, that it was hardly safe for me to go abroad after dark. My religious and political opponents joined their forces, and seemed ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... else be said in praise of a critic? And does an extravagance or an error here and there lie validly against the saying of it? I think not. I could be a professor if I would and show you slips enough—certain ponderous nothings in the Ibsen essays, already mentioned; a too easy bemusement at the hands of Shaw; a vacillating over Wagner; a habit of yielding ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... was taught to consider as dead, the mother whom she has mourned as dead, is living—a divorced woman, going about under an assumed name, a bad woman preying upon life, as I know you now to be—rather than that, I was ready to supply you with money to pay bill after bill, extravagance after extravagance, to risk what occurred yesterday, the first quarrel I have ever had with my wife. You don't understand what that means to me. How could you? But I tell you that the only bitter words that ever came from those sweet lips of hers were on your account, and I hate to see ...
— Lady Windermere's Fan • Oscar Wilde
... ate, he told me many things, and among them of a life of wasted opportunities—of foolish riot, and prodigal extravagance, and of ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... pointed at Saturnian Jove To vex him, blue-eyed Pallas thus began. Eternal father! may I speak my thought, And not incense thee, Jove? I can but judge That Venus, while she coax'd some Grecian fair 495 To accompany the Trojans whom she loves With such extravagance, hath heedless stroked Her golden clasps, and scratch'd her lily hand. So she; then smiled the sire of Gods and men, And calling golden Venus, her bespake. 500 War and the tented field, my beauteous child, Are not for thee. Thou rather shouldst be found In scenes of matrimonial bliss. The ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... drag me into a quarrel," said Venetia; "you are putting things into my mouth. I think mad extravagance is worse than intoxication, inasmuch as it is committed by reasonable people uninfluenced by drugs or alcohol. I think insults levelled at inoffensive people are worse than the wildest deeds committed under the influence of ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... it lessens, appear extremely short. Time will seem to have added wings to his heels as well as his shoulders. 'Those have a short Lent who owe money to be paid at Easter.' At present, perhaps, you may think yourselves in thriving circumstances, and that you can bear a little extravagance without injury; but ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... love of pleasure, the fast making and fast spending of money; the old hard labor and wild delights; jobberies, official and political corruption; thefts, robberies, and violent assaults; murders, duels and suicides; gambling, drinking, and general extravagance and dissipation.... The people had wealth at command, and all the passions of youth were burning within them; and they often, therefore, outraged public decency. Yet somehow the oldest residenters and the very family-men ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... scoldin' Adam about slackness in gittin' kindlin' wood or her pardner complainin' about her wastefulness and extravagance in usin' so many fig leaves for her fall suit. Oh, how nateral, how nateral ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... class we rise to the highest, all there is gaiety, pleasure, luxury, and extravagance; the town life at Dublin is formed on the model of that of London. Every night in the winter there is a ball or a party, where the polite circle meet, not to enjoy but to sweat each other; a great crowd crammed into twenty feet square ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... this subject I was often indulging in an Utopian dream, rather than a well-founded opinion. I have been concerned at finding that these fine estates were too often involved, and mortgaged, or placed in the hands of creditors, and the owners exiled from their paternal lands. There is an extravagance, I am told, that runs parallel with wealth; a lavish expenditure among the great; a senseless competition among the aspiring; a heedless, joyless dissipation among all the upper ranks, that often beggars even these splendid establishments, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... is extravagance. On the plea that "the best is always the cheapest," and to be sure of a large factor of safety, or as the late Mr. Holley called it a "factor of ignorance," without much trouble to themselves, some engineers use more or ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... you," said the Acolyte, "my most excellent, though blunt- witted Hereward, this Caesar of ours hath had the extravagance to venture his tender wit in comparison to that of Achilles Tatius. He stands upon his honour, too, this ineffable fool, and is displeased with the idea of being supposed either to challenge a woman, or to receive a challenge ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... put together. The expenses of these new merchants are, however, much greater than sixteen years ago, the profit less, and the credit still less than the profit. Hence numerous bankruptcies, frauds, swindling, forgeries, and other evils of immorality, extravagance, and misery. The fair and honest dealers suffer most from the intrusion of these infamous speculators, who expecting, like other vile men wallowing in wealth under their eyes, to make rapid fortunes, and to escape detection as well as punishment—commit crimes to soothe disappointment. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the Princess Osra. But no look came, and he got nothing from her but cold civility. Yet she had looked at him when he looked not—for princesses are much like other maidens—and thought him a very pretty gentleman, and was highly amused by his extravagance. Yet she did not believe it to witness any true devotion to her, but thought ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... civilization A splendid external deception Moral evils Imperial despotism Prostration of liberties Some good emperors Disproportionate fortunes Luxurious living General extravagance Pride and insolence of the aristocracy Gibbon's description of the nobles The plebeian class Hopelessness and disgrace of poverty Popular superstitions The slaves The curse of slavery Degradation of the female sex Bitter satires of Juvenal ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... trick she had played. Jimmie had committed an extravagance, treating her to a new dress out of his increased earnings: a gorgeous contrivance of several colours, looking like silk, even if it wasn't. Lizzie had stated that the cost was fifteen dollars, and he, the dupe, had believed ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... business, for there's a hard-times atmosphere hanging over the house, all of a sudden, and mamma is constantly remarking that there's a limit to my extravagance, etc., etc. She and I happen to be on dreadfully formal terms just at present, which is another of the joys of home. And to cap the climax," she added, with a burst of confidence only half mocking, "I'm in an absolutely suitorless condition—not a blessed ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... places. They were now, not ordinarily ugly, but either absolutely hideous, or ludicrously grotesque both in face and form. There was no invention, they said, of the most lawless imagination expressed by pen or pencil, that could surpass the extravagance of their appearance. But I suspect those who said so had mistaken some of their animal companions for the goblins themselves—of which more by and by. The goblins themselves were not so far removed from the human as ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... the great army of the delicatessen-fed, so he took up his old way of life again, in that he stopped every evening at Braegdort's delicatessen and bought potatoes in salad, ham in slices, and sometimes even stuffed tomatoes in bursts of extravagance. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... on to the bowsprit nearly stifled by the showering of the seas, holding an open knife between my teeth, half dazed by the prodigious motion of the light brig, which, at this extreme end of her, was to be felt to the full height of its extravagance. At every plunge I expected to be buried, and every moment I was prepared to be torn from my hold. It was a fearful time; the falling off of the brig into the trough—and never was I in a hollower and more swelling sea—her falling off, I say, in the act of veering might end ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... its people and their necessities, it would have been a miracle almost, no matter how honest, had their legislation not been harmful. Unfortunately, there was added to gross ignorance the most unblushing corruption and wanton extravagance. Many millions of debt, in the shape of "Special Tax Bonds," as they were called, were attempted to be fastened upon the State by this Legislature, but the people have persistently ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... been brought clearly to the attention of the original proprietor of the estate, its draft-power would have raised that distinguished military gentleman out of his grave. "My dear friends," Major Slocomb would say, when, after his wife's death, some new extravagance was commented upon, "I felt I owed the additional slight expenditure to the memory of that queen ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... be too much for you," said the elder sister, while Chatty dried her eyes. Minnie's eyes had no need of drying. She had cried at the right time, but it was little more than levity to be always crying. It was nearly as bad as enjoying anything. She did not like extravagance of any kind. ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... has sympathy with the serpent's shape. When any other animal barters away his legs he buys either fins or wings with them; this is a generally-understood law, invariably respected. But the snake goes in for extravagance in ribs and vertebrae; an eccentric, rakish, and improper proceeding; part of an irregular and raffish life. Nothing can carry within it affection, or even respect, for an animal whose tail begins nowhere ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... hardihood. He was, besides, the favorite of the ladies, who called him the best-looking and most amiable man in the whole monarchy; and, with amiable indulgence, attributed his many adventures and acts of inconstancy, his wild and dissipated life, his extravagance and numerous debts, to the genius of the prince. He was, indeed, an extraordinary man, one of those on whose brow Providence has imprinted the stamp of genius,—not to their own good, but to their misfortune, and who either miserably perish by their genius, or constantly ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... acknowledge the tenderness which his heart felt. He only said, that on the eve of a great battle, he wished to bid his father farewell, and solemnly to implore his good offices for the wife—it might be for the child—whom he left behind him. He owned with contrition that his irregularities and his extravagance had already wasted a large part of his mother's little fortune. He thanked his father for his former generous conduct; and he promised him that if he fell on the field or survived it, he would act in a manner worthy of the ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... spirits, and prepares them to despond when it shall have passed away. The country, we are told, is "ruined." What! the country ruined, when the mass of the population have hardly retrenched a luxury! We are indeed paying, and we ought to pay, the penalty of reckless extravagance, of wild and criminal speculation, of general abandonment to the passion for sudden and enormous gains. But how are we ruined? Is the kind, nourishing earth about to become a cruel step-mother? Or ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... is yet unknown; but this adds only to the Oriental-extravagance of the picture. I do not think with Lane (ii. 426) that "abyaz" here can mean "bright." Dr. Steingass suggests ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... Hebrew. His De Rudimentis Hebraicis, [Sidenote: 1506] a grammar and dictionary of this language, performed a great service for scholarship. In the late Jewish work, the Cabbala, he believed he had discovered a source of mystic wisdom. The extravagance of his interpretations of Scriptual passages, based on this, not only rendered much of his work nugatory, but got him into a great deal of trouble. The converted Jew, John Pfefferkorn, proposed, in a series of pamphlets, that Jews should be ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... felt more and more the need to express his affection. He had expressed it, he thought, to the uttermost, by letting her go at all. And now he wanted to express it in detail, by pink curtains, satin-faced wall-paper with pink roses. The paper cost two shillings a piece, and he gloated over the extravagance and over his pretty, poetic choice. Usually the wall-papers at the Rectory had been chosen by Betty, and the price limited to sixpence. He would refrain from buying that Fuller's Church History, the beautiful brown folio whose ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... Indeed, I believe every one, for a moment at least, experienced something like shame, from having either proposed or countenanced an extravagance so useless and frivolous. For my part, I was so much struck and affected by a rebuke so noble to these spendthrifts, that I felt my eyes filled ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... could join his family every week, and inhale a breath of pure air. Charles did not particularly like the Combermeres. Mrs Combermere was a fussy woman, full of absurd pretension, and with a weakness for forming aristocratic acquaintance, which had more than once led her into extravagance, ending in disappointment and mortification. The Misses Combermere inherited their mamma's weakness; they were comely damsels, and expectant sharers of papa's wealth, who was 'very particular' on whom he bestowed ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... the cringing attitude of the bull. Making herself ever so much bigger than Nature intended, she followed up her advantages, slapping her enemy's face with widespread wings until he winced again, and clawing with truly feminine extravagance and uncertainty of aim. The first round was all to the credit of the hen, and the startled poultry cackled derisively as the bull retreated. Sure of victory, the hen followed him up, skipping, flapping, clawing, and scolding ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... without chart or compass. The gentlemen, his particular friends, who, with the names of various departments of ministry, were admitted to seem as if they acted a part under him, with a modesty that becomes all men, and with a confidence in him which was justified even in its extravagance by his superior abilities, had never in any instance presumed upon any opinion of their own. Deprived of his guiding influence, they were whirled about, the sport of every gust, and easily driven into any port; and as ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of the cottage-folk is inquired into it will often be found that they have descended from well-to-do positions in life—not from extravagance or crime, or any remarkable piece of folly, but simply from a long-continued process of muddling away money. When the windmill was new, Peter's forefathers had been, for village people well off. The ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... her hand shook while she wrote out a second cheque for twenty-five pounds. Not without fear and trembling did she present it at the cashier's desk; but the clerk said not a word, nor did he look at her with a stern, shocked expression as if reproaching her for such awful extravagance. On the contrary he smiled pleasantly, remarking that it was a warm day (which Fan knew), and then bowed, and ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... impersonator of character, the same old stage gossip remarks, how men would read Shakspere with higher rapture could they but conceive how he was played by Betterton! "Then might they know," he exclaims, with a delightful extravagance of emphasis and quaint-ness of phraseology, "the one was born alone to speak what the other only knew to write!" The simple truth of the matter being that for the making of a consummate actor, reader, or impersonator, not only is there ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... specialism will deny that there is in these old, many-sided institutions an element of unity and universality which may well be preserved in its due proportion and place. Spiritually, at least, it will be admitted that some all-round balance is needed to equalize the extravagance of experts. It would not be difficult to carry the parable of the knife and stick into higher regions. Religion, the immortal maiden, has been a maid-of-all-work as well as a servant of mankind. She provided men at once with the theoretic laws of an unalterable cosmos and also with the ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... wrecks of men who inherited fortunes before they had developed the mental poise or business experience necessary to estimate money at its true value. If they had earned their money by honest effort they would not have fallen into habits that led to unbridled extravagance and ultimate disgrace. The inheritance of unearned wealth quite frequently proves a ...
— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst
... in terms which are really applicable to himself. In him this manner blends with a true gallantry of nature, and an affectionate complaisance and grace. He has at times some of its extravagance or caricature also, but the shades of expression by which he passes from this to the "golden cadence" of Shakespeare's own most characteristic verse, are so fine, that it is sometimes difficult to trace them. What is a vulgarity in Holofernes, and a caricature in Armado, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... long on points like these. We must now notice a few features of his style which mark him as the representative of an epoch. First, his extreme cleverness. In splendid extravagance of expression no Latin author comes near him. The miniature painting of Statius, the point of Martial, are both feeble in comparison; for Lucan's language, though often tasteless, is always strong. Some of ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Morris, and as they were all excellent friends of mine I could make no objection, though ill able to bear my share of the expense of the mnage incurred, and finally I broke away, leaving him in possession, with Madame Bodichon's consent. He was generous to the same degree of extravagance that he was indifferent to the claims of others; he made no more account of giving you a treasured curio than he did of taking it. His was a sublime and childlike egotism which simply ignored obligations until, by chance, they were made legal, at which, when it happened, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... who seek to reduce the impressions of the extravagance indulged in by the Indians at these games. The concurrence of testimony is to the effect that there was no limit to which they would not go. Their last blanket or bead, the clothing on their backs, their wives and children, their own liberty were sometimes hazarded; and if the chances ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... convincing. Any listener who had been on the point of accusing Persis of extravagance, must have humbly acknowledged his mistake and begged her pardon. But Persis had a harder task than to convince an outsider that she needed an addition to her wardrobe. She was striving, and without success, to alter her own uneasy conviction that ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... country have been attributed to the Abolitionists, though it is hard to see how any party can become permanently powerful except in one of two ways,—either by the greater truth of its principles, or the extravagance of the party opposed to it. To fancy the ship of state, riding safe at her constitutional moorings, suddenly engulfed by a huge kraken of Abolitionism, rising from unknown depths and grasping it with slimy tentacles, is to look at the natural history of the matter with the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the Athenians; nor the battle of Marathon to Miltiades, but to the republic. But now people say that Timotheus took Corcyra, and Iphicrates cut off the Spartan division, and Chabrias won the naval victory at Naxos; for you seem to resign the merit of these actions, by the extravagance of the honors which you have bestowed on their account upon each of ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Imperial Extravagance.—Asses' milk is said to be a great beautifier and preserver of the skin. Poppaea, wife of the Emperor Nero, used it for that purpose, having four or five hundred asses constantly in her retinue, to furnish her every morning with a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... accommodation, which the better interpreters had already applied to many violations [fn62] in the New Testament, is by this author extended to all." "Though this opinion of Dr. Ekerman," says Mr. Everett, must be allowed to savour a little of the extravagance of theory, Eichorn adopts it. As the work alluded to, the "Theological Contributions" has become a classical book with one class of the German divines, who are thought to excel in critical learning, there is no doubt that this doctrine is generally received among them. MICHAELIS ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... spend too much of his time in gaming and recreations. Then it was, for no other part of his time can be instanced, when some, who knew him not (for these were only his traducers), took occasion from this extravagance, to reproach him with profanity and flagitiousness, which his nature ever abhorred, and disdained the very suspicion thereof. When his time at the college drew near an end, he demonstrated such a tenderness of offending God, &c. that, upon his refusal of the oath of allegiance then tendered, he ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... eggs, and was most particular that they should be boiled for three minutes, and not one second more. The landlady brought up the beefsteak and the hot milk for the coffee, and if any friend came in orders were sent down instantly for more food. Such extravagance could not fail to astonish Kate, accustomed as she had been from her earliest years to a strict and austere mode of life. Frequently she begged of Dick to be more economical, but having always lived Bohemian-like on the money easily gained, ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... Who was there like him in the quarter For mortifying brick and mortar, Or pocketing the odd piastre By substituting lath and plaster? With plan and two-foot rule in hand, He by the foreman took his stand, With boisterous voice, with eagle glance To stamp upon extravagance. For thrift of bricks and greed of guilders, He ...
— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... short and riotous life, had dashed through the Dreux fortune at a tremendous rate, very few people realized what an utter financial wreck he had left for the two children. There had been barely enough for them to live upon after his death, and inasmuch as Myra Nell's extravagance steadily increased as the income diminished, her half-brother was always hard pressed to keep up appearances. She was a great responsibility upon the little man's shoulders, particularly since she managed in all innocence and thoughtlessness to spend ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... pointing out that the enormous sums of money spent by Governments, by municipalities, and by private persons upon education, in order to produce this lamentable state of affairs, is so much waste and extravagance. Not only does it bring in no practical return, but it works out in a precisely opposite direction. Schools and colleges that only serve to produce anomalous and unnatural social conditions, that stifle genius and talent, and that cause widespread ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... regular tastes of the refined, fastidious Eton boy; wrote of the cut of his first tail-coat that 'this is really an important thing;' and had grown choice in the adorning of his room and the binding of his books, though he never let these tastes bring him into debt or extravagance. His turn for art and music began to show itself, and the anthems at St. George's Chapel on the Sunday afternoons gave him great delight; and in Eton Chapel, a contemporary says, 'I well remember how he used to sing the Psalms ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... drops—as sometimes happens. For the impetuous spirits will have none of this cradling. Never any swaying or aimlessly lolling for them. Never any making believe, or lying cosily, or genially supposing that one is much like another, fire warm, wine pleasant, extravagance ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... called up by the country of Michael Angelo, Raphael, Palladio, &c., and in his contemplation of the scenes of the convulsions of nature, and of the most striking incidents in the classical and middle ages. Independently of this extravagance of style, this work is valuable, especially in what relates to the Tyrol, where indeed his style is more simple. ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... of youthful extravagance in his plans and expectations. But it was the untamed enthusiasm which is the source of all great thoughts and deeds,—a beautiful delirium which age commonly tames down, and for which the cold shower-bath the world furnishes gratis proves ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... preservation are distributed to the several organs.(698) There is, indeed, no machine which has saved as much labor as money. (Lauderdale). It is true that the shadows which wealth is wont to cast, extravagance, avarice and inequality of every kind, may readily grow longer and darker in consequence of the introduction of money.(699) But may not the knife which, in the hands of the surgeon, does so much for life, become an instrument of danger in the hands of a child? The invention of money has been ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... they climbed unknown mountains, surveyed unknown oceans, pierced the sultry intricacies of tropical forests; while from year to year and from day to day new wonders were unfolded, new islands and archipelagoes, new regions of gold and pearl, and barbaric empires of more than Oriental wealth. The extravagance of hope and the fever of adventure knew no bounds. Nor is it surprizing that amid such waking marvels the imagination should run wild in romantic dreams; that between the possible and the impossible the line of distinction ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... prodigious success of that adorable piece, a success in which Agar and I had our share, Chilly thought more of me, and began to like me. He insisted on paying for our costumes, which was great extravagance for him. I had become the adored queen of the students, and I used to receive little bouquets of violets, sonnets, and long, long poems—too long to read. Sometimes on arriving at the theatre as I was getting out of my carriage I received a shower of flowers which simply ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... odd in this speech, and the tone in which it was said. It seemed as if my companion was not always in his constant mind, or that he was willing to try if he could frighten me. I laughed at the extravagance of his language, however, and asked him in reply if he was fool enough to believe that the foul fiend would ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... only an incidental, a purely passing sensation compared to the idle and greedy inertia which followed it. The war lost," he went on, "might have acted as a lash upon the torpor of many of these men. Won, it created a wave of immorality and extravagance from which they had never recovered. They spent more than they had and they earned more than they were worth. That is to say, they lived ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was a nation sight too much. It was all in a flutter, silk heaped on silk. E. E. tried it on, and fairly waded in silk when she walked. There was neither elegance nor simplicity in it, nothing but a sickening idea of extravagance and money. ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... narration. This may be seen in The House of the Aylors. He has, moreover, a romantic lavishness of description that in spite of all technical faults still has some degree of merit. The following quotations, taken respectively from The Mowers and The Flight of Leeona, with all their extravagance, will exemplify both his weakness and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... man as they saw him trotting to Saint-Thibault and attending to his business, like a merchant living on his vineyards, found the answer to the riddle when the ant-lion seized his prey, after waiting for the day when the extravagance of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse culminated in the ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... country-women, she understood the art of dress to admiration, she set off her person to the best advantage; always attiring herself in a style, and in colours, that suited her, and never indulging in an unwarrantable extravagance of ruff, or absurd and unbecoming length of peaked boddice. As to the stuffs she wore, they were certainly above her station, for no Court dame could boast of richer silks than those in which the pretty Dameris appeared on fete days; and this ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... we are undone!—not at all; if folly and extravagance are symptoms of a nation's being at the height of their glory, as after-observers pretend that they are forerunners of its ruin, we never were in a more flourishing situation. My Lord Rockingham and my nephew Lord Orford have made a match of five hundred pounds, between five ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... girl, and make her a dictionary, or a machine, or a piece of formality and conventionalism. But the father, wiser, and with greater insight and truer sympathy, relaxed the cords of discipline, unfettered her imagination, connived at her flights of extravagance, and allowed her to develop her faculties in her own way. She had a remarkable fondness for her father,—she adored him, and clung to him through life with peculiar tenderness and devotion, which he appreciated and repaid. Before she was twenty she wrote poetry as a matter of course. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... eliminated, and little attempt was made to eliminate it. The great increase of agricultural production was accompanied, not by a progressive and well-diffused rise in the standard of national well-being, but by high rents and extravagance on the one side, and, on the other, the rapid multiplication of a population living on the very margin of subsistence. The terrible year of famine was a warning to British statesmanship of the need of ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... same breath to blame me on both charges at once? Is it not a sheer contradiction to object to my wallet and staff on the ground of austerity, to my poems and mirror on the ground of undue levity; to accuse me of parsimony for having only one slave, and of extravagance in having three; to denounce me for my Greek eloquence and my barbarian birth? Awake from your slumber and remember that you are speaking before Claudius Maximus, a man of stern character, burdened with ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... virtues, "I have inveighed all my life against the insolence of the Tories, and for this I have the authority both of Whigs and Reformers; but then I have occasionally spoken against the imbecility of the Whigs, and the extravagance of the Reformers, and thus have brought all three on my back, though two out of the three regularly agree with all I say of the third party."[15] The strange thing is not that he should have incurred the wrath of all parties, but that he should show ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... what he had always done when in a civilized community—spend his money recklessly. He went back to the hotel, called Donna on the long-distance phone and frittered away two dollars in inconsequential conversation. However, he felt amply rewarded for the extravagance when Donna's voice—deep, throaty, almost a baritone—came to him over the wire; the delighted, almost childish cry of amazement which greeted his "Hello, Donna girl" was music ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... of our own nourishment. We are educated by our circumstances to think no revolution in appliances and economic organisation incredible, our minds play freely about possibilities that would have struck the men of the Academy as outrageous extravagance, and it is in regard to politico-social expedients that our imaginations fail. Sparta, for all the evidence of history, is scarcely more credible to us than a motor-car throbbing in the agora would ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... may be, practice is more than theory, and I stipulate for milk for all purposes from the lowest lota—that is, milk which is warranted to yield butter. If it will not stand that test, I reject it. Gopal wonders at my extravagance, but consents. The milk is good and the butter from it plentiful. But as time goes on the latter declines both in quantity and quality, so gradually that suspicion is scarcely awakened. When at last you summon the butler to a consultation, he suggests ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... have been to blame about Malaga, but I have taken the whole charge of your affairs, managed your servants, and looked after the very least details. I cannot leave you until I see you prepared to continue my management. You have now been married three years, and you are safe from the temptations to extravagance which come with the honeymoon. I see that Parisian women, and even titled ones, do manage both their fortunes and their households. Well, as soon as I am certain not so much of your capacity as of your perseverance I shall ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... source from which it was derived, it readily followed that a constituency would ask, not why the representative had voted for the expenditure of money, but how much he had got for his own district, and perhaps he might have to explain why he did not get more. Is it doubtful that this would lead to extravagance, if not to corruption? Nothing could be more fatal to the independence of the people and the liberties of the States than dependence for support upon the public Treasury, whether it be in the form of subsidies, ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... still please the reader, though he may question the high eulogium of Johnson, that "scarcely any work of any poet is at once so interesting by the fable, and so delightful by the language." Rowe has not the tragic power which can express passion without rant, and pathos without extravagance. In The Fair Penitent Calista gives utterance to her feelings by piling up expletives. Thus, when her husband attacks the lover who has ruined her, she exclaims, 'Destruction! fury! sorrow! shame! and death!' and, on another occasion, she cries out, 'Madness! confusion!' words ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... report that he was furnishing his new apartment extravagantly; and Laure, to whose ear the tattle had come, ventured to allude to it in a letter reproaching him with remissness in writing home and to her. The accusation of extravagance, which later he really merited, was at this moment a trifle previous, money being scarce and credit also. "Stamps and omnibus fares are expenses I cannot afford," he assured his sister; "and I abstain from going out in order to save ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... Republic Where a river speaks to men And cries to those that love its ways, Answering again When in the heart's extravagance The rascals bend to say "O singing Mississippi Shine, ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... or you may, with equal justice of fortune, be ruined by them. But whatever happens to you, this, at least, is certain, that the whole of your life will have been spent in corrupting public taste and encouraging public extravagance. Every preference you have won by gaudiness must have been based on the purchaser's vanity; every demand you have created by novelty has fostered in the consumer a habit of discontent; and when you retire into inactive life, you may, as a subject of consolation ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin |
