"Marbles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appears however questionable in the present instance, whether, if the marbles had not been carved to his hand, the architect would have taken the trouble to enrich them. For the execution of the rest of the pulpit is studiously simple, and it is in this respect that its design possesses, it seems to me, an interest to the religious spectator ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... the interesting building, beneath the stained-glass windows, reading these various records, which are inscribed on precious marbles in high colors, that make a dado around the walls, Hope gave a little cry and eagerly beckoned Dwight, who had fallen behind. He came at once, and both read with intense satisfaction a glowing tribute to a certain American consul ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... all the wonders and entertainments of the city of London. There was neither trouble nor expense. My Baharanee gave orders I should inhabit her own house in that city. It was in reality a palace filled with carpets, gilt furniture, marbles, mirrors, silks, velvets, carvings, etc., etc. Hot water ran in silver pipes to my very bedside. The perfumed baths were perpetually renewed. When it rained daily I walked in a glass pavilion filled with scented flowers. I inhabited here ten days. Though I was utterly useless they were unwearied ...
— The Eyes of Asia • Rudyard Kipling
... was one of the additions suggested in Dean Milman's time, when the dome area was used for service. It is a memorial to Captain Robert Fitzgerald, designed by Mr. Penrose; and the marbles come from various places. It stands on columns, of which the gray are from Plymouth, the "dark purplish" from Anglesea, and the red from Cork. In the panels and elsewhere the green is from Tenos, and the yellow chiefly from Siena, with a little of the ancient Giallo Antico ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... is enriched with two orders of pilasters, Corinthian and Composite. Inside, white, pink and black marbles are used, the columns are composite, but the whole design is far poorer than anything ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... of sad defilement his luxury wore. In the heavy odour of tobacco and various liqueurs which hung over everything, the furniture, the ceilings, the woodwork could be seen, already faded and still new. Spots on the crumpled satins, ashes staining the beautiful marbles, dirty footmarks on the carpets. It reminded one of a huge first-class railway carriage incrusted with all the laziness, the impatience, the boredom of a long journey, and all the wasteful, spoiling ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... get him that. I'll tell you, Chicken Little, I believe he'd like a nice strong bag for his marbles—it won't be long till marble time now. But, perhaps, we can think ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... preceding section describes the process of enamelling by oil varnishes, and the directions referring to the polishing will be found of value for the "polishing up" on painted imitations of woods or marbles. There is another process whereby an enamel can be produced upon furniture at a much cheaper rate than the preceding, and one too, perhaps, in which a polisher may feel more "at home." The work should ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead
... there is something in it that breaks the outline of perfect and conventional beauty, something that dots with anger the blind eyes of the Apollo and lashes to a cavalry charge the horses of the Elgin Marbles. Christianity is savage, in the sense that it is primeval; there is in it a touch of the nigger hymn. I remember a debate in which I had praised militant music in ritual, and some one asked me if I could imagine Christ walking down the street before a brass band. I said ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... him too. What is the good! It was not his fault—that was the way of his bringing up beyond there at Cadiz, where they think more of a toreador than of John the Baptist. It was my fault. I ought to have banked the money. I ought not to have kept it to look at like a gamin with his marbles. There it was in the wall; and there was Dolores a long way from home and wanting to get back. He found the way by a gift of the tools; and I wish I had the same gift now; for I've got no other gift ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to look like the body of one of those great snakes of old that used to frighten armies, always the mark of lovers' knives, as in the days of Musidora and her swain,—the yellow birch, rough as the breast of Silenus in old marbles,—the wild cherry, its little bitter fruit lying unheeded at its foot,—and, soaring over all, the huge, coarse-barked, splintery-limbed, dark-mantled hemlock, in the depth of whose aerial solitudes the crow brooded on her nest unscared, and the gray squirrel lived unharmed till his incisors ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of two hard boiled eggs are minced and mixed with part of the raw white of one, the paste then formed into balls like marbles and dropped into boiling water, one has little yellow spheres to lend an enlivening color note to clear soups. Two or three of these dropped into each plate just before serving makes a pleasing change from ...
— Twenty-four Little French Dinners and How to Cook and Serve Them • Cora Moore
... grounds, a smooth and shining expanse of unsullied snow about the early Elizabethan pile of buildings. Returning, they skirted the lowest wall below the tenements, for in the circling line of courtyarded vaults, where the "nobeelity" of Scotland lay haughtily apart under timestained marbles, were many shadowy nooks in which so small a dog could stow himself away. Skulking cats were flushed there, and sent flying over aristocratic bones, but there was no ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... they retain the ignominious position of the literary pirates of the world, I suppose they can afford to do without inconvenience. There is also a fine studio, full of casts from the best models, and copies of the Elgin marbles presented by Mr. Leap. Instruments of the best quality abound for the explanation of all ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... with all manner of jewels, and went on before her, till they came to the inward of the monastery, where Sherkan saw couches set up all around, facing one another and overhung with curtains spangled with gold. The floor was paved with all kinds of variegated marbles, and in the midst was a basin of water with four and twenty spouts of gold around it from which issued water like liquid silver; whilst at the upper end stood a throne covered with silks of royal ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... he found a pretty stone or shell, or bit of coloured glass or bright crockery or broken mirror, he would always throw it in, that the water might have the prettier path to run upon. Indeed, he emptied his store of marbles into it. He was not particularly fond of playing with marbles, but he had a great fancy for those of real white marble with lovely red streaks, and had collected some twenty or thirty of them. He kept them in the brook now, instead ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... Jekyll, in a dress imaginatively designed to display a considerable quantity of her figure, was surrounded by a party which attracted many glasses. Alice Palgrave was there, pretty and scrupulously neat, even perhaps a little prim, her pearls as big as marbles. Mrs. Alan Hosack made a most effective picture with her black hair and white skin in a geranium-colored frock—a Van Beers study to the life. Mrs. Noel d'Oyly lent an air of opulence to the box, being one of those lovely but all too ample women who, while compelling admiration, dispel intimacy. ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... the scene presented at that moment without experiencing a thrill which he would have found it difficult to describe. The sunshine, sending a beam through the stained glass of the great window on the stairway, threw warm tints of colour on the marbles of the columns and the tesselated floor of the hall, sparkled on the Lord Mayor's chain, lent a rich glow to the scarlet gowns of the City Fathers, and lit up the red and the blue and the white of the Imperial flag which draped the table and which was the symbol of so much ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... surrounded by his natural sons and the wealth he leaves has been purchased by every kind of iniquity—its pride of life; its luxury; its semi-Paganism; its imitative classicism; its inconsistency; its love of jewels, and fine stones, and rich marbles; its jealousy and envy; its pleasure in the adornment of death; its delight in the outsides of things, in mere workmanship; its loss of originality; its love of scholarship for scholarship's sake alone; its contempt of the common people; its exhaustion—are ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... Chilmark parish. Pausing before a knot of boys playing marbles: "Herbert," she said sternly, "why weren't you at school on Sunday?" Old Hewett, propped like a wheezy mummy against the oak tree that shaded the Prince of Wales's Feathers, brought up his stiff arm slowly in a salute to the vicar's daughter. "'Evening," ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... of Strathmore. It was purchased from her by a Mr. Lochee, who kept a military academy here. Among the later residents were Sir William Hamilton, who built a large hall to contain the original casts of the Elgin Marbles. These casts form a frieze round the room, and detached fragments are hung separately. This room alone in the house is not panelled. The panelling of the others was for many years covered with paper, which has been gradually removed. ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... play, where the other interlocutors are only brought in as convenient points for the hero to hitch the interminable web of his monologue upon. Besides, Keats had been continuing his education this year, by a course of Elgin marbles and pictures by the great Italians, and might very naturally have found little to say about Mr. Haydon's extensive works, that he would have cared to hear. Lord Houghton, on the other hand, in his eagerness to ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... acquainted with every grief, and then to perish miserably?" Old questions these, which the sprightly critic justly condemns as morbid and futile, and not to be dangled before a merry world of make-believe. Perhaps he is right. It is better to play at marbles on a sepulchre than to lift the lid and peep inside. But, for all that, they will arise when we sit alone at even in our individual wildernesses, surrounded, perhaps, by mementoes of our broken hopes and tokens of our beloved dead, strewn ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... smallest sized potato scoop, cut out a pint of potato balls about the size of common marbles and boil in salted water until tender. Let them cool, and add a pint of the largest peas, three stalks of minced celery, a good sized cucumber cut fine, ten drops of onion juice. Salt and pepper any good cooked dressing, to which ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... Pupil.—My stocking is the one I'll hang, I know 'twill hold quite well, About a hundred marbles more Than's owned by Tommy Bell. Of course I want some candy, too, But ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... was playing marbles with Bully, the frog, one day. They had just finished one game, and were beginning another when Alice Wibblewobble came alone. "Jimmie," ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis
... Thord—"The building which is called the Sanctuary of God, stands open—why do you not all enter there? Within are precious marbles, priceless pictures, jewels and relics—and a great altar raised up by the gifts of wicked dead kings, who by money sought to atone for their sins to the people. There are priests who fast and pray in public, and gratify all the ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... my hands; but I was too young to be trusted with a knife. I had never seen a kite, except far away in the sky: I took it for a bird. There were no rushes to make water-wheels of, and no brooks to set them turning in. I had neither top nor marbles. I had no dog to play with. And yet I do not remember once feeling weary. I knew all the creatures that went creeping about in the grass, and although I did not know the proper name for one of them, I had names of my own for them all, and was so familiar with their looks and their habits, ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... brought in chains, looking very uncomfortable. Though a prisoner, he had been tolerably happy, perhaps because his mind was at rest, and all the fighting was over, and he was playing at marbles with his guards when the ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... spiritual in Greek civilisation was sick before the sack of Corinth, and all that was alive in Greek art had died many years earlier. That it had died before the death of Alexander let his tomb at Constantinople be my witness. Before they set the last stone of the Parthenon it was ailing: the big marbles in the British Museum are the last significant examples of Greek art; the frieze, of course, proves nothing, being mere artisan work. But the man who made what one may as well call "The Theseus" and "The Ilissus," the ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... limestone in the earth. For, as a general rule, the more ancient the strata is in which the limestone is found, the harder the limestone is; except in cases where volcanic action and earthquake pressure have hardened limestone in more recent strata, as in the case of the white marbles of Carrara in Italy, which are of the age of our Oolites, that is, of the freestone of Bath, etc., hardened by the heat ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... 'dearing' and 'ducking' at every spare moment; no, boys show their love after a different fashion, and kisses with them go for very little, and are considered rather a nuisance than otherwise. If he had a shilling, half of it was mine; I might use his books, pencils, marbles, bat, ball, or, for that matter, anything that was his, and he in his turn was welcome to anything I possessed. If he saw a big boy bullying me, he wasted no words in useless remonstrances, but instead, off with his jacket and fought ...
— Leslie Ross: - or, Fond of a Lark • Charles Bruce
... that for thirty years before I saw it. Did you ever notice how long you have to see most things before you see them? I saw that when I played marbles. The big marbles would shake to the top of my pocket and the little ones would rattle down ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... friend's got hit," White remarked apathetically. "He shouldn't try to play marbles with this crowd. Carson is just chucking new stocks at the public. But he has a clique with him that can ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the women, the voices of the children, the cries of Vive la nation, patriotic songs, and the sound of instruments, deafened the ear, whilst to the eye, these rags contrasted strangely with the marbles, the statues, and the decorations of the salle. The miasmas of this horde set in motion tainted the air, and stifled respiration. Three hours elapsed ere all the troop had defiled. The president hastened to adjourn the sitting, in the expectation of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... them with a world-wide fame,—that was as new to me as it was amazing. They seemed to agree that the art of the sculptor reached its height in the Age of Phidias; that never again would men give shape to figures fit to be put, let us say, beside the Elgin Marbles. As some nineteen centuries passed by, another art came to its finest flowering in the Italian Cinquecento, when Raphael, Da Vinci, and Michael Angelo added color to form. They agreed that never again would paintings be produced ...
— The Conflict between Private Monopoly and Good Citizenship • John Graham Brooks
... The second string, with its white, lozenge-shaped stone beads (Pl. CXXXIX), is very striking and attractive against the black hair. This string reaches its perfection when it is composed solely of spherical agate beads the size of small marbles and the longer white stone beads placed at regular intervals among the reddish agates. It is practically impossible to purchase these beads, since they are heirlooms. The third string is usually of dog teeth. They are strung alternately with black seeds or with ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... stood open; for a small boy had been washing the flags, and had left his pail, and had gone off to play marbles in the road with a younger brother. Dick,—who understood the bearings of the case at once, shook his fist at the truant behind his back, and then turned in ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... da San Gallo, then a young man. Then, in that part where the greatest space is, Andrea made the Angel Gabriel bringing the Annunciation to the Virgin—which happened in that very chamber which these marbles enclose—with such grace and beauty that there is nothing better to be seen, for he made the Virgin wholly intent on that Salutation, and the Angel, kneeling, appears to be not of marble, but truly celestial, with "Ave Maria" issuing from his mouth. In company with Gabriel are two other ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... Museo—(and by the by he had expressed his dislike of the busts and statues of Roman emperors in the gallery of marbles: their faces were too vigorous, too pronounced for him)—having conversed already in the morning I did not think I was intruding when in the evening, finding the dining-room very full, I proposed to share his little table. Judging ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... from that stall where y'ave ter get them marbles in them holes. An' I got these two in two goes-'aepenny a go-they've got moss-roses on, look here. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... apartments in the same household, while in the process of trade all classes seem to fraternize in an easy and even cordial manner. The same is true of the children, who play together indiscriminately in the street. Many a one of these heterogeneous groups we have watched "playing marbles" with the ankle-bones of sheep, and listened, with some amusement, to their half Russian, half native jargon. Schools are now being established to educate the native children in the Russian language and methods, and native apprentices are being taken in by Russian merchants ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... rebuke her companion's. He passed down the street with ecclesiastical dignity, bestowing a curt, but not unamiable word of recognition here and there. Unkempt, dirty-faced children, playing hop-scotch or marbles on the flag pavement, looked up at him with a species of awe, not un-mingled with secret resentment; women lounging on door-steps, holding babies on their hips, stared in critical sullenness as he ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... word which now appears for the first time. 'He shall bear much fruit.' We are not to be content with a little fruit; a poor shrivelled bunch of grapes that are more like marbles than grapes, here and there, upon the half-nourished stem. The abiding in Him will produce a character rich in manifold graces. 'A little fruit' is not contemplated by Christ at all. God forbid that I should say that there is no possibility of union ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... little attention. He was playing in the stuff, throwing it in the air and letting it fall to the floor of the cavern again, like a boy with a new sack of marbles, or a child with its building blocks. Five tons and the night was not yet over! Five tons, and the vein had not ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... crime, may be thrown around him; an atmosphere of doubt shall envelop him, though, as regards manners, he may be highly refined. Middleton shall find in the house a priest; and at his first visit he shall have seen a small chapel, adorned with the richness, as to marbles, pictures, and frescoes, of those that we see in the churches at Rome; and here the Catholic forms of worship shall be kept up. Eldredge shall have had an Italian mother, and shall have the personal characteristics of an Italian. There shall be something ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is not possible that this thing can affect jealousy of such a woman as Harriette? thought I: so proceeded with our conversation: and he shortly resumed his polite amusement of spitting upon the children who were 51playing marbles beneath his window. 'I am really married to that monster, yonder,' said she, in an under tone: 'How do you like my choice?' 'I am not old enough in the gentleman's acquaintance to hazard an opinion on his merits,' quoth I; 'but you are a woman of experience, belle Harriette, and should be a good ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... and wood-lice found on turning up the large stone, disappeared one after the other. The wood-lice were an especial amusement: when Monsieur the Viscount touched them, they shut up into tight little balls, and in this condition he removed them to the stone, and placed them like marbles in a row, Monsieur Crapaud watching the proceeding with rapt attention. After awhile the balls would slowly open and begin to crawl away; but he was a very active wood-louse indeed who escaped the suction of Monsieur Crapaud's tongue, as his eyes ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... examined the writing that was on the ring, they bowed, dropping their sword points and we passed through the heavy curtains broidered with gold into the resting-place of Cleopatra. It was beautiful beyond imagining—beautiful with many coloured marbles, with gold and ivory, gems and flowers—all art can furnish and all luxury can dream of were here. Here were pictures so real that birds might have pecked the painted fruits; here were statues of woman's loveliness ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... Pollux. She was confined within a room so luxurious, that, save from the door being fastened to prevent her exit, and there being no possibility of escaping through the latticed window, Zarah could scarcely have realized that she was a prisoner still. The floor of the apartment was inlaid with costly marbles; on the walls were depicted scenes taken from mythological subjects; luxurious divans invited to repose; and vases, wreathed with brilliant flowers and filled with rose-water, were surrounded by others loaded with ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... dolls, boats, trumpets, drums, balls, toy houses, flags, the animals in Noah's Ark, building blocks, toy castles and battleships, story and picture books, little locomotives, cars, trains, automobiles, aeroplanes, rocking horses, windmills, besides cookies, candies, marbles, tops, fans, lace, and more nice things than ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... the market-place alone Stood the statue carved in stone, Watching children round her feet Playing marbles in the street: When she tried to join their play They ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... lessons. By far the most important portion of what one calls education, I owe to him; yet he never preached, or prosed, or played the pedagogue. He talked a great deal, not to us, but with us; we began to have conversation while we were still playing marbles and dolls. I remember hours of discussion with him on some subject so large that the littleness of his interlocutor must have tried him sorely. Time and eternity, theology and science, literature and art, invention and discovery came each in its ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... form one of these wheels: they go and come round the globe; they are the true importers, and exporters of spices and silks; of fruits and wines and marbles; they carry missionaries, embassadors, opera-singers, armies, merchants, tourists, and scholars to their destination: they are a bridge of boats across the Atlantic; they are the primum mobile of all commerce; and, in short, were they to emigrate in a body to ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... sat down beside her on a sand-hill and told her: about the long low-ceiled room in the quadrangle of the Bodleian, the old marbles which lined the walls, the examiner at the blue baize table, and the little deal tables (all scribbled over with names and dates and verses and ribald remarks) at which the candidates wrote; also of the viva voce examination in the antechamber of the Convocation House, ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... wandering in one of the busy parts of the city, and turned aside out of the roar and the bustle into a little chapel, lying close to the roar but separate from it. I had been there before, and knew there were some fine marbles in the place; one especially, that I wanted to see again. I was alone that day, and could take my time; and I went in. It is the tomb of some old dignitary who lived several centuries ago. I do not ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... honeyed wealth Hymettus yields; There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds, The free-born wanderer of thy mountain-air; Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds, Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare; Art, Glory, Freedom fail, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... giants rolling Giant marbles—oh, such fun! See, he smiles, for he has seen one Bigger, brighter, ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... believe it," said the Doctor. "The rocking-horse's nose couldn't turn up, it was the purest Grecian, modelled from the Elgin marbles. Perhaps it was the heat that did it, though. However, you seem to have got through your troubles very well, Master Deordie. I wish poor Tiny were at the end ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... castle of Bagdad, counting the moments until another day breaks and I can feel the touch of my princess's hand. Even my dull eyes count for me, because so I can fancy myself, if I choose, in some royal apartment, surrounded by hanging curtains of silk, priceless marbles, and ornaments of gold and silver, with many silent eunuchs awaiting my commands. From my windows I'm at liberty to imagine towers and minarets and domes ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... heard in the outer darkness, and a dozen forms, lithe and lean, dressed only with the narrow white breech-clout and mocassins, and daubed with white earth until they seem a group of living marbles, come bounding through the entrance, yelping like wolves, and slowly moving round the fire. As they advance, in single file, they throw their bodies into diverse attitudes, some graceful, some strained, some difficult, some menacing, and all grotesque. Now they face the east, now the west, now the ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... child in the nursery, or had tried to gamble, for cakes and toys. He had gambled when at school for coppers, pocket-knives, and marbles. He had gambled when at the University, and had felt the claws of the Children of Usury. He gambled away his nine thousand pounds, or such remainder of it as had not been forestalled, when he came ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... court. Then followed a warm muffler for the head; it was a very comfortable looking thing. No sooner was the muffler safely in than a pint of peanuts rolled into the stocking, and after the peanuts came some marbles, and after the marbles, a dozen red apples, and after the apples a pair of skates, and after the ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... depression; hysteria; amentia[obs3]. screw loose, tile loose, slate loose; bee in one's bonnet, rats in the upper story. dotage &c. (imbecility) 499. V. be insane &c. adj. become insane &c. adj; lose one's senses, lose one's reason, lose one's faculties, lose one's wits; go mad, run mad, lose one's marbles [coll.], go crazy, go bonkers [coll.], flip one's wig [coll.], flip one's lid[coll.], flip out[coll.], flip one's bush [coll.]. rave, dote, ramble, wander; drivel &c. (be imbecile) 499; have a screw loose &c. n., have a devil; avoir le diable au corps[Fr]; lose one;s head ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... stately colonnades of foreign marbles, no tesselated pavement to the vestibule, no glowing frescoes on the walls, no long lines of exterior windows, glittering with the new luxury of glass. All was decorous, it is true; but all, at the same time, was stern, and grave, and singular for ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... into a visionary state which, whilst it lasted, gave me such placid happiness as I have never known when in my perfect mind. Lying still and calm, and perfectly awake, I watched a succession of wonderful pictures. First of all I saw great vases, rich with ornament and figures; then sepulchral marbles, carved more exquisitely than the most beautiful I had ever known. The vision grew in extent, in multiplicity of detail; presently I was regarding scenes of ancient life—thronged streets, processions triumphal or religious, halls of feasting, fields of battle. ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... apartments, inspected the superb picture-gallery, where scores of dead-and-gone Cimicifugases (most of them very plain) were glorified by the art of Van Dyck, Sir Joshua, or Gainsborough, and admired the priceless collections of marbles and cameos and bronzes. It was about four o'clock when we were conducted to a magnificent apartment for a brief rest, as we were to return to London at half-past six. As Lady Veratrum left us, she remarked casually, 'His Grace will join us ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... at him. Don't cry now Danny, man, yer going' up to the big house where the lovely pink lady lives that has the chocaklut drops on her stand and chunks of cake on the table wid nuts in them as big as marbles. There now," continued Pearlie, putting the towel over her finger and penetrating Danny's ear, "she'll not say she can plant seeds in you. Yer ears are as clean as hers," and Pearlie stood back and took a critical view of Danny's ears ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... could drive almost into the house. The Duke, who was never grand himself, as he stood there looking at the far-stretching view before him, could not remember that he had ever but once before placed himself on that spot. Of what use had been the portico, and the marbles, and the huge pile of stone,—of what use the enormous hall just behind him, cutting the house in two, declaring aloud by its own aspect and proportions that it had been built altogether for show and in no degree for use or comfort? And now as he stood there he could already ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... instance, I would save the life of his infant child; for what harm can this benefit do to any of those who suffer from his cruelty? But I would not furnish him with money to pay his bodyguard. If he wishes for marbles, or fine clothes, the trappings of his luxury will harm no one; but with soldiers and arms I would not furnish him. If he demands, as a great boon, actors and courtesans and such things as will soften his savage nature, I would willingly bestow them ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... when at last the auspicious morning dawned, they remembered with dismay that they had drunk the last drop two days before, and there was none in stock. Then there was a wonderful and more successful hoarding of marbles, of a variety so great that my memory refuses to bear the names of the different kinds, which, I think, must have greatly increased since the time when I too was a boy, when some marbles—one of real, white ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... through a great variety of ground, rocky woods, lawns, etc., that nothing can be more pleasing; it passes through a remarkable scene of rocks, which are covered with woods. From thence to the marble quarry, which Mr. Herbert is working, and where he gains variety of marbles, green, red, white, and brown, prettily veined; the quarry is a shore of rocks, which surround a bay of the lake, and forms a scene consisting of but few parts, but those strongly marked; the rocks are bold, and broken into slight caverns; they are fringed with ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... Playthings? What are they? Mr. L. Such things as ninepins, marbles, tops, and wooden horses. B. No, sir. Tom and I play at football in winter, and I have a jumping rope. I had a hoop, but it is broken. Mr. L. Do you want nothing else? B. I have hardly time to play ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... that there were two worlds—the visible and the invisible, and that earth, like man, had a body and soul. Nature laid itself bare to me; and I perceived its immensity, by seeing the ocean of beings who were spread every where, making the whole one mass of animated matter, from the marbles up to God. It was a noble sight! In short, there was a universe in my patient. When I inserted the knife in his gangrened leg I annihilated millions of those beings. You laugh, ladies, to think you are ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... musical instruments; while the pilasters were decorated with masks of the tragic and comic Muses, torches, thyrsi wreathed with ivy and vine, and pan-pipes. These were wrought in silver and gold, and set with costly marbles, and they stood out from the marble background like metal work on a leather shield, or the rich ornamentation on a sword-sheath. The figures of a Dionysiac procession, forming the frieze, looked down upon the feasters—a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not afraid of it. Monsieur Lagrange had promised it to me, and I was waiting for it. When I did not know you, I felt so lonely." She looked at the tables loaded with vases and statuettes, the tapestries, the confused and splendid mass of weapons, the animals, the marbles, the paintings, the ancient books. ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... needs of the soil are air and water. Just think of all soils as made up of many particles; let us say like a lot of marbles, one placed upon another. Each given mass of particles has a given air space between every particle. Again, if a marble is dipped in water a film of water remains on it a short time. Let us think of the particles as always having a film of water on them. Then, as roots and root-hairs ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... pockets, disgorging upon the floor a multitude of small white spheres, like marbles. Then, as he stepped out into the hall, he discovered that their odor still remained about him; so he stopped and carefully turned his pockets inside out, one after the other, but finding that he still smelled vehemently of the "moth-balls," though ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... to play all sorts of games with marbles, how to make and spin more kinds of tops than most boys ever heard of, how to make the latest things in plain and fancy kites, where to dig bait and how to fish, all about boats and sailing, and a host of other things ... an unmixed delight to ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... whole earth became to the boy, as Tennyson describes the lotus country, "a land of streams." In school-days and in town he acknowledged the sway of those mysterious and irresistible forces which produce tops at one season, and marbles at another, and kites at another, and bind all boyish hearts to play mumble-the-peg at the due time more certainly than the stars are bound to their orbits. But when vacation came, with its annual exodus from the city, there was only one sign in the zodiac, and ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... of the Parthenon, and was perfectly conscious of the difference between Phidias and his pupils. Even now, if one takes the pains to think of it, the difference between such works as the so-called "Genius" of the Vatican and the Athenian marbles, or between the Niobe group at Florence and the Venus torso at Naples, for example, seems markedly individual enough, though the element of style is still to our eyes the most prominent quality in each. Indeed, ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... could play with the boys beyond the garden gate, and if detected, to be sure he was obliged to spend a quiet hour in the pleasant parlor. But this was not intolerable as long as he could expect a paper of sugar-plums, a cake, or at least something amply to compensate him for the loss of a game at marbles." ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... marbles obtained in the vicinity are exceedingly interesting, and in many cases very beautiful, a very pleasant half-hour can be spent at one of the many marble works which the town possesses. Fired with this idea ourselves, one gloomy day after lunch ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... a regular palace of a place, with a splendid vestibule with walls and pavement of different-hued marbles, with palm trees over-shadowing a little fountain tinkling in a jade basin, with servants in gaudy liveries. The reception clerk overwhelmed me with the cordiality of his welcome to my companion and "the American gentleman," ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... they could launch their weapons through the slots and between the battlements. At the south-west end of the church is a curious entrance door of the twelfth century, with a relieving arch of coloured marbles over it, and the apostles Peter and Paul rudely sculptured as supporters of the arch. They occupy a crouching position, and are sculptured on triangular blocks. In the tympanum is the Saviour seated in glory. But what in addition to its quaintness of design gives peculiar interest ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... remember it perfectly," she returned. "That was how I came to know him. But I knew something of his family long before. I remember his grandfather, a great buyer of pictures and marbles." ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... hoop-sticks to match them, as strong and as good; There were books full of pictures and books full of rhymes, There were songs for the seasons and tales for the times; Pen-knives and pen-wipers, pencils and slates, Wheelers and rockers and rollers and skates; Bags full of marbles and boxes of bricks, And bundles and bundles of canes ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... to study the abstruse antiquities of Egypt and Chaldea. The absolute seclusion of women which was necessitated under the burning sun of Asia prevailed under the laws of Greece and Ionia. The women remained in confinement within the marbles of the gyneceum. The country was reduced to the condition of a city, to a narrow territory, and the courtesans who were connected with art and religion by so many ties, were sufficient to satisfy the first passions of the ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... been inside the Museum, actually, since he and Hilda used to meet there; sometimes to set out for gay adventures at Twickenham or Richmond, sometimes to linger about the place for a while and to ponder by Lord Elgin's marbles upon the lastingness of some things, or, in the mummy room, upon the awful brevity of others. Since then Bartley had always thought of the British Museum as the ultimate repository of mortality, where all the dead things in the world ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... Monte Cristo gave his hat, cane, and gloves to the same French footman who had called his carriage at the Count of Morcerf's, and then he passed into the small salon, preceded by Bertuccio, who showed him the way. "These are but indifferent marbles in this ante-chamber," said Monte Cristo. "I trust all this will soon be taken away." Bertuccio bowed. As the steward had said, the notary awaited him in the small salon. He was a simple-looking lawyer's clerk, elevated to the extraordinary ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... origin, undertaken with the praiseworthy and disinterested object of teaching the Old World "how to do it," and is built and furnished regardless of expense. The couloirs are wide, lofty, richly carpeted; the walls of them encrusted with pale highly polished marbles, pilasters of which, with heavily gilded capitals, flank vast panels of looking-glass. The moulded ceilings are studded with electric lights, the glare of which is agreeably softened by pineapple-shaped globes of crystal glass. The scheme of colour, ranging from imperial purple through ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... wrapper was from his hand. He was the third son of John Henning, friend of Scott and Dr. Chalmers, on the strength of his famous miniature restoration of the Parthenon frieze, of which he engraved the figures on slate in intaglio; and he was well known besides not only for these copies of the Elgin marbles, but for his portrait-busts and medallions. Precision in all things was one of his characteristics, and even showed itself in the inscriptions in his family Bible, wherein he set on record that his son Archibald ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... by sprinkling it with sand from a box near at hand, signed with his own name, and, with a fine courtesy, addressed to "Mrs. Molly Walden." Having first carefully sealed it in an envelope, he stepped to the open door, and spied, playing marbles on the street near by, a group of negro boys, one of whom the ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... will. She should ripen under an Italian sun. She should walk under the frescoed vaults of palaces, until her colors deepened to those of Venetian beauties, and her forms were perfected into rivalry with the Greek marbles, and the east wind was out of her soul. Has she not exhausted this lean soil of the elements her growing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... out, and cricket and marbles were in, and the days were getting long and warm, when I received a letter from Mary, saying that Captain Frankland had come home, and had written to our father, but she did not know what had passed between them. I always told Mary all I thought and ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... eat—and we found them full of seeds, like a custard-apple, with a sweet taste. A larger tree was covered with white blossoms, their fragrance reminding me of the hawthorn at home; but the flowers of these were as large as dog-roses and the fruit the size of big marbles. Chickango pointed to the flowers; not so much to admire them, as because numerous bees were sucking their sweets. "Dere! dere!"—and he pointed out several hollows in the neighbouring trees. "Me come back, and get for eat," ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... his heart. He endeavored, in wild and hasty words, to set forth, how that he had been bred a chimney-sweep; that one Sunday afternoon he had left a set of companions, most on 'em sweeps, who were all playing at marbles in the church-yard, and he had wandered to the Dust-heap, where he had fallen asleep; that he was awoke by a sweet voice in the air, which said something about some one having lost her way!—that he, being now wide awake, looked up, and saw with his own eyes a young Angel, with fair hair and rosy ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... might be a term Including skates, velocipedes, Kites, marbles, soldiers, towers infirm, Bows, ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... once the centre of art and learning, adorns our collection with Athens, the Acropolis and Parthenon, the latter almost completely and shamefully bereft of those famous marbles, chiseled by Phidias nearly ...
— Shepp's Photographs of the World • James W. Shepp
... oldest outskirts Vanno came to the foot of the monument, unspeakably majestic still, though long ago stripped of its splendid marbles, and its statues that commemorated Caesar's triumph. Men were working in the shadow of the vast column of stone and crumbling Roman brick, digging for lost knowledge in the form of broken inscriptions, hands and heads of statues, bits of carved cornice, and a hundred buried treasures ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to play marbles which was about the most interesting game they had to play. Of course, they could play outside as all children do now when they had ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... with a strip of gingham in his high chair, arrested and held Stephen's attention. Very pallid, with the pallor not of flesh but of an ivory image, with hair as thin and white as the hair of an old man, and eyes that were as opaque as blue marbles, the baby sat there, with its look of stoical philosophy and superhuman experience. And this look said as plainly as if the tiny mute lips had opened and spoken aloud: "I am tired before I begin. I am old before I begin. I ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... the greater part of the day standing on the form. The contents of his pockets (including some priceless marbles) were impounded; he had two columns of dates to commit to memory before he could go home; and, hardest of all, because of a little blot, he was reduced to the ineffable humiliation of writing all his exercises on ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... companions were all around him. Ivan surveyed them in turn. They loved him—lots. Had not Josephine just said so? And only yesterday Augustus Adolphus had played marbles with him. It was very good to be loved, to have a home, and not to be a little sunbeam any longer. Then his eyes met those of Miss Clarkson, fixed ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... blocks of ice and snow, and amused themselves in all kinds of ways. Their only playthings were some bones of the seal and walrus, nicely polished, but they seemed to have just as much fun with them as if they had been the finest marbles or the most superlative tops that the world could produce. "How jolly they look!" said Nibble. "I wish I could jump down and play with them! and oh! don't they talk strangely, Brighteyes? 'Wogglety wagglety, chacka-chacka punksky'—what are ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... precious, necessary and noble a thing. "Oh! if I only had a dollar." He set to work to save and scrape. He won marbles in game, swopped marbles for tops, tops for jack-knives as the various games came around with strange and rigid periodicity. The jack-knives in turn were converted into rabbits, the rabbits into cash of small denominations. ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton |
