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Ceremonious   Listen
adjective
Ceremonious  adj.  
1.
Consisting of outward forms and rites; ceremonial. Note: (In this sense ceremonial is now preferred.) "The ceremonious part of His worship."
2.
According to prescribed or customary rules and forms; devoted to forms and ceremonies; formally respectful; punctilious. "Ceremonious phrases." "Too ceremonious and traditional."
Synonyms: Formal; precise; exact. See Formal.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ceremonious" Quotes from Famous Books



... apprised of the landing of Marie de Medicis than, after having vehemently reproached the King for a haste which she designated as insulting to herself, she made instant preparations for her return to Paris, resolutely refusing to assist at the ceremonious reception of the new Queen; nor could the expostulations of Henry, even accompanied, as they were, by the most profuse proofs of his continued affection, induce her to rescind her determination. To every representation of the monarch she replied by reminding him ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... Dame Spider arose with a rustle, Welcomed him with ceremonious bustle; Quick as a flash threw her long arms around him, Heeded no buzzing, but held ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates

... after Mexico,—pleasant for young soldiers destined to die on the plains of Gettysburg or the cloudy heights of Lookout Mountain. There was an esprit de corps in the little band, a dignity of bearing, and a ceremonious state, lost in the great struggle which came afterward. That great struggle now lies ten years back; yet, to-day, when the silver-haired veterans meet, they pass it over as a thing of the present, and go back to the ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... painting and domestic architecture, nourished at Brussels; and nowhere were troops so well equipped, burghers more prosperous, learning more widespread, than in his domains. Here, too, were the most ceremonious courtesy, the most splendid banquets, and the most wonderful display of jewels, plate, and cloth-of-gold. Charles VII., a clever though a cold-hearted, indolent man, let Philip alone, already seeing how the game ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge

... four of its most distinguished members were introduced under Greek names, invented by Boileau for his friend's use. The consultation held by these sages, which respects everything save the case of the patient—the ceremonious difficulty with which they are at first brought to deliver their opinions—the vivacity and fury with which each finally defends his own, menacing the instant death of the patient if any other treatment be observed, seemed all to the public highly comical, and led many reflecting men ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... you have got!" sighed Charmian. "May I come to see you? Not a ceremonious call. In your own room; ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells

... boasts, that no one of the kings of Aragon has been stigmatized by a cognomen of infamy, as in most of the other royal races of Europe. Peter IV., "the Ceremonious," ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... sin and shame are ever tied together With Gordian knots of such a strong thread spun, They cannot without violence be undone." "One whose mind Appears more like a ceremonious chapel Full of sweet music, than a thronging presence." "Gentry? 'tis nought else But a superstitious relic of time past; And, sifted to the true worth, it is nothing But ancient riches." "What is death? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... of the Signor Gradenigo, as he slowly returned towards his closet, after a ceremonious leave-taking with his guest, in the outer apartment. Closing the door, he commenced pacing the small apartment with the step and eye of a man who again mused with some anxiety. After a minute of profound stillness, a door, concealed by the hangings of the room, was cautiously opened, ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... contemplation of the chivalrous era, arises from the dangers and virtues by which it was distinguished,—from the constant hazards in which its warriors passed their days, and the mild and generous valour with which they met those hazards,—joined to the singular contrast which it presented between the ceremonious polish and gallantry of the nobles, and the brutish ignorance of the body of the people:—if these are, as we conceive they are, the sources of the charm which still operates in behalf of the days of knightly ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... witness and to perform in spectacles where speech, music, song and dance created an image of nobility and strange beauty. When the modern revolution came, Noh after a brief unpopularity was played for the first time in certain ceremonious public theatres, and 1897 a battleship was named Takasago, after one of its most famous plays. Some of the old noble families are to-day very poor, their men it may be but servants and labourers, but they still frequent these theatres. 'Accomplishment' ...
— Certain Noble Plays of Japan • Ezra Pound

... giving himself airs. A bustling, active, good-humoured man, he was prone now and then to play the scholar and the fine gentleman, the while he lost sight of his more recognised position as a landlord. He wore a full-dress suit of black, starched ruffles, and a very grand periwig; was ceremonious and stately in his manners, affected an inordinate love of literature and an air of connoisseurship that contrasted rather strangely with his calling. Certainly there was not such another landlord to be seen upon the road between London and Bath; ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... I am not, however, surprised that he should choose to behave in this way at Mannheim, though no doubt very differently at Weimar and elsewhere, for here he is stared at as if he had fallen from the skies. People seem to be so ceremonious in his presence, no one speaks, all are as still as possible, striving to catch every word he utters. It is unlucky that they are kept so long in expectation, for he has some impediment in his speech which causes him to speak ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

... patience and his temper. "My message to thy master, fellow, was a civil one," he exclaimed, "and to the effect that Captain Drake of Plymouth, Devon, England, would honour him by waiting upon him at sunrise to-morrow. Now, methinks, Captain Drake will come to him in less ceremonious fashion and without further delay." The irate Devonian turned on his ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... a very ceremonious fellow!" cried the horseman. "Go and tell M. de Saint-Geran that his relative, the Marquis de Saint-Maixent, wishes to ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... walked with an upright, slow gait, and on reaching us saluted Cardozo with the air of a man who wished it to be understood that he was dealing with an equal. My friend introduced me, and I was welcomed in the same grave, ceremonious manner. He seemed to have many questions to ask, but they were chiefly about Senora Felippa, Cardozo's Indian housekeeper at Ega, and were purely complimentary. This studied politeness is quite natural to Indians of the advanced agricultural tribes. The language used was Tupi— I heard ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... made the stay as short as she could, and Mrs. Coles who felt that she had lost her footing and did not know how to regain it, suffered herself to be carried away. But while Primrose got a kiss, she was dismissed by her host with a very ceremonious reverence. He had opened the door for the two and closed it behind them. Coming back he bent down to touch his ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner

... my earliest recollections is the great physician HARVEY, who, indeed, knew me from my birth. Although an exceedingly able man, he was a confirmed glutton. He would at the most ceremonious of dinner-parties push his way through the guests (treating ladies and gentlemen with the like discourtesy) and plumping himself down in front of the turtle soup, would help himself to the entire contents of the tureen, plus the green fat! During the last years of his life ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various

... yield the more credit to Mr. White's self-denial in this respect, because his notes prove him to be capable of profound as well as delicate and sympathetic exegesis. Shakspeare himself has left us a pregnant satire on dogmatical and categorical esthetics (which commonly in discussion soon lose their ceremonious tails and are reduced to the internecine dog and cat of their bald first syllables) in the cloud-scene between Hamlet and Polonius, suggesting exquisitely how futile is any attempt at a cast-iron ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... is a very dull one. At exchange of ceremonious visits. Intrigues, cards—cards, intrigues. Now and then, perchance, you may meet with a kind, hospitable family, but such a case is very rare; you much oftener find a ludicrous affectation to imitate the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... be seen hereafter, a number of persons who are employed from time to time to perform various acts and functions of a ceremonious or superstitious character, notably the man who has the important duty of killing pigs at feasts; but these men are not by virtue of their offices or functions either chiefs or sub-chiefs, or even notables or important personages. ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... with some degree of politeness, "If you were coming to call upon me, as I guess from the festive air of your Mercury, I am sorry not to be at home, having to buy a new horse. I consider your visit paid, return you my most ceremonious thanks, and give you my blessing on your entrance." And, with a careless nod, he went ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... an old weather-beaten seadog of a Spanish pilot, unto whom I felt a great attraction; and greeting him in Malagan Spanish, such as I had learned from Manuel Gori, as Hermano! and offering him with ceremonious politeness a good cigar, I also drew his regards; all Spaniards, as I well knew, being extremely fond, beyond all men on earth, of intimacy with gentlemen. We were delayed for two days at Gibraltar. ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... and sisters of whom she had been alternately the pride and the trial. The fantastic name had an appropriateness so undeniable that even Joan's husband had adopted it in his turn for use in the family circle, reserving the more dignified "Joan" for more ceremonious occasions. ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey

... stirp, that silent came and vanished, As near her nest the hermit thrush, nor dared Confess a mortal name,—that faith which gave A Hamadryed to each tree; and I Will hold it true that in this willow dwells The open-handed spirit, frank and blithe, Of ancient Hospitality, long since, With ceremonious ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... from that prevailing in the North. There each tribe was a small republic, electing its chiefs, and preserving the liberty of its people. Here the tribes were absolute monarchies. The head-chief, or king, had the lives and property of all his subjects at his disposal, and kept his court with the ceremonious dignity of a European monarch. When he called on La Salle, who was too sick at that time to go and see him, the ceremony was regal. Every obstruction was removed from his path by a party of pioneers, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... hands of a savage uncle, who wanted to sacrifice this beauty to a brute of a son. Mrs. Berry listened credulously to the emphatic narrative, and spoke to the effect that the wickedness of old people formed the excuse for the wildness of young ones. The ceremonious administration of oaths of secrecy and devotion over, she was enrolled in the hero's band, which now numbered three, and entered upon the duties with feminine energy, for there are no conspirators like women. Ripton's lieutenancy became a sinecure, his rank merely titular. He had never ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... into renown, who, not knowing the original import of words, will use them with colloquial licentiousness, confound distinction, and forget propriety. As politeness increases, some expressions will be considered as too gross and vulgar for the delicate, others as too formal and ceremonious for the gay and airy; new phrases are, therefore, adopted, which must, for the same reasons, be in time dismissed. Swift, in his petty treatise on the English language, allows that new words must sometimes be introduced, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... Kalkbrenner's character balance themselves. He prided himself on being the pattern of a fine gentleman, and took upon him to teach even his oldest friends how to conduct themselves in society and at table. In his gait he was dignified, in his manners ceremonious, and in his speech excessively polite. He was addicted to boasting of honours offered him by the King, and of his intimacy with the highest aristocracy. That he did not despise popularity with the lower strata of society ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... extremely superstitious in relation to the herb selago, which they reckoned a preservative against sore eyes, and almost all misfortunes. Another herb called samotis, which they imagined had a virtue to prevent diseases among cattle, they were very ceremonious about gathering. The person was obliged to be clad in white, and was not suffered to handle it; and the ceremony was preceded by a sacrifice of bread ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... engine strength and gun-power of the principal warships, and found delight in making models of cruisers and torpedo-boats. The Army in those days made no appeal to him, though he was familiar with military sights and sounds—the ceremonious displays that take place from time to time in a garrison town, bugles blowing, the crunch of feet on the gravel in the barrack square, and the tramp, tramp of marching men. It was to the Navy that his heart went out. The natural set of his mind to the Navy was encouraged ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... to face with many great and exacting problems which will search us through and through whether we be able and ready to play the part in the world that we mean to play. It will not bring us into their presence slowly, gently, with ceremonious introduction, but suddenly and at once, the moment the war in Europe is over. They will be new problems, most of them; many will be old problems in a new setting and with new elements which we have never dealt with or reckoned the force ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson

... gracefully as I could under the circumstances, and was about to proceed with an inquiry relative to those previously picked up off the floating deck when the ring of people who had gathered round us during our somewhat ceremonious exchange of compliments was abruptly broken through by a female figure, and in another instant my neck was encircled by a pair of lovely arms, a beautiful head was laid lovingly upon my breast, and the clear silvery notes of Dona ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... and for the rest of the day he was an efficient assistant in the decorations, and the past adventure was only apparent in the shattered glass, and the stern ceremonious courtesy of the younger brother ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Louis; and seizing Hamilton's arm, he hurried off, leaving Norman to follow at his leisure, as neither Hamilton nor himself felt at all inclined to be ceremonious. ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May

... attention paid to the intercession of the only foreign Power that then made an effort to save Charles. The States- General of Holland had sent over a special embassy for the purpose; but, though the Ambassadors were in London on the 29th and were received that day with most ceremonious respect by the Commons as well as by the Lords, they knew that they had ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... lignum—sent it with such accurate calculation of the distance of his object, the trajectory of his missile, and the pace of his horse, that the mucous disc smote the ornamental insect fair on the back, laying it out, never to rise again. This was but a ceremonious prologue, intended to deepen the impression of ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... broke up and the wondering ladies saw the two men come forth it was late,—almost ten o'clock,—and the captain did not venture beyond the threshold of the sitting-room. He bowed and bade them a somewhat ceremonious good-night. His eyes rested—lingered—on Miss Renwick's uplifted face, and it was the picture he took with him into the stillness of the ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King

... at her marble face, wondering whether she would choose the lover or the money. It was a hard choice, and a very difficult position. He could not read in her eyes what she intended to do, so mutely bowed and took a ceremonious departure, paying a silent tribute to the widow's strength of mind. "Poor thing; poor thing," thought the solicitor, "I believe she loves her cousin. It is hard that she can only marry him at the cost of becoming a pauper. A difficult position ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... and we reached her house without exchanging another word. At her door a very ceremonious curtesy, with these words, "Adieu, sir!" warned me that I was not to go any further. I had no wish to do so, and went away dreaming and wondering at the singularity of the adventure, the end of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... and I went to Copenhagen, where I was presented to the King and the Queen. I was first received by the Grande Maitresse, Madame de Raben, and three dames d'honneur, who were all pleasant but ceremonious. When the Queen entered the room and I was presented to her she was most gracious and affable. She motioned me to sit down beside her on the sofa. She said that she had heard much about me. She spoke of my father-in-law, whom she loved, and Johan, whom she liked so much. ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... permission from anybody, placed Miss Graves beside the driver, and established herself on the same seat, leaving Marjorie between the two gentlemen on the one behind, after they had bestowed their valises and Miss Graves' portmanteau in their rear. Beyond a ceremonious handshake, Miss Carmichael gave Coristine no recognition, although she could not have failed to perceive his delight at once more meeting her. To Miss Graves, however, she was all that could be desired, cheerful, even animated, and full of pleasant conversation. Marjorie kept her Eugene and ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... Correspondent, who writes himself Peter Ball, or Bell,—for his hand-writing is as ragged as his manners—admonishes me of the old saying, that some people (under a courteous periphrasis I slur his less ceremonious epithet) had need have good memories. In my 'Old Benchers of the Inner Temple,' I have delivered myself, and truly, a Templar born. Bell clamours upon this, and thinketh that he hath caught a fox. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... Damn the wreck!" growled old Thompson (for such was his name), as he turned his back in no very ceremonious ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... journal—such I call all letters of mine as related only to my motions towards Madrid—with something of the splendid and ceremonious entertainment of his Majesty's Ambassador, from place to place, more or less as the places themselves are more or less eminent and plentiful, was dated at Seville, 23 Mart, 1663/2 Aprilis, ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe

... the wall of his room, and there stepped into his presence two magnificent fairies, just arrived from their castles in the air, to pay him a visit. They had travelled all the way on purpose to have some conversation with Master No-book, and immediately introduced themselves in a very ceremonious manner. ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... pongye's shaven head. On his first visit he had dismounted, given his horse to its syce, and boldly approached the monastery, outside of which an imposing group of pongyes was assembled. The attitude of some was lofty and disdainful; others, with a friendly glance, acknowledged the stranger's ceremonious greeting. Towering majestically among his fellows stood Mung Baw, who, throwing them a hasty explanation, advanced to welcome Shafto with a soldierly tread and a jaunty swing of his yellow robe. Then taking him aside he began to talk to ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... Old Jerry's daily appearance had taken on, at least in the eyes of the Tavern regulars, a ceremonious importance that demanded their personal attendance, and although it still lacked a few moments of the hour for which they were waiting, a roll-call would have found their number complete when the yellow-wheeled buckboard of Boltonwood's most important citizen, with its strangely assorted ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans

... more questions—addressed more particularly to veteran observers than to those to whom the world is new and strange. Have you observed any alteration in the manner of men toward women? If so, is it in the direction of greater rudeness or of more ceremonious respect? And again, if so, has not the change, in point of time, been coincident with the genesis and development of woman's "emancipation" and her triumphal entry into the field of "affairs"? Are you really desirous that the change go further? Or do you think that when women are ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... feel that you need an excuse to come here, Mr. Herrick. We're not a ceremonious people here. We can't afford to be; ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour

... replied the crafty Italian.—"I was in hopes that your highness had found recreation as well as glory in Belgium. During my sojourn at the court of Philip, I supported with patience the somewhat ceremonious gravity of the Escurial, in the belief that your highness was enjoying meanwhile those festal enlivenments, which none more fully understand how to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... street with their furniture, I had but little apprehension of personal violence, and the boss protested that he would 'see me righted,' should any mischief befall. So it went on for a few days longer, when a second deputation waited upon me, and, less ceremonious than the first, they rushed noisily, and without notice, up the stairs, and crowded into my bench-room. There were about twenty of them; their spokesman looked clean and respectable, but the others were a dirty, out-at-elbows, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various

... slighting remarks made by Europeans upon our elaborate discipline of politeness. It has been criticized as absorbing too much of our thought and in so far a folly to observe strict obedience to it. I admit that there may be unnecessary niceties in ceremonious etiquette, but whether it partakes as much of folly as the adherence to ever-changing fashions of the West, is a question not very clear to my mind. Even fashions I do not consider solely as freaks of vanity; on the contrary, I look upon these ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... why it is that social equality is somehow supposed to mean social familiarity. Why should equality mean that all men are equally rude? Should it not rather mean that all men are equally polite? Might it not quite reasonably mean that all men should be equally ceremonious and stately and pontifical? What is there specially Equalitarian, for instance, in calling your political friends and even your political enemies by their Christian names in public? There is something very futile in the way in which certain Socialist ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... meet Dame Clio over the tea-table, as it were, where she is often more entertaining, if not more instructive, than when she puts on the loftier port and more ceremonious habit of a Muse. These inadvertences of history are pleasing. We are no longer foreigners, in any age of the world, but feel that in a few days we could have accommodated ourselves there, and that, wherever men are, we are not far from home. The more we can individualize ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... and tenants to pay a proportion of their rent in advance. The Pooneah might therefore be called 'rent-day.' A similar day is set apart for the same purpose in Tirhoot, called tousee or collections, but it is not attended by the same ceremonious observances, and quaint customs, as attach to the Pooneah on ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... and to testifie their love and service to him. Which they do by lighting up candles and lamps in his house, and laying flowers every morning before him. And at some times they boyl victuals and lay it before him. And the more they perform such ceremonious service to him here, the more ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox

... rather have been prescribed; but our young woman had perhaps not yet felt it so fully brought home that such refinements of repose, among them, constituted the empty chair at the feast. This was the more distinct as the feast, literally, in the great bedimmed dining-room, the cool, ceremonious semblance of luncheon, had just been taking place without Mrs. Verver. She had been represented but by the plea of a bad headache, not reported to the rest of the company by her husband, but offered directly to Mr. Verver himself, on their having assembled, by her maid, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... before. He forgot that, as he had subsequently learned from Biddy, their foreign, or all but foreign, cousin had spent an hour in Rosedale Road, missing him there but pulling out Miriam's portrait, the day of his own last visit to Beauclere. These young men were not on a ceremonious footing and it was not in Nick's nature to keep a record of civilities rendered or omitted; nevertheless he had been vaguely conscious that during a stay in London elastic enough on Peter's part he and his kinsman ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... my own case, from which he selected a cigar with anxious care and much sniffing; then he bade me a ceremonious adieu and departed down the stairs, blithely humming a melody ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... o'clock I was received by Mrs. Titus in my own study. The Countess came down from her eerie abode to officiate at the ceremonious function—if it may be so styled—and I was agreeably surprised to find my new guest in a most amiable frame of mind. True, she looked me over with what seemed to me an unnecessarily and perfectly frank stare of curiosity, but, on sober reflection, I did not hold ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... emotion, the thought that is in him. And coming down to more ordinary matters—ordinary, that is, to most people—I shall never forget, once when I was in Spain and he wrote to me there, his decoration of my name on the envelope with the finest ceremonial prefix of the ceremonious Spanish code which to him represented the splendour of the land of ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... Joseph marrying her. On a wall-space equal in extent to the arch of the vaulting is her Visitation, in which are many figures that are very beautiful, but above all some who have climbed on certain socles and are standing in very spirited and natural attitudes, the better to see the ceremonious meeting of those women; besides which, there is something of the good and of the beautiful in the buildings and in every gesture of the other figures. He pursued this work no further, illness coming upon him; ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari

... originals. Starting from this point, their course has been shaped according to the peculiar genius of our institutions and people. Republican feeling has dispensed with the monastic dress, the servile demeanor toward superiors, and the ceremonious forms which had lost their significance. The peculiar wants of a new country have required not high scholarship, but more practical learning to meet pressing physical wants. Again, our numerous religious sects requiring each a nursery ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... his courtiers and the servants of the Palace, and the chief fish of the sea together, and solemnly told them that the grandson of the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu, was coming to the Palace, and that they must be very ceremonious and polite in serving the august visitor. He then ordered them all to the entrance of the Palace to ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki

... in ceremonious fashion to present their respects to me. They greeted me as the "second spouse of the King" (which greatly offended the Queen), and in the name of the King of Arda, they presented me with a necklace of large pearls, and two bracelets ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... Rev. Mr. Worden, and an old gentleman of Dutch designation and extraction, of the name of Abraham Van Valkenburgh, but who was familiarly called, by his friends, 'Brom Follock, or Col. Follock or Volleck, as the last happen to be more or less ceremonious, or more or less Dutch. Follock, I think, however was the favourite pronunciation. This Col. Van Valkenburgh was an old brother-soldier of my father's, and, indeed, a relation, a sort of a cousin through my greatgrandmother, besides being a man ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... Lucas" to every one in the place. There is a friendliness about it: the hotel is more of a home, or at any rate, less of a barrack, because of it. And yet this universal camaraderie has some odd lapses into formality. The members of clubs in America are far more ceremonious with each other than we are in England. In English clubs the prefix "Mr." is a solecism, but in American clubs I have watched quite old friends and associates whose greetings have been marked almost by pomposity and certainly by ritual. Yet Americans, I should say, are heartier ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas

... which his lordship answered, "He would promise nothing, and could give him no hopes of success; but you may be assured," said he, with a leering countenance, "I shall do him all the service in my power." A language which the doctor well understood; and soon after took a civil, but not a very ceremonious leave. ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... see that it was enough to give him his Malay title to flatter him greatly. So when there was anything to be gained by it, and sometimes out of pure and unprofitable good nature, they would drop the ceremonious "Captain Lingard" and address him half seriously as Rajah Laut—the King of ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... to escape the din and noise of dressing "the babies," &c.; and after the service was over, poor Triangle was taken aside by a tall, bony man, who reported himself in no very ceremonious manner as the proprietor of a flock of sheep scared to death, and one rare lamb killed—"by your dog!" Triangle owned to the soft impeachment, and "compromised" for ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... courtesy, it is not necessary, as in simpler patriarchal days, that they sit at the family-table. Your carpenter or plumber does not feel hurt that you do not ask him to dine with you, nor your milliner and mantua-maker that you do not exchange ceremonious calls and invite them to your parties. It is well understood that your relations with them are of a mere business character. They never take it as an assumption of superiority on your part that you do ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... tender blooms of certain priceless ipomaeas. That alone was enough to infuriate an archangel. Moreover, like everybody else—he always conformed to custom—he had been slightly tipsy overnight. This had the singular effect of making him glum, ceremonious, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... and Cleopatra—for this last should be always included among his supreme efforts—has made me place him on the shelf where the mighty men repose, himself the mightiest of all. Reading Milton is like dining off gold plate in a company of kings; very splendid, very ceremonious, and not a little appalling. Him I read but seldom, and only on high days and festivals of the spirit. Him I never lay down without feeling my appreciation increased for lesser men—never without the same kind of comfort ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... of the bustle of warlike affairs the worthy chronicler Fray Antonio Agapida pauses to note, with curious accuracy, the distinguished reception given to the count de Cabra and his nephew, the alcayde de los Donceles, at the stately and ceremonious court of the Castilian sovereigns, in reward for the capture of the Moorish king Boabdil. The court (he observes) was held at the time in the ancient Moorish palace of the city of Cordova, and the ceremonials were arranged ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... the young peer was ceremonious, but not in the least servile. He saluted the other's superior rank, not his person, as he turned the guard out for a general officer. He never could be brought to be otherwise than cold and grave in his behaviour to John ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... as much as hospitality permitted, to confine his visits to a few ceremonious calls; but he persisted in coming almost every day, and walked in past the girl with that quiet sort of authority which it is so difficult to resist. In the same way he took possession of Mary and me. He was sure it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... respective instruments. "Altogether," he writes, "it is a happy, merry time! Certainly, at the last state dinner of the Rothschilds, in the presence of such notabilities as Canning or Narischkin, I was obliged to keep rather in the background. The invitation to a large, brilliant, but ceremonious ball appears a very questionable way of showing me attention. The drive up, the endless queue of carriages, wearied me, and at last I got out and walked. There, too, I found little pleasure." On the other hand, he praises the performance ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris

... Grail's. Of course no ceremonious preparation was necessary, yet he wasted a couple of hours previous to his time for setting forth. He could not apply himself to anything; he paced his room. Indeed, he had paced his room much of late. Week by week he seemed ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... ceremonious form by which he was accustomed to address the Queen in public, hoping to hint to her of some necessary preparation to control the meeting of the Council that could not, in any ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... the muses and making a ceremonious address to King Sebastian, the poet describes how Jupiter, having assembled the gods on Mount Olympus, directs their glances upon Vasco da Gama's ships plying the waves of an unknown sea, and announces to them that the Portuguese, who have ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... and in and out among their rivals; some, with wings brushing upon the ground; others, with a single wing spread out, against which they frequently kicked the nearest foot as they circled round each other. A continuous hissing was kept up, along with a shaking of heads from side to side, a ceremonious bowing, and a striking of bills upon the ground. But—though the cock was doing his best to dazzle them with the display of his charms—the hens appeared unconscious of his presence ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... expression for tight shoes.]—I was heartily weary, yet walked however to the Queene's Chappell at St. James's, and there saw a little mayde baptized; many parts and words whereof are the same with that of our Liturgy, and little that is more ceremonious than ours. Thence walked to Westminster and eat a bit of bread and drank, and so to Worster House, and there staid, and saw the Council up, and then back, walked to the Cockepitt, and there took my leave ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... roadside inns was taken into account; and it was "mine host's" interest to furnish good ale and beef, since he was tolerably certain that, with such attractions within-doors, the populous and heavy-laden mail would not pass by the sign of the Angel or the Griffin. Long and ceremonious generally were the meals of our forefathers; nor did they abate one jot from their courtesies when travelling on "urgent business." On arriving at the morning or noontide baiting-place, and after mustering ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne

... on seeing him, stared for an instant, and then abruptly turned her back, thus giving him the cut direct in the most pointed and insulting manner. In thus turning she found herself face to face with the Spaniard, who made a very ceremonious bow, saying, ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... and wordes done to the sticke, they lift vp the stone from ground, which sometimes with all a mans force they cannot stirre, and sometime againe they lift as easily as a fether, and hope thereby with certaine ceremonious wordes to haue ease and helpe. And they made vs by signes to vnderstand, lying groueling with their faces vpon the ground, and making a noise downeward, that they ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... declining, commanded it to be offered to the King of England, who was too well bred to accept the honor. When the Pax was presented at the Agnus Dei, the two sovereigns repeated the same mannerly breeding. The two Queens were equally ceremonious. After a polite altercation of some minutes, when neither would decide who should be the first to kiss the Pax, woman-like they kissed each other instead. A sermon in Latin, enlarging on the blessings of peace, was delivered by Pace at the close of the service; and a salamander ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... the money, from this remarkable and ceremonious acknowledgment on his part: had I been sober I would just as soon have lent him the nose on my face; for, in my then circumstances, the note was of much more consequence ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... another story that never existed, about a man who was accused of having murdered and dismembered his secretary when he had only taken his typing machine to pieces; but we must not dwell on these digressions. The Americans may have another reason for giving long and ceremonious titles to the lift. When first I came among them I had a suspicion that they possessed and practised a new and secret religion, which was the cult of the elevator. I fancied they worshipped the lift, or at any rate ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... fond of school-feasts, had promised to assist at this one. It was not to be a stiff or ceremonious affair. There was to be no bevy of young ladies, oppressively attentive to their small charges, causing the children to drink scalding tea in a paroxysm of shyness. The whole thing was to be done in an easy and friendly manner; with no aid but that of the school-mistress and master. The magnates ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... certain affection for Sir Charles Grandison. He is pompous and ceremonious to an insufferable degree; but there is really some truth in his sister's assertion, that his is the most delicate of human minds; through the cumbrous formalities of his century there shines a certain quickness and sensibility; he even condescends to be lively ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... and stayed very fresh. And true to her German training, and undaunted by the fork, she did that which Anna-Rose in her contentment had forgotten, and catching up Mrs. Twist's right hand, fork and all, to her lips gave it the brief ceremonious kiss of a well ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... Finally, when the time agreed upon was up, the Spanish officer departed, pouring forth a stream of high-flown compliments, which Drake, who was a Spanish scholar, answered with the like. Waving each other a ceremonious adieu the two leaders were ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... in Eskimo land to indulge in ceremonious salutation. Okiok was naturally a straightforward and brusque man. It will not therefore surprise any one to be told that he ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne

... would gladly have made its acquaintance; but she felt convinced beforehand that it was not equal to a country life, and the more their hearts seemed to be in sympathy, the more ceremonious they became, the more frequently their glances met and blended smiling; and it seemed that a new feeling of benevolence was awakened in them, a wider affection, an interest in a thousand things of which ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... awaited her daughter's coming, and having lingered at the window to watch with impatience the rather ceremonious leave-taking, she hastened to the door of the improvised sitting-room to welcome the mountaineers, as they returned to tell ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson

... American fashion. He would be very kind and gentle like one of the family, coming to the casa every day, playing with the children, advising Don Andreas and—yes—having a devotion—very discreet, very ceremonious, for Dona Rosita. And then, all in a moment, he would become as ill, without a word or gesture, until he would stalk out of the house, gallop away furiously, and for a week not be heard of. The first time it happened, Dona ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte

... take up my Odyssey. On the third day your children no longer used the ceremonious "you;" they thee'd and thou'd each other like lovers. My mother-in-law, enchanted to see us so happy, is trying to take your place to me, dear mother, and, as often happens when people play a part to efface ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... arrived in France, the Countess de Noailles was assigned to her as her lady of honor. She was somewhat advanced in life, haughty and ceremonious, a perfect mistress of that art of etiquette so rigidly observed in the French court. Upon her devolved the duty of instructing the dauphiness in all the punctilios of form, then deemed far more important than the requisitions of morality. The following anecdote, ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... phrases which indicate the intense delight, &c., of the inhabitants of the village at having the honoured privilege of entertaining such noble and distinguished visitors, &c. A suitable reply is made by the guests (through an interpreter, if no one among them can speak Samoan), and then follows a ceremonious brewing and drinking of kava. This is a most important function in Samoa, and to the stranger unaccustomed to the manner of making the beverage, the ordeal of drinking it is an exceedingly trying one. It is prepared as ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke

... looked as if there were something more than met the eye. Eugene detected this idea in Haddington's mind, and it caused him keen amusement. Kate also he had encountered, and their meeting had been marked by the ceremonious friendship demanded by the circumstances. The flavor of diplomacy imparted to private life by these episodes had not, however, been strong enough to prevent Eugene being very bored. He was growing from day to day less patient of Claudia's invisibility, and he expressed his feeling ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope

... history; it throws a new light on many important events, in which the historians of the times are deficient, who had not the knowledge of this assiduous observer. But my present purpose is not to treat Sir John with all the ceremonious punctilios, of which he was himself the arbiter; nor to quote him on grave subjects, which future ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... My dear sir, these are now the very ceremonious expressions and excuses of theatrical and directorial beings. Unfortunately that is the case here too, although our dear Weymar continuing free, not only from the real cholera, but also from the slighter, but somewhat disagreeable, periodical political cholerina, may peacefully dream by ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated

... was then but thirty-five thousand, and only a few families—at the head of which were the Schuylers, the Livingstons, the Van Rensselaers, and the Morrises—constituted what is called "Society," which was much more ceremonious than at the present day, and more exclusive. All the great officers of the new government were aristocratic and stately, even inaccessible, except Jefferson; and many of the fashions, titles, and ceremonies of European courts were kept up. The ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord

... morning' with his usual affability, he looked at me in a distant, ceremonious manner, and coldly requested me to accompany him to a certain coffee-house, which, in those days, had a door opening into the Commons, just within the little archway in St. Paul's Churchyard. I complied, in a very uncomfortable state, and with a warm shooting all over me, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... dining-room and saloon, in proportion as they are many and strict, extinguish that agreeable communion which they were originally intended to secure. The dislike with which people commonly speak of society that is "formal," and "stiff," and "ceremonious," implies the general recognition of this fact; and this recognition, logically developed, involves that all usages of behaviour which are not based on natural requirements, are injurious. That these conventions defeat their own ends is no new assertion. ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... like to meet in Flushing. A few of the lighter craft having been taken by the patriot cruisers, the alarm was spread through all the fleet. Medina Coeli, with a few transports, was enabled to effect his escape to Sluys, whence he hastened to Brussels in a much less ceremonious manner than he had originally contemplated. Twelve Biscayan ships stood out to sea, descried a large Lisbon fleet, by a singular coincidence, suddenly heaving in sight, changed their course again, and with a favoring breeze bore boldly up the Hond; passed Flushing in spite of a severe ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... drama had passed between them, and in silence! What feelings had been hidden under those few words of formal and ceremonious speech! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... grievous in the eyes of his subjects, commended him to the hearts of his courtiers, the common purpose of whose lives was pursuit of pleasure. Never was sovereign more gracious to those who came in contact with him, or less ceremonious with his friends; whilst abroad he had lived with his little band of courtiers more as a companion than a king. The bond of exile had drawn them close together; an equal fortune had gone far towards obliterating distinctions of royalty; and custom had so fitted the monarch ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... not knowing a soul in it. Come down at once, and you'll find a hearty welcome here if you won't find much else. I don't see why you couldn't have come anyhow, without waiting to write; but you were always so confoundedly ceremonious. We're rather at sixes and sevens, for the governor's got "in howlts" with his tenants and we're boycotted. It's not bad fun when you're used to it, but a trifle inconvenient in certain small ways. Let me know what train you take and I'll meet you at the station. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various

... and unaffected courtesy will enable you to make even a ceremonious morning call tolerable, if not absolutely pleasant to both the caller ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells

... his own action, and went on to claim it. By which time his train was ready. It was indeed vital that he should be in London to meet a commission which had shown such reluctance to trade with foreign devils, and had been, moreover, so punctilious in its demand for ceremonious receptions, but he had not the slightest doubt about his ability to reach London before the boat train arrived. He had two and a half hours, and two and a half hours gave him ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... the young stranger saluted the assembled company very gracefully. The men rose to answer by a courteous inclination, and the women made a ceremonious bow. ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... does not express wonder that the evangelical preaching in these islands (and more especially at Manila) is so eloquent; that the worship in the temples has a veneration as perennial as it is ceremonious; that the holy orders maintain themselves in the most strict observance of their institutes and rules; that the Christian church is so happily increased; that devotion is so well received; and that justice is so uprightly administered? For, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... hand on her hair with a smile half amused and half pathetic. He looked twenty years younger than Sarrion, and laying aside his sacerdotal manner as suddenly as he had assumed it on Juanita's instinctive initiation, he helped her into the carriage with a grave and ceremonious courtesy. ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... Salvini of the stage and the Salvini of private life, the one so imposing, impetuous and fiery, the other so gentle, urbane, and even retiring. He is a gentleman possessing the manners of the good old school—courtly and somewhat ceremonious, reminding one of those Italian nobles of the sixteenth century of whom we lead in the novels of Giraldo Cinthio and Fiorentino—uomini illustri, e di civil costumi. His greeting is cordial and his conversation delightful, full ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... reappear for at least an hour. I could hear their busy voices, loud and low by turns, as they ranged from public to confidential topics. At last Mrs. Todd kindly remembered me and returned, giving my door a ceremonious knock before she stepped in, with the small visitor in her wake. She reached behind her and took Mrs. Fosdick's hand as if she were young and bashful, and gave her a ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett

... befriended the King in his flight from Worcester. I was examining his features with the interest that an unknown face belonging to a well-known name has for us, when the Duke addressed me with a suave and lofty graciousness, his manner being in a marked degree more ceremonious than the King's. ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope

... barbarians. Four separate times have Tartars broken in and founded dynasties, and four separate times have Chinese culture and civilisation sapped rugged strength, and made the rulers the de facto servants of the ceremonious inhabitants. In the Tartar city there are Yellow Lama temples, with hundreds of bare-pated lama priests, the results of Buddhist Concordats guaranteeing Thibetan semi-independence in return for a tacit acknowledgment of Chinese suzerainty. Near the Palace walls is a ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... This made the ceremonious request preferred by the lady a little more intelligible—but it left the lady's object in wishing to speak to Mrs. Glenarm still in the dark. Julius politely waited, until it pleased her to proceed further, ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... rather to consult her own advantage and that of her country, by availing herself of the abilities of a diligent and faithful servant, than to please herself by granting rewards to an affectionate and generous kinsman. In fact, lord Hunsdon was skilled as little in the ceremonious and sentimental gallantry which she required from her courtiers, as in the circumspect and winding policy which she approved in her statesmen. "As he lived in a ruffling time," says Naunton, "so he loved sword and buckler men, and such as our fathers wont to call men of their hands, of which sort ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... and ceremonious old gentleman did not ask my reasons for this sudden act—he simply inclined his head—and said that he would always be glad to serve me. With a momentary pressure of Annie's cold hand, and a low bow to the ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... date, you see, were more free-and-easy than they are now, and less ceremonious. The visitors at the palace of King Hudibras were expected only to appear at the royal board at the evening meal after all the business or pleasure of each day was over. At all other times they were supposed to do as they pleased ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne

... been now, in all, about a month in this gay and flowery city, seeing the French people, not in hotels and cafes, but in the seclusion of domestic life; received, when introduced, not with ceremonious distance, as a stranger, but with confidence and ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... taken his place in the council. There was a long, ceremonious pause. Then Multnomah arose. He looked over the council, upon the stern faces of the Willamettes and the loyal tributaries, upon the sullen faces of the malcontents, upon the fierce and lowering multitude beyond. ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch

... for him. His horses were to be in waiting in Venice, whence he was to go over to the mainland. He nodded to the young man carelessly, but said nothing, and no one would have guessed how kindly he had spoken to him on the previous night. Giovanni Beroviero took ceremonious leave of his father, his cap in his hand, bending low, a lean man, twenty years older than Marietta, with an insignificant brow and clean-shaven, pointed jaw and greedy lips. Marietta stood within the shadow of the doorway, very pale. Nella was beside her, and Giovanni's wife, and further ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford

... 'we can entertain him well enough. You always say fox-hunters are not ceremonious. I tell you what, Jog, you don't think half enough of yourself. You are far too easily set aside. My word! but I know some people who would give themselves pretty airs if their husband was chairman of a board of guardians, and ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... the apartment of Mr. Pug, a chattering young monkey, who, as soon as he saw us whipt his little hat under his arm in a crack, and seating himself upon his backside, welcomed each of us into the room by several ceremonious nods, which were intended to supply the place of a bow, and were accompanied by such a noisy affected grin, that it was impossible for us to forbear laughing—"This contemptible animal, said Mr. Wiseman, is inhabited by the little soul of the late Master Billy ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous

... declined to risk a ceremonious call on our neighbors as a family, I saw no reason why I should not speak to the husband as an individual, when I happened to encounter him by the wayside. I made several approaches to do so, when it occurred to my penetration that my neighbor had the air of ...
— Our New Neighbors At Ponkapog • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... the best way to win a Spaniard's heart is to treat him with ceremonious civility. I therefore dismounted, and taking off my hat, made a low bow to the constitutional soldier, saying, "Senor nacional, you must know that I am an English gentleman, travelling in this country for my pleasure; I bear a passport, which, on inspecting, you will find to be perfectly ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... which bound them to the condition of fowl and vegetable, and thus be free to engage in new relations; just as a man who wishes to be naturalized in a new country must first break the ties which hold him to the old one. Those articles of food we were speaking of lately, which are so stiff and ceremonious, and want so much coaxing before they change into chyme, which, moreover, we call indigestible because they tire the stomach so much more than the rest, are merely those whose component parts being held together by more solid ties ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace

... always a feeling that you may do something dreadful—such as drop a spoon or have your mouth full just at the moment when her Majesty addresses a remark to you. At the Queen Mother's Court things are more formal—more ceremonious. I always feel timid before I go. And yet no sovereign could be more gracious, and her memory is extraordinary. She forgets nothing. Yesterday she asked me how the baby was. She knew his age, even his name and all about him. She asked ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post

... them. But his nervousness infected me with a cruel dread. All those eyes were going to watch how we comported ourselves in jumping from the landing-steps into the boat! If this operation, upon a ceremonious occasion, has terrors even for a gondolier, how formidable it ought to be to me! And here is the Signora dell' Acqua's white cachemire shawl dangling on one arm, and the Signora herself languishingly clinging to the other; and the gondolas are fretting in a fury of excitement, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... but this was about all that could be said of her, for she was rather weak in intellect, and was not such a queen as "Louis the Great" needed. His majesty was not attached to her, though he invariably treated her with the most ceremonious respect, and extended to her the utmost kindness ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... almost equally credulous, or, at least, confiding. Even Mr. Walsingham was won over by the pleasure he felt in the prospect of his daughter's happiness; and good Mr. Palmer was ten times more attentive than ever to Madam Beaumont. In his attention, however, there was something more ceremonious than formerly; it was evident, for he was too honest to conceal his feelings, that his opinion of her was changed, and that his attention was paid to her rather as the widow of his old friend than on her own account. Amelia, who particularly remarked this change, and who feared that it must be severely ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... me to renew my old intimacy with Lucy Carrington; or at least to call on her. You remember she was not well enough to be at the wedding; she is here at Ashlands with her baby. Mr. and Mrs. Carrington called here yesterday while you were out, and both urged me not to be ceremonious with Lucy, as she is hardly well enough to make calls and is longing ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley

... to a liquor produced by chewing the root of a shrub called angona, and the ceremonious part of the preparation consists in ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... creature known on tennis lawns as "a fourth." He was almost nameless, tall, very young, with the seedlings of a moustache and a space of nude calf between his knickerbockers and his socks. He was very ceremonious, shy, ungainly and blushful. He played a fair-to-middling game; and nothing more ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... formality; and that 'there is a candour and sincerity about them that is quite delightful.' When they offer refreshments, for instance, if they are not accepted, they do not think of offering them a second time; for they have not the least idea of that ceremonious kind of refusal which expects a second invitation. 'Having one day,' says Bligh, 'exposed myself too much in the sun, I was taken ill, on which all the powerful people, both men and women, collected round me, offering their assistance. For this short illness I was made ample amends ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow

... turn back to ask any questions as she stepped stiffly away down the brick walk. Miss Pickett followed her, raising the fringed parasol; they both made ceremonious little bows as they shut the high white gate behind them. "Good-by," said Mrs. Timms finally, as she stood in the door with her set smile; and as they departed she came out and began to fasten up a rose-bush that climbed a narrow white ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett

... repulsed." What a transcendent actress! What astonishing tact! What shrewdness blended with self-control! She conformed herself to his tastes and notions. At the supper-tables of her palsied husband she had been gay, unstilted, and simple; but with the King she became formal, prudish, ceremonious, fond of etiquette, and pharisaical in her religious life. She discreetly ruled her royal lover in the name of virtue and piety. In 1675 the King ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord

... animals, I am extremely susceptible to external impressions; and the fresh air, movement, and company, had all their usual exhilarating effects on my spirits. Our lady of Sourcraut Hall, Lady C——, received myself and my protector with a ceremonious and freezing politeness; asked a few questions concerning my treatment, gentleness, and docility; and desiring my kind companion to put me on the back of a chair, she bowed him out of the room. When he was gone, the lady turned to a gloomy-looking man, who sat reading at a table, and who ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various

... formal courtesy, and then held up her cheek to be kissed, according to the custom of the day; but there was a little smile of amusement on their faces that would have told a close observer that, had their mother not been present, their greeting would have been a warmer and less ceremonious one. ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty

... prepare to pray, wash (Ghusl) your faces, and your hands unto the elbows; and rub (Mas-h) your hands and your feet unto the ankles; and if ye be unclean by having lain with a woman, wash (Ghusl) yourselves all over." The purifications and ceremonious ablutions of the Jews originated this command; and the early Christians did very unwisely in not making the bath obligatory. St. Paul (Heb. xi. 22) says, "Let us draw near with a true heart...having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... perceiving him, not only on account of his impertinent remarks, but he, moreover, stood so near him that he several times impeded him in his rapid evolutions, and of course got himself shoved aside in no very ceremonious way. Instead of making him keep his distance, these rude shocks and pushes, accompanied sometimes with hasty curses, only made him cling the closer to this king of the game. He seemed determined to maintain his right to his place as an onlooker, as well as any of ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... about him, and sought advancement from his favor. Festivals and shows of all sorts—plays, ballets, banquets, dazzling fireworks—were the costly diversion of the gay throngs of courtiers, male and female, in that court, where sensuality was thinly veiled by ceremonious politeness and punctilious religious observances. Poets, artists, and scholars were liberally patronized, and joined in the common adulation offered to the sovereign. Stately edifices were built, great libraries gathered; academies of art and of ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... its voice was mournful and deep, like to the voice of a bell speaking to a man for the last time when he is newly dead. Each bell uttered once as Leothric came under it, and their voices sounded solemnly and wide apart at ceremonious intervals. For if he walked slow, these bells came closer together, and when he walked swiftly they moved farther apart. And the echoes of each bell tolling above his head went on before him whispering to the others. Once ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany

... choir thus hardly completed even with the greatest labour and diligence, the monks were resolved to enter on Easter Eve with the 'new fire,'" that is, the paschal candle which was lit on Easter Eve and burnt until Ascension Day. The kindling of this light was carried out in a very ceremonious manner as enjoined in Lanfranc's statutes. A fire was made in the cloister and duly consecrated, and the monks, having lit a taper at this fire carried it on the end of a staff in solemn procession, singing psalms and hymns and burning incense, and lit the paschal ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers

... marks of formal respect from the surrounding Algonquins. Thus, among the latter, the Leni-Lenappe possessed the titular headship, and were called "grandfathers" at all the solemn councils as well as in the ceremonious communications that passed among the tribes; yet in turn they had to use similar titles of respect in addressing not only their former oppressors, but also their Huron allies, who had suffered under the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... be said that this ceremonious proceeding appealed to the people of France. It was the nineteenth century, and the Revolution lay between the new and the old age. All men of wit laughed at the pompous affair, and five years afterwards the people of Paris dispensed with Charles X. as their king, despite the flavor ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... his approach they rose from their seats, and, extending their hands to him to salute, caused him to be seated before them. These were unprecedented marks of condescension to a person of Columbus' rank in the haughty and ceremonious court of Castille. It was, indeed, the proudest moment in the life of Columbus. He had fully established the truth of his long-contested theory, in the face of argument, sophistry, sneer, skepticism, and contempt. After a brief ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... ceremonious circumambulation of the Holy House at Meccah: a notable irreverence worthy ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... few of the long-haired and a few of the lost-in-dreams. Andreas Doederlein had promised to come in later. He appeared, as a matter of fact, five minutes before midnight, and stood in the wide-opened door as ceremonious as the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... justice of the peace, privately, in two minutes. Miss Pillbody did not agree with her future husband on this point, and was thinking, at that very moment, what a solemn thing marriage was, and with what ceremonious deliberation it ought to be entered upon. Matthew Maltboy had had great experience as a groomsman, and he speculated with perfect composure on this important question: Whether the gentle tremor of Miss Trapper's ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... head of the table, did very little talking, save occasionally to evince views of life that were both lachrymose and pugnacious. And the lovers talked with desperate cheerfulness, so that there might be no outbreak so long as Pilkins—preeminently ceremonious among butlers, and as yet inclined to scoff at the notion that the Musgraves of Matocton were not divinely entrusted to his ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... have been the Tory, and I the Whig. Theoretically my opinions were very much more liberal than those of my brother, who, especially after his marriage, became what our Indian nabobs call a Bahadoor—a person ceremonious, stately, and exacting respect. When my Lord Dunmore, for instance, talked about liberating the negroes, so as to induce them to join the King's standard, Hal was for hanging the Governor and the Black Guards (as he called them) whom his Excellency had crimped. "If you, gentlemen ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... ceremonious bow to Riekje, placed one foot behind the other, pressed his hand to his heart, as the quality do, and, with a solemn ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various

... Ould Michael rushing towards him; "'tis McFarquhar. My friend, Mr. McFarquhar," said Ould Michael, presenting me in his most ceremonious style ...
— Michael McGrath, Postmaster • Ralph Connor

... more of the part where he had had the blister, than of Hilarion's metaphor—and our preconceptions having (you know) as great a power over the sounds of words as the shapes of things, he had imagined, that my father, who was not very ceremonious in his choice of words, had enquired after the part by its proper name: so notwithstanding my mother, doctor Slop, and Mr. Yorick, were sitting in the parlour, he thought it rather civil to conform to the term ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... still maintained some little reserve, but was much more familiar and communicative than before. She appeared, moreover, to be as little ceremonious as Mrs. Ellison had reported her, and very readily accepted Amelia's apology for not paying her the first visit, and agreed to drink tea with her ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... skulls which stand beside me (I have always had four in my study) without emotion, but I cannot strip the features of those I have known of their fleshy covering, even in idea, without a hideous sensation; but the worms are less ceremonious." See, too, his "Lines inscribed upon a Cup formed from a Skull," Poetical Works, 1898, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... scarlet, profusely figured over with yellow braid, sat stolidly, blades in hand and ready dipped, when the passengers took their places, the Prince and Lael in the box, and Nilo behind them as guard. The vessel was too light to permit a ceremonious reception. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... luncheon in short order because Roberta and Ted, plainly anxious to begin the afternoon's program, made such short work of it themselves. They bade him farewell at the door of the dining-room like a pair of lads who could hardly wait to be ceremonious in their eagerness to be off, and the last he saw of them they were running up the staircase hand in hand like the ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond

... and Mrs. Phoebe and Mrs. Delia so resented it that they abandoned the state pew to Madam Belamour and the children, made their curtsies more perpendicularly than ever, and, when formally invited to supper, sent a pointed and ceremonious refusal, so that Aurelia felt hurt ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... as a master, but simply as "Captain Auld," who had married old master's daughter. All my lessons concerning his{146} temper and disposition, and the best methods of pleasing him, were yet to be learnt. Slaveholders, however, are not very ceremonious in approaching a slave; and my ignorance of the new material in shape of a master was but transient. Nor was my mistress long in making known her animus. She was not a "Miss Lucretia," traces of whom I yet remembered, and the more especially, as ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... silence,—"Certainly," he said, "my coming to see you is an act of friendship. Nevertheless I was in a measure obliged to do so. My sister asked me to come, and a request from my sister is, for me, a law. I was near you, and I observed lights in what I supposed were your rooms. It was not a ceremonious hour for making a call, but I was not sorry to do something that would show I was not ...
— The American • Henry James

... export), teak-wood, hemp, tobacco, cotton, etc., but of the land surface only about one-twentieth is cultivated, a large portion of the rest lying under forest and jungle; the Siamese are indolent, ignorant, ceremonious, and the trade is mainly in the hands of the Chinese; the mining of gold, tin, and especially rubies and sapphires, is also carried on. Buddhism is the national religion, and elementary education is well advanced; government is vested in a king (at present an enlightened ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... forward as she entered the room. He merely rose and bowed. She made the faintest possible salutation, and, without taking a seat, conveyed her mother's excuses in a tone of such studied coldness that it amused Farnham, who took it as a school-girl's assumption of a grand and ceremonious manner suitable to a ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... disappeared also. The through coach to Marysville and Sacramento was likewise waiting, for Sugar Pine was the limit of Bill's ministration, and the coach which we had just left went no farther. In the course of twenty minutes, however, there was a slight and somewhat ceremonious bustling in the hall and on the veranda, and Yuba Bill and the Judge reappeared. The latter was leading, with some elaboration of manner and detail, the shapely figure of Miss Mullins, and Yuba Bill was accompanying her companion to the ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte



Words linked to "Ceremonious" :   formal, pompous, ceremony, ceremoniousness



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