"Homely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he died, for he was the pattern of the ideal german scholar, as daringly original in his thought as he was homely in his life, a modest, genial, laborious slave to truth and learning, and withal the owner of an admirable literary style of the vernacular sort. The materialistic generation, that in the fifties and sixties called ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... comfortable meal spread upon the table, simple and homely, but sufficient for the appetites of all. The three rosy-faced apprentices, of whom a son of the house made one, formed a link at table between the family and the shopmen and serving wenches. All sat down together, and Rebecca, the daughter who lived ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... chief has his soldiers. The agent of the Great Father has his men. Red Dog demands the right to bring an equal retinue," was doubtless what the Indian wished to say and what in the homely metaphor of the plains he made at once understood. "You got soldiers. Agent got heap. Red Dog he say he bring heap same," was the way Elk put ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... waked from my dream. It was a joyful shock to see Joseph beside me, in the homely clothes which had replaced his "Sunday best"; to see Finois and his pack full of my friendly belongings. But I clung to the comfortable present for a few moments only. The spell of dead centuries had me in its grip. Farther and farther back into the land of dead days, I journeyed with St. ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... of her marriage At the Entering of the New Year They would not come After a romantic day The Two Wives "I knew a lady" A house with a History A Procession of Dead Days He Follows Himself The Singing Woman Without, not within her "O I won't lead a homely life" In the small hours The little old table Vagg Hollow The dream is—which? The Country Wedding First or Last Lonely Days "What did it mean?" At the dinner-table The marble tablet The Master and the Leaves Last words to a dumb friend A drizzling ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... solid lady with a fine white bosom and strong white arms. Her face was homely and kind; I saw at once that she adored her husband; her placid smile carried beneath its placidity a tremulous anxiety that he should be pleased, and her mild eyes swam in the light of his encouragement. I was sure, however, ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... decree? Some linger in the drear poor-house—some are beyond the sea; One died behind the cold ditch—back beneath the open sky, And every star in heaven was a witness from on high. None dared to ope a friendly door, or lift a neighbor's latch, Or shelter by a warm hearthstone beneath the homely thatch. ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... Johnson," every one called him— had made many friends while a member of the House, and was one of the most popular Senators. He was a man of generous feeling, honorable impulses, and a cheerful humor, which had endeared him to the homely backwoodsmen of his State. He was a fine speaker, pouring forth fact and argument with an earnestness that riveted attention, and lighting up the dull path of logic with the glow of his captivating fancy, while he spiced his remarks with the idiosyncrasies ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... are both very much grown and very much improved," replied Edward, "but I must confess to you that I think it is high time that they were, if possible, removed from their present homely occupations, and instructed as young ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile The short and simple annals of ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... red-hot now, and Rouletta Kirby's tent was warm. She seated herself before a homely little dresser fashioned from two candle-boxes, and began to arrange her hair. Curiously she examined the comb and brush. They were, or had been, 'Poleon's; so was the pocket-mirror hanging by a safety-pin to the canvas wall above. Rouletta ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... in the sitting-room, and he betook himself thither, picturing the homely scene of Sylvia knitting socks for her husband or ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... has to be something very like a western exposure in him too, a touch of the homely seer, a habit of having reflections and afterglows, a sense of principles, and of the philosophy of men ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... and for the hard mockery in his puffy eyes. The company seemed fairly homogeneous in its raffishness, though here and there appeared a thin, aristocratic face, with grey moustache and pointed beard, and the homely anxious visage of a small tradesman. But in bulk it looked an ugly, seedy crowd, with unwashed bodies and unclean souls. I noticed an Italian or two, and a villainous Englishman with a face like that of a dilapidated horse. A glance at the ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... various degrees to oppression. Cunning, intrigue, the oily tongue, have, through extended and powerful conspiracies, brought the resources of society under the control of the few, who stood aloof from his homely toil. Hence his dependence upon them. Hence the multiplied injuries which have fallen so heavily upon him. Hence the reduction of his wages from one degree to another, till at length, in the case of millions, fraud and violence strip him of his ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... general and in detail would come after that. He could not afford by imprudent forwardness of speech or premature declaration of measures to increase the embarrassment which already surrounded him. "Let us do one thing at a time and the big things first" was his homely but expressive way of indicating the wisdom ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... of a simple but dignified and devotional expression, that might have befitted an angel of charity. A priest and a lady were dispensing loaves and warm garments to the throng around; but each gift was accompanied by a gentle word from the lady, framed with difficulty to their homely English tongue, but listened to even by uncomprehending ears like a strain ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ligno non fit Mercurius.' This Roman proverb, Courteous Reader! is adequately rendered by a homely one of our own—"You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear." Certainly it is difficult to do so; and none can speak to that more feelingly than myself; but not impossible, as I would hope ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... such a day as only a Scots April can show. The cobbled streets of Kirkmichael still shone with the night's rain, but the storm clouds had fled before a mild south wind, and the whole circumference of the sky was a delicate translucent blue. Homely breakfast smells came from the houses and delighted Mr. McCunn's nostrils; a squalling child was a pleasant reminder of an awakening world, the urban counterpart to the morning song of birds; even the sanitary cart seemed a picturesque ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... remarkable for a fullness, a perfection of outline, combined with a fairness and delicacy which suggested that she was not made of ordinary clay. Miss Wildmere prided herself upon giving the impression that she was remote from all that was common or homely in life. She cultivated the characteristic of daintiness. In her dress, gloves, jewelry, and complexion she would be immaculate at any cost. Graydon's fastidious taste could never find a flaw in her, as regarded externals, and she knew the immense advantage ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... to have been made and carry her off for a day up the river, where a quiet little lunch, in the tranquil shade of overhanging trees, and the cosy, intimate talk that was its invariable concomitant, seemed like an oasis of familiar, homely pleasantness in the midst of the gay ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... agriculture, textile industry, seem, all of them, to have had their origin in one or other of these two countries. The beginnings may have been often humble enough. We may laugh at the rude picture-writing, the uncouth brick pyramid, the coarse fabric, the homely and ill-shapen instruments, as they present themselves to our notice in the remains of these ancient nations; but they are really worthier of our admiration than of our ridicule. The first inventors of any art are among the greatest benefactors ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... the stiff foliage that sometimes covers it from the extremities of the branches down almost to the roots, it cannot fail to attract observation. Trees of this species, for the most part too rough and homely to please the eye, are not generally valued as objects in the landscape; but there is a variety in their shape that makes amends for their want of comeliness, and gives them a marked importance. We do not in general sufficiently appreciate the value of homely objects among ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... owned, had rather a mean opinion of her husband's friend, Captain Dobbin. He was very plain and homely-looking, and exceedingly awkward and ungainly. Not knowing him intimately as yet, she made light of honest William; and he knew her opinions of him quite well, and acquiesced in them very humbly. A time came when she knew him ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... fine place, they say; but, doctor, I am not worthy on't. I am contented with this homely world; 'tis good enough for such a poor, rascally Mussulman, as I am; besides, I have learnt so much good manners, doctor, as to let my ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... might be in their reserve and half-confessions, here was one who had never deceived him or knowingly misled him to believe her better, or otherwise, than she was. Honesty and truth were stamped upon her face by a life-long practice of these homely virtues—not by meretricious arts. It was tardy justice, but he rendered it without ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... along happily enough. The factory had a homely feel. No one was rushed or driven. Paul always enjoyed it when the work got faster, towards post-time, and all the men united in labour. He liked to watch his fellow-clerks at work. The man was ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... a homely person, with no desire either to speak, or to be spoken to. She went out but seldom, and on those rare occasions did not in any way interfere with her daughter. Mr. Boncassen filled a prouder situation. Everybody knew that Miss Boncassen was in England ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... had gathered. It lighted, too, the beautiful old face of the grandmother as she sat in her white cap and kerchief, with folded hands, making, to the minister's pleased eye, a fair picture of the homely scene. ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... no further propitiatory efforts, but sat and stared in simple blankness at the country, which seemed to increase in loveliness at each new point of view. Sometimes she saw sweet wooded, rolling lands made lovelier by the homely farmhouses and cottages enclosed and sheltered by thick hedges and trees; once or twice they drove past a park enfolding a great house guarded by its huge sentinel oaks and beeches; once the carriage ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... an ugly wooden bed covered with a bright patchwork quilt, a pine bureau and two cheap chairs. The walls were utterly bare and the floor, but for a woven rug near the bed, of the sort so common in New England. And yet there was an air of homely occupation in the plain chamber, a bright, patched cushion in one chair, a basket full of household mending and such matters, on a small table, a pair of spectacles and a worn Bible beside it. The room had that unmistakable air of recent occupation, that subtle ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... type the poet-soul sublime That leads the vanward of his timid time, And sings up cowards with commanding rhyme— Soul calm, like thee, yet fain, like thee, to grow By double increment, above, below; Soul homely, as thou art, yet rich in grace like thee, Teaching the yeomen selfless chivalry, That moves in gentle curves of courtesy; Soul filled like thy long veins with sweetness tense, By every godlike sense Transmuted from the four wild elements. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... a reception in her room on the morning when I was introduced there, and the sight of the house brought vividly to my mind how the four (five) deceased young people lay, side by side, on a clean cloth on a chest of drawers; reminding me by a homely association, which I suspect their complexion to have assisted, of pigs' feet as they are usually displayed at a neat tripe-shop. Hot candle was handed round on the occasion, and I further remembered as I stood contemplating the greengrocer's, that a subscription was entered into among the company, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... with walls of rubble let into oak frames, and duly whitewashed every summer, a thatched roof, small panes of glass, an old doorway raised from the ground by two steps. There was about this little dwelling all the homely rustic elegance which peasant life admits of; a honeysuckle was trained over the door; a few flower-pots were placed on the window-sills; the small plot of ground in front of the house was kept with great neatness, and even taste; ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it "homely"; the Corps Commander remarked that its style was "not cramped, anyhow—what?" and the Army ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... in hand, wholesomely honest in his homely ruggedness, a flush of embarrassment tinging his face. The sun in his short hair seemed laughing, picking out little flecks of gold as mica flakes in the sea waves ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... of "the industrious classes," but added, with a seeming loftiness of condescension, that the Address should be replied to with as much attention as if it had proceeded from either of the branches of the Legislature—"although," said his Excellency, "I shall express myself in plainer and more homely language." This was bad enough, but its effect was intensified by the demeanour of the Lieutenant-Governor and several military officers who were in attendance upon him. It seemed to the deputation that those gentlemen regarded them with supercilious ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... willingly have stayed longer, but Perez, who had slipped away, came back with his satchel on his back and said it was time to start. * So the King said goodbye very politely, and Mrs. Mouse gave him a kiss on each cheek in her homely way. * Adelaide put out a paw in a lackadaisical fashion, and Elvira shook hands like a pump handle, while Miss Stilton made him a beautiful cheese of a curtsey, and then stared at him through her eyeglass until he was out of sight. ...
— Perez the Mouse • Luis Coloma
... "I judge you are ready for late supper or early breakfast, whichever you may prefer to call it. The provisions are homely, and I am an indifferent cook, but I can at least give you enough to eat. Those brigands of yours have stored sufficient food ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... which constitutes the essence of all poetry "; "a more than usual state of emotion, with more than usual order," as he has elsewhere defined it. And, in one of his spoken counsels, he says: "I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose— words in their best order; poetry—the best words in ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... shy," is a homely saying, but singularly true. A man who has been swindled will be very cautious the second time, and the third. The fourth time he may be swindled again more ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... bankruptcy came upon him, a homely human angel intruded upon him with an offer of $1,500 for the Tennessee Land. Mrs. Hawkins said take it. It was a grievous temptation, but the judge withstood it. He said the land was for the children—he could ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... sunlight struck the carpet. In the middle of the room sat Mrs. Quincy, and before her on a kitchen chair stood a little tub of foamy soap-suds. A maid was stationed at hand with a bar of soap and a bottle of ammonia, and the steam of homely cleanliness filled ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... reduces the sad relicks to owe their very existence to the ostentatious bounty of their oppressors. If it is true in common life, it is still more true in governments, that we should be just before we are generous; but our legislators seem to have forgotten or despised this homely maxim. They have unjustly left unprotected that most important part of property, not less real because it has no material existence, that which ought to enable the labourer to provide food for himself and his family. I appeal to innumerable statutes, whose constant and professed object ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... permeates the business world and stiffens the economic backbone of the nation. It is no exaggeration to say that the whole German people, barring the inevitable though small percentage of weaklings, is trying with terrific earnestness to live up to the homely Hindenburgian motto, "Durchhalten!" ("Hold out,") or, in more idiomatic American, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Yet homely as were her attire and surroundings, it seemed as inappropriate for any one to call the stately Susannah Grandiere "Sukey," as it is for some writers to refer to England's ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... world he has recorded with a fresh, unfailing touch. His horses are not as rhythmic as those of Degas, his landscapes are not as sun-flooded as those of Monet, nor are his Holland bits so charged with homely sentiment as those of Josef Israels. But Liebermann is Liebermann, with a supple, flowing, pregnant line, his condensed style a versatile conception, a cynical, at times, outlook upon the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... in all their lives would moments so full of sweetness and splendor come to them. They were all the sweeter because blended with the homely duties that fell to Antonia's hands. As she went about ordering the breakfast, and giving to the table a festal air, Dare thought of the old Homeric heroes, and the daughters of the kings who ministered to their wants. The bravest of them had done no greater ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... women alone worked. Nowhere was there evidence of a man tilling the fields or performing any of the homely duties ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the White House that draws most strongly at the interest and curiosity of the homely, common throng ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... Renaissance style, which is most familiar to us in the architecture of Bath; it has an outlandish look, with its classical lines seen against the background of the smooth river and green Devonshire country, and has not the homely charm of Elizabethan or ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... that Uncle Solomon's homely story of the goat would be a splendid illustration of some of our modern politicians. It is difficult to tell which side of the question ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... on the pageantry of the marriage day itself, but I do not find that they have authority for the splendor of their descriptions. I cannot find a word in the older Chronicles about the jewels or dress of the brides, and I believe the ceremony to have been more quiet and homely than is usually supposed. The only sentence which gives color to the usual accounts of it is one of Sansovino's, in which he says that the magnificent dress of the brides in his day was founded "on ancient custom."[32] However this may have been, the circumstances of the rite were otherwise very ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... have separate bedrooms. Ordinary people accept the homely phases of coexistence as inevitable and therefore unimportant. They grow to enjoy the intimacy: they give and take informality as one of the comforts of a home. They see frowsy hair and unshaven cheeks and yawns as a homely, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... good many English parents, who call themselves Christians, are too apt to say, 'Ask your Sunday-school teacher,' when such questions are put to them. The decay of parental religious teaching is working enormous mischief in Christian households; and the happiest results would follow if Joshua's homely advice were attended to, 'Ye shall let ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... it to cover, and has the full emotional power and suggestion that it has for himself. Two quite simple illustrations may serve. The English-born clergyman in Canada who spoke of a meeting of his congregation as a "homely gathering" did not produce quite the effect he intended; "home-like" is one thing in Canada, "homely" quite another, and the people laughed at the slip—they knew, what he did not, that "homely" meant hard-featured and ugly. My other illustration will take us towards the second canon. I ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... furnishes also the following reminiscences: As George Muller was engaged in free, homely conversation with his friends on a Sunday afternoon within about three weeks of his departure to be with the Lord, he referred to two visits he had made during the previous week to two old and beloved friends. He had fully appreciated that, though they were about ten years younger than himself, ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... considerable concession—by placing herself before him in a more favourable light. In her dress, her manner, her bearing there was a certain half-alien delicacy, finesse, aloofness. She would not lay this altogether aside, even at home, even in the informal country; but she would provide a homely medium, suited to Abner's rustic vision, through which her exotic airs and graces ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... parts of the house. In the diplomatic corps there was great splendor of costume, but no man carried himself more stately than did Mr. Lawrence, whose fine, manly figure admirably becomes a court dress. I do not think that I ever saw a collection of ladies so plain and homely as the court ladies of Queen Victoria, who walked behind her in procession. The Duchess of Sutherland has been renowned for her majestic beauty; but she is passe, and her friends are, I think, matchless for entire destitution of personal charms. But there was enough present to atone for the ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... forget the dead, otherwise life would be too horrible; and it was possibly only the Larchers' nature to laugh and to talk more loudly than most people. James saw that it was a united, affectionate household, homely and kind, cursed with no particular depth of feeling; and if they had not resigned themselves to the boy's death, they were doing their best to forget that he had ever lived. It was obviously the best thing, and it would be ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... Impossible to see in him any resemblance to his father! Oh! He was a far more brilliant, more advanced, more complicated, more seductive being than his homely father! She wondered where he had come from. And yet ...! If his father had lived, what would have occurred between them? Would the boy have been openly smoking cigars ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... long for sleep; Men that wake and revel;— If an old song leap To your senses' level At such moments, may it be Sometimes, though a moment only, Some forgotten, quaint and homely Vehicle of me! ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... sculptured shields upon the columns of it and Umbrian frescoes in the roof, she spread their board and brought them their onion-soup and their dish of pasta, and while they ate it looked on and muttered her talk and twirled her distaff, day after day, year after year, the same. Life is homely and frugal here, and has few graces. The ways of life in these grand old places are like nettles and thistles set in an old majolica vase that has had knights and angels painted on it. You know what I mean, you who ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... with a cold, reserved look, by a lady into whose hands I had passed, that struck me as singular, as shown to the owner of such an article. It was not long, however, before I discovered, to use a homely phrase, that something had happened; and I was not altogether without curiosity to know what that something was. It was apparent enough, that Eudosia was the subject of general observation, and of general conversation, ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... thus:—Sir James taking only with him two of his servants, went to Thomas Dickson, of whom he was received with tears, after he had revealed himself to him, for the good old man knew him not at first, being in mean and homely apparel. There he kept him secretly in a quiet chamber, and brought unto him such as had been trusty servants to his father, not all at, once, but apart by one and one, for fear of discoverie. Their advice ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... estranged from you Southerners. We are becoming a world power and should have a thoroughly united country. Why don't you Southern people begin a campaign of education and let the North know your real mind, so that we won't tread on your corns so often, to use a homely phrase." ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... for October, and the veranda of the hotel was crowded with loungers, homely men in jeans, slouched hats, and coarse brogans. Some of them sat on the benches, supported by the square columns, at the end of the veranda; a few had tilted their chairs against the wall, and others stood in groups ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... Gellius, Noctes Atticae, ii. 2.) The Lessons of the philosopher Taurus were justified by the old and memorable example of Fabius; and we may contemplate the same story in the style of Livy (xxiv. 44) and the homely idiom of Claudius Quadri garius ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... is very accomplished, and has made this house a happy home to us all, ever since we can remember. She is not elegant, but genuinely good, and so beloved and respected that there will be universal mourning for her when her place is empty. No one can fill it, for the solid, homely virtues of the dear soul have gone out of fashion, as I say, and nothing new can be half so ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... at the same time for drill in language and for recitation, whereby on the one hand the memory was developed and the imagination strengthened, and on the other the heroic forms of antiquity and healthy primitive utterances regarding morality, and full of homely common sense, were deeply engraved on the young mind. Homer was regarded not merely as a poet, but as an inspired moral teacher, and great portions of his poems were learned by heart. The Iliad and the Odyssey were in truth the Bible of the Greeks." (Laurie, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... the rooms in the college is singularly furnished. "Girard had directed that a suitable room was to be set apart for the preservation of his books and papers; but from excess of pious care, or dread of the next-of kin, all the plain homely man's effects were shovelled into this room. Here are his boxes and his bookcase, his gig and his gaiters, his pictures and his pottery; and in a bookcase, hanging with careless grace, are his braces—old homely knitted braces, telling their tale of ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... huge tea-kettle on the fire, and tea-pot to correspond on the table, and I, as I read my story, and the rest of the company, as they listen, might help ourselves, I think it would be very jolly, and very homely." ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... young patriot and his warmly sympathizing Martha, who now kindly supplied their wants, and then conducted them to their attic chamber, where, it being now nearly dark, they immediately betook themselves to their homely but grateful couch. And, overcome by the fatigues and harrowing anxieties of the day, they soon fell asleep, expecting to be roused in the morning by the din of the battle, which they felt confident was ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... That homely adage, "What is one man's meat is another man's poison," comes to mind when we consider with what different eyes different naturalists look upon the hypothesis of the derivative origin of actual specific forms, since ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... silver is a mighty poor radiator. Homely example: Try waiting for your coffee to cool if it's in a polished silver pot. Then try it in a tungsten-beryllium pot. No matter how you polish that tungsten-beryllium, the stuff WILL radiate heat. ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... stars, veined marble, stained glass, and flying stair-rails he saw his legs trail helplessly after, close in above, fling violently across him feet foremost, and dash out of view. In other words, having reached the bottom of the grand staircase he had turned a complete and homely somersault. ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... scorn! Where friendship and esteem that ought to be The tenants of men's hearts, lodge in their looks And tongues alone. Where little virtue, with A costly keeper, passes for a heap; A heap for none that has a homely one! Where fashion makes the law—your umpire which You bow to, whether it has brains or not! Where Folly taketh off his cap and bells, To clap on Wisdom, which must bear the jest! Where to pass current you must seem the thing, The passive thing, that others think; and not ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... the contrary, do we seem to wish for no song from the tropical bird of magnificent plumage, and express no surprise that none comes from it. I may put this more plainly as I proceed, and in more homely words. What I want to lay before you now, and must insist upon, is, that you seek for tone, tone before all. Tone you must get at all cost; and to get it, you must have as choice wood as ever can be procured, ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... his homely features, and humble garb, the intrepidity of soul came out in all its lustre! Heroism, in its native majesty, commanded ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... impression that he was on the verge of prostration, although, making an effort, Blakely had appeared at breakfast after an early morning walk, had been most courteous, gentle, and attentive to her and to her wholesome, if not actually homely, Kate. How the mother's heart yearned over that sweet-natured, sallow-faced child! But after breakfast Blakely had wandered off again and was out on the mesa, peering through a pair of borrowed glasses over the dreary eastward ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... as queer as you!" she retorted with homely force. "And if he was so bad then as that comes to, how is he such an ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... of no service to the common people: but to tell them that they may die in a fit of drunkenness, and shew them how dreadful that would be, cannot fail to make a deep impression. Sir, when your Scotch clergy give up their homely manner, religion will soon decay in that country.' Let this observation, as Johnson meant it, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... the introduction of man), as that one form should be transmuted into another upon fitting occasion, as, for instance, in the succession of species which differ from each other only in some details. To compare small things with great in a homely illustration: man alters from time to time his instruments or machines, as new circumstances or conditions may require and his wit suggest. Minor alterations and improvements he adds to the machine ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... bad as all that, we just got to keep still about it. I wouldn't allow you to throw mud at her if she's been carryin' on with only one man, but if there's fifty or—But, gosh a' mighty, Harry, it ain't possible. A woman as homely as Minnie—why, dog-gone it, a woman as homely as she is simply couldn't be bad no matter how much she wanted to. It ain't human ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... to perswade, my louing Protheus; Home-keeping youth, haue euer homely wits, Wer't not affection chaines thy tender dayes To the sweet glaunces of thy honour'd Loue, I rather would entreat thy company, To see the wonders of the world abroad, Then (liuing dully sluggardiz'd ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... single volume in 1879, and on the 7th of October 1886 Barnes died at Winterborne Came. His poetry is essentially English in character; no other writer has given quite so simple and sincere a picture of the homely life and labour of rural England. His work is full of humour and the clean, manly joy of life; and its rusticity is singularly allied to a literary sense and to high technical finish. He is indeed the Victorian ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... of severe mental strain Mr. Excell sat beside Lawyer Brown, motionless as a statue, save when now and again he leaned forward to whisper a suggestion. He did not look at his son, and Harold seldom looked at him. Jack Burns sat as near the prisoner as the sheriff would permit, and his homely, good face, and the face of the judge were to Harold the only spots of light in the otherwise dark room. Outside the voices of children could be heard and the sound of the rising wind in the rustling trees. Once a breeze sent ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... times themselves are giving, at once cheerfully and sadly, in strange destructions and strange births, a better answer than I can give. I have set forth, as far as in me lay, the data of my problem: and surely, if the premises be given, wise men will not have to look far for the conclusion. In homely English I have given my readers Yeast; if they be what I take them for, they will be able to bake with ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... and the riot of Zaton's seemed far away. The triumphs of the fencing-room—even they grew cheap and tawdry. I thought of existence as one outside it, I balanced this against that, and wondered whether, after all, the red soutane were so much better than the homely jerkin, or the fame of a ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... these hard, cold things and take hold of and seize them, we know that we have, to use a homely simile, eaten our cake. The supply of pearls is continuous, and under the control of the cruel ingenuity of man they grow to an ordinary size in less ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... the 30th of May, 1783: "Our son is at the Hague, pursuing his studies with great ardor. They give him a good character wherever he has been, and I hope he will make a good man." On the 9th of June he wrote in these homely, but manly words: "I am weary, worn, and disgusted to death. I had rather chop wood, dig ditches, and make fence upon my poor little farm. Alas, poor farm! and poorer family! what have you lost that your country might be free! and that others might catch fish ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... saint—a cross or so— A hammock swinging to and fro— A gittern by the window laid Whereon the morning breezes play'd, And its low tones and broken parts Seem'd like some thoughtless minstrel's arts— A rugged table in the floor— Ran thro' this homely comedor. Here, weary as you well may think, An hour or so we made abode, To give our mules both food and drink, Before we took again the road; And honestly, our own repast Was that of monks from lenten fast. ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... is a breach of etiquette, when offering a gift, to represent it as valueless, or useless to yourself. "If you do not have it, the pigs will," is a homely old proverb in such cases, not ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... Bartholomaeus Anglicus, an English Franciscan of the thirteenth century, was a mutationist in his way, as Aristotle, "the Philosopher" of the Christian Schoolmen, had been in his. So late as the seventeenth century, as we learn not only from early proceedings of the Royal Society, but from a writer so homely and so regularly pious as Walton, the variation of species and "spontaneous" generations had no theological bearing, except as instances of that various wonder of the world which in devout minds is ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... Maclaurin, with a face of flippant assurance, 'Are these words your own?' BOSWELL. Sir Walter Scott shows where the humour of this motto chiefly lay. 'The counsel opposite,' he writes, 'was the celebrated Wight, an excellent lawyer, but of very homely appearance, with heavy features, a blind eye which projected from its socket, a swag belly, and a limp. To him Maclaurin applied the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... tut, tut, tut!" And as the young subaltern gave utterance to these homely sounds, he was recalling certain sarcastic remarks of the stern master of drill respecting officers and gentlemen demeaning themselves by associating ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... from the most scientific test of the uniformity of these fibers, I shall next refer to one more homely. It is simply this: The common garden spider, except when very young, cannot climb up one of the same size as the web on which she displays such activity. She is perfectly helpless, and slips down with a run. After vainly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... maid brought in a tray shining with silver and porcelain, set it down on the table in front of Mrs. Draper, and then wheeled in a little circular table with shelves, a glorified edition in gleaming mahogany of the homely, white-painted wheeled-tray of Sylvia's home. On the shelves was a large assortment of delicate, small cakes and paper-thin sandwiches. While she poured out the amber-colored tea into the translucent cups, Mrs. Draper kept up with the ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... listened. There was something doing. It was a Welsh rhapsodie that he was playing. It was all there—the mountains and the rivers, and the towering cliffs with glimpses of the sea where waves foam on the rocks, and sea-fowl wheel and scream in the wind, and then a bit of homely melody as the country folk drive home in the moonlight, singing as only the Welsh can sing, the songs of the heart; songs of love and home, songs of death and sorrowing, that stab with sudden sweetness. A child cries somewhere in the dark, cries for his mother who ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... offer so pleasant and worthy a work, devised by the author, it being now barbarously and simply framed in our English tongue. And after long deliberation had, your honourable lordship came to my remembrance, a man much more worthy, than to whom so homely and rude a translation should be presented. But when I again remembred the jesting and sportfull matter of the booke, unfit to be offered to any man of gravity and wisdome, I was wholly determined to make no Epistle Dedicatory at all; till as now of ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... window-panes for darkened homes before she even tapped on the window of a darkened mind; but when she did, no plants ever turned more eagerly toward the light than did the youthful souls of those Kentucky hills. She started with five pupils in a log cabin. She built a homely frame house with five rooms, only to find more candidates clamoring at her door. She taught the girls to cook, sew, wash and iron, clean house, and make baskets, and the boys to use tools, to farm, make garden, and take care of animals; and she ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... determined to superintend the education of Coningsby. It was a relation which identified him with the noble house of his pupil, or, properly speaking, his charge: for Mr. Rigby affected rather the graceful dignity of the governor than the duties of a tutor. The boy was recalled from his homely, rural school, where he had been well grounded by a hard-working curate, and affectionately tended by the curate's unsophisticated wife. He was sent to a fashionable school preparatory to Eton, where he found about two hundred youths of noble families and connections, lodged in a magnificent villa, ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... not to be pricked out of his form even by so shrewd a pricker; and like unto one who heareth not, he continued to look most graciously on the homely vessel that stood ready to ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... ceremony, to their respective seats in a spacious hall. The royal table and couch, covered with carpets and fine linen, was raised by several steps in the midst of the hall; and a son, an uncle, or perhaps a favorite king, were admitted to share the simple and homely repast of Attila. Two lines of small tables, each of which contained three or four guests, were ranged in order on either hand; the right was esteemed the most honorable, but the Romans ingenuously confess, that they were placed on ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... fragrant matting; a table neither too low to be pretty nor too high to be useful; a couple of armchairs, hospitably embracing; a pair of silver candlesticks, quaint and homely; a goodly company of pleasant books; a piano, just escaping from its travelling-cage, with all its pent-up music in its bosom; a cosey little cot clinging to its ampler mother; a stream of generous sunlight ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... that it's worth explaining. We have rather luxurious quarters at the hotel, but this room is somehow different. It's restful—I think it's homely—in fact, as I said, ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... dooce——" demanded Bones indignantly, and looked over the side.... He saw the pitiful thing that rolled slowly in the swift current, and the homely face of ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... glance travelled along the ridge to his right, he saw it gradually rising from the marsh in slopes, and scars, and wooded fells, a medley of lovely lines, of pastures and copses, of villages clinging to the hills, each with its church tower and its white spreading farms—a laud of homely charm and comfort, gently bounding the marsh below it, and cut off by the seething clouds in the north-west from the mountains towards which it climbed. And as he turned homewards with the moss country behind him, the hills ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mistress of Od, the patroness of Othere the homely, the sister of Frey-Frode, and daughter of Niord-Fridlaf, appears as Gunwara Eric's love and Syritha Ottar's love and the hair-clogged maiden, as ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... denied the intimacy of his kind because he performed them acceptably. If his aloof and solitary state ever distressed him, at least he gave no outward sign of it, but went his uncomplaining way, bearing himself with a homely, silent dignity, and enveloped in those invisible garments of superstition which local prejudice and local ignorance had ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... and shade, of colour and composition, is to transform them. Schopenhauer lays great stress on the transforming power of art. He instances many typical paintings of the Dutch school, simple interiors, homely scenes, fruit, vegetables, the commonest tools and utensils, even dead flesh—all are taken up into material for pictures, and, in their special ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... you've been so steeped in the fog of the crowd that you are blind to the homely and necessary things of living. I mean I have here meat of both sheep and hog that I raised myself. That is to say, mutton and ham. ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... sought people who would talk to him of themselves. He had a kind of faith that a message would come to him out of the mouth of some simple, homely dweller of the villages or the farms. A woman, with whom he talked in the railroad station at Fort Wayne, Indiana, interested him so that he went into a train with her and travelled all night in ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... young women blowing trumpets. They were not symbolical, or allegorical; they were homely, pathetic, humorous, human. They were aimed straight ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... hours and lapses and changes of time itself. An almost burdensome fulness of expression haunted the gestures, the very dress, the personal ornaments, of the people on the highway. Even Jacques Bonhomme at his labour, or idling for an hour, borrowed from his love, homely as it was, a touch of dignity or grace, and some secret of utterance, which made [57] one think of Italy or Greece. The voice of the shepherd calling, the chatter of the shepherdess turning her spindle, seemed to answer, or wait for answer,—to ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... say the truth, was in a bad way when he first knew Rose: he was restless, reckless, bitter. Turned loose into society with an ample fortune and nothing to do, he was in danger, according to the homely couplet of Dr. Watts, of being provided with employment by that undescribable personage who makes it his business ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Thought of deep, rude, earnest minds, fairly opened to the things about them; a face-to-face and heart-to-heart inspection of the things,—the first characteristic of all good Thought in all times. Not graceful lightness, half-sport, as in the Greek Paganism; a certain homely truthfulness and rustic strength, a great rude sincerity, discloses itself here. It is strange, after our beautiful Apollo statues and clear smiling mythuses, to come down upon the Norse Gods 'brewing ale' to hold their feast with Aegir, the Sea-Joetun; ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... whose light was what he had discerned at the extremity of the passage. He could distinctly observe the furniture and inmates of the room. Of the former, the only articles were a table—on which were placed the remains of a homely meal—an iron bedstead, and a barrel, turned upside down, which served as a substitute for a chair. The bedstead had no curtains, but in lieu of them, there were hangings around it, which struck Delme as resembling mourning habiliments. Whilst the light operated thus favourably, in enabling Sir ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... spiritual life was no longer a unity to Erasmus. It was, on the one hand, a strong desire for an upright, simple, pure and homely belief, the earnest wish to be a good Christian. But it was also the irresistible intellectual and aesthetic need of the good taste, the harmony, the clear and exact expression of the Ancients, the dislike of what was ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... to cross the borders of English into Spain. In his Noble Numbers Herrick shows himself to be a near kinsman of such men as Valdivielso, Ocana, Lope de Ubeda; and there are versicles of his that in their homely mixture of the sacred and the profane, in their reverent familiarity with things divine, their pious and simple gallantry, may well be likened to the graceful and charming romances and villancicos of these strangers. Their spirit is less Protestant than Catholic, and is hardly ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... together always carried me back to a dead and gone generation. There was a rag carpet on the floor, of the "hit-or-miss" pattern; the chairs were ancient Shaker rockers, some with homely "shuck" bottoms, and each had a tidy of snowy thread or crochet cotton fastened primly over the back. The high bed and bureau and a shining mahogany table suggested an era of "plain living" far, far remote from the day of Turkish rugs and Japanese bric-a-brac, and Aunt Jane was in perfect ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... distinguished from his companions, fell to talking about a leading townsman, and praised him for his ingenio simpatico, his bella intelligenza, with exclamations of approval from those who listened. No, it is not merely the difference between homely Anglo-Saxon and a language of classic origin; there is a radical distinction of thought. These people have an innate respect for things of the mind, which is wholly lacking to a typical Englishman. One need not dwell upon the point that their animation was supported ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... man she loved, whose happiness it would be her joy to make, and who was already one with her in heart and soul. So her fortune went to swell the purse of a wiser sister, who had married a rich nabob; and she, to the wonder and compassionate regret of all who knew her, went to bury herself in the homely village parsonage among the hills of -. And yet, in spite of all this, and in spite of my mother's high spirit and my father's whims, I believe you might search all England through, and fail to ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... awful homely," said Emma Jane. "I'm going to have a white satin with a pink sash, pink stockings, bronze slippers, ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... hundred sermons every year. In London he spoke to the limit of his voice—ten thousand people. Yet when chance sent him but fifty auditors he spoke with just as much feeling. His sermons were full of wit, often homely but never coarse. He knew how to interest tired men; how to keep the children awake. He interspersed anecdote with injunction, and precept with homely happenings. He yearned to better this life, and to evolve souls ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... woman, whose dress was somewhat above her mien and air, which, though not without a certain respectability, were very homely, entered the room; and seeing the young man standing thus thoughtful by the window, paused. She was used to his habits; and since his success in life, had learned to respect them. So she did not disturb his revery, but began softly to arrange the room, dusting, with ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... English in our courts of law. The poems of Chaucer are the literary result— "the bright consummate flower" of the union of two great powers— the brilliance of the French language on the one hand and the homely truth and steadfastness of English on the other. Chaucer was born in 1340, and died in 1400; so that we may say that he and his poems— though not the causes— are the signs and symbols of the great influence that French obtained and held over our mother tongue. But although ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... lighting upon the one unanswerable demand of American political life at the time. In the earlier pages of his "Sketches" he lays down his Theory of Government, which is, in brief, that of the contrat social, but presented in a homely form, which brings it nearer to the actual life of men; he concludes his observation with a definition of the most perfect practicable system of government as "a government where the right of making laws is vested in the greatest number of individuals, and the power of executing them in the ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... Caesarea. His memory of Mathias was as partial; but he knew the president's full face, and while pondering on it he remembered that he had never seen him in profile. Nor was this all that set the two men apart in Joseph's consciousness. The prior's simple and homely language came from the heart, entered the heart and was remembered, whereas Mathias spoke from his brain. The heart is simple and always the same, but the brain is complex and various; and therefore it was natural that Mathias should hold, as if in ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... grinned his understanding and handed over the lead-rope with a bit of homely advice. "You no lak' you git find, dat better you don' talk mooch. You ain' got to sing no mor', neider, or ba Goss! A'm tak' you down an' stick you mout' full of rags, lak' I done down to Chinook dat tam'. Dat hooch she mak' noise 'nough ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... of perhaps 40 minutes, the D.C.L.I. or 479 have observed our arrival and tools are counted out and issued, the homely pick and shovel. The task is pleasantly situated about 150 yards in front of several batteries of our field guns (which open fire directly we are in position) and consists in relaxing duckboards, excavating the submerged sleepers ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... was, as Slim had said, a hammer-headed brute of imposing proportions. But for his eyes no turfman would have looked at him twice. They were large, clear, and unusually intelligent; they redeemed his homely face. Without them he would have been ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... come and dine with us; it is a month since we have seen your homely old phiz." And Sir Joseph replies that he will be on hand the next Sunday evening and offers this mild suggestion, "Scientific gents as has countenances as curdles milk should not cast aspersions on men made ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... Ward affords not only a singular instance of the mutability of human affairs, but of the tendency of the Anglo-Saxon race, when transplanted to foreign countries, to emerge to eminence, and surpass others by the homely but rare qualities of common-sense and unfaltering energy. Ward was a Yorkshire groom. The Duke of Lucca, when on a visit to this country, perceiving the lad's merit, took him into his service, and promoted him, through the several degrees ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... love,' sings Coleridge, 'doth work like madness in the brain;' and to edit in numerous volumes the works of a man you cordially dislike and always mistrust has something of the same effect, whilst it is certainly hard measure on the poor fellow edited. His lot—if I may venture upon a homely comparison founded upon a lively reminiscence of childhood—resembles that of an unfortunate infant being dressed by an angry nurse, in whose malicious hands the simplest operations of the toilet, to say nothing of the severer processes of ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... spent her time in spinning and weaving, and in thinking of her royal husband. Often she was very sad and lonely, and it happened that one day while she was seated at the window, letting salt tears drop on her work, an old woman, a kind, homely-looking old body, stepped up to the window, and, leaning upon her crutch, addressed the Queen ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... very remarkable, that he retained in his memory very slight and trivial, as well as important things[49]. As an instance of this, it seems that an inferiour domestick of the Duke of Leeds had attempted to celebrate his Grace's marriage in such homely rhimes as he could make; and this curious composition having been sung to Dr. Johnson he got it by heart, and used to repeat it in a very pleasant manner. Two of the stanzas ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... throve. The noble blood in his veins was warm, and he became strong on his homely fare. He grew apace in the humble house, and the Danish dialect spoken by the West Jutes became his language. The pomegranate seed from Spanish soil became a hardy plant on the coast of West Jutland. Such may be a man's fate! To this home he clung with the ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... very hearts and souls, with our wills, with our absolute being. But all external things should be in harmony with the spirit of his revelation. And if God chose that his Son should visit the earth in homely fashion, in homely fashion likewise should be everything that enforces and commemorates that revelation. All church-forms should be on the other side from show and expense. Let the money go to build decent houses for God's poor, not to give them his holy bread and wine out of silver and gold and ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... chintz-covered couch and cowered there with a hidden face. Rand arose and, walking to the window, stared at the veil of rain and the stabbing lightning. The clock ticked, a log upon the hearth parted with a soft sound, from the back of the house came faintly the homely cheer of the servants' voices. How deadly, how solemnly still, how wet and cold, was now a rocky strand upon the river road! He left the window and, coming to the couch, looked down upon the crouching figure of his wife. His brain was not numbed; it was pitilessly awake, and he suffered. ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... parade of glorious colour and the scannel voice of it issuing forth, as in mockery, from its painted throat, must, like my landlady's butterflies at Great Missenden, have been invented by some skilful fabulist for the consolation and support of homely virtue: or rather, perhaps, by a fabulist not quite so skilful, who made points for the moment without having a studious enough eye to the complete effect; for I thought these melting greens and blues so beautiful that afternoon, that I would have given them my vote just then before the sweetest ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... governing a kingdom has not considered her too insignificant to advise him; and I am sensible of it. I am, I assure you, dearest, on my guard against it. That would not attach me to him, as his homely friendliness does. He is the most amiable, cheerful, benignant of men; he has no feeling of an enemy, though naturally his enemies are numerous and venomous. He is full of observation and humour. How he would amuse you! In many respects ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Epaminondas is reported to have said afterwards, of his table, "Treason lurks not under such a dinner," so Lycurgus perceived before him, that such a house admits of no luxury and needless splendour. Indeed, no man could be so absurd as to bring into a dwelling so homely and simple, bedsteads with silver feet, purple coverlets, golden cups, and a train of expense that follows these: but all would necessarily have the bed suitable to the room, the coverlet of the bed and the rest of their utensils and furniture to that. From this plain sort of dwellings, proceeded ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... you, Mr. Caffyn, here in the Doctor's presence, that this has been a great experience for me. I've had a good time, as I believe, sir, they say in your country. But I look around me'—here Farrell looked again and almost theatrically around the feast of Comus—'and I say that, be it never so homely, give me Wimbledon to wind up. You and me, Doctor—or, as I might say, you and I, are for home, after all—and the old cooking. Our ways henceforth may lie separate; but we've a bond in common and any time you care to look me up at Wimbledon I shall be most ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... always a little hyperborean, leaning towards the cold; bracing, sub-acid, active fruit. I think you must come from the north, you are so frank and honest, so sturdy and appetizing. You are stocky and homely like the northern races. Your quality is Saxon. Surely the fiery and impetuous south is not akin to you. Not spices or olives or the sumptuous liquid fruits, but the grass, the snow, the grains, the coolness is akin ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... fish for dinner, spattering the bacon fat upon the floor. She smiled alternately at her father and Professor Young; she caroled like a spring bird with bursts of happy song. Then they three sat down to the table to eat the homely ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... their hands. He will own to you that in the struggle for life which goes on day and night in our thoughts as in the outside world of nature, much that he learned under the name of science has died out, and that simple homely experience has largely taken the place of that scholastic knowledge to which he and perhaps some of his instructors ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... it to make madmen Merry, and wisemen Sick. There is a Decency, or shall I rather say a Chastity in Writing or Thinking on such exalted Subjects, that great Minds are apt to Cherish, which keeps them Cautious and Diffident, where weak Men are as bold and as rash (to use an homely Phrase) as a blind Mare in a Mire. I have known many silly Preachers, and paperscull'd Writers in my Time, that were troubled with the Divinity Squirt, and were forc'd to print, or to be tormented with the Cholick, or foul ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous |
