"Elaborate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reproduction, not uncommon in Mucorini, is described by Van Tieghem in this species. Conjugating threads on the substratum by degrees elaborate zygospores, but these, contrary to the mode in other species, are surrounded by curious branched processes which emanate from the arcuate cells on either side of the newly-developed zygospore. This system of reproduction ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... you to-night," said Captain Plessy and he set down the candle upon the table. Then with an elaborate correctness he drew his sword from its scabbard and offered the ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... predilection for law and chicanery, and a respect amounting to veneration for written documents, red tape, and sealing-wax. Master Pothier's acuteness in picking holes in the actes of a rival notary was only surpassed by the elaborate intricacy of his own, which he boasted, not without reason, would puzzle the Parliament of Paris, and confound the ingenuity of the sharpest advocates of Rouen. Master Pothier's actes were as full of embryo ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... choice places of New York to me then was the "Phrenological Cabinet" of Fowler & Wells, Nassau street near Beekman. Here were all the busts, examples, curios and books of that study obtainable. I went there often, and once for myself had a very elaborate and leisurely examination and "chart of bumps" written out (I have it yet,) by Nelson Fowler (or was it ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... material. It is built of the granite of the country, which necessarily gives it a somewhat stern and weather-beaten look, and hinders any great exuberance of architectural ornament. Not that we think this any loss; the simple buttresses and flying buttresses at Dol are really a relief after the elaborate and unintelligible forests of pinnacles which surround so many French churches, even of very moderate size. It is only in the huge porch attached to the south transept that an approach to anything of this kind is found. But very beautiful work of other sorts may be seen ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... but even evaporated peaches can be stewed so that they're appetizing. And as I had the good sense to bring out with me no less than three cook-books, from Brentano's, I am able to attempt more and more elaborate dishes. ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... with the Corbetts, she had dreaded a second encounter with March and had consciously avoided one. To meet and be introduced as the strangers they were supposed by the rest of the family to be, to elaborate the pretense that this was what they were—they who had shared those flaming moments while Paula sang!—would be ridiculous and disgusting. But anything else, any attempt to go on from where they had left off was unthinkable. In the privacy of her ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... to be reassured. He kept looking furtively towards the door by which Ibrahim had vanished. In about five minutes it was opened again by Ibrahim. He stood aside, slightly bending and looking on the floor, and Mrs. Armine came in, dressed in a sort of elaborate tea-gown, grey in colour, with silver embroideries. She was carefully made up, but not made up pale. Her cheeks were delicately flushed with colour. Her lips were red. Her shining hair was arranged to show the beautiful ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... get himself anything elaborate; he found some leftovers in the refrigerator and combined them into a stew. While it was heating, he sat down at the kitchen table and lit his pipe. The spurt of flame from the lighter opened Little Fuzzy's eyes, but what really awed him was Pappy Jack blowing ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... thing; but here all this magnificent ceremonial of prayer and chanted responses and psalms and anthems was the setting to a short, meagre discourse, which would not have been considered of any account among the elaborate intellectual efforts of New England ministers. While this was going on, the light came through the stained glass windows and fell upon the congregation, tingeing them with crimson. After service we wandered about the aisles, and looked at the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "Oh, nothing as elaborate as that," was the laughing reply. "It's just an experiment I want to try. And yet it isn't exactly an experiment, either, for I read how to do it in a camping book. It's baked ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... be expected that the lawyers appointed to plead against Hales would exert great force on that occasion: but the cause was regarded with such anxiety by the public, that it has been thoroughly canvassed in several elaborate discourses;[*] and could men divest themselves of prejudice, there want not sufficient materials on which to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... Taking the knife, she thrust its point through the elaborate white frosting, with two or three ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... sur le papyrus Prisse, le livre de Kagimna et les lecons de Ptah-hotep. Bibliotheque de {75} l'Ecole des Hautes-Etudes, fasc. 70. Paris, 1887. Contains complete translation and elaborate discussion of the text; ...
— The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke'Gemni - The Oldest Books in the World • Battiscombe G. Gunn
... work in baked clay, which contracts as it dries, and is very easily frangible. Then you must put no work into it requiring niceness in dimension, nor any so elaborate that it would be a great loss if it were broken, but as the clay yields at once to the hand, and the sculptor can do anything with it he likes, it is a material for him to sketch with and play with,—to record his fancies ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... can be determined. In it the sacrificial ritual is a constituent, and indeed a very essential element, of the Mosaic legislation: that ritual is not represented as ancient use handed down to the Israelites by living practice from ancestral times: it was Moses who gave them the theory of it—a very elaborate one too—and he himself received his instruction from God (Exodus xxv. seq.; Leviticus i. seq.). An altogether disproportionate emphasis is accordingly laid upon the technique of sacrifice corresponding to the theory, alike upon the when, the where, and the by whom, and also ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... and angels, acting as his deputies in forgiving offenses, in dealing punishments and in receiving gifts. They would become makers of laws and moral codes. They would wear special costumes to distinguish them, they would go through elaborate ceremonies to impress their followers, employing all sensuous effects, architecture and sculpture and painting, music and poetry and dancing, candles and incense and ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... breakfast she made plans for spending the whole day where she was. Perhaps, though, it wouldn't be as necessary that day as the next. That day, Scrap calculated, Mellersh would be provided for. He would want to have a bath, and having a bath at San Salvatore was an elaborate business, a real adventure if one had a hot one in the bathroom, and it took a lot of time. It involved the attendance of the entire staff—Domenico and the boy Giuseppe coaxing the patent stove to burn, restraining it when it burnt too fiercely, ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... in front of one brown-stone structure that looked a trifle less elaborate. "It says Presbyterian," said Corydon, reading the sign. "I wonder how they ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... injunctions he had given him, unless he had had a nearer conversation than ordinary with Mariamne. So he gave order that Sohemus should be seized on and slain immediately; but he allowed his wife to take her trial; and got together those that were most faithful to him, and laid an elaborate accusation against her for this love potion and composition, which had been charged upon her by way of calumny only. However, he kept no temper in what he said, and was in too great a passion for judging well about this matter. Accordingly, when the court ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... proportion may still be considered as holding good. But let us advert to the large debt which we have ourselves contracted in a single war, and let us only calculate on a common share of the events which disturb the peace of nations, and we shall instantly perceive, without the aid of any elaborate illustration, that there must always be an immense disproportion between the objects of federal and state expenditures. It is true that several of the States, separately, are encumbered with considerable debts, which are an excrescence of the late war. But this cannot happen again, if the proposed ...
— The Federalist Papers
... mark. Charts of the sea around Japan were ruled off into small numbered squares, so as to facilitate the reporting of the enemy's position and movements from the moment he would be first sighted. An elaborate system of scouting by light cruisers was organized; signal stations were established on islands and headlands, and wireless installations erected at central and outlying points. If Rojdestvensky made for the Tsu-shima channels, Togo was there to meet him. If ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... imperturbably, telling of her own experience in New York as a beginner of newspaper work. Later Evelyn plied her with countless questions regarding the stage, its advantages and disadvantages. The throb of anxiety in her voice was stronger than her elaborate pretense of indifference. Figuratively, Kathleen pricked up her ears. It was only when they had exhausted the subjects of the working girl and the stage that she launched at Evelyn the seemingly innocent question, "Where are you going to stay in New ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... this, a moment's serious thought will show that, had he surrounded them with those elegancies which elaborate architecture and the other fine arts furnish, he might have been even more severely criticised. He would have been spending the gifts of the poor who often sorely denied themselves for the sake of these orphans, to purchase embellishments or secure decorations which, if they had adorned ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... of the obscurer branches of that grotesque family, amidst their changeful fortunes, during a period of two thousand years! Nor is this all; princes have ranked them among the Rosciuses; and Harlequins and Scaramouches have been ennobled. Even Harlequins themselves have written elaborate treatises on the almost insurmountable difficulties of their art. I despair to convey the sympathy they have inspired me with to my reader; but every Tramontane genius must be informed, that of what he has never seen he must rest content ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... elaborate: he describes her in his 'Recollections' as a splendid brune, eclipsing all the blondes coming near her: and 'what is more, the beautiful creature can talk.' He wondered, for she was young, new to society. Subsequently he is rather ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... while the wind threatened to stave the weather ones in by its actual solid weight. It was now blowing a furious cyclone, the force of which has never been accurately gauged (even by the present elaborate instruments of various kinds in use). That force is, however, not to be imagined by any one who has not witnessed it, except that one notable instance is on record by which mathematicians may get ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... house of this great law luminary, whose acquaintance he had made through Mr. Low, and he had thought a great deal of the occasion. Mrs. Freemantle had sent him the invitation nearly a fortnight ago, and he understood there was to be an elaborate dinner party. He did not know it for a fact, but he was in hopes of meeting the expiring Lord Chancellor. He considered it to be his duty never to throw away such a chance. He would in all respects ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... the late Jahveh arranged carbon, nitrogen, sulphur, hydrogen, oxygen and phosphorus in the sublime form of the human carcass. He, too, has his jokes. He knows the arch effect of a strange touch; his elaborate pedantries correspond almost exactly to the hook noses, cock eyes, outstanding ears and undulating Adam's apples which give so sinister and Rabelaisian a touch to the human scene. But in the main he sticks to more seemly materials and designs. His achievement, in fact, consists precisely ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... are not worth having," answered Muscari. "You cannot make Italians really progressive; they are too intelligent. Men who see the short cut to good living will never go by the new elaborate roads." ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... provided shells or skins or skeletons suitable for handing over to museums. Huxley occupied himself incessantly with dissecting tools and with the microscope, with results to be described in a later chapter. The better equipped expeditions of modern times were provided with elaborate appliances for bringing up samples of living creatures from all depths of the floor of the ocean, and with complicated towing nets for securing the floating creatures of the surface of the seas. The Rattlesnake naturalists had to content themselves with simple apparatus devised by ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... suggests at once the history which attaches to her. Rachel Trouve is equally suggestive. That we have not more names of this sort is due to the fact that we insist upon the most minute, elaborate and careful investigation of every case; and it is, I think, to the credit of our institutions that not more than four or five small infants have been admitted from the first without our having been able to trace each child home to its parentage, and to fill our records with incidents ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... and they adjourned to an hotel close by, where the "snack" developed into a very elaborate luncheon; and when they slipped out again a brougham, which Eden had meanwhile ordered, was waiting at ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... very minute and elaborate paper by Arago, to say nothing of the summary in 'Silliman's Journal,' with the detailed statement just published by Lieutenant Maury, it will not be supposed, of course, that in offering a few hurried remarks in reference to Von ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Strange beasts, entrapped in the swamps and forests, passed through the capital on their journey to Cairo and Europe. Complex and imposing reports of revenue and expenditure were annually compiled. An elaborate and dignified correspondence was maintained between Egypt and its great dependency. The casual observer, astonished at the unusual capacity for government displayed by an Oriental people, was tempted to accept the famous assertion which Nubar Pasha put into the mouth ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... something the boys had often done. They carried blankets and tarpaulins on their saddles, ready for this emergency, and they "packed" sufficient rations for several substantial, if not elaborate, meals. They had a coffee pot, a frying pan, bacon and prepared flour, and flapjacks were within their range of ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... duty for a tower. With its creeper-covered dormer windows and a somewhat convivial-looking chimney-pot sticking up out of one of them on the south side, it looks more picturesque than ecclesiastical; but the beauty of the vane itself at once arrests attention. I think it is one of the most elaborate specimens of wrought ironwork, applied to such a purpose, that I have met with; against a sunny sky it is like so much beautiful filigree—the metal wind-plate is apparently a much later restoration, and is perforated with the letters "W. M." and the date 1868. From the vane ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... on the immense stage. The entire personnel of the house seemed to be present: a crowd apparently consisting of thousands of people, and which really did comprise some hundreds. Never before had I had such a clear conception of the elaborate human machinery necessary to the production of even a comparatively simple lyric work like "Lohengrin." Richly clad pages and maids of honor, all white and gold and rouge, mingled with shirt-sleeved ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... Yu tells us that in ancient times it was customary for a temple to be set apart for the use of a general who was about to take the field, in order that he might there elaborate his plan of campaign.] ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... Spiders'-webs in plenty were there, and one in particular just before him was in full use as a snare, stretching across the arch of the window, with radiating threads as its ribs. Somerset had plenty of time, and he counted their number—fifteen. He remained so silent that the owner of this elaborate structure soon forgot the disturbance which had resulted in the breaking of his diagonal ties, and crept out from the corner to mend them. In watching the process, Somerset noticed that on the stonework behind the web sundry names ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... for a brief space, after my somewhat elaborate exposition of these self-evident analogies. Presently A PERSON turned towards me—I do not choose to designate the individual—and said that he rather expected my pieces had given pretty good "sahtisfahction."—I had, up to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... wall and studied the effect at various and more or less unsatisfactory angles. Again he knelt—after depositing the hat on the bed—and emerged with a pair of gorgeous leather chaps that glittered with the polished silver of conchas from waist-band to heel. Next he drew on a pair of elaborate gauntlets embellished with hand-worked silk roses of crimson. Then he glanced at his boots. They were undoubtedly serviceable, but more or less muddy and stained. That wouldn't do at all! Striding to the kitchen he poked about ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... the general entrance, Poet's Corner. I hardly stopped to look at the elaborate exterior of Henry VIIth's Chapel, but passed on to the door. On entering, the first thing that met my eyes were the words, "OH RARE BEN JONSON," under his bust. Near by stood the monuments of Spenser and Gay, and a few paces further looked down the sublime countenance ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... composition of that guily, elaborate, shameful letter was the last prominent act of Seneca's ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... day, most famous temples—amongst others that of Jaganath at Puri—were founded during that period. The custom, in itself very ancient, of religious pilgrimages to celebrated shrines and to the banks and sources of specially sacred rivers, was consecrated in elaborate manuals which became text-books of ritual as well as of religious geography. Much of what might be regarded as the degeneration of Hinduism from its earlier and more spiritual forms into gross idolatry and licentiousness, may well have been in itself ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... have only to read what Lord Bacon himself has said upon the true ends of knowledge, to comprehend at once how angry the poor great man, whom Mr. Dale treats so harshly, would have been with those who have stinted his elaborate distinctions and provident cautions, into that, coxcombical little aphorism, and then misconstrued all he designed to prove in favor of the commandant, and authority of learning. For," added the sage, looking up as a man does when he is tasking his memory, "I think ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... it has all the comforts anyone could reasonably require. As far as my taste can discover, it's artistic and even unusual. The dinner my cook sends up every night is as good, or better than any first-class hotel can serve, though it may not be quite so elaborate. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... incident which lately occurred in my presence will better illustrate what I wish to convey than any elaborate exposition could do. One day, a poor simple-hearted married couple, from the country, called on a medical friend of mine, to consult him about a complaint in the eyes of the husband, which seemed to threaten him with total blindness. The wife entered at great length into ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... at the head of the Government with a Bramin for chief Counsellor. Elaborate rules and regulations are laid down in the code as to administration, taxation, foreign policy, and war. Land perhaps but not certainly was generally held in common ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... the Marquise devoted her energies to two things, and these she kept ever before her,—the pleasing of her royal master, and the furthering of her party's interests. How well she succeeded, this book shows. She entertained and amused the King by elaborate pageants, in the various chateaux which she built, or remodelled. Bellevue, Choisy, the Hermitage at Versailles, Menars, La Celle, Montretout,—these are among the monuments of her lavish career, and in these palaces she ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... essays as a (very big) set of program notes to accompany his second piano sonata. Here, he puts forth his elaborate theory of music and what it represents, and discusses Transcendental philosophy and its relation to music. The essays explain Ives' own philosophy of and understanding of music and art. They also serve as an analysis of music itself as an artform, and provide a critical ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... with alabaster hair came to take my order. I asked for jaco and bunlets, and carried the food to a wall shelf near the Dry-towners. Their dialect fell soft and familiar on my ears. One of them, without altering the expression on his face or the easy tone of his voice, began to make elaborate comments on my entrance, my appearance, my ancestry and probably personal habits, all defined in the colorfully obscene dialect ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... De Dion and Bouton Road Motor.—An elaborate description of this typical French motor operated ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... on a thin cotton mattress, which is unfolded and laid out over our white matting. Chrysantheme's pillow is a little wooden block, cut so as to fit exactly the nape of her neck, without disturbing the elaborate head-dress, which must never be taken down; the pretty black hair I shall probably never see undone. My pillow, a Chinese model, is a kind of little square ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... and my clothes torn, but there was no other way. I must begin where the colt (or boy) is, as the book on pedagogy says. I wanted to stay on the hill where everything was agreeable, but that wouldn't get the colt. Now, if Mr. Charles H. Judd cares to elaborate this outline, I urge no objection and shall not claim the protection of copyright. I shall be only too glad to have him make clear to all of us the pedagogical recipe for catching colts ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... attentive audience he drew a loud and elaborate plan of a very brilliant campaign. When he had finished, the blue-clothed men scattered into small arguing groups between the rows of squat brown huts. A negro teamster who had been dancing upon a cracker ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... romance of character, and all the enthusiasm of life; hating dignity, having no sympathies with goodness, insensible to the very existence of honor as a spring of human conduct; treating patriotism and disinterestedness with an elaborate sneer, and receiving the suggestions of duty with a horse-laugh. There is a difference not easily to be mistaken between the lessening of men which is occasioned by the loftiness of the platform whence the observation is made, and that which is produced by the malignant ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... courts of Europe were comparatively poor and mean, while the palaces of the oriental monarchs powerfully affected the imagination of the traveller. At a time too when the manners of the European nobility exhibited little refinement, the dignified courtesy and elaborate ceremonies of Bagdad and Ispahan were not less imposing than the pomp and splendour of their garb and its decorations. The Eastern chivalry also was to the full as efficient as that of the West; for what it lacked in weight of metal, it gained in superior adroitness ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... age his beloved Bodleian was a mere infant. Here the volumes were written on palm leaves, then rubbed over with oil to toughen and preserve them; the edges were richly gilt and fastened together by drilling a hole at one end, through which a cord was passed, then they were placed in elaborate lacquer boxes. There were countless numbers of such books, devout and mystic, all inscribed in Pali; they included the "Three Baskets of the Law," also the Laws of Manu, which dated from the fifth century before Christ. Professional scribes were kept constantly employed in ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... elastic curve, reinforced concrete arches between settling abutments are designed with fixed ends. The theorist has departed about as far as possible from his premise in this case. On an exceedingly slender thread he has hung an elaborate and important theory of design, with assumptions which can never be realized outside of the schoolroom or the designer's office. The most serious feature of such theories is not merely the approximate and erroneous ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... Journey that way, take an Abstract of their most admirable Tracts in Navigation, and the Mysteries of Chinese Mathematicks; which out-do all Modern Invention at that Rate, that 'tis Inconceivable: In this Elaborate Work I must run thro' the 365 Volumes of Augro-machi-lanquaro-zi, the most ancient Mathematician in all China: From thence I shall give a Description of a Fleet of Ships of 100000 Sail, built at the Expence of the Emperor Tangro the 15th; who having Notice of the ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... individual traits. Not once in the years I followed him, did he show any desire for others of his kind. He preferred being alone. His play consisted chiefly of elaborate stalkings of easily captured animals. If his hunger was appeased for a time he would turn to hunting grasshoppers. Marking the spot where one had alighted he would steal forward and pounce upon it as though ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... not quote Hare's elaborate methods for determining these various points because they do not belong to a paper of this character, but I quote his admirable advice because it emphasizes what I believe to be an essential in the treatment of chronic glaucoma, exclusive of operative work, that is, the intelligent ...
— Glaucoma - A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago - Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 • Various
... day of the two concerts I was detailed with a troop of young men, relatives of the patrons, to conduct the people to their seats, and an elaborate plan of the large Assembly Room was given me, with minute particulars of the lettered rows and numbered seats, presenting the appearance, somewhat, of a labyrinth. I was studying it at the doors, and arranging with the young stewards ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... congenital deaf-mutism, habitual pauperism, and the like. Now there can be no doubt that criminality in some of its forms is related to these functional forms of degeneracy. Even ordinary people have noticed its similarity to insanity, while Lombroso has traced an elaborate parallel between criminality and epilepsy. Without accepting extreme views, it may be claimed that criminality is, in some cases, a form of biological degeneracy for the ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... in me to excuse the boast, I flung myself upon the instrument in the corner and hurled it to the ground with all my might. I was myself sent spinning into the opposite corner at the same instant. But the instrument happened to be a standard of the more elaborate pattern, and I flattered myself that I had put the delicate engine out of action for ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... elaborate. After the oysters, came a fish nearly three feet long all done up in sea-weed, then a big silver bowl was brought in covered with pie-crust. When the carver broke the crust there was a flutter of wings, and "four and twenty black birds" flew out. This it seems was done by the Japanese ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... we drift along the Nova Scotia coast, lying low and blue on our northern board. The Fourth dawns rather foggy, but it soon yields to the sun's rays and a good breeze which bowls us along toward the Cape. An elaborate celebration of the day is planned, but only the poem is finally rendered, due probably to increased sea which the brisk breeze raises incapacitating several of the actors for their assigned parts. The poem, by the late ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... donnes . . . per les judges, et sages de la ley," 11 vols. The "Scholastic History of the Canon of the Holy Scripture" (London, 1684) is the only volume of the works of John Cosin, Bishop of Durham, who was born at Norwich in 1594. In the preparation of this, his most elaborate and important work, he injured his eyesight. Thornhagh Gurdon, a receiver-general for Norfolk, who is included in Mr. Walter Rye's "Norfolk Families," and who resided mostly at Norwich, presented a copy of the first edition of his "History of the High Court of Parliament" (London, ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... separation; it preserves one's presence in absence. It cannot be too simple, too commonplace, too colloquial. Its familiarity is not its weakness, but its supreme virtue. If it attempts to be orderly and stately and elaborate, it may be a good essay, but it will certainly be a ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... "after one or two elections proportional representation ought to work as easily as the ballot. When the county electors got the extended franchise we had some difficulty with the ballot, but now it is simple, and proportional representation would be much the same." Speaking of the elaborate precautions taken in the organization of elections he expressed the opinion that the voters were more to be trusted than our machinery trusts them. It is difficult in the face of such evidence to understand on what grounds ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... a heavy object hoisted to the belfry, wrapped in a dark sack or cloak—a procedure sometimes had in the case of an elaborate piece of sculpture, or statue, which, being intended to grace the front of a new edifice, the architect does not desire exposed to critical eyes, till set up, finished, in its appointed place. Such was the impression now. But, as ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... well expressed in 1946 by George S. Pettee, a noted author on national security. He wrote in The Future of American Secret Intelligence (Infantry Journal Press, 1946, page 46) that world leadership in peace requires even more elaborate intelligence than in war. "The conduct of peace involves all countries, all human activities - not just the enemy ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... who served the meals, and as Dora could not starve, she was compelled to eat what was set before her, the fare being anything but elaborate. ...
— The Rover Boys on the Ocean • Arthur M. Winfield
... and he imagined that the memory of the sights and sounds he had grown to love would soothe his dying moments. He left Canada for service in India, like Dufferin and Lansdowne, and never returned. His grave is at Dhurmsala {160} under the shadow of the Himalayas. It is marked by an elaborate monument surmounted by the universal symbol of the Christian faith; but a nobler and more lasting memorial is the stable government he gave to 'that ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... An elaborate criticism of Hammer-Purgstall's arguments was made in the Journal des Savans, March and April 1819, by M. Raynouard, a well-known defender of the Templars. (See also Hallam, Middle Ages, c. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... the shores of the Caribbean Sea, a less elaborate commerce called "sloop-trade," for it was usually managed by sloops which hovered near some secluded spot on the coast, often at the mouth of a river, and informed the inhabitants of their presence in the neighbourhood by firing a shot from a cannon. Sometimes ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... a small apartment, and on a raised place in the corner of this was the Time Machine. I had the small levers in my pocket. So here, after all my elaborate preparations for the siege of the White Sphinx, was a meek surrender. I threw my iron bar away, almost sorry not to ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... a decent appearance when the carpenter and mason have departed, though done as much for the passer-by as the dweller within. The most tasteful front-yard fence was never an agreeable object of study to me; the most elaborate ornaments, acorn-tops, or what not, soon wearied and disgusted me. Bring your sills up to the very edge of the swamp, then, (though it may not be the best place for a dry cellar,) so that there be no access on that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... to suppose that the first domestication of any animal, except the elephant, implies a high civilisation among the people who established it. I cannot believe it to have been the result of a preconceived intention, followed by elaborate trials, to administer to the comfort of man. Neither can I think it arose from one successful effort made by an individual, who might thereby justly claim the title of benefactor to his race; but, on the contrary, that a vast number of half-unconscious attempts have ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... systematic model experiments, although of a rude kind in modern eyes, before entering on some of their ventures. About 1840 Mr. John Scott Russell carried on, on behalf of the British Association, of which he was at that time one of its most distinguished members, an elaborate series of investigations into the form of least resistance in vessels. For this purpose he leased the Virginia House and grounds, a former residence of Rodger Stewart, a famous Greenock shipowner of the early part of the century, the house being used as offices, while in the grounds ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... strongest—John Bellini, Titian, Velasquez, Tintoret, Mantegna, Sandro Botticelli, Carpaccio and Turner—have ever painted a fragment of good landscape. In missal painting exquisite figure-drawing is frequent, and landscape backgrounds in late works are elaborate; but I only know thoroughly good landscape in one book; and I have ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... detail the senses and the nervous system. We may, further, endeavor to render our knowledge of mental phenomena more full and accurate by experimentation. In doing this we may be compelled to make use of elaborate apparatus. Of such mechanical aids to investigation ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... The Army had made elaborate plans for what they called "Operation Sinker." Even as the general spoke the publicity mills ground into high gear. From coast to coast the citizens absorbed the news with ...
— Navy Day • Harry Harrison
... bound in red and gold, could be found, but the owner was sure to belong to the school of Liszt or Wagner. "How could the poetic work of an opera-composer bear serious consideration in contrast with the elaborate literary productions of professional poets?" Wagner says with justice. He felt himself rejected everywhere, and just ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... large an interest for old and young, soldiers and statesmen, the world of society and the recluse, alike. You can hardly read any novel of Scott's and not become better aware what public life and political issues mean. And yet there is no artificiality, no elaborate attitudinizing before the antique mirrors of the past, like Bulwer's, no dressing out of clothes-horses like G. P. R. James. The boldness and freshness of the present are carried back into the past, and you see Papists and Puritans, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... acarus or mite amidst a solution of silica submitted to the electric current. The insects produced by the action of a galvanic battery continued for eleven months are represented as minute and semi-transparent, and furnished with long bristles. One of the creatures resulting from this elaborate term of gestation was observed in the very act of emerging, in its first-born nudity, and sought concealment in a corner of the apparatus. Some of them were observed to go back into the parent fluid and occasionally they devoured each other; and soon after they were called to life, they ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... only by the hanging folds of a rich crimson silk curtain, and exquisitely fitted with white enamelled furniture ornamented with hand-wrought silver. The bed had no resemblance whatever to a ship's berth, but was an elaborate full-sized affair, canopied in white silk embroidered with roses; the carpet was of a thick softness into which my feet sank as though it were moss, and a tall silver and crystal vase, full of gorgeous roses, was placed at ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... box. There was a tittering in the grand stand; another roar from the bleachers. Clammer's face turned as red as his hair. Gilbat shoved the baby carriage upon the plate, spread wide his long arms, made a short presentation speech and an elaborate bow, then backed away. ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... I think the same, otherwise I should suspect the above difference to point to a marked one in the nature of the fluid derived from the stock: thus leafless plants might be supposed to induce no particular change in the fluid they imbibe, while the others might be supposed to elaborate their own from that of ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... n. (alt. 'regex' or 'reg-ex') 1. Common written and spoken abbreviation for 'regular expression', one of the wildcard patterns used, e.g., by UNIX utilities such as 'grep(1)', 'sed(1)', and 'awk(1)'. These use conventions similar to but more elaborate than those described under {glob}. For purposes of this lexicon, it is sufficient to note that regexps also allow complemented character sets using '^'; thus, one can specify 'any non-alphabetic character' with '[^A-Za-z]'. 2. Name of a well-known PD regexp-handling ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... in the minutest line would at once cause detection; secondly, that the original plates may be formed by the united labours of several artists most eminent in their respective departments; for as only one original of each design is necessary, the expense, even of the most elaborate engraving, will be trifling, compared with the multitude of copies ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... here that all Bontoc agricultural labors, from the building of the sementera to the storing of the gathered harvest, are accompanied by religious ceremonials. They are often elaborate, and some occupy a week's time. These ceremonials are left out of this chapter to avoid detail; they appear in the ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... want of aprons there in that crowd? And she no need to had six new complete suits of under-clothes made, all trimmed off elaborate with tattin' and home-made edgin' before she went. And it wuzn't neccessary for her to knit two pairs of open-work ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... mixed with tribes. As a result, new relations and new industries, especially of trade, were established, and the new associations of tribe with tribe and of the Indians with Europeans led very often to the development of quite elaborate jargon languages. All of these have a tendency to complicate the study of the Indian ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... these people were cleared out by the events of 1867, and the few beautiful fragments of the palace which have retained anything of their original magnificence are now clean and in good order. The elaborate decorations of the Diwan-i-Khas have been partially restored, and the interior of this building is still ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... of Latin and Greek verses, outlines for essays, and hasty jottings of University and Temple lectures—memorials of Holroyd's undergraduate and law-student days. Then came notes scribbled down in court with a blunt corroded quill on borrowed scraps of paper, and elaborate analyses of leading cases and Acts of Parliament, which belonged to the period of zeal which had followed his call to ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... was of Chonae in Phrygia, (the old Colossae of St. Paul:) he raised himself to the honors of senator, judge of the veil, and great logothete; beheld the fall of the empire, retired to Nice, and composed an elaborate history from the death of Alexius Comnenus to the reign ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... girl stealing an opened love-letter from a fair one dozing on a sofa, and a third advancing on tiptoe from the door of the room, is highly creditable to Mr. Smirke, the painter, and A.W. Warren, the engraver. Among the more elaborate plates is an exquisite creation of Howard's pencil, the Infant Bacchus engraved by J.C. Edwards; and last, though not least in effect, is Trionto, a mountain wild and chaos of storm, from a drawing by Martin; but the engraving hardly approaches ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 399, Supplementary Number • Various
... had fashioned an elaborate tea-cosy with a letter "M" in outline stitch, and a pretty frilled pincushion marked with a "J," for her two aunts, so that taken all together the day would have been an unequivocal success had nothing else happened; ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was scattered over ten blazing acres of sand just south of the Rio Grande. It was an older city than San Felipe, and its buildings were more elaborate. ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... of the hiding-place of the Diamond, he found that they had no bearing upon it whatever; that for anything seen or heard by him the world might hold no such precious gem, and the Russian's letter to Signor Lampini might be nothing more than an elaborate hoax. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... became familiar with the literary forms and fashions of the Renascence. These he imitated in German, writing odes, songs (for the reader), anacreontics, sonnets, epigrams, elegies in alexandrine verse, and occasional poems of elaborate metrical structure. For the most part his substance is very thin, consisting in extravagant and affected praise, with much infusion of Roman mythology, of the high-born personages by whose favor he prospered or hoped to prosper. The text of the selections follows Goedeke's edition in Deutsche ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... High School, class feeling was strong. There were Greek letter societies in the fourth grade, reflecting the influence of the college on the lake shore. Among the well-to-do girls, and also among those who could less well afford it, there was much elaborate dressing. Dancing parties were weekly occurrences. They were attended by first year girls of fourteen and fifteen as well as by the older girls, each lass with an attendant lad, who called for her ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... pivot so that it could be swung around with the sun; and the movable roof was opened so that the accentuating sunlight could stream in upon the actor whose gesticulations were being caught by the camera. These beginnings and crudities are very remote from the elaborate and expensive paraphernalia and machinery with which the art ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... carefully for some time, and was so struck with the ingenuity displayed in their construction that he took the lad and apprenticed him to a clock-maker in Leicester, where he became one of the cleverest workmen in the kingdom, the most elaborate and curious piece of mechanism he made being ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... enacted the "Donkey's Skin," very much amplified and more elaborate, had now a permanent place in my aunt Claire's room. Little Jeanne, more interested in it since the additions to the scenery and the text, came over oftener; she painted backgrounds under my direction, and the moments I enjoyed most were ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... tea; moreover he had, as a kind of miracle performed to dazzle her, actually arisen early on the Tuesday morning and done his arithmetic. To express her satisfaction she had manufactured a specially elaborate straw- frame for the sketch after Sir Edwin Landseer, and had hung it in her bedroom: an honour which Cyril appreciated. She was as happy as a woman suffering from a recent amputation can be; and compared ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... valuable notes in which the author elucidated the "many legal topics contained in the work, enabling the non-professional reader to understand more easily the somewhat complex and elaborate plot ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... ignored propriety and neglected the libretto. Instead of exercising original invention, instead of suiting melodies to words by appropriate combinations of sound and sense, the composers chose any musical themes that came to hand, and wrought them up into elaborate contrapuntal structures without regard for their book. The first words of a passage from the Creed, for instance, were briefly indicated at the outset of the number: what followed was but a reiteration of the same syllables, and divided in the most arbitrary manner to suit the complicated ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... allowed that elaborate harmony of colouring, a brilliancy of tints, a soft and gradual transition from one to another, present to the eye what an harmonious concert of music does to the ear, it must be remembered that painting is not merely a gratification of the sight. ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... reason why he took so much pains to compose his sermon for that Sunday. Without possessing any special claim to eloquence, he had always been earnest and painstaking, bestowing much labor on the construction and finish of his sentences, which were in consequence more elaborate than original. At times, when he took less pains and was simpler in style, he seldom failed to satisfy his hearers. His voice was pleasant and well modulated, and his delivery remarkably quiet and free from ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... walked on together, talking, and laughing, and joking away like anything; and when they got as far as Pentonville, Miss Ivins's friend's young man would have the ladies go into the Crown, to taste some shrub, which, after a great blushing and giggling, and hiding of faces in elaborate pocket-handkerchiefs, they consented to do. Having tasted it once, they were easily prevailed upon to taste it again; and they sat out in the garden tasting shrub, and looking at the Busses alternately, till ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Much had been recently said of the personal hostility which Francis entertained towards Hastings, and he commenced his speech by disclaiming such a feeling, and by asserting that his animosities were all of a public, and not of a private nature; after which he entered into an elaborate discussion of the charge, enumerating the different modes which Hastings had adopted of managing the revenues in question. Major Scott replied to Francis, and on this occasion Pitt defended the accused; but upon a division the motion was carried by seventy-one against fifty-five. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... in general terms. Pottgeiter nodded understandingly: assassination was a familiar feature of the medieval political landscape, too. Chalmers went on to elaborate. It was a relief to talk to somebody like Pottgeiter, who wasn't bothered by the present moment, but simply boycotted it. Eventually, the period-bell rang. Pottgeiter looked at his watch, as from conditioned reflex, and then rose, saying that he ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... fascinated by the courtly romances of Chretien de Troyes. Inspired partly by that writer, and partly by Ovid, it was the aim of Lorris to produce an Art of Love, brought up to date, and adapted to the tastes of his aristocratic audience, with all the elaborate paraphernalia of learned disquisition and formal gallantry which was then the mode. The poem, cast in the form of an intricate allegory, is of significance chiefly on account of its immense popularity, and for its being the fountain-head of a school of allegorical poetry which flourished for ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... observation: probably a just one. Laurence has been painting for me a Copy of Pickersgill's Portrait of Crabbe—but I am afraid has made some muddle of it, according to his wont. I asked for a Sketch: he will elaborate—and spoil. Instead of copying the Colours he sees and could simply match on his Palette, he will puzzle himself as to whether the Eyebrows were once sandy, though now gray; and wants to compare ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... Excursion," his religion is brought forward—prominently and conspicuously—in many elaborate dialogues between Priest, Pedlar, Poet, and Solitary. And a very high religion it often is; but is it Christianity? No—it is not. There are glimpses given of some of the Christian doctrines; just as if the various philosophical disquisitions, in which the Poem abounds, would be imperfect ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... to assume that Governor Hunter discountenanced their earliest efforts. It was presumably on the passage quoted above that the author of a chapter in the most elaborate modern naval history founded the assertion that "the plans of the young discoverers were discouraged by the authorities. They, however, had resolution and perseverance. All official help and countenance were withheld."* (* Sir Clements Markham in The Royal Navy, a History, 4 565.) ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... of the apartment stood a vast table covered with gigantic parchment-bound tomes and rolls of yellow manuscript. Behind this table was a huge, high-backed chair of elaborate antique workmanship resembling the throne of some Asiatic sovereign of the remote past. In this chair the physician seated himself after having installed his visitors each upon a ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... think that when that first of Christian converts, and first of Christian preachers went to his brother, all full of what he had discovered, his simple saying, 'We have found the Messias,' was a better sermon than a far more elaborate proclamation would have been? My brother! if you have found Him, you can say so; and if you can say so, and your character and your life confirm the words of your lips, you will have done more to spread His name than much eloquence and many an orator. All can preach who ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... cannot well be mistaken as to the space which it occupied in their own eyes. Sallust, the partizan of Marius and Caesar, who had so much reason to hate the senatorial party, speaks of Caesar and Cato as the two mighty opposites of his time, and in an elaborate parallel ascribes to Caesar the qualities which secure the success of the adventurer; to Cato those which make up the character of the patriot. It is a mistake to regard Cato the younger as merely an unseasonable repetition of Cato the elder. His inspiration ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... was, however, but a brief antepast of something more exhaustive to follow. In the same year in which he took his degree, we find him coming before the scientific world through the medium of the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, with a series of elaborate papers, entitled "The Development of the Vascular System in the Foetus in Vertebrated Animals," a contribution which is admitted on all hands, we believe, to be perhaps the highest and safest authority on its intricate and recondite subject-matter that as yet exists. We are not ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... other reply than a polite acknowledgment. A commission, consisting of three officers of the Engineer Corps of the army, was sent by the War Department to visit Europe and the seat of war, and upon its return made an elaborate report; but at this critical period of naval progress, when sail was manifestly giving place to steam, when the early attempts at iron-clad batteries were being made, and the vast changes in armament that have since taken place were ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... about preparing a new and elaborate edition of Vaughan, which, only just before his death, he was endeavouring to find means to publish. After his death the two manuscripts passed by purchase to Mr. Charles Higham, the well-known bookseller of Farringdon Street, who in turn sold them to Mr. Dobell. Later, when ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... prevails with regard to the motives of the early colonists to leave their homes. Without entering into an elaborate discussion of the subject, and thereby invading the province of the historian, it may perhaps be permitted me to say, that, in my judgment, they were partly political, partly religious, partly ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... from the armatures. A frame—also carriages—fitted with this brake, are shown by the Compagnie des Chemins de Fer de l'Est, which company also shows several other pieces of interesting apparatus, one of which is a carriage fitted with elaborate mechanism, in which electricity plays, perhaps, but a subsidiary part, to obtain the traction of the train under varying circumstances, the pressure on the buffers when stopping, and various phenomena ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... how far envy will carry some people. It was on this very passage that M. Hallier, before he became one of our friends, quizzed Father Bauny, saying of him ‘Ecce qui tollit peccata mundi—Behold the man who taketh away the sins of the world.’” {147} Then after an elaborate description of all that goes to ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... of hemp, frequently fringed with cotton yarn of many colors and suspended from the back by strings passing over the shoulders and under the arms, constitutes the man's receptacle for his chewing paraphernalia. It may be more or less elaborate in beadwork and embroidery, but as a rule there is no ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... be dangerous; but if it be concealed by the appearance of candour, which men of great abilities best know how to assume, it endangers our judgment sometimes, and sometimes our morals. If her grace the Duchess of Newcastle, instead of penning her lord's elaborate eulogium, had undertaken to write the life of Savage, we should not have been in any danger of mistaking an idle, ungrateful libertine, for a man of genius and virtue. The talents of a biographer are often fatal to his reader. For these reasons the public often judiciously countenance ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... elaborate on the extraordinary statement you have just made," he invited, as though every word had sharp corners that were ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... incapable of moulding circumstance to their own intrinsic design, and of mastering their own destiny. Borrowing our ideal of life from a dark period of our degeneracy, we have covered up our sensitiveness of soul under the immovable weight of a remote past. We have set up an elaborate ceremonial of cage-worship, and plucked all the feathers from the wings of the living spirit of our people. And for us,—with our centuries of degradation and insult, with the amorphousness of our national unity, with our helplessness before the attack of disasters from without ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... a piece of my friend's private life at Epsom. Nothing could have been farther removed from misery. A light-hearted gaiety reigned in his face and ruled his every gesture. His companions seemed to bow to him, as to their leading humorist and mirth-maker. I was stimulated by the collapse of my elaborate illusion to make inquiries about him. I found that he had been born almost on the stage, and had taken part in stage-life from his earliest years. He never had any ambition: so long as he could be on the stage, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... the first words of antagonism. To fling elaborate sarcasms at Tess, however, was much like flinging them at a dog or cat. The charms of their subtlety passed by her unappreciated, and she only received them as inimical sounds which meant that anger ruled. She remained mute, ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... tones of two musical instruments by aid of their overtones, but elaborate experiments were required to prove this, since ordinarily we do not distinguish the overtones, and could simply say that the instruments sounded differently, and let it ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... persons are more confident: they argue that Napoleon's system did not disappear after Waterloo, nor Wesley's system with the death of its founder, and that the Roman Catholic Church is as strong as ever, though Pope after Pope disappears. That is true, but for the very reason that these systems were elaborate organisations, based on the facts of life. The Code Napoleon and the Methodist Connexion were much too well adapted to human needs to disappear with their authors. On the other hand, movements and systems which depend wholly upon one ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... could not be carried on during the turmoil of the time; William, Earl of Bedford, filled his leisure in the framing of an elaborate bill of costs. It was dated 20 May, 1646, and showed the sums which he had spent and which had been wasted in the failure to reclaim the Fens. He stated them at over L90,000, and to this he added, like a good business man, interest at the rate of 8 per ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... nimble grooms; young girls, extravagantly veiled, made room in comfortable touring-cars for feminine guests whose extravagant veils were yet to be unpacked; slim young men in leather trappings, caps adorned with elaborate masks or goggles, manipulated rakish steering-gears; preoccupied machinists were fussing with valve and radiator or were cranking up; and, through the jolly tumult, the melancholy bell of the locomotive sounded, and the long train ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... unnoticed. He now came reeling forward among the scholars, familiarly slapping first one and then another on the shoulder, saying "Nice ('ic) nice old boy!" and smiling a smile of elaborate content. Arrived at a good position for speaking, he put his left arm akimbo with his knuckles planted in his hip just under the edge of his cut-away coat, bent his right leg, placing his toe on the ground and resting his heel with easy grace ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of the forbidden tree of Paradise, and the lust for which inevitably thrusts us against the bars of the material life in which we are consigned; but to give up one's time to writing and reading elaborate theories of a past and future which we may conceive to exist, but of the existence of which it is impossible we should achieve any proof, much less any detailed knowledge, appears to me an unprofitable and unsatisfactory misuse ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... of wearing a nice, blue broadcloth blouse which I had brought from home, which had two rows of brass buttons on it. I had paid about twenty dollars of my bounty for the blouse, and had found that the private soldiers did not wear such elaborate uniforms in active duty, so I kept it in the chaplain's tent. I thought if I was killed and my body was sent home, the blouse would come handy. The chaplain wore it occasionally, and he said any time I wanted to wear any of his clothes ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... Anglo-Saxon race occupying the sites of the Indian wigwams. It is a field in which plumed sachems, farmers, legislators, statesmen, speculators, professional and scientific men, and missionaries of the gospel, figure in their respective capacities. Nobody seems to have set down to compose an elaborate letter, and yet the result of the whole, viewed by the philosophic eye, is ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... not exist among the primitive Japanese, nor any notion of metempsychosis. The Buddhist doctrine of rebirth—a late borrowing—was totally inconsistent with the archaic Japanese beliefs, and required an elaborate metaphysical system to support it. But we may suppose the early ideas of the Japanese about the dead to have been much [56] like those of the Greeks of the pre-Homeric era. There was an underground world to which spirits descended; ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... leaned up against it, watched by a youthful volunteer in blue coat and red cap. Near at hand sat the commanding officer, whose flat face was surmounted by an immense white plume, and whose person was adorned by an enormous white scarf, and a sword with elaborate hilt. This dignitary was considerably excited when he beheld the strangers; he clapped his hat more firmly on his head, stroked his unkempt beard, and began to give audience. After a few preliminary remarks, the travelers told him that they had weighty business to ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... been. But no entry in any flower parade that Santa Paloma had ever known, was as much discussed as this one. Indeed, it began a new era; but that was later on. When Mrs. Burgoyne's plain white frock appeared among the elaborate gowns worn at the club luncheon that afternoon, she was quite overwhelmed by congratulations. She went away very early, to superintend the children's luncheon at the Hall, and then Mrs. White had a chance to tell the distinguished guests who she was, and that she could well afford ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... fatally as a material mistake in stating the uses or setting out the remainders would, two hundred years ago, have vitiated an English deed. Indeed, the mischiefs of the archaic ceremonial are even thus only half stated. So long as elaborate conveyances, written or acted, are required for the alienation of land alone, the chances of mistake are not considerable in the transfer of a description of property which is seldom got rid of with much precipitation. But the higher class of property in the ancient ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine |
