"Opulent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reputation. The engagement with the widow must go on. He could not yield the prize; life without her would not be worth the having. What was to be done, then? Why, to wed, and to secure the maintenance of the firm by means which were at his command. Once married to the opulent Mrs Mildred, and nothing would be easier than to obtain men of the first consideration in the county to take a share of his responsibilities. Twenty, whom he could name, would jump at the opportunity and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... Nebraska had, in 1893, reduced freight rates within the state about twenty-nine per cent, in order to bring them into some sort of relation to the rates charged in the adjoining State of Iowa, which were calculated to be forty per cent lower than the Nebraska rates. Several of the most opulent and powerful corporations of the Union were affected by this law, among others the exceedingly prosperous and influential Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railway. No one pretended that, were the law to be enforced, the total revenues of ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... time, from the capital throughout the country, and to become universal among them. In antiquity, Athens attests the truth of this proposition, by rising, through the same means, above all the cities of Greece; and, in modern times, have we not seen in Florence, become opulent, the darkness of ignorance vanish, like a fog, before the bright rays of knowledge, diffused by the flourishing progress ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... canvases represent the Earth, the teeming, opulent earth giving of its fullness. Men with great baskets gather the harvests of vegetables and fruits (especially the luscious grapes in the ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... child knights were also keeping their mantles close about them. A few of the envied opulent swung brilliant fabrics from their shoulders, airily, showing off hired splendours from a professional costumer's stock, while one or two were insulting examples of parental indulgence, particularly little Maurice Levy, the Child Sir Galahad. ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... its legitimate end. Further argument is useless." The defenses of the Sung capital were by this time removed, and the unfortunate upholders of that dynasty had no option save to come to terms with the Mongols. Marco Polo describes Kincsay as the most opulent city of the world, but it was in no position to stand a siege. The empress-regent, acting for her son, sent in her submission to Bayan, and agreed to proceed to the court of the conqueror. She abdicated for herself and family all the pretensions of their rank, and she accepted ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... between them, whether they succeeded I know not, for we were obliged to leave the bridge of battle, before these important points were arranged, to join a pleasant party at Mons. St. J——'s, an opulent banker at Caen, to whom I had letters of introduction from Mons. R——, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... contrived to cast this exposition of Human Error that every bookseller shied at its very sight, as an owl blinks at daylight, or human error at truth. In vain Squills and I, before we left London, had carried a gigantic specimen of the Magnum Opus into the back parlors of firms the most opulent and adventurous. Publisher after publisher started, as if we had held a blunderbuss to his ear. All Paternoster Row uttered a "Lord deliver us!" Human Error found no man so egregiously its victim as to complete those two quartos, with the prospect of two others, at his own expense. Now, I had earnestly ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a man has not a full possession of the language, the most important, because the most amiable, qualities of his nature have to lie buried and fallow; for the pleasure of comradeship, and the intellectual part of love, rest upon these very "elements of humour and pathos." Here is a man opulent in both, and for lack of a medium he can put none of it out to interest in the market of affection! But what is thus made plain to our apprehensions in the case of a foreign language is partially true even with the tongue we learned in childhood. Indeed, we all speak different dialects; one shall ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gold cockade, she made a delightful picture as she rummaged in a bag which reposed upon a steamer-chair, and which, thus opened, revealed a profusion of gold mountings, bottles and brushes, hand-chased and initialed in an opulent way. ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... made up of big fortunes, the middle class of medium fortunes. Then come people who have little, then those who have nothing. All intercourse is regulated by this principle. And the relatively rich man who has shown his disdain for those less opulent, is crushed in turn by the contempt of his superiors in fortune. So the madness of comparison rages from the summit to the base. Such an atmosphere is ready to perfection for the nurture of the worst feeling; yet it is not wealth, but the spirit of the wealthy ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... they passed, the lands, and burning the houses of the Covenanters. But at Brechin, Baillie opposed their progress with a[a] numerous and regular force. Montrose turned in the direction of Dunkeld; Baillie marched to Perth. The former surprised the opulent town of Dundee; the latter arrived in time to expel the plunderers. But[b] he pursued in vain. They regained the Grampian hills, where in security they once more bade defiance to the whole power of the enemy. ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... he attempts to sustain his sinking reputation, and recover the fortune he has lost. The communication of the great secret is now the staple commodity with which he is to barter, and the grand talisman with which he is to conjure. It can be imparted only to a chosen few—to those among the opulent who merit it by their virtues, and can acquire it by their diligence, and the divine vengeance is threatened against its disclosure. A process commencing in fraud and terminating in mysticism is conveyed to the wealthy aspirant, or instilled into the young enthusiast, and the grand mystery ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... balmy temperature and complicated conveniences of Faxon's bedroom, the injunction was not easy to obey. It was wonderful luck to have found a night's shelter under the opulent roof of Overdale, and he tasted the physical satisfaction to the full. But the place, for all its ingenuities of comfort, was oddly cold and unwelcoming. He couldn't have said why, and could only suppose that Mr. Lavington's intense personality—intensely negative, but intense all ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... verandah, on the part of which before the shop goods of all descriptions may be seen exposed. This is easily recognised as the establishment of the principal store-keeper of the town; while his less opulent trading brethren carry on their vocations in humbler tenements. On the opposite side of the street will be perceived a long one-storied building, also with a verandah (on to which all the rooms open ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... windfall, receive an inheritance, hit the jackpot, win the lottery; fill one's pocket &c. (treasury) 802; feather one's nest, make a fortune; make money &c. (acquire) 775. [transitive] enrich, imburse[obs3]. worship the golden calf, worship Mammon. Adj. wealthy, rich, affluent, opulent, moneyed, monied, worth much; well to do, well off; warm; comfortable, well, well provided for. made of money; rich as Croesus, filthy rich, rich as a Jew|!; rolling in riches, rolling in wealth. flush, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... in imaginative prose, full of the glamour and opulent color of the tropics and yet strong with the salt breath ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... in a state of perplexity, the Fairy suddenly remarked: "All those female apartments and ladies' chambers in so many wealthy and honourable families in the world are, without exception, polluted by voluptuous opulent puppets and by all that bevy of profligate girls. But still more despicable are those from old till now numberless dissolute rous, one and all of whom maintain that libidinous affections do not constitute lewdness; and who try, further, to prove that licentious love is not tantamount to lewdness. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... historian, musician, painter or sculptor whose reputation extends beyond his own country. Between the Mason and Dixon line and the mouth of the Mississippi there is but one opera-house, and that one was built by a Frenchman, and is now, I believe, closed. The only domestic art this huge and opulent empire knows is in the hands of Mexican greasers; its only native music it owes to the despised negro; its only genuine poet was permitted to die up an alley ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... would almost invariably have destroyed colonies animated by different instincts; and the law of restricted swarming would therefore by slow degrees have established itself in our northern races. But it is precisely these prudent, opulent, acclimatised hives that man has always destroyed in order to possess himself of their treasure. He has permitted only—he does so to this day in ordinary practice—the feeblest colonies to survive; degenerate stock, secondary or tertiary ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... that has come, and that will go leaving no more trace than her reflection on the glass when she herself has moved away. She sees in her dream the world like passing shadows thrown on an illuminated cloth. She thinks of her soft, white, and opulent beauty which fills her white dress; her chin is lifted, and above her face shines the ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... a flower. One sees many roses—little bud roses, and big, buxom, full-blown roses, and wild, free-blowing roses. One sees many white camellias, and heavy-scented tuberoses, and opulent Parma violets, and gorgeous tiger-lilies—those have been the women of my world. One sees many marigolds and cornflowers and poppies. But I've seen only one white lilac—you. White lilac is the fresh young Spring. And yet it is a woman grown. White lilac is sweet ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... said, was easy, and even opulent in his circumstances. But his wealth, like that of the patriarchs of old, consisted in his kine and herds, and in two or three sums lent out at interest to neighbours or relatives, who, far from being in circumstances to pay anything to account of the principal sums, thought they did ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... case amongst the opulent, who have estates to draw upon, what must be the consequences of a want of frugality in the middle and lower ranks of life? Here it must be fatal, and especially among that description of persons whose wives have, in many cases, the receiving as well as ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... principle is applied. A man, it is said, cannot be a governor of a state, a mayor of a city, a member of Congress, or hold any high office, unless his house, his equipage, his dress and his table, exhibit some appearance of elegance and wealth; and if a man live in a large and opulent city, he must be somewhat expensive in his style of living, that he may exert an influence in the higher walks of society. Then, country towns, and small villages, take pattern of the large cities, and the plea goes down through every rank and every grade. ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... eternal happiness the ends for which society was formed? Are the local interests of Cornwall and Wiltshire, for instance, their roads, canals, their prisons, their police, better than Yorkshire, Warwickshire, or Staffordshire? Warwick has members: is Warwick or Stafford more opulent, happy, or free than Newcastle, or than Birmingham? Is Wiltshire the pampered favorite, whilst Yorkshire, like the child of the bondwoman, is turned out to the desert? This is like the unhappy persons who live, if they can be said to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... imagining. By its aid she found it possible to have furniture bought and placed inside a fortnight, even to a list of books set up in sliding sectional cases. She had hoped to buy those cases some day, one at a time, and getting them at one fell swoop seemed to her more arrogantly opulent than the purchase of the house and grounds—than even the big shiny victrola. She had bought that herself, before there was a house to put it in, going on the principle that all men not professional musicians have a concealed ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... money. As he knelt, fitting the boards back, he thought of the singing woman, Pancha Lopez. The beloved of a highwayman, with a Spanish name, he pictured her as a dark, flashing creature, coarsely opulent and mature. It was evident that she too belonged to the world of rogues and social pirates, and he laughed again as he saw himself, swept back by a turn of fate, into the lives of the outlawed. He must see Pancha Lopez; she ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... of human ills, from good to ill, From ill to worse, is fatal, never fails. Increase of power begets increase of wealth, Wealth luxury, and luxury excess: Excess the scrofulous and itchy plague, That seizes first the opulent, descends To the next rank contagious, and in time Taints downwards all the graduated scale Of order, from the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... all likelihood have heard before this of the inexpressible Calamity befallen the whole Maritime Coast, and in particular this opulent City, now reduced to a heap of Rubbish and Ruin, by a most tremendous Earthquake on the first of this Month, followed by a Conflagration which has done ten times more Mischief than the Earthquake itself. ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... his throne? The heaven high over Is the deep's lover; The sun and sea, Informed by thee, Before me run And draw me on, Yet fly me still, As Fate refuses To me the heart Fate for me chooses. Is it that my opulent soul Was mingled from the generous whole; Sea-valleys and the deep of skies Furnished several supplies; And the sands whereof I'm made Draw me to ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... cost must have been the determining factor, Starratt had often thought, as he lingered before the old picket fences, in an attempt to revive his memories of other days. He could not remember, of course, quite back to the time when the Hyde Street hill had been in an opulent heyday, but the flavor of its quality had trickled through to his generation. This was the section where his mother had languished in the prim gloom of her lamp-shaded parlor before his father's discreet advances. The house was gone ... replaced by a bay-windowed, ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... further turned to day, for above the City, high in the velvet black empyrean were suspended thousands of glass balloons, each emitting the Geissler-like illumination that marked the lines of streets. So full and opulent was the flood of light, that the summit I had reached, the encircling hills, and the farther side of the saucer-shaped valley where Scandor lay, were bathed in an ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... I was hardly more than two years of age, my father moved to Lunenburg, Worcester County, and settled upon a farm, a mile south-west of the village, which he had bought of Phinehas Carter, then an old man, who had been opulent as a farmer for the time and place, but whose estates had been wasted by a moderate sort of intemperance, by idleness, and family expenses. The house was large, well built for the times, finished with clear, unpainted white pine, with dado work in the front rooms below ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... and sleepy, with its opulent Campo and the rich silver mine, heard the din of arms fitfully in its fortunate isolation. It was nevertheless in the very forefront of the defence with men and money; but the very rumours reached it circuitously—from abroad even, so much was it cut off from the rest of the Republic, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... superior judgment he had confidence. Gratitude, respect, and affection, all conspired to give Mr. Percival the strongest power over his soul. Mr. Percival had been a guardian and a father to him. His own father, an opulent merchant, on his death-bed requested that his son, who was then about eighteen, might be immediately sent to England for the advantages of a European education. Mr. Percival, who had a regard for the father, arising from circumstances which it is not ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... that it was essentially a collection of books. He would, in his unworldliness, entirely overlook the fact that it might be a job for a municipally influential builder, a costly but conspicuous monument to opulent generosity, a news-room, an employment bureau, or a meeting-place for the glowing young; he would never think for a moment of a library as a thing one might build, it would present itself to him with astonishing simplicity as a thing one would collect. Bricks ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... which no happiness absolves, and for which men blush at last, that she had a daughter, a daughter to save, a daughter for whom to desire a noble life and the chastity she had not. Henceforth, happy or not happy, opulent or beggared, she had in her heart a pure, untainted sentiment, the highest of all human feelings because the most disinterested. Love has its egotism, but motherhood has none. La Marana was a mother like none other; for, in her total, her eternal shipwreck, motherhood might still redeem her. ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... Barksdale and Imogene Tabb—highly satisfactory and creditable to all the parties concerned in it, but not romantic. Tom, a sturdy young planter, who had studied law while at the University, but never practised it, being already provided for by his opulent father, had visited his relatives, the Tabbs, in August, and straightway fallen in love with the one single daughter of his second cousin—a pretty, amiable girl, who would inherit a neat fortune at her parent's death, and whose pedigree became ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... the war-fund, but actually carried a law making it high treason to renew the proposal. The degree to which political enmity was exasperated by the Euboean War may be judged from the incident of Midias, an adherent of Eubulus, and a type of opulent rowdyism. Demosthenes was choragus of his tribe, and was wearing the robe of that sacred office at the great festival in the theatre of Dionysus, when Midias struck him on the face. The affair was eventually compromised. The speech "Against Midias" written by Demosthenes ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... happy and opulent family, Raised by the grandfather, and augmented by the father, became extinguished with the grandson. Go, Reader! And reflecting on the vicissitudes of all human affairs, ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... minor millionaires as the Rothschilds, the Vanderbilts, the Dukes of Northumberland, or the Stewarts, nor the directors of the powerful bank of California, and other opulent personages of the old and new worlds whom William W. Kolderup would have been able to comfortably pension. He could, without inconvenience, have given away a million just as you and I might give away ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... place it contained, I repaired thither as fast as the heat permitted, and walked in a lofty marble hall, magnificently covered, till the dinner was ready at the inn. That despatched, we set off for Utrecht. Both sides of the way are lined with the country-houses and gardens of opulent citizens, as fine as gilt statues and clipped hedges can make them. Their number is quite astonishing: from Amsterdam to Utrecht, full thirty miles, we beheld no other objects than endless avenues and stiff parterres scrawled and flourished in patterns like the embroidery of ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... the reign of Louis XV., who commissioned him to paint a series of pictures. Carle Vernet, the father of Horace Vernet, was also an artist. When quite young, he fell violently in love with the daughter of an opulent furnisher. The marriage was impossible, and his friends, to wean him from his love, sent him to Italy, where he studied the art of painting, and took a high prize—but he could not forget the woman he had loved. In his grief he resolved to give himself ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... simony is loosely noticed by Shaw in his History of Staffordshire, vol. i. p. 278. He says, "Edward Chandler was translated from Lichfield and Coventry to Durham in 1730; and it was then publicly said that he gave 9000l. for that opulent see." To this Chalmers, in his Biog. Dict., adds, "which is scarcely credible." The Charge by the bishop is in the British Museum: it is entitled, "A Charge delivered to the Grand Jury at the Quarter-Sessions held at Durham, July 16, 1740, concerning engrossing of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... negress offers for sale a kind of chalk with which the ladies of Cuba are in the habit of powdering their faces and necks. She also sells what she calls 'cositas francesas,' which consist of cakes and tarts prepared by the French creoles of Cuba. Many of the less opulent Madamas of the town employ their time by making French pastry, which their slaves afterwards dispose ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... being invited to dine with the lord chamberlain, found under their covers, the one a bank-note for L100, the other for L50. I have already noticed, that these pecuniary benefactions were not held so degrading in that age as at present; and, probably, many of Dryden's opulent and noble friends, took, like Dorset, occasional opportunities of supplying wants, which neither royal munificence, nor the favour of the public, now enabled the poet ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... on his in a luscious voluptuous kiss while his hands felt for the opulent curves ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the natives understood him or not when he asked them where they got their gold, at any rate they pointed to the south, and thus confirmed Columbus in his suspicion that he had come to some island a little to the north of the opulent Cipango. He soon found that it was a small island, and he understood the name of it to be Guanahani. He took formal possession of it for Castile, just as the discoverers of the Cape Verde islands and the Guinea coasts had taken possession of those places for Portugal; ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... also produced great quantities of sesamum, panic, millet,[32] wheat, and barley. A chain of hills, strong and high, encompasses it on all sides from sea to sea. 23. Descending through this plain, he proceeded, in four days' march, a distance of twenty-five parasangs, to Tarsus, a large and opulent city of Cilicia. Here was the palace of Syennesis, the king of the Cilicians; and through the midst of the city runs a river, called the Cydnus, the breadth of which is two plethra. 24. This city the inhabitants, ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... ever afforded by the natural world is that of a complete and far-reaching ice-storm, locally known as a glissade, transcending in delicate aerial fantasy the swiftly changing faint green panorama of early spring or the amber hazes of opulent autumn. A true and perfect glissade is comparatively rare; like a fine display of the auroral arches, another wonder in the visible universe, or the vast expanding and nobly symbolical rainbow, it does not often occur, nor when it does, is it always a spectacle of permanence as well as ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... this. Case met Farmer Price as he was coming home, whistling, from a new ploughed field. The attorney had just dined at The Abbey. The Abbey was the family seat of an opulent baronet in the neighbourhood, to whom Mr. Case had been agent. The baronet died suddenly, and his estate and title devolved to a younger brother, who was now just arrived in the country, and to whom Mr. Case was eager to pay his court, in hopes of obtaining his favour. Of the agency ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... a little kingdom, and largely supplied its own wants. Mills, looms, shops,—all these were part of the careless system, easy and opulent, which found support and gained arrogance from a rich and generous environment. The old house itself, if it might be called old, built as it had been scarce thirty years before, lay in the center of a singular valley, ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... appearances, if we would form a fair estimate of the degree of purity and vigour, in which the principle of good will towards men warms the bosoms of the generality of professed Christians in the higher and more opulent classes in this country. In a highly polished state of society, for instance, we do not expect to find moroseness; and in an age of great profusion, though we may reflect with pleasure on those numerous charitable institutions, which ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... lonesomeness of old age. And then, rather disconnectedly, beating a tattoo with the fingers of his big hand on the top of the table, he spoke of the constraint in which he found himself with reference to the opulent owner of the mill. He told Daniel he had gone on a man's note, had been suddenly obliged to redeem the note, and not having so much ready money at his disposal, had accepted a loan from the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... disapproved by the holy fathers. His relations with the girl had been perforce clandestine, because the disapproval of the holy fathers was matched in thoroughness by that of Diego de Susan. It had been vexatious enough on that account not to be able to boast himself the favoured of the beautiful and opulent Isabella de Susan; it was exasperating to discover now a new and more imperative reason for ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... original sense of superiority. Another class is made for under-secretaries and subordinates, sharp, and ingenious men, the real business-men of the House. Another class, perfectly distinct, is that of the matter-of-fact men, largely recruited from among opulent merchants, bankers sent from country constituencies, and others of that calibre, who are formidable on every question of figures, are terrible on tariffs, and evidently think, that there is no book of wisdom on earth but a ledger. Then come the country gentlemen, generally ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... Such opulent moments come to all in youth; moments when the soul, unconscious of its chains because they have not been stretched to their limits, roams the universe with God-like ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... ascertain that it ever was the case. Those who are sent as apprentices, are learning their duty to receive the rating of mates, and ultimately fulfil the office of captains; and it may here be remarked, that many Americans, after serving as captains for a few years, return on shore and become opulent merchants; the knowledge which they have gained during their maritime career proving of the greatest advantage to them. There are a number of free black and coloured lads who are sent to sea, and who, eventually, serve as stewards and cooks; ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... medallions and spandrels of the arches, the garlands hung along the entablature of the colonnade, and the interior adornment of the vaulted corridors. The columns, including the huge Sienna shafts before the arches and the Tower of Jewels, are Roman Corinthian, with opulent capitals, though not too florid when used in a work of such vast extent. Most Roman of all is the great Column of Progress, at the ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... Bob's(183) political tenants will be very tardy in remitting him their rents. But between Foley House, and the run of Mr. Boverie's kitchen, with his own credit at Brooks's, and his share in and affinity to an opulent Bank, and flourishing trade, he may find ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... accidentally broken, and shocked by the discovery of the confinement and the dangers to which numbers of children in Paris were doomed, she did not make a parade of her sensibility. She did not talk of her feelings in fine sentences to a circle of opulent admirers, nor did she project for the relief of the little sufferers some magnificent establishment which she could not execute or superintend. She was contented with attempting only what she ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... way down the Chagres river. The storehouses of Porto Bello, now a decayed and miserable town, retaining no shadow of former greatness, were filled with merchandise, and its streets thronged with opulent merchants drawn from distant provinces. Upon the arrival of the fleet a fair was opened, continuing for forty days, during which the most extensive commercial transactions took place, and the rich cargoes of the galleons were all marketed, and the specie and staples of the ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... from the village on the morrow, when no doubt, after a good deal of crying and condoling, and talking and persuading, the matter will eventually be decided against the old lady. It was well understood that she had bribed a few of the most opulent and influential inhabitants of Jenna with large sums of money, to induce them to overlook her dereliction from the path of duty, and by their representations that she had obtained the tacit consent of the king of Katunga to live out the full term of ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... of the luxuries of tropical climates, not taking into the account the mineral wealth of the surrounding hills and mountains, which there is reason to believe is very great. This place is, doubtless, destined to become one of the largest and most opulent commercial cities in the world, and under American authority it will rise with astonishing rapidity. The principal merchants now established here are Messrs. Leidesdorff, Grimes and Davis, and Frank ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... upon occasions fiercely savage, this life took hold upon that of a hundred years ago. These strings of blacks, who now, answering the plantation bell, slowly crawled down the lane to the outlying fields, might still have been slaves. This lazy plow, tickling the opulent earth, might have been handled by a slave rather than by this hired servitor, whose quavering, plaintive song, broken mid-bar betimes, now came back across the warm distances which lay trembling in the rays of the advancing ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... waves are crested with radiance, you have the one blending picture—nay, the reality—of the American domain. No such soil—so varied by climate, by products, by mineral riches, by forest and lake, by wild heights and buttresses, and by opulent plains, yet all bound into unity of configuration and bordered by both warm and icy seas—no such domain, was ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... laid the palaces of the wealthy in ruins, and the green lawns where their children had played, had been crimsoned with the blood of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. A gigantic system of robbery had seized upon houses and lands and every species of property and had turned thousands of the opulent out into destitution, beggary, and death. Pollution had been legalized by the voice of God-defying lust, and France, la belle France , had been converted into a disgusting warehouse of infamy. Law, ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... time of introduction he was quietly engraving a little plate of gold, which was destined to adorn the watch-chain of the Mayor, who, after Mr. Crewe, was Timber Town's most opulent citizen. ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... from one in whose breast no anger durable or vehement has ever been kindled, but by what he considered as tyranny; and who snatches from his share in the endeavours which are used by good men to discredit opulent oppression, the hours he has employed on your affairs; and who in so doing persuades himself he has not departed from his usual office: they come from one who desires honours, distinctions, and emoluments, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... mankind. Here we have in some measure regained the ancient dignity of our species; our laws are simple and just, we are a race of cultivators, our cultivation is unrestrained, and therefore everything is prosperous and flourishing. For my part I had rather admire the ample barn of one of our opulent farmers, who himself felled the first tree in his plantation, and was the first founder of his settlement, than study the dimensions of the temple of Ceres. I had rather record the progressive steps ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... eyes; it was impossible, they thought, that he could continue this superb acting forever. A glance, a smile, a burst of ingenuous confidence, a covert appeal to his chivalry would yet catch him tripping. But the melancholy eyes that had gazed at the treasures of Ashley Grange and the opulent ease of its guests without kindling, opened to their first emotion,—wonder! At which Lady Elfrida, who had ingenuously admired him, hated him a little, as the first step towards a ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... had been free persons a few days before, and were often distinguishable for honour, merit, and virtue. The representation of the towns that had been taken in the war, explained that they had sacked, plundered, and burnt the most opulent cities; and had either destroyed or enslaved their inhabitants. In short, nothing was more inhuman, than to drag kings and princes in chains before the chariot of a Roman citizen, and to insult their misfortunes and humiliation in that ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... merely admirers and entertainers, but friends, protectors, patrons, benefactors and followers.—Under the instruction of the masters, the disciples had become philanthropists; moreover, the amenities of manners developed in all souls compassion and benevolence: "Nothing was more dreaded by opulent men than to be regarded as insensitive."[4151] They concerned themselves with children, with the poor, with the peasantry, setting their wits to work to afford them relief; their zeal was aroused against oppression, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... is succeeded by the pride of the merchant— the influence of wealth is again realized by cheap purchases of the national domains—the abandoned abbey becomes the delight of the opulent trader, and replaces the demolished chateau of the feudal institution. Full of the importance which the commercial interest is to acquire under a republic, the wealthy man of business is easily reconciled ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... and world-weary triflers, O idle and opulent folk, For whom time is a foe to be slain, and life's self but a bore or a joke, Take yourselves, and your hearts, and your purses to Nazareth House and behold The brave service of well-bestowed time, the brave uses of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... mirror, face to face With her own loveliness? (O blessed land That owns such twin perfections both together; If guessed aright!) Ah, me; I wonder whether She now her braided opulent hair unlace And drop it billowing from her ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... is no time, diversion, nor glory in this world like that of the profession of arms and making war in the way we have. How blithe were we when we rode forth at hazard and hit on a rich abbe, an opulent prior or merchant, or a string of mules from Montpelier, Narbonne, Limoux, Toulouse, or Carcassonne laden with the fabrics of Brussels or furs from the fair of Lendit, or spices from Bruges, or the silks of Damascus and Alexandria! All was ours or was to ransom at our sweet will. Every day we ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... that most chivalrous of races, and, like all chivalrous races, endowed with a keen love of gain, did not seize upon poor countries, but upon the best lands they could take and hold,—the beautiful Neustria, the opulent Sicily, and the fertile England, so admirably situated to become the seat of empire. So, it will be found, have all conquering, absorbing races proceeded, not even excluding the Pilgrim Fathers, who, if they paid the Indians for their lands, generally contrived to get good measure ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... such an hour, are beyond the power of my pen to describe. To behold her streets once thronged with the busy crowd, to tread the forum where sages met and discoursed, to enter the theatres once filled with delighted thousands, and the temples whence incense arose, to visit the mansions of the opulent which had resounded with the shouts of revelry, and the humbler dwellings of the artisan, where he had plied his noisy trade, in the language of an elegant writer and philosopher, to behold all these, now tenantless, and silent as the grave, elevates ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... of the natural strength of the kingdom, he gave no narrow or conventional account of it. He included in the elements of that strength, besides the great peers and the leading landed gentlemen, the opulent merchants and manufacturers, and the substantial yeomanry. Contrasted with the trite versions of Government as fixed in King, Lords, and Commons, this search for the real organs of power was going to the root ...
— Burke • John Morley
... of my safe arrival?—Safe, my dear?—It was positively regal. Visiting royalty effect. Rodney Harrison met me and I find I had quite forgotten how very easy to look at he is! He apologized for the taxi which seemed most opulent to me, because his own speedster was in the shop, he having "broken a record and some vital organ the night before, and the mater was using the limousine and the governor was out of town with the big bus." His pretty plan was for dinner and the theater and then supper ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... mass of the people were contrary to the self-interest of those classes, because tending to render the people more powerful for throwing off the yoke: but if the democracy obtained a large, and perhaps the principal share, in the governing power, it would become the interest of the opulent classes to promote their education, in order to ward off really mischievous errors, and especially those which would lead to unjust violations of property. On these grounds I was not only as ardent as ever for democratic institutions, but earnestly ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... mood of the weather, and every sunset that glows across the sombre woods has some freshness, some feature that is quite unlike any other. Autumn, too, is a memorable time for those who can watch the face of Nature from this spot, for when one of those opulent evenings of the fall of the year turns the sky into a golden sea of glory, studded with strange purple islands, there is unutterable beauty in the flaming woods ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... he had seen this beautiful young person in all the eclat, pomp, and circumstance of her station, as the heiress of the opulent Templeton,—the first time he had seen her the cynosure of crowds, who, had her features been homely, would have admired the charms of her fortune in her face. And now, as radiant with youth, and the flush of excitement on her soft cheek, she met his eye, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... were vanquished; the victorious Aborigines and Trojans lost their leader Latinus. Upon this Turnus and the Rutulians, diffident of their strength, have recourse to the flourishing state of the Etruscans, and their king Mezentius; who holding his court at Coere, at that time an opulent town, being by no means pleased, even from the commencement, at the founding of the new city, and then considering that the Trojan power was increasing much more than was altogether consistent with the safety of the neighbouring states, without reluctance joined his ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... an extent he comprehended so humane a sentiment, Charles had been tender with the Netherlands because of his life-long relation to its people. He looked a Netherlander rather than a Spaniard, and felt one, so that, so far as he showed favors, he showed them to this opulent people. Charles, with his many faults, had yet a rude geniality, which softened or seemed to soften his ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... rich, a. wealthy, opulent, affluent, well-to-do, moneyed; abundant, copious, bountiful, plentiful; fecund, fertile, luxuriant, prolific, exuberant, teeming, productive; sumptuous, luxurious; delicious, luscious, hearty, nutritive gorgeous, elegant, beautiful; vivid, bright, intense. Antonyms: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... a hill opposite the Alhambra; and the villa is as expensive and pretentious as a villa must be if it is to be let furnished by the week to opulent American and English visitors. If we stand on the lawn at the foot of the garden and look uphill, our horizon is the stone balustrade of a flagged platform on the edge of infinite space at the top of the hill. Between us and this platform is a flower garden with a circular basin and fountain ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... must feel a most singular contempt for a very short name, and on this subject Fuller has recorded a pleasant fact. An opulent citizen of the name of John Cuts (what name can be more unluckily short?) was ordered by Elizabeth to receive the Spanish ambassador; but the latter complained grievously, and thought he was disparaged by the shortness of his name. He imagined that a man bearing a monosyllabic name ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... still to a lower Order of Criticks, you'll find very few Coffee-Houses in this opulent City without an illiterate Mechanick, Commenting upon the most material Occurrences, and Judging the Actions of the greatest Councils in Europe, and rarely a Victualing House, but you meet with a Tinker, a Cobler, or a Porter, Criticizing upon the Speeches ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... been content with these opulent benefactions, all might have gone well with him; but, alas, human ambition and the interests of self lead good men often enough astray, and the Duke's private secretary began to look for favours at the hands of the ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... statesman versed in the policy of European courts. To the eyes of those who observed him superficially he might have passed for one of those cosmopolitans, curious of knowledge, but disdaining action; one of those opulent travellers, haughty and cynical, who move incessantly from place to place, ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... did not suffer from her niece's adaptability. Lily had no intention of taking advantage of her aunt's good nature. She was in truth grateful for the refuge offered her: Mrs. Peniston's opulent interior was at least not externally dingy. But dinginess is a quality which assumes all manner of disguises; and Lily soon found that it was as latent in the expensive routine of her aunt's life as in the makeshift existence of a ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... persons to whom I am under such extraordinary obligations, although the history of my life is short and simple, and contains little worthy to be recited. My name is Chares; and I was born in one of the maritime cities of Asia, of opulent parents, who died while I was yet a youth. The loss of my parents, to whom I was most affectionately attached, made so strong an impression upon my mind that I determined to seek relief in travel, and for that purpose sold my paternal estate, the price of which I converted ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... how many mouths he belched forth venom. I told him to reflect well that he was about to commit himself with a foe that was immortal, for a faculty never dies, and to rest assured that after having brought three monks to bay, he would have to defend himself against numerous legions, not only opulent and powerful, but, besides, very dishonest and very experienced in the practice of every kind of cheatery, who would never rest until they had effected his ruin, were his cause as just as Christ's. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... lodges had been established, crowds ran to initiate themselves into the mysteries of Free-Masonry; persons of all conditions, from the opulent magnates down to the humblest artisans. In the Scotch lodges were the Spaniards who were disaffected toward the independence; Mexicans who had taken up arms against the original insurgents through error or ignorance; those who obstinately declared ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... faded herbage, a score of "strollers for work" that is to say, of folk who, a community apart, consist of "nowhere people," of dreamers who live constantly in expectation of some stroke of luck, some kindly smile from fortune, and of wastrels who, intoxicated with the abundant bounty of the opulent region, have fallen passive victims to the Russian craze for vagrancy. These folk tramp from hamlet to hamlet in parties of two or three, and, while purporting to seek employment, merely contemplate that employment lethargically, express astonishment at the plenitude which it produces, and then ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... change of national conditions from the comparative mediaevalism of the days of the eighth Henry to the comparative modernity of the beginning of the Hanoverian era. It is not, perhaps, overfanciful to see something of the lavish richness, the opulent homeliness, of the earlier period typified in the varied buildings, courts, and gateways of the Tudor portion of the Palace, and the more formal grandeur of the later time in the symmetrical stateliness ...
— Hampton Court • Walter Jerrold
... use his opportunities is due to any one, it is not an instinctive sentiment. The contrary is the fact. Unless we are dominated by some other sentiment than justice, we instinctively yield assent to Aristotle's proposition that the prize flute should be awarded to the best flute player whether opulent or indigent, literate or illiterate, citizen or slave. A group of small children exploring the fields and woods for wild flowers will concede to each what flowers he finds whether by his better eyes or better luck. So with groups of small boys fishing ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... nothing to do but to return, as diligently as I could, to the house of my friend, Mr Treherne. I reached his dwelling in time to prepare for dinner, at which repast, as on the previous evening, I encountered a few select friends and opulent business men. These were a different set. Before joining them, Treherne had given me to understand that they were all very wealthy, and very liberal in their politics, and before quitting them I heartily believed him. There ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... health, especially among the poorer class: it is the want, during the summer season particularly, of substantial food. This is sometimes owing to indolence or improvidence; but perhaps oftener, to the circumstances in which a few families are placed, at a distance from any established or opulent settlement. ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... and low price, used by the masses of the people, are in many instances subjected by it to heavy taxes, while articles of finer quality and higher price, or of luxury, which can be used only by the opulent, are lightly taxed. It imposes heavy and unjust burdens on the farmer, the planter, the commercial man, and those of all other pursuits except the capitalist who has made his investments in manufactures. All the great interests of the country ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk
... insight into human weakness, yet still had never shaken his youthful optimism. He smiled a little thoughtfully, but was openly fraternal to Jim, courteous to his host and family, and, as he rode away in the faint moonlight, magnificently opulent in his largess to the farmer,—his first and only assertion ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... the plea that their ladies had not visited his mother; others, because they had neglected to pay him this compliment sooner. The true reason, however, of the haughty distance, at which, both now and afterwards, he stood apart from his more opulent neighbours, is to be found in his mortifying consciousness of the inadequacy of his own means to his rank, and the proud dread of being made to feel this inferiority by persons to whom, in every other respect, he knew himself superior. His friend, Mr. Becher, frequently expostulated ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... below a serious notice." But the attention of the public was not excited; there was no friend to promote a subscription; and the project died to revive at a future day. A new undertaking, however, was soon after proposed; namely, an English dictionary upon an enlarged plan. Several of the most opulent booksellers had meditated a work of this kind; and the agreement was soon adjusted between the parties. Emboldened by this connexion, Johnson thought of a better habitation than he had hitherto known. He had lodged with his wife in courts and alleys about the Strand; but now, for the purpose ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... in Norway; and I could not avoid feeling surprise at observing the difference in the manners of the inhabitants of the two sides of the river, for everything shows that the Norwegians are more industrious and more opulent. The Swedes (for neighbours are seldom the best friends) accuse the Norwegians of knavery, and they retaliate by bringing a charge of hypocrisy against the Swedes. Local circumstances probably render both unjust, speaking from ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... than a half-century after the first attempt at colonization by La Salle. Its population may have been five thousand whites and half that number of blacks. Louis XIV. had fostered it with pride and liberal expenditures; an opulent merchant, famed for his successful enterprise, assumed its direction; the Company of the Mississippi, aided by boundless but transient credit, had made it the foundation of their hopes; and, again, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... Incas. But, if this were all, it would imply but a very moderate advancement in the arts. There were certain individuals, however, carefully trained to those occupations which minister to the demands of the more opulent classes of society. These occupations, like every other calling and office in Peru, always descended from father to son.14 The division of castes, in this particular, was as precise as that which existed in Egypt or Hindostan. If this arrangement be ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... composed of rum well diluted with water. With respect to wine, Madeira is not only best suited to the climate, in which it improves by heat and age, but also most commonly used by the people in general, though French, Spanish and Portuguese wines are likewise presented at the tables of the most opulent citizens. Besides these, they have porter and beer from England, and cyder and perry from the northern colonies. Where rum is cheap, excess in the use of it will not be uncommon, especially among the lower class ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... cut down the multitude pouring from the town, others hurried to the gates, others secured the towers, revenge and the hope of plunder prevailing over their weariness. Thus Vacca triumphed only two days in its treachery; the whole city, which was great and opulent, was given up to vengeance and spoliation. Turpilius, the governor, whom we mentioned as the only person that escaped, was summoned by Metellus to answer for his conduct, and not being able to clear himself, was ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... little the longer on this Court topic, because it was much insisted upon at the time of the great change, and has been since frequently revived by many of the agents of that party: for, whilst they are terrifying the great and opulent with the horrors of mob-government, they are by other managers attempting (though hitherto with little success) to alarm the people with a phantom of tyranny in the Nobles. All this is done upon their favourite principle of disunion, of sowing jealousies amongst the different ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... call it Urinam Vulcani, it calybeates every ones Excrements more or less according to the Gradus of the natural Calor.—To my Knowledge, Sir, a Smith of a very fiery Constitution is grown very opulent by ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... therefore, to be prostrated at a blow. The clause in the Constitution should be erased, which tolerates, greatly to the detriment and injustice of the non-slaveholding States, a slave representation in Congress. Why should property be represented at the impoverished south, and not at the opulent north? ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... came down and lay among great black and gold satin cushions, and lit a scented cigarette and opened a new French novel. Black and gold was her new scheme for her drawing-room; she had had it done this spring. It had a sort of opulent and rakish violence which suited her ripe magnificence, her splendid flesh tints, her brown eyes and corn-gold hair. Against it she looked like Messalina, and Gilbert like rather a decadent and cynical pope. The note of the room ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... the most gifted female poets that have ever lived, the daughter of Mr. Barrett, an opulent London merchant, born near Ledbury, Herefordshire, about 1807. She began to write verse when only ten years of age, and gave early proofs of great poetical genius. At the age of seventeen, she published An Essay on Mind, with other Poems, and ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... as we have seen, was fantastic, mystical, a bold, independent thinker, the quintessence of the Romantic spirit. Mendelssohn, on the other hand, though not lacking in poetic fancy and warmth, was cautious—a born conservative; and his early classical training, together with the opulent circumstances of his life, served as a natural check upon the freedom of genius. His dazzling precocity—witness the Midsummer Night's Dream Overture, composed while he was in his seventeenth year—and a great popular success were surely ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... proud, sensitive, and indolent, a beacon against exposing himself to similar mortification, pain, and fruitless exertion for the time to come. He continued to live at Waverley-Honour in the style of an old English gentleman, of an ancient descent and opulent fortune. His sister, Miss Rachel Waverley, presided at his table; and they became, by degrees, an old bachelor and an ancient maiden lady, the gentlest and kindest of ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... far-reaching searches after the imaginary good. We, poor underlings, have been taught in the school of sad experience the mortal agony of Love without Skill,—the power of perception, without the power of utterance. We know how dumb are the sweet melodies of our souls,—how fleeting their opulent and dreamy pageantries. But we have not fully learned the utter emptiness and desolation of Skill without Love. We accept its sounding brass and tinkling cymbals for immortal harmonies. We look reverently upon its tortured marbles and its canvases stained with academic knowledge as revelations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... said with truth that, except among what are termed the opulent classes, any protracted attack of insanity, from the heavy expenses which its treatment entails, and the fatal interruption which it causes to everything like active industry, seldom fails to reduce its immediate victims, and generally ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... the Broad Avenue of Confusing Noises, smoked and gazed about them with the independent air that notes among a million the man from New York. And as they walked they talked in crisp sentences, laughing at the seller of opulent Frankfurter sausages and nodding pleasantly to the lovely ladies in short, spangled skirts, who, with beckoning glances, sought their eyes. The air reverberated with an August evening's heat and seemed sweating. Its odor modulated from sea-brine to Barren Island, and the wind ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker |
