"Gaudy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... loaded the white men's boats with provisions. In ten days the wan, gaunt {199} sailors were so sleek and fat that even the generous entertainers had to laugh at the transformation. Old King Terreeoboo came clothed in a cloak of gaudy feathers with spears and daggers at his belt and a train of priestly retainers at his heels to pay a visit of state to Cook; and a guard of mariners was drawn up at arms under the cocoanut grove to receive the visitor with ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... spring is seen; Golden yellow, gaudy blue, Daintily invite the view: Everywhere on every green Roses blushing as they blow, And enticing men to pull, Lilies whiter than the snow, Woodbines of sweet honey full: All love's emblems, and all cry, 'Ladies, if not pluck'd, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... home they built, the growing things they preserved, the way they planted, the life they led, all go to prove exactly that thing. Their bush—and vine-covered fences crept around the acres they owned in a strip of gaudy colour; their orchard lay in a valley, a square of apple trees in the centre widely bordered by peach, so that it appeared at bloom time like a great pink-bordered white blanket on the face of earth. ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the flow'rets rise, And boast their gaudy pride, While here beneath the northern skies ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... can get provisionally your interest, and when times mend your principal. Perhaps it will not be half so well with your wives estate, for she it may be in her maiden estate, hath spent and run out more in gaudy apparel, to intice a Lover, then the interest of her estate could bear, insomuch that the principal is diminished, or the revenues thereof received and consumed long ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... steep, paved with rough cobblestone. The fronts of the buildings had been changed to conform with the Chinese idea of architecture. Wide balconies and gratings and fretwork of iron painted in gaudy colors gave an Oriental touch. The fronts were a riot of color. The fronts of the joss houses and the restaurants were brightened with many colored lanterns, quaint carved gilded woodwork, potted plants and dwarf trees. Up and down these narrow streets every hour in the twenty-four ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... last rays of the sun stream in lengthwise, with coloring as rich as any painted window can furnish. Her choristers were the birds; her incense the sweet perfume which the grateful earth and her innocent children the flowers continually offer up to their Maker: instead of the gaudy chandelier, she gazed upon the full-orbed moon, hanging like a silver lamp from its dome of blue, and forcibly recalling the Divine Hand which placed it there. All nature had a voice and a meaning to her, and ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... took on the form of adoration. There was not a delicate, gaudy, winged creature of day that did not make so strong an appeal to my heart as to be almost painful. It seemed to me that the most exquisite thoughts of God for our pleasure were materialized in their beauty. My soul always craved colour, and more brilliancy could ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... graces married within two years of each other. Of course, they chose strangely. Matilda, whose beauty might have graced the head of the table in any one of three gaudy mansions on Nob Hill, chose Edward C. Tiffany, attorney, politician in a small but honorable way, man about town—and much older than she. Alice, following quietly, accepted Billy Gray, journalist—a clever reporter with no possibilities beyond that; a gentleman, it is true, and a man ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... lived ought not to stand forth meretriciously spangled and daubed, like a show-booth at a fair, for a bait; though the grandiloquent man of advertizing letters assured Sir Lukin that a public agape for the big and gaudy mouthful is in no milder way to be caught; as it is apparently the case. She withdrew the trumpeting placard. Retract we likewise 'banner of the metropolis.' That plush of speech haunts all efforts to swell and illuminate citizen ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... as black as soot, wrinkled and bald except for a fringe of white wool, cut decorously short, that ran over his ears and around his head. There was nothing of the stage "uncle" about him: his black suit nearly fitted him; his shoes shone, and his straw hat was banded with a gaudy ribbon. In his right hand he carried something carefully concealed ...
— Options • O. Henry
... racing against and beating the Royal William. This had the Lord Mayor and Aldermen on board, who had gone down to the extent of the city jurisdiction to meet the Queen, and have an excuse for a good dinner. The deck presented a gay scene, being covered with a military band, and the gaudy-liveried lackeys belonging to the Mansion House, and sheriffs whose clothes were one continuous mass of gold lace and frippery, shining beautifully brilliant in the midday sun. The royal yacht, with its crimson and gold pennant floating on the breeze, came towering up at a rapid pace, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... seen driving about Plymouth, laden inside and out with seamen and their sweethearts, decked out in costumes of the most gaudy colours and extravagant fashion. Suppers and dancing closed the day. There was no great variety, perhaps, in the style of their amusements. The great object seemed to be to get rid of their ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... enters into the work with intelligent zest, and when completed the whole array of blended colours is beyond the criticism of the tribe. The back of an Indian's war-bonnet and war-shirt is always more gaudy and sumptuous than the front view and this because when Indians pass each other their salutation is brief and formal. They ride right on. But after the meeting they turn in the saddle and look back to take an inventory. The wealth of the Indian, his position in the tribe, his ceremonial attainment ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... palace at Greenwich under the same roof with the queen, with reception rooms, and royal state, and a position openly acknowledged,[159] the gay court and courtiers forsaking the gloomy dignity of the actual wife for the gaudy splendour of her brilliant rival. Tamer blood than that which flowed in the veins of a princess of Castile would have boiled under these indignities; and we have little reason to be surprised if policy and prudence were ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... thy fate, Since title deck'd my higher birth, Yet envy not this gaudy state, Thine is the pride ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... glorious summer evening. "The western sky was all aflame" with the gorgeous hues of the sunset; the air was like amber mist, and the shrill-voiced Canadian birds, with their gaudy plumage, sang their vesper laudates high in the green gloom ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... sensation in its time and is still the best representative of the old-time gaudy red-and-yellow garden gladiolus, or corn flag. It was eagerly welcomed by breeders of the day, among others the accomplished French hybridizer, Mons. Souchet, of Fontainebleu, who really laid the foundation of the modern Gandavensis strain, the basis of all ...
— The Gladiolus - A Practical Treatise on the Culture of the Gladiolus (2nd Edition) • Matthew Crawford
... that?" Fay broke in loudly. "What's wrong with taking the pressure off little guys? Why shouldn't Tickler be a super-ego surrogate? Micro's Motivations chief noticed that positive feature straight off and scored it three pluses. Besides, it's nothing but a gaudy way of saying that Tickler backstops the memory. Seriously, Gussy, ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... his retainers and a string of pack-horses, would make his way over mountains and through forests to the banks of the Ohio, establish his head-quarters in some Indian town, and disperse his followers to traffic among the hamlets, hunting-camps and wigwams, exchanging blankets, gaudy colored cloth, trinketry, powder, shot, and rum, for valuable furs and peltry. In this way a lucrative trade with these western tribes was springing up and becoming monopolized ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... not, O best beloved of my soul, afflict you farther. Why should I thus sadden all your gaudy prospects? I have said enough to such a heart as yours, if Divine grace touches it. And if not, all I can say will be of no avail!—I will leave you therefore to that, and to your own reflections. And after giving you ten thousand thanks for your indulgent patience with me, I will only beg, that ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... corn, and as soon as they are done we make a feast, at which we dance the crane dance in which they join us, dressed in their most gaudy attire, and decorated with feathers. At this feast the young men select the women they wish to have for wives. He then informs his mother, who calls on the mother of the girl, when the necessary arrangements ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk
... suitable promenade for gayety, wealth and fashion to roam. Here beauty's feet may stray, arrayed in the most showy colors or the stateliest attire, without fear of encountering nasty crossings or of being splashed over and soiled by teams upon muddy streets. Ladies attired in gaudy ball-room dresses with long trails, would scarcely present a contrast in dress with the average promenaders. All dress equally well, on Sundays, and on week-days, so that Paris presents to the foreigner, the appearance of ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... other wives country schoolmasters, for that the present education which was given them, and their diligence in learning, fitted them for such an employment. And as for the women, whenever they saw them adorned with their mother's clothes, they threatened, that instead of their present gaudy apparel, they should be clothed in sackcloth, and confined so closely that they should not see the light of the sun. These stories were presently carried by Salome to the king, who was troubled to hear them, and endeavored to make up matters; but these suspicions afflicted him, and ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... it. He was more secure of his intellect in the matter of peaches than inner lights. Cowed and awed as he could have been by no body of men, he followed Bluhm up a dirty flight of stairs into the assemblage of Superior Women. The office was by nature a chamber with gaudy wall-paper of bouquets and wreaths. Viewed as an office, it was well enough, but in the aesthetic, light of a Holy Ground of Ideas it needed sweeping. The paper, too, hung in flaps from the damp walls: dusty files of newspapers, an empty bird-cage, old boots, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... pretty girl in a pretty frock is mighty handy to wait table." Again the wideflung hands of the proprietor of the Silver Moon Tavern embraced in their gesture the shiny tables, booths, chromium-trimmed chairs, and the gaudy juke box ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... satisfaction. Like the flame which welds the loosened particles into a solid mass, his words united those floating wisps of feeling which she had felt, but never believed, concerning her possible ability, and made them into a gaudy shred of hope. Like all human beings, she had a touch of vanity. She felt that she could do things if she only had a chance. How often had she looked at the well-dressed actresses on the stage and wondered ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... in the forest you see the bird called the small tiger-bird. Like some of our belles and dandies, it has a gaudy vest to veil an ill-shaped body. The throat, and part of the head, are a bright red; the breast and belly have black spots on a yellow ground; the wings are a dark green, black, and white; and the rump and tail black and green. Like the manikin, it ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... lined and faced with blue, and bedizened with broad gold lace, a green silk-knit waistcoat, embroidered with silver, and decorated with a deep fringe, together with a hat tricked out in the same gaudy style. His figure was slight, but well-built; and, in stature he did not exceed five feet four. His complexion was pale; and there was something sinister in the expression of his large black eyes. His head was small and bullet-shaped, and he did not wear a wig, but had his sleek black hair cut ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the stage doubled his fists like the Capuzzi below, and shouted in exactly the same furious way, and in the same high-pitched voice, "May all the spirits of hell sit at your heart, you abominable nonsensical Pasquale, you atrocious skinflint—you love-sick old fool—you gaudy tricked-out ass with the cap and bells dangling about your ears. Take care lest I snuff out the candle of your life, and so at length put an end to the infamous tricks which you try to foist upon the good, honest, modest ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... modest to make a noise: worth not only all me, but all —- , —-, & Co. put together. Three such little volumes have appeared, but just appeared; like Violets, I say: to be overlooked by the 'madding Crowd,' but I believe to smell sweet and blossom when all the gaudy Growths now in fashion are faded and gone. He ought to be ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... their heads, than dressed upon them; their gowns are of a very coarse light brown woollen cloth, made extremely short-waisted, and full of high and thick plaits over the hips, the sleeves are rather large, and turned up with some gaudy coloured silk; upon the shoulders are sewed several pieces of worsted livery lace, which seem to go quite under their arms, in the same manner as is sometimes put to children to strengthen their leading-strings; ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... special temperament; but she was extremely fond of spending her evenings at the penny theatres, or other cheap and decidedly low places of entertainment. There she would enjoy herself, looking on with eager interest at the coarse and gaudy representations of so-called "life." She would never laugh loudly, however, or applaud noisily, although she encouraged and smiled at those who did. She was very poor, but she was always neat in ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... this waste undulated and frothed amidst the countless cells of crumbling house walls, and broke along the foot of the city wall in a surf of bramble and holly and ivy and teazle and tall grasses. Here and there gaudy pleasure palaces towered amidst the puny remains of Victorian times, and cable ways slanted to them from the city. That winter day they seemed deserted. Deserted, too, were the artificial gardens among the ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... recall that, after I had been on a visit to Springfield and had beholden for the first time the marvels of Barnum's show, I made up my mind that when Royal and I were old enough we would unite our fortunes with those of a circus, and in my imagination I already pictured huge and gaudy posters announcing the blood-curdling performances of the dashing bareback equestrian, Samuel Cowles, upon his fiery Morgan steed, Royal! This plan was not at all approved of by Judge Phipps, who continued to insist that it was on the turf and not in the sawdust ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... wandering, this withdrawing of herself farther and farther into the lonely places! She longed for the noise of Babe's hearty, irrepressible voice with its smack of chewing, of her step coming up the stairs to that little bedroom under Hudson's gaudy roof. Could it be possible that she was homesick for Millings? For the bar with its lights and its visitors and its big-aproned guardian? Her lids were actually smarting with tears at the recollection of Carthy's big Irish face.... He had ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... The trees were tall, their cover dense; long, ropelike vines hung in festoons. It was very still. A colobus barked somewhere in the tops; the small green monkeys swung from limb to limb, or scampered along the rope vines, chattering. Silent, gaudy birds swooped across dusky spaces. The dripping of water reached the ear; the smell of dampness ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... pictures of the native life: wide-eyed, naked children, mingled with pigs; a youth asleep under a tree; an old gentleman spelling through glasses his Hawaiian Bible; the somewhat embarrassing spectacle of a lady at her bath in a spring; and the glimpse of gaudy-coloured gowns in the deep shade of the houses. Thence I found a road along the beach itself, wading in sand, opposed and buffeted by the whole weight of the Trade: on one hand, the glittering and sounding surf, and the bay lively with many sails; on the other, ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... elegant and spacious, though there is nothing gaudy or gay about it. Let us walk in. It is plainly furnished, though the articles are rich and tasteful. This is the sitting room. Who is that beautiful lady sitting at the piano-forte? Do you not recognize her, gentle reader? Of course you do. It is ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... glad to see that you like birds, sir," said Beckendorff to Vivian; for our hero, good-naturedly humouring the tastes of his host, was impartially dividing the luxuries of a peach among a crowd of gaudy and greedy little sparrows. "You shall see my favourites," continued Beckendorff; and tapping rather loudly on the table, he held out the forefinger of each hand. Two bullfinches recognised the signal, and immediately ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... elementary things remain much as they have always been before, and if they appear to have acquired new meaning it is simply because they have been moved into the foreground and are no longer masked by a gaudy superstructure. ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... not the original but a translation, and a translation, as you will presently see, far from faithful; he gives you not the scene, but the effect of the scene on his mind; and as Dickens started out to produce not a faithful picture, but a startling emotion, his scene is accordingly gaudy, theatrical, false. For observe, the wind is a respectable wind, and yet afflicted with pettiness of tyranny, and it wreaks vengeance; and this vengeance-wreaking wind does not come up flying, as you would expect of ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... in order also, to show the rich furniture of the room. All poets do not revel in such gaudy trappings as I do, but I cannot write well in a bare and ill-furnished room. In these apartments there is also a window which does not show in the engraving. I have tried over and over again to write a poem in a room that had no window ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... gallantry and grace, Until the last, Yasodhara, came near, Whose laugh was clearest of the merry crowd, Whose golden hair imprisoned sunlight seemed, Whose cheek, blending the lily with the rose, Spoke of more northern skies and Aryan blood, Whose rich, not gaudy, robes exquisite taste Had made to suit her so they seemed a part Of her sweet self; whose manner, simple, free, Not bold or shy, whose features—no one saw Her features, for her soul covered her face As with a veil of ever-moving life. When she came near, and her bright ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... line with their bodies winged their flight above the tree-tops. Pelicans displayed their ungainly forms, as they snapped at the passing fish and neatly laid them away for future reference in their pouches. Strange birds of gaudy plumage flew from side to side, harshly screaming as they hid themselves in the dense foliage. Huge alligators sunned themselves along the shore, or showed their savage muzzles, as they slowly swam across our path. Frequently at some sharp bend, it ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... his vast accumulations of knowledge perfectly fresh; and I notice in him that, instead of growing more staid and commonplace in his style as he increased in years, he grew more vigorous, until he actually slid into the excess of gaudy redundancy. I am sorry that his prose ever became Asiatic in its splendour; but even that fact shows how steadfast effort may prevent a man from writing away his originality and his freshness of manner. Observe the sad results of an antagonistic proceeding for even the mightiest ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... had an attraction for me, as it must have had for any tired and lonely man. But it was not merely the lure of sensuous pleasures that appealed to me, for I was also fascinated with the deeper and more tragic aspect of life beneath the gaudy surface of hectic joy. ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... a number of unpretentious Hindu temples, and the Maharaja is said to be quite punctilious in his observance of religious forms. He was absent from the city, but several brothers of his were seen driving, clad in long garments of gaudy-colored striped calico, and wearing small turbans; the dress of the women was also peculiar, the skirt being so full that as they walked they resembled balloons; they are noted for wearing a profusion of jewelry,—necklaces by the half-dozen, bracelets sometimes ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... With gaudy schemes that rouse my solemn dander I leave our frivolous youth to flirt; A riband round my straw—for choice, Leander; A subtle nuance in my shirt; For tie, the colours of my school— These are the limits of my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... poet of nature, the daisy seems perfectly intelligible. Scattered throughout the lowly places, with meekness it seems to shed beauty over its surroundings, and compensate for gaudy vesture by cheerful contentment. Wordsworth calls the daisy "the poet's darling," "a nun demure," "a little Cyclops," "an unassuming commonplace of nature," and sums up its excellences in a verse which may fitly conclude our attempt to pluck a ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... his disposal, and enabled the composer to gratify a harmless humour by sending invitations in his own name to each of the Sovereigns and grandees then in Vienna. Much personal homage, some substantial kindness from these gaudy creatures of the hour, made the period of the Congress a bright page in that wayward and afflicted life whose poverty has enriched mankind with ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... latest price of wheat, a somewhat astonishing attendance in the long room of the hotel at the railroad settlement one Saturday evening. A big stove in the midst of it diffused a stuffy and almost unnecessary heat, gaudy nickeled lamps an uncertain brilliancy, and the place was filled with the drifting smoke of indifferent tobacco. Oleographs, barbaric in color and drawing, hung about the roughly-boarded walls, and any critical stranger would have found ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... and unsatisfactory, and apparently unappreciative, but it is candid and just. Lodge, in his "Some Accepted Heroes," has done service in rubbing the gilding from Achilles, and showing that he was gaudy and cheap. We thought the image was gold, which was, in fact, thin gilt. Achilles sulks in his tent, while Greek armies are thrown back defeated from the Trojan gates. In nothing is he admirable save that, when his pouting fit is over and when he rushes ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... suddenly came out of the wood's shadow into the glare of the sunlight that shone on a great stretch of yellow sand, dotted with heaps of grey rocks where spiky cactus plants showed gaudy crimson and pink flowers among their shabby, sand-peppered leaves. Away to the right was something that looked like a grey-brown hedge, and from beyond it blue smoke went up to the bluer sky. And over all the sun shone till you could ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... poplar Shiver aloft in air their rustling leaves. Cool breaths the rising breeze, and with it wakes The worn out spirit from its state of stupor. The lazy boy springs from his mossy bed, To chace the gaudy tempting butterfly, Who spreading on the grass its mealy wings, Oft lights within his reach, e'en at his seer, Yet still eludes his grasp, and o'er his head Light hov'ring round, or mounted high in air Temps his ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... swing suspended by their tails or mock the public, who are kept at a distance by a rope fence. At last, from the main inclosure the procession emerges for the purpose of whetting and astonishing the curiosity of the public to a greater extent. The procession is headed by a gaudy band-wagon, drawn by six prancing horses with fine harness, and feathers on their heads. The riders on the saddles are in the costume of French postilions. On the other wagons come cages of lions, and in every cage is seated a lady with an olive branch in her hand. Then ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... sunlight they stood out pictorially. He guessed that they were from five to six thousand feet high. The lofty, irregular, castellated line seemed like the walls of a magic city. The cliffs fronting him were composed of gaudy rocks—vermilion, emerald, yellow, ulfire, and black. As he gazed at them, his heart began to beat like a slow, heavy drum, and he thrilled all over—indescribable hopes, aspirations, and emotions came over him. It was ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... think he never could recapture 15 The first fine careless rapture! And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower —Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! 20 ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... the ingathering of the harvest, a host of customs have been kept up from time immemorial, which have been duly noticed by Brand, while towards the close of the month we are reminded of St. Bartholomew's Day by the gaudy sunflower, which has been nicknamed St. Bartholomew's star, the term "star" having been often used "as an emblematical representation of brilliant virtues or any sign of admiration." It is, too, suggested by Archdeacon Hare that the filbert may owe its name to St. Philbert, ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... another it is different. The world is not his; he is the world's, and all his petty doings have its gaudy stencil blotched upon them. Yet haply even he has a heart, and somewhere in its fruitless fallows stands a poor ruin, that never was of much dignity at its best,—poor and broken, and half choked with weeds and briers; ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... purse. The necessity of spending the entire week's earnings is obvious, and to assist him in doing so seems to be the only visible means of support of half the people of the town. The dance-house and the gambling-saloon, flaunting their gaudy attractions, own him for the hour their king. His Midas touch is all-powerful. I must confess, with all my admiration for his character, that his tastes are low. I know that the civilization of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... a thing of cupolas and porticoes, faces the narrow street of the grain-sellers and the locksmiths. Here is the East, with its memories of Akbar and Shah Jehan, its fiery superstitions and its crudities of decoration. Gaudy chandeliers of coloured glass hang from the roof of a marble mosque, and though the marble may crack and no one give heed to it, the glass chandeliers will be carefully swathed in holland bags. Here is the East, but outside the city ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... padded with leather to exclude the cold and guarded by two 'proud young porters' in severe cocked hats and formidable batons, into a broad hall,—threw off our furred boots and cloaks, ascended a carpeted marble staircase, in every angle of which stood a statuesque footman in gaudy coat and unblemished unmentionables, and reached a broad landing upon the top thronged as usual with servants. Thence we passed through an antechamber into a long, high, brilliantly lighted, saffron-papered room, in which a dozen card-tables were arranged, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... A gaudy transparency in front of a cellar caught his eye, and invited him to come and enjoy the hospitalities of Madame X——'s Varieties. An inward voice bade him shun the place, but as he was only going for curiosity, he silenced the ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... has been described as a ruffian and villain of irredeemable depravity—desperate to the last degree. James P. Casey was a young man of bright, intelligent and rather prepossessing face, neat in his person, inclined to fine clothes, but not flashy or gaudy in his attire. He was of low stature, slender frame, lithe and compact, sinewy, nervous, and very agile. His eyes were blue and large, of bold expression. His voice was full and sonorous. He had served as Assistant ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... clearly conceived by another mind and built in a different spirit. It is from the two corner pavilions on the tower side, perhaps, that the best general views of the court can be obtained. Unfortunately the attractive view down the straight colonnades of the north extension of the court is marred by a gaudy band pavilion, which is quite out of keeping with the pervading mood of simple dignity. The little corner pavilions are worthy of study alone, as a graceful and unusual ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... marble-floored vestibule of the Metropolitan Grand Hotel in Buffalo, Professor Stillson Renmark stood and looked about him with the anxious manner of a person unused to the gaudy splendor of the modern American house of entertainment. The professor had paused halfway between the door and the marble counter, because he began to fear that he had arrived at an inopportune time, that something unusual was going on. The hurry ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... Whenever any of the men desired to get rid of their pay quickly they had only to walk a few hundred yards to Ploegsteert village, where, within a mile of the firing line, some hundreds of the inhabitants still remaining sold bad beer, tinned fruit, and gaudy postcards at Flemish rates, which are the highest in the world. When shelling was severe they locked up their houses and disappeared mysteriously for a day or two until a renewed lull enabled them to restart their profitable ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... much, I likewise shall observe a contrary conduct, and indulge you with a tete-a-tete frequently, my dear.—But I have fifty places to call at yet:—I am to wait on Miss Nancy Startup, Miss Biddy Dresswise, Miss Gaudy, Miss Titterwell, Mrs. Furbelow, Mrs. Neverhome, Mrs—et caetera, et caetera; which visits I mean to pay with all the formality and fashionable shortness in my power: from thence I shall proceed to Mademoiselle Mincit, the milliner; from ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... deluding Joys, ............The brood of Folly without father bred! How little you bested ............Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys! Dwell in some idle brain, ............And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, As thick and numberless ............As the gay motes that people the sun-beams, Or likest hovering dreams, ............The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train. But, hail! thou Goddess sage and holy! Hail, divinest Melancholy! Whose saintly visage is too bright To hit ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... place with the murderer of her father and her mother, who sought her love. Yet, strangely enough, her heart was filled not with tears, but with contempt and icy anger. She did not shrink away from him as he came towards her in his gaudy clothes, with an assumed air of insolent confidence, but sat pale and proud, as she had sat at Umgugundhlovu, when the Zulus brought their causes ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... said Durtal to himself, "that it is not like that of Notre Dame de Poitiers, where the interior is gaudy with childish colouring and raw tones; for there, instead of expressing regret and tranquillity, it rouses a suggestion of the childish glee of an old savage in his second childhood, who laughs when his tattoo marks are renewed, and his ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... wagon is all painted with gaudy signs," said Betty. "That's a boy driving that wagon. Why—why!" she exclaimed, as she caught sight of the lad, "it's the same boy who took home the little lost girl for us—the same one who told us about the man with the five hundred dollar bill. ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... grand images. An immense mountain covered with a shining green turf, is nothing, in this respect, to one dark and gloomy; the cloudy sky is more grand than the blue; and night more sublime and solemn than day. Therefore in historical painting, a gay or gaudy drapery can never have a happy effect: and in buildings, when the highest degree of the sublime is intended, the materials and ornaments ought neither to be white, nor green, nor yellow, nor blue, nor ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... though a little to a volunteer militia company of which I was a member; for a time a lieutenant, then in 1860 brigade-major on a militia brigadier's staff. We staff officers wore good clothes, much tinsel, gaudy crimson scarfs, golden epaulets, bright swords with glistening scabbards, rose horses in a gallop on parade occasions and muster days, yet knew nothing really military—certainly but little useful in war. We knew a little of company drill and of the handling ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... drink or two he resignedly took his belongings, and dropping into the wet and dirty boat with Bauda, he lifted an umbrella over his gaudy cap and disappeared ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... his room was open; he went in. A gnarled old woman sat on the edge of the bed; a female consoler was on either side. At the sight of Suvaroff the mourner rose and stood trembling before him, rolling a gaudy handkerchief into a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... pinks and marigolds and princes' feathers, with bachelor's buttons and Johnny-jump-ups to keep them company. There were gay poppies and gaudy tulips, and large important peonies and fine Duchess ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... said Mr Burne, who had become quite reconciled to his fez with its gaudy roll of yellow silk; in fact, two or three times over he had taken it off and held it up to examine it as it rested on his fist. "He is perfectly right," he repeated, "we do not want to fight, unless driven to extremities, and discretion is ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... deal of moving about on the rising ground; then the footmen cleared away in front, and most of the elephants withdrew, and then were seen ten guns ranged side by side. Close behind them were two elephants, with gaudy trappings, while others, less brilliantly arrayed, ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... woman who offers bananas and zapotas for sale. Dainty senoritas trip across the way in red-heeled slippers of Cinderella-like proportions, while noisy, laughing, happy children, girls and boys, romp with pet dogs, trundle ribbon-decked hoops, or spin gaudy humming tops. Flaring posters catch the eye, heralding the cruel bull-fight or a performance at the theatre. On Sundays a military band performs here forenoons and evenings. Under the starlight you may look not only among the low growing foliage to see ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... conspicuous place, beamed with a bright intentness upon its motley spectacle, careless of where her smiles might fall. For her the immodest theatrical poster drooped in the windows of saloons, or caught a transient hold upon the hoardings of uncompleted buildings; brazen blare and gaudy placards (disgusting rather than indecent) invited the passer-by into cheap museums and music-halls; all the unclassifiable riff-raff that is spawned by a great city leered from corners, or slouched along the edge of the gutters, or stood in dark doorways, or sold impossible rubbish ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... in the Italian style, having heavy facades, plain brick sides and queer but rather picturesque bell-towers. Internally, they are gaudy and tasteless, the altars ornamented on high days and holidays with innumerable wax candles, festoons of red, white and blue drapery, and huge pyramids of paper roses with gold foliage. Ecclesiastical affairs are presided ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... with packages, chests, and cloth bundles; while the men, moving about with violent gesticulations and loud exclamations, employ themselves in their well-known and allotted tasks. By degrees graceful forms arise, and richly-tinted pavilions, with gilded summits, glitter in the sunbeams, while gaudy banners flutter in the air. Long lines of canvas sheets appear, and spacious enclosures formed of kanauts secure the utmost privacy to the dwellers of the populous camp; while the elephants, who have trodden out the ground, and smoothed it for ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... and confusion wearied me, I could not get the hang of the steps. Presently an understanding matron let me slip out of the dance, and I sat down by the fiddler and dozed. Clanking spurs, brilliant chaps, fur-trimmed trappers' jackets, thudding moccasins, gaudy Indian blankets and gay feathers, voluminous feminine flounces swinging from demure, snug-fitting basques—all whirled above ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the common phrase makes it, feminine intuition. The mark of that so-called intuition ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... modes of dressing the hair was discountenanced or forbidden, not less than the use of gaudy clothes and bright arms. Some of these regulations have a quaint air to readers of this generation; and as indications of manners in past times, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... too. I wanted something gaudy that would make me feel cheerful when I woke in the morning; but I also had another idea in my mind. Mangle-proof buttons! Have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... though startlingly humanoid—at least from the waist up, which was all that showed in the screen. A large mouth and slightly bulging eyes gave it a somewhat jovial, frog-like demeanor. Seated at a desk similar to Heselton's, wearing a gaudy uniform profusely strewn with a variety of insignia, it was obviously Heselton's counterpart, the commander of an ...
— A Matter of Magnitude • Al Sevcik
... taxi-cabs, or in trains with my packed bag from big railway stations—what keeps me going, I sometimes ask myself; and I remember how, in his 'Masnavi I Ma'navi' or 'Spiritual Couplets,' Jalalu 'D-Din Muhammad Rumi says that our Desires, the swarm of gaudy Thoughts we pursue and follow, are short-lived like summer insects, and must all be killed before long by the winter ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... outrageous and fantastical absurdities, which were hailed with a smile from Mons. C., and a burst of approbation from the rest of the party. At the top of the hill were four scattered pillars of different diminutive forms, with gilt balustrades; all painted with gaudy colours, and none large enough for a moderate tea-garden, or sufficiently solid to have resisted the point-blank stagger of a drunken man. Lower down were two holes in the rock, which, from their size and appearance, I should have taken for a ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... went on Andy. "Give us a whiff," and before the dude could stop him the younger Racer boy had snatched it from his pocket. "Whew! Yes, this is it!" he cried, holding his nose as he handed the gaudy linen back. "How did it happen, Chet? Did you drop it somewhere? It's awful!" and he pretended to stagger back. "Better have ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... assumption that every girl's character was on the surface, and I made no effort to probe deeper, I was the confidant, the friend, of many a fine woman. They all smiled at my douce sobriety, but in the end they preferred it to the gaudy recklessness ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... concerning the fact that Wagner used to wear gaudy costumes of silk and satin while he was composing, and that he had colored glass in his windows, which gave every object a mysterious aspect. He was called an imitator of the eccentric King of Bavaria, and some went so far as to declare ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... to paint Him. And they felt (very rightly) that representing Him as a rather quaint old man with a gold crown and a white beard, like a king of the elves, was less profane than resisting the sacred impulse to express Him in some way. That is why the Christian world is full of gaudy pictures and twisted statues which seem, to many refined persons, more blasphemous than the secret volumes of an atheist. The trend of good is always towards Incarnation. But, on the other hand, those refined thinkers who worship the Devil, whether in ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... First Street that had been so clean and genteel, a word used very much at that time, was fast changing. The lower part on the south side was rilling up with undesirable people, some foreigners who crowded three families into a house. Houston Street was growing gaudy and common with Jew stores. And oh, the children! There was a large bakery where they sold cheap bread, and in the afternoon there really was a procession ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... tournament between knights, its gaudy accessories and trappings, and its chivalrous regulations, originated in France. Tournaments were repeatedly condemned by the Church, probably on account of the quarrels they led to, and the often fatal results. The "joust," or ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... straining against the rider. Now the spectators could make out plainly the boatmen. It could be seen that they had decked themselves out for the occasion. Their heads were bound with bright-colored fillets, their necks with gay scarves. The paddles were adorned with gaudy woollen streamers. New leggings, of holiday pattern, were intermittently visible on the bowsmen and steersmen as they half rose to give ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... also blooms with flowers. Transfigured by the radiance of silver lamps and myriads of tapers, enshrined in garlands of roses, veiled in clouds of incense, the statue in its niche lent a charm to the gaudy ornaments of the high altar, and all the tinsel draperies extending from column to column along the aisle. On the right a star of light was visible in the miraculous bath-room, with its dim frescoes and ancient pillars; the nuns flitted ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... the ground of the specialists. Through a too common illusion, simplicity and beauty are considered as rivals. But simple is not synonymous with ugly, any more than sumptuous, stylish and costly are synonymous with beautiful. Our eyes are wounded by the crying spectacle of gaudy ornament, venal art and senseless and graceless luxury. Wealth coupled with bad taste sometimes makes us regret that so much money is in circulation to provoke the creation of such a prodigality of horrors. Our contemporary art suffers as much from the want of simplicity as does our ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... two had ushered in the summer of St. Martin, as it was called by the habitans,—the Indian summer,—that brief time of glory and enchantment which visits us like a gaudy herald to announce the approach of the Winter King. It is Nature's last rejoicing in the sunshine and the open air, like the splendor and gaiety of a maiden devoted to the cloister, who for a few weeks ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... forming a double column, composed of men and women side by side. The former are stamping and the latter tripping lightly, but all are keeping time. They certainly present a weird appearance, tricked out in their gaudy apparel and ornamented with flashy trinkets. The hair of the men is worn loose; tufts of green and yellow feathers flutter over the forehead, while around their necks and dangling over their naked ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... and solid, as though he might be carved out of some dark wood. Mr. Hand, much of Mr. Arneel's type, but more solid and apparently more vigorous, had donned for the occasion a blue serge coat with trousers of an almost gaudy, bright stripe. His ruddy, archaic face was at once encouraging and serious, as though he were saying, "My dear children, this is very trying, but we will do the best we can." Mr. Merrill was as cool and ornate and lazy as it was possible for a great merchant to be. To one ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... on the tiny front porch, was the kitchen table that served as desk, library, and type-writing stand. The bed, against the rear wall, occupied two-thirds of the total space of the room. The table was flanked on one side by a gaudy bureau, manufactured for profit and not for service, the thin veneer of which was shed day by day. This bureau stood in the corner, and in the opposite corner, on the table's other flank, was the kitchen—the oil-stove on a dry-goods box, inside of which were dishes and cooking utensils, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... my Pegasus! Nor balk At that fear-inspiring figure!) Thomasina took a walk. And Fate drew her—drew her—drew her by a thousand spidery lines To a Slocum Pocum window filled chockful of valentines, All gaudy—save two, just alike in color, shape and size, Which pressed against the window pane and caught ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... winter wild While the Heavenly Child All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies. Nature in awe of Him Had doffed her gaudy trim With her ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... gravely and formally introduced, as strangers in the country, to the inmates. Here we are introduced to a tall muscular old lady, who has her cap fantastically trimmed with bits of ribbon of various gaudy colours. With an air of assumed politeness and dignity, she asks me if I have been to Washington. On receiving a reply in the negative, she expresses great regret, and inquires if I have seen "Dan ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... the care of the dining room. The furnishing may be simple and inexpensive,—beauty in a home is not dependent upon expense,—but let it be substantial, tasteful, harmonious in color and soft in tone, nothing gaudy or showy. Use no heavy draperies, and have no excess of ornament and bric-a-brac to catch dust and germs. A hard-finished wood floor is far superior to a carpet in point of healthfulness, and quite as economical and easy to ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... of that gaudy machine outside, but there was an honest appeal in the speaker's eyes, and, moreover, the memory of her own obligation rose to prevent her from appearing ungrateful. "I'd be delighted," she falsified, and, gurgling with appreciation, Miss Demorest ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... lively expression). Let us fly, Fiesco! let us with scorn reject these gaudy nothings, and pass our future days only in the retreats of love! (She presses him to her breast with rapture.) Our souls, serene as the unclouded sky, shall never more be blackened by the poisonous breath of sorrow; our lives shall flow ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of a sudden I thought of what Serenus said about a woman twice my size dressed in gaudy red, forever takin' after folks—What would Josiah do if she took after him? And no doubt she would, for looked at through the magnifying lens of Absence and Anxiety he looked passingly beautiful. As I thought of her I knowed what I would ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... hair, and patterns of gowns. The new, exaggerated toilettes of the actresses, their gait, even the spurious elegance of their speech, which seemed to her of the highest distinction, and with it all the tawdry magnificence of the gilding and the lights, the gaudy placard at the door, the long line of carriages, and all the somewhat unwholesome excitement that springs up about a popular play; that was what she loved, that was ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... mechanic and artist of our souls who wants trustworthy timepieces and keen blades, will not be deceived by these gaudy trinkets, and will reject them. Others may esteem you for this or that quality, admire this or that qualification you possess, be taken with their superficial gloss and accidental usefulness. The quality required ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... in wages, he suddenly began to revel in a wealth that he never dreamed was possible. The more he made the more he spent. He squandered his financial substance on fine cigars, expensive clothes, and excessive drinks, while his wife bedecked herself in gaudy finery and installed pianos or phonographs in her house. ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... one of these bursts of hilarity Mr Hazlit entered the room. The sound seemed to grate on his feelings, for he frowned as he walked, in an absent mood, up to a glass case full of gaudy birds, and turned his back to it under the impression, apparently, that it was ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... shelter and peace and freedom. It meant honour and kindness, and the chance to be good. Perhaps you think she would not care for that. But you do not know her. Rosa Mundi was meant to be good. She hungered for goodness. She was tired—so tired of the gaudy vanities of life, so—so—what is the word—so nauseated with the cheap and the bad. Are you sorry for her, I wonder? Can you picture her, longing—oh, longing—for what she calls respectability? And then—this chance, this offer of deliverance! It ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... XIV., united with the gaiety of his Court, and the gaudy ostentation of his character, had so humbled, and at the same time so fascinated the mind of France, that the people appeared to have lost all sense of their own dignity, in contemplating that of their Grand Monarch; and the whole reign of Louis XV., remarkable only ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... bas-relief, but has imagined for himself a being half human, half bestial, and yet wholly real; nor has he portrayed in Procris a nymph of Greek form, but a girl of Florence. The strange animals and gaudy flowers introduced into the landscape background further remove the subject from the sphere of classic treatment. Florentine realism and quaint fancy being thus curiously blended, the artistic result may be profitably ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... commands in the meadow behind the grove, where I saw Dorinda, Dorillus his daughter, entering with a basket of cowslips for Sylvia, unnecessarily offering sweets to the Goddess of the Groves, from whence they (with all the rest of their gaudy fellows of the spring) assume their ravishing odours. I take every opportunity of telling my Sylvia what I have so often repeated, and shall be ever repeating with the same joy while I live, that I love my Sylvia to death and madness; that my soul ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... look at Mary Gowd, went out to confer with the porter about the motor. Papa Gregg, hand in pockets, cigar tilted, eyes narrowed, stood irresolutely in the centre of the great, gaudy foyer. Then, with a decisive little hunch of his shoulders, he came back to where Mary ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... company. Sometimes they were permitted to pass in their wares only through a window in the outer part of the fort. A beaver skin was the regular standard of value, and in return for their skins the savages received all manner of gaudy trinkets and also useful merchandise, chiefly knives, hatchets, guns, ammunition, and blankets. But before the end of the eighteenth century the activity of the Nor'westers had forced the Hudson's Bay Company out of its aristocratic slothfulness. The savages were ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... of green, clumsily trimmed here and there—apparently by his own hands—with gaudy lace; brightest where the cloth was most worn and soiled, and poorest where it was at the best. A pair of tawdry ruffles dangled at his wrists, while his throat was nearly bare. He had ornamented his hat with a cluster of peacock's feathers, but they were limp and broken, and now trailed negligently ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... little place, was the hut of the consumo, the local custom-house, with officials lounging at the door or sitting straddle-legged on chairs, lazily smoking. Opposite was a tobacconist's, with the gaudy red and yellow sign, Campania arrendataria de tabacos, and a dram-shop where three hardy Spaniards from the mountains stood drinking aguardiente. Than this, by the way, there is in the world no more insidious liquor, for at first you think its taste of aniseed and peppermint very ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... and the nun there was only one other woman in the company. This was the vulgar, bouncing Wife of Bath. She dressed in rich and gaudy clothes, she liked to go about to see and be seen and have a good time. She had been married five times, and though she was getting old and rather deaf, she was quite ready to marry again, if the husband she ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... their tender age, Lest court corruption should their souls engage; Teach them how arts, and arms, in thy young days, Employed our youth—not taverns, stews, and plays; Tell them the generous scorn their race does owe To flattery, pimping, and a gaudy show; Teach them to scorn the Carwells, Portsmouths, Nells, The Clevelands, Osbornes, Berties, Lauderdales: Poppaea, Tigelline, and Arteria's name, All yield to these in lewdness, lust, and fame. Make them admire the Talbots, Sydneys, Veres, Drake, Cavendish, Blake, men void of slavish ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... Wright well compare Polonius' antithesis of 'rich, not gaudy': though I doubt if ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... a whole hedge of them right at your hand. Nothing could be more appropriate for returning honeymooners. Further, they're gaudy enough to compete with the two inches of dust in the lane. If we don't have rain pretty doggoned soon we won't have ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... all other small town business districts. The Gem Theater vied with the Star and the Orpheum in lavish display of gaudy posters advertising pictures that were "coming to-morrow," and in two weeks of observation the investigators learned what sort of moving pictures Delafield demanded, or, at least what sort it got. They took note of the Amethyst Coterie's Saturday ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... often declared, "the very niftiest dresser" in Central High. And even when he went motor-boating he was the very "glass of fashion." His fancy waistcoat would never be seen in its pristine lustre again, and as for the gaudy striped shirt and cuffs he had worn, the stripes were surely "fast" colors, in that they had immediately run into the white ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... to accumulate when once they are formed is absolutely all the truth I can distill from Spencer's unwieldy account of evolution. It makes a much less gaudy and chromatic picture, but what there ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... hooked salmon that has taken the gaudy fly, felt a check and recognised that a Power had her in hand, recognised in the light-going and fair-speaking Pinckney something of adamant, a will not to be broken ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... a thin, tense-faced Hebrew girl of eighteen or nineteen came rushing in, carrying a wire basket full of typewritten sheets. She was as gaunt as a plucked spring chicken, and her cheap, gaudy clothes might have been thrown on her. She looked as if she were running to catch a train and in mortal dread of missing it. While Miss Devine examined the pages in the basket, Becky stood with her shoulders drawn up and her elbows drawn in, apparently trying to hide herself in her insufficient ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... whistles, signs, rally suddenly from no one knows where, and vanish in the alleys, basements, roofs, and corridors they know so well. Their inordinate vanity is well called the slum counterpart of self-esteem, and Riis calls the gang a club run wild. They have their own ideality and a gaudy pinchbeck honor. A young tough, when arrested, wrenched away the policeman's club, dashed into the street, rescued a baby from a runaway, and came back and gave himself up. They batten on the yellowest literature. Those of ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... touched with a snarl of triumph, and searing like a puff of flame, sounded as the boy remained for one moment with the flag in his hand looking down at the crowd below. His face was odd and elated and still. Then with the slightest gesture he threw the flag from him, and Aaron watched the gaudy remnant falling towards the many faces, whilst the noise of ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... and broke at once those bands of friendship, which were more agreeable to him than all other sweets of life. He describes the situation of his soul under this struggle, and says, "Those who saw me, judging by the gaudy show which surrounded me, and not knowing what passed within my soul, said, speaking of me: Oh, how well is it with him! how happy is he! But they knew not the anguish of my mind; for the deep wound in my heart ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... mother herself, by a suggestive circumstance which might have afforded matter of thought to a more experienced observer than Archie, wrapped in a shawl nearly identical with Kirstie's, but a thought more gaudy and conspicuously newer. At the sight, Kirstie grew more tall - Kirstie showed her classical profile, nose in air and nostril spread, the pure blood came in her cheek evenly in a delicate ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... overdone, that the clothes were too ragged, the men too gaunt and too much wounded, and that by no stretch of imagination could a band be playing "God save the King" while a square painted train called "Lou-lou" steamed in, looking like a child's giant gaudy toy, and an aeroplane ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... his former fiancee and his supplanter, and gives more proofs of its impossibility by his conduct and speech than was at all necessary. The conversation is very flat, and the descriptions are chiefly confined to long, gaudy inventories of rich parvenus' houses, which read like ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... by Britons once were counted, Close to my side were monies lent and paid; If princes died—some gaudy herald mounted Upon my head, and proclamations read; Till Gresham rose; who used me very ill, He moved the place of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... bastard of great Mercury, Got on Thalia when she was asleep: My gaudy grandsire, great Apollo hight,[113] Born was, I hear, but that my luck was ill, To all the land upon ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... the carriages and the gaudy javelin-men had turned the corner at the foot of a hill, and were no longer visible; with her hands clasped together, she had prayed to God to temper with mercy the heart of the Judge, before whom her ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... in their general appearance which would have led him to imagine that they had come from under the equator. [1] The birds, plants, and insects have a desert character, and are not more brilliantly coloured than those from southern Patagonia; we may, therefore, conclude that the usual gaudy colouring of the intertropical productions, is not related either to the heat or light of those zones, but to some other cause, perhaps to the conditions of existence ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... bright eyes, Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel: Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament, And only herald to the gaudy spring, Within thine own bud buriest thy content, And tender churl mak'st waste in niggarding: Pity the world, or else this glutton be, To eat the world's due, ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... summit of the hill on which the chapel is perched, a marvel to all new-comers by the highway of the Lake. The door was open, and we walked in. There was no light burning on the altar, nor any water in the stone basin by the door. But there was all the apparatus of worship—the gaudy toyshop above the grand altar, the tiny side chapels, with their pictures of the dying Saviour, and the confessional box, now thick with dust, and echoless of sob of penitent or counsel of confessor. It was evidently a poorly ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... of a sunset filtered through. The wide spaces were beset with screens in lacquer, odd chairs, Dutch tables, and very many cabinets,—cabinets inlaid with flowers and birds of many colours; cabinets full of shells, agates, corals, and any gaudy stone; cabinets and yet again more cabinets full of Eastern china. In the midst ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... the determined opposition of the tones. He finally discovered that his first inspiration, which was to animate the fire of the weave by setting it off against some dark object, was erroneous. In fact, this rug was too new, too petulant and gaudy. The colors were not sufficiently subdued. He must reverse the process, dull the tones, and extinguish them by the contrast of a striking object, which would eclipse all else and cast a golden light on the pale silver. ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... and homespun garments, mounted on rough ponies, clattered along through the streets. The manual work was for the most part done by swarthy natives, while among the crowd were numbers of Malays, with dark olive skins, small eyes, and jet-black hair, their women being arrayed in every shade of gaudy colour. ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... the gems of India's gaudy zone, And plunder piled from kingdoms not their own, Degenerate trade! thy minions could despise Thy heart-born anguish of a thousand cries: Could lock, with impious hands, their teeming store, While famish'd nations died along the shore; Could mock the groans of fellow-men, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... is time we should go through Muttonwool's house room by room. On entering the drawing-room the first thing that strikes the eye is the carpet, with a stiff set pattern large enough to knock you down, and of a rich gaudy colour. You raise your eyes—find opposite them the regulation white marble mantelpiece, more or less carved, and a gilt mirror, which we will hope is not protected from the flies by green netting. Having made a grimace, you sit down upon one of the chairs. There are ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... which are endowed by Nature with the gift of song in connection with gaudy plumage is the American Goldfinch, or Hemp-bird, (Fringilla tristis,) one of the most interesting and delicate of the feathered tribe. Of all our birds this bears the closest resemblance to the Canary, both in his plumage and in the notes of his song. He cannot be ranked ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... "Why, how d'ye do, Mr. Norman?" said she. And her friendliness and assurance of manner jarred upon him. There was not a suggestion of forwardness; but he, used to her old-time extreme reserve, felt precisely as if she were bold and gaudy, after the fashion of so many of the working girls who ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... larger than natural, of gaudy color, and in bad taste, is divided into three parts, each presenting an important phase in the life of the convert, surnamed "The Prophet." In the first, behold a long-bearded man, the hair almost ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... single act of dishonesty. While they have generally shared with us the little they possess, they have always abstained from begging anything from us. With their liveliness of temper, they are fond of gaudy dresses and all sorts of amusements, particularly games of hazard; and, like most Indians, delight in boasting of their warlike exploits, either real or fictitious. In their conduct towards us they have been ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... each of which was content to put up with a fortnightly alternate morning and evening service. The Belamour seat was a square one, without the comfortable appliances of the Delavie closet, and thus permitting a much fuller view, but there was nothing to be seen except a row of extremely gaudy Belamour hatchments, displaying to the full, the saltir-wise sheafs of arrows on the shields or lozenges, supported by grinning skulls. The men's shields preserved their eagle crest, the women had only lozenges, and the family motto, Amo et ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge |
