"Sumptuousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... declares that in the capital the sumptuousness of apparel, the lascivious dances, the multiplication of entertainments, were common both to the court and the citizens. Nothing was to be seen but jongleurs, farceurs, and other actors and buffoons, extravagance, debauchery, ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... and produce the fiercest and most obstinate contests. The successful candidate is secure, that he will be enriched by the offerings of matrons; that, as soon as his dress is composed with becoming care and elegance, he may proceed, in his chariot, through the streets of Rome; and that the sumptuousness of the Imperial table will not equal the profuse and delicate entertainments provided by the taste, and at the expense, of the Roman pontiffs. How much more rationally (continues the honest Pagan) ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... indignant at what had once been their delight. They laid the blame of their ruin upon the splendor of the house, the sumptuousness of the stairs, the candelabras of the vestibule, the carpets, the ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... correspondingly enlarge the innate character of the ornament; so that, instead of making the miniature appear truly vast, it only makes us seem unnaturally small. Still, after all criticisms, St. Peter's remains one of the most delightful places in the world; its sweet sumptuousness and imperial harmonies seem somehow to enter into us and make us harmonious, rich, and sweet. The air that we inhale is just touched with the spirit of incense, and mellowed as with the still memories of ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... larger public or semi-public establishments. Whether he bathes in the baths of Agrippa at the back of the Pantheon, or in those of Nero, or in his own, the process will be much the same. The arrangements are practically uniform however great may be the differences of sumptuousness and spaciousness. We have not indeed yet reached the times of those huge and amazing constructions of Caracalla and Diocletian, but there is no reason to doubt that the existing public baths were already of much magnificence. Regularly ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... CHRIST. In its flourishing state it contained two hundred thousand inhabitants, who were celebrated for their hospitality, their love of the arts and luxurious style of living. Plato was so much struck with the solidity of their buildings and the sumptuousness of their dinners, that he said they 'built as though they thought themselves immortal, but ate as though they never expected to eat again.' The horses of Agrigentum were celebrated; and one of the citizens returning from the Olympic games, on entering his native town, was ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... them by various parts of his conduct, and especially by the introduction of a horde of Frenchmen, who monopolised the most lucrative posts, both civil and military. He also gave offence by his luxurious and expensive manner of living. The sumptuousness of his table was proverbial throughout the kingdom, and, having left Madame Joseph in France, he permitted himself considerable license in other respects, living a very free life amongst the young beauties of his court, whom he used to take with him ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... Mme. Touchard, the mother, presided on the right and the bride on the left. Anna looked after everybody, saw that the glasses were kept filled and the plates well supplied. The guests evidently felt a certain respectful embarrassment at the sight of all the sumptuousness of the rooms and at the lavish manner in which they were treated. They all ate heartily of the good things provided, but there were no jokes such as are prevalent at weddings of that sort; it was all too grand, and it made them feel uncomfortable. Old Madame Touchard, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... or five shillings; and that the luxury of this hotel appealed, not in its taste perhaps, but certainly in its effect, to the shoddy rather than to the refined demands of the traveller. Shenstone certainly never associated the ease of his inn with any such hyperbolical sumptuousness as this; and it probably could not arise in any community that did not include a large class of individuals with literally more money than they knew what to do with, and desirous of any means of indicating ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... any part of the globe, but which for some time was entirely confined to coast drawing, and was meant to supply the practical wants of captains, pilots, and seamen. The Catalan atlas of 1375-6 shows the portolano type extended to a real Mappa Mundi; the elaborate carefulness and sumptuousness of this example prepares us for the still higher work of Andrea Bianco and of Benincasa in the fifteenth century. As the Laurentian portolano of 1351 commemorates the voyage of 1341 and marks its discoveries in the Atlantic islands, so the Catalan ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... screens and a second tier of columns, troublesome labour is saved and the total cost greatly diminished. On the other hand, the carrying of the columns themselves in unbroken height directly up to the beams that support the main roof, seems to add an air of sumptuousness and ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... well-wishers of the undertaking, presided over a flow of oratory, the report of which occupied over five columns of the newspapers, and visions of a new Aberystwyth swam before the eyes of the guests, wonderful and beatific! Such, indeed, was the sumptuousness of the repast, and the wealth of oratory, that it was eleven at night before the company could be persuaded to take their places in the return train, and at three o'clock the next morning a jovial party arrived home at Oswestry, tired and ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... where the shampooing and washing rooms are kept sweet and clean, the bathing appliances effective, and the cooling rooms ample, and supplied with an abundance of fresh air. This is not the result of sumptuousness and elaboration, but of pure applied science. Amplitude of space, however, facilitates its attainment, as it is difficult to render a ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... possess many attractions for the classic tourist, as well as for the strange flies of fashion. Among these is Virgil's Tomb, which is, indeed, holy ground. The temples, aqueducts, and arches of olden time are likewise stupendous records of the sumptuousness of the ancient people of this interesting district; and, apart from these attractions, the contemplative philosopher may read in the volcanic remains, and other phenomena on its shores, many inspiring lessons in the broad volume of Nature; as well ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various
... the Cardinal was no ascetic. His hermitage contained other appliances save those for study and devotion. His retired life was, in fact, that of a voluptuary. His brother, Chantonnay, reproached him with the sumptuousness and disorder of his establishment. He lived in "good and joyous cheer." He professed to be thoroughly satisfied with the course things had taken, knowing that God was above all, and would take care of all. He avowed his determination ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... its material aspect has a sensuous value, as the wealth of color of Venetian painting, the sumptuousness of Renaissance architecture, the melody of Mr. Swinburne's verse, the gem-like brilliance of Stevenson's prose, the all-inclusive sensuousness, touched with sensuality, of Wagner's music-dramas. Because of the charm of ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... been more than royal and royal in the dazzling French manner, which was perturbing to a woman of Marie Therese's solid German notions. His hunting-parties, his supper-parties, the fetes he gave upon every occasion, the worldly inventiveness, the sumptuousness and reckless extravagance that made each of these affairs seem like a supplement to "The Arabian Nights' Entertainments," the sybaritic luxury of his surroundings, the incredible prodigality of his expenditure, all served profoundly to scandalize ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... cook must be a descendant of one of those artists whom Lord Beaconsfield described in "Tancred," and he has found in Ascher's house a situation which ought to satisfy him. Ascher does not care for sumptuousness or abundance; but he knows how to eat well. We had one wine, a very delicately flavoured white Italian wine, perhaps from Capri, the juice of some rare crops of grapes in that ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... Pope, having been conducted to the palace, which was, as I have said, prepared beyond the port, every one retired to their own quarters till the morrow, when his Holiness was to make his entry; the which was made with great sumptuousness and magnificence, he being seated in a chair carried on the shoulders of two men and wearing his pontifical robes, but not the tiara. Pacing before him was a white hackney, bearing the sacrament of the altar,—the said hackney being led by reins of white silk held by two footmen ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... The streets, seen now under the advantages of a warm morning sun adding a beauty of its own to whatever it glanced upon, showed much more brilliantly than ours of Rome. There is, in the first place, a more general sumptuousness in equipage and dress, very striking to the eye of a Roman. Not perhaps that more wealth is displayed, but the forms and the colors, through which it displays itself, are more various, more tasteful, more gorgeous. Nothing can ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... came valiant knights from all the neighbouring provinces, habited in every conceivable style of richest armour; yet none surpassed Saint David in the sumptuousness of his plume and burgonet, the trappings of his steed, the richness of his scarf, the splendour of his shield and breastplate, or of his whole armour, which, from his lofty helm to his knightly spurs, shone with resplendent beauty. Numerous champions ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... and splendor were displayed in any one particular part of this palace more than in another—if anything could be preferred to the wonderful arrangement of the interior, to the sumptuousness of the gilding, and to the profusion of the paintings and statues, it would be the park and gardens of Vaux. The jets d'eau, which were regarded as wonderful in 1653, are still so, even at the present ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... distinction, and conscious yet sober freedom, than the word Venetian. There is some subtle phrenotype that associates him with the great colorists. His work is, in fact, full of color, if one may trench on the jargon of the studios. It has the sumptuousness of Titian and Paul Veronese. Its motives are cast in the same ample mould. Many of his figures breathe the same air of high-born ease and well-being, of serene and not too intellectual composure. There is an aristocratic tincture even in his ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... King took as much pleasure in this sight as if Fontanges had been the heroine of the fete, and our ladies, to please him, made their hands sore in applauding. This naval fight terminated in a great feast, which left nothing to be desired in the matter of sumptuousness and delicacy. ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan |
