"Gimcrack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... still,—how long, O ye heavens, in the country of Dante? These, that fanaticized Europe, which now can forget them, release not This, their choicest of prey, this Italy; here you see them,— Here, with emasculate pupils and gimcrack churches of Gesu, Pseudo-learning and lies, confessional-boxes and postures,— Here, with metallic beliefs and regimental devotions,— Here, overcrusting with slime, perverting, defacing, debasing, Michael Angelo's Dome, that had hung the Pantheon in heaven, Raphael's Joys and ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... "In that gimcrack thing over there." Merrington pointed to a slight, elegant writing-table standing in a corner of the room. "Isn't it a typical female hiding-place? About as safe as burying your head in the sand. The drawer had been locked and the key taken away, but it ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... but two objects of interest (in Persian eyes)—the lighthouse (occasionally lit) and a palace of the Shah, built a few years since as a pied-a-terre for his Majesty on the occasion of his visits to Europe. It is a tawdry gimcrack edifice, painted bright blue, red, and green, in the worst possible taste. The Shah, on returning from Europe last time, is said to have remarked to his ministers on landing at Enzelli, "I have not seen a single building in all Europe to compare ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... you must be to give your gimcrack craft such a name as that! But you may take my word for it that as soon as ever you are caught in your slippery eel you will all either be hung or go to penal servitude for life—though perhaps you'll be let off, as you are ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... and sad, and distressed with hunger. They reminded me much of Indians, did these people. They had but little clothing, but such as they had was fanciful in character and fantastic in its arrangement. Any little absurd gewgaw or gimcrack they had they disposed in such a way as to make it attract attention most readily. They sat in silence, and with tireless patience watched our every motion with that vile, uncomplaining impoliteness which is so truly Indian, and which makes a white ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the allegory? I love to speak in such, and the above types have been presented to my mind while sitting opposite a gimcrack coat-of-arms and coronet that are painted in the Invalides Church, and assigned to one of ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... does not stop with the moneyed classes. It descends to those who have nothing but their salary to live upon. It descends to the wives of clerks and shopmen. They, too, dress for respectability. They live beyond their means. They must live in gimcrack suburban villas, and "give parties." They must see what is going on at the theatres. Every farthing is spent so soon as earned,—sometimes before. The husband does not insure his life, and the wife runs into debt. If the man died to-morrow, he would leave ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... number of pieces of apparatus of a generally useless kind which he had ordered on the strength of their much advertising, and he observed sententiously, "We armatures get badly imposed upon." Here were patent gimcrack printing devices, although he had scarce anything worth printing; all sorts of atrocious fancy borders with which he sought in vain to embellish out-of-focus under-exposures; orthochromatic filters and colour screens with which ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... brave tars have been pitched into with large pieces of salt beef, while the English commanders have been pelted with chops; but this is an error. The thing called junk is not the article of that name used in the Royal Navy, but a gimcrack attempt at a vessel, built principally of that sort of material, something between wood and paper, of which we in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... reckon, friend? 'Twas rather kind ov tryin'. The way he made the dollars fly, Such gimcrack things a-buyin'— He spent a big share ov a fortin' On pesky things that went ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... a vacuum being created in the tube on the other side of the piston by the working of a stationary engine. Great was the popularity of the atmospheric system; and still George Stephenson said "It won't do: it's but a gimcrack." Engineers of distinction said he was prejudiced, and that he looked upon the locomotive as a pet child of his own. "Wait a little," he replied, "and you will see that I am right." It was generally supposed that the locomotive system was about to be snuffed out. "Not so fast," said ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... unchecked or unnoticed; but it is the laughing at our weaknesses, or thwarting our humours, that is never to be forgotten. It is not the errors of others, but our own miscalculations, on which we wreak our lasting vengeance. It is ourselves that we cannot forgive. In the will of Nicholas Gimcrack the virtuoso, recorded in the Tatler, we learn, among other items, that his eldest son is cut off with a single cockleshell for his undutiful behaviour in laughing at his little sister whom his father kept preserved in spirits of wine. Another of his relations has a collection of grasshoppers ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt |
