"Overdone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are among the most difficult to write. The thing had, it seemed, been done to death and underdone and overdone when Packard came along. In all seriousness, it may be said that Packard has restored the underworld to respectability—as a domain for fictional purposes at least! It is not that his crooks are real crooks—though they are—but that he is able to put life into them, ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... marked their religion, their institutions, their literature, and their art. Their virtues and their vices turned upon it. Hence the golden mean is eminently a Greek conception, a leading idea of the Hellenic race. The Greek hated a thing overdone, a gaudy ornament, a proud title, a fulsome compliment, a high-flown speech, a wordy peroration. Nothing too much was the inscription over the lintel of the national sanctuary at Delphi. It is the ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... head of this list I would place what may be called the "white marriage" theme: not because it is ineffective, but because its effectiveness is very cheap and has been sadly overdone. It occurs in two varieties: either a proud but penniless damsel is married to a wealthy parvenu, or a woman of culture and refinement is married to a "rough diamond." In both cases the action consists of the transformation of a nominal ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... the house the foreman, with a specially pleasant smile, asked him if he would not have his dinner now, expressing the fear that the feast his wife was preparing, with the help of the girl with the earrings, might be overdone. ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... which he alone discovers all that is lacking in the eyes of the public. He is whimsical to the last degree. His friends have seen him destroy a finished picture because, in his eyes, it looked too smooth. "It is overdone," he would ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Many things could be said against their sufficiency as instructors in matters of thought; and many more against the low and barbarous tone of their morale—the inhumanity and brutality of both their principles and their practice. All this might no doubt be very easily overdone, and would certainly be so, if undertaken in the style ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... danger, but to remove so unpleasant an idea from their minds; you persuade them to remain as they are, from a new fear that their activity may bring on the apprehended mischief before its time. I confess freely that this evil sometimes happens from an overdone precaution; but it is when the measures are rash, ill-chosen, or ill-combined, and the effects rather of blind terror than of enlightened foresight. But the few to whom I wish to submit my thoughts are of a character which will enable them to see danger without ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... editor of the Cape Times, and other prominent men. A movement of this nature naturally excited considerable attention in Pretoria; but the success of it was wholly unexpected. The President and his party had played to the South African gallery, and they had not yet realized that they had in any way overdone the theatrical part. They had no suspicion of the real feeling with which the sentences were regarded, nor of the extent to which they had alienated sympathy by that and the subsequent 'magnanimous' ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... said the king, "and therefore I thought it best to bring Dick up on fairy books, that he might know what is right, and have no nonsense about him. But perhaps the thing has been overdone; at all events, it is not a success. I wonder if fathers and sons will ever understand each other, and get on well together? There was my poor father, King Grognio, he wanted me to take to adventures, like other princes, fighting Firedrakes, and so forth; and I did not ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... was nothing to eat and only the dirtiest old woman in all the world to cook it, but at three o'clock we managed to serve the patients with an elegant dish of underdone lentils for the first course, and overdone potatoes for the second, and partook ourselves gratefully thereof, after they had finished. In the afternoon of that day a meeting of the Red Cross Committee was held at the hospital, and I was sent for and formally installed as Matron of the hospital with full authority to make any improvements ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... the depths of the valley, reach the warm, level rays of sunlight that turns the first leaves that have passed their prime into the fierce yellows and burnt siennas which, when faithfully represented at Burlington House, are often considered overdone. Even the gaunt obelisk near Marske Hall responds to a fine sunset of this sort, and shows a gilded side that gives it ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... it may be of importance to add that this kind of instruction can be easily overdone, and it is better to proceed too slowly than too rapidly. It is a healthy and permanent development that is wanted, and the teacher should rest satisfied if it is slow. It is by no means feasible to attempt to subordinate all study ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... that they appear to mix with the other foliage; or else they should be seen at some distance. Other varieties of the common white poplar or abele are occasionally useful, although most of them sprout badly and may become a nuisance. But the planting of these immodest trees is so likely to be overdone that one scarcely dare recommend them, although, when skillfully used, they may be made to produce most excellent effects. If any reader has a particular fondness for trees of this class (or any others with woolly-white foliage) ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... far upon our return, when one of our most valuable dray-horses became completely overdone with fatigue, and I was obliged to take it out of the team and put in a riding horse, to try, if possible, to reach the plains where the grass was. We just got to the borders of this open patch of country, when the poor animal (a mare) could not be got a yard farther, and we were compelled ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... and attentions were being overdone, Lieutenant James took them amiss and elected to become jealous. He talked darkly of "calling out" one of his wife's admirers. But before there could be any early morning pistol-play in the Phoenix Park, an unexpected solution offered itself. Trouble was suddenly threatened ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... that we had, Socrates, but I have to satisfy myself as well as you; and in my judgment the figure of the king is not yet perfected; like statuaries who, in their too great haste, having overdone the several parts of their work, lose time in cutting them down, so too we, partly out of haste, partly out of a magnanimous desire to expose our former error, and also because we imagined that a ...
— Statesman • Plato
... water of the pool was supposed to reseal the pores which the treatment in the hot room had caused to open. In the best gymnasium circles it is held to be a fine thing to have these educated pores, but I am sure it can be overdone, and personally I cannot say that I particularly enjoyed it. I kept it up largely for their sake. They became highly trained, but developed temperament. They were apt to get the signals mixed and open ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... other charities quite as worthy, because its maintenance pumps dry the pockets of those who have to give. It will require a drastic course of training, I fear, to open the eyes of the public to the fact that even generosity can be overdone, and I must disclaim any desire to superintend the process of securing their awakening, for it is an ungrateful task to criticise even a mistakenly generous person; and man being by nature prone to thoughtless judgments, the critic of a philanthropist who spends a million ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... do,' Rose said cheerfully. She was too cheerful for Sophia's romantic little theory, but an acuter audience would have found her too cheerful for herself. She had overdone it by half a tone, but the exaggeration was too fine for any ears but her own. She was, as a matter of fact, in the grip of a violent anger. She was not the kind of woman to resent the new affections of a rejected lover, but she had, through her own folly, attached herself to Francis Sales, as, ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... not laughed in his sleeve to see it acted?—Who has not admired and wondered at the cold and formal bow and shake of the hand, the tender inquiries after the health of the maiden aunt and the baby, the carelessly expressed wish that we may meet somewhere—all so palpably overdone? That the heroine of the impassioned scene at which we had unfortunately to assist an hour ago! Where are the tears, the convulsive sobs, the heartbroken grief? And that the young gentleman who saw nothing for it but flight or a pistol bullet! There, all the world's a stage, and ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... country, or the first ascent of a peak, is usually accorded privilege of nomenclature. Yet it is a privilege that is often abused and should be exercised with reserve. Whether or not it has been overdone in the present case, others must say. This, however, the author will say, and would say as emphatically as is in his power: that he sets no store whatever by the names he has ventured to confer comparable with that which he sets ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... insisted upon seeing. It was the only room to the decoration of which she gave whole-hearted praise and approval. The cooking at the Green Gate she admitted to be perfect, without pretension. In fact, she thought everything in the house a little overdone, except ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... danger with rustic work is the temptation, to which most builders yield, to make it too fancy and intricate in place of practical and simple. Figs. 323, 324, 325, and 326 are as ornamental as one can make them without incurring the danger of being overdone, too ornate, too fancy ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... the humble elements of constitutional government which he found in existence. There was more manliness in his nature than in that of his brother, more belief in the worth of his own people. The espionage, the servility, the overdone professions of sanctity in Manteuffel's regime displeased him, but most of ail he despised its pusillanimity in the conduct of foreign affairs. His heart indeed was Prussian, not German, and the destiny which created him the first Emperor of united Germany was not of his own ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... almost sorry for the man; but really the thing was overdone when, not content with overcrowding our village, these London people took to living in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... things! At least, that is how I regard it. The over-cultivation of physical strength leads to mental callousness and brutality. These are scientific points which require discussion,—not with you,—but with a scientist. Nothing should be overdone. Too much enervation and lack of athleticism leads to moral deterioration certainly,—but so does too much 'sport' as they call it. There is a happy medium to be obtained on both sides, but human beings generally miss it. Prince Humphry, born of a beautiful, introspective, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... dancing will ever be overdone. It is popular, and good dancers for this line of work are not too numerous. So it seems likely to be in ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... at the tips, say the last eight inches, which is accomplished by rounding the back slightly and reducing the width at this point. This gives an active recoil, or as it is described, "whip ended." This can be overdone, especially in hunting-bows, where a little more solidity and safety are preferable to a ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... overdone it a bit—women hate to be disillusioned. What you ought to have done, sir, is to describe me as a sort of ass—genial and all that sort of thing, but a commonplace ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... was exquisite: the omelette overdone, the sausages too greasy, and the bread so hard that he had to cut it into fingers for Christine lest she should hurt her wrist. They emptied two bottles of wine, and began a third, becoming so gay and noisy that they ended by feeling bewildered in the long room, where they partook of the ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... to attractiveness is order and division, simply and sensibly managed. Nothing is much more repellent, at least to modern hearers, than an excess of arrangement; headings and subdivisions overdone. But nothing is more helpful to attention than a simple, natural, luminous division, present in the preacher's mind, announced to the audience, and faithfully carried out. Remember this, among many other things, in the choosing ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... very poor: his debts, with his legacies, which are trifling, amount to fifty thousand pounds. His estate, a nominal eight thousand a-year, much mortgaged. In short, his fondness for Houghton has endangered Houghton. If he had not so overdone it, he -might have left such an estate to his family as might have secured the glory of the place for many years: another such debt must expose it to sale. If he had lived, his unbounded generosity and contempt of money would have run ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... child by Madame W...t.n's husband, at twenty a second. Madame found out the father, and kicked Sarah out. Mr. W...t.n then kicked Madame out, and went to live with Sarah, rows ensued, other companies of "Poses plastiques" came into competition, the thing got overdone, he could not get his living; he knew a trade, but was I expect too lazy to work at it; so Sarah took to letting herself out as model, and that being poor pay, to letting out her cunt to get their bread; she had just began it ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... know—only you shouted a lot. You're overdone, aren't you? Been working too hard I expect." Then he added, slowly, "You were ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... dear. What a time those little squares of lace must take. I am like yourself in respect of religion; in the first place, I think that nothing should be overdone. Have you ever-I have never spoken to any one on the subject, but I see your ideas are so in accordance ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... this mortifying alternative rather than suffer himself to be torn into beefsteaks. It may be, however, that in this instance our Nimrod has suddenly discovered that it is about dinner-time, and is hurrying back to camp lest the beef should be overdone. ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... manifest improvements of John Broadwood's wrest-plank and John Geib's "grasshopper." After the beginning of this century, the square piano became much enlarged and improved by Collard and Broadwood, in London, and by Petzold, in Paris. It was overdone in the attempt to gain undue power for it, and, about twenty years ago, sank in the competition, with the later cottage pianoforte, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... myself out of odd pieces of wool.' And that's not the worst! Mrs Hudson would paint bulrushes on cream-pots, and forget-me-nots on tambourines, and come round bristling with importance. 'I always find fancy work is overdone at sales, so I thought a little of my hand- painting would be acceptable! No one needs more than a dozen cosies, but every one is glad of an extra tambourine!' ... It's easy to talk, my dear, but what could you do when it came to the point? There's nothing ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Chayne, without the least emotion in his voice. But he walked with uneven steps. At times he staggered like one overdone and very tired. But once or twice he said, as though he were dimly aware that he had his friend's ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... he overdone it, though!" cried Jemmy. "Well! And so then this boy mounted his horse, with his bride in his arms, and cantered away, and cantered on and on till he came to a certain place where he had a certain Gran and a certain ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings • Charles Dickens
... entered to say that Miss Nellie begged to be excused from coming down to dinner, as she felt too ill. Then Robert entered to ask should he serve dinner or wait until Mr. Holmes came in. "Wait!" said Bayard, bluntly. But five minutes passed; the dinner would be overdone; so Robert slipped out in search of the truant, and Miller saw him going over to Bedlam. But the upper gallery was empty; Mr. Holmes and Miss Forrest had disappeared; the adjutant came striding up from the guard-house, and together the ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... too common error of overstocking with sheep when the price of wool is high. Sheep Husbandry has been a very profitable branch of business for the farmers of this State; but like every other business it may be overdone, and is liable to fluctuations and changes. Sheep must be well fed and cared for in order to produce heavy fleeces; and there is certainly a limit to the number which may profitably be kept upon any farm; and it not unfrequently happens that a flock of fifty sheep on a small farm, will yield ...
— Address delivered by Hon. Henry H. Crapo, Governor of Michigan, before the Central Michigan Agricultural Society, at their Sheep-shearing Exhibition held at the Agricultural College Farm, on Thursday, • Henry Howland Crapo
... Oh, and poor Mr. Ridokanaki! You'll refuse him to-night, I suppose! What fun it must be to be a pretty girl going about refusing people in conservatories—like a short story in a magazine! I've forgotten how I did it. In a year, darling? Quite. I say, have I overdone the dix-huitieme business? Do I look like a fancy ball? Pass me a hairpin, dear. No, don't. I suppose you know that Chetwode has never seen this dress! What do you think of that? One would think we ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... and content by disparaging the present and actual. It is the voice which says No, like Mephistopheles. No, you have not succeeded; no, your work is not good; no, you are not happy; no, you shall not find rest—all that you see and all that you do is insufficient, insignificant, overdone, badly done, imperfect. The thirst for the ideal is like the goad of Siva, which only quickens life to hasten death. Incurable longing that it is, it lies at the root both of individual suffering and of the progress of the race. It destroys happiness in the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... carefully in his wallet. There was nothing more to be done here apparently. As we passed down the corridor we could hear a man apparently raving in good English and bad French. It proved to be Millefleur—or Miller—and his raving was as overdone as that of a third-rate actor. Madame was trying to ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... been said in preceding pages about Puget Sound that it would seem the subject might be somewhat overdone. But it still remains to be said that justice can never be done to the scenic glories of this beautiful inland sea. The views from different points, and from almost every point on the Sound, are of sublime grandeur. On the east are the Cascade Mountains, ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... in this very beautiful, but rather overdone portion of earth's surface, that the adventures occurred of which we are now to give some account; and as probably most of our readers have heard the name of Syria pretty often of late, we need not display much ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... pudding he had baked one, for a wager, ten feet deep in the Thames, near Rotherhithe, by enclosing it in a great tin pan, and that in a sack of lime. It was taken up after about two hours and a half, and eaten with great relish, its only fault being that it was somewhat overdone. The bet was ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... stairs. To this, of course, I had no objection, but was rather pleased to see it. Time, however, which proves all things, showed my cook to be rather too literary in her inclinations. I often found her reading, when it was but reasonable for me to expect that she would be working; and overdone or burnt dishes occasionally marked the degree in which her mind was absorbed in her literary pleasures, which I discovered in time, were not of the highest order-such books as the "Mysteries of Paris" furnishing the aliment ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... tempter advanced, but entertained the seamen with a lively and graphic account of the running down of the Skylark, and entered into minute particulars—chiefly of a comical nature—with such recklessness that the cause of Mr Jones bade fair to resemble many a roast which is totally ruined by being overdone. Jones gave him a salutary check, however, on being landed next day at a certain town on the Kentish coast, so that when Billy was taken before the authorities, his statements were brought somewhat more into accord with ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... was talking rapidly in French—with rather overdone eagerness—to Mrs. Perrault. She took no notice of her fellow-voyager as she lightly stepped exactly in the centre of the canoe, and sank down on the rug in front of him, with the ease of one thoroughly accustomed to that somewhat treacherous ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... which I was admitted, and these were no doubt the very splendors of Karlee's establishment. If he had been a rich Anglicized baboo, he would have had a profusion of hot, tawdry chairs, and a vulgar-gorgeous cramming of gilt-edged tables, sweaty red sofas, coarse pictures in overdone frames, Bowery ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... larger the loaves the slower must be the baking, otherwise they will be overdone on the outside ...
— The Healthy Life Cook Book, 2d ed. • Florence Daniel
... made a short run of about 1/2 mile, and then after a short halt to cool, a long non-stop for quite 3 miles. The Barrier, five geographical miles from Cape Armitage, now looked very close, but Lashly had overdone matters a bit, run out of lubricant and got his engine too hot. The next run yielded a little over a mile, and he was forced to stop within a few hundred yards of the snow slope leading to the Barrier and wait for more lubricant, as well as for the heat balance in ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... to have a foreign accent. Ironical, and gifted with a certain clownish humor, they had not much natural wit: but they were clever enough, and they manufactured their goods in imitation of Paris. If the stone was not always of the first water, and if the setting was always strange and overdone, at least it shone in artificial light, and that was all it was meant to do. They were intelligent, keen, though short-sighted observers—their eyes had been dulled by centuries of the life of the counting-house—turning ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... Menecy, by Germain Pillon, who died in 1590. In this the failings mentioned above will be readily recognized, and also in another example, namely, that of a carved oak door from the church of St. Maclou, Rouen, by Jean Goujon, in which the work is very fine, but somewhat overdone with enrichment. This cast ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... emperors, almost from the beginning, threw themselves into such hands; and the mischief increased every day till the decline and final ruin of the empire. It is therefore of very great importance (provided the thing is not overdone) to contrive such an establishment as must, almost whether a prince will or not, bring into daily and hourly offices about his person a great number of his first nobility; and it is rather an useful prejudice that gives them a pride in such a servitude. Though ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Mary declined an invitation to take a run to the village. She seemed overdone with ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... I had overdone it. However I decided to know the worst. The worst that the machine could tell me was twenty-stone-seven. ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... time. My work upon the Hall estate, and my exercise with Roger, had kept my body in good condition: yet to run for four miles or more at a stretch with the mind in a ferment would tax any man, and by the time I came in sight of the turnpike I was fairly overdone, dripping with sweat—'twas a sunny day in July—and trembling ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... England I shall take from Mr. Daniel Jones' dictionary,[16] the authority of which cannot, I think, be disputed. It is true that it represents a pronunciation so bad that its slovenliness is likely to be thought overdone, but there is no more exaggeration than any economical system of phonetic spelling is bound to show. It is indeed a strong and proper objection to all such simplifications that they are unable to exhibit the finer distinctions; but this must not ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... and the unfortunate baby was roaring and kicking, he called down to me, "Will you come and drink some chocolate to King Herod's memory?" Mr. Maxwell, who has four children, did not behave much better; and it was a great exertion to me, by overdone courtesy and desperate attempts at conversation, to keep the mother as far as possible from hearing ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... vale. The maxim "multum in parvo" may be an admirable one for an author whose book will lie in the reader's hand the while he has time to grasp the full significance of every well-filled sentence. By a public speaker, however, packing may easily be overdone; and here is one of the dangers of the written sermon as compared with one in which the preacher, having gathered together his knowledge and his thought upon a matter, leaves the choice of words to the hour ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... tall, well made, with a high-bred if somewhat dissipated face, an air of blase indifference a little overdone, and an accent which he had brought back with him from Oxford, and which he was anxious not to lose. Indeed, the bare thought of the possibility of his dropping into the flat, semi-nasal of his native land filled ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... Street, and his bootmaker at the corner of that street and Piccadilly. He was particular in the article of gloves, and the getting up of his shirts was a matter not lightly thought of in the Ullathorne laundry. On the occasion of the present visit he had rather overdone his usual efforts, and caused some little uneasiness to his sister, who had not hitherto received very cordially the proposition for a lengthened visit ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... wind. Inquiries had been made in every by-way that could be thought of, until at last the wise and learned men has asserted, as we have been already told, that "love, the life-giver, could alone give new life to a father;" and in saying this, they had overdone it, and said more than they understood themselves. They repeated it, and wrote it down as a recipe, "Love is a life-giver." But how could such a recipe be prepared—that was a difficulty they could not overcome. At last it was decided that help could ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... companion, who had known how to make himself very pleasant to him. Here was the clear, cold corrective, which the fever of his present life demanded. Without it, he would have felt alternately suffocated and exhausted by an existence, at once so gaudy and overdone, and yet so intolerably empty; in which people, even at their best, seemed only to be brooding, like the wise emperor himself, over a world's disillusion. For with all the severity of Cornelius, there was such a breeze of hopefulness—freshness and hopefulness, as of new ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... and breast of a boiled fowl are the favorite portions. It is important that the fowl be cooked just right. If underdone, the joints will not separate readily; and if overdone they will fall apart so quickly that carving is impossible. Unless the knife be very sharp, and the work done carefully, the skin of the breast will come off with the ...
— Carving and Serving • Mrs. D. A. Lincoln
... his work in life, a boating-man will stick to it. His favourite sport is not expensive, and nothing can possibly be less luxurious. He is often a reading man, though it may be doubted whether "he who runs may read" as a rule. Running is, perhaps, a little overdone, and Strangers' cups are, or lately were, given with injudicious generosity. To the artist's eye, however, few sights in modern life are more graceful than the University quarter-of-a-mile race. Nowhere else, perhaps, do you see figures so full of ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... hut for a few minutes, she turned to her guest, and curtly bade him watch the cakes, to see that they did not get overdone. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... thunder don't you have a light?" said the visitor, with a loud freedom carefully calculated to give the effect of old and privileged comradeship. But the laugh of hearty good fellowship which followed his next remark was a trifle overdone "Ain't afraid of bombs, are you? Don't you know that ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... must confess we felt that the training was rather overdone. We had to put in many hours daily, and the march to the training ground at Yvrencheux and back, some six miles in all, was to say the least of it somewhat tedious. We were besides, most unfortunate with regard to weather, which was very unpleasant most of ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... these was Mother Capoulade, whose head lay sideways on her curled arms, and from whose throat there issued a resonant and melodious snore. Most of the faces that La Boulaye could see were horribly livid and bedewed with sweat, and again it came into his mind to wonder whether he had overdone things, and they would wake no more. On the other hand, an even greater fear beset him, that the drug might have been insufficient. By way of testing it, he caught one fellow who lay across his ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... our league could probably do something in the interests of sculpture. It is apparent to any fair-minded person that sculpture has been very much overdone in this country. It seems to us there should be a law against perpetuating any of our great men in marble or bronze or stone or amalgam fillings until after he has been dead a couple of hundred years, and by that time a fresh crop ought to be coming on and probably we shall have lost ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... the Rev. Dr. Aaron Burr, the godly president of Princeton; by his grandfather, Jonathan Edwards; or by at least 1,394 of the other members of the family of Mr. Edwards. There is no purpose to give him saintly enthronement, but it may not be amiss to suggest that the abuse of him has been overdone. ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... what it is, and I'll try what I can do. But you won't think I'm so bad as I seem, and 'll forgive me? I know what you think of me, and that's what mortifies me; you think I'm an overdone specimen of ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... people give generously for the erection and maintenance of luxurious church buildings and for the sustenance of men appointed to the idolatrous service of Rome. I saw bishops and priests grow rich until they possessed the choicest real estate. I thought then that Paul's admonitions were overdone. I thought he should have requested the people to curtail their contributions. I saw how the generosity of the people of the Church was encouraging covetousness on the part of the clergy. I know ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... rang again. Presently Lady Cynthia and Sir Timothy appeared upon the bridge and crossed the lawn. They were walking a little apart. Lady Cynthia was looking down at some roses which she had gathered. Sir Timothy's unconcern seemed a trifle overdone. ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... consuming great quantities of half-cooked flapjacks, chunks of overdone beef, and tin-cupfuls of scalding coffee. When they had finished they thrust aside the battered tin dishes with the air of men too weary to bother further with them. They rolled brown paper cigarettes and smoked listlessly. After a ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... "It was quite simple; and not one of us had the stomach-ache. That fear of the cats is very much overdone. They can do nothing, so long as you eat them while ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... proved to be its benefactors; for that which is persecuted, grows. To them its present popularity is due, the cheapening of its Degrees, the invasion of its Lodges, that are no longer Sanctuaries, by the multitude; its pomp and pageantry and overdone display. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... eminently wholesome and natural. Early to bed, he slept like an infant and was up with the dawn. Always with something to do, and with a thousand little things that enticed but did not clamor, he was himself never overdone. Nevertheless, there were times when both he and Dede were not above confessing tiredness at bedtime after seventy or ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... highly respectable opinion that character-mongering is much overdone nowadays. After all, what does it matter—that Fanny Elmer was all sentiment and sensation, and Mrs. Durrant hard as iron? that Clara, owing (so the character-mongers said) largely to her mother's influence, never yet had the chance to do anything off her own bat, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... far as Poodles was concerned, I could not accuse myself of obstinacy in refusing to apologize. On the whole, I was satisfied with myself, though willing to acknowledge that in some things I had rather overdone the matter. ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... herself up in her room and was seen by no one. It was a wretched night for everybody; and when next morning Mrs Rimbolt, sitting down to breakfast, was met with the news that neither Master Percy nor Miss Raby wanted breakfast, she began to feel that the affair was being overdone. ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... what their trade was; whether they did their washing at home, and burned tallow or wax, and mixed chicory with their coffee, and were over-fond of Gruyere cheese—the biggest, cheapest, plainest, and most formidable cheese in the world; whether they fried with oil or butter, and liked their omelets overdone and garlic in their salad, and sipped black-currant brandy or anisette as a liqueur; and were overrun with mice, and used cats or mouse-traps to get rid of them, or neither; and bought violets, or pinks, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... trained you into my own style of playing: I never could get Jupp entirely into it; he is too fond of noise and flourishes. It has struck me that perhaps Mr. Galloway might spare you: his office is not overdone with work, and I would ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... failing among official personages. He ordered everybody about except the Lord Mayor, and him he seemed to push about as though he were wheeling him in a legal Bath-chair. His Lordship was indeed a great invalid in respect to matters of law; I think he had overdone it, if I may use the expression; his study must have been tremendous to have acquired a knowledge of the laws of England in so short a time. But being somewhat feeble, and in his modesty much misdoubting his own judgment, he did nothing and said nothing, except it was ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... of this transept was put up in 1894, in memory of Wm. Philip Price, M.P. This window is too full of detail, and the canopy work is overdone. The ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... the antique vigour of Villehardouin. Joinville is something of a gossip, and though he evidently writes with a definite literary purpose, is not master of very great argumentative powers. But for this same reason he abounds in anecdote, and in the personal detail which, though it may easily be overdone, is undoubtedly now and then precious for the purpose of enabling us to conjure up the things and men of old time more fully and correctly. And there is a Pepysian garrulity as well as a Pepysian shrewdness about Joinville; so ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... understand you at last," retorted Stanton. "You have been smitten yourself, and this is your strategy to conceal the fact. The trouble is that you have overdone the matter, and revealed your transfixed heart long before I should have suspected the wound. Had you not better commence on the picture soon, for this matter may disable you ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... it!" cried Mr. Worden, hurrying into the passage, in quest of his hat and cloak. "It is no more than just that you should have your own, and the supper will be either eaten, or overdone, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... Duke's assurance of support to Melbourne exasperated his own people to the greatest degree, produced a sulky article in the 'Times,' and the usual complaints at White's and the Carlton of the Duke's being in his dotage, and so forth. Even some of his real admirers thought he 'had overdone it,' and whilst at Brooks's they did not quite know what to make of it, at the Carlton they were in the same doubt how to interpret Melbourne's cautious ambiguities. Both, however, were clear enough: Melbourne meant to say he would 'go no further,' ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... She'll git a meal o' cold pork 'n' greens, cold string beans, gingerbread, 'n' custard pie on t' the table; then she'll stan' in the front door an' holler: 'Hurry up, Ossian! it's struck twelve more 'n two minutes ago, 'n' everything 's gittin' overdone!'" ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... artists also lent their aid, their designs ranging from the shepherdesses of Watteau to copies of Chinese and Japanese scenes. Flowers, cupids, garlands, landscapes—never was such a diversity of decoration attempted as during the reigns of Louis XIV and XV. As a result the output became very overdone and ornate. Fortunately for art, Louis XVI had better taste. Instead of continuing this garish type of design he procured a collection of Greek vases to serve as models for his workmen, and as a result the product came back ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... his head, with closed eyes, 'you forget my caracter. Why, the house is full iv faymales. My darlin' Mrs. Nutther, I—I couldn't enthertain sich an idaya; and, besides,' said he, with sudden energy, recollecting that the goose might be overdone, 'there's a religious duty, my dear Ma'am—the holy sacrament waitin'—a pair to be married; but Pat Moran will keep them quiet till mornin,' and I'll be down myself to see you then. So my sarvice to you, Mrs. Nutther, and God bless ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... weight was exactly two hundred, and her countenance a strange medley of the light-heartedness of her race, and the habitual and necessary severity of a cook. She often protested that she was weighed down by "responserbility;" the whole of the discredit of overdone beef, or under-done fish, together with those which attach themselves to heavy bread, lead-like buckwheat-cakes, and a hundred other similar cases, belonging exclusively to her office. She had been twice married, the last connection having been ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... as he read his little unsuccessful circumstances vanished and the wonder of life returned to him, the routine of reluctant getting up, opening shop, pretending to dust it with zest, breakfasting with a shop egg underdone or overdone or a herring raw or charred, and coffee made Miriam's way and full of little particles, the return to the shop, the morning paper, the standing, standing at the door saying "How do!" to passers-by, or getting a bit of gossip or watching unusual visitors, all these ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... respect to disposition, intellectual culture and study that conversation between us had become almost impossible. One of them suspected something, and said to me: "I have always thought that you were being overdone in the way of study." A habit which I had acquired of reciting the psalms in Hebrew from a small manuscript of my own which I used as a breviary, surprised them very much. They were half inclined to ask me if I was a ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... Dryden, Warburton and Doctor Johnson used collectively or individually the following expressions in describing the work of the author of "Hamlet": conceit, overreach, word-play, extravagance, overdone, absurdity, obscurity, puerility, bombast, idiocy, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... enter upon the next stage to which I introduce him; the subjects I suggest for his consideration rouse his curiosity, because they are fine in themselves, because they are quite new to him, and because he is able to understand them. Your young people, on the other hand, are weary and overdone with your stupid lessons, your long sermons, and your tedious catechisms; why should they not refuse to devote their minds to what has made them sad, to the burdensome precepts which have been continually piled upon them, to ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... "You're overdone, MacIan," said Turnbull, putting him on one side. "It's only someone playing the goat. Let me open ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... sitting on the mint beside the well-house, weaving herself a wreath of buttercups. Felicity was sipping from the cup of clouded blue with an overdone air of unconcern. Each was acutely and miserably conscious of the other's presence, and each was desirous of convincing the rest of us that the other was less than nothing to her. Felicity could not succeed. ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... quieted him down and got him home at last; and when he'd got home he was that dismal and depressed from the reaction that he sat in his armchair all day and did nothing but grumble and burst into tears, for, you see, he'd overdone it, and it was bound to tell upon him. But after that all his natural pluck and determination got hold of him again, and if he wasn't mad to have that dance that they had ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... spoiled already. The fowls werena much to begin with. It needs sense and discretion to market, as well as to do most things, and folk that winna come home at the right hour, must content themselves with things overdone, or else in the ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... pretty things to an acquaintance, and omit them to a friend, "because she knows us, and we need not be ceremonious." But ceremony is not half such a bad thing as this age seems to think; it may be overdone, but so may its opposite. Why should we not give our friend the pleasure of this or that acknowledgment of her powers, which a stranger would give her, but which she would value far more from us, even though she "knows ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... responded the other, impatiently. "College professors, delicate ladies, children not yet in their teens, have committed homicide, why not this handsome gentleman in the wool business? Or if you won't have murder—and I agree that blood is rather tiresome, it has been overdone so much—bring a woman into the case. Let us have a betrayal, a wronged virgin, and ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... about it, whatever it was," said Mrs. Belmont, laying her hand soothingly upon his as the camels closed together. "It is no wonder that you are overdone. You have thought and worked for all of us so long. We shall halt presently, and a few hours' sleep will ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... one of his smooth little side-moves—his or Mrs. Honoria's. He didn't want Evan to get in too deep in the righteousness puddle, and he took that way of letting him get a peek at the real thing. It was overdone, though; horribly overdone. Confound it all! I wish Mr. McVickar would loosen up a little more with me! If he'd tell me a few of the things I ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde |
