"Overdressed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the outer edge of the crowd of overdressed females and overfed men, and, with a sardonic smile, listened to Flagg telling his assembled friends and sycophants how glad he was they were there to see him ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... applied at different periods to the self-proclaimed fascinator of women, and to-day we will use some one, any of them, rather than that abomination,—masher. Nor am I "puttin' on scallops and frills," as the boys say. I know a good thing when I hear it, as when a very much overdressed woman entered a car, and its first sudden jerk broke her gorgeous parasol, while its second flung her into the arms of the ugliest, fattest man present and whirled her pocket-book out of the window, I knew that the voice of conviction ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... you, you foolish, plain, overdressed, mincing, cheaply-organized, self-saturated young person, whoever you may be, now reading this,—little thinking you are what I describe, and in blissful unconsciousness that you are destined to the lingering asphyxia of soul which is the lot of such multitudes ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... exceedingly well. Invariably they were of the same type. There was the same monotonous sameness in the gaudy decorations and furnishings; the same hilarious crowd in the cafe downstairs; the same overdressed, over-rouged women in the elevator and halls. They enjoyed in common the same class of patronage—blonde ladies with lengthy ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... not suitable, Ann," her mother would answer. "You would look ridiculous going through the fields and along the dusty roads in such finery, and among all these plainly attired country people you would appear overdressed. I hope that my little daughter is too much of a lady in her tastes to ever want to call attention to herself in that way, especially ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... to her than that cobweb to that palm-tree, which hangs on it by chance and which will be torn off and carried away by the wind. I walked about the square where the band was playing, went into the Casino; there I looked at overdressed and heavily perfumed women, and every one of them glanced at me as though she would say: "You are alone; that's all right." Then I went out on the terrace and looked for a long time at the sea. There was not ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... venereal diseases, the insane and feeble-minded; another in the fallen women (and men, too), of whom so much has been said of late; another in the crowded saloons and busy restaurants in the heart of the city, with their music, bright lights, food, liquor, and overdressed, painted women with their consorts; still another in the billiard-rooms and the ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... overdressed, with a pasty complexion and eyes like a fish, in which was a lack of all moral sense. She hurried after the girl and took her by the shoulder just as she reached the top of the stairs that led ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... in club and at mess, the two soldiers soon drifted into an easy chat, meeting on safe grounds. They calmly ignored the surrounding civilians, regardless of the attractions of two falcon-eyed Chicago beauties, loud of voice and brilliantly overdressed, who were guiding "Popper" and "Mommer" over the continent. These resplendent daughters of Columbia already boasted a train consisting of a French count (of a very old and shadowy regime), a singularly second-hand looking Italian marquis, a wooden-soldier ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... size had a shirt supplemented with a trousers-like garment reaching to the knees; and so on, progressively, up to the biggest boy, who wore the cast-off parental toggery, and so, instead of having too little on, was, in a sense, overdressed. I asked this youngster for a can of water to quench my thirst and a stick of fire to light my cigar. He ran into the kitchen, or living-room, and by and by came out again without either water or fire. "Papita wishes you to come in to drink ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... those who first invented balls!" was his reflection. "Who derives any real pleasure from them? In this province there exist want and scarcity everywhere: yet folk go in for balls! How absurd, too, were those overdressed women! One of them must have had a thousand roubles on her back, and all acquired at the expense of the overtaxed peasant, or, worse still, at that of the conscience of her neighbour. Yes, we all know why bribes are accepted, and why men ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... journal would describe it—and a cloak of smoke colour which fell from one shoulder and double draped the other. There was nothing ordinary in the appearance of Auriole Craven. She attacked the eye and held it captive. A woman would have declared her to be overdressed—outre—almost demi mondaine—would have denounced the white face and the red curled lips—would have criticised the uncanny knack of falling instantaneously into attitudes of flowing lines. But to a man the subject of these criticisms was matter for appreciation. By her very daring ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... a perfect host. He had the right word for everybody; his infectious conviviality made them all straightway at their ease. The overdressed native ladies, the priests and officials moving about in prim little circles, were charmed with his affable manner "so different from most Englishmen"; likewise that flock of gleeful tourists who had suddenly turned up, craving for admission without a single letter ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... to have seen that man I described to you some time back, a stout man with a lean face, overdressed, thick red ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... not interest Patience. Her glance went on across the street where an overdressed young man, just alighted from an automobile, stood surveying his surroundings. His eyes met hers. He removed his hat with an elaborate bow. The girl, a little piqued and a little amused, reached over very quietly and drew down the window curtain. Then she resumed operations on the ledger with the ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... was one of those drawing-room concoctions in which charmingly overdressed ladies and gentlemen suffer the pangs of love and jealousy amid gilded surroundings. Such bon-mots are ever enticing to those who have all their days longed for such material surroundings and have never had them gratified. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... disguised masks of Tragedy, Comedy, and Farce, is shewn the same man who gave the scroll to the Spearman, see Plate 29, Page 118 (note the pattern of his sleeves). He is now engaged in writing his book, while an Actor, very much overdressed and wearing a mask something like the accepted mask of Shakespeare, is lifting from the real writer's head a cap known in Heraldry as the "Cap of Maintenance." Again we refer to our quotation ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... Fashion sternly condemns gems in the day time as evidence of hopelessly bad taste. No jewels are permitted in any ostentatious way, and yet a woman may, even in good society, wear a few thousand dollars' worth of precious stones, without seeming to be overdressed, provided the occasion is appropriate, as in the case of ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... morning, Bill and Frank, feeling fearfully overdressed in new suits, and bearing spotless shiny yellow suitcases, stood on the train waving to two rather damp looking mothers and two fathers who stood up almost too straight, and started away ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... night, to see but one thing—to see flashy, overdressed, fat and vulgar men and women gorging themselves! Oh, this will teach me to feel—this at least! I go about with my whole being one curse of rage—I could throttle them! And to bow and smirk and lackey them—all day! All day! Oh, ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... what you are, maybe, but I always was crazy over your kind of girl—blond hair and nice, clear eyes and just shoulder-high—kind of a girl that could snuggle down beside a fireplace and look like she grew there—not one of these domineerin' sufferin' cats females. No, nor one of these overdressed New-York chickens, neither, but cute ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... which she had cabled to Paris, did not come, and the effect of the german was lost. Somehow, the "lovely and gifted heiress" of the newspapers never seemed to Susan at all reconcilable with Dolly Ripley, vapid, overdressed, with diamonds sparkling about her sallow throat, and the "jolly impromptu" trip of the St. Johns to New York lost its point when one knew it was planned because the name of young Florence St. John had been pointedly omitted from Ella Saunders ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... door. "Right this way, Charley." And as the slender, overdressed young gentleman of nineteen entered the room, Carroll again glimpsed the light of amusement ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... at Schlangenbad, Lady Georgina sallied forth, very much overdressed, and in a youthful hat, to use the waters. They are valued chiefly for the complexion, I learned; I wondered then why Lady Georgina came there—for she hadn't any; but they are also recommended for nervous irritability, and as Lady Georgina had visited the ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... you'll allow me to say so," her father declared, "before breakfast is the time to dress, and not afterwards. You're always the same, Selina, underdressed when you think there's no one around to see you, and overdressed when there is." ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... shadows, filled the editorial "coop" in The Chicago Daily News building. Outside the rain was slanting down in the way that Hecht's own rain always slants. In walked Hecht. He had been divorced from our staff for some weeks, and had married an overdressed, blatant creature called Publicity. Well, and how did he like Publicity? The answer was written in his sullen eyes; it was written on his furrowed brow, and in the savage way he stabbed the costly furniture with his cane. The alliance with Publicity ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... qualities of character and his unassuming and natural demeanour made a very favourable impression. But a year or two after his return, he was joined by a Labour representative who displayed the characteristics of altogether a different sort. For one thing, he was a vulgarly overdressed man, and he used to sprawl about the benches with outstretched arms, making his cry of condescending patronage heard in answer to any utterance of which he might approve from such inconsiderable persons as Gladstone ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... the direction her companion had indicated, to see a large, overdressed man staring at them. There was a smirk on his face, and as Harriet caught his eye she saw him rise and, to her horror, realized that he ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... finger, the modeling of the small, brown cap with its two eagle quills—all set the little woman apart and made her fit to enter any well-dressed company of riders in some great city park or fashionable drive. Yet here in the wilderness she was not overdressed. ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... beauty that learning, training, or the least bit of consecutive reasoning could reveal. Earlier he had not lacked books or tutelage, but no one ever had been able to teach him what they were for. This was Basile Hayle, the overdressed young brother of the twins. Now that his seventeen years had ripened in him the conviction that he was entitled, as the phrase is, "to all the rights of a man and all the privileges of a boy," he seemed yet to have acquired no sense of value for any ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... the painful accuracy of this appellative, her husband was understood to mutter that he had rather be an ill-favoured worm than an overdressed parrot ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... with a breath of perfume, there swept in a large, overdressed woman of forty-five with bold, dark eyes and hair that was too red to be real. She bowed to the judge with excessive ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... so, I covertly studied our visitor. He lay back in the armchair, his heavy eyelids lowered deceptively. He was a thought overdressed—a big man, dark-haired and well groomed, who toyed with a monocle most unsuitable to his type. During the preceding conversation, I had been vaguely surprised to note Mr. Abel Slattin's ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... frock coat, with pale gray spats and scarf to match, looked overdressed in the brilliant sunshine. Yet probably Peter, whose purple tie blossomed too gorgeously above a blue silk "fancy vest" of a cut a good deal affected in the early nineties, looked the more ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... with velvety orange lichen and grey-green moss, starred with infinitesimal yellow flowers. And Lynette, habitually courteous and rather amused, and not at all unwilling to know a little more of the affected, slangy, overdressed little woman, sits down upon the other end of the sprawling stone column, and says, smiling at Baby, who is clutching at a hovering butterfly ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... house and planning all her housekeeping arrangements under a constant critical inspection; and, moreover, that she was liable to find all her afternoon-teas with particular friends, or those persons of whom she wished to make particular friends, broken up by the advent of the overdressed and be-rouged lady, who first put the guests to flight, and was then out ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Then as an overdressed, florid woman, with high bullhead fringe and old-fashioned Spanish farthingale, quickly obeyed his behests, he said with ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... you're not marrying me because a lot of overdressed, giggling, skittish old girls have taken a fancy to make eyes ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... at four Deming, with his two ladies overdressed for the occasion in the dowdy German manner, occupying a handsome, heated limousine decorated with a conspicuous mirror and with Parma violets gently disengaging a delicate perfume, fell in right behind the king's household if possible, and toured the park in stately measure, ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... somewhat dangerous unless he was thrown off his guard and "rattled." The witness in question—an influential man, whose vulnerable point was said to be his self-esteem—was ushered into the box, a portly overdressed person, beaming with self-assurance. Looking him over for a few minutes without saying a word Sir James opened fire: "Mr. Tompkins, I believe?"—"Yes."—"You are a stockbroker, I believe, are you not?"—"I ham." Pausing for a few seconds and making an attentive survey ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... me when I went back. I was sorry, went to town hoping to find her, and wrote to the post-office. By some chance—perhaps to get a letter from Giles—she went there. A week afterwards my landlady said a young woman had called on me. "A lady?" said I. "Not at all, an overdressed young woman." It was Molly, who called again. I went to her poor lodgings, she fenced my questions, said she meant to go back to her mother's. Pressing her as to how she lived, she said she had the money I ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... a fairy in a short little white frock, all fine muslin and lace, with ruffles and frills that stood out in every direction. The overdressed little midget was delighted with her appearance, and pranced around in front of the mirror admiring herself. Reginald too, considered himself very fine in his black velvet suit, with a great white collar and immense ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... a crammer's pup—most overdressed of all the human race—would merely have aroused a smile, looked oddly with the Major's wrinkled skin and his old eyes. There was something almost uncanny in the exaggerated boyishness; he reminded one of ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... to Handy's ragtime music—all shoulders, neck, and arms, and tulle, and twenty-dollar satin slippers. Atlanta, too, is young, vivid, affluent, altogether modern; while as for Birmingham, she is pretty, but a little strident, a little overdressed; touched a little with the amiability, and the other qualities, of the ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... Lanyard's eyes. Lackeys made the rounds, presenting each guest with a handful of coloured, feather-weight celluloid balls, with which to bombard strangers across the room. The inevitable shamefaced Englishman departed in tow of an overdressed Frenchwoman with pride of conquest in her smirk. The equally inevitable alcoholic was dug out from under his table and thrown into a cab. An American girl insisted on climbing upon a table to dance, but swayed and had to be helped down, giggling foolishly. A Spanish dancing girl was afforded a ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... half-dozen other spectators had watched the scene. An overdressed girl among the number tittered at ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... an expression which, we regret to say, is sometimes found more pleasing than it ought to be in the eyes of the gentle sex. Habited in a light summer riding-dress, fashioned according to the taste of the time, of plain and unpretending material, and rather under than overdressed, he had, perhaps, on that very account, perfectly the air of a gentleman. There was, altogether, an absence of pretension about him, which, combined with great apparent self-possession, contrasted ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... alight in what is called a tavern, weary, travel-stained, and with a headache. She is shown into a waiting-room where sits, perhaps, an overdressed female in a rocking-chair violently fanning herself. She learns that this is the landlady. She asks if she can have a room, some hot water, etc. The answer may be, "I don't know; I don't have to work; perhaps Jim will tell you." And it is to the man ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... Court Journal. She was a woman who thought on the lines of Aristotle, despised most other women except Charlotte Corday, Judith, Joan of Arc, and a few more, and she dyed her hair and read the Court Journal. People who did not know her sometimes alluded to her as an overdressed woman with a wig. Those who had met her even but once admitted the power of her personality. Perhaps if any one had known her very well he or she would have been bewildered by the many-sided complexities of her character, and would have failed ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... Anstey and Olive shook hands with Fanny, each of them wondering in her mind at the relationship between her pretty, shy hostess and this florid, rather overdressed young woman; but convention mercifully intervened to hide their wonder; and Fanny could find no fault ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... of herself that she desired to project, never dreaming that with every word, every look, and every gesture she was more and more fully disclosing the pitiable truth to the clear eyes of Mary. And the Sibyl that Mary saw was an overdressed woman, in manner half rustic, and in mind as shallow as a pan, but possessed by emotions that appeared to be strong—perhaps even violent. What those emotions were Mary had not guessed, but she began ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... the dining-room. Lady Russell had arranged that the two little girls were to sit together, but at the very last moment some change was made, and Ermie to her horror found herself between her father and a stout old gentleman, who was inclined to regard her as an overdressed, but pretty little doll. ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade |
