"Costliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... work before them was really little else but a compilation; and that Victor had already abridged in the same merciless way the writings of the Fathers (Chrysostom chiefly) from whom he obtained his materials. We are to remember also, I suppose, the labour which transcription involved, and the costliness of the skins out of which ancient books were manufactured. But when all has been said, I must candidly admit that the extent of license which the ancients evidently allowed themselves quite perplexes me.(515) Why, for example, remodel the structure ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... universally recognized as a national beverage that people forget it comes from China, and that it is both alien and heathen. Still, I mean no offence when I put tea in the same category with Tobacco. Now, who thinks of lecturing us on the costliness of tea? And yet it is a mere superfluity. The habit of taking it as we do is unknown across the Channel, and was quite unknown amongst ourselves a very little time ago, when English people were no less proud of themselves and their customs than they are now, and perhaps with ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... selected as the dwelling-place of Francis and his train. As for the splendor of adornment of those who followed him, there seems to have been almost nothing worn but silks, velvets, cloth of gold and silver, jewels and precious stones, such being the costliness of the display that a writer who saw it humorously says, "Many of the nobles carried their castles, woods, and farms upon ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... with a variety of materials. Wood was in common use during primitive times. Terra cotta was employed at all periods for statuettes a few inches in height. Productions in gold and ivory, from the costliness of these objects, were extremely rare. Bronze was the favorite material of some of the most eminent artists. The Greek sculptor especially relied on the beautiful marbles in which ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... spread far and wide, and for days came throngs to view the "sweet martyr's" body, for which the priests had prepared a costly catafalque, and for her a grand mass was celebrated in St. Peter's where she was laid at rest in a tomb, the like of which for costliness was never ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... People of the highest rank, abroad, will often accept, with gratitude, a bit of embroidery done by a friend, a poem inscribed to them by an author; a painting executed by some artist; who would not care for the most expensive bauble that was offered them. Mere costliness does not constitute the soul of a present; it is the kind feeling that it manifests which gives it its value. People who possess noble natures do not make gifts where they feel neither affection nor respect, but their gifts are bestowed out of ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... only second in India. By mistake we were taken to see the new palace instead, and we used up the last remnant of our spare time there. It was a pity, too; for the new palace is mixed modern American-European, and has not a merit except costliness. It is wholly foreign to India, and impudent and out of place. The architect has escaped. This comes of overdoing the suppression of the Thugs; they had their merits. The old palace is oriental and charming, and in consonance with the country. The old palace would still be great if there were nothing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... brilliant joy. Wreaths of flowers hung from the windows; rich tapestries decked the Dome Kirk, and the relics were displayed in shrines of wonderful costliness of material and beauty of workmanship; little birds, with thin cakes fastened to their feet, were let loose to fly about the church, in strange allusion to the event of the day; the clergy wore ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sleigh- robes of buffalo, bear, fox, wolf, and racoon, varying in price from six to thirty guineas; and coats, leggings, gloves, and caps, rendered necessary by the severity of a winter in which the thermometer often stands at thirty degrees below zero. People vie with each other in the costliness of their furs and sleigh equipments; a complete set sometimes costing as much as ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... by Miss Blackwell and her Literature Committee and Miss Gordon urged that clergymen of all denominations should be circularized with it. She said: "I believe the association should not be dissuaded from this undertaking because of the amount of work and its costliness. The burden of responsibility rests upon us to prove with such evidence that the worst enemy of the church and the most active enemy of woman suffrage is a mutual foe, the 'organized liquor and vice power.' If in the face ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... spent several hours in walking about these places, to visit which it is necessary to procure a written permission from the captain-general of Ferrol. They filled me with astonishment. I have seen the royal dockyards of Russia and England, but for grandeur of design and costliness of execution, they cannot for a moment compare with these wonderful monuments of the bygone naval pomp of Spain. I shall not attempt to describe them, but content myself with observing, that the oblong basin, which is ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... ablaze with light. From shop windows, from illuminated signs, from office buildings, street-cars, and motors, the carnival of theatre-hour was lit with glaring brilliancy. Women, in all the semi-barbaric costliness with which their sex loves to adorn itself of a night, stepped from limousines with their tiny silvery feet twinkling beneath the load of gorgeous furs and vivid opera-cloaks; while well-groomed men, in the ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... little difference to be observed in the costliness of the clothing of the different classes of society in Upper Canadian towns and cities, and much less difference in the taste with which these articles are selected, than might be expected. With the exception of the lower class of labourers, all persons are ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Mrs. Bines a reputation for wit that she was never able quite to destroy. There had been talk of a banquet to a visiting celebrity the night before, for which the menu was one of unusual costliness. Mr. Milbrey had dwelt with feeling upon certain of its eminent excellences, such as loin of young bear, a la Granville, and the boned ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... bicycle; but occasionally one is ridable, and the astonishment of the inhabitants as I wheel leisurely through, whistling the solemn strains of "Roll, Jordan, roll," is really quite amusing. Every village of any size boasts a church that, for fineness of architecture and apparent costliness of construction, looks out of all proportion to the straggling street of shapeless structures that it overtops. Everything here seems built as though intended to last forever, it being no unusual sight to see a ridiculously small piece of ground ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... conditions of intercourse, sees from this simple thought how the carriage of an umbrella came to indicate frugality, judicious regard for bodily welfare, and scorn for mere outward adornment, and, in one word, all those homely and solid virtues implied in the term RESPECTABILITY. Not that the umbrella's costliness has nothing to do with its great influence. Its possession, besides symbolising (as we have already indicated) the change from wild Esau to plain Jacob dwelling in tents, implies a certain comfortable provision of fortune. It is not every one that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... glass is equalled by the costliness of the furniture, which is almost universally of mahogany; a wood which is here in such common use, that in some of the most elegant houses the very stair-banisters are constructed of it. Even the pilots ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... a natural monopoly in favor of skilled laborers against the unskilled, which makes the difference of reward exceed, sometimes in a manifold proportion, what is sufficient merely to equalize their advantages. But the fact that a course of instruction is required, of even a low degree of costliness, or that the laborer must be maintained for a considerable time from other sources, suffices everywhere to exclude the great body of the laboring people from the possibility of any such competition. Until lately, all employments which required even the humble education of reading and writing ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... operates. For so we shall be the better prepared for a generous appreciation of those far Southern gardens whose beauty has singled them out for our admiration. We know, of course, that the "formal garden," by reason of its initial and continuing costliness, is, and must remain, the garden of the wealthy few, and that the gardening for the great democracy of our land, the kind that will make the country at large a gardened land, is "informal," freehand, ungeometrical gardening. In this sort, on whatever scale, ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... have grown up the present religious organizations of Cleveland, numbering about seventy churches, many of them of great beauty and costliness, with flourishing Sunday schools and wealthy congregations. The leading denominations have each several churches graded, from stately buildings for the older and wealthier congregations to the modest mission chapels. Nearly all ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... of New Intentions.*—All the outer and inner determinations which impede or hold at a distance the attainment of the normal sexual aim, such as impotence, costliness of the sexual object, and dangers of the sexual act, will conceivably strengthen the inclination to linger at the preparatory acts and to form them into new sexual aims which may take the place of the normal. On closer investigation it is always seen that the ostensibly most ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... and leading principle of the measure which I introduce, is designed to cut off the very source of all costliness, insecurity, litigation, by abolishing altogether the system of retrospective titles and ordaining that as often as the fee simple is transferred, the existing title must be surrendered to the Crown, and a fresh grant from the Crown issued ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... house without any assistance, and that the materials for it shall cost, say, a penny, and the charge for it to a patient with 100 pounds a year be half-a-crown. And, on the other hand, a hygienic measure has only to be one of such refinement, difficulty, precision and costliness as to be quite beyond the resources of private practice, to be ignored or angrily denounced as ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... golden roof glittering in the sunshine. For nine years he had constantly employed 18,000 men in its re-erection, and for upwards of thirty years more he had kept adding to its embellishments, till for grandeur and costliness it stood unrivalled. But when it was completed he set up over its chief gate the golden eagle of the Romans, and at the sight of that abhorred ensign all their gratitude fled, giving ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... feet two or three inches in height, had an oval face of remarkable beauty and liveliness, jet black hair, and eyes in which merriment dwelt as in its home. He was dressed as became a noble of the time, and in apparel of unusual splendor and costliness; plumed bonnet, slashed velvet doublet, tight silken hose, jeweled dagger at ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... ardently and increasingly felt scientific aspiration of his life—an aspiration which he hardly dared to expect or to see realized." A little later, however, Sir William, always cautious and canny, began to discover the inherent defects of the primitive battery, as to disintegration, inefficiency, costliness, etc., and though offered tempting inducements, declined to lend his name to its financial introduction. Nevertheless, he accepted the principle as valuable, and put the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the required materials implies a diminished reserve of materials for race-maintenance. And we have seen reason to believe that this antagonism between Individuation and Genesis becomes unusually marked where the nervous system is concerned, because of the costliness of nervous structure and function. In Section 346 was pointed out the apparent connection between high cerebral development and prolonged delay of sexual maturity; and in Sections 366, 367, the evidence went to show that where exceptional fertility exists there is sluggishness of mind, and ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... expeditions was that to the ruins of the great amphitheatre. It is constructed of red marble from the Veronese quarries, upon basements of Roman brickwork. No other amphitheatre can be compared with this for costliness of material; nor I believe, for size, it having contained some fifty to sixty thousand spectators at a time. It is somewhat oval in form, being 546 feet by 436 feet across; the circumference is 1476 feet. The outer circuit once consisted ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... times could furnish. This intimation was sufficient for the courtiers. Preparations were made for such a display of folly and extravagance as even alarmed the king. All ordinary richness of dress, of satin, and velvet, and embroidery of gold, was discarded for fabrics of unprecedented costliness, for bouquets of diamonds, and wreaths of the most ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... article on Court Masques in the early pages of the present volume for notices of the elaborate splendour and costliness ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... costliness of the materials, the richness and variety of the details, amply compensated for the moderate dimensions of the building. It was such a sacred edifice as a traveller might have expected to find in El Dorado. The walls were of hewn ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... and the entire work, containing a collection of such articles, can be regarded in no other light than as an attempted exhibition of the sum of human knowledge, commending itself, of course, to professional and highly educated minds, but far transcending, in extent and costliness, the requirements and the means of the great class of general readers. For the wants of this latter class a different sort of work is desirable, which shall be cheaper in price, less exhaustive in its method, and more diversified ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... among the less wealthy classes—when we find that many who most need to be disciplined by mixing with the refined are driven away by it, and led into dangerous and often fatal courses—when we count up the many minor evils it inflicts, the extra work which its costliness entails on all professional and mercantile men, the damage to public taste in dress and decoration by the setting up of its absurdities as standards for imitation, the injury to health indicated in the faces of its devotees at the close of the London season, the ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... equivalent to sight, and enough for him. Men did not understand him. He would not die so easily—they must be undeceived. Miserable Allcraft! He speedily removed from his small cottage—took a mansion, furnished it magnificently, and made it a palace in costliness and hospitality. Ah! was he poor? The trick answered. The world was not surprised, but satisfied. There was but one opinion. He deserved it all, and more. The only wonder was, that he had hitherto lived so quietly, rich as he was, in virtue of his wife's inheritance, and from his own hard-earned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... these halls, they were only an introduction to those which followed. Each one exceeded the other in splendor and costliness. The walls were covered to the ceiling with rows of goblets, vases, etc., of polished jasper, agate, and lapis lazuli. Splendid mosaic tables stood around with caskets of the most exquisite silver and gold work upon them, and vessels of solid silver, some of them weighing ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... signs of the greatest annoyance, nay, of even fury seething in his heart. If the piece of work which he had to deliver up was something of more than ordinary importance, especially anything of great value, worth many thousands owing to the costliness of the jewels or the extreme delicacy of the gold-work, he was capable of running about like a madman, cursing himself, his labour, and all about him. But then if any person came up behind him and shouted, "Rene Cardillac, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... This belief invested their tombs with peculiar sacredness, and led the wealthy to great expense in their construction. Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans built them with upper apartments, more or less spacious. These chambers were adorned with vases, sculptures, and paintings on the walls, varying in costliness and style according to the means or taste of the builder. The tomb of Cestius in Rome contained a chamber much ornamented with paintings. Ancient Egyptian tombs abound with sculptures and paintings, probably representative of the character of the deceased. Thus, on the walls ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... the long and cumbrous garments that were associated with dignity, with royalty, and wore, instead, the tunic and long hose that gave his shapely limbs the greatest freedom and the most liberal display. But any simplicity in the form of his habit was splendidly atoned for by the costliness of the material. The revenues of a rich merchant for a year might have been spent upon the woven and embroidered stuffs that garbed the King's person, yet little of these noble stuffs was visible, so richly were they embellished with gold and ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Colston's fashion was that imposed on her by the dressmaker, but Ms. Butcher always had a style peculiarly her own. She knew the secret that a woman's attractiveness, so far as it is a matter of clothes, depends far more upon the manner in which they are made and worn than upon costliness. It was always thought that she ruled her husband and had just a spice of contempt for him. She gained thereby in Eastthorpe, at least with the men, for her superiority to him gave her an air which was slightly detached, free, and fascinating. ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... The middle strophe and antistrophe describe the richness of this prize; the opening strophe makes 'chastening' the cost at which it is obtained by the individual from the Lord; and the corresponding antistrophe (at the end) explains the reason for this costliness—wisdom was the instrument by which the whole ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... great manager-actor's requirements were fairly met, it is certain that the entertainment in question was of a kind very different to the pantomime of our day—a production that is invariably very long, rarely laughable, and always of exceeding costliness. Leigh Hunt complained in 1831 that pantomimes were not what they had been, and that the opening, "which used to form merely a brief excuse for putting the harlequinade in motion," had come to be a considerable part of the performance. ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... not reply. She, too, wanted new dresses; she could hardly endure the grace and costliness of Connie's garments, when she compared them with her own; but there was something in her sad little soul also that would not let her be beholden to Connie. Not ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... as peace is established or extended in Europe, the arts decline. They reach an unparalleled pitch of costliness, but lose their life, enlist themselves at last on the side of luxury and various corruption, and, among wholly tranquil nations, wither utterly away; remaining only in partial practice among races who, like the French and us, have still the minds, though ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... disenchantment, but now, in the sober after-light of discrimination, where he saw her definitely divided from him by the crudeness of a choice which seemed to deny the very differences he felt in her. It was before him again in its completeness—the choice in which she was content to rest: in the stupid costliness of the food and the showy dulness of the talk, in the freedom of speech which never arrived at wit and the freedom of act which never made for romance. The strident setting of the restaurant, in which their table seemed set apart in a special glare of publicity, and the presence at it of little ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... reach a large majority of the readers—prefer sensationalism. Even those which are anxious in such cases to be fair and temperate are sadly hampered both by the limitations of space in their own columns and by the costliness of telegraphic correspondence. It is inevitable that the most conservative and judicial of correspondents should transmit to his papers whatever are the most striking items—revelations—accusations in an indictment such ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... independence which could not exist an hour but by the protection of England, and the burlesque of a parliament into which no man entered but in expectation of a job; the scandal of an Irish slave-market, and the costliness of purchasing representatives, only to be sold by them in turn, became so palpable to the national eye, that the nation contemptuously cashiered the legislature. The gamblers who had made their fortunes off the people, and had amused ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... guests, a list of whom I regret I did not obtain, was the young Earl of Lincoln and several other noblemen in the suite of Lord Granville.... Some twenty servants in the imperial livery served the table which was furnished with truly royal profusion and costliness. The rarest dishes and the costliest wines in every variety were put before us. I need not say that in such a party everything was conducted with the highest decorum. No noise, no boisterous mirth, no loud talking, but a quiet cheerfulness ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... After the solid costliness of Wartrace Hall and the thirty-mile spin in a high-powered gentleman's roadster, which was only one of the three high-priced motor-carriages in the Wartrace garage, Evan Blount was not surprised to learn that his father was registered in permanence ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... they went out of fashion; but recently they have been to some extent revived. It is not likely, however, that they will again become really fashionable in the old sense,—partly because they represented rare forms of social refinement that never can be revived, and partly because of their costliness. ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... least four in the family who bought clothes at Shillitoe's, and everybody looked elaborately costly, except Hilda Lessways, who did not flatter the eye. But equally, they all seemed quite unconscious of their costliness. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... persons possessing them to deliver to the bishop, or sheriff, to be openly burnt, all works in English purporting to be written by Frith, Tyndale, Wicliff, Joye, Basil, Bale, Barnes, Coverdale, Turner, or Tracy. The extreme rarity and costliness of the works of these men are the measure of the completeness with which this order was carried out; but not of its success, for the ideas survived the books which contained them. A list of the books is given in Foxe (v. 566), and comprises twelve by Coverdale, twenty-eight ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... of wines and did not suspect the costliness of those which during the entire voyage ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... this subject. No doubt the libraries of MSS. collected generation after generation by the Egyptian Ptolemies became, in the course of time, the most extensive ever then known; and were famous throughout the world for the costliness of their ornamentation, and importance of their untold contents. Two of these were at Alexandria, the larger of which was in the quarter called Bruchium. These volumes, like all manuscripts of those early ages, were written on sheets of parchment, having ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... duties), he staid behind in the Palace in London, passing his time peacefully and pleasantly in a splendid library, and vying at the expense of his princely patron with the magnificence of the king himself in the sumptuousness of his fare and the costliness of his apparel: "Dominus meus, quasi continuo abest, vagus ut Scytha, ego autem hic dego, in quiete libris involvor. Providetur mihi pro victu et vestitu, idque est satis, neque enim amplius vel Rex ex hoc tanto apparatu rerum capit." ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... deploys all his seductive, and vain, and frivolous airs; where he wears his best clothes and his best manners; where he loves to be seen, and observed, and saluted—the tradesmen of the capital have installed establishments the costliness and elaborateness of which it is hardly possible to exaggerate. The gilding and the mirrors, the marbles and the bronze, the myriad lamps of every fantastic form, the quaint and daring designs for shop fronts, the infinite arts employed to "set off" goods, and the surprising, never-ceasing ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... the mysterious meat was that of a newly-born calf whose dam was yet lying helpless in a corner of the cabin. The man was quite unconscious that there was anything objectionable in the dreadful food, and offered it to "the masthers" with perfect grace, and without the slightest pang at the costliness of the banquet. He had given the best and only meat he had to his guests. Like the Italian gentleman with his falcon, or rather the Arab sheik with his horse, who, my friend Mr. Browning tells me, is the original of Boccaccio's mamby-pamby story, the Kerry mountaineer had ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... and the walrus ivory which is Alaska's other contribution of material for the ornamental arts. Here we passed a veritable department store, its ground-floor plate-glass window set as a drawing-room, with gilded, brocaded chairs, marquetry table, and ormolu clock, and I know not what costliness of rug and curtain. It was all so strange that it seemed unreal after that long passage of the savage wilds, that long habitation of huts and igloos and tents. Hitherto we had often been fortunate could we buy a little flour and ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... and actors to, 1; costliness of modern production, 2; the simple method and the public, 8; Charles Kean's spectacular method, 9; Irving's method, 10; plays produced by Phelps, 11; reliance on the actor, 13; in Vienna, 17; advantage of its performance constantly and in variety, 23; importance of minor roles of, ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... common scenery; and our actors and actresses must have little respect for their own powers, if they think that dignity of gesture is dependent on the flash of jewellery, or the pathos of accents connected with the costliness of silk. Perfect execution of music by a limited orchestra is far more delightful, and far less fatiguing, than the irregular roar and hum of multitudinous mediocrity; and finished instrumentation by an adequate number of performers, exquisite acting, and sweetest singing, might be ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... officers, and servants. The commanders of the armies of Persia and Media, the nobles and governors were before him; while for one hundred and eighty days he showed them the wonderful riches of his kingdom and the costliness of his ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... materials, of giant size no doubt, and of majestic aspect. Barbarous enough it would have looked beside the marble lovelinesses of Greece, but it was quite like the coarser art which sought for impressiveness through size and costliness. Other people than Babylonian sculptors think that bigness is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of the John Fraser, and will duly lecture the sinning bookseller. I noticed the misnomer in a letter of his New York correspondent, and, I believe, mentioned to you in a letter my fear of such a mischance. I am more sorry for the costliness of this adventure to you, though in a gracious note to me you cut down the fine one half. The new books, tardily printed, were tardily bound and tardily put to sea on the packet ship "Ontario," which left New York for London on the 1st of August. At least this ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... England, the loftiest object of ambition as constituting a nobility; and secondly, that there, the true nobility of blood, confining itself within the strict limits of legitimate taste, rather avoids than affects that mere costliness in which a parvenu rivalry may at any ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... those days the tubular bridge had not yet been thought of; but the beautiful suspension bridge at Menai was already in existence, and was the most remarkable bridge then existing in the world. I was more struck by the beauty of the structure than by its costliness or size; the journal says, "It is indeed wonderfully beautiful." On one of our excursions we saw what in rainy weather is a good waterfall, and I find a reference to this that I quote for the curious bit of Welsh-English that is included in it,—"We came to a ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... to be found in many country houses is indeed enormous. In Holinshed's Chronicle of Englande, Scotlande and Irelande, published in 1577, there is a chapter on the "maner of buylding and furniture of our Houses," wherein is recorded the costliness of the stores of plate and tapestry that were found in the dwellings of nobility and gentry and also in farm-houses, and even in the homes of "inferior artificers." Verily the spoils of the monasteries and churches must have been fairly evenly ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... illustration took with the House, and the speaker was interrupted by 'much laughter.' And then he went on to say that, 'as with those well-known ointments or medicines whose specific virtues lay in the enormous costliness of some of the constituents, so it must give unspeakable value to the efficacy of those healing measures for Ireland, to know that the whole British Constitution was boiled down to make one of them, and every right and liberty ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... Delecresse, repacked his wares with such care as their delicacy and costliness required, and the Countess desired Levina to summon the varlets to bear the heavy ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... the opening of the retreat, Roc-Amadour is illuminated, and the spectacle is one that renders the grandest illuminations in Paris mean and vulgar by comparison. It is not in the costliness of the display that its splendour lies; it is in what may almost be termed the zeal with which Nature works with art towards the same end. Without the rocks and precipices the spectacle would be commonplace; but the site being what it is, the ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... public roads were little inferior to the aqueducts and Cloa'cae in utility and costliness; the chief was the Appian road from Rome to Brundu'sium; it extended three hundred and fifty miles, and was paved with huge squares through its entire length. After the lapse of nineteen centuries many parts of it are still as perfect as when ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... the service secretary. Finally it would have set up a system for purging existing records and removing photographs from promotion board selection folders.[22-64] The services strongly objected to a purge of existing records on the grounds of costliness, and they were particularly opposed to the removal of photographs. Photographs were traditional and remained desirable, Deputy Under Secretary of the Army Roy K. Davenport explained, because they were useful in portraying individual physical characteristics ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... animated and sustained by the expression of public affection. Gentlemen, there is yet one other remark that I would make upon our monarchy, though had it not been for recent circumstances, I should have refrained from doing so. An attack has recently been made upon the throne on account of the costliness of the institution. Gentlemen, I shall not dwell upon the fact that if the people of England appreciate the monarchy, as I believe they do, it would be painful to them that their royal and representative ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... the Great Leveler also. It is the most powerful of the forces for democracy. An aristocracy can hardly be maintained except by distinction in dress, and distinction in dress can only be maintained by sumptuary laws or costliness. Sumptuary laws are unconstitutional in this country, hence the stress laid upon costliness. But machinery tends to bring styles and fabrics within the reach of all. The shopgirl is almost as well dressed on the street as her rich customer. ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... Articles of female apparel and ornament are greedily purchased; for the European women in the settlement spare no expense in ornamenting their persons, and in dress, each seems to vie with the other in extravagance. The costliness of the exterior there, as well as in most other parts of the world, is meant as the mark of superiority; but confers very little grace, and much less virtue, on its wearer, when speaking of the dashing belles who generally frequent the Rocks, who may ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... has been secured to the suppression of the trade in slaves. And one thing is clear, that when all the causes of war, involving manifest injustice, are banished by the force of European opinion, focally converged upon the subject, the range of war will be prodigiously circumscribed. The costliness of war, which, for various reasons has been continually increasing since the feudal period, will operate as another limitation upon its field, concurring powerfully with the public declaration from ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... attain to, that a book consists, like a man, from whom it draws its lineage, of a body and a soul. They are not always proportionate to each other. Nay, even the different members of the book-body do not sing, but clash, when bindings of a profuse costliness are imposed, as too often happens in the case of Bibles and books of devotion, upon letter-press which is respectable journeyman's work and nothing more. The men of the Renascence had a truer sense of adaptation; the age ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone
... paint-box was so handsomely furnished, too, and so daintily ordered, that I scarcely dared touch it. She gave me a little respite, however, by rubbing the colors for me,—colors, some of them, that, for their costliness, I could not allow myself at all at home,—and selected for me two such exquisite brushes from her store! Then she lay down beside me on a "couch of Ind," smiled as I laid her plaid over her feet, and watched me at the work. How that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... for a mere song; they run into debt, expressly to keep up a spurious luxury, in the hope of recovering what they have lost—a cash-box to draw upon. These ups and downs of their career account for the costliness of such connections, generally brought about as Asie had hooked (another word of her vocabulary) ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... many—descriptions of a Roman dinner, but the tendency, especially with the novelist, is to exaggerate grossly the average costliness and gluttony of such banquets. Undoubtedly there were such things as "freak" dinners almost as absurd as those of the inferior order of American plutocrat. Undoubtedly also there was often a detestable ostentation of reckless expenditure. But we are endeavouring to obtain a fair view ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... furnished with a sort of extravagant good taste; there was nothing to object to in the satin furniture, the pale, soft, rich carpet, the pictures, and the bronze and china bric-a-brac, except that their costliness was too evident; everything in the room meant money too plainly, and too much of it. The Marches recognized this in the hoarse whispers which people cannot get their voices above when they try to talk away the interval of waiting ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... visit to his brother in the United States, a country at that time on the rage for social clubs with classic names. The "Manchester Athenaeum," owing partly to defective management and architectural costliness, partly to some years of bad trade and deficient employment, and partly to an unfortunate sectarian conflict, had fallen into debt and difficulty; and a few of the younger members, who had profited ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... and pretend to consult his taste as to the merits of it; nothing more was wanting to persuade the liberal-hearted lord to buy it. If a jeweller had a stone of price, or a mercer rich costly stuffs, which for their costliness lay upon his hands, lord Timon's house was a ready mart always open, where they might get off their wares or their jewellery at any price, and the good natured lord would thank them into the bargain, as if they had done him a piece of courtesy ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... freckles on her smiling face, and the expression of a daring, vivacious and happy spirit—and acknowledged to be the best dancer and most popular girl in Middleville. Her dress, while not to be compared with her friends' costumes in costliness, yet was ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... and which appear to interest and even excite one of the congregation. This is a man of middle age, most richly dressed with a certain foreign air about him and evidently in a very delicate state of health. He is accompanied by a lady whose dress is also a marvel of beauty and costliness though hardly of fitness. The broad bands of gold which adorn her wrists and neck would alone procure for her the entire attention of the congregation were she seated in a more conspicuous place. As it is ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... loans were always regarded by the borrower as temporary expedients; the habitual conduct of business on borrowed capital was unknown. But, just as the new output of the German mines was increasing the supply of precious metals, the greater costliness of war, due to the substitution of mercenaries and fire-arms for feudal levies equipped with bows and pikes, made the governments of Europe need money more than ever before. They made great loans at home and abroad, and it was the interest on these that expanded the banking business until ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... a dress Stiff with lavish costliness! Here comes on whose cheek would flush But to have her garment brush 'Gainst the girl whose fingers thin Wove the weary 'broidery in, Bending backward from her toil, Lest her tears the silk might soil, And in midnight's chill and ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... burning coal by steam alone at a temperature at which the ammonia formed should not be dissociated, although it yielded more ammonia, would not lead to an economic process, because it would require apparatus heated from the outside, of great complication, bulk, and costliness, on account of the immense quantity of raw material to be treated for a small ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... dwelt here, but a fire swept their homes away in a single night, leaving only ashes to mark the spot. There is no foundation or cellar to a Japanese dwelling. The temples in this vicinity are isolated from the dwellings, a river running between, and are wonderful in architecture, size, and costliness. They are many hundred years of age, and contain, among other curious ornaments, statues of grotesque shapes in bronze, of priceless value, mammoth bronze figures of birds of the stork species, etc., life-like in character, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... institutions increased rapidly in number under Louis XV., and became the favorite resort of distinguished individuals. At present, they abound in every quarter, and justly rank among the most remarkable features of the city, being very generally decorated with unrivaled costliness and splendor. Besides coffee, wine, beer and other refreshments, they frequently provide breakfast, and many of them also dinners and suppers. In 1874, there were over 6,000 cafes in Paris, doing business to ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... We recognize your greatness and your power. Deign to give us from your abundance, not that we may live comfortably when serving the Lord, but live in luxury like you, and compete with you in the sumptuousness of our banquets and in the costliness of our furniture and our works of art, and be your companions and equals in social distinctions, and be enrolled with you as leaders of society." On the contrary they said, "We ask nothing from you. We do not wish to be rich. We prefer poverty. We would not be encumbered with ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... I know not where I could live with more comfort; and where comfort is, my good madam, what signifies the costliness or ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... for a time, and he recovered in consequence health and spirits. He has now taken to it again. Of this indeed I was too sure before I heard from you—that his looks bore testimony to it. Perhaps you are not aware of the costliness of this drug. In the quantity which C. takes, it would consume more than the whole which you propose to raise. A frightful consumption of spirits is added. In this way bodily ailments are produced; and the wonder is that ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... edifying or satisfying in the mere comparing of apparel. The aim of entertainment should be to refresh the guest and stimulate friendship; the end is defeated by a rivalry in extravagance that awakens concern as to one's ability to return courtesies extended. The increasing costliness of social functions not only robs entertainment of the enjoyment that it is intended to bring, but it leads many young couples to ruin themselves financially in an effort to keep up appearances and pay their ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... one; nobody, guest or member of the family, was forgotten, and whether costly, or homely but useful, the gifts seemed to give equal joy. It was the season of good-will, in which the kindly thought, not the costliness of the gift, was alone considered, and when all tokens of kindliness were accepted in the same spirit of gratefulness ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... been able to keep up an interest in the conversation at table, and not to betray the slightest anxiety as to the success of the affair. Host or hostess should never make disparaging remarks as to the quality of dishes; and still less should they refer to their costliness, and should know beforehand as to the edge of the carving-knife, as the use of ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... method we should be able to carry out Rescue work on a much larger scale. At present two difficulties very largely block our way. One is the costliness of the work. The expense of rescuing a girl on the present plan cannot be much less than 7; that is, if we include the cost of those with whom we fail, and on whom the money is largely thrown away. Seven pounds is certainly not a very large sum for the measure of benefit ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... changed the Palluim for the Toga in the infancy of the christian world; but all other christians were left undistinguished by their dress. These were generally clad in the sober manner of their own times. They observed a medium between costliness and sordidness. That they had no particular form for their dress beyond that of other grave people, we team from Justin Martyr. "They affected nothing fantastic, says he, but, living among Greeks and barbarians, they followed the customs of the ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... allowed between sliding sleeve and coupling heads can always be made sufficient to accommodate a considerable want of alinement, far beyond anything which is likely to occur in actual practice. Perhaps the only feature against it is its lack of simplicity of construction and corresponding costliness. ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins
... in the Rue de la Paix, I met a well-known English producer of plays, and he piloted me to the Cafe de Paris, which seemed to have lost nothing of its special atmosphere of smartness and costliness. Louis the Rotund, who in the early days of the war went off to guard bridges and gasometers, was playing his more accustomed role of maitre d'hotel, explaining with suave gravity the unpreventable altitude of prices. And for at least the tenth time he told me how ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... maintenance of a common standard of living, the lawgiver placed so effectual a check upon the desire of riches for the sake of luxury? What inducement, for instance, would there be to make money, even for the sake of wearing apparel, in a state where personal adornment is held to lie not in the costliness of the clothes they wear, but in the healthy condition of the body to be clothed? Nor again could there be much inducement to amass wealth, in order to be able to expend it on the members of a common mess, where the legislator had made it seem far more glorious that a man should ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon |
