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Sumptuous   /sˈəmptʃwəs/  /sˈəmptʃuəs/   Listen
Sumptuous

adjective
1.
Rich and superior in quality.  Synonyms: deluxe, gilded, grand, luxurious, opulent, princely.  "Gilded dining rooms"



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"Sumptuous" Quotes from Famous Books



... luscious lips and in her great black eyes. Scarlet flowers, flat-petaled, black-stamened, wreathed her dusky hair. Scarlet bands outlined her dusky shoulders. Scarlet streamers trailed in her wake. Never had she seemed more lazy and languid, more velvety and voluptuous, more colorful and sumptuous. ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... Captain, learning his art; and afterwards as Kaiser's Generalissimo, in 1542. He did no good upon the Turks, on that latter occasion; as indeed what good was to be done, in such a quagmire of futilities as Joachim's element there was? "Too sumptuous in his dinners, too much wine withal!" hint some calumniously. [Paulus Jovius, &c. See Pauli, iii. 70-73.] "Hector of Germany!" say others. He tried some small prefatory Siege or scalade of Pesth; could not do it; and came his ways home again, as the best course. Pedant Chroniclers ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle

... the mules lay down their load; There, while Maecenas goes to fives, we creep, Virgil and I, to bed, and so to sleep: For, though the game's a pleasant one to play, Weak stomachs and weak eyes are in the way. Then to Cocceius' country-house we come, Beyond the Caudian inns, a sumptuous home. Now, Muse, recount the memorable fight 'Twixt valiant Messius and Sarmentus wight, And tell me first from what proud lineage sprung The champions joined in battle, tongue with tongue. From Oscan blood great Messius' sires derive: ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... arm to lead the way to the reception-rooms of the front house, where a sumptuous fete had been prepared. As he entered the gallery, followed by his guests, he beheld it filled with pictures and ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac

... chapels, chiefly by Luini and Ferrari—an idyllic Nativity, with faun-like shepherds and choirs of angels—a sumptuous adoration of the Magi—a jewelled Sposalizio with abundance of golden hair flowing over draperies of green and crimson—will interest those who are as yet unfamiliar with Lombard painting. Yet their architectural setting, perhaps, is superior to their intrinsic merit as works of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... Boleyn came a sumptuous litter covered with cloth of gold, drawn by four white palfreys caparisoned in white damask down to the ground, and each having a page in white and blue satin at its head. Over the litter was borne a canopy of cloth of gold ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... studies, and so on, through the whole syllogism which ends in Nature's supreme quod erat demonstrandum. What was there to distract him or disturb him? He did not know,—but there was something. This sumptuous creature, this Eve just within the gate of an untried Paradise, untutored in the ways of the world, but on tiptoe to reach the fruit of the tree of knowledge,—alive to the moist vitality of that warm atmosphere palpitating with voices and music, as the flower of some diaecious plant which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... church; but now, as we made our way round the choir, gazing into chapel after chapel, each with its painted window, its crucifix, its pictures, its confessional, and afterwards came back into the nave, where arch rises above arch to the lofty roof, we came to the conclusion that it was very sumptuous. It is the greatest of pities that its grandeur and solemnity should just now be so infinitely marred by the workmen's boards, timber, and ladders occupying the whole centre of the edifice, and screening ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... only too glad to feel that her anxiety had been needless; but, alas! three times over during breakfast did Rhoda stoop down to button her shoe, and in vain did her companions press food upon her. A sumptuous breakfast had been served in honour of the occasion, but ham and eggs seemed just the last things in the world that she wanted to eat, while the sight of fried fish took away the last remnant of ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... decline to specify, somewhere between Oxford and Guildford, I missed a connection or miscalculated a route in such manner that I was left stranded for rather more than an hour. I adore waiting at railway stations, but this was not a very sumptuous specimen. There was nothing on the platform except a chocolate automatic machine, which eagerly absorbed pennies but produced no corresponding chocolate, and a small paper-stall with a few remaining copies of a cheap imperial ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... In its translucent atmosphere Afrite and Princess reappear,— Through painted panes the scattered spear Of sunrise scarce so warm and clear,— And pulped with such a golden juice, Ambrosial, that one cannot choose But find the thought most sumptuous cheer. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... from the close of the ceremony, the guests were invited to partake of a sumptuous dinner, prepared expressly for the occasion. It was placed on rough tables made of large slabs, supported by small, round legs, set in auger holes; and though there was a scantiness of dishes—and these in the main consisting of a few pewter-plates, ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett

... life was a perfect harmony. Once on returning from a journey Hillel heard a sound of quarreling in the neighborhood of his house. "I am certain," said he, "that this noise does not proceed from my home." On another occasion Hillel sent his wife a message to prepare a sumptuous meal for an honored guest. At the appointed hour Hillel and his guest arrived. But the meal was not ready. "Why so late?" asked Hillel. "I prepared a banquet," the wife replied, "according to your desire. But I learned that a couple ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... progeny remained from them, and because they were people of large property, and numerous in the towns where they resided, they had a quarter set apart, like as in Portugal and Castile in other times there used to be Jewries and Moorish quarters set apart; and they built houses for their idols, sumptuous edifices, which are to be seen at this day; and in the space of a hundred years there did not remain one. All this they had got thus recorded in their legends, and since at that time so many people did not take India, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... answer came, and Kenyon and Wentworth again held consultation in the sumptuous offices which had ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr

... generals and soldiers, the consuls and praetors, and proconsuls and propraetors, filled their treasuries, and fed their troops, and paid the artisans for fabricating their arms. With these avails they built the magnificent edifices of Rome, and adorned its environs with sumptuous villas. As they had the power and the arms in their hands, the peaceful and the industrious had no alternative but to submit. They went on as well as they could with their labors, bearing patiently every interruption, returning again to till ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott

... Stuart of Chipewyan, and John Clarke, whom Thompson had known at Isle a la {109} Crosse. But where was Alexander Mackay, who had gone overland with Mackenzie in 1793? The men fell into one another's arms with gruff, profane embraces. Thompson was haled in to a sumptuous midday dinner of river salmon, duck and partridge, and wines brought round the world. The absence of Mackay was the only thing that took from the ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut

... at his Majesty's Palace, a stately and princely seat, wherein I saw a sumptuous chapel, most richly adorned with all appurtenances belonging to so sacred a place, or so royal an owner. In the inner court I saw the King's arms cunningly carved in stone, and fixed over a door aloft on the wall, the red lion being in the crest, over which ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor

... Most men find it in their daily occupations, their profession or their business. The president of one of the great Western railroads remarked once in conversation that he would rather build a thousand miles of railroad than live in the most sumptuous palace on Fifth Avenue. Railroad building was his medium of expression; it was his art. Some express themselves in shaping their material environment, in the decoration and ordering of their houses. A young woman said, "My ambition is to keep my house well." Again, ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes

... that the eyes of the brothers dwelt, nor even upon the soldier-like figure of their stalwart father leaning against the wall with folded arms, and eyes shining with the patriotic fervour of his race. The attention of the lads was enchained by another and more sumptuous figure —that of a fine-looking man, approaching to middle life, who was seated at a little distance from the minstrel, and was smiling with pleasure and appreciation at the wild sweetness of the stream of melody ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green

... in the balmy breezes of the "Lone Star" State, compelled was I by feebleness of frame to miss the sumptuous feast by loving hands so deftly spread. And sad, yet happy thought, those as ever ready on the poor to wait, are now in those of the Master clasped. And still I linger, and the years go by. Such is life. Deep and many are her mysteries. God knows ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen

... drawing a square piece of papyrus from his girdle: 'I see that he asks us an hour earlier than usual: an earnest of something sumptuous.' ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... do taste food, it must be what first offers: and this thou wouldst have known hadst thou read as many histories as I have done; for, though I have perused many, I never yet found in them any account of knights-errant taking food, unless it were by chance and at certain sumptuous banquets prepared expressly for them. The rest of their days they lived, as it were, upon smelling. And though it is to be presumed they could not subsist without eating and satisfying all other wants,—as, in fact, they were men,—yet, ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... wreath, and held it up in the sun to look at it. What a strange beauty was hers, as she held it so—a heavy, sumptuous thing—in her white hands, ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... up of fine public buildings, sumptuous dwellings, and low hovels, not mingled indiscriminately, as is often seen in European cities, each class being found clustering in its special locality. In Florence, Rome, or Naples, a half-starved cobbler will be found occupying ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... underneath, the smallest beginning and the tallest always knocking against them a little, because she did not stoop enough. It made them shout with laughter, and these young voices sounding beneath the low vaults of my sumptuous palace, seemed to wake it up and to people it with childlike gaiety, filling it ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... best people I have told you about are as far removed from the commonplace as the equator from the poles. They are rich in conception, sumptuous in detail, artistic in every way, and filled with the art gems of the world. But these people have descended from refined people for several generations. They are the true Americans, but make up a small ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous

... account of his extravagance and general worthlessness, took up his residence in Geneva, and, on his death, in 1873, bequeathed all his property, about four million dollars, to the city. The municipality was grateful enough to carry out in a very sumptuous manner the last wishes of its benefactor, who desired to be commemorated by a monument in the style of the later Scaliger tomb at Verona, and from the designs of Frauel was erected the hexagonal Gothic pavilion, surmounted ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various

... Margaret gleefully, when she had persuaded Eleanor to abandon her buns and to share this sumptuous meal, "she knew that I should meet a friend. Do you know," she added, "that this is the very first picnic I have ever attended in my life, though I have read of ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler

... prolific literary labour she was able to double her jointure, and to maintain much of the splendour to which she had become so accustomed. Even her literary children were cradled in luxury on a fauteuil of yellow satin, in a library crowded with sumptuous couches and ottomans, enamel tables and statutary. To her house in Seamore Place her beauty and fame drew the most eminent men in England, from Lawrence and Lyndhurst to Lytton and young Disraeli, gorgeous as his hostess, in gold-flowered waistcoat, gold rings and chains, white stick with black ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... seem to be something almost physical in the sensation, as it can be excited by tickling, or the inhalation of gas. Similar results may be produced by other bodily causes. Homer speaks of the chiefs laughing after a sumptuous banquet, and of a man "laughing sweetly" when drunk. Bacon's term titillatio, would seem very appropriate in such cases. There was an idea, in olden times, that laughter emanated from a particular part of ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... Belleisle:—of the eminent Montijos I have to record next to nothing in the shape of negotiation ("Treaty" with the Termagant was once proposed by him here, which Friedrich in his politest way declined); and shall mention only, That his domestic arrangements were sumptuous and commodious in the extreme. Let him arrive in the meanest village, destitute of human appliances, and be directed to the hut where he is to lodge,—straightway from the fourgons and baggage-chests of Montijos is produced, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... pictures, too, in all Mr. Browning's interiors, seem to have grown out of the life of the persons. He has not merely come in and hung them up, as poor artist or upholsterer, to make a sumptuous house for fine people to move into. The character in any one of his poems seems to have devised the furnishing: it is distinct, exterior, not always helping or expressing the character's thought, sometimes to be referred to that only with an effort, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... presented it to Prince Potemkin, who promptly resold it to a wealthy merchant-contractor in the commissariat department of the army, who in turn sold it to Katherine II., who gave it once more to Potemkin. The prince never lived here, but gave sumptuous garden parties in the vast park, which is now in great part built over, and sold it back to the state again in 1794. It was first occupied by royalty in 1809, when the Emperor Alexander I. settled his ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... following Belle's death the Hon.———sat down to a sumptuous dinner in one of the most fashionable of the Saratoga hotels. A costly bottle of wine added its ruddy hue to his florid complexion. The waiters were obsequious, the smiling nods of recognition from other distinguished ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... that beautiful, sumptuous Nina Childe, with her wit, her humour, her imagination, loved this neutral little fellow; yet she made no secret of doing so. We tried to frame a theory that would account for it. 'It's the maternal instinct,' suggested one. 'It's her chivalry,' said ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... immediately laid aside their arms, welcomed the strangers, and entertained them with a sumptuous feast. Thus refreshed, they pressed on several leagues farther, until they reached a much larger city called Guancabama. From all the accounts given it would seem that the inhabitants of this region had reached a degree of civilization, so far as ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... sheets of heavy plate-glass. In the windows all the glittering and precious treasures of India and Asia seemed draped in gorgeous confusion, and blazed also through unbroken expanses of limpid glass of yet larger dimensions than the doors. Silks, laces, Cashmere shawls, damask, heavy and sumptuous velvets of bright colors, and fit for a queen's train, muslins of bewildering beauty, dresses at L200 a piece, and handkerchiefs of Manilla of almost fabulous value. The interior presented similar displays on all sides, multiplied by reflections from broad mirrors, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... He was recognized at once by one of the foreigners present, who, out of consideration for the host and fellow guests, held his tongue; but it is understood that this gentleman sought Armitage privately and warned him to leave Washington, which accounts for the fact that the sumptuous apartments at the New American in which Mr. John Armitage, alias Baron von Kissel, had established himself were vacated immediately. None of those present at the supper will talk of the matter, but it has been the subject of lively ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson

... fearful death of his Highness, Duke Philip II. of Pomerania, and of his melancholy but sumptuous burial. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... blaze of light over the massive pile, which seemed suddenly transformed into a regal palace, where high colors and cheap revelry went hand in hand, the party, joined and rejoined by several other distinguished politicians, refreshed themselves on a sumptuous supper, which the landlord had prepared without regard to expense. And when this was over, and the major's arrival had got fully noised about, there came such a throng of rejected humanity that the house ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... young and vigorous, and a hired man on a farm might have called her good-looking; but her charms did not interest Eddie. His soul was replete with the companionship of his other self—Pheeny; and if Delia had been as sumptuous a beauty as Cleopatra he would have been still more afraid of her. He had no more desire to possess her ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... hearing that Henry Thoreau, the eccentric bachelor, had just died of consumption in his mother's house on Main Street, in his forty-fifth year, would have smiled cannily at the notion that after fifty years their townsman's literary works would be published in a sumptuous twenty-volume edition, and that critics in his own country and in Europe would rank him with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Yet that is precisely what has happened. Our literature has no more curious story than the evolution of this local crank into his rightful place of ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... from his seat. He saw it all in a flash: the burning tower, with volumes of smoke rising from it; the line of men, with hose and buckets, pouring water on the connecting bridge of the tower; the groups of frightened guests on the terrace, and his mother standing unmoved amongst them in her sumptuous purple dress and the diamonds in her hair; the arrival of the fire-engine from Sedgwick; and then, just at the end, the figure of a man appearing on the bridge, with a cloak wound round his head, dashing into the doorway through which the smoke was issuing in great ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... and splendor flowing from all the sources of the world had carried thither its rarest treasures. Greece, Rome, Byzantium, the genius of the Saracen, and the vigor of the Norman had shared in the decoration of those walls, gorgeous with gold and color, hung with sumptuous tapestries woven with alluring figures from the legends of love. The floor, inlaid with iridescent tiles that Persian hands had painted, was strewn with costly stuffs and furs. Before a life-size statue in bronze of Venus, a copy of that Venus Callipyge given by Heliogabalus to Syracuse, ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... summoned his domestics, and bade them lose no time in preparing a most sumptuous banquet, and above all things, not to fail of setting a golden beaker of the water of Lethe by ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... little before. A place truly fitted for contemplation, a happy and delightful spot, fully competent, from its first establishment, to supply all its own wants, had not the extravagance of English luxury, the pride of a sumptuous table, the increasing growth of intemperance and ingratitude, added to the negligence of its patrons and prelates, reduced it from freedom to servility; and if the step-daughter, no less enviously than odiously, had not ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis

... tables. He gave for toasts—Joseph Surface sentiments at dinner parties— 'The man that betrays' [something or other]—'the man that sneaks into' [other men's portfolios, perhaps]—'is'—ay, what is he? Why he is, perhaps, a Knight of the Bath, has a sumptuous mansion in St. James's Square, dies full of years and honor, has a pompous funeral, and fears only some such epitaph as this—'Here lies, in a red ribbon, the man who built a great prosperity on the basis of a great knavery.' I complain heavily of ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... the sumptuous wedding-breakfast. While the merriment was at its height, Varrick touched her ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey

... "this incessant demand for you. That's the worst of being popular. If he wants you to stop to tea, edge away. A meal on rather a sumptuous scale will be prepared in the study against ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... at the back door and pounded on the dishpan with a wooden spoon to announce that dinner was ready. It was quite a sumptuous meal: potatoes baked in the ashes, beans baked in the brick oven, coffee made on the hearth, fish cooked in the skillet, and pancakes made on a griddle with a handle three ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... relief and encircling the column. One of these groups has been brought to the British Museum, and its beauty and vigour enable the imagination partly to restore this splendid feature, which certainly was one of the most sumptuous modes of decorating a building by the aid of sculpture which has ever been attempted; and the effect must have ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith

... Liberty's sales, and some bits of twopenny-halfpenny art china for her narrow mantelpiece. A lacquered tea-tray and a tea-set of a single cup and saucer, a plate and a teapot, made her feel herself almost sumptuous. After a day spent in trudging about in the wet or cold of the streets, doing other people's shopping, or searching for dressmakers or servants' characters for her patrons, she used to think of her bed-sitting-room ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... eyes with the sly look which one takes when divulging secrets of love, and, with a Napoleonic gesture, he showed me his sumptuous parlor, his park, the three women, who had reappeared in the back of it, then, in a triumphant voice, where the note of ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... DREAM was fitted with that exquisite luxury, so dear to Sir Percy Blakeney's heart, and by the time they all landed at Dover he had found time to get into some of the sumptuous clothes which he loved, and of which he always kept a supply on board ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... equal to you in delicate ways and sense and a mind to study books; but it seems to me that that's a reason why you should love us, Sister Halsey. There is work for you to do; we need your guiding hand. You say to me that I am content with horses and sumptuous living and fine raiment; and knowest thou not that there is upon my soul a great burden, even the burden of this great people, to go in and out before them and guide them aright? I have need of thy counsel, my sister; there's that which ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... spent in settling down to our new quarters in what was, especially after the camp at Valcartier, a luxurious home. Dinner at night became the regimental mess, and the saloon with its sumptuous furnishings made a fine setting for the nightly gathering of officers. We lay stationary all that night and on the next evening, Sept. the 29th, at six o'clock we weighed anchor and went at slow speed down the stream. Several other vessels had preceded us, the orders to move ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... country, and of friends bereft, Not one of all these sumptuous temples left; Which, while the fortune of our house did stand, With rich wrought ceilings spoke the ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... lie, my old friend, were I to say that I was indifferent to our ruin. Philosopher though one may be, it is not without some pangs that one passes from a sumptuous hotel to a gloomy garret. But what grieved me most of all was that I saw myself compelled to give up the labors which had been the joy of my life, and upon which I had founded the most magnificent hopes. A positive vocation, stimulated further by the accidents of my education, ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... like an arrow, and appeared promptly back again with the volume in question. The magistrate hastened to look up the address given by the prisoner, and found it entered thus: "Langlois, sumptuous apartments for families and ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... confined by fetters of gold; a slave supported the gold chain which encircled her neck, and she almost fainted under the intolerable weight of jewels. She preceded on foot the magnificent chariot, in which she once hoped to enter the gates of Rome. It was followed by two other chariots, still more sumptuous, of Odenathus and of the Persian monarch. The triumphal car of Aurelian (it had formerly been used by a Gothic king) was drawn, on this memorable occasion, either by four stags or by four elephants. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... after-breakfast walk from Dutch Gap. The mansion long ago disappeared, and nothing now marks its site but negro huts. Many of those exquisite spots on the James and Appomattox, which we have seen men pause to admire while the shells were bursting overhead, were occupied sixty years ago by the sumptuous abodes of the Randolphs and families related to them. Mattoax, the house in which John Randolph passed much of his childhood, was on a bluff of the Appomattox, two miles above Petersburg; and Bizarre, the estate on which he spent his boyhood, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... off at one of the American churches in Paris. It was a sumptuous ceremonial, aided by a bishop (who was on his travels, but who had not forgotten to bring along his vestments) and by the attendance of half the colony. Raymond was obliged to put up with all this pomp and show, much as it ran counter to his tastes and inclinations. ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller

... red-letter days in Edward Bok's life, but the moment that still stands out preeminent is that when two colored head waiters at the dining-room entrance, whom he had so often watched, bowed low and escorted the party to their table. At last, he was in that sumptuous dining-hall. The entire room took on the picture of one great eye, and that eye centred on the party of three—as, in fact, it naturally would. But Edward felt that the eye was on him, wondering why he ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... A sumptuous supper and worthy the mistress who planned it. At the head of the table sat Jackson; at the foot, the young ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... at one o'clock, and the feast could not be called sumptuous. It consisted of a piece of beef, that known as the "aitch-bone," which is perhaps the cheapest that the butcher supplies when the amount of eating is taken into consideration; one roast duck, a large Pekin, the Near Year offering of the farmer ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard

... the opposite one, Saint John the Baptist, whom the imager had made with such patent whites to his eyes, set in a bronzed complexion, that the effect was rather startling. A very small selection of primitive culinary utensils lay on a shelf close to the hearth. Much was not wanted, when the most sumptuous meal to be had was boiled fish ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... and three for the mount, and he picks up an infinite number of unconsidered trifles in the way of presents, since the turfite, bad or good, is invariably a cheerful giver. The popular jockey soon has his carriages, his horses, his valet, and his sumptuous house; noblemen, millionaires, great dames, and men and women of all degrees conspire to pamper him: for jockey-worship, when it is once started, increases in intensity by a sort of geometrical progression. A shrewd man of the world may smile ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... the brown bay—for which a thousand francs over and above its value was paid by M. Godefroy as a result of a sumptuous snail supper given to that gentleman's coachman by the horse-dealer—thanks to the expensive brown bay which certainly went well, the financier was able to get through his many engagements satisfactorily. He appeared punctually at the Bourse, sat at several committee tables, ...
— The Lost Child - 1894 • Francois Edouard Joachim Coppee

... Adrienne Le Couvreur as companion, in the plays of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire, reestablished the popularity of the French theatre. Adrienne immediately became a favorite with the titled class, was frequently present at Mme. de Lambert's, gave the most sumptuous suppers herself, and was compelled to repulse lovers of the ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... sunshine fades Mid floating curls and sumptuous braids,— A crown of light that glorifies White brow and deep ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey

... day glowed outside in sumptuous splendor. A glad wind sprang up and sped afield. Geraldine, her breakfast finished, a broad hat canted down over her eyes, rushed through the hall as noisily as a boy, prodded up the old hound, and ran ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... this your cook-maid go bedight like any queen since nought is there in Black Bartlemy's Treasure that is not sumptuous and splendid. Have you no desire to behold these ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... the cottage and garden; the wagon stood outside the paling. Though the little kitchen was very much encumbered with furniture, they contrived to make a fire in it; and, having eaten a sumptuous dinner, they drank each other's health, using the new tumblers ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow

... that afternoon—Monday—when the troopers awoke and set about preparing a meal as sumptuous as the limited larder permitted. Since Friday only odd nibbles of bully and biscuit had ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... himself well taught of Hawaiian love and love- ways, erect, slender, dignified, between the two nobly proportioned women, an arm around each of their sumptuous waists, proceeded ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London

... sumptuous through train we now pass rapidly over nearly one thousand miles of a country which is intensely interesting, historically and ethnologically, and finally arrive in the famous city of Agra, which stands supreme among Indian ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... laid out in the barn of one of the farm-houses. Augustus had given orders that it should be of the most sumptuous description, and ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn

... suppliant where she had reigned a Queen. Nor did her pleadings fall on deaf ears. Her Royal lover's hand was given, against his will, to his new Queen, but his heart, he vowed, was all Henriette's—so much so that he soon installed her in sumptuous rooms in his palace adjoining those ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... for a platform and a small shed as a station building. The town consisted of three or four brick buildings and a huddle of wooden shanties. To-day it is one of the twenty most populous cities in the United States with tall office buildings, broad busy streets, and sumptuous private residences. I used to have excellent trout-fishing in what is now the centre of a great town. Where the air to-day is filled with the hum of wheels and the roar of machinery, then was only open prairie innocent of any evidence of human occupation beyond some three or four things like ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... speeches, by their crafty and cunning sleights whereby they lay in wait to deceive, they quite got him in, and set him up and made him a great one, even the chief, before they were aware. Further, he quickly got him a beast to ride on, far, for sumptuous glory, beyond—though as to nature as assish a creature as—that on which Balaam was wont to ride; and by this exaltation he not only became more stately, but the horns of the beast ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... tempest in the cave could not extinguish them, to be lighted. Then the King entered, not without fear, before all the others. He discovered, by degrees, a splendid hall, apparently built in a very sumptuous manner; in the middle stood a Bronze Statue of very ferocious appearance, which held a battle-axe in its hands. With this he struck the floor violently, giving it such heavy blows that the noise in the Cave was occasioned by the motion of the air. The King, greatly affrighted and ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott

... being really splendid. Bonico and I, as Heralds, for example, once were superbly arrayed in white tabards emblazoned with red dragons and gold embroidery, cut from paper and pasted on white muslin. There was a deal of real, genuine, sumptuous finery brought out from family wardrobes for the pageant, but the hint as to the Heralds indicated how an effect could be ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears

... traced. Of such is the 11th or 12th century Siculo-Saracenic specimen in fig. 1, in which the heads only of the pairs of animals and birds are broched with gold thread. Another sort of brocaded material is indicated in fig. 2, taken from a part of a sumptuous Siculo-Saracenic weaving produced in coloured silks and gold threads at the famous Hotel des Tiraz in Palermo for an official robe of Henry IV. (1165-1197) as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and still ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... weird majesty three thousand feet above the sea, and boasting as its chief glory the great peak of Jedke, the most northern glacier in all the wild Norwegian land. There was no sign of a returning sail, and he resumed his study of the sumptuous sky, the colors of which were now deepening and burning with increasing lustre, while an array of clouds of the deepest purple hue, swept gorgeously together beneath the sun as though to form ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... directions, had marvelled at its palaces and its treasures, and had found it to be great beyond all expectation. Everything here was on the grand scale; what men built one day they tore down again on the morrow, in order to build something more sumptuous. So much was going on here, surely the poor man might somehow make his fortune out of ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... the sides, more than twice as broad and double the height of those in our London exchange, supported by numerous pillars all of one stone; and all round about are entrances into numerous rooms, very ingeniously contrived. Opposite the grand gate stands a fair and sumptuous tomb, most artificially inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and inclosed by a stone ballustrade curiously carved; the ceiling being curiously plastered and painted. In this tomb is deposited the body of a calender, or Mahometan devotee, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... in which she resumed the old white lace evening-dress that she had worn to dine with her cousin, was strewn with the delicate underclothing, the sumptuous wraps and costly knick-knacks of wealthy women. She had felt ashamed, as she had undressed there, of her own poor little belongings among these; and ashamed to be so ashamed. As she had seen her garments overswept by the folds of the fair Socialist's white velvet mantle, lined with Arctic fox ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... cold and unused, told of plenty and prosperity within, and his good faithful Pierre, in a rich new suit of livery, stood between Miraut and Beelzebub at the great entrance door awaiting him. He saw himself, in sumptuous attire, proudly leading his fair Isabelle by the hand towards the grand old home of his forefathers; his beautiful Isabelle, dressed like a princess, wearing ornaments bearing a device which seemed ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... return for a moment to the problematical function of the antennae. The male Oak Eggar has a sumptuous pair, as has the Great Peacock or Emperor Moth. Are we to regard these silky "feelers" as a kind of directing compass?—I resumed, but without attaching much importance to the matter, my previous experiment of amputation. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... races. At the same time they continue to persuade themselves and others that they are all much concerned about the welfare of these working classes, whom they have always trampled under their feet, and on Sundays, richly dressed, they drive in sumptuous carriages to the houses of God built in very mockery of Christianity, and there listen to men, trained to this work of deception, who in white neckties or in brocaded vestments, according to their ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... rank, fashion, taste, and riches of the possessor, afford ample materials for entertaining discussion. In the meantime, the lowly cottage of the poor husbandman is passed by as scarcely deserving of notice. Yet, perchance, such a cottage may often contain a treasure of infinitely more value than the sumptuous palace of the rich man—even "the pearl of great price." If this be set in the heart of the poor cottager, it proves a gem of unspeakable worth, and will shine among the brightest ornaments of the Redeemer's crown, in that day when he maketh up ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond

... who spy Sumptuous equipages, Horses, litters passing by, And a host of pages, Say, "Unless their purses were Quite with wealth o'erflowing, They could never thus, I swear, ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... vindictive and passionate disposition, they are ever ready to avenge not only recent but ancient affronts; they neither inhabit towns, villages, nor castles, but lead a solitary life in the woods, on the borders of which they do not erect sumptuous palaces, nor lofty stone buildings, but content themselves with small huts made of the boughs of trees twisted together, constructed with little labour and expense, and sufficient to endure throughout the year. They have neither orchards ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis

... cold water, awakened to the fact that he must see Clinton St. Mary again. It appeared to him, now, with its lanes, its hedges, the village green, the moor, the Borhaze Road, the pirates, yes, and the Scarecrow. It came there, across the Canon's sumptuous Turkey carpet, and ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole

... the position of a man with L2,000 a year in a club of millionaires. He has always the resource, no doubt, of declining the society of emperors, and even fixing his domestic budget more in accord with present exigencies than with the sumptuous traditions, the palaces and pleasure-houses, of his millionaire predecessors. It is said of Pedro II. that "he had the wisdom and self-restraint not to increase the taxes, preferring to reduce the expenses of his household to the lowest possible amount." But Dom Carlos was not a man of this kidney. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... which is paid to them every day by all who have knowledge of the good. It was necessity that first gave rise to buildings; necessity that created ornaments for them; necessity that led to the various Orders, the statues, the gardens, the baths, and all those other sumptuous adjuncts which all desire but few possess; and it was necessity that excited rivalry and competition in the minds of men with regard not only to buildings, but also to their accessories. For this reason craftsmen have been forced to display ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari

... trottant, traversant, et vagabondant le monde" (always trotting, traversing, and tramping the world). Not in the habit of a vagabond, however, for the balls, banquets, tournaments, masques, ballets, and wedding-feasts which he describes so vividly were occasions for the display of sumptuous costumes; and Messire Pierre de Bourdeille doubtless appeared as elegant as any other gallant in silken hose, jeweled doublet, flowing cape, and long rapier. What we value most are his paintings of these festive scenes, and the vivid portraits which he has left of the Valois ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... privilege of living at luxurious houses as Gulosulus, who, after thirty years of continual revelry, has now established, by uncontroverted prescription, his claim to partake of every entertainment, and whose presence they who aspire to the praise of a sumptuous table are careful to procure on a day of importance, by sending the invitation a ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... nature was far too refined, I believe, ever to sink into the sensualism revealed in Temple's diaries, yet it was through the gratification of corporeal tastes that he endeavoured to achieve the divine extasis; and there were constantly lavish and sumptuous entertainments at the villa, at ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner

... Mr. John Harvard Ellis's sumptuous edition of Anne Bradstreet's works, published in 1867, and containing all her extant works, for all extracts of either prose or verse, as well as for many of the facts incorporated in Mr. Ellis's careful introduction. Miss Bailey's "History of Andover," ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... noticing for the last three or four days. Dined the day before yesterday with the Duc de Poix, and went to Hope's ball; his house is a sumptuous palace in miniature, all furnished and decorated with inconceivable luxury and recherche; one room hung with cachemires. Last night to a small ball at Court. Supper in the gallery de Diane—round tables, all the ladies supping first; the whole thing as beautiful and magnificent ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... the seat of power under the shade of his ancestral tree, the mighty Branstock. When his authority was fully established, Sigmund married Borghild, a beautiful princess, who bore him two sons, Hamond and Helgi. The latter was visited by the Norns as he lay in his cradle, and they promised him sumptuous entertainment in Valhalla when his earthly career ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... day's hospitality." He appointed for the Minister fitting quarters of the palace; and, pitching tents for the troops, rationed them with whatever they might require of meat and drink and other necessaries. On the fourth day he made ready for wayfare and got together sumptuous presents befitting his elder brother's majesty, and stablished his chief Wazir viceroy of the land during his absence. Then he caused his tents and camels and mules to be brought forth and encamped, with their bales and loads, attend ants and guards, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... cavalry, and took his place on the Duke of Gandia's left hand. The duke attracted all eyes by his personal beauty, set off as it was by all the luxury he thought fit to display at this festival. He had a retinue of pages and servants, clad in sumptuous liveries, incomparable for richness with anything heretofore seen in Rome, that city of religious pomp. All these pages and servants rode magnificent horses, caparisoned in velvet trimmed with silver fringe, and bells of silver hanging down every ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... fellow-students, made friends with scarcely any one, especially held aloof from women, and lived in great solitude, buried in books. He held aloof from women, though he had a heart of the tenderest, and was fascinated by beauty.... He had even obtained a sumptuous English keepsake, and (oh shame!) gloated adoringly over its 'elegantly engraved' representations of the various ravishing Gulnaras and Medoras.... But his innate modesty always kept him in check. In the house he used to work in what had been his father's study, it ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... clothing can make a man be good Better is in ragges pure liuing innocent Than a soule defiled in sumptuous garment." ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt

... Carnot did not hesitate, during the Universal Exposition, and not long before the Legislative Elections began, to bring up no fewer than some thirteen thousand of the mayors of France to Paris at the public expense. There they were entertained—still at the public expense—with a sumptuous hospitality, which proves that, however orthodox the Republican Atheism may be of M. Constans, the Minister of the Interior, he has not yet struck the blessed St. Julian out of his calendar, at least when he is spending the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... guests fit lodgings / now provided were. Clad in rich apparel / came the messenger, And to the court his fellows / did bear him company. Sumptuous attire / ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler

... flowering shrubs and truly hardy roses will, if properly planted, pruned, and fertilized, live for many years, certain varieties even outlasting more than one human generation, the modern hardy perennial and biennial of many species and sumptuous effects must be watched and treated with almost as much attention as the so-called bedding-plants demand in order to bring about the ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... almost expected questions to be asked about it in the House of Commons, and now she's coming on purpose to stare at my few miserable pansies and the gaps in my sweet-pea border, and to give me a glowing, full-length description of the rare and sumptuous blooms in ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki

... radiance. How pretty a fable, I reflect, would the ancients have associated with the Southern Cross, shimmering there in the serene sky! Dare I, at this inspiring moment, attempt what they missed, merely because they lacked direct inspiration? Those who once lived in Egypt saw the sumptuous southern jewel, and it may again glitter vainly for the bewilderment of the Sphinx if the lazy world lurches through space long enough. Yes, let me invent a myth—and not tell it, but rather think of the origin of the Milky Way and so convince ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... as fresh as a lily of the valley, all white amidst that hard metallic splendour; frail as a dewy anemone, slender as the moist narcissus. He saw one face like the chalice of a rose, and amidst all those fiery jewels two large eyes as soft as dark violets. And the sumptuous Court, the plumes, the swords, the standards, the hot, vari-coloured crowd melted away and disappeared, so that when the Emperor rose and made the sign of the Cross over his people, first to the right, and then to the left, and thirdly over the half-circle behind him, and the singers ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring

... one side of the young king, and the Prince of Conde on the other. With them rode the Dukes of Anjou and Alencon, who had ridden out with a gay train of nobles to welcome Henri in the king's name, and escort him into the city. The Huguenots were still in mourning for the late queen; but the sumptuous materials of their dress, set off by their gold chains and ornaments, made a brave show even by the side of the gay costumes of the ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty

... dwarfs were present at great and noble gatherings. In Rome in 1566 the Cardinal Vitelli gave a sumptuous banquet at which the table-attendants were 34 dwarfs. Peter the Great of Russia had a passion for dwarfs, and in 1710 gave a great celebration in honor of the marriage of his favorite, Valakoff, with the dwarf of the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... dynasty composed (Beyond that mighty wall, not fabulous, China's stupendous mound) by patient toil 80 Of myriads and boon nature's lavish help; [F] There, in a clime from widest empire chosen, Fulfilling (could enchantment have done more?) A sumptuous dream of flowery lawns, with domes Of pleasure [G] sprinkled over, shady dells 85 For eastern monasteries, sunny mounts With temples crested, bridges, gondolas, Rocks, dens, and groves of foliage taught ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... summoned again to the kitchen where he ate a sumptuous repast, after which Pepsy and Wiggle took him about and showed ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... too, being starved. Her votaries have not as yet cared much for purple and fine linen, and sumptuous fare. There are a very few among them who, joining brilliant talents to solid learning, have risen to deserved popularity, to titles, and to wealth. But even their labours, it seems to me, are never rewarded ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley

... Wilna, but failed to see the emperor there; became involved in the retreat of the French army; and, overcome by exposure, died at the Polish village of Zarnowiec on the 24th of December 1812. In 1807 he had published in a sumptuous volume the Columbiad, an enlarged edition of his Vision of Columbus, more pompous even than the original; but, though it added to his reputation in some quarters, on the whole it was not well received, and it has subsequently been much ridiculed. The poem for which he ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... rooms; but my establishment was of short duration ere I learned the history of an eventful morning which followed that incident:—of how the placid face of the master peered among his people, beaming with a great joy; how a sumptuous feast was fitted up in the private office for all in the employ; of the two hundred francs, and a suit of clothes, presented to each; and how every one, from the little messenger to the gray cashier, with the rarest wine in the cellar, drank prosperity to the new-born son ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... walls of massive stone, Sad relics, sad and vain, Of those invincible men Who held the region then. Funereal memories alone remain Where forms of high example walked of yore. Here lay the forum, there arose the fane— The eye beholds their places, and no more. Their proud gymnasium and their sumptuous baths Resolved to dust and cinders, strew the paths; Their towers, that looked defiance at the sky, Fallen by their own vast ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... crack of long whips could be heard, flourished over oxen yoked by the horns, or three or four ponies hitched tandem, all driven without reins, and drawing huge bales of merchandise. Few of the houses were more than one story high, but they had a sumptuous spread, each in its own square of lawn, orchard, and garden. They were built of stone, or of timbers filled ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood



Words linked to "Sumptuous" :   rich, opulent, sumptuosity



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