"Rusticity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sciences, which are apt to render us unsociable and sour. . . . Let us suppose, for example, a society of men so passionately devoted to hunting as to make it their sole employment; they would doubtless contract thereby a kind of rusticity and fierceness. But if they happened to imbibe a taste for music, we should quickly perceive a sensible difference in their customs and manners. In short, the exercises used by the Greeks could raise but one kind of ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... buckskin suits. He had never observed scenery. The world, as it appeared to him, was almost obliterated by his own great grinning figure in the foreground: Caliban-Malvolio. And it seems to me as if, in the persons of these brothers-in-law, we had the two sides of rusticity fairly well represented: the hunter living really in nature; the clodhopper living merely out of society; the one bent up in every corporal agent to capacity in one pursuit, doing at least one thing keenly and thoughtfully, and thoroughly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... like myself he praised the slave-boy of his friend Pollio in one of his light pastoral poems, shrinks from mentioning real names and calls himself Corydon and the boy Alexis. But Aemilianus, whose rusticity far surpasses that of the shepherds and cowherds of Vergil, who is, in fact, and always has been a boor and a barbarian, though he thinks himself far more austere than Serranus, Curius, or Fabricius, those heroes of the days of old, ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... the sunken street, supporting a second and more graceful arch of snow, and the street curves alluringly into the trees which rise beyond, a gray wall of misty shadow, the eye is satisfied with a clean, well-composed, strongly lined picture, and the imagination almost deluded into a belief of its rusticity. ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... possess the mind that I have slightly exaggerated my rusticity and remoteness. And yet it is true as I came to that corner of the Park that, for some unreasonable reason of mood, I saw all London as a strange city and the civilization itself as one enormous whim. The Marble Arch itself, in its new insular position, with traffic turning dizzily ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... columns of the temple of Concord; and the solitary column of Phocas. At a short distance the temple of Castor and Pollux and that of Romulus and Remus, which is a round building of great antiquity, whose rusticity forms a striking contrast with the elegance of the colonnaded temples, and which was evidently built before the conquest of Greece by the Romans and the consequent introduction of the fine arts and of the ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... shows a spacious room, fitted with luxurious rusticity. To the right of centre are a couple of broad windows, leading to a veranda. In the corner, right is a table, with a telephone. In the centre of the room is a large table, with a lamp and books, and a leather ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... him the honest and manly though unpolished characteristics of his earlier days. Never was a man further removed from all snobbish affectation. As little was there, also, of the demagogue art of assuming an uncouthness or rusticity of manner and outward habit with the mistaken notion of thus securing particular favor as 'one of the masses.' He chose to appear then, as in all his later life, precisely what he was. His deportment was unassuming, though without any awkwardness ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... a shilling for 'em!' was the unlooked-for conclusion, causing her to start aside with a slight scream, as there stood beside her a stout, black-eyed, round-faced lad, his ruddy cheeks and loutish air showing more rusticity than agreed with his keen, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the town were much more circumscribed than at the present day, a well-known old female (a perfect character in her way) had long fixed her abode in a curiously built hut-like cot in the locality in question; the rusticity of which, together with the obliging demeanour of its tenants, had gradually induced the good folk of Plymouth to make holiday bouts to this retired spot for the purpose of merry-making. As years rolled on, the shrewd old dame became a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... and mistaken things! Of all the odious daubs!" purled Dr. Gowdy to his cowed and abashed following. For Dr. Gowdy, town-bred and town-born, had no sympathy for ill-considered rusticity, and was too rigorous a purist to give any quarter to such a discordant mingling of the simulated and ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... principal character of Italian landscape is melancholy, another is elevation. We have no simple rusticity of scene, no cowslip and buttercup humility of seclusion. Tall mulberry trees, with festoons of the luxuriant vine, purple with ponderous clusters, trailed and trellised between and over them, shade the wide fields of stately ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... Mr. Punch neither admits nor denies the charge. He is convinced, however, that those who do him the honour to read these Studies, might justly complain if he failed to include in them an example of the work of a Poet who has shown our generation how rusticity and rhymes, cattle and Conservative convictions, peasants and patriotism, may be combined in verse. It is scarcely necessary to add that the author of the following magnificent piece is Mr. A-FR-D A-ST-N. Like others ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... to French; in some respects, the French is incomparable. Such scenes as that avenue on the Seine, which I have recommended you to buy the engraving of, admit no rivalship in their expression of graceful rusticity and cheerful peace, and in the beauty of ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... said, he was a graceful and gracious youth, and in his courteous and polished language showed himself to be of good birth and courtly breeding, and rustics as we were that listened to him, even to our rusticity his gentle bearing sufficed to make ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Edinburgh, he paints an elegant group of ladies and gentlemen indulging in an open air dance of some sort. One couple are doing steps facing one another, to the music of a set of pipes, while the rest flirt and talk, decorously, round about. There is no boisterous rusticity here; ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... an elegant rustic lodge (see the Cut,) where commences a new carriage-road[3] to Croydon; which winds round the flank of the hill, and is protected by hanging woods. The lodge is in the best taste of ornate rusticity, with the characteristic varieties of gable, dripstone, portico, bay-window, and embellished chimney: of the latter there are some specimens in the best style of our olden architects. This building, as well as the other rural edifices ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... keen controversy among the critics of the time. Entirely averse to the conventional method of idealizing the character of the country girl out of all semblance to nature, Malibran was essentially realistic in preserving the rusticity, awkwardness, and naivete of peasant-life. One critic argued: "It is by no means rare to discover in the humblest walk of life an inborn grace and delicacy of Nature's own implanting; and such assuredly is the model from ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... have no more folly. I was too good-natured to allow it. I am vexed beyond measure that he should have seen such rusticity." ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... describing a 'soire'e de beaute'' given by Lady Jersey, 'Mrs. —— (la belle) looked as silly and gaudy, I do vow, as one of the old Morris Dancers.' And many other writers—from Horace Walpole to Captain Harver—have their sneer at the Morris. Its rusticity did not appeal to the polite Georgian mind; and its Moorishness, which would have appealed strongly, was overlooked. Still, the Morris managed to survive urban disdain—was still dear to the carles whose fathers had ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... Cheapside, made a call at Mortimer's, the Gun-smith's on Ludgate hill, provided themselves with all necessary shooting apparatus; and Tom, ever mindful of the variety which he conceived would be needful to render rusticity agreeable on their way, purchased a pair of boxing gloves, a backgammon board, and other amusing articles, to provide, as he said, against ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... words, "Phonetic spelling!" Yet Landor was not very exacting. In the "Last Fruit off an Old Tree," he says, through his medium, Pericles, who is giving advice to Alcibiades: "Every time we pronounce a word different from another, we show our disapprobation of his manner, and accuse him of rusticity. In all common things we must do as others do. It is more barbarous to undermine the stability of a language than of an edifice that hath stood as long. This is done by the introduction of changes. Write as others ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... barbarism, Vandalism, Gothicism^; mauvis gout [Fr.], bad taste; gaucherie, awkwardness, want of tact; ill-breeding &c (discourtesy) 895. courseness &c adj.^; indecorum, misbehavior. lowness, homeliness; low life, mauvais ton [Fr.], rusticity; boorishness &c adj.; brutality; rowdyism, blackguardism^; ribaldry; slang &c (neology) 563. bad joke, mauvais plaisanterie [Fr.]. [Excess of ornament] gaudiness, tawdriness; false ornament; finery, frippery, trickery, tinsel, gewgaw, clinquant^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... inimitable expression which depends on nothing external, which in the living prototype we should term countenance; as if a chastened consciousness of her high destiny and exalted character shone through the natural rusticity of her features, and touched them with a certain grace and dignity, emanating from the mind alone, which only mind could give, and mind perceive. I have seen within the last few days, three copies of this picture, in all of them ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... still as though it had not been, or as it was before the sixth day, when as yet there was not a creature that could conceive or say there was a world. The wisdom of God receives small honour from those vulgar heads that rudely stare about, and with a gross rusticity admire his works. Those highly magnify him, whose judicious enquiry into his acts, and deliberate research into his creatures, return the duty of a devout and ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... of flesh, which, in its sable and singed shape, seemed to put me on a level with Richard Coeur-de-Lion,—when he ate up the head of a Moor carbonadoed, and of other viands savouring rather of the rusticity ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... here. The tone of the place is excellent, being equally free from rusticity, coarse egotism and affectation. There is little intimacy or geniality, but the conversation is dignified and elevated, with scarcely a trace of commonplace or gossip. It would be idle to look for anything like cordiality between the directors and the students, for this is a plant which grows only ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... a little back-garden with rusticated woodwork seats, painful to those rash enough to avail themselves of them, and a negotiable wall you and your jug can climb over and descend from by the table no one ever gets his legs under owing to this same rusticity of structure, then you can do as Michael did, and make your presence felt by whistling through the keyhole, without fear of incriminating the Egeria of the beer-fountain in the locked and shuttered bar, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... than the letters themselves. Indeed, all the inferior classes possess an innate self-respect, and a natural gravity of deportment, which differs as far from the suppleness of a Hindustani as from the awkward rusticity of an English clown." ... "Even children," he continues, "in Mahomedan countries have an unusual degree of gravity in their deportment. The boy, who can but lisp his 'Peace be with you,' has imbibed this portion of the national character. ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... social animal has met with general assent; in fact, men do derive from social life much more convenience than injury. Let satirists then laugh their fill at human affairs, let theologians rail, and let misanthropes praise to their utmost the life of untutored rusticity, let them heap contempt on men and praises on beasts; when all is said, they will find that men can provide for their wants much more easily by mutual help, and that only by uniting their forces can they escape from the dangers that ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... the Meeting House. The valley was quiet. Scarcely a sound broke the perfect peace of the Sabbath morning. The sun blazed down, a blistering fragrant heat, and the laden atmosphere of the valley suggested only the rusticity, the simple ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... of it suggests lunch. At the mouth of Redstone Creek, a mile below Dunlap Creek, our port of departure, we turn in to a shaly beach at the foot of a wooded slope, in semi-rusticity, and ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... frank, and sonorous, though practically clear, distinct, and forcible, rather than melodious; the tone of him, businesslike, sedately confident; no discourtesy, yet no anxiety about being courteous. A fine wholesome rusticity, fresh as his mountain breezes, sat well on the stalwart veteran, and on all he said and did. You would have said that he was a usually taciturn man, glad to unlock himself to audience sympathetic and intelligent, when such offered itself. His face bore marks of much, not always ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... with much depth of philosophy. This kind of merit is often found among the German writers; but SCHLEGEL has no equal in the art of inspiring his own admiration; in general, be shows himself attached to a simple taste, sometimes bordering on rusticity; but he deviates from his usual opinions in favour of the inhabitants of the South. Their play on words is not the object of his censure; he detests the affectation which owes its existence to the spirit ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... hypocrisy. Mythologies ill understood at first, then perverted into feeble sensualities, take the place of the representations of Christian subjects, which had become blasphemous under the treatment of men like the Caracci. Gods without power, satyrs without rusticity, nymphs without innocence, men without humanity, gather into idiot groups upon the polluted canvas, and scenic affectations encumber the streets with preposterous marble. Lower and lower declines the level of abused intellect; ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... character, as distinguished from the vulgar and laughable ones. The domestic interior of the Jackwood family was drawn with remarkable truth and spirit, and all the working characters of the book on a certain average level of well-to-do rusticity were made to think and talk naturally, and were as full of honest human nature as those of the conventional modern novel are empty of it. An author who puts us in the way to form some just notion of the style of thought proper to so large a class as our ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... received by magistrates of the most severe character, and represented before a virtuous queen; when, I say, foreigners are told of this insolent conduct, this contempt for the royal authority, and this Gothic rusticity which some presume to call Christian severity, what an idea must they entertain of our nation? And how will it be possible for them to conceive, either that our laws give a sanction to an art which is declared infamous, ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... day. Otto II and his court listened patiently for hours while Gerbert disputed with a Saxon rival concerning the subdivisions of the genus philosophy. Otto III invited Gerbert to come to court and cure him of "Saxon rusticity"; he deluged the complaisant tutor with Latin verses, consulted him in affairs of state, and finally promoted him to the Papacy. Gerbert was in fact a subtle and ambitious politician, who filled ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... discovered none of these defects,—had perhaps regarded the characteristics as meritorious rather than otherwise,—while he had been hotly in favour of the marriage. Then the hair-grease and the rest of it had in his eyes simply been signs of the civilisation of the town as contrasted with the rusticity of the country. It was then a great thing in his eyes that Marie should marry a man so polished, though much of the polish may have come from pomade. Now his ideas were altered, and, as he sat alone upon the log, he continued to turn up his ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... he, like some other monarchs, stretch forth his hand to be kissed, which, to a man possessing a particle of spirit, must be degrading and humiliating. There is no doubt that it was owing to the rusticity and awkwardness of their address, not having been brought up amongst the fooleries and absurdities of a court, that Mansolah's risible faculties were so strongly excited, but he laughed so long and heartily, and his wives, and eunuchs, and subjects of all sorts joined with him with ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... whistle softly, and smooth out the wrinkles in his doublet. There was a certain amount of rustic shyness about him, but his affability, his good manners, and his child-like cheerfulness removed any unpleasant impression this rusticity might otherwise have made. He generally spoke the dialect of Nuremberg, though when with Daniel he never spoke anything but the most correct and chosen High German. His natural, acquired culture and the wealth of ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann |
