"Opulence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the Dialogue, "that it will not be easy to find, in all the opulence of our language, a treatise so artfully variegated with successive representations of opposite probabilities, so enlivened with imagery, and heightened with illustration." But we have some difficulty in going along with him when he adds—"The account of Shakspeare may stand as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... agriculture—which is the general employment of our whole country. Among us, we know that there is no one, however humble his beginning, who, with persevering industry, intelligence, and orderly and virtuous habits, may not attain to considerable opulence. So far as wealth has been accumulated in the States which do not possess slaves, it has been in cities by the pursuits of commerce, or lately, by manufactures. But the products of slave labor furnish more ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the world and that the devil is the greater; that sin shall breed sin for ever. He does not believe that the many must drudge to the limit of endurance and starve their higher nature as long as the world lasts, that the few may taste the sweets of culture and opulence. He does not believe that brute force shall for ever trample splendid intelligence underfoot, or that we must always stand on the margin of the dark river of wrong, in the unfathomed depths of which lie mysteries ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... depart next morning, the coach being already full. On this very first day of his arrival, he perceived between the English and the people among whom he had hitherto lived, such essential difference in customs, appearance, and way of living, as inspired him with high notions of that British freedom, opulence, and convenience, on which he had often heard his mother expatiate. On the road, he feasted his eyesight with the verdant hills covered with flocks of sheep, the fruitful vales parcelled out into cultivated enclosures; the very ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... nation, was in the fifteenth century the home of northern intelligence; and nowhere was it more fully made visible than in the old town of Nuernberg; it was the centre of trade, the abode of opulence, the patron of literature and the arts. Here, amid congenial spirits, lived Albert Duerer—"in him," says Dr. Kuegler, "the style of art already existing attained its most peculiar and its highest perfection. He became the representative of German art at this period." ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... his own thoughts") that led Pope, as well as Lord Byron, to prefer the silence and seclusion of his library to the most agreeable conversation.—And not only too, is the necessity of commerce with other minds less felt by such persons, but, from that fastidiousness which the opulence of their own resources generates, the society of those less gifted than themselves becomes often a restraint and burden, to which not all the charms of friendship, or even love, can reconcile them. "Nothing is so tiresome (says the poet of Vaucluse, in assigning a reason for not living with some ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... promised day, Drives fraud and rapine from their nightly spoil, And social nature wakes to various toil; So from the blazing mine the golden store Mid rival states shall spread from shore to shore, Unite their force, its opulence to share, Extend the pomp but sooth the rage of war; Wide thro the world while genius unconfined Tempts loftier flights, and opens all the mind, Dissolves the slavish bands of monkish lore, Wakes the bold arts and bids the Muses soar. Then shall thy northern ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... the Durbar Hall as she spoke—a long room overloaded with gilt furniture, gilt-framed mirrors, and the inevitable chandeliers and musical boxes that are the insignia of semi-civilised opulence throughout India. No self-respecting Maharajah, or Rana, or Nawab would dream of living in ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... on the 1st of June 1810. He there learned from my correspondence that the Hanse Towns-refused to advance money for the pay of the French troops. The men were absolutely destitute. I declared that it was urgent to put an end to this state of things. The Hanse towns had been reduced from opulence to misery by taxation and exactions, and were no longer able to ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... somewhat disappointed in the city of which he had heard so much. The streets were ill paved and worse lighted, and were narrow and winding. In the neighbourhood of the Louvre there were signs of wealth and opulence. The rich dresses of the nobles contrasted strongly indeed with the sombre attire of the Glasgow citizens, and the appearance and uniform of the royal guards filled him with admiration; but beyond the fashionable quarter it did not appear to him that ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... not apply with the same force farther north, where the air seems thinner and less capable of absorbing and holding the sunlight. Indeed, the opulence and splendor of our climate, at least the climate of the Atlantic seaboard, cannot be fully appreciated by the dweller north of the thirty-ninth parallel. It seemed as if I had never seen but a second-rate article of sunlight or moonlight until I had taken up my abode in the ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... emporium for the precious metals of Peru and Mexico, two thousand mules being kept for the transportation of those rich ores. It was also the seat of a great trade in negro slaves, for the supply of Chili and Peru. The merchants of the place lived in great opulence and the churches were magnificently adorned, the chief among them being a handsome cathedral. Beautiful paintings and other costly works of art ornamented the principal dwellings, and everything concurred to add to the importance and ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... Leucippus, travelled to Egypt, Persia, and Babylon. He almost seemed a compound of two different characters, uniting the intellectual energy of the sage with the social feelings of a man of the world. Living in ease and opulence, he was not inclined to be censorious or morose; having mingled much in society, he was not very emotional or sympathetic; not tempted to think life a melancholy scene of suffering, but callous enough to find amusement in the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... rapacity of the courtiers, and the small affection which Mary bore to the Protestant ecclesiastics, rendered their revenues contemptible as well as uncertain; and the preachers, finding that they could not rival the gentry, or even the middling rank of men, in opulence and plenty, were necessitated to betake themselves to other expedients for supporting their authority. They affected a furious zeal for religion, morose manners, a vulgar and familiar, yet mysterious cant; and though the liberality of subsequent princes put them ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... money, and the increase of our opulence, might form, says Johnson, a curious subject of research. In the reign of Edward the Sixth, Latimer mentions it as a proof of his father's prosperity, that though but a yeoman, he gave his daughters five pounds each for their portion.[19] At the latter end of Elizabeth's reign, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... of water of considerable extent; and the geologist, who beholds in everything the past rather than the present state of nature, can have no doubt but that the whole plain is a great basin dried up. Laguna has fallen from its opulence, since the lateral eruptions of the volcano have destroyed the port of Garachico, and since Santa Cruz has become the central point of the commerce of the island. It contains only 9000 inhabitants, of whom nearly 400 are monks, distributed in six convents. The town is surrounded with a ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... Amelia, is it you, the object of grief, the daughter of opulence, of wisdom and philosophy, that thus complaineth? It cannot be you are the child of misfortune, speaking of the monuments of former ages, which were allotted not for the reflection of the distressed, but for the fearless ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... a predominance of the foreign element. In the third place, small means rather than wealth and a sluggish contentment rather than ambition is characteristic of the older rural sections; in newer districts ambition to push ahead is more common, and prosperity and an air of opulence are ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... deer-park, on the banks of the river we have before mentioned. The scenery around was of a dark, solemn, and somewhat melancholy cast, according well with the architecture of the house. Everything appeared to be kept in the highest possible order, and announced the opulence ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... by his flocks and tillage, looks forward to the enjoyment of his opulence in domestic happiness. The companion of his early labors and privations forms the chief object in the picture; but while he was dreaming of future bliss, the envious eye of a savage, which had recognised in that prosperous homestead ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... this, at any rate, a singular aspect of what political and social capabilities, nay, let us say, what depth and opulence of true social vitality, lay in those old barbarous ages, That the fit Governor could be met with under such disguises, could be recognised and laid hold of under such? Here he is discovered with a maximum of two shillings ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... this fair world to gain As many guineas as, with toil and pain, In threescore years thine avarice can wring From poorer men, be warned! With tiger-spring Fell death will leap upon your life amain And rive you from your opulence, though fain To tarry. Then the jovial heir will fling To the four winds of heaven thy gathered hoard In flaunting joys and unrestricted glee, While costly dishes glitter on the board And the wine flows in ruddy runnels free. Thou, meanwhile, in the shady realms below A bloodless ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... you are well, and growing stronger daily, now that you realize the fact that God made only health, wealth, and love, and that he intended all his children to share his opulence. ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... but they were economic, not romantic. Freddy had no money and no occupation. His mother's jointure, a last relic of the opulence of Largelady Park, had enabled her to struggle along in Earlscourt with an air of gentility, but not to procure any serious secondary education for her children, much less give the boy a profession. A clerkship at thirty shillings ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... Let us add a quantity of fine, amusing, and varied streets, like the Rue de Rivoli, and I do not despair of Paris presenting to the eye, when viewed from a balloon, that richness of line, that opulence of detail, that diversity of aspect, that grandiose something in the simple, and unexpected in the beautiful, which ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... really not absolutely impossible that the courier introduced him. He is evidently immensely charmed with Miss Miller. If she thinks him the finest gentleman in the world, he, on his side, has never found himself in personal contact with such splendor, such opulence, such expensiveness as this young lady's. And then she must seem to him wonderfully pretty and interesting. I rather doubt that he dreams of marrying her. That must appear to him too impossible a piece of luck. He has nothing but his handsome face ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... having, with guilty egotism, linked this unhappy lady to his fate. Far from being consoled from the conversation he had just heard, he fell into a state of sadness, of inexpressible despondency. There is in a life of opulence without employment this terrible disadvantage: nothing turns its attention, nothing protects the mind from brooding on its sorrows, on itself. Never being compelled to occupy itself with the necessities of the future, or the labors of each day, it remains entirely a prey to ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... interests. The citizens copy after the State, and regard wealth, pomp, and luxury as the great goods of life. Such a nation creates wealth rapidly, and distributes it badly. Thence the two extremes, of monstrous opulence and monstrous misery; all the enjoyment to a few, all the privations to the rest, that is to say, to the people; Privilege, Exception, Monopoly, Feudality, springing up from Labor itself: a false and dangerous situation, which, making Labor a blinded and chained Cyclops, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... sweet-smelling harvests of clover and hay in the background and weeds and wild grass in the foreground, the area of vegetation in the opulence of midsummer was demarked from the area of shell-craters, trenches and explosions. You had the majesty of battle and the desolation of war; nature's eternal seeding and fruiting alongside the most ruthless forms of destruction. In the clear air the black ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... lit a cigar, without acknowledging his host's courtesy, while Maxwell applied himself to the task before him. The first part of the will was speedily written; but those parts which alluded to the testator's daughter, foreshadowing the opulence that awaited her, he could not so easily pass over. They were so strongly suggestive of the fortunate lot of him who should wed her, that he could scarcely proceed with the work. An hour before, she had veiled his prospects in darkness; now he was preparing a will which would, ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... evening hours in swift hansoms; a man envied and admired by a host of clerks in Throgmorton Street to whom he appeared a kind of Napoleon of finance. I will confess that I myself was a little dazzled by his careless opulence. When he took me to dine with him he thought nothing of giving the head waiter a sovereign as a guarantee of careful service, or of sending another sovereign to the master of the orchestra with a request for some particular piece of music which he fancied. He once ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... seventeen. He addressed me in his native language, and, finding that I understood him, he commenced talking with astonishing volubility. In the space of five minutes he informed me that, having a desire to see the world, he had run away from his friends, who were people of opulence at Madrid, and that he did not intend to return until he had travelled through various countries. I told him that if what he said was true, he had done a very wicked and foolish action; wicked, because he must have overwhelmed those with grief whom he was bound to honour and love, and foolish, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Tom Allonby taught me the worth of all such commerce." There was a smile upon her lips, sister to that which Clytemnestra may have flaunted in welcome of that old Emperor Agamemnon, come in gory opulence from the sack of Troy Town. "I gave it—" Her voice rose here to a despairing wail. "Ah, go, before I lay my curse upon you, son of Thomas Allonby! But do you kiss me first, for you have just his lying mouth. ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... the most difficult, to write a song that will be popular. I do not mean a "popular" song, but a song everybody will whistle—for few songs written for the populace really become songs of the people. The difference between poverty and opulence in the business ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... this conspicuous when, on entering the library, we found Mr. Rochester—alone! The envied possessor of all this opulence can be no happy man. He was seated with his head bent on his folded arms, and when he looked up a morose—almost a malignant—scowl blackened his features! Hastily beckoning to the governess, who entered with us, to follow him, he exclaimed, "Oh, hang ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... which they would have us believe is a sort of premature senescence and decay. The New World is pitied for her failure to know without illusion the futility of the hurried pursuit of wealth, of the passion for extravagant opulence and inordinate display, of all the hostages youth in America eternally gives to old age. "America has produced great artists," admits Mr. Gilbert Chesterton. Yet he maintains that "that fact most certainly proves that she is full of a fine futility and the end of all things. ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... intelligence, according as he looks to the Lord, and is at the same time in conjunction with him; without this, a man is mere concupiscence; yet still in externals, or as to the body, he is in intelligence arising from education; for a man lusts after honors and wealth, or eminence and opulence, and in order to attain them, it is necessary that he appear moral and spiritual, thus intelligent and wise; and he learns so to appear from infancy. This the reason why, as soon as he comes among men, or into company, he inverts his spirit, and removes it from concupiscence, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... who raised it to its sudden prosperity were not Russians but Greeks; and in the course of a single generation many a Greek trading-house, which had hitherto deemed the sum of L3,000 to be a large capital, rose to an opulence little behind that of the great London firms. Profiting by the neutrality of Turkey or its alliance with England during a great part of the revolutionary war, the Greeks succeeded to much of the Mediterranean trade ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... of great size; that they are almost devoid of shapely windows or stained glass, of notable carvings or richness of decorative detail. Their art is a simple art, a sober art, and in its nearest approach to opulence—the sculptured portals of Saint-Trophime of Arles or Saint-Gilles-de-Languedoc—there is still a reserved rather than an exuberant ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... financial company had brought about a crisis on the Bourse. The news of the inability of Wermant, the 'agent de change', to meet his engagements, had completed the downfall of M. de Nailles. Not only death, but ruin, had entered that house, where, a few hours before, luxury and opulence had seemed to reign. ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... his promises like a loyal knight; and this miracle, as it appeared in the eyes of Fray Antonio Agapida, is the first instance on record of paper money, which has since inundated the civilized world with unbounded opulence. ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... many catastrophes are hatched, and from which issue so many young girls incapable of appreciating the painful sacrifices by which the honest man who does them the honor of marrying them, has obtained opulence; young girls eager for the enjoyments of luxury, ignorant of our laws, ignorant of our manners, claim with avidity the empire which their beauty yields them, and show themselves quite ready to turn away from the genuine utterances of the heart, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... obligations to British hospitality by raising his plumed hat to the London City & Midland Bank on the Viaduct corner. Hatton Garden, as every Londoner knows, begins on the other side of this improving spectacle—a short broad street which disdains to indicate by external opulence the wealth hidden within its walls, though, to an eye practised in London ways, there is a comforting suggestion of prosperity in its wide flagged pavements, comfortable brick buildings, and Jewish names which appear in gilt ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... summons of his conductors, who had unbound his feet, and made signs to him to follow. They led him into a tent which was larger than the rest, and on the inside was magnificently fitted up. Splendid cushions embroidered with gold, woven carpets, gilded censers, would elsewhere have bespoken opulence and respectability, but here seemed only the booty of a robber band. Upon one of the cushions an old and small-sized man was reclining: his countenance was ugly; a dark-brown and shining skin, a disgusting expression around his eyes, and a mouth of malicious ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... sought outlet from his lips came near to smothering him, but he succeeded in smothering it—though the effort almost clicked him. He, with a wealth which would have seemed to her as the treasure of the Incas, was falling under suspicion as a lazy fortune-hunter, seeking haven in the meager opulence of a mountain farm! Yet he dared not confess that wealth now because such admission would stamp him ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... into the hands of some poor gambling officer, she attached herself to him as a dog to its master, sharing the discomforts of the military life, which indeed she comforted, as content under the roof of a garret as beneath the silken hangings of opulence. Italian and Spanish both, she fulfilled very scrupulously the duties of religion, and more than once she ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... depended on their gratitude and affection, and very naturally presumed, that the injuries which they had suffered, and the dangers which they still apprehended from his most inveterate enemy, would secure the fidelity of a party already considerable by their numbers and opulence. Even the conduct of Maxentius towards the bishops of Rome and Carthage may be considered as the proof of his toleration, since it is probable that the most orthodox princes would adopt the same measures ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... exuberance. Their life philosophy was egoistic and materialistic. They wanted to enjoy all which their powers could win, yet their notion of olbos was so elevated that our modern languages have no word for it. It meant opulence, with generous liberality of sentiment and public spirit. "I do not call him who lives in prosperity, and has great possessions, a man of olbos, but only a well-to-do treasure keeper."[130] Such were ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... country, with beautiful plains, the lovely town of Siena, numerous villages great and small, with homesteads and handsome farms, and solitary churches built on hills, lay spread before us. Every thing shewed traces of cultivation and opulence. ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... it difficult to believe that he is in the midst of an inhabited place, the houses appearing to be fewer in number, and more insignificant, than a closer inspection proves them to be. No splendid fragment, imposing in its ruin, records the glory and opulence of the populous city, as it existed in the days of Solyman the Magnificent, the era from whence it dates its decline. The possession of Aden was eagerly contended for by the two great powers, the Turks and the Portuguese, struggling for mastery in ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... treasure-house" of mineral wealth and agricultural possibility. The world's treasure is deposited in many houses, and Alaska has its share; its mineral wealth is very great, and "hidden doors of opulence" may open at any time, but its agricultural possibilities, in the ordinary sense in which the phrase is used, are confined to very small areas in proportion to the enormous whole, ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... conscious of a new resentment against her for her contemptuous allusions to HIS father, and her evident hopeless inability to comprehend his position. His mother, he feared, was indeed low!—but HE was his father's son! Nevertheless, he gave her a funeral at Atherly, long remembered for its barbaric opulence and display. Thirty carriages, procured from Sacramento at great expense, were freely offered to his friends to join in the astounding pageant. A wonderful casket of iron and silver, brought from San Francisco, held the remains ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... would listen to no defence. It had been at first proposed, that one-eighth of their respective estates should be allowed for the future support of the directors; but it was especially urged that, in the various shades of opulence and guilt, such a proportion would be too light for many, and for some might possibly be too heavy. The character and conduct of each man were separately weighed; but, instead of the calm solemnity of a judicial inquiry, the fortune ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Sevres porcelain, and white damask, was redolent of opulence. The dishes were from Chevet, the wines from a celebrated merchant on the Quai Saint-Bernard, a personal friend of Matifat's. For the first time Lucien beheld the luxury of Paris displayed; he went from surprise to surprise, but he kept his astonishment to himself, like a man who had spirit ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... an opulence which we must do Raleigh the credit to say was expended not on debauchery or display, but in the most enlightened efforts to extend the field of English commercial enterprise beyond the Atlantic. We need not suppose him to have been unselfish beyond the fashion of his age. In his action ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... imply that Falstaff must have had some funds which are not brought immediately under our notice. That these funds were not however adequate to his style of living is plain: Perhaps his train may be considered only as incumbrances, which the pride of family and the habit of former opulence might have brought upon his present poverty: I do not mean absolute poverty, but call it so as relative to his expence. To have "but seven groats and two-pence in his purse" and a page to bear it, is truly ridiculous; and it is for that reason we become so familiar with its contents, "He ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... the source of the degradation of our own cities but this same curse of selfishness which is ready to march to opulence and luxury over the bodies of the starved and poisoned toilers of our towns and factories, and thinks it can justify its barbarity by an off-hand reference to Political Economy and its irrefragable laws? "Supply and demand"—sacrosanct enactments of man's brains—how shall they ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... Washington itself was becoming one of the most beautiful cities in the world, with its broad avenues, seldom thronged, its circles and squares, whose frequenters seemed never busy, its spirit of leisure, its suggestion of opulence and amplitude, and of a not too zealous or disturbing hold on reality. You still saw occasionally a tiny cottage inhabited by a colored family cuddled up against a new and imposing palace, just ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... now a visitor in the first literary circles, and was welcomed at the tables of persons of opulence. From the commencement of his residence in London, he had known John Kemble, and his accomplished sister, Mrs Siddons. He became intimate with Lord Byron and Thomas Moore; and had the honour of frequent invitations ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... she irritated him with her perpetual clinging, and wore him out. I've seen him wince at the sound of her voice in the room. He'd say things to her; not often, but just enough to see how far he could go. He was afraid of going too far. He wasn't prepared to give up the comfort of Lena's house, the opulence and peace. There wasn't one of Lena's wines he could have turned his back on. After all, when she worried him he could keep himself locked up in ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... chambermaid. But they were keeping up with Lizzie. Poor things! They weren't so much to blame. They thought their fathers were rich, an' their fathers enjoyed an' clung to that reputation. They hid their poverty an' flaunted the flag of opulence. ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... power. Dinah, in spite of her striking beauty, after nursing her baby for three months, could not stand comparison with these perishable blossoms, so soon faded, but so showy as long as they live rooted in opulence. ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... A sort of insolent opulence seemed to exude from her. Mayo, her captain though he was, felt that suggestion of insolence more keenly than his companions, for he had had bitter and recent experience with ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... spirit-stirring music; volumes of vaporous perfumes diffused themselves through the apartment, and an endless procession of treasure-laden figures defiled before the bewildered youth. He seemed buried in the opulence of the world, as he sat up to his waist in gold and jewels; all the earth's beauty gazed at him through eyes brilliant and countless as the stars of heaven; courtiers beckoned him to thrones; battle-steeds neighed and pawed for his mounting; laden tables allured every appetite; vassals bent ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... wars of Edward III. and Philip, many a soldier of fortune amassed considerable opulence by the ransoming of his prisoners. Croquart, a famous leader of these companies, is related to have become extremely rich by the money he received from the ransoms of castles and towns. In the fourteenth ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... the river the scene was one of brilliant and splendid opulence, that contrasted strongly with the half-lighted gloom of the murky wilderness of South London, dark and forbidding in ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... apparently unknown to the Aztecs. The conquest of Mexico, like our conquest of California, was in itself a small affair; but both being immediately followed by extensive discoveries of the precious metals, Mexico rose as rapidly into opulence as San Francisco has in ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... competent to that expensive establishment which his reputation, added to a hospitable temper, had in some measure imposed upon him; and to those donations which real distress has a right to claim from opulence. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... to himself luxuries at the expense of the necessaries of his neighbour; a system admirably fitted to produce all the varieties of disease and crime, which never fail to characterize the two extremes of opulence and penury. A speculator takes pride to himself as the promoter of his country's prosperity, who employs a number of hands in the manufacture of articles avowedly destitute of use, or subservient only to the unhallowed cravings of luxury and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... a showy scale. Every monk had an annual stipend of four hundred dollars. But this was mere pocket-money; they had "donations and bequests" from the living and from the dead, a most capacious source of opulence, and of an opulence continually growing, constituting what was termed the pious fund of California. Besides all these things, they had the cheap labour of eighteen thousand converts. But the drones were to be suddenly smoked out of their hives. Mexico declared itself a republic; and, as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... rooms, lordly rooms, which Trevor furnished in a stately manner, hanging a selection of his mezzotints on the walls—ladies of old years, after Romney, Reynolds, Hoppner, and the rest. A sober opulence and comfort characterised the chambers; a well-selected set of books in a Sheraton bookcase was intended to beguile the tedium of waiting clients. The typewriter (Miss Blossom accepted the situation) occupied an inner chamber, opening ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... of all sorts hurried to the new centre of opulence. Already an obsequious personage from Paris had taken up his abode in a room of one of the new houses, and a painted board hanging from his window informed the passers-by that he was permitted to ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... region of the Great Lakes and in finding fabulous rewards in furs. The Dutch on the Hudson were similarly engaged by means of the western trails to the country of the Iroquois, while the planters of Virginia had discovered an easy opulence in the tobacco crop, with slave labor to toil for them, and they were not compelled to turn to the hardships and the hazards of the sea. The New Englander, hampered by an unfriendly climate, hard put to it to grow sufficient ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... she seems to have liked Jamaica very well. It must have been an extraordinary community, and to understand it we must remember the conditions prevailing. Bryan Edwards, in his History of the British West Indies, published in 1793, called them "the principal source of the national opulence and maritime power of England"; and without the stream of wealth pouring into Great Britain from Barbados and Jamaica, the long struggle with France would ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... trust that the scenes of dignity, opulence, and wisdom, set forth in these superficial letters, are not unsettling your intellect and causing you to yearn for a ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... It was the 9th of September, 955. In the great banqueting hall of the palace there was a magnificent feast prepared. The guests were regaled with richest music. After such an entertainment as even the opulence of the East had seldom furnished, there was an exchange of presents. The emperor and the queen strove to outvie each other in the richness and elegance of their gifts. Every individual in the two retinues, received presents of ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... characteristic of the dress of these southern women, will come home to him unexpectedly, and awaken in him that satisfaction with which we tell ourselves that we are the richer by one more beautiful experience. Or it may be something even slighter: as when the opulence of the sunshine, which somehow gets lost and fails to produce its effect on the large scale, is suddenly revealed to him by the chance isolation—as he changes the position of his sunshade—of a yard or two of roadway with its stones and weeds. And then, there is no end to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... object as it stands in the circuit of cause and effect has a history which involves its surroundings, and that the depth of the interest which it awakens in us is in proportion as its integrity in this respect is preserved. In nature we are prepared for any opulence of color or of vegetation, or freak of form, or display of any kind, because of the preponderance of the common, ever-present feature of the earth. The foil is always at hand. In like manner in the master poems we are never surfeited ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... thinner and more spiritual than he had ever seen her. She was tastefully dressed, as she had always been, a certain style of languorous silken deshabille which she was wont to affect in better health now became her paler cheek and feverishly brilliant eyes. There was the same opulence of lace and ornament, and, whether by accident or design, clasped around the slight wrist of her extended hand was a bracelet which he remembered had swept away the last dregs ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of a Greek of the Anthology, and a cure of souls (Heaven help them!) in Devonshire. His Julia is the least mortal of these "daughters of dreams and of stories," whom poets celebrate; she has a certain opulence of flesh and blood, a cheek like a damask rose, and "rich eyes," like Keats's lady; no vaporous Beatrice, she; but ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... reside, should by parsimony, vulgarity, and meanness, render riches contemptible, prosperity unavailing, and economy odious: and that the choice of her uncle should thus unhappily have fallen upon the lowest and most wretched of misers, in a city abounding with opulence, hospitality, and splendour, and of which the principal inhabitants, long eminent for their wealth and their probity, were now almost universally rising ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... young noble was destined for soldiership from his cradle. His education partook of the manly preparations for the soldier's career. The discipline of the service, even in peace, taught him some superiority to the effeminate habits of opulence; and a sense of the actual claims of talents, integrity, and determination, gave them all an importance which, whatever might be the follies of an individual, from time to time, powerfully shaped the general character of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... to describe in detail the rapid descent from opulence and station to poverty and insignificance, which now transpired to mark this era in the singular fortunes of Elwood and his family. Their history, for the next three months, was but the usual painful one which awaits the failed merchant everywhere in the cities. The crushing sense of misfortune ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... facing) kontrauxe. Opposition kontrauxmeto—ado. Oppress subpremi. Oppressor tirano, subpremanto. Opprobrium malnobleco, malgloro. Optics optiko. Optical optika. Optician optikisto. Optimism optimismo. Optimist optimisto. Option elekto—ajxo. Opulence ricxeco. Opulent ricxa. Opusculum libreto, brosxuro. Or aux. Oracle orakolo. Oral vocxa, parola. Orange orangxo. Orange (colour) orangxkolora. Orangery orangxerio. Oration parolado. Orator oratoro, parolisto. Oratory (chapel) pregxejeto. Oratory elokventeco. Orchard ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... represent to this priest in the little intermingling half-hour of their lives that lay shaken out before them, and dropped unerringly. It really hardly mattered, but she always had such instants. She was aware of the shadow of a regret at the opulence of her personal effect; her hand went to her throat and drew the laces closer together there. An erectness stole into her body as she sat, and a look into her eyes that divorced her at a stroke from anything ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... Joey with dogged pessimism. They trooped off after him, each one lighter hearted in spite of a dull reluctance, simply because Colonel Grand had brought not only the sunshine but a life-saving opulence. ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... The hero of this piece unites in himself the three greatest characters upon earth; he is a priest, an husbandman, and the father of a family. He is drawn as ready to teach, and ready to obey, as simple in affluence, and majestic in adversity. In this age of opulence and refinement whom can such a character please? Such as are fond of high life, will turn with disdain from the simplicity of his country fire-side. Such as mistake ribaldry for humour, will find no wit in his harmless ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... native country; where he could not, however, fish out so much as one single relation out of the obscurity he was born in. Taking then a taste for refinement, and pleased to enjoy life, like a mistress in the dark, he flowed his days in all the ease of opulence, without the least parade of it; and, rather studying the concealment than the shew of a fortune, looked down on a world he perfectly knew himself, to his wish, unknown ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... loaded, that it is solemnly averred that creditors avoided their debtors fearing lest the latter should pay them what they owed in further heaps of the bulky treasure; and it is certainly a fact that even the animals shared in the opulence of the conquest, for the horses were shod with silver. Silver was cheaper and ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... and is impossible with a mental attitude which is hostile to it. We can not attract opulence mentally by a poverty-stricken attitude which is driving away what we long for. It is fatal to work for one thing and to expect something else. No matter how much one may long for prosperity, a miserable, poverty-stricken, mental attitude will close all the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... she deviated into the truth. A kind lady, the Marquise de Boulainvilliers, investigated her story, found it true, and took up the Valois orphans. The wicked mother went back to Bar-sur-Aube, which Jeanne was to dazzle with her opulence, after she ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... "Opulence is a disgrace; for every thousand livres expenditure of this kind a smaller number of natural or adopted children can be ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... de la haute fortune, D'un roi trop indolent souverain absolu, Surcharge de travaux dont le soin L'importune. Bruhl, quitte des grandeurs L'embarras superflu. Au sein de ton opulence Je vois le Dieu des ennuis, Et dans ta magnificence Le repos ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... opulence," retorted Laigle calmly. "I congratulate you. You have there a rent of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... promoting the establishment of a National Theatre, in which the talents of Alfieri and his own wealth were to be combined. Notwithstanding his age, and a character, as it appears, by no means reputable, his great opulence rendered him an object of ambition among the mothers of Ravenna, who, according to the too frequent maternal practice, were seen vying with each other in attracting so rich a purchaser for their daughters, and the young Teresa Gamba, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474 - Vol. XVII. No. 474., Supplementary Number • Various
... sympathy with the dreamy romanticism which found such splendid exponents, while he was yet in his early youth, in Schumann, Chopin, and Liszt. Imagination in its higher functions he seemed to lack. A certain opulence and picturesqueness of fancy united in his artistic being with an intelligence both lucid and penetrating, and a sense of form and symmetry almost Greek in its fastidiousness. The sweet, vague, passionate aspiration^, ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... sir, this looks bad, but things at home are better. What proof can be adduced? The parapets that are whitewashed? The roads that are repaired? fountains and fooleries? Look at the men of whose statesmanship these are the fruits. They have risen from beggary to opulence, or from obscurity to honor; some have made their private houses more splendid than the public buildings, and in proportion as the state has declined, their ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... katydids sang in unison, the hills dreamed in the misty distance like vast, peaceful, patient, crouching animals. The wheat and corn burdened the warm wind with messages of safely-garnered harvests, and my mind, reacting to the serenity, the peace, the opulence of it all, was at rest. The dark swamps of the Bulkley, the poisonous plants of the Skeena, the endless ice-cold marshes of the high country, the stinging insects of the tundra, and the hurtling clouds of the White Pass, all seemed events of another ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Pettigrew told each Northerner, as soon as he could get him from Mrs. Garnet's presence, that Virginia was the Mother of Presidents; that the first slaves ever brought to this country came in Yankee ships; that Northern envy of Southern opulence and refinement had been the mainspring of the abolition movement; and—with a smile of almost womanly heroism—that he—or his father at least—had lost all ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... absolutely necessary after the double catastrophe of Mademoiselle Danglars' broken contract and M. Danglars' disappearance. The world will think you abandoned and poor, for the wife of a bankrupt would never be forgiven, were she to keep up an appearance of opulence. You have only to remain in Paris for about a fortnight, telling the world you are abandoned, and relating the details of this desertion to your best friends, who will soon spread the report. Then you can quit your house, leaving your jewels and ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... would all lead directly and inevitably to this result. That they have led to it, may be collected from other sources than Adams. Even Park, to whom so brilliant a description of the city was given by some of his informants, was told by others that it was surpassed in opulence and size by Houssa, Walet, and probably by Jinnie. Several instances also occur in both his missions, which prove that a considerable trade from Barbary is carried on direct from the desert to Sego and the neighbouring ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... that Durant was lapped in material comfort only intensified his spiritual pangs. The Tancreds were rich, and their wealth was not of to-day or yesterday; they had the dim golden tone, the deep opulence of centuries. And they were generous, they gave him of their best; so that, besides being bored, he had the additional discomfort of feeling himself a bit of a brute. As he lay awake night after night in his luxurious bed he wondered how he ever got there, what on ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... year Mrs. Redburn struggled on, often with feeble hands and fainting heart, to earn a subsistence for herself and Katy. She had been bred in opulence, and her wants were not so few and simple as the wants of those who have never enjoyed the luxury of a soft couch and a well-supplied table. She had never learned that calculating economy which provides a great deal with very ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... she wanted comradeship, a living and frank exchange of the best in both, with the deeper feelings untroubled. To be fixed at the mouth of a mine, and to have to descend it daily, and not to discover great opulence below; on the contrary, to be chilled in subterranean sunlessness, without any substantial quality that she could grasp, only the mystery of the inefficient tallow-light in those caverns of the complacent-talking man: this appeared to her too extreme a probation ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... disagreeable fact that the Marrs had lived within a few doors of this very house, which again argued that the murderer also lived at no great distance. These were matters of general alarm. But there were others peculiar to this house; in particular, the notoriety of Williamson's opulence; the belief, whether well or ill founded, that he accumulated, in desks and drawers, the money continually flowing into his hands; and lastly, the danger so ostentatiously courted by that habit of leaving the house-door ajar through one entire hour—and that hour loaded ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... of respite—the temptation was irresistible. And he really liked the kind uncomplicated Hickses. A wholesome honesty and simplicity breathed through all their opulence, as if the rich trappings of their present life still exhaled the fragrance of their native prairies. The mere fact of being with such people was like a purifying bath. When the yacht touched at Naples he agreed since they were so awfully kind—to go on to Sicily. And when the chief ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... possess, the state of commerce, of arts, of industry, these circumstances and many more, too complex, minute, or adventitious to admit of a particular specification, occasion differences hardly conceivable in the relative opulence and riches of different countries. The consequence clearly is that there can be no common measure of national wealth, and, of course, no general or stationary rule by which the ability of a state to pay taxes can be determined. The attempt, therefore, ...
— The Federalist Papers
... Queen's robes, retired about this time; and her Majesty offered the vacant post to Miss Burney. When we consider that Miss Burney was decidedly the most popular writer of fictitious narrative then living, that competence, if not opulence, was within her reach, and that she was more than usually happy in her domestic circle, and when we compare the sacrifice which she was invited to make with the remuneration which was held out to her, we are divided between ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... gave a certain cachet to the home in Paris and to the castle. They smacked of the possessions of titled nobility. But Germany! . . . The comforts and luxuries in his country! . . . He just wished his brother-in-law to admire the way he lived and the noble friendships that embellished his opulence. And so he insisted in his letters that the Desnoyers family should return their visit. This change of environment might tone Julio down a little. Perhaps his ambition might waken on seeing the diligence of his cousins, each ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... horribly rich and an 'honourable,' and all that sort of thing, she isn't in the least grand. She never impresses one with her opulence as, for instance, Mrs. Duff-Whalley does. Her clothes are beautiful, but so much a part of her personality that you never think of them. Her pearls don't hit you in the face as most other people's ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... now only an undistinguished heap of ruin. They are fallen, for luxury and avarice first made them feeble. The rewards of the state were conferred on amusing, and not on useful, members of society. Their riches and opulence invited the invaders, who, though at first repulsed, returned again, conquered by perseverance, and at last swept the defendants into ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... in your Transactions the means by which Britain may now, on the most distant voyages, preserve numbers of her intrepid sons, her Mariners; who, braving every danger, have so liberally contributed to the fame, to the opulence, and to the maritime ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... a barbarian, the backwoodsman would seem to America what Alexander was to Asia—captain in the vanguard of conquering civilization. Whatever the nation's growing opulence or power, does it not lackey his heels? Pathfinder, provider of security to those who come after him, for himself he asks nothing but hardship. Worthy to be compared with Moses in the Exodus, or the Emperor ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... eyes became obscured by a thick veil, the icy hand of death began to freeze my veins. 'Oh!' said I, making an effort to speak, 'take back those estates for which I have sacrificed everything. Give me four hours longer, and I make you master of all my gold, of all my wealth, of all that opulence of fortune I have so earnestly desired.' 'Agreed: you have been a good master, and I am willing to do something for you; I consent to your prayer.' I felt my strength return; and I exclaimed: 'Four hours are so little ... oh! Juba! ... Juba ... oh! Juba! give me yet four ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... socialized medicine, unending unemployment insurance, old age pensions, pensions for veterans, for widows and children, for the unfit, pensions and doles for this, that and the other, had doubled, and doubled again, until everyone had security for life. The Uppers, true enough, had opulence far beyond that known by the Middles and lived like Gods compared to the Lowers. But all had security. They had agreed, thus far, Joe and Nadine. But then had ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... refinement, of culture and of courtly manners was here centered. Even the houses were more imposing than elsewhere throughout the country. They were usually well constructed of stone or brick with either thatched or slated roofs. They were supplied with barns bursting with the opulence of the fields. The countryside round about was teeming with fatness. Indeed, in all the colonies no other place was so replete ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... as that of commerce depends upon liberty. Till 1806 it was a flourishing city. With England in particular, whose manufactures and colonial produce were allowed to be freely imported, its commercial relations were of the highest importance. For the opulence which Leipzig then enjoyed it was indebted to its extensive traffic, which contributed to the prosperity of Saxony in general; but it was more particularly the numerous adjacent villages and hamlets that owed to our city ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... such thoughtless haste from the press of the metropolis. In Dr. Whitaker's History of Craven—which in spite of his extravagant prejudices in favour of gentle blood, and in derogation of commercial opulence, is still an excellent model for all future writers of local history—there is a ground-work laid for at least a dozen ordinary novels. To say nothing of the legendary tales, which the peasantry relate of the minor families of the district, of the Bracewells, the Tempests, the Lysters, the Romilies, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... gem-collecting did not wane, but, if possible, grew on him. His ventures all prospered, his profits from risky speculations poured in, his normal income from his heritage increased; and, of all this opulence, every surplus denarius was paid out for gems and curios. Yet he never was so much a faddist as to lose a day from the games of the circus and the amphitheater. He viewed every show of gladiators, every day of racing, almost every combat ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... armour. All these features of a high—though, as it proved, a less enduring—civilization are noted with wonder and applause by the early travellers, who cannot sufficiently express their admiration of such opulence and such ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... the days of Sankharib the King, lord of Asur[FN9] and Naynawah,[FN10] there was a Sage, Haykar hight, Grand Wazir of that Sovran and his chief secretary, and he was a grandee of abundant opulence and ampliest livelihood: ware was he and wise, a philosopher, and endowed with lore and rede and experience. Now he had interwedded with threescore wives, for each and every of which he had builded in his palace her own bower; natheless he had not a boy to tend, and was he sore of sorrow therefor. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... here the faith, will not permit it to be so easily destroyed. Accordingly I maintain, first, that what is assigned to the encomenderos is not too small to support adequately any one of them whatsoever—not with the opulence and abundance that they desire, but as the extreme poverty and wretchedness of the Indians allows, and as the little that they have accomplished and are doing requires. For, if the encomienda be of good size, the encomendero can support himself very comfortably with the third ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... into rational obedience. It taught men, as Hall has said, that true liberty smothers the voice of kings, dispels the mists of superstition, and by its magic touch kindles the rays of genius, the enthusiasm of poetry, the flame of eloquence, pours into our laps opulence and art, and embellishes life with innumerable institutions and improvements which make it one grand ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... economy fully vindicated. After some remarks on roads and means of communication by water, in which steam was spoken of as one of the agents to which our agriculturists must look for a helping hand up the hill that leads to competency and opulence, the King strongly recommended the planting of fruit trees, and went into some practical details of the method now pursued by the natives of Kona, Hawaii, who as a class bid fair not long hence to be, perhaps, more comfortably off than the people of any other district. Coffee, oranges, ...
— Speeches of His Majesty Kamehameha IV. To the Hawaiian Legislature • Kamehameha IV
... written history began, the economic capital of the world, the seat for the time being of opulence and of splendor, and at once the admiration and the envy of less favored rivals, has been a certain ambulatory spot upon the earth's surface, at a point where the lines of trade from east to west have converged. And always the marked ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... refinement in her speech and manner. She was dressed with the restraint of a prolonged and attenuated widowhood, in a rich and complicatedly quiet dress of mauve and grey. She was obviously a transitory visitor and not so much taking the opulence about her and particularly the great butler for granted as pointedly and persistently ignoring it in an effort to seem to take it for granted. The sister, on the other hand, had Lady Harman's pale darkness but ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... might reasonably have been expected. This will be understood when the general financial condition of the city is called to recollection. Every one who has known the country but for a few years back must remember the almost general bankruptcy occasioned by the failure of land speculating men of opulence and high credit. During that time commerce in all its classes sensibly felt the shock, and business languished in all its branches. No wonder that the theatre, which can only be fed by the superflux of all other departments of society, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... schooner skippers earned scanty incomes. Then came a world shortage of tonnage and immediately coastwise freights soared skyward. The big schooners of the Palmer fleet began to reap fabulous dividends and their masters shared in the unexpected opulence. Besides their primage they owned shares in their vessels, a thirty-second or so, and presently their settlement at the end of a voyage coastwise amounted to an income of a thousand dollars a month. They earned this money, and the managing ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... to-day than she had been yesterday. When she appreciated the fact that the interest on her invested property had increased her wealth, since the previous morning, by some hundreds of dollars, it frightened her. She felt as if an irresistible flood of opulence was flowing in upon her, and she shuddered to think of the responsibility of directing it into its proper courses, and so preventing it from overwhelming her ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... effort—of the Temple of Fame, an immense cage, sixty miles long, and its inhabitants the great writers of classic times, and is chiefly valuable as showing the estimation in which the classic writers were held in that day. This is also in octosyllabic verses, and is further remarkable for the opulence of its imagery and its variety of description. The poet is carried in the claws of a great eagle into this house, and sees its distinguished occupants standing upon columns of different kinds of metal, according to their merits. The poem ends with ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Maximus seems to you to be a suitable person before whom to deride poverty, because he himself is in enjoyment of great wealth and enormous opulence. You are wrong, Aemilianus, you are wholly mistaken in your estimate of his character, if you take the bounty of his fortune rather than the sternness of his philosophy as the standard for your judgement and fail to realize that one, who holds so austere ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... consider the energy with which the tuneful art is cultivated, and the importance with which it is invested, by the Italians. In the freedom happily enjoyed by Englishmen, all pursuits are open to individual enterprise and ambition; and every path to fame or opulence is thronged with busy eager aspirants, all running the race of eminence and distinction, with that strong purpose of the will which leaves but little opportunity for the indulgence of tastes, which, though they often exist among the individuals of these classes, are for this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... that multitude of people who live under conditions at least supportable. Whence comes their heart-burning? Why is it found not only among those of modest though sufficient means, but also under shades of ever-increasing refinement, all along the ascending scale, even to opulence and the summits of social place? They talk of the contented middle classes. Who talk of them? People who, judging from without, think that as soon as one begins to enjoy ease he ought to be satisfied. But the middle classes themselves—do ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... circumstances so entirely different. The tenor of Roman life was, in general, earnest and grave, although in private society they had no small turn for wit and joviality. The diversity of ranks among the Romans, politically, was very strongly marked, and the opulence of private individuals was frequently almost kingly; their women lived much more in society, and acted a much more important part than the Grecian women did, and from this independence they fully participated in the overwhelming tide of corruption ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... eye can trace the prospect round The splendid tracts of opulence are found; Yet scarce a hundred annual rounds have run. Since first the fabric of this power begun; His noble stream, inglorious, Mersey roll'd, Nor felt his waves by lab'ring art controll'd: Along his side a few small cots were spread, His finny brood ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... Neither in the Hotel de Soto, with its many divinities, nor in the palace of Nelse Ackerman, the king, had he felt such a sense of his own lowliness as the sight of this calm, slow-moving great lady inspired. She was the embodiment of opulence, she was "the real thing." Despite the look of kindliness in her wide-open blue eyes, she impressed him with a feeling of her overwhelming superiority. He did not know it was his duty as a gentleman to rise from his chair when a lady entered, but some instinct brought ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... dearest friends, writes: "No painter of our time could so well recall the bright and happy creations of Veronese." The difference between them is more one of period than of temperament. Paolo Veronese represented the opulence of a rich, strong society, full of noble life, while Tiepolo's lot was cast among effeminate men and frivolous women, and full of the modern spirit himself, he adapts his genius to his time and devotes ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... half-hour, he faced a future so alluring as by its beauty to intimidate him. Youth, love, long years of happiness, and (by this capricious turn) now even opulence, were the ingredients of a captivating vista. And yet he needs must pause a while to think of the dear comrade he had lost—of that loved boy, his pattern in the time of their common youthfulness which gleamed in memory ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell |
