"Gaudy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in those days that far away from the dust of the grimy shelves, in the very middle of the room, there was a table with all the latest works of fiction in their gaudy bindings, a few volumes of poetry and a few memoirs. Close to this table Miss Milton sat, wrapped, in the warmest weather, in a thick shawl and knitting endless stockings. She hated children, myself in particular. She was also a Snob of the Snobs, and thanked God on her knees ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... succession, which gave me to think that even embusquing in France has its drawbacks. On the seventh day I was accused, by good people who know not Thomas, of being (1) a Russian, (2) an American, (3) a Belgian, and (4) an Irishman, which made me feel that these gaudy colours I have burst into are not so famous as I supposed; and on the eighth day I find myself insulted in twenty-seven places by an angry mosquito, whom in the small hours of the morning I had occasion to rap over the knuckles and turn out of my billet. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... pine-trees, a rudely constructed, but roomy block-house. In front of the building, and between two massive perpendicular beams, connected by cross-bars, swung a large board, upon which was to be distinguished a grotesque figure, painted in gaudy colours, and whose diadem of feathers, tomahawk, scalping-knife, and wampum, denoted the Indian chief. Beneath this sign a row of hieroglyphical-looking characters informed the passer-by that he could here find "Entertainment for man and beast." On that side of the house, or rather ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... of a sudden I thought of what Serenus said about a woman twice my size dressed in gaudy red, forever takin' after folks—What would Josiah do if she took after him? And no doubt she would, for looked at through the magnifying lens of Absence and Anxiety he looked passingly beautiful. As I thought of her I knowed what I would do. Sez I, "I will go and tear him away and bring ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... every child wore its Sunday best. Even the shabbiest little girls had a clean white pinafore to hide deficiencies beneath, and the untidiest little boy showed a scrubbed face. The majority of the boys wore clean collars; some grinned over gaudy neckties. The only one who appeared in his week-day grime and tatterdemalion outfit was little Paul Kegworthy. He had not changed his clothes, because he had no others; and he had not washed his face, because it had not occurred to him ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... Fetter Lane smote on my ears as I came out through the archway, and very squalid and unrestful the little street looked when contrasted with the dignity and monastic quiet of the old garden. As to the surgery, with its oilcloth floor and walls made hideous with gaudy insurance show-cards in sham gilt frames, its aspect was so revolting that I flew to the day-book for distraction, and was still busily entering the morning's visits when the bottle-boy, Adolphus, ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... be blither than roses in thine eyes, Shall I not rend this raiment of pangs and fears, This Colchian cloth white flames ensorcelise, This gaudy-veil distained with blood and tears?— What praise? "O marriage-beauty garlanded For festival, O sumptuous flowery stole For rites of adoration!"—See instead A cilice drenched with torment of my ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... placed the figure of a lady; she appeared to be nearer fifty than forty, and was dressed suitably to her age, in a handsome suit of flowered silk; she had a profusion of trinkets and jewellery about her person, and many rings upon her fingers; but although very rich, her dress was not gaudy or in ill taste; but what was remarkable in the lady was, that although her features were handsome, and upon the whole pleasing, the pupil of each eye was dimmed with the whiteness of cataract, and she was evidently stone ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... years went on the gay assumption that every girl's character was on the surface, and I made no effort to probe deeper, I was the confidant, the friend, of many a fine woman. They all smiled at my douce sobriety, but in the end they preferred it to the gaudy recklessness of more ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... also blooms with flowers. Transfigured by the radiance of silver lamps and myriads of tapers, enshrined in garlands of roses, veiled in clouds of incense, the statue in its niche lent a charm to the gaudy ornaments of the high altar, and all the tinsel draperies extending from column to column along the aisle. On the right a star of light was visible in the miraculous bath-room, with its dim frescoes ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... come here," he called to the two. They came. "Do you think that necktie is too bright for a fellow?" went on Campbell, pointing to a decidedly gaudy one in ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... and from Boulogne to Paris, and from Paris to Baden, their idleness, their ill-health, and their ennui. "In the morning of youth," and when seen along with whole troops of their companions, these flowers look gaudy and brilliant enough; but there is no object more dismal than one of them alone, and in its autumnal, or seedy state. My friend, Captain Popjoy, is one who has arrived at this condition, and whom everybody knows by his title of Father ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "that face needs no gaudy hues, those white cheeks need nothing but that red mouth to set them off, and that black hair. She should be white, all white, should she not, Mrs. Lear? A tragic bride from the south, languishing in our cold land. 'Twould make a fine subject for a painting, though ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... the first fetter could be dragged to where he knelt, he sprang up with the fire of fury in his eyes, and made a rush at the mandarin, seized him, and it would have gone ill with his gaudy costume, had not a couple of the officers ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... crooning to the child and hushing it; midway she stopped, suddenly. She had caught sight of her new Sunday gown—a cheap curtain-calico thing, a conflagration of gaudy colors and fantastic figures. She surveyed it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... small tenacious, sweet-scented creepers, bearing a pale lilac blossom that exhaled a mingled odor of sea and shore. Hurlstone pointed out the cross as one of the earliest outposts of the Church on the edge of the unclaimed heathen wilderness. It was hung with strings of gaudy shells and feathers, which Hurlstone explained were votive offerings in which their pagan superstitions still mingled ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... taste in the selection of a costume. He chose no gaudy colours, or flashily-cut vestments. On the contrary, the garb he assumed was in perfect keeping with the style of his hair and moustache. It was the dress of a middle-aged gentleman; fashionable, but scrupulously simple, quiet alike in colour ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... now from what it had been when he first saw it. There were four little masts put up in it, on which were hoisted gay and gaudy flags. Her "hull," or body, was now coppered and neatly painted, while all the rubbish of the building-yard was cleared away, so that everything looked neat and clean. The stocks, or framework on which ...
— The Life of a Ship • R.M. Ballantyne
... plainly rather than flatteringly, and I have done so because I believe the time has fully come when woman should be a woman, and not a mere gaudy appendage to man; when her soul should wake up from its long lethargy and put on the habiliments of wisdom and usefulness; when she should live to a grander purpose than she has done, and should make her power felt more sensibly in the morality and ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... a group of men and women were loitering, the men buying theatre tickets, the women turning over the leaves of magazines, scanning lazily the titles of novels. The magazines were stacked in rows, each with a gaudy cover,—"artistic" or designed merely to capture the eye by a blaze of color. One of the women turned the leaves of several novels, idly, with a kind of fat ennui, as if loath to be tempted even by mental dissipation. Then noting a title that had somehow lodged itself with ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... grew we up to Man, and still more fixt; And shall a gaudy Beauty, A thing which t'other day I never saw, Deprive my Heart of that kind Heat, And place a new and unknown Fire ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... like a puff of flame, sounded as the boy remained for one moment with the flag in his hand looking down at the crowd below. His face was odd and elated and still. Then with the slightest gesture he threw the flag from him, and Aaron watched the gaudy remnant falling towards the many faces, whilst the noise ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... leaving Powers and Mazechazz staring at each other in the council chamber, their gaudy uniforms looking a little ...
— Join Our Gang? • Sterling E. Lanier
... limestone and dust, a pauper or two still inhabiting where inhabitation is possible. The lanes wind among these ruins; the blue sky and mountain grass are seen through the windows of their rooms and over their partitions, on which old gaudy papers flaunt in rags: the weeds gather, and the dogs scratch about their foundations; yet there are no luxuriant weeds, for their ragged leaves are blanched with lime, crushed under perpetually falling fragments, and worn away by listless standing of idle feet. There is ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... asked was, who was the red-faced young man with stubbly sunburnt hair, and a scar on his cheek, who had appeared in the lists in very gaudy but ill-fitting armour, and with a great raw-boned, snorting horse, and now stood in a corner of the hall with his eyes steadily fixed on ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... colors, filled it with trifles; while the other was left plain on the outside, but filled within with flocks and herds and riches of all kinds. These jars being covered, and presented to the Navajos and Pueblos, the former chose the gaudy but paltry jar; while the Pueblos received the plain and rich vessel—each nation showing, in its choice, traits which characterize it ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... market-cart or the Sunday chaise, are hitched up to bear out the merry loads. Old waggons, whose wheels have known no other decoration than the mud and clay of rutty roads, are festooned gaily with cedar wreaths, oak leaves, or the gaudy tissue-paper rosettes, and creak joyfully on their mission of lightness and mirth. On foot, by horse, in waggon or cart, the crowds seek some neighbouring grove, and there the day is given over to laughter, mirth, and song. The children roll and tumble on the sward in the intoxication of ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... fact that the one of them was gray and the other blue. He was short, but of immense breadth of chest and strength of limb; while his delicate hands and feet and long locks of golden hair marked him of most noble, and even, as he really was, of ancient royal race. He was dressed in a gaudy costume, resembling on the whole that of a Highland chieftain. His knees, wrists, and throat were tattoed in bright blue patterns; and he carried sword and dagger, a gold ring round his neck, and gold rings on his wrists. He was a ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... yawning dragons draw her thirling[8] car From Latmus' mount up to the gloomy sky, Where, crown'd with blazing light and majesty, 110 She proudly sits) more over-rules the flood Than she the hearts of those that near her stood. Even as when gaudy nymphs pursue the chase, Wretched Ixion's shaggy-footed race, Incens'd with savage heat, gallop amain From steep pine-bearing mountains to the plain, So ran the people forth to gaze upon her, And all that ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... or four exceptions in the thousands, they are all practically alike, all ornamented with scroll-work, as if cut out by the jig-saw, all vividly painted, all appealing to a primitive taste just awakening to the appreciation of the gaudy chromo and the illuminated and consoling household motto. Most of the hotels are in the town, at considerable distance from the ocean, and the majestic old sea, which can be monotonous but never vulgar, is barricaded from the town by five or six miles of stark-naked plank ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the pretty but gaudy parrot tribe, our most beautiful birds may be said to be the wren (Malurus longicaudus, Gould), the grosbeak (Estrelda bella, Lath.), the king-fisher (Alcyone Diemenensis, Gould), the diamond birds (Pardalotus ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... fisheries are important to the people of Puerto Rico. The coast waters and fresh water streams swarm with fishes of strange shapes and gaudy colors. ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... remember that, some four-and-twenty years ago, one of those gay-coloured books so common on the shelves of nursery libraries had, amongst other equally recherche couplets, the following attached to a gaudy print of a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... crammed with an apparently impenetrable crowd of men and beasts, the latter—water-buffaloes, humpy cattle, and donkeys—strolling about and getting in everybody's way with perfect nonchalance, while men in strange raiment of gaudy hue pursued their lawful occupations with much clamour. The variety ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... the bar, roulette and faro tables, bright with varnish and gaudy with nickel trimmings, were waiting with invitations to feverish excitement. The room was a modern presentation of Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla, the bar, stimulated to the daring of Charybdis across the ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... reviews. At 9:30 the F.-D.-B. took his place near me and gave the word of command; the drums began to rumble and thunder, the head of the forces appeared at an upper door, and the "march-past" was on. Down they filed, a blaze of variegated color, each squad gaudy in a uniform of its own and bearing a banner inscribed with its verbal rank and quality: first the Present Tense in Mediterranean blue and old gold, then the Past Definite in scarlet and black, then the ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... seen anywhere in England outside my own house,—and I am an attentive student of bookshop windows! And the French books are all so pleasant in the page, and so cheap—they are for a people that buys to read. One thinks of the English bookshop, with its gaudy reach-me-downs of gilded and embossed cover, its horribly printed novels still more horribly "illustrated," the exasperating pointless variety in the size and thickness of its books. The general effect of the English book is that it is something sold by a dealer ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... mountain covered with a shining green turf, is nothing, in this respect, to one dark and gloomy; the cloudy sky is more grand than the blue; and night more sublime and solemn than day. Therefore in historical painting, a gay or gaudy drapery can never have a happy effect: and in buildings, when the highest degree of the sublime is intended, the materials and ornaments ought neither to be white, nor green, nor yellow, nor blue, nor of a pale red, nor violet, nor ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... clad in light-coloured garments, so cut that they exaggerated her stoutness; a large, many-coloured shawl was thrown round her shoulders; on her head was a big round hat, tied with strings in a bow under her chin. This odd head-gear was topped with a bunch of gaudy feathers, ragged and out of curl. A veil of flowery design half hid this woman's features: though far from her first youth, she no doubt wished to appear young still. The skin of her face was covered with powder and ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... that I could sink so low, I would kill myself this very hour. I know myself better, and only for revenge do I live. Hush! say nothing more. Look at me! I am cursed, and there in those gaudy rooms in my purgatory; here is my paradise, and here the wicked demon may dare to change into the sad, wretched wife, who mourns the happy days already flown, and weeps the inconsolable future. Oft will I come here in the night when ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... slowly feeling his knees as if they were his way to a difficult subject, continued with the same suggestion of stating general fact, but waiving any argument himself. "Clarkson of Angels allows she's got a free, gaudy, picter-covered style with the boys, but that she can be gilt-edged when she wants to. Rowley Meade—him ez hed his skelp pulled over his eyes at one stroke, foolin' with a she bear over on Black Mountain—allows it would be rather monotonous ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... came out to the very edge of the track to exchange greetings. They were very good-natured, exceedingly well-formed, and quite jocular with our boys. Especially did our suave and elegant Simba sparkle. This resident public, called from its daily labours and duties, did not always show as gaudy a make-up as did the dressed-up travelling public. Banana leaves were popular wear, and seemed to us at once pretty and fresh. To be sure some had rather withered away; but even wool will shrink. We saw some grass skirts, like the ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... to this theory, that the "Cock of the Rock" (Rupicola) on the western side of the Andes (Esmeraldas) is of a richer, deeper color than the same species on the eastern slope (Napo). In keeping with Mr. Gould's theory is the statement by Mr. Bates, that the most gaudy butterflies (the ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... mellow, tempered sunshine; gentle, genteel breezes. In the rear, the show windows of two shops, a jewelry establishment on the corner, a furrier's next to it. Here the adornments of extreme wealth are tantalizingly displayed. The jeweler's window is gaudy with glittering diamonds, emeralds, rubies, pearls, etc., fashioned in ornate tiaras, crowns, necklaces, collars, etc. From each piece hangs an enormous tag from which a dollar sign and numerals in intermittent electric lights wink out the incredible ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... is delightfully commemorated in the old custom of Queen's College, by which, at the Gaudy dinner on Jan. 1st, each guest receives a needle with a silk thread of the colour of his faculty—Theologians black, Lawyers blue, Arts students red—and is bidden 'Take this and be thrifty'. The mending of the hood was a duty which must ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... table, shamed now by contact with the crown of his unsaintly hat. On the mantel stood a large, flat mahogany clock with floral decorations and a broad, white face with vivid black numerals and long black hands. The walls were covered with a gaudy but expensive paper, in which huge, indescribable red flowers mingled regularly with glaring green leaves. Two "mottoes," worked in red and blue worsted and framed with narrow cross-pieces of oak, hung suspended in ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... a thin, tense-faced Hebrew girl of eighteen or nineteen came rushing in, carrying a wire basket full of typewritten sheets. She was as gaunt as a plucked spring chicken, and her cheap, gaudy clothes might have been thrown on her. She looked as if she were running to catch a train and in mortal dread of missing it. While Miss Devine examined the pages in the basket, Becky stood with her shoulders drawn up and her elbows drawn in, apparently trying to hide herself in her insufficient ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... perched, a marvel to all new-comers by the highway of the Lake. The door was open, and we walked in. There was no light burning on the altar, nor any water in the stone basin by the door. But there was all the apparatus of worship—the gaudy toyshop above the grand altar, the tiny side chapels, with their pictures of the dying Saviour, and the confessional box, now thick with dust, and echoless of sob of penitent or counsel of confessor. ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... Feathers of this glorious Bird appear, through the Microscope, no less gaudy then do the whole Feathers; for, as to the naked eye 'tis evident that the stem or quill of each Feather in the tail sends out multitudes of Lateral branches, such as AB in the third Figure of the 22. Scheme represents a small part of about 1/32 part of an ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... got the Ot'man goin', little gaudy hunts begin. It fer us to chiv His Trousers. 'n' to round the stragglers in. Cuttin' closest to the raw, 'n' swearin' lovin' all the way, Is Artie from Molinga on his ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... officer was fond of discarding his uniform, and I was well aware that French officers also did so when on furlough in Paris, but it gave my young mind quite a shock to see her Majesty's military representative with King William arrayed in a gaudy dressing-gown in the middle of the day. He seated himself, and querulously inquired of my father what his business was. It was told him very briefly. He frowned, hummed, hawed, threw himself back in his armchair, and curtly exclaimed, ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... She appeared to be nearer fifty than forty, and was dressed suitably to her age, in a handsome suit of flowered silk; she had a profusion of trinkets and jewellery about her person, and many rings upon her fingers. But although very rich, her dress was not gaudy or in ill taste. But what was remarkable in the lady was, that although her features were handsome, and upon the whole pleasing, the pupil of each eye was dimmed with the whiteness of cataract, and she was evidently stone-blind. I was for some seconds ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... above a flower, and doing something to the flower's advantage with a pair of scissors. As Bess hung over the leafy object of her solicitude, with her yellow wealth of hair coiled round and round, she herself looked not unlike a graceful, gaudy chrysanthemum. This poetic reflection, which would have been creditable to Mr. Fopling, never occurred to Richard; he was too full of Dorothy to have room for Bess. However, the good Bess found no fault with his loving preoccupation; she, too, was pensively thinking on poor ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... themselves round hands, and feet, and tongue. I could neither stir nor utter a sound,—only look, look with all the pent-up agonies of my soul through my burning, quivering eye-lashes. A yard, a foot, an inch, and the perspiring fingers of his left hand dexterously loosened the gaudy coloured scarf that hid my throat. A second later and I felt them smartly transferred to my long, curly hair. They tightened, and my neck was on the very verge of being jerked back, when between my quivering eyelids I saw on the sheeny surface ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... to peer at Eugenia through that dark cloud of tragedy, it seemed to her that Eugenia showed signs of some real human emotion. As she gazed at her in the crude brilliance of the gaudy morning sun, she saw for the first time signs of years in Eugenia's exquisite small face. There was not a line visible, nor a faltering of the firmness of the well-cared-for flesh, but over it all was a faint, hardly discernible flaccid fatigue ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... gaudy silk, and was lying on her bed. Her poor little face was blistered with tears, and, as Mrs. Bell expressed it, it "gave me a heart-ache even to look at her." She was not a woman, however, to own to defeat. She ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... treble doors, padded with leather to exclude the cold and guarded by two 'proud young porters' in severe cocked hats and formidable batons, into a broad hall,—threw off our furred boots and cloaks, ascended a carpeted marble staircase, in every angle of which stood a statuesque footman in gaudy coat and unblemished unmentionables, and reached a broad landing upon the top thronged as usual with servants. Thence we passed through an antechamber into a long, high, brilliantly lighted, saffron-papered ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... one-sided and unbalanced aspect, there being only a single aisle, with its row of sturdy pillars. The pavement is covered with pews of old oak, very homely and unornamental; on the side opposite the aisle there are two or three windows of modern stained glass, somewhat gaudy and impertinent; there are likewise some hatchments and escutcheons over the altar and elsewhere. On the whole, it is not an impressive interior; but, at any rate, it had the true musty odor which I never conceived of till I came to England,—the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... when a person is asked to give an opinion of something which is considered vulgar—that a gaudy article of dress will look well in a country ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... wheels, was covered with groups of Cupids, and with Anacreontic attributes, such as lyres, tambourines, Pandaean pipes, cooing doves, and hearts pierced with arrows, executed at some remote period by a pencil more remarkable for audacity than correctness of design. The mule harnessed to this gaudy car, had the upper half of his body closely clipped, bore a lofty panoply of coloured worsted upon his head, and was covered with bells from nose to tail. A ferocious-looking charioteer, stripped to his shirt-sleeves, a sheepskin jacket dangling from his shoulder, sat sideways upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... engage the young squire as her partner! To be sure, it was a comely sight for to see as how the buxom country-lasses, fresh and fragrant and blushing like the rose, in their best apparel dight, their white hose, and clean short dimity petticoats, their gaudy gowns of printed cotton; their top-knots and stomachers, bedizened with bunches of ribbons of various colours, green, pink, and yellow; to see them crowned with garlands, and assembled on Mayday, to dance before ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... she followed Mary Ann through the shop into the house, and was ushered into the sitting-room, or parlour as it was called. The room was like Mary Ann's dress—full of all sorts of bright colours and gaudy ornaments of poor quality. ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... rising lofty from below; By him the Archer,[203] with his bended bow; Near him the Bird, with gaudy feathers spread; And the fierce ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... this post. Two villages, very wild and barbarous-looking. A great many fine canoes. The life is very wild about us here. One canoe comes in loaded down with rabbits which they have shot along the shores. Much gaudy clothing and savage finery now. Every one wears moccasins. One woman here does fine porcupine-quill work. She is Mrs. McLeod, and is the daughter of Old-man Firth, who is the factor at Fort McPherson, so they say. She is the wife of the factor at ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... first "friends of the negro," whose honest industry and philanthropy were darkened by a religion of sombre smugness, which almost makes one fancy they loved the negro for his colour, and would have turned away from red or yellow men as needlessly gaudy. But his wit and his politics (combined with that dropping of the Puritan tenets but retention of the Puritan tone which marked his class and generation), lifted him into a sphere which was utterly opposite to that from which he came. This Whig world ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... the first time, when the brilliancy of its decorations might appear in full splendour, in the rays of the sun: I reserve for you a finer, and a more profound enjoyment, to behold it by the light of the moon." Perhaps there is a distinction of the same kind between the gaudy brilliancy of varied colours, and the chaster simplicity of uniform shadows; and it is probably for this reason, that on the first view of a picture which you have long admired in the simplicity of engraved effect, you involuntarily recede from the view, and seek in the obscure ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... deposited his carpet-bag at the cosy village inn, where snow-white curtains fluttered gaily at every window in the warm western breeze, and innumerable geraniums made a gaudy blaze of scarlet against the wooden wall. He did not stop here to make any inquiries about those he had come to see. His heart was beating tumultuously in expectation of the meeting that seemed so near. He alighted from the fly, dismissed the driver, and walked rapidly across ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... matters outside of the law, though a little to a volunteer militia company of which I was a member; for a time a lieutenant, then in 1860 brigade-major on a militia brigadier's staff. We staff officers wore good clothes, much tinsel, gaudy crimson scarfs, golden epaulets, bright swords with glistening scabbards, rose horses in a gallop on parade occasions and muster days, yet knew nothing really military—certainly but little useful in war. We knew a little of company drill and of the ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... sobriety, and holy truth; Watch and preside over their tender age, Lest court corruption should their souls engage; Teach them how arts, and arms, in thy young days, Employed our youth—not taverns, stews, and plays; Tell them the generous scorn their race does owe To flattery, pimping, and a gaudy show; Teach them to scorn the Carwells, Portsmouths, Nells, The Clevelands, Osbornes, Berties, Lauderdales: Poppaea, Tigelline, and Arteria's name, All yield to these in lewdness, lust, and fame. Make them admire the Talbots, Sydneys, Veres, Drake, Cavendish, Blake, men void of ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... white sail fills and crackles, there are blown smells of pine and hemp and tar; you catch the home wind on your cheeks; and old shipmen, their eyeballs white in their bronzed faces, with silver rings and gaudy handkerchiefs, come in and tell you moving stories of the immemorial, incommunicable deep. He abides in a port; he goes down to the docks, and loiters among the galiots and brigantines, he hears the melancholy song of the chanty-men; ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... as we might have in our pockets, and, more especially, the brass buttons on our uniforms. Rebel soldiers, like Indians, negros and other imperfectly civilized people, were passionately fond of bright and gaudy things. A handful of brass buttons would catch every one of them as swiftly and as surely as a piece of red flannel will a gudgeon. Our regular fee for an escort for three of us to the woods was six over-coat or dress-coat buttons, or ten or twelve ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... to reach it at last, but it had been a slow, and therefore, long journey. All the gas-jets the little shop owned were lighted, but even under their flare the articles in the window—the one or two once cheaply gaudy dresses and shawls and men's garments—hung in the haze like the dreary, dangling ghosts of things recently executed. Among watches and forlorn pieces of old-fashioned jewelry and odds and ends, the pistol lay against the folds of a dirty gauze ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... region of the skirt to a degree which reduced that appendage to the most absurd and infinitesimal proportions. This wonderful garment was 314 composed of a fabric which Freddy Coleman, when he made its acquaintance some few days later, denominated the Mac Omnibus plaid, a gaudy repertoire of colours, embracing all the tints of the rainbow, and a few more besides, and was further embellished by a plentiful supply of gent.'s sporting buttons, which latter articles were not quite so large as cheese-plates, and represented in bas-relief a series of moving incidents ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... have just come in and added their gaudy vermilions, blues, and emerald greens to the picture, the North Landing is worth seeing. The men in their blue jerseys and sea-boots coming almost to their hips, land their hauls of silvery cod and ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... Anger. Their Mothers, as it is usual, engaged in the Quarrel, and supported the several Pretensions of the Daughters with all that ill-chosen Sort of Expence which is common with People of plentiful Fortunes and mean Taste. The Girls preceded their Parents like Queens of May, in all the gaudy Colours imaginable, on every Sunday to Church, and were exposed to the Examination of the Audience for Superiority ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... into its most tangled traffic—there has hung for many years the painted signboard of a veterinary surgeon. Its artist was in the first flourish of youth. Old age had not yet chilled him when he mixed his gaudy colors. The surgeon's name is set up in modest letters, but the horse below flames with color. What a flaring nostril! What an eager eye! How arched the neck! Here is a wrath and speed unknown to the quadrupeds of this present Long Street. ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... shroud swatheth mortals each hour, Yet little we reck of what's hanging us o'er; O would on the world that ye laid not such stress, That its baubles ye lov'd not, so gaudy and poor; O where are the friends we were wont to caress, And where are the lov'd ones who dwelt on our floor? They have drank of the goblet of death's bitterness, And have gone to the deep, to return never more; Their mansions bewail them in tears and distress; Yet has paradise lovelier ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... opened and the confusion of voices burst on the visitors' ears with startling directness. A girl, dressed as a Gypsy, gaudy of raiment and bejeweled with brilliantly colored glass beads, almost ran the chums down as she tried to pull the door to behind her. The girl's face was painted with heavy shadows and much white, and so ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... poet of nature, the daisy seems perfectly intelligible. Scattered throughout the lowly places, with meekness it seems to shed beauty over its surroundings, and compensate for gaudy vesture by cheerful contentment. Wordsworth calls the daisy "the poet's darling," "a nun demure," "a little Cyclops," "an unassuming commonplace of nature," and sums up its excellences in a verse which may fitly conclude our attempt to pluck ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... brotherly love and Christian fellowship well; but drunkenness and gluttony, feasting and carousing I hate, especially now when the kirk of Scotland is going in dool-weed: therefore be sober. 1. Be sober in your apparel; I think there is too much of gaudy apparel among you. 2. Be sober in your conceits. 3. Be sober in your judgments. 4. Be sober in your self-conceiting. 5. Be sober in your speaking. 6. Be sober in your sleeping. 7. Be sober in your lawful recreations. 8. Be sober ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... and steep, paved with rough cobblestone. The fronts of the buildings had been changed to conform with the Chinese idea of architecture. Wide balconies and gratings and fretwork of iron painted in gaudy colors gave an Oriental touch. The fronts were a riot of color. The fronts of the joss houses and the restaurants were brightened with many colored lanterns, quaint carved gilded woodwork, potted plants and dwarf trees. Up and down ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... Every Christmas brings us livres de luxe in plenty, books which are no books, but have gilt and magenta covers, and great staring illustrations. These are regarded as drawing-room ornaments by people who never read. It is scarcely necessary to warn the collector against these gaudy baits of unregulated Christmas generosity. All ages have not produced quite such garish livres de luxe as ours. But, on the whole, a book brought out merely for the sake of display, is generally a book ill "got up," and not worth reading. Moreover, ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... There were two Argus pheasants, a male and female—the male alone being decorated superbly. The Argus belongs to the same family as the peacock, but is not so gaudy in colouring, and therefore, perhaps, somewhat more pleasing. Its tail is formed chiefly by an enormous elongation of the two tail quills, and of the secondary wing feathers, no two of which are exactly the same, and the closer ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... a variety of colors the Negritos always select black for their breechcloth and saya, because, they explain, the black will not show dirt as will other colors. Gaudy colors seem to attract and will be readily accepted as gifts if nothing else is at hand; yet I had some difficulty in disposing of a bolt of red cloth I had taken among them, and finally had to take the greater part of it back ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... chrysanthemums, auriculas, geraniums, and many others, to be exposed to the influence of cold, frosty nights, as when the "fell destroyer" commences to exert its power all plants touched by it rapidly decay. Gladioli will now be clothed in the full glory of their gaudy, but handsome dress; they are comparatively easy to manage in well-drained spots, and being such continuous bloomers, at least three or four or even half a dozen should be in every small garden. In winter they must be ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... material; they are not very capable of attachment to principles. External objects are requisite for them, even in a slight degree; and the momentary enthusiasm that is obtained by affecting their senses subsides with the conclusion of a favourite air, or the end of a gaudy procession. ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... my utterly destitute condition, in the most glowing terms my execrable Spanish would permit. It was an animated scene; the men in the checkered serape, or stripped blankets, conical sombreros, with broad brims, calzoneros of velveteen, with rows of shining buttons, and a sash of gaudy color, encircling their waists. The women were no less conspicuous; draped in the graceful sebazo, the short vogna, and the ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... Ages, had been successfully encouraged and was designedly introduced to make Way for Credulity, the Simplicity of the Gospel and the Doctrine of Christ were turn'd into Gaudy Foppery and vile Superstition. It was then, that the Church of Rome began openly to execute her deep-laid Plot for enslaving the Laity. Knowing, that no Power or Authority can be established or long maintain'd upon Earth without ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... broad grin as he replied in the affirmative, while Antoine looked a little confused. He did not care much, however, for jesting. So, after getting one or two more articles—not forgetting half-a-dozen clay pipes, and a few yards of gaudy calico, which called forth from Peter a second reference to Annette—he bundled up his goods, and made way for ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... with a rail across the front end of it, and a gate; and in the front part a drinking bar, the musicians at the other end on a platform, and beyond the rail and gate a beautiful dance floor, while at the side were boxes where one could retire to watch the dancing—all rough boards and gaudy cretonne curtains. The lady partners were not in evening dress, just blouses and skirts, and it seemed the custom for the man to pay the proprietor for each dance, take his lady through the gate, and when it was over escort ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... joyes, The brood of folly without father bred, How little you bested, Or fill the fixed mind with all your toyes; Dwell in som idle brain And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, As thick and numberless As the gay motes that people the Sun Beams, Or likest hovering dreams The fickle Pensioners of Morpheus train. 10 But hail thou Goddess, sage and holy, Hail divinest Melancholy Whose Saintly ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Boss, to everyone's pained surprise, said, "Will the troopers kindly take off their overcoats!" With great reluctance this was done amid shouts of laughter as three of us stood divested of coats in gaudy pyjamas. ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... yellow fruit fell beside us, and my Lord Carnal, a mass of gaudy bloom in his hand, stepped from the wood. "I returned to lay our first-fruits at madam's feet," he explained, his darkly watchful eyes upon us both. "A gift from one poor prisoner to another, madam." He dropped the ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... several members of the so-called general committee, whose organisation and duties I confess I do not clearly understand, came out from our lines and stood waving their handkerchiefs. But it was some time before the gaudy-coated enemy would pay any attention to these advances, and finally one of our committeemen, to show that he was a man of peace and really wished to speak with them, went slowly forward with his hands held high above his head. Then a thin, sallow Chinese, throwing ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... blouses, and olive-drab (properly o. d.) knees not yet worn white (as I have seen on returning Plattsburgers) while our canvas leggings were still unshaped to our manly calves. Our hats were new and stiff, and their gaudy cords were bright. And we were inquisitive of the life that was ahead of us, readily making acquaintance in order to compare our scraps of information. Dismay ran here and there with the knowledge that the ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... than that of waking with the sun shining on objects quite new, and (although you have made the voyage a dozen times,) quite strange. Mrs. X. and you occupy a very light bed, which has a tall canopy of red "percale;" the windows are smartly draped with cheap gaudy calicoes and muslins; there are little mean strips of carpet about the tiled floor of the room, and yet all seems as gay and as comfortable as may be—the sun shines brighter than you have seen it for a year, the sky is a thousand times bluer, and what a cheery clatter of shrill quick ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I snatched a hasty breakfast of cocoa and biscuit, and then wended my way to the wharf, where the Krooboy, in light marching order, with three days' rations—which he proposed to supplement on the way, if necessary—tied up in a gaudy bandana handkerchief, awaited me in the dinghy. Scrambling down into the boat with some circumspection—for my broken arm, although knitting together again nicely, was still rather painful at times, and very liable to break again in the same place if treated roughly—I ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... to me. My childhood's antipathy to wearing red enabled me later to comprehend the feelings of a little niece, who hated everything pea green, because she had once heard the saying, "neat but not gaudy, as the devil said when he painted his tail pea green." So when a friend brought her a cravat of that color she threw it on the floor and burst into tears, saying, "I could not wear that, for it is the color of the devil's tail." I sympathized with the child and had it changed for the hue she liked. ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... their size. Refined countries always are panting for speedy enjoyment: the maxim of carpe diem[Footnote: Seize the present moment.] came into Rome when luxury triumphed there; and poets and philosophers lent their assistance to decorate and dignify her gaudy car. Till then we read of no such haste to be happy; and on the same principle, while Americans contentedly wait the slow growth of their columnal chesnut, our hot-bed inhabitants measure the slender poplar with canes, anxiously admiring its quick growth and early elegance; yet are often cut down ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... in her careless gestures there was something of the fine fervour of the artist. She sang boldly, her full body rocking from side to side, her bared arms outstretched, her long throat swelling like a bird's above the gaudy handkerchief upon ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... rear there came a shrill, high shriek, oaths, shouts, and the orchestra stopped playing. Men jumped to their feet from the faro layouts, and then, mob-like, began to surge toward the door, while in the lead, uttering scream on scream, ran one of the dance-hall girls with her gaudy dress bursting into enveloping flame. She had the terror of a panic-stricken animal flying into the danger of ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... the afternoon sunlight gilding it, its tall trees waving, its gray turrets and towers piercing the amber air, its ivied walls, and tall stacks of chimneys, Catheron Royals came in view at last. The fallow deer browsed undisturbed, gaudy peacocks strutted in the sun, a fawn lifted its shy wild eyes and fled away at their approach. ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... name, so that I fear me you are defrauded. 'Tis he that uses my house as though it were his own, bringing into it vile women of the Court, and men that are viler still, however high their names and gaudy their attire," and he choked with his ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... first impression of him is apt to be less flattering to his head than to his heart. He is a person, however, that improves with acquaintance, and is probably more intelligent than he looks. He seems to be living here in a very plain and unpretentious manner; no gaudy stained glass, no tinsel, no mirror-work, no vain gew-gaws of any description impart a cheap and garish glitter to the place; no gorgeous apparel bedecks his ample proportions. Clad in the ordinary dress of a well-to-do Persian nobleman, Heshmet-i-Molk, happy and contented in the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... fantastic figures loomed, moving slowly, two and two, under the fairy foliage; on the Gray Water canoes strung with gaudy paper lanterns drifted; clouds of red fire rolled rosy and vaporous along the water's edge; and in the infernal glow, hazy shapes passed and repassed, finding places among scores of rustic tables, where servants ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... and himself, and he hated the pink milliner for the humiliation that she heaped upon them both. Rodney did not see one-fifth of it, and what he did see lost its force, because, strangely enough, he loved the gaudy wife who wore gloves on her bloodless hands as she did the house-work and spent numberless afternoons in trimming her own bonnets. Her peevishness grew apace as the newness of the experience wore off. Uncle Jim seldom spoke to her, as he seldom spoke ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Sholt's Tavern to this place, thirty-six miles distant, lies partly across "barrens," that is, land of middling quality, thinly set with timber, or covered with long grass and shrubby underwood; generally level and dry, and gaudy with marigolds, sunflowers, martagon lilies, and many other beautiful flowers. On the whole, the country is tame, poorly watered, and not desirable as a place of settlement; but, from its varied character, it is pleasant ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... of the country-town, for one old humble Monastery by the wayside, where he could refresh himself and his horse without having to fear either pride, impertinence, or knavery, or to pay for pomp, glitter, and gaudy ornamentation; then where he could make his orisons in a church which resounded with divine harmony, and there were no pews for wealth to isolate itself within; where he could behold the poor happy and edified ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... God. I sang songs of joy, which the maid who served me learned by heart, as fast as I made them. We together sang thy praises, O, my God! The stones of my prison looked in my eyes like rubies; I esteemed them more than all the gaudy brilliancies of a vain world. My heart was full of that joy which Thou givest to them who love Thee, in the midst ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... Suddenly the great idea of the mighty halls dawned upon her, and filled her soul. The so-called decorations vanished from her view, and she felt as if she stood in her father's presence. She was at one elevated and humbled. As suddenly the idea faded and fled, and she beheld but the gaudy festoons and draperies and paintings which disfigured the grandeur. She wept and sped away. Now it was too late to interfere, and things must take their course. She would have been but a Cassandra- prophetess ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... cab was still moving more slowly over the rough surface of partly paved streets, and by single rows of new houses standing at different angles to each other in fields covered with ash-heaps and brick-kilns. Here and there the gaudy lights of a drug-store, and the forerunner of suburban civilization, shone from the end of a new block of houses, and the rubber cape of an occasional policeman showed in the light of the lamp-post that he ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... mother; and the mother herself, by a suggestive circumstance which might have afforded matter of thought to a more experienced observer than Archie, wrapped in a shawl nearly identical with Kirstie's, but a thought more gaudy and conspicuously newer. At the sight, Kirstie grew more tall - Kirstie showed her classical profile, nose in air and nostril spread, the pure blood came in her cheek evenly in a ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the embroidered flags and gilded ornaments of which glittered far and wide, and reflected a thousand rich tints against the setting sun. The coverings of the large pavilions were of the gayest colours— scarlet, bright yellow, pale blue, and other gaudy and gleaming hues—and the tops of their pillars, or tent-poles, were decorated with golden pomegranates and small silken flags. But besides these distinguished pavilions, there were what Thomas de Vaux considered as a portentous number ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... about her neck; when satisfied that he had drawn our attention to the right person, he gave us to understand, with an air of great complacency, that she was 'Olla,' his wife. While thus engaged, we were suddenly discovered, being betrayed by Mowno's gaudy tiputa, seen through the foliage by the quick eye of his better half, who immediately sprang up with a clear, ringing laugh, scattering a lapful of flowers upon the ground, and came running like a fawn towards him; the rest of us still keeping concealed. She was ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... trains with my packed bag from big railway stations—what keeps me going, I sometimes ask myself; and I remember how, in his 'Masnavi I Ma'navi' or 'Spiritual Couplets,' Jalalu 'D-Din Muhammad Rumi says that our Desires, the swarm of gaudy Thoughts we pursue and follow, are short-lived like summer insects, and must all be killed before long by the ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... I toil from morn to eve, And scorning idleness, To tribes of gaudy sloth I leave ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... waiting all this while at Wills's Creek, with the heavy stores and cannon. To reward the friendly Indians for their services and fidelity, Major Muse brought with him presents of hatchets and knives, guns, powder and lead, tin cups, needles and pins, beads, and dry-goods of every gaudy hue, and it may be, although we can only guess it, a ruffled shirt or two. In addition to these, there came a number of silver medals for the chief sachems, sent by Gov. Dinwiddie at the suggestion of Col. Washington, who well knew how much these simple people prize little compliments of this kind. ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... spent their season's gains in carousal, packed their blanket capotes and were ready for the wilderness again. They made a picturesque crew in their gaudy turbans, or hats adorned with plumes and tinsel, their brilliant handkerchiefs tied sailor-fashion about swarthy necks, their calico shirts, and their flaming worsted belts, which served to hold the knife and the tobacco pouch. ...
— The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin • Frederick Jackson Turner
... to smuggle into Mr. Jordan's library a picture of Tom Steele, one of Daniel O'Connell's henchmen, to whom he gave the title of Head Pacificator of Ireland. Many amusing stories are told of this official, of his gaudy uniform, his strut and swagger, and his pompous language. At a political meeting on one occasion, he attacked, it seems, one Peter Purcell, a Dublin tradesman who had fallen out with the Liberator on some minor question. "Say no more on the subject, Tom," ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... up with a gaudy feather, dyed blue, which belonged to me. I recognised it. It had come out of the brush with which the girl breaks the china ornaments in our drawing-room. At any other time I should have been glad to see him flying off with the whole thing, handle included. ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... burst into the drawing-room. It was a dusty and forbidding place, with ugly furniture and gaudy walls. No piano nor any other musical instrument stood in it. The intruder turned an angry and baffled face to the old woman, who was smiling with ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... towards the trail on which the solitary rider has disappeared. Here and there among them swift gleams, like silver streaks, are plainly seen, as the moonbeams glint on armlet or bracelet, or the nickel plating on their gaudy trappings. ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... complexities of our amazing community, an evil is at work which gathers power daily and which is actually assassinating, as it were, every moral quality that has made England strong and beneficent. Begin with a picture. The long curved counter glistens under the flare of the gas; the lines of gaudy bottles gleam like vulgar, sham jewelry; the glare, the glitter, the garish refulgence of the place dazzle the eye, and the sharp acrid whiffs of vile odour fall on the senses with a kind of mephitic influence. The evening is wearing away, and the broad space ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... of this little gaudy metropolis the lofty tent of the queen domineered over the rest like a stately palace. The marques of Cadiz had courteously surrendered his own tent to the queen: it was the most complete and sumptuous in Christendom, and had been carried about with him throughout the war. In the centre rose a ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... filled even the rude people with a certain awe and wonder, even as the majestic cathedrals of mediaeval Europe, with their imposing pomps, stimulated the poetic conceptions of the Gothic nations. Art is popular. The rude savage admires a gaudy picture even as the cultivated Leo X. or Cardinal Mazarini bent in admiration before the great creations of Raphael or Domenichino. Art appeals to the senses as well as to the intellect and the heart, and is ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... it is just that. The command of a wide vocabulary is in truth an accomplishment, and like any other accomplishment it may be used for show. But not necessarily. Just as a man may have money without "flashing" it, or an extensive wardrobe without sporting gaudy neckties or wearing a dress suit in the morning, so may he possess linguistic resources without making a caddish exhibition of them. Indeed the more distant he stands from verbal bankruptcy, the less likely he is ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Every plantation within a circuit of five miles had sent in a representation, till the benches, the aisle, the small area around the pulpit, and the open space near the doorway, were all densely packed. On the left, the men, in gaudy cravats and many-colored waistcoats, were chatting merrily together, and enjoying themselves as heartily as a parcel of Yankees at a clambake; and on the right, the women, in red and yellow turbans, and flaming shawls and neckerchiefs, were ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of new-fangled opinions. His style runs pure and clear, though it may often take an underground course, or be conveyed through old-fashioned conduit pipes. Mr. Lamb does not court popularity, nor strut in gaudy plumes, but shrinks from every kind of ostentatious and obvious pretension into the ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... loyalty which freedom gives. It had become rich, and enervated by luxury and ease. Solomon had civilised the Jewish kingdom, till it had become one of the greatest nations of the East; but it had become also, like the other nations of the East, a vast and gaudy despotism, hollow and rotten to the core; ready to fall to pieces at Solomon's death, by selfishness, disloyalty, and civil war. Therefore it was that Solomon hated all his labour that he had wrought under the sun; for all was vanity and ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... the Chipewyans are now totally without power. The presents of a flag and a gaudy dress still bestowed upon them by the traders do not procure for them any respect or obedience except from the youths of their own families. This is to be attributed mainly to their living at peace with their neighbours ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... should never overflow the limits of perfect moderation; if it is to be controlled, there must be something to control, in pruning there must be some strong shoots to cut back, and in toning down there must be some over-gaudy colours to subdue. It is better that there should be too much life than too little, and better that criticism should find something vigorous enough to lay hold of, rather than something which cannot be felt at all. This is the time to teach children ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... Independent of this necessity, he is, in such a situation, naturally disposed to the parsimony requisite for accumulation. In that simple state, the expense even of a sovereign is not directed by the vanity which delights in the gaudy finery of a court, but is employed in bounty to his tenants, and hospitality to his retainers. But bounty and hospitality very seldom lead to extravagance; though vanity almost always does. Every Tartar chief, accordingly, has a treasure. The treasures ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... travellers generally do, not that which is, but that which he had made up his mind to see before he left his own threshold. There are those attracted by nothing except brilliant color, and others who have heard so much of the vulgarity of 'high lights' and gaudy hues, that they will tolerate nothing but brown trees, russet grass, gray skies, slate rocks, drab gowns, copper skins, and shadows so deep that the discovery of the objects represented becomes a real game of 'hide ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Here, as in Sicily, the old lava is overgrown with prickly pear and red valerian. Mesembrianthemums—I must be pardoned this word; for I cannot omit those fleshy-leaved creepers, with their wealth of gaudy blossoms, shaped like sea anemones, coloured like strawberry and pine-apple cream-ices—mesembrianthemums, then, tumble in torrents from the walls, and large-cupped white convolvuluses curl about the hedges. The Castle Rock, with Capri's refined sky-coloured outline relieving its hard profile on ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... I, but Ella—there she does reign undisputed," he acknowledged, following her glance about the library, which wore an air of permanent habitation, of slowly formed intimacy with its inmates, in marked contrast to the gaudy impersonality of the usual ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... at Creil was a nondescript place in the inside, splashed with gaudy lights from the windows, and picked out with medallions of the Dolorous Way. But there was one oddity, in the way of an ex voto, which pleased me hugely: a faithful model of a canal boat, swung from the vault, with a written aspiration that God should conduct the Saint Nicolas ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dissent will pull all these up like weeds, and throw them out; and scepticism will raise nothing but gaudy annuals. The perennials will not flourish without cultivating and enriching the ground; their roots are in the heart. The religion of our Church, which is the same as this of England, is a religion which inculcates love: filial love towards God; paternal ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... however, just notice, that the charms of gaudy inartistic colouring frequently exercise a powerful sway even over minds familiar with better things; although that sway is always indicative of the decay of intellectual or moral freshness. Thus, it is remarked ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... Chia Chen: "This just reminds me that although this place is perfect in every respect, there's still one thing wanting in the shape of a wine board; and you had better then have one made to-morrow on the very same pattern as those used outside in villages; and it needn't be anything gaudy, but hung above the top of a tree ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... had squandered as fast as I obtained it, and had realised a considerable sum. I could not help comparing myself to a chrysalis previous to its transformation. I had before been a caterpillar, I was now all ready to burst my confinement, and flit about as a gaudy butterfly. Another week I continued my prudent conduct, at the end of which I was admitted to my superior, in whose hands I placed a sum of money which I could very conveniently spare, and received his benediction and ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... braziero, [Footnote: Brazier: a pan for burning coals. Tuscan. Tuscany is one of the divisions of northern Italy.] in the corner the only furniture in the room—a clean iron bedstead, with crucifix and rosary hung on the wall above it, and by the window an image of the Madonna adorned with gaudy paper flowers; I was in Italy, in my poor, exiled Italy. And in the purest Tuscan the eldest sister informed me that Don Gaetano lived in the garret. I went up there and knocked, but got no answer, so I opened the door myself. The room was brightly lit by a blazing fire. ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... arras green and blue, Showing a gaudy summer-morn, Where with puffed cheek the belted hunter blew His ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... from an elevated pride of soul, which did not forsake it when life was extinct. He was habitually taciturn, but, when excited, his eloquence was nervous, concise, and figurative. His dress was plain, and he was never known to indulge in the gaudy decoration of his person, which is the common practice of the Indians. On the day of his death, he wore a dressed deer skin coat and pantaloons. He was present in almost every action against the Americans, from the period of Harmer's defeat ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... the Rock and established himself with his gang, on a well known and much frequented trail called the Nashville and the Natches Trace. Here his gang became the terror of the whole travelling community. Sometimes, with his whole band decorated in the most gaudy style of Indian warriors, with painted faces, and making the forest resound with hideous yells, they would swoop down upon a band of travellers, inflicting outrages which ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... a blaze of varied colours; and beyond these again were flowery thickets a very maze of green boskages besplashed with the vivid colour of flower or bird, for here were many such birds that flew hither and thither on gaudy wings, and filling the air with chatterings and whistlings strange to ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... shines bright and the days grow long, And the crocuses brilliant, in purple and gold, Bloom in the gardens in numbers untold; When in the fields the grass grows green, And a few early lambs are seen; When daffodils in gaudy gowns Look gay upon the verdant downs, And fair spring flowers of each degree In every sheltered nook ...
— CAW! CAW! - The Chronicle of Crows, A Tale of the Spring-time • RM
... a can of condensed cream, so I can feed my baby and my dog," said a large, florid-faced woman in a gaudy kimono, "and I don't care for crackers, but you can throw in some potted chicken if ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... Miss Sylvester, the daughter of a man who owned a herd of pigs, much too near our saw-mills, and herself a young woman of outrageous dress, and in a larger light contemptible. But when Mr. Gundry, without any words, conveyed this piece of news to me, I immediately felt quite a liking for gaudy but harmless Pennsylvania—for so her parents had named her when she was too young to help it; and I heartily hoped that she might suit Firm, which she seemed all the more likely to do as his conduct ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... the wearer's legs very tightly, were a pair of much soiled corduroy pantaloons that had once been of a lavender shade. Over the vest was a short, dark, double-breasted sack coat, now unbuttoned. A large gaudy, flowing cravat, and an ill-used silk hat, set well back on the wearer's head, ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... A gaudy transparency in front of a cellar caught his eye, and invited him to come and enjoy the hospitalities of Madame X——'s Varieties. An inward voice bade him shun the place, but as he was only going for curiosity, he silenced the faithful monitor, ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... another mind and built in a different spirit. It is from the two corner pavilions on the tower side, perhaps, that the best general views of the court can be obtained. Unfortunately the attractive view down the straight colonnades of the north extension of the court is marred by a gaudy band pavilion, which is quite out of keeping with the pervading mood of simple dignity. The little corner pavilions are worthy of study alone, as a graceful and unusual ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... They have forgotten the Middle Ages and have not yet found modern art. To the peasant of the Black Forest, the splendid, baroque, dome-shaped church of St. Blasien is a much greater marvel of native art than the Freiburg cathedral. Gaudy, exaggeratedly fantastic Rococo saints are generally considered by Catholic country people very much more edifying than a picture in the severe style of the Middle Ages or of the modern school. In the ornamentation of utensils and houses of our peasants the Rococo style has quite ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... is not unlike hemp, but the stalk is cleaner and semi-transparent. The flower also is so gaudy, that a field in blossom looks like a bed of florist's flowers, and its aromatic fragrance does not aid to dispel such delusion. It flourishes most upon land which is light and fertile. The fragrance of ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... terrible tobacco, crotched himself between the pawl-post and a forward bunk, cocked his feet up on the table, and smiled tender and indolent smiles at the smoke. Dan lay at length in his bunk, wrestling with a gaudy, gilt-stopped accordion, whose tunes went up and down with the pitching of the We're Here. The cook, his shoulders against the locker where he kept the fried pies (Dan was fond of fried pies), peeled potatoes, with one eye ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling |
