"Tawdry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... infinitely older and more elemental truth could be conveyed by a novel in which no person, good or bad, had any manners at all. Her work represents the first great assertion that the humdrum life of modern civilisation is a disguise as tawdry and deceptive as the costume of a bal masque. She showed that abysses may exist inside a governess and eternities inside a manufacturer; her heroine is the commonplace spinster, with the dress of merino and the soul of flame. It is significant to notice that Charlotte ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... tracts of corn-land so general throughout Cambridgeshire. After following this lane about a quarter of a mile, we came upon a small, retired ale-house, surrounded by trees. As we approached the door a stout, vulgar-looking woman, dressed in rather tawdry finery, ran out to meet us; on coming nearer, however, she stopped short as if surprised, and then re-entered the house as quickly as she had left it, calling to some one within as she did so. ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... appeared hugely delighted with the enchantments of the garden. Lord, how he stared at the fireworks! Gods, how he huzzayed at the singing of a horrible painted wench who shrieked the ears off my head! A twopenny string of glass beads and a strip of tawdry cloth are treasures in Iroquois-land, and our savage valued ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... finest Neck and Bosom, in a Word, the whole Person of a Woman exquisitely Beautiful. She affected to allure me with a forced Wantonness in her Look and Air; but I saw it checked with Hunger and Cold: Her Eyes were wan and eager, her Dress thin and tawdry, her Mein genteel and childish. This strange Figure gave me much Anguish of Heart, and to avoid being seen with her I went away, but could not forbear giving her a Crown. The poor thing sighed, curtisied, and with a Blessing, expressed ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... wish to go through such an agony of emotion. The Acropolis made the whole of Europe seem tawdry. I felt ashamed of the gorgeous sights I had seen, of the rich dinners I had eaten, of the luxuries I had enjoyed. I felt as if I would like to have the whole of my past life fall away from me as a cast-off garment, and that if I could ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... which they lost at the gaming tables just as quickly. In the streets one rubbed elbows with denizens from every part of the solar system; many of them curiously not anthropomorphic. Glittering and painted purveyors of more tawdry and shopworn goods than mining equipment also made fortunes overnight, and some of them paid for their greedy snatching at luxury with their empty lives. Brawls were ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... most clung, if not to self-interest, to personal crotchets. What is more darling to a man than the child of his intellect or fancy? How the poor poetaster hugs his tawdry verses as if they were the imperial ornaments of genius! Just in the same way does the politician love the policies himself hath devised, pressing them forward at all hazards, while he is blind to the utility of others. This ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... deliberation. The bell rang out its signal for the actors to arrange themselves; hearing which, she thrust the billets behind her stomacher, and hastened to the great court, where, on a platform supported by four wheels, was builded a sort of hut, decorated in a tawdry and fanciful style, and yeleped "The Bower ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... appearance to his own bonnet than to the hats commonly worn in France. Several of the men had curled black beards, and the complexion of all was nearly as dark as that of Africans. One or two who seemed their chiefs, had some tawdry ornaments of silver about their necks and in their ears, and wore showy scarfs of yellow, or scarlet, or light green; but their legs and arms were bare, and the whole troop seemed wretched and squalid in appearance. There were ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... but turned my own eyes away. And again I saw the menacing negro faces and the burning sunlight and the strange flag that tossed and whimpered in the air above my head, the strange flag of unknown, tawdry colors, like the painted face of a woman in the street, but a flag at which I cheered and shouted as though it were my own, as though I loved it; a flag for which I would fight ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... with some indignation in his voice; "though but little given to run into the noise and chatter of the settlements, yet have I been into the towns in my day, to barter the peltry for lead and powder, and often have I seen your waxen dolls, with their tawdry clothes ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... second the colors shifted and changed; what had been blue a moment before was now purple and in another minute would be a velvety black. A little lost ghost of an echo stole out of a hole and went straying up and down, feebly mocking our remarks and making them sound cheap and tawdry. ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... serious fault arises from his desire to be thought a fine writer. Without making long extracts, it is impossible to give any conception of the absurdities into which this childish ambition has led him. The tropes and metaphors, the tawdry tinsel, the common tricks of feeble rhetoricians are reproduced here as if they were the highest results of rhetorical art. The display is often amusing. Thus, in describing Mrs. John Adams, Mr. Randall says: "Her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... little gilded idol which is labelled Self! And that each of us is a fanatic in seeking to make conversions to our own little god. And I am not at all sure but that education only helps us to put on a little more gilding and a little more tawdry finery on our hidden deity; and that even when we sit in judgment upon him, as we do when preparing for Confession, it is often as a gentle and doting mother, not as an inflexible and impartial judge. Here are you now (turning to Father Letheby), a good, estimable, zealous, and successful ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... been converted into two: one was a bonnet-shape maker's, the other was opened by a tobacconist, who also dealt in walking-sticks and Sunday newspapers; the two were separated by a thin partition, covered with tawdry striped paper. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... given such a glimpse of empire; but, in justice to the magic of such glances which come once from the eyes of every good woman, for some good man, in each lifetime, it must be acknowledged that their potent wizardry turns the commonplace, even the tawdry surroundings of a thousand million every-day lives, into ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... brought away from it nothing but new methods of arranging the hair, and patterns of gowns. The new, exaggerated toilettes of the actresses, their gait, even the spurious elegance of their speech, which seemed to her of the highest distinction, and with it all the tawdry magnificence of the gilding and the lights, the gaudy placard at the door, the long line of carriages, and all the somewhat unwholesome excitement that springs up about a popular play; that was what she loved, that was what ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... tombs and sarcophagi of the Corsini family, and in presence of a marble Pieta very beautifully sculptured. On the other side of the church we looked into the Torlonia Chapel, very rich and rather profusely gilded, but, as it seemed to me, not tawdry, though the white newness of the marble is not perfectly agreeable after being accustomed to the milder tint which time bestows on sculpture. The tombs and statues appeared like shapes and images of new-fallen snow. The most interesting thing which we saw ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... next day a cheap, tawdry and unimposing procession wended its way through the back streets of Paris, its leader seeking to escape even the edges of the mob, lest the people should fall upon the somber little pageant and rend it into fragments. This was the funeral cortege of Louis, the Grand Monarque, ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... traditions, innate tendencies, characteristics, and genius, racial and individual. In the eyes of the Chinese of the old school these changes in the habit of life infinitely old are improving nothing and ruining much—all is empty, vapid, useless to God and man. The tawdry shell, the valueless husk, of ancient Chinese life is here still, remains untouched in many places, as will have been seen in previous chapters; but the soul within is steadily and surely, if slowly, undergoing a process of final atrophy. But yet ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... life here I looked upon as only an incident. The gay tawdry had faded; I realized how much more enduring were the rough, uncouth but genuine products like my friend Mr. Jenks and those of that ilk, who spoke me well instead of merely fair. Health of mind and body should ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... ripe nuts, and your face is always pale. Your lips have a trick of falling apart in a half-smile when you listen. They told me before I knew you that you were pretty. Pretty! The word is cheap and tawdry. You are beautiful, with the beauty of a pearl or a star ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and silver; the railing which leads from it to the choir is of pure silver, with pillars of the same metal; the two pulpits, with their stairs, are also covered with silver; and the general ornaments, though numerous and rich, are disposed with good taste, are kept in order, and have nothing tawdry or loaded in their general effect. The choir itself is extremely beautiful; so also is the carved screen before the organ, the doors of the first being of solid silver, and those of the other of richly-carved wood. There is also an immense silver font, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... at your age, and did not do. Every country has its peculiarities, which one can be much better informed of during one's residence there, than by reading all the books in the world afterward. While you are in Catholic countries, inform yourself of all the forms and ceremonies of that tawdry church; see their converts both of men and women, know their several rules and orders, attend their most remarkable ceremonies; have their terms of art explained to you, their 'tierce, sexte, nones, matines; vepres, complies'; their 'breviares, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... source of them, had ever the quivering consciousness that he was and must be in the presence of an unloved Judge; have you not there the naked bones of a very dreadful thing, which does not need any tawdry eloquence of man to make it more solemn and more real? The unloving heart is always ill at ease in the presence of Him whom it does not love. The unloving heart does not love, because it does not trust, nor see ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... the players would begone, Out of this theatre of tinsel days And lights and tawdry glamour, out to face Even the blank of night, the icy stars, The vast abysses. What the gallery-gods Could give, they well have given; but deities Inscrutabler than they annul all gifts With one gift more—the restless mind that peers Past fame, friends, ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... Somerset House, and Sir John Soane with the Bank of England, continued the classical traditions, but its full force came with Nash, "the apostle of plaster," who planned the Quadrant and Regent Street, from Carlton House to Regent's Park, and the terraces in that locality, in the tawdry pseudo-classic stuccoed style, applied indiscriminately to churches, shops, and what not. Not till the middle of the nineteenth century did the Gothic revival flourish. Pugin, Britton, and Sir John Barry ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... man would want to squeeze such a ragbag o' tawdry finery and milliners' tinsel," said ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... impression was not so much disillusionment concerning all things theatrical as realisation of my worst forebodings. In that one moment all glamour connected with the stage fell from me, nor has it since ever returned to me. From the tawdry decorations of the auditorium to the childish make-belief littered around on the stage, I saw the Theatre a painted thing of shreds and patches—the grown child's doll's-house. The Drama may improve us, elevate us, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... my opinion, such effects are tawdry, and detract not only from the severe simplicity, but from the UNITY which should pervade a painting of this description. Of course, I wash my hands of all these innovations upon ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... dark as if he had been blackleaded all over. He was a negro, Darby knew. He had seen a black man only once before, and he now stared at this boy as if he could not remove his gaze. The lad's clothes, too, were queer. He had on a dingy purple velvet jacket, covered with frayed gold lace, tawdry tinsel braid, tarnished gilt buttons, with long, wide red and white striped cotton trousers, from which his dusky ankles and bare flat feet flopped about like the fins of some ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... he said to the secretary as they passed some tawdry looking flats lying against the ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... 13th.—Visited the town again to-day. Called at the houses of a couple of the princes, in which I found everything dirty, with an attempt at tawdry finery. A black houri was set to fan me. We were served with rose syrup. Walked to the prince's garden—a beautiful wilderness of cocoa and betel nuts, sweet orange and mango, with heterogeneous patches of rice, sweet ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... a Pharaoh might have spoken them to a slave, and as though the bare, low-ceiled, shabby room, with its tawdry Oriental curtains and ornaments, had been an audience-chamber in the palace of Pepi in old Memphis, for this was he who had once been Anemen-Ha, High Priest of Ptah, in the days when Nitocris was Queen ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... the Colonna, borne by Adrian's troop, obtained ready admittance at the Porta del Sole. As he passed up the irregular and narrow streets that ascended to the citadel, groups of foreign mercenaries,—half-ragged, half-tawdry knots of abandoned women,—mixed here and there with the liveries of the Colonna, stood loitering amidst the ruins of ancient fanes and palaces, or basked lazily in the sun, upon terraces, through which, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... by the rippling dark masses of hair crowning her lovely brows. In the silky waves of her coronal, shines one diamond star of surpassing richness. In all the pride and freshness of youth her loveliness is unmarred by the tawdry arts of cosmetic and make-up. Unabashed by the admiration she compels, she calmly pursues her exciting calling. The new-comer is well worthy the rank, by general acclaim, of "Queen of the El Dorado." In no way does she notice the eager crowd. She is an impartial priestess of fortune. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... It has doors that open when the joss-sticks are to be burnt before the toy figure that presides on a miniature throne. A sampan whose owners are too poor to supply themselves with decent clothing, will be sure to have its tawdry baby-house and doll idol, and it frequently has in addition a roll of paper, four feet by one, like a window curtain, with, a gay picture of Joss, in a scarlet dress, in the act of dancing, and generally in a very absurd posture ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... essentially feminine. As I did so I had a picture before me, in which I saw Priscilla crowned with love, the support and blessing of her three little sisters. The picture was a very bright one, Maggie, and your crown of bay looks quite tawdry beside the other crown which I hope to see on ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... execution of the sentence need not occupy us long. Belshazzar so little realised the facts, that he issued his order to deck out Daniel in the tawdry pomp he had promised him, as if a man with such a message would be delighted with purple robes and gold chains, and made him third ruler of the kingdom which he had just declared was numbered and ended by God. The force of folly could no further go. No wonder that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... see it all. They could hold horses at the gate of the inn at the September fair, and so see all the farces. They could see the famous Norwich puppet-play. But he—what pleasure did he ever have? A tawdry pageant by a lot of clumsy country bumpkins at Whitsuntide or Pentecost, or a silly school-boy masque at Christmas, with the master scolding like a heathen Turk. ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... answered me:- "Sir, I was sick with revelry. True, I have scarred the night with sin, A pale and tawdry heroine; But once I heard a voice that said 'Who lives in sin is surely dead, But whoso turns to follow me Hath ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... so tawdry and claptrap: the dirty boards, the grossly painted scenery, the dingy workmen shuffling about grumbling and gruff, ordered and scolded by a vulgar superior. Of course the stars do not see all these things, ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... sea. A farmhouse stands at the end of the village with a farmyard of deep manure and black puddles coming up to the side-door. The church, once interesting, has been restored with more than usual barbarity, blue slates, villa ridge-tiles, the vulgarest cheap pavement, tawdry decorations and furniture, such as are supplied to churchwardens by ecclesiastical tradesmen. But the tower is still grey, and has looked unchanged over the Axe estuary for hundreds of years. Turning up from the main street is a Devonshire lane eight feet wide or thereabouts. It ascends to a ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... mortar dumped at random over the cheerless soil. Above swam the marvellous clarified atmosphere of the sky, like iridescent gauze, showering a thousand harmonies of metallic colors. Like a dome of vitrified glass, it shut down on the illimitable, tawdry sweep of ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... my acquaintance of the previous evening, in curl papers, assiduously dusting shelves and counter. There was a fragrance of the last night's potations still hovering about the place, which had the dreary, tawdry appearance that was so different to the glamour of the previous night. I bade the girl good-morning, and then inquired whether she had seen anything of my friend. At first she did not appear to recognize me, but on doing so she volunteered to go off ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... From the moment she had struck her hand into his, there in the tawdry "saloon" of the toll-house, and cried out, "Come!" she let him do as he chose. So he had carried her away to the city hall, where, like any other unclassed or unchurched lovers, they were married by a hurried city official. She had had one ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... and taking Jane by the hand he led her around behind the monster and up the broad tail to the great, horned back. "Now will we ride in the state that our forebears knew, before which the pomp of modern kings pales into cheap and tawdry insignificance. How would you like to canter through Hyde Park on ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... resting-place. This structure was adorned with an ungraceful figure in marble, representing, "The muse of Coila finding the poet at the plough, and throwing her inspiring mantle over him." To this was added a long, rambling epitaph in tawdry Latin, as though any inscription which scholars could devise could equal the simple name of Robert Burns. When the new structure was completed, on the 19th September, 1815, his grave was opened, and men for a moment gazed with awe on the form of Burns, seemingly ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... had met in the street their former instructress, who was a very good-looking and showy girl, she had not been too favorably impressed with Miss Bennett. But when she saw her coming out of the Lodge door, rather shabbier than beforetime, the March wind whistling through her thin, tawdry shawl, and making her pretty face look pinched and blue, Mrs. Grey, contrasting the comforts of her own life with that of the poor governess, felt compassionately towards her so much so, that, though wondering what could possibly be her business at the Lodge, ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... is a procession-day, and all the saints of some church are taken out for an airing. They are figures composed of wood and wax, life-size, and in full costume, each having a complete separate wardrobe, but more tawdry and shabby, let us hope, than the originals ever indulged in. Here are Saint Francis and Saint Isabella, Saint Peter with a monk kneeling before him, and Saint Margaret with her dog, and the sceptred and ermined Saint Louis, and then Joseph and Mary sitting amicably upon the same ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... city of Mexico. The houses of both the upper and lower classes are mingled, scattered here and there, often adjoining each other. Some few of the better class of houses, like the domes of some of the churches, are faced with porcelain tiles, giving the effect of mosaic; but this has a tawdry appearance, and is exceptional in the national capital. At Puebla it is much more common, that city being the headquarters ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... were very reserved, and even more Indian-like than the Tarahumares I had seen so far, still in their dress they showed more traces of advancing civilisation than the latter tribe. Everything here betrays the nearness of the mines, with the characteristic accompaniment of cheap clothes, cheap, tawdry jewelry, and a slight influx of iron cooking utensils. The Pimas, like the Tarahumares, use pine cones for combs; and we picked up several ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... successfully pretended for a time that he was fully subservient. Ostensibly to carry out Vanderbilt's plans he persuaded that magnate to allow him to bring in as directors two men whose pliancy, he said, could be depended upon. These were Jay Gould, demure and ingratiating, and James Fisk, Jr., a portly, tawdry, pompous voluptuary. In early life Fisk had been a peddler in Vermont, and afterwards had managed an itinerant circus. Then he had become a Wall street broker. Keen and suspicious as old Vanderbilt was, and innately distrustful of both of them, he nevertheless, for ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... those drenching days last week, he slopped down town with his cubs, and visited a poor little beggarly shed where were a dwarf, a fat woman, and a giant of honest eight feet, on exhibition behind tawdry show-canvases, but with nobody to exhibit to. The giant had a broom, and was cleaning up and fixing around, diligently. Joe conceived the idea of getting some talk out of him. Now that never would have occurred to me. So he dropped in under ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... increased my faith in you—it has added to my knowledge of you. But I must confess to you it has made it very difficult for me to go on with Alessandra. All the other plays are in line of a national drama. Alessandra is a bitter and ironical concession. The Morning makes its splendor almost tawdry. It hurt me to go to rehearsal to-day. Westervelt's presence was a gloating presence, and I hated him. Hugh's report of the exultant 'I told you so's' of the dramatic critics sickened me—" Her letter ended abruptly, almost ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... humble churchyard. The grave was noticeable because it was well kept, and utterly devoid of the tawdry ornamentation inseparable from such places in Italy. It was marked by a monument distinctly unique in a European country. It was a huge unpolished boulder, over which creeping green ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... charge. This unexpected accident of the mad woman makes Aurengezebe curious to know, whether others who are in their senses can guess at his quality. For which reason the whole convent is examined one by one. The matron marches in with a tawdry country girl: "Pray, Winifred," says she, "who do you think that fine man with those jewels and pearls is?" "I believe," says Winifred, "it is our landlord. It must be the squire himself." The emperor laughs ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... fresh treatises, aroused fierce controversies, subsided into new sects; and day by day they altered more and more the once noble aspect of the ancient basilica. They hung their nauseous relics on its mighty walls, they stuck their tiny tapers about its glorious pillars, they wreathed their tawdry fringes around its massive altars. Here they polished, there they embroidered. Wherever there was a window, they curtained it with gaudy cloths; wherever there was a statue, they bedizened it with artificial flowers; wherever there was a solemn recess, they outraged its religious gloom with ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... Swift, those spotless leaves I send; Small is the present, but sincere the friend. Think not so poor a book below thy care; Who knows the price that thou canst make it bear? Tho' tawdry now, and like Tyralla's face, The spacious front shines out with borrow'd grace; Tho' pasteboards, glitt'ring like a tinsell'd coat, A rasa tabula within denote; Yet if a venal and corrupted age, And modern vices should provoke ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... judgment was given to the effect that the nuns should retain a portion, while the part of a finger was granted to the church, which was accordingly done. It was this saint who gave rise to our word "tawdry." She was popularly known as St. Awdrey, and strings of beads sold in her name at fairs, etc., came to be made of any worthless glass or rubbish, and were called tawdry. The crypt is used as a regular ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... sufficiently quickly (if jerkily) to keep one curious about the next page. But having very willingly admitted so much I return to my contention, that for Mr. TIGHE to neglect his sensitive and delicate art for the antics of these tawdry dolls is to betray both himself and the craft of which he may still become ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... things, while I stood there gasping, staring, sick at heart. All my vinous joy was gone, leaving me a haggard, weary wretch of a man, disenchanted and miserable to the verge of—what? I shuddered. The lights seemed to have gone blurred and dim. The hall was tawdry, cheap and vulgar. The women, who but a moment before had seemed creatures of grace and charm, were now nothing more than painted, posturing harridans, their seductive smiles the leers of ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... frequent rake Sweeps on the yellow hay, in heavy wreaths, Leaving the smooth green meadow bare behind. The old and young, the weak and strong are there, And, as they can, help on the cheerful work. The father jeers his awkward half-grown lad, Who trails his tawdry armful o'er the field, Nor does he fear the jeering to repay. The village oracle, and simple maid, Jest in their turns, and raise the ready laugh; For there authority, hard favour'd, frowns not; All are companions in the gen'ral glee, ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... Miss Martineau, in her work upon America, states that she went up to hear the orator at Bloody Brook; and, in two pages of very coarse, unmeasured language, states "that all her sympathies were baffled, and that she was deeply disgusted;" that the orator "offered them shreds of tawdry sentiment, without the intermixture of one sound thought or simple and natural feeling, simply and naturally expressed." I have the Address of Governor Everett before me. To insert the whole of it would be inconvenient; but I do most unequivocally ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... culminating figure of Mexico's internecine warfare and questionable financial acts. The story of Maximilian stands out from the pages of Mexico's history in pathetic colours, wringing a sigh from us as we scan its pages, or halt a space in the museum of Mexico's capital before the gilded tawdry coach of the ill-fated Austrian, which is preserved there in musty ruin. For up rose Napoleon III., pricking up his ears at this suggestion of a monarchy in America; and, urged by him, the tripartite convention ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... fell back upon his pillow and closed his eyes, as though he were asleep, and then opening them again, turned cautiously, and spied upon his keeper. As usual, his keeper sat at the foot of the cot turning the pages of a huge paper filled with pictures of the war printed in daubs of tawdry colors. His keeper was a hard-faced boy without human pity or consideration, a very devil of obstinacy and fiendish cruelty. To make it worse, the fiend was a person without a collar, in a suit of soiled khaki, with a curious red cross bound by a safety-pin ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... his mind to see what might be in the Pep Boys' store, far down the hill and along traffic-filled M Street. Somehow the tawdry bustle of this street, with its many shops, appealed to the boy who carried misery inside him like a cold, heavy stone. Running, he started down the hill between the lines of old brick houses, left Rock Creek Park behind him, and turning to the right up M Street, reached ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... the colored people, and on the other to the blacks. The finery of the negroes was in sad contrast with the simplicity we had just seen at the Moravian chapel. Their dresses were of every color and style; their hats were of all shapes and sizes, and fillagreed with the most tawdry superfluity of ribbons. Beneath these gaudy bonnets were glossy ringlets, false and real, clustering in tropical luxuriance. This fantastic display was evidently a rude attempt to follow the example set them by the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... machinery. And Hulia does so; for, at the last attack of Padre Doyaguez, she suddenly turns upon him and says, "Sir, you are a Doctrinary and a Propagandist." And the good Father suffers her to depart in peace. But first there is the chapel to be seen, with its tawdry and poor ornamentation,—and the dormitories of the scholars, with long double rows of beds and mosquito-nettings. There are two of these, and each of them has at one end a raised platform, with curtains and a bed, where rests and watches the shepherd ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... of this word (to bedizen with tawdry finery) is plain. As it is only found here, the N.E.D. suggests it ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... of a mad thing, but her play, her taste, her magnificence, even her general familiarity, made her the fashion. She soon declared the women's head-dresses ridiculous, as indeed they were. They were edifices of brass wire, ribbons, hair, and all sorts of tawdry rubbish more than two feet high, making women's faces seem in the middle of their bodies. The old ladies wore the same, but made of black gauze. If they moved ever so lightly the edifice trembled and the inconvenience ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... a love of distinction, among the lowest dregs of society, as there is also a love of plush and other insignificant tawdry among our more wealthy republicans. Few would have thought of one inebriate affecting superiority over another, (the vote-cribber was an inebriate, as we shall show,) but so it ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... practice. We are inclined to think that the morning is more favourable to dramatic excellence than the evening. The daylight accords with the truth and sobriety of nature, and it is the season of cool judgment: the gilded, the painted, the tawdry, the meretricious—spangles and tinsel, and tarnished and glittering trumpery—demand the glare of candle-light and the shades of night. It is certain, that the best pieces were written for the day; and it is probable, that the best actors were ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... Benedictine lines. It acquired a big house among gardens, built, I believe, by a wealthy manufacturer. It has since been altered and enlarged, but Hugh drew an amusing set of sketches to illustrate the life there, in which it appears a rueful and rather tawdry building, of yellow stone and blue slate, of a shallow and falsetto Gothic, or with what maybe called Gothic sympathies. It is at Mirfield, near Bradford, in the Calder valley; the country round full ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... round the room. Long, low, with four tawdry glass and gilt chandeliers hanging from the not over-clean ceiling, cushions spreading all over the floor excepting in the middle where lay an exquisite Persian carpet, long mirrors on all sides, little inlaid tables, and at the far end, built into the wall with ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... inspired by it would have been precisely similar. Nor in a religious picture do you want the savoir-faire of the master to be always protruding itself; it detracts from the feeling of reverence, just as the thumping of cushion and the spouting of tawdry oratory does from a sermon: meek religion disappears, shouldered out of the desk by the pompous, stalwart, big-chested, fresh-colored, bushy-whiskered pulpiteer. Rubens's piety has always struck us as of this sort. If he takes a pious ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... opened the door for Houston, and one of them entered with him. It was a small room, evidently a woman's, and its general squalor and dilapidation were made more apparent by tawdry, shabby bits of finery strewn here and there. Curtains of red damask, faded and ragged, hung at the window, excluding the daylight, and on a small table a kerosene lamp had burned itself out. But Houston took little notice of the room; as his eyes became accustomed to ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... had a deadly antipathy. He could stoop to a plain style, sometimes even to a bald style; but false brilliancy was his utter aversion. His muse had no objection to a russet attire; but she turned with disgust from the finery of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day. Whatever ornaments she wears are of massive gold, not only dazzling to the sight, but capable of standing the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... explain that though she had overslept herself, and though it would have been all the same anyhow, she had come up to time. Bit by bit the tragic story was forced from her lips—a tragedy that even her telling could not make tawdry. She told with superfluous detail how—when Mr. Grodman broke in the door—she saw her unhappy gentleman lodger lying on his back in bed, stone dead, with a gaping red wound in his throat; how her stronger-minded companion calmed ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... came sidling up and spoke to him. He perceived her to be one of those made by men into mediums for their pleasure, to feel sympathy with whom was sentimental. Her face was flushed, her whisper hoarse; she had no attractions but the curves of a tawdry figure. Shelton was repelled by her proprietary tone, by her blowzy face, and by the scent of patchouli. Her touch on his arm startled him, sending a shiver through his marrow; he almost leaped aside, and walked the faster. But her breathing as she followed sounded laboured; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... told her lover before that she did not aspire to please the multitude, that she would have esteemed such cheap and tawdry success a humiliating failure. It was almost better not to be read at all than to be appreciated only by the average Mudie subscriber. But she would have liked someone to read her poems. She would have liked critics to praise and understand her. She would have liked to have her own small world ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... This latter object was veiled with two flimsy curtains, which were designed to be raised and lowered with great pomp and the ringing of a little bell during service. The image was attired in real clothes, covered with tawdry finery, gilt paper, and faded ribbons. The head bore a wig of hair; and the face was painted, although great sections of the paint had fallen, away, leaving the suggestion of pockmarks. Beneath this image was located the sagrario, the little ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... a moment's uproar when, wishing for a better view, the driver of a tawdry ekka urged his half-starved ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... for us. That thought is not a subject to be decorated with tawdry finery of eloquence, or to be dealt with as if it were a sentimental prettiness very fit to be spoken of, but impossible to be practised. It is the duty of every Christian man and woman, and they have not done their duty unless they have learned that the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... from, with fix'd eyes Pursuing me; and one most strange of all That, as I pass'd the crystal on the wall, Look'd from it—left it—and as I return, Returns, and looks me face to face again— Unless some false reflection of my brain, The outward semblance of myself—Myself? How know that tawdry shadow for myself, But that it moves as I move; lifts his hand With mine; each motion echoing so close The immediate suggestion of the will In which myself I recognize—Myself!— What, this fantastic Segismund the same Who last night, as for all ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... Sorrows, upon a rock, in her widow's weeds, exhibiting a grief so intense that she may well have been made larger than life, in order to support a misery which would crush a mortal woman. It is so fine, this emblem of divine suffering, that it obscures its tawdry surroundings, its pinchbeck tabernacle, gilding and red paint. When she is carried in a paso, as whiles she is, no spangled robe is put over her, no priest's vestment, no crown or veil. Seven swords are driven into her bosom: she is unconscious ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... chiefly in the Scottish Language" (Inverness, 1804), 2 vols. 12mo. Among some rubbish, and much tawdry versification, there is occasional power, which, however, is insufficient to compensate for the general inferiority. There are only a few songs, but these are superior to the poems; and those following are not unworthy of a place among the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... this quip would leave us cold. The 'Isles of Greece' seem rather tawdry too; but on the 'Address to the Ocean,' or on 'The Dying Gladiator,' 'time ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... students of the gospel a interpreted by Brother Tresize, and sufficiently saintly always, presuming that no disturbing element such as a new hat or an unfamiliar dress was introduced to awaken the critical spirit. The young men, looking in their Sunday clothes like awkward and tawdry imitations of their workaday selves, were instructed by Brother Spence; and Brother Bowden, being the kindliest, gentlest, most incapable man of the band of brothers, was given the charge of the boys' Second Class, a class of youthful heathen, rampageous, ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... rightly put together. The ostentation of the home, the tawdry luxury and profusion of fashionable society, creep into the church and set up their standards there, and the religion of Christ puts on a costume in which its Founder would ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... are going to act this play without any special preparations. Truth looks tawdry when ...
— The Cycle of Spring • Rabindranath Tagore
... portraits by Velasquez, a dignity which is in keeping with their value. The splendid designs show brilliantly on a background of scarlet, rose colour, or black silk; and that which, hanging loosely, looks only tawdry and ragged, had a magnificent effect when ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... At the tawdry concert hall everything was as it should be, and in the brief interval before the arrival of the Poles he received inspiriting news from one of his workers. Money was flowing, buckets of it, but beyond doubt they held the longer ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... for cooking and washing, were stowed away out of reach of defilement. Above his bed the simple-hearted soldier had nailed a crude coloured print of the Kaiser-i-Hind in robes and crown; and on the opposing wall hung a tawdry looking-glass, almost as ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... room in the Palazzo Arconati, on the Grand Canal, Venice. The room itself is beautiful in its decayed grandeur, but the furnishings and hangings are either tawdry and meretricious or avowedly modern. The three windows at the back open on to a narrow covered balcony, or loggia, and through them can be seen the west side of the canal. Between recessed double doors on either side of the room is a fireplace out of use and ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... livery of the Czar? They do his will. Nor tassell'd silk, nor epaulet, Nor plume, nor torse— No splendour gilds, all sternly met, Our foot and horse. But, dark and still, we inly glow, Condensed in ire! Strike, tawdry slaves, and ye shall know Our gloom is fire. In vain your pomp, ye evil powers, Insults the land; Wrongs, vengeance, and the Cause are ours, And God's right hand! Madmen! they trample into snakes The wormy clod! Like fire, beneath their feet awakes The sword ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... stretch all around, Astir with restless, hurried life, and spanned By arches that with thund'rous trains resound, And throbbing wires that galvanize the land; Gin palaces in tawdry splendor stand; The newsboys shriek of mangled bodies found; The last burlesque is playing in the Strand— In modern prose, all poetry seems drowned. Yet in ten thousand homes this April night An ancient people celebrates ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... was small, but not uncomfortably furnished, though the articles had originally been of the tawdry fashion which such places affect, and had probably not been new by several stages when ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... transactions, was well filled, neat, and tastefully fitted up. There was no show, however—no empty glare to catch the eye; on the contrary, the whole concern was marked by an air of solid, warm comfort, that was much more indicative of wealth and independence than tawdry embellishment would ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... drug-born dream of Poe could equal it for grisly fascination. Frankenstein, de Maupassant's "Horla," all the fantastic literary monsters of the past faded to tawdry, childish bogeys beside the actual observations of Stern, the engineer, the man of ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... intonation; her hands and arms, which were bare and of old ivory hue, were laden with barbaric jewelry, much of it tawdry silverware of the bazaars. Clearly she was a half-caste of ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... show! In truth the condition of poverty of Joseph and his espoused, and the like poor condition of the shepherds who were now shortly to be used of the Lord, was the only fitting way that we should expect the Lord would have it. All the pomp and glory of earthly preparation would have been but tawdry tinsel, detracting from the glorious things that were shortly to follow. Each one of the earthly players whom Jehovah had assigned to perform a part upon this stage was humble, meek, and possessed of faith in the promises of God. In heaven there was a host of angels that ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... French vignettes!" cried Opportunity, running up to a table where lay some inferior coloured engravings, that were intended to represent the cardinal virtues, under the forms of tawdry female beauties. The workmanship was French, as were the inscriptions. Now, Opportunity knew just enough French to translate these inscriptions, simple and school-girl as they were, as wrong as they could possibly be ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... saloon was quite an imposing place, and very tawdry with gilt adornments and coloured glass. They turned into a road at the left, according to the direction given by the girl, and then followed a road which was scarcely more than a track, and that abounded ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... the devil did she want to come nosing about in America, reminding him of all the things that he wanted to forget? The odor of her sachet annoyed him. A bath and boudoir! He realized now that she had always annoyed him with her pretty silly little affectations and her tawdry smatterings of the things that were worth while. He owed her nothing. He had made love to her, of course, because that was what a woman of her type expected from men of his. But there had been no damage done on either side, for ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... first inclination carried, that even the hellish yoke of slavery cannot stifle the savage desire of admiration which the black heroes inherit from both their parents, for all the hardly-earned savings of a slave are commonly expended in a little tawdry finery. And I have seldom known a good male or female servant that was not particularly fond of dress. Their clothes were their riches; and I argue from analogy, that the fondness for dress, so extravagant in females, arises from the same cause—want of cultivation of mind. ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... consciousness had continually grown clearer that she could never find in her old mode of life any satisfying pleasure. She had caught a glimpse of something so much better, that her former world looked as tawdry as the mimic scenery of a second-rate theatre. A genuine man, such as she had not seen or at least not recognized before, had stepped out before the gilt and tinsel, and the miserable shams were seen in contrast ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... greatness, of goodness, will be the last things that he will see; for seldom indeed will they be presented to his sight. For the pure, the sweet, the graceful, the dignified, he will have thrust before his eyes gaudy, tawdry caricature and grimace; and, worse still, perhaps wholly vulgar obscenities. Were he in his boyhood given a present in the pictorial line, it would be of an Opera-dancer or a race-course, or an abomination of London low life. What "slang" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... the glasses ranked, and round go the healths and bumpers till they are carried to bed. And this is the constant method of passing away their hours, days, months, years, and ages. I have many times took great satisfaction by standing in the court, and seeing how the tawdry butterflies vie upon one another: the ladies shall measure the height of their humours by the length of their trails, which must be borne up by a page behind. The nobles justle one another to get nearest to the king's elbow, and wear gold chains of that weight and bigness as require no less strength ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... which the huge body was clothed. A great crowd pressed to the railing to gaze their fill and go away. Behind the division tall troopers in cuirasses mounted guard and moved carelessly about. It was all tawdry, but tawdry on a magnificent scale—all unlike the man in whose honour it was done. For he had been simple ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... necklace and bracelets of glass beads; and her green apron was marvellously braided in a large pattern. Martha, in her clean print dress, and white handkerchief pinned round her throat, was a pleasant contrast to the tawdry girl, who looked wildly at Stephen as he entered, as if she scarcely knew what ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... demanded to see the room, and he was led upstairs to a small and rather dark chamber, containing a fair-sized oval table surrounded by red plush chairs, a red plush sofa along one side, and a narrow sideboard along another. The walls supported tawdry and dilapidated decorations, in which beveled mirrors and faded gilding bore a prominent part. Two large but quite worthless oil paintings hung above the fireplace and the sideboard respectively, and the window was covered with ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... number of chairs with curved backs. The table was covered with a long and exquisitely embroidered Indian cloth, of which the prevailing colour was a brilliant orange-red, that glowed and had a sheen which was almost fiery. In the centre of this table stood a tawdry Japanese vase, worth, perhaps, five or six shillings. A lovely bracket of carved wood fixed to the wall held ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... had forgotten to say, that that majestic square was filled with military, with exceedingly small firelocks, the men ludicrously young and diminutive for the most part, in a uniform at once cheap and tawdry,—like those supplied to the warriors at Astley's, or from still humbler theatrical wardrobes: indeed, the whole scene was just like that of a little theatre; the houses curiously small, with arcades and balconies, out of ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... called the Garter King of Arms stepped forward and in a loud voice recited the earthly titles and honours of the simple little dead man; and, although few qualities are commoner than physical courage, the whole catalogue seemed ridiculous and tawdry until the being came to the two words, "Victoria Cross". The being, having lived his glorious moments, withdrew. The Funeral March of Chopin tramped with its excruciating dragging tread across the ruins of the soul. And finally ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... from a cab at the door of a rather dissipated looking mansion in the northern suburb. A servant admitted me, but I had to wait alone for a quarter of an hour or more in the stuffy and rather tawdry luxury of a great drawing-room. After a time I realized that Agatha was making me wait purposely in a refinement of cruelty, knowing well what torments I ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... do with books? The Herr Doctor might perhaps be asked for his advice; but we have no index expurgatorius in Gruenewald. Had we but that, we should be the most absolute parody and farce upon this tawdry earth." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... canary or a linnet at the curtained window and at least one cat or dog or maybe both. This type is the progenitor of our stage acrobat, it is the primitive stage of these old-time troubadours, and it is still prevalent in times of peace in France. The strong man gotten in tawdry pink tights and much worn black velvet with his very elaborate and drawn out speeches, in delicate French, concerning the marvels of his art and the long wait for the stipulated number of dix centimes pieces before his marvellous ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... dropped out of Handel's life, wrote in November: "The concerts begin next Saturday at the Haymarket. Carestini sings, Pescetti composes; the house is made up into little boxes, like the playhouses abroad." Dr. Burney gives a comic account of the undertaking. "The opera, a tawdry, expensive and meretricious lady, who had been accustomed to high keeping, was now reduced to a very humble state. Her establishment was not only diminished, but her servants reduced to half-pay. Pescetti seems ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... scythe. Through a rift in the trees appeared a patch of delicate blue sky and the edge of a rosy cloud. Mrs. LeMasters came to the wistful end of an alluring and musty reminiscence and gazed regretfully at the tawdry beauties of the present. Then she turned her eyes upon Joe, and with a sigh that was sodden with romance: "How could you ever bear to leave that ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... woman, nor yet in the mere idol; not in those lovely creations which awaken a sympathetic throb of tenderness; nor in those stern, motionless types,—which embody a dogma; not in the classic features of marble goddesses, borrowed as models; nor in the painted images which stare upon us from tawdry altars in flaxen wigs and embroidered petticoats. ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... taste ever goes to a theatre to look at the fronts of the boxes. Comfortable and roomy seats, perfect cleanliness, decent and fitting curtains and other furniture, of good stuff, but neither costly nor tawdry, and convenient, but not dazzling, light, are the proper requirements in the furnishing of an opera-house. As for the persons who go there to look at each other—to show their dresses—to yawn away waste hours—to obtain a maximum of momentary excitement—or to say they were there, at ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... to take the hint. She sought them out instead. There followed seven tawdry, hard-working, heartbreaking years. Supe, walk-on, stock, musical comedy—Josie went through them all. If any illusions about the stage had survived her Wapello days, they would have vanished in the first six months of her dramatic career. By the time ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... tents, present a companion piece to the spectacle which the so-called Park-hill affords. It is Naples' "Largo dei Castello," with its dancing apes, shrieking Bajazzoes, the whole deafening jubilee which has been transported to a northern wood. Here also, in the wooden booths, large, tawdry pictures show what delicious plays you may enjoy within. The beautiful female horse-rider stands upon the wooden balcony and cracks with her whip, whilst Harlequin blows the trumpet. Fastened to a perch, large, gay parrots nod over the heads of the multitude. Here stands ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... bankers' agents, or, in cases, only by a hotel servant armed with a letter of instructions. Here and there a bored, tired-eyed European had found time, for somebody-or-other's sake, to pounce on a new arrival and bear him away to breakfast and a tawdry imitation of the real hospitality of northern India; but for the most part the beardless boys lounged in the red-hot customs shed (where they were to be mulcted for the privilege of serving their country) ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... small and close the room was! He leaned out on the sill, as far out as he could, in the sun. It was shining full down the street now, gilding the canal-like river at the foot, and throwing over the tall, dingy houses on the opposite side, a tawdry brightness, which, unlike that of the morning with its suggestion of dewy shade, only served to bring out the shabbiness of broken plaster and paintless window; a shamefaced yet aggressive shabbiness, where high-arched doorways ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... He may be careful to put on his boxing-gloves, and yet forget, that, the older they grow, the more plainly may the knuckles inside be felt. Moreover, in the heat of contest, the eye is insensibly drawn to the crown of victory, whose tawdry tinsel glitters through that dust of the ring which obscures Truth's wreath of simple leaves. I have sometimes thought that my young friend, Mr. Biglow, needed a monitory hand laid on his arm,—aliquid sufflaminandus erat. I have never thought it good husbandry to water the tender plants ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... evidently more than half a joke. Anti-Smith was more good-humouredly in evidence than the winning party. Just this touch of buffoonery completed our sense of the farce-comedy character of the situation. The town was tawdry in its preparations—and knew it; but half sincere in its enthusiasm—and knew it. If the crowd had been composed of Americans, we should have anticipated an unhappy time for Smith; but good, loyal Canadians, by the limitations ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... rumpled gauze and tarnished spangles, to sing. In a poor little voice, feebler and shriller than the chattering of the monkeys, she sang a song about the "Grecian Bend," and enacted the same, walking round and round the stage whirling her tawdry finery. Then Anne, aged twelve, came in as a boy and joined her. Both the girls had rather pretty features, blue eyes, and tightly curling hair; both had pleasing faces; but Anne was solid and phlegmatic, ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... lowering, militant expression, the smouldering fire in her eyes proclaimed it. Her long, rather narrow face was gripped between her hands; her elbows rested upon the brick parapet. She gazed at that world of blood-red mists, of unshapely, grotesque buildings, of strange, tawdry colors; she listened to the medley of sounds—crude, shrill, insistent, something like the groaning of a world stripped naked—and she had all the time the air of one who hates the thing ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... but sat, gazing straight before her, dry-eyed and motionless, but with an ache in the throat which Martin divined so strongly that it made his own throat ache. He regretted that he had spoken. It seemed so tawdry what he had offered her—mere money—compared with what she offered him. He offered her an extraneous thing with which he could part without a pang, while she offered him herself, along with disgrace and shame, and sin, and ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... go through this world, looking among their fellows with reverence, as one looks amid the dust and rubbish of old shops for hidden works of Titian and Leonardo, and, finding them, however cracked or torn or painted over with tawdry daubs of pretenders, immediately recognize the divine original, and set themselves to cleanse and restore. Such be God's real priests, whose ordination and anointing are from the Holy Spirit; and he who hath not this enthusiasm is not ordained of God, though whole synods ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... am master here now of everything; so go and take off all that tawdry rubbish. You will never make a soldier, and I shall tame down all this bullying haughtiness. You never thought my day would come when I was forced to put up with the insults and jeers of a miserable cub of a boy. But every man has ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... send me out the programme of the coming Promenade Concert season? I would give anything to hear Wagner and Beethoven once more. My allegiance to these giants, as to Shakespeare and Milton, grows stronger every day. The appalling tawdry trash that passes for music nowadays, and the degradation of art and literature which seems to be the feature of the twentieth century, intensify my loyalty to great musicians and noble writers. What is the cause of this decadence? There is surely enough inspiration for genius in this ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... toward the street curb. Against her will, Miss Theodosia surged, too. Loud cries filled her ears—ecstatic cries of little children. Down the usually quiet street marched, in all its brilliancy of color and tinsel and tawdry splendor, the street parade. Horses curvetted, elephants patiently plodded, huge cars of mystery swung by; clowns smirked, to the riotous ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... terror. The interior of the five-room house gave just such an effect of bizarre and extravagant contrast; an effect, too, of luxury, though in truth it was furnished for the most part with stuffs and objects picked up at no very great expense in San Francisco shops. Nevertheless, there was nothing tawdry and, here and there, something really precious. Draperies on the walls, furniture made by Wen Ho and Prosper, lacquered in black and red, brass and copper, bright pewter, gay china, some fur rugs, a gorgeous Oriental lamp, bookcases with volumes ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt |
