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Marbles   /mˈɑrbəlz/   Listen
Marbles

noun
1.
A children's game played with little balls made of a hard substance (as glass).
2.
The basic human power of intelligent thought and perception.  Synonym: wits.  "I was scared out of my wits" , "He still had all his marbles and was in full possession of a lively mind"



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"Marbles" Quotes from Famous Books



... a significant fact that we find balls even among the remains of the Lake Dwellers of Northern Italy and Switzerland, while small, round balls, resembling marbles, have been found in the early Egyptian tombs. The Teutons made ball-plays national, and built houses in which to indulge in these exercises in all sections of Germany, as late as the close of the sixteenth ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... companions were all around him. Ivan surveyed them in turn. They loved him—lots. Had not Josephine just said so? And only yesterday Augustus Adolphus had played marbles with him. It was very good to be loved, to have a home, and not to be a little sunbeam any longer. Then his eyes met those of Miss Clarkson, ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... is stately and swelling, in keeping with the heroic part of his characters; sometimes it is too swelling, and even bombastic. Though he is the greatest of all, art in him had not arrived at technical perfection. He reminds us sometimes of the Aeginetan marbles, rather than the frieze ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith

... of youth—it was composed chiefly of boys, like the one opposing it—enjoyed itself during these comparatively idle months. The soldiers played rural games, marbles even, pitching the horseshoe, wrestling, jumping and running. It was to Harry like Hannibal in winter quarters at Capua, without the Capua. There was certainly no luxury here. While food was more abundant than for a long time, it was of the simplest. Instead of dissipation there was a great ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Newburyport; he swam in the Merrimac in summer, and skated on it in winter; he was good at sculling a boat; he played at bat and ball and snowball, and sometimes led the 'Southend boys' against the Northenders in the numerous conflicts between the youngsters of the two sections; he was expert with marbles. Once, with a playmate, he swam across the river to 'Great Rock,' a distance of three-fourths of a mile and effected his return against the tide; and once, in winter, he nearly lost his life by breaking through the ice on the river and ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... hand; and many a schoolboy is a better reasoner than he. I knew one about eight years of age, whose success at guessing in the game of 'even and odd' attracted universal admiration. This game is simple, and is played with marbles. One player holds in his hand a number of these toys and demands of another whether that number is even or odd. If the guess is right, the guesser wins one; if wrong, he loses one. The boy to whom I allude won all the marbles of the school. Of course he had some principle ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various

... let 'em take these marbles," said Mabel. "They're my little brother's. He gave me his bag to hold when he went off to play tops with some of the boys. I'll let Margy and Mun Bun take the ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Aunt Jo's • Laura Lee Hope

... against oppression he put into practice. Boys who were being imposed upon found in him a ready protector. Sometimes, watching a game of marbles or tops, he would remark in his slow, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... house in Algeria, adapted to European habits. The slender columns supporting the horse-shoe arches were trained with crimson passion-flower and bougainvillia, while orange and gardenia blossom scented the air, and in the midst of a pavement of mosaic marbles was a fountain, tinkling coolness to the air which was already heated enough to make it impossible to cross the court without protection from the sunshine even at ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... lecture-givers, the lawyers, the journalists. In painting and sculpture, original schools were no more to be found, nor great names, but the number of statues and bas-reliefs increased infinitely. The paintings of Pompeii and many statues and marbles that are now admired in European museums are examples of this industrialised art, inexpensive, creating nothing original, but furnishing to families in comfortable circumstances passable copies of works of art—once a privilege only ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero

... "The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom; And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... was particularly urgent with her for the harmonious duet in praise of Lakelands; and plied her with questions all round and about it, to bring out the dulcet accord. He dwelt on his choice of costly marbles, his fireplace and mantelpiece designs, the great hall, and suggestions for imposing and beautiful furniture; concordantly enough, for the large, the lofty and rich of colour won her enthusiasm; but overwhelmingly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... deepest, with the variations of colored sands and rocks on the bottom, as well as queer-shaped and colored bowlders lying on the vari-colored sands, that are not found elsewhere. The waving of the water gives a mottled effect surpassing the most delicate and richly-shaded marbles and onyxes. Watered-silks of the most perfect manufacture are but childish and puerile attempts at reproduction, and finest Turkish shawls, Bokhara rugs or Arab sheiks' dearest-prized Prayer Carpets are but glimmering suggestions of what the Master ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... Apollo, and the soprano were always as sylph-like as she is described in the libretto, even then I should doubt the average operatic chorus being regarded by the connoisseur as a cheap and pleasant substitute for a bas relief from the Elgin marbles. The great thing required of that operatic chorus is experience. The young and giddy-pated the chorus master has no use for. The sober, honest, industrious lady or gentleman, with a knowledge of music is ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome

... years of age also held herself very upright in her light bridal gown, still strong and still showing some of the healthy beauty of other days. With hair white like Mathieu's, and softened face, illumined as by a last glow under her silky tresses, she resembled one of those sacred marbles whose features time has ravined, without, however, being able to efface from them the tranquil splendor of life. She seemed, indeed, like some fruitful Cybele, retaining all firmness of contour, and living anew in the broad daylight with gentle good humor sparkling in her ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... that will seem kind of flighty. And I'll tell you how they'll learn their letters. Sulie and I will paint 'em; great big ones, all colors; and hang 'em up with ribbons, and every child that learns one, so as to know it everywhere, shall take it down and carry it home. Then we will have marbles for numbers; and they shall play addition games, and multiplication games, and get the sums for prizes; the ones that get to the head, you know. Why, you ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... a church. There Chosroes found stores of gold and silver so great in amount that, though he took no other part of the booty except these stores, he departed possessed of enormous wealth. And he took down from there many wonderful marbles and ordered them to be deposited outside the fortifications, in order that they might convey these too to the land of Persia. When he had finished these things, he gave orders to the Persians to burn the whole ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius

... discovered great masses of the same stone, but minus the green base, exhibiting at the same time the characteristics of irregular mosaic in the angular fragments of white, black, and various coloured pieces which appeared to be artificially inlaid. These marbles, especially the true verde antica, would be exceedingly valuable if cut into slabs and exported, and there would be little difficulty in constructing a feasible route for camels, which would convey with ease large slabs secured in frames slung upon ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... second-hand curiosities St. Leger had promised Mrs. Copley, the visit to which could no longer be deferred. Dolly was in a dream of delight all the way. Sunlight on the old palaces, on the bridges over the canals, on the wonderful carvings of marbles, on the strange water-ways; sunlight and colour; ay, and shadow and colour too, for the sun could not get in everywhere. Between the beauty and picturesqueness, and the wealth of old historic ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... touch 'em," began poor Button, as she crept about hunting for the black and white beads that looked like very ugly marbles. ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott

... Aosta, in Piedmont: where, indeed, there is a triumphal arch, but no inscription. This noble monument of antiquity was first of all destroyed by fire; and afterwards, in Gothic times, converted into a kind of fortification. The marbles belonging to it were either employed in adorning the church of the adjoining village, which is still called Turbia, a corruption of Trophaea; [This was formerly a considerable town called Villa Martis, and pretends to the honour of having given birth to Aulus Helvius, who succeeded Commodus ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... The "Xanthian Marbles," and "Washington Allston," are very pleasing papers. The most interesting part, however, are the sentences copied from Mr. Allston. These have his chaste, superior tone. We copy ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... first and second fingers and place them on the marble as shown in the illustration. Then have the person roll the marble about and at the same time close the eyes or look in another direction. The person will imagine that there are two marbles ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom, And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... the Doctor. "The rocking-horse's nose couldn't turn up, it was the purest Grecian, modelled from the Elgin marbles. Perhaps it was the heat that did it, though. However, you seem to have got through your troubles very well, Master Deordie. I wish poor Tiny were at the ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... vessel and watch her breasting the waves. The mass of water rolled from her bows as white as milk, studded with those innumerable sparkles of blue light. The nebulosity instantly separated into small masses, curdled like clouds of marbles, leaving the water between of its own clear blackness; the clouds soon subsided, but the sparks remained. Sometimes one of these points, of greater size and brilliancy than the rest, suddenly burst into a small cloud ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... swallow-tail butterfly (Papilio Machaon), was common, feeding on umbelliferous plants, as in England; and a Sphynx (like S. Euphorbiae) was devouring the euphorbias; the English Cynthia Cardui (painted-lady butterfly) was common, as were "sulphurs," "marbles," Pontia (whites), "blues," and Thecla, of British aspect but foreign species. Amongst these, tropical forms were rare, except one fine black swallow-tail. Of moths, Noctuae and Geometrae abounded, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... year to year, by the oldest resident. Names on its old tombs had come to mean nothing to those who read them, except as they recalled memorable records of love, of inspiration, of courage, of self-sacrifice. And this being so, it touched the imagination to see, among the marbles that crumbled toward the dust below, a living embodiment of affection and fidelity. Indeed, it came to be remarked, as it is remarked to-day, although four decades have gone by, that no other spot in ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson

... complicated buildings one could make, with long passages and steps and windows through which one could peep into their intricacies, and by means of slips of card one could make slanting ways in them, and send marbles rolling from top to base and thence out into the hold of a waiting ship.... And there was commerce; the shops and markets and storerooms full of nasturtium seed, thrift seed, lupin beans and such-like provender from the garden; such ...
— A Catalogue of Play Equipment • Jean Lee Hunt

... it is, too. He's in the Brigade, and I minded his box for him, and took sixpence while he went and had a game of marbles. That's why he ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn

... inlaid with all kinds of jacinths, and thereon a golden statue of a man and beside it a little door. She opened the door and found herself in a long corridor: so she followed it and entered a Hammam-bath walled with all kinds of costly marbles and floored with a mosaic of pearls and jewels. Therein were four cisterns of alabaster, one facing other, and the ceiling of the bath was of glass coloured with all varieties of colours, such as confounded the understanding of those who have insight and amazed the wit of every ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... see a mild form of it in the tom-boy who abandons her dolls and female companions for the marbles and masculine sports of her boy acquaintances. In the loud-talking, long-stepping, slang-using young woman we see another form; while the square-shouldered, stolid, cold, unemotional, unfeminine android ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir

... to be, it is the most important one of the day to the boy and, for the interests of his character, it may be the most important for many a day to the father. If he answers with sympathy and interest this question on a "foul ball" or on marbles or peg-tops, he has opened a door that will always stay open so long as he approaches it with sincerity; if he slights it, if he is too busy with those lesser things that seem great to him, he has closed a door into the boy's life; it may never be opened again. Children ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... first, and after them Admiral Sir Charles Wager, and then the Countess of Strathmore. It was purchased from her by a Mr. Lochee, who kept a military academy here. Among the later residents were Sir William Hamilton, who built a large hall to contain the original casts of the Elgin Marbles. These casts form a frieze round the room, and detached fragments are hung separately. This room alone in the house is not panelled. The panelling of the others was for many years covered with paper, which has been gradually removed. The drawing-room door, which faces ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton

... bedclothes, looking for something. Finally he complained that he could not find his mouth-harp. They tried to make him forget it, but when they failed, his mother went to the bureau and pulling open the lower drawer found a little varnished box; under the shaded lamp she brought out a sack of marbles, a broken bean-shooter, with whittled prongs, a Barlow knife, a tintype picture of a boy, and the mouth-organ. This she gave to the hands that fluttered about the face on the pillow. He began to play "The Mocking Bird," opening and shutting ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... for him who never sees The stars shine through his cypress trees! Who hopeless lays his dead away, Nor looks to see the breaking day Across the mournful marbles play! Who hath not learned in hours of faith The truth to flesh and sense unknown, That Life is ever Lord of Death, And love can ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... September evening. A blaze of light—delicious all-prevailing warmth—the moist bronzed faces of the men—the girls with the look of physical content that comes in hot countries with the evening—the sun flooding with its last gold, now the new marbles of the facciata, now the alabaster and bronze of the Baptistery, and now ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... after the other. The wood-lice were an especial amusement: when Monsieur the Viscount touched them, they shut up into tight little balls, and in this condition he removed them to the stone, and placed them like marbles in a row, Monsieur Crapaud watching the proceeding with rapt attention. After awhile the balls would slowly open and begin to crawl away; but he was a very active wood-louse indeed who escaped the suction of Monsieur Crapaud's tongue, as, his eyes ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... holding a crown of thorns, the other the "cup of bitterness." The panels have richly crocketed canopies, the central one being surmounted by a floriated cross. They are filled with diaper work, and the supporting pilasters are of various-coloured Irish marbles. The whole was designed by C. E. Giles, Esq., cousin of the late Vicar, Prebendary ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter

... of their elder brother. One may safely predict that ere many summers go by, our public cemeteries, by their natural beauty, are likely to attract crowds of strangers, as Greenwood and Mount Auburn do in the States. Chaste monumental marbles, on which can be detected the chisel of English, Scotch and Canadian artists, are at present noticeable all over the grounds, tastefully laid out and smiling parterres of annuals and perennials throw a grateful fragrance over the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... and side walk at no great distance lead to Frogmore, with its mausoleum half hidden in luxuriant foliage. In the octagonal building, which forms a cross, and is richly decorated with coloured marbles, is the famous recumbent figure of the Prince in white marble by Baron Marochetti. When the Queen's time comes, which her people pray may still be far distant, she will rest by her husband's side, and a similar statue ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler

... On the marbles of Nineveh is represented the pectoral worn by Sardanapalus. It is an exact miniature of a Kurdish rug of modern times. The Tree of Life, the motif of most of the Persian rug designs, is in the centre, and the border is ornamented with rosettes ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt

... thought to herself. "I have been wasting time—at Lemaire's orders. The only way to induce this boy to betray his trust will be by offering him presents of marbles, tops, ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham

... typical of the future purposes of the building. The rotunda-walls are themselves castellated, the towers being interplaced with windows of Saracenic arched form. The beton pavement of the corridors and balcony is made of annular fragments, facets upward, of black, red, white and slate-colored marbles, feldspar and other stones. It is as hard as natural rock and as smooth as half-polished marble. A tessellated fret pattern is made along the borders of the corridor floor, consisting of triple rows of smooth cubes of marble inserted in the cement. The square balusters ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... awaiting her the Dean of the Court, an official of great importance to whom the settlement of questions pertinent to rank was confided. The state barge of fifteen oars in which he arrived was moored to the marbles of the quay in front of her palace, a handsomely ornamented vessel scarcely needing its richly liveried rowers to draw about it the curious and idle of the town in staring groups. At sight of it, the Princess knew there was a message for her from the Emperor. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... of the Friary stood open; for a small boy had been washing the flags, and had left his pail, and had gone off to play marbles in the road with a younger brother. Dick,—who understood the bearings of the case at once, shook his fist at the truant behind his back, and then ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... all human doctrines and this is as between a marble statue and a quick thing. The statue may be better, and it may be of better material; it may be of ivory, of marble, and amongst marbles known to the ancient sculptors of several different kinds the most prized; of silver gilt, of hollow gold, of massy gold, and in all degrees of skill; but still one condition applies to all—whatever ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... his hat, cane, and gloves to the same French footman who had called his carriage at the Count of Morcerf's, and then he passed into the small salon, preceded by Bertuccio, who showed him the way. "These are but indifferent marbles in this ante-chamber," said Monte Cristo. "I trust all this will soon be taken away." Bertuccio bowed. As the steward had said, the notary awaited him in the small salon. He was a simple-looking lawyer's clerk, elevated ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... consists of pods and seeds of different kinds of leguminous plants, with leaves of various plants; and, as these are often hard and dry, he picks up a great quantity of pebbles, many of which are as large as marbles. He picks up also some small bulbs, and occasionally a wild melon to afford moisture, for one was found with a melon which had choked him by sticking in his throat. It requires the utmost address of the Bushmen, crawling for miles on their stomachs, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... the Osage." Another reference to the scenery on these rivers describes it as "Wild and grand, beautiful and unique;" with "gaudy-colored bluffs." In the section on building materials he remarks: "One of the most desirable of the Missouri marbles is in the Third Magnesian Limestone on the Niangua. It is fine-grained, crystalline, silico-magnesian limestone of a light drab, slightly tinged with peach-blossom, and beautifully clouded with the same hue ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen

... I entered the church together. It is a magnificent structure—palatial, cathedral-like, in its proportions—a gorgeous temple of fashion, built with exquisite taste, of different-colored marbles, and surrounded by graceful columns. Ushers, who looked like guards in uniform, stood at the doors, to keep out the poorly-dressed people, if any such presented themselves; for it was evident that this so-called church ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... surmounted by a canopy of brocade, and in each pavilion was a sitting-place and each place had its richly- wrought fountain and tank paved with marble and streams flowing in channels along the floor and meeting in a great and grand cistern of many-coloured marbles. Quoth the Emir to the Shaykh Abd al-Samad, "Come let us visit yonder pavilion!" So they entered the first and found it full of gold and silver and pearls and jacinths and other precious stones and metals, besides chests filled with brocades, red and yellow and white. Then they ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... were frescoed. The baths were quite comfortable; you had waters salt or sulphurous at will. The dining halls had ivory ceilings from which flowers fell, and wainscots that changed at each service. The walls were alive with the glisten of gems, with marbles rarer than jewels. In one hall was a dome of sapphire, a floor of malachite, ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... season pronounced not particularly good. None the less it was the present exhibition that, for some cause connected with his "crisis," made him think fast, produced that effect he had spoken of to his mother as a sense of artistic life. The precinct of the marbles and bronzes spoke to him especially to-day; the glazed garden, not florally rich, with its new productions alternating with perfunctory plants and its queer, damp smell, partly the odour of plastic clay, of the studios ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... with a sense of the sublime in architecture. At Pisa we say, 'How beautiful!' here we say nothing; it is enough if we can breathe. The mountainous marble masses overcome as we look up—we feel the weight of them on the soul. Tesselated marbles (the green treading its elaborate pattern into the dim yellow, which seems the general hue of the structure) climb against the sky, self-crowned with that prodigy of marble domes. It struck me as ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... For the most part they were successful, and if in particular instances objection may be taken, it would be hyper-criticism to detract from their value. Wherever possible, the stone was taken from the quarries used by the first builders. The Purbeck marbles especially had severely suffered, and the mouldings and bases ruthlessly destroyed for the better accommodation of the wainscoting to the stalls; moreover, the differences in the nature of the stone were rendered null by a hideous yellow wash with which they ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw

... Minerva, uttered by a great poet against the father, clings to the son." The removal of the old office-holders seemed to this writer to be an act of desecration not unlike the removal of the famous marbles from the Parthenon. In a despatch explaining his course on the Rebellion Losses Bill, Lord Elgin said that long before that legislation there were evidences of the temper which finally produced ...
— George Brown • John Lewis

... in the tool box, opened the gas tank, and looked in—and right there he did something else; something that would have spelled disaster if either of them had seen him do it. He spilled a handful of little round white objects like marbles into the tank before he screwed on the cap, and from his pocket he pulled a little paper box, crushed it in his hand, and threw it as far as he could into the bushes. Then, whistling just above his breath, which was a habit with Bud when his work was going along pleasantly, ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower

... other was a body-servant, a menial, an educated man, a fine man-of-business, a Sir Roger in his manners, and black. The two had been brought up together, the black having been given to the white gentleman during the latter's second year. "They had played marbles in the same hole," the General said. I know that Jim was unceasing in his attentions to his master, and that his master could not have lived without them. A sort of attachment of fidelity certainly did exist ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... about when I was up at my Lady's, and all that. Oh! and how bad I behaved at church, and when I was so saucy to Master about the marbles; and so often I've not minded Mother. O Harold! and ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge

... where they landed was not a small place; it was a large city, the capital of a great king. Not far from the palace, the queen and her son hired a hut where they lived. As the prince was yet a boy, he was fond of playing at marbles. When the children of the king came out to play on a lawn before the palace, our young prince joined them. He had no marbles, but he played with the ruby which he had in his possession. The ruby was so hard that it broke every taw against ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... terraces are broken by gigantic masses of rock of various colours, red, green, golden, white, blue, silver, brown, and variegated—rocks of carbuncle, lapis lazuli, malachite, gold-stone, and many-coloured marbles. ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... silver and gold, for hangings for the Synagogue, Holy Ark, and pulpit. There are many silver bells, crowns, and chains, enriched with precious stones, for the scrolls of the Holy Law, and in the Synagogue there are beautiful marbles, mosaics, and columns." ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... of white marble. It is about 65 feet square at the base, and is the frustrum of a pyramid, truncated at about 140 feet. It is filled with a square hole, upon the sides of which are inscriptions let into various colored marbles, and in the languages of the peoples who inhabited a great country ages ago. The stone was designed to be put over the remains of PRO PATRIA, a personage once celebrated for loyalty and wisdom, but whose teachings are now well nigh forgotten, and whose name even is fast ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various

... those disintegrating influences of the weather and the surf, under which the yielding matrix in which they were embedded has worn from around them. Here and there we find them lying detached on the beach, like huge shot, compared with which the greenstone balls of Mons Meg are but marbles for children to play with; in other cases they project from the mural front of rampart-like precipices, as if they had been showered into them by the ordnance of some besieging battery, and had stuck fast in the mason-work. Abbotsford has been described as a romance in stone and lime; we ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... where the other interlocutors are only brought in as convenient points for the hero to hitch the interminable web of his monologue upon. Besides, Keats had been continuing his education this year, by a course of Elgin marbles and pictures by the great Italians, and might very naturally have found little to say about Mr. Haydon's extensive works, that he would have cared to hear. Lord Houghton, on the other hand, in his eagerness to prove that Keats was not killed by the article ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... want, the nearest emblem of himself he can think of. Amidst all the imposing recollections of the ancient edifice, one impressed me in the inverse ratio of its importance. The Archdeacon pointed out the little holes in the stones, in one place, where the boys of the choir used to play marbles, before America was discovered, probably,— centuries before, it may be. It is a strangely impressive glimpse of a living past, like the graffiti of Pompeii. I find it is often the accident rather than the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... Bilibaldus Pirckheimer of Nuremberg, which he acquired during a diplomatic mission into Germany in 1636. Some of the manuscripts, Oldys states, once formed part of the library of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary. The Earl of Norfolk's collections also comprised a very large number of antique marbles, paintings, vases, and gems. ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... they look, Tom! Is it marls (marbles) or cobnuts?" Maggie's heart sank a little, because Tom always said it was "no good" playing with her at those ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... distance. Under the flaming yellow roof of the Palace is a frail and frightened little six-year-old boy—the ruler of millions—who, if he knew and could, would gladly exchange his priceless crown for freedom and a bag of marbles. ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... have spent the days in the open air, and some part of the time have felt that the eyes of the gaolers were not upon him. Every conceivable method of killing time, and every practical recreation was resorted to. Marbles were held in high estimation for many days, and the games were played first, and discussed subsequently with keen interest. A long ladder, which had been left in the hall, leaning against the wall, was a perfect treasure to those who most ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... human effort. A general fast being therefore proclaimed, and a solemn procession appointed for the 25th day of June, while the people assembled in the church interceded with God in fervent prayers for the desired boon, they beheld, with as much amazement as joy, a slight shaking in the marbles of a pillar (near the place where the altar of the Cross is now), which, presently falling to the earth, exposed to the view of the rejoicing people the chest of bronze in which the body of ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... is to dig deep down for our foundations below the rubbish that has accumulated. If a man wishes to build a house in Rome or in Jerusalem he has to go fifty or sixty feet down, through potsherds and broken tiles and triturated marbles, and the dust of ancient palaces and temples. We have to drive a shaft clear down through all the superficial strata, and to lay the first stones on the Rock of Ages. Do not build on that which quivers and shakes beneath you. Do not try to make your life's path across the weeds, or as they call it ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... exercising himself in the rhymed Latin of the middle ages. He like history, but he loved to meditate on a land laid waste, Britain deserted by the legions, the rare pavements riven by frost, Celtic magic still brooding on the wild hills and in the black depths of the forest, the rosy marbles stained with rain, and the walls growing grey. The masters did not encourage these researches; a pure enthusiasm, they felt, should be for cricket and football, the dilettanti might even play fives and read Shakespeare without blame, but healthy English boys should have ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... cold, then pour it to the boiling, stirring it one way till it begin to thicken, and is just going to boil up; then pour it into a pan, stir it some time, add a large spoonful of peach water, two spoonfuls of brandy, or a little ratafia. Marbles boiled in custard, or any thing likely to burn, will prevent it from catching if shaked about in the saucepan.—To make a richer custard, boil a pint of milk with lemon peel and cinnamon. Mix a pint of cream, and the yolks of five eggs ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... in spite of himself. An expression of sheer terror might have been observed on the old negro's crinkled face, but his voice was drowned, and we swept out of the alley. Scarcely had we travelled a block before we began to be joined by all the boys along the line of march; marbles, tops, and even incipient baseball games were abandoned that Saturday morning; people ran out of their houses, teamsters halted their carts. The breathless excitement, the exaltation I had felt on leaving the alley were now tinged with other feelings, unanticipated, but not wholly lacking in delectable ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... is no longer as it was in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's day. From Rotterdam in 1716 she sent the Countess of Mar a pretty account of the city: "All the streets are paved with broad stones, and before the meanest artificers' doors seats of various coloured marbles, and so neatly kept that, I will assure you, I walked all over the town yesterday, incognita, in my slippers, without receiving one spot of dirt; and you may see the Dutch maids washing the pavement of the street ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... She came back in pride and vain-glory, and boasted that had she known the English people better, she would never have gone away; and she has squandered thousands in yonder palace, upon floors of coloured woods, and Italian marbles—the people's money, mark you, money that should have built ships and fed sailors; and she meant to end her days among us. But a worse enemy than Cromwell has driven her out of the house that she made beautiful for herself; and who knows if ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... walked up and down in front of this house, as if to take care of it. In the middle of the street some boys were very busy at a game, carts and lorries passing over them occasionally. They came to the pavement to play marbles, and then Tommy noticed that one of them wore what was probably a glengarry bonnet. Could he be ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie

... manuscript poems, all as if he had left them but yesterday; airy bridges, which seem not so much to rest on the earth as to hover over the waters they span; the loveliest creations of ancient art, rescued from the grave of ages again to enchant the world; the breathing marbles of Michael Angelo, the glowing canvas of Raphael and Titian, museums filled with medals and coins of every age from Cyrus the younger, and gems and amulets and vases from the sepulchers of Egyptian Pharaohs ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett

... mischievous looking urchin playing marbles looked up as Dick passed and said mysteriously, "I know about your dog, but I shan't tell for nothing. Give me a penny, for a ride on the gallopin' horses." Dick put a penny into the grimy hand, and the boy said in a loud whisper, "A girl had him while ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis

... I was immediately sent; and here, among other competitors was the Squire's eldest son, Hector Mowbray. He was two years older than I, and in the high exercise of that power to which he was the redoubted heir. To insult the boys, seize their marbles, split their tops, cuff them if they muttered, kick them if they complained to the master, get them flogged if they kicked and cuffed in return, and tyrannize over them to the very stretch of his invention, were practices in which he daily made himself more and more expert. He was the young ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... he wants land, and will have it. Had you paid off what you owed him, he would have purchased the Crown property; and now, it seems young Gresham has bid against him, and is to have it. This has riled him, and I may as well tell you fairly, that he is determined to have either money or marbles." ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... closing again, darkened for another onslaught. This one brought sleet. The driving pellets stung Helen's neck and cheeks, and for a while they fell so thick and so hard upon her back that she was afraid she could not hold up under them. The bare places on the ground showed a sparkling coverlet of marbles of ice. ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... appeared on the hills we crossed this day, and also on the open ground where indeed it was most abundant. It was a species of acacia, the leaves adhering edgeways to thorny branches; many of these shrubs were in blossom, the flowers being yellow and as large and round as marbles, and those growing very thickly, they gave to the branches the appearance of garlands or festoons, the effect altogether being extremely graceful and singular. We found also a beautiful new species of acacia looking like a broad-leaved ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... large red globe and a blue one. She only loved him the more, quite carried away at the sight of the brilliant-colored globes. She cherished the recollection of it forever in her heart. The following year she met him near the school playing marbles. She rushed up to him, threw her arms round him, and kissed him so passionately that he screamed, in fear. To quiet him, she gave him all her money. Three francs and twenty centimes! A real gold mine, at which he ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... of round frightened eyes followed her pointing finger; and on the box they saw a half-grown rabbit, with eyes bulging like marbles as the little creature crouched there in deadly terror. One glance, and three of the girls broke into shrieks of nervous laughter in which, after a moment, Rose joined. And having begun to laugh the girls kept ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston

... with St. Peter's inevitably forces itself upon those who are familiar with the great Roman basilica, there can scarcely be a greater contrast than between the two buildings. There, all is blazing with precious marbles; here, there is no color except from the poor glass of the eastern windows, or where a tattered banner waves above a hero's monument. In the blue depths of the misty dome the London fog loves to linger, and hides the remains ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... incense; costly in treasure of precious stones and metals, glittering through iron bars; holy with the bodies of deceased saints; rainbow-hued with windows of stained glass; dark with carved woods and coloured marbles; obscure in its vast heights, and lengthened distances; shining with silver lamps and winking lights; unreal, fantastic, solemn, inconceivable throughout. I thought I entered the old palace; pacing silent galleries ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... paid for. The present work, too, over the communion table was intended only to serve till something more worthy could be prepared; and, to supply its place, Wren had modelled a magnificent altar, consisting of four pillars wreathed of the finest Greek marbles, supporting a hemispherical canopy, richly decorated with sculpture. But marble, such as he liked, could not readily be procured: dissensions arose, and the work remained in the models. The interposition of the Duke of York—the malevolence of the commissioners—the Puritanic, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various

... of architects in the process of building has given it something the look of a glorified railway station. But the interior is altogether dignified and splendid, more palatial, in fact, than any of the royal residences. It is lined with costly marbles, rare Eastern woods, wonderful Japanese tapestries, and adorned with gifts from all the nations, except the United States, which had promised to give a marble statue representing "Peace through Justice," to be placed on the central landing of the great Stairway ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke

... earth, like man, had a body and soul. Nature laid itself bare to me; and I perceived its immensity, by seeing the ocean of beings who were spread every where, making the whole one mass of animated matter, from the marbles up to God. It was a noble sight! In short, there was a universe in my patient. When I inserted the knife in his gangrened leg I annihilated millions of those beings. You laugh, ladies, to think you are possessed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... Museo—(and by the by he had expressed his dislike of the busts and statues of Roman emperors in the gallery of marbles: their faces were too vigorous, too pronounced for him)—having conversed already in the morning I did not think I was intruding when in the evening, finding the dining-room very full, I proposed ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... beautiful things into pictures, ideas into intellectual philosophies, morals into ethical systems. The architect is helpless unless he remembers where are the quarries and what their kinds; where the marbles and what their colors; where the ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... Curly," says he after a while, "since we've finished all our day's work and have a little time left, we can now engage in some simple pastime, such as mumblety-peg, or maybe marbles, till later in the evening. I'm through cutting her off, Curly, and I'm happy. I've left it as clean as I know how. Now I'll bet you a thousand dollars I can beat you three games out of five at mumblety-peg. ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough

... no more about hoss-trottin' than a goose knows about the hard-shell Baptist doctrine," raved Wallace, his little eyes popping like marbles. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... temples retained their sanctity for the eye long after the gods had become a theme for mockery, and the noble architecture of the palaces that shielded the infamies of Nero and of Commodus were a protest against them. Humanity has lost its dignity, but art has saved it, and preserves it in marbles full of meaning; truth continues to live in illusion, and the copy will serve to re-establish the model. If the nobility of art has survived the nobility of nature, it also goes before it like an inspiring genius, forming and awakening minds. Before truth causes her triumphant ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... turn of Monypenny they came suddenly upon some boys playing at capey-dykey, a game with marbles that is only known in Thrums. There are thirty-five ways of playing marbles, but this is the best way, and Elspeth knew that Tommy was hungering to look on, but without her, lest he should be accused of sweethearting. So she offered to ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie

... Constantinople. Sir Stratford Canning was delighted with the result of his expedition. He had a passion for discovery as well as diplomacy, and it is to him that the British Museum is indebted for the priceless marbles of Halicarnassus. He now obtained for Mr. Layard a firman, permitting him to make what excavations he wished. Then the news reached London, and the British Museum made a grant to support the work. All difficulties ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... Doges who preceded me, And pluck me down amongst them? Would they could! For I should rest in honour with the honoured. Alas! I must not think of them, but those Who have made me thus unworthy of a name Noble and brave as aught of consular On Roman marbles; but I will redeem it 590 Back to its antique lustre in our annals, By sweet revenge on all that's base in Venice, And freedom to the rest, or leave it black To all the growing calumnies of Time, Which never spare the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... magnificent one, which we shall examine more {58} closely presently, was prepared by the same Italian workmen who were employed on the pavement, and afterwards to decorate the tombs of Henry III. and Queen Eleanor of Castile. The materials—the mosaic, the coloured marbles, and the porphyry—used for this beautiful pavement, which was put down in 1268, as well as for the royal tombs, were, like the designers and craftsmen themselves, brought from Rome by Abbot Ware, who, with his successor, Abbot Wenlock, lies beneath the ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith

... developed architecture and sculpture to the highest perfection the world has seen, made statues thicker than men in Athens, made men more beautiful than statues, sighed even after Virtue as the Becoming, the Perfect Beauty, left the world temples whose ruins are inspirations, and marbles whose discovery dates the epochs of culture. Israel essayed to do many things that other peoples achieved, and promised success in more than one direction. At a certain period she bade fair to develop into a martial empire, and to become a lesser Assyria or Rome. A little later ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... floor of chequered marbles, black and white, stood a carved table of black oak. By this he halted, leaning lightly against it whilst she sat enthroned in the great crimson chair ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... to view the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, it is possible that he will say that the outside is the finest part of it, and that it looks best from a distance; or he may say that the entrance-hall, with its display of coloured marbles and polished granite, is the best part of the museum. Certainly there are many that look at Christianity in this manner; thinking it perhaps a magnificent ideal of life, especially as seen in history; or perhaps as seen at some distance, as we view Sunday from the other ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris

... nice vision had absorbed the elegancies of European taste, pronounced them superb. The upholstery and ornamentation were composed under the direction of celebrated artists. Palmer was consulted on the marbles. Page (at Rome) advised the cartoons for the frescoes, and gave laws for the colors and disposition of the draperies. The paintings, panelled in the walls, were modern, triumphs of the art and genius ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... he who made us aware of a high-walled inclosure where soldiers found worthy of death by court martial could be conveniently shot; though I think we discovered for ourselves the old woman curled up out of the wind in a sentry-box, and sweetly asleep there while the boys were playing marbles on the smooth ground before it. I must not omit the peanut-boaster in front of the palace; it was in the figure of an ocean steamer, nearly as large as the Lusitania, and had smoke coming out of the funnel, with rudder and screw complete ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... courtyard leapt a gleam of lanterns containing tiny clay lamps in which burned a wick that was nourished by mutton fat. Asad, waiting to learn who came, halted at the foot of the white glistening steps, whilst from doors and lattices of the palace flooded light to suffuse the courtyard and set the marbles shimmering. ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... love me. They hunt for the first flowers, they welcome the first birds returning from the south, and they prepare the garden for the seeds of flowers and vegetables. The boys play marbles everywhere, and run and laugh, filling their lungs with my life-giving air. The organ grinder plays for the children and they dance on the sidewalks, singing and calling out in delight. The trees put forth their tender leaves. The sun fills the air with golden warmth, and the world seems full ...
— Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades • Florence Holbrook

... it must be remarked at the outset that very few rules can be laid down which are of universal application. The architectural plans, exterior and interior, of such great institutions as the Library of Congress, or the Boston Public Library, with their costly marbles, splendid mural decorations, and electric book-serving machinery, afford no model for the library building in the country village. Where the government of a nation or a wealthy city has millions to devote for providing a magnificent ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... boys about to hang a black kitten, they had offered them sixpence to let it go, at which they had only laughed. The price had then risen to two shillings besides all the marbles Ambrose had in his pocket, and this being paid David had seized the kitten, ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton

... miserably?" Old questions these, which the sprightly critic justly condemns as morbid and futile, and not to be dangled before a merry world of make-believe. Perhaps he is right. It is better to play at marbles on a sepulchre than to lift the lid and peep inside. But, for all that, they will arise when we sit alone at even in our individual wildernesses, surrounded, perhaps, by mementoes of our broken hopes and tokens of our beloved dead, strewn ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... dressing-table and rushed across the room to one of the several lamps that Dundee had noticed on his first survey of the room. It was the largest and gaudiest of the collection—a huge bowl of filigreed bronze, set with innumerable stones, as large as marbles, or larger. Red, yellow and green stones that must have cast a strange radiance over the pretty head that had been wont to lie just beneath it, on the heaped lace pillows of ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin

... the grass in a front yard where it would be much easier and quicker to pull the grass out of the dock weeds. It may even be made a source of profit by removing the wrappings and charging two china marbles a look. I seem to recall that in the case of a specially attractive injury, such as a thumb nail knocked off or a deep cut which has refused to heal by first intention or an imbedded splinter in process of being drawn out by a scrap ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb

... structure, with a street frontage of 1,364 feet. The office, parlor, dining room and dancing hall are unequaled for size, graceful architecture and splendid equipments and finish—the former exhibiting a lavish display of white and colored marbles, while a series of colonnades rise from the center to the dome. Within the capacious grounds are several elegant cottages, which are greatly sought for by the elite. A vertical railway, comprising the latest improvements, renders the six stories so easy of ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn

... Table Talk—full of incisive remarks—left by John Selden, whom Milton pronounced the first scholar of his age, and who was a distinguished authority in legal antiquities and international law, furnished notes to Drayton's Polyolbion, and wrote upon Eastern religions, and upon the Arundel marbles. Literary biography was represented by the charming little Lives of good old Izaak Walton, the first {142} edition of whose Compleat Angler was printed in 1653. The lives were five in number, of Hooker, Wotton, Donne, Herbert, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... the ceiling. On the gray cement walls were four German photographs of famous marbles. The Venus de Milo looked across to the David of Michael Angelo; the Flying Victory across to Rodin's Thinker. In the centre was a massive Florentine table, its broad top bare except for a big ivory tusk paper-knife free from ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... settle some matters about which they cannot agree by "tossing up a penny," or by "drawing cuts." In a game of ball they determine "first innings" by "tossing the bat." Differences in a game of marbles, they settle by guessing "odd or even," or by "trying it over to prove it." In all these modes of adjustment there is an appeal to chance. Probably behind these practices is the feeling that the ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary

... Museum, actually, since he and Hilda used to meet there; sometimes to set out for gay adventures at Twickenham or Richmond, sometimes to linger about the place for a while and to ponder by Lord Elgin's marbles upon the lastingness of some things, or, in the mummy room, upon the awful brevity of others. Since then Bartley had always thought of the British Museum as the ultimate repository of mortality, where all the dead things in the world were assembled to make one's hour ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes

... It appears however questionable in the present instance, whether, if the marbles had not been carved to his hand, the architect would have taken the trouble to enrich them. For the execution of the rest of the pulpit is studiously simple, and it is in this respect that its design possesses, ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... storm, walked the wet marbles of the piazzas, with arms folded over his chest and head bowed, in a state of absent, moody absorption. At length the hall-door opened, and Rufus ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... one of these wheels: they go and come round the globe; they are the true importers, and exporters of spices and silks; of fruits and wines and marbles; they carry missionaries, embassadors, opera-singers, armies, merchants, tourists, and scholars to their destination: they are a bridge of boats across the Atlantic; they are the primum mobile of all commerce; and, in short, were they ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... contents of his money-box, and there was more silver than gold, and more copper than either, and more odd rubbish than there was anything else. You know what a boy's pockets are like. Stones and putty, and slate-pencils and marbles—I urge in excuse that Edward was a very little boy—a bit of plasticine, one ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit

... things. "Yesterday," he wrote in 1856, "I went out at about twelve and visited the British Museum; an exceedingly tiresome affair. It quite crushes a person to see so much at once, and I wandered from hall to hall with a weary and heavy heart, wishing (Heaven forgive me!) that the Elgin marbles and the frieze of the Parthenon were all burnt into lime, and that the granite Egyptian statues were hewn and ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... a marble-paved chamber in the Palace, the walls adorned with carvings of flowers and birds, minutely worked, the ceiling with arabesques formed of thin strips of painted wood, the air cooled by a fantastic fountain playing into a pool lined with black and white marbles and red tiling. Lattice-work windows gave on the central courtyard, and were supplemented by decorative windows of stained glass, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... sacrificing a ram and a sow, and although the panels lie scattered around the temple, and the figures are broken, apparently no important piece is missing. There is also an altar four feet high, with figures of Etruscan type, which was removed to the Palazzo Chigi [now Odescalchi]. The columns and marbles of the temple were bought by cardinal Falconieri to build and ornament a chapel in the church of S. Giovanni de' Fiorentini.... Not far from the temple a stratum of ex-votos has been found, so rich that the whole of Rome is now overrun with terra-cottas. Every part of the human ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... box-wood head, and I think Mr. Blake carried it for company. And it had a face, like that of an old man, carved on one side of the box-wood head. Mr. Blake kept it ringing in a hearty way upon the pavement as he walked, and the boys would look up from their marbles when they heard it, and say: "There comes Mr. Blake, the minister!" And I think that nearly every invalid and poor person in Thornton knew the cheerful voice of the ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston

... Missouri Compromise and lay a-dying amid the echoes of Manila and El Caney: stirring times for living, times dark to look back upon, darker to look forward to. The black-faced lad that paused over his mud and marbles seventy years ago saw puzzling vistas as he looked down the world. The slave-ship still groaned across the Atlantic, faint cries burdened the Southern breeze, and the great black father whispered mad tales of cruelty ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... They were everywhere to be seen. The pediments and friezes of the temples were covered with exquisitely wrought sculptures. The most beautiful sculptures that have come down from antiquity are the marbles of the Parthenon. The Greeks appreciated to the full the beauty of nature. They gave to their gods ideal human forms, in which were blended every attribute of majesty and grace which are conceived to belong to perfected humanity. Sculpture in Greece, as elsewhere, was ally to religion; "but whilst ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... no airs at all. The American altogether forgot his speech at Nubbly Creek, and found the aristocrat's society to be very pleasant. He lit a cigar, and they talked about Naples, Rome, and Florence. Mr. Spalding, when the marbles of old Rome were mentioned, was a little too keen in insisting on the merits of Story, Miss Hosmer, and Hiram Powers, and hardly carried his listener with him in the parallel which he drew between Greenough and Phidias; and he was somewhat ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... the famous magician, who, with several others, is winning the war by suggestion, and that true soldier, General FitzChutney, and that earnest and eloquent publicist, Mr. Blufflerlow, had been persuaded to stick to marbles, what misleading excitement and unprofitable anxiety would have been spared to the commonweal! Boys should be warned against and protected from Great Careers. Better still if embryologists could discover something which would enable ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... custard-apple, with a sweet taste. A larger tree was covered with white blossoms, their fragrance reminding me of the hawthorn at home; but the flowers of these were as large as dog-roses and the fruit the size of big marbles. Chickango pointed to the flowers; not so much to admire them, as because numerous bees were sucking their sweets. "Dere! dere!"—and he pointed out several hollows in the neighbouring trees. "Me come back, and get for eat," ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... said—indeed ought to be said—providing we know how to say it. She probably did not. She was not intelligent enough for that. She had no knowledge of the world. She had got hold of words as a child might get hold of some poisonous pills and play with them for "dear, tiny little marbles." No! The domestic-slave daughter of Carleon Anthony and the little Fyne of the Civil Service (that flower of civilization) were not intelligent people. They were commonplace, earnest, without smiles ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad



Words linked to "Marbles" :   intelligence, Elgin Marbles, wits, child's game



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