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Extravagant   Listen
adjective
Extravagant  adj.  
1.
Wandering beyond one's bounds; roving; hence, foreign. (Obs.) "The extravagant and erring spirit hies To his confine."
2.
Exceeding due bounds; wild; excessive; unrestrained; as, extravagant acts, wishes, praise, abuse. "There appears something nobly wild and extravagant in great natural geniuses."
3.
Profuse in expenditure; prodigal; wasteful; as, an extravagant man. "Extravagant expense."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Extravagant" Quotes from Famous Books



... body, talents, habits of business, in the consideration that you have time yet to retrieve every thing, and a knowledge that the very activity necessary for this, is a state of greater happiness than the unoccupied one, to which you had a thought of retiring. I wish the bulk of my extravagant countrymen had as good prospects and resources as you. But with many of them, a feebleness of mind makes them afraid to probe the true state of their affairs, and procrastinate the reformation which alone can save something, to those who may yet be saved. How happy a people ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... never observe any of the three great Unities of Action, Time and Place, which are great Errors; For what breeds more Confusion than to have five or six main Plots in a Play, when the Audience can never attend to 'em? What more extravagant than to fancy the Actions of Weeks, Months, and Years represented in the Space of three or four Hours? Or what more unnatural than for the Spectators to suppose themselves now in a Street, then in a Garden, by and by in a Chamber, ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard

... prophesies from one end of the year to the other. She is always seeing apparitions, and hearing death-watches; and was the other day almost frightened out of her wits by the great house-dog, that howled in the stable at a time when she lay ill of the tooth-ach. Such an extravagant cast of mind engages multitudes of people not only in impertinent terrors, but in supernumerary duties of life; and arises from that fear and ignorance which are natural to the soul of man. The horror ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... M. Carey Thomas, the President of Bryn Mawr College, who attributes the industrial progress of the United States largely to the fact that the men of the country have such well-educated mothers. It seems to me a not unreasonable or extravagant suggestion. I am certainly of the opinion that the conversational fluency and mental alertness of the American woman, as well as in large measure her capacity for bearing her share in the civic labour, are largely the result of the fact that she has in most cases had precisely ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... your taking upon me (at so extravagant a rate too) to pay my mother's servants. Indeed I am, and I will be, angry with you for it. A year's wages at once well nigh! only as, unknown to my mother, I make it better for the servants according to their merits—how it made the man stare!—And it may ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... strength or skill, but that, knowing the eccentricity of the king, they apprehended that the individual whom he had sent against them, in such an uncouth garb, and who was to hold combat with them at such extravagant odds, they being on horseback, while he was on foot, might be no true knight, but some base-born man whom the monarch had sent against them for a jest's sake. But, while they communed together, the Savage Knight approached near where they stood, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... the ever-beckoning to the hills of treasure, with their extravagant stories of adventure, but the professional man was anchored in the more prosy city, and buckled down to a commonplace existence. The exhilarating ozone from the ocean, the wind blowing over the vast area of sand, the red-flannel-shirted miner recklessly dumping out sacks of gold-dust ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... series of changes which the geologists unfolded. This demand for a greatly extended time was strengthened when the law of the gradual evolution of life was expounded by the modern school of naturalists, and as great a lapse of time as five hundred millions of years was not deemed an extravagant estimate. Sir William Thompson has, however, demonstrated that the time that has elapsed since the crust of the earth became solidified can not be far from one hundred millions of years, and consequently we know the time since the appearance of life ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... Forrest had a level head. He did not delude himself with any extravagant idea of his own importance. He knew that what he had done was purely the ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... betrothed her to Francesco Peretti (1573), a man of no position, but a nephew of Cardinal Montalto, who was regarded as likely to become pope. Vittoria was admired and worshipped by all the cleverest and most brilliant men in Rome, and being luxurious and extravagant although poor, she and her husband were soon plunged in debt. Among her most fervent admirers was P. G. Orsini, duke of Bracciano, one of the most powerful men in Rome, and her brother Marcello, wishing to see her the duke's wife, had Peretti murdered (1581). The duke himself was suspected of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... with his old extravagant demonstrations of affection and delight, and when she looked searchingly into her mother's face she was met with a beaming smile. There was no trace of the ordeal she had faced alone, and Hansie's anxious heart ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt

... when his power was at its height, the courtiers wearied him by their fulsome flatteries. Disgusted with their extravagant adulations he determined to teach them a lesson. They had spoken of him as a ruler before whom all the powers of nature must bend in obedience, and one day he caused his golden throne to be set on the verge of the sea-shore sands as the tide was rolling in with its resistless might. Seating himself ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris

... Ben's gettin' extravagant," said Uncle Job. "I've always heerd that the Astor House is a fashionable hotel where they charge big prices. Ben ought to have gone to a cheap place, ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger

... been extravagant, and is said to be embarrassed; the truth is, sir, that the man values not your daughter, but the property to which he thinks he will become entitled, and which I have no doubt will be very welcome to his necessities. I feel that I speak truth, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... although I have never yet found two persons to agree in their explanation of what is meant by the word "Commune." At the Moderate clubs, the speeches generally consisted of ignorant abuse of Germany, attempts to disprove well-established facts, and extravagant self-laudation. I have attended many clubs—Ultra and Moderate—and I never heard a speaker at one of them who would have been tolerated for five minutes by an ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... that when a man is raging in a fever, the cat cast ower him will cure him; applied to them whom we hear telling extravagant things, as ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop

... you, my daughter, that these male costumes, so effeminate, extravagant, and costly, had met great opposition from part of the people of St. Martin parish. They had been brought in by the French emigres, and many had adopted them, while others had openly revolted against them. A league had been formed against them. Among ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... is another good example of Roman cookery, far from being extravagant as it is reputed to be, it is economical and clever, and shows ingenuity in the utilization of good things which ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... had a pair o' them shiny shoes with buttons on," I answered in a low, confidential tone, afraid to express, openly, a wish so extravagant. ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... "'Most extravagant meal of vittles ever I got away with,' I says. 'Cost me and my partner two hundred and fifty apiece, that lunch did. We stayed in Boston two days, and on the afternoon of the second day we was on our way back totin' a couple of neat but expensive slips of paper signifyin' that we'd ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... Wallenstein had purposed to fulfil his extravagant designs was now manifest. He had learned the lesson from Count Mansfeld; but the scholar surpassed his master. On the principle that war must support war, Mansfeld and the Duke of Brunswick had subsisted their troops by contributions ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... of taking formal possession of the land in her majesty's name. Raleigh however, unwilling to acknowledge a failure, published on his return an account of Guiana, filled with the most disgraceful and extravagant falsehoods;—falsehoods to which he himself became eventually the victim, when, on the sole credit of his assurances, king James released him from a tedious imprisonment to head a second band of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... seems to many rhetorical and extravagant. In after days it appeared so to Rousseau himself, and he claimed no more for it than that he had tried to tell the truth. Before he learned that he had won the Dijon prize and that his work had taken Paris by ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... pentatonic is now—perhaps then these borderland experiences may be both easily expressed and readily recognized. But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be a transcendental language in the most extravagant sense. Possibly the power of literally distinguishing these "shades of abstraction"—these attributes paralleled by "artistic intuitions" (call them what you will)-is ever to be denied man for the same reason ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... Boston. I went yesterday into Cheapside to purchase a few articles, but found everything higher than in Boston. Silks are in a particular manner so; they say, when they are exported, there is a drawback upon them, which makes them lower with us. Our country, alas, our country! they are extravagant to astonishment in entertainments compared with what Mr. Smith and Mr. Storer tell me of this. You will not find at a gentleman's table more than two dishes of meat, though invited several days beforehand. Mrs. Atkinson went out with me yesterday, and Mrs. Hay, to the shops. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... the maiden of bashful fifteen; Now to the widow of fifty; Here's to the flaunting extravagant quean And here's to the housewife that 's thrifty. Let the toast pass, Drink to the lass, I'll warrant she'll prove ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... sweet potato is sold in halves, or even in quarters, if required; ferriage across the river in a boat—a stream as wide as the Ohio at Pittsburgh—costs one-fifth of a cent, and you can engage an entire boat for yourself for a cent, if you wish to be extravagant; poultry is sold by the piece, as we sell a sheep, the wings, breast, legs, all having their price, and even the very feet of a chicken being sold for soup. Common iron nails are laid out in lots of six each; these have been used and used again, no one knows how often; we see ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... saw some flashy people. You know one customer attracts her friends and so on. There is every class there from the demi-monde up to actresses and really truly society. And they have things for all prices from the comparatively cheap to the most extravagant. They're very accommodating and, in a ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... of the use of patchouly as a perfume in Europe is curious. A few years ago real Indian shawls bore an extravagant price, and purchasers could always distinguish them by their odor; in fact, they were perfumed with patchouly. The French manufacturers had for some time successfully imitated the Indian fabric, but ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse

... her husband out. He was so careful, so—so miserly in some ways, so wildly extravagant in others. All this furniture had come from Germany, and must have cost a pretty penny. It was true that he had got it, or so he assured her, with very heavy discount off—and ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... though he had many good qualities, was by no means perfect. He was rather spoiled by indulgence at home and popularity at school, and thought a good deal too much of himself for one thing, and for another he was inclined to be thoughtless and extravagant in money matters. It is excellent to be generous with money which is absolutely our own; but to seek to get the credit for generosity at other people's expense is quite another, and not at all an admirable thing. Crawley knew this in theory, but practically, if he wanted anything ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough

... sterling character, highly and deeply principled, though not demonstrative, and showing his Scots descent. None of the brothers had been extravagant, but Tom, with the income of his lately achieved fellowship, performed feats of economy, such as attaining to the purchase of an ultra perfect microscope, and he was consistently industrious, so exactly measuring his own powers that to undertake was with him to ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... honours of the place to me, and he ordered for us a DINER EN GOURMAND at the chief restaurateur's, maintaining it surpassed the Rocher at Paris. Six or eight partook of the entertainment, and we all agreed it was infinitely inferior to the Paris display, and much more extravagant. So ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to the township before the moon went down. He was very heavy with his own reflections. How magnificent! It had all surpassed his most extravagant imaginings—in audacity, in expedition, in simple mastery of the mutable many by the dominant one. He forgave Stingaree his gibes and insults; he could have forgiven a horse-whipping from that king of men. Stingaree had been his imaginary god ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... in British East Africa is ruinously extravagant. If the government desires the extermination of the game, such a bag limit surely will promote that end. It is awful to think that for a petty sum any man may buy the right to kill 300 head of hoofed ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... past all description of mine. 'The Garden of Cyrus must be read. It is an extravagant sport of a scholar of the first rank and a genius of the first water. 'We write no herbal,' he begins, and neither he does. And after the most fantastical prose-poem surely that ever was written, he as fantastically winds up at midnight with this: 'To keep our eyes longer ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte

... female, and the mixture of frenzy and enthusiasm in her manner, seldom failed to produce the strongest impression upon those whom she addressed. Her words, though wild, were too plain and intelligible for actual madness, and yet too vehement and extravagant for sober-minded communication. She seemed acting under the influence of an imagination rather strongly excited than deranged; and it is wonderful how palpably the difference in such cases is impressed upon the ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... for the play," Ellison said eagerly. "You are of the old world, and Isteinism to you will simply spell chaos and vulgarity. But the woman! well, you will see her! I don't want to prejudice you by praises which you would certainly think extravagant! I will say nothing." ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... in last night's conversation, as one who maintained the most extravagant opinion that ever entered into the mind of man, to wit, that there is no such thing as material substance ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... without quite understanding it. Allowances, large allowances, she knew, must be made for the ideas of those who spoke. She heard it all under embellishment. All that sounded extravagant or irrational in the progress of the reconciliation might have no origin but in the language of the relators. Still, however, she had the sensation of there being something more than immediately appeared, in Mr Elliot's wishing, after an interval of so many years, to be well received by ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... in an extraordinary manner,' said Mr. Crayshaw grimly; 'he was idle and extravagant in his early youth, and his career since then has been far from brilliant, not to speak of this most unfortunate and imprudent marriage with a penniless orphan girl, which he had sufficient shame ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham

... chapter. But the life of Galeazzo Maria, husband of Bona of Savoy, and uncle by marriage to Charles VIII. of France, forms an integral part of that history of the Milanese despots which we have hitherto been tracing. In him the passions of Gian Maria Visconti were repeated with the addition of extravagant vanity. We may notice in particular his parade-expedition in 1471 to Florence, when he flaunted the wealth extorted from his Milanese subjects before the soberminded citizens of a still free city. Fifty palfreys ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... travelled by land to receive his baggage at Leghorn — He is now more likely than ever to execute a whim of the same nature; and I will hold any wager, that as he cannot be supposed to live much longer, according to the course of nature, his exit will be as odd as his life has been extravagant. ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... laid out in certain purchases; Andrea del Sarto perfidiously embezzled the whole, and turned it to his own use. This story is told in his life, with the addition that "he was persuaded to it by his wife, as profligate and extravagant ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... that light fare begets light dreams; my fare at that time was light enough; but I had anything but light dreams, for at that period I had all kind of strange and extravagant dreams, and amongst other things I dreamt that the whole world had taken to dog-fighting; and that I, myself, had taken to dog-fighting, and that in a vast circus I backed an English bulldog against the bloodhound of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... sign manual of their intense respectability. The old regime would not compromise with fashion in all its extravagant changes for the world. Moreover, it is their serene belief that they may dress exactly as they choose, and they choose to keep an old tradition alive. Are not English duchesses much ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... natural that she should then have considered what result would be next best to a marriage? She was very poor, having saved only some few hundreds a year from the wreck of her own fortune. Independently of her daughter had nothing. And in spite of this poverty Arabella was very extravagant, running up bills for finery without remorse wherever credit could be found, and excusing herself by saying that on this or that occasion such expenditure was justified by the matrimonial prospects which ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... of Mr. Rutherford's extravagant expressions," Lyle replied, "the natural surroundings here are certainly beautiful, but their beauty only makes the conditions mentally and morally the more painfully conspicuous, and if I can see the contrast so plainly, who have always lived here and known no other ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... Only two!" decisively exclaimed Charles. "A man is an extravagant fool who dines more. The third is expensive and in ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.

... body at the time were made up partly of Arians, partly of Trinitarians, who held each other in mutual tolerance; the ministers freely exchanging pulpits. No bad consequence followed. We do not hear of individual ministers going to extravagant lengths in either direction. A large body gravitated, in the course of time, to the modern Unitarian position; but, considering the start, the stride was not great. In such a century as the eighteenth, there might well have been greater modifications of the ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... war of independence, but the task of breaking the maritime power of Spain fell mainly to England in the age of Elizabeth. Cabot's notable voyage was without immediate result. Neither the frugal Henry VII, who gave "L10 to him that found the new isle," nor his extravagant son, who was engaged in separating England from Rome and in enriching the treasury with the spoils of the monasteries, coveted the colonies of Spain or greatly feared her power in Europe. But Elizabeth, seated ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... tradition for itself which placed it beside The Times—the "Thunderer," as one of the institutions of this country, recognised abroad as essentially expressive of national character. English humour, like American and French, has its own flavour; it lacks the high and extravagant fantasy that is so exhilarating in America; it avoids the subtlety of France; it is essentially a laughing humour. The Englishman, who cannot stand chaff himself, always laughs at others. It is curious that while an Englishman's conventions rest upon dislike ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood

... front of rampart-like precipices, as if they had been showered into them by the ordnance of some besieging battery, and had stuck fast in the mason-work. Abbotsford has been described as a romance in stone and lime; we have here, on the shores of Laig, what seems a wild but agreeable tale, of the extravagant cast of "Christabel," or the "Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner," fretted into sandstone. But by far the most curious part of the story remains to ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... spaces in advance, delayed us long enough to distinguish some of the ornaments in the general blaze of splendour and ostentation). The caboceers, as did their superior captains and attendants, wore Ashantee cloths of extravagant price, from the costly foreign silks which had been unravelled to weave them, in all the varieties of colour as well as pattern; they were of an incredible size and weight, and thrown over the shoulder exactly like the Roman toga; a small silk fillet ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... the personality of the state, clothed with immortality and with a formally boundless power of taxation, is so often seduced into engaging in transactions of credit which are never self-discharged.(535) The social diseases of panics and of extravagant enterprises stand in the same relation to credit that unbelief and superstition do to ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... proceeded thus far swimmingly, except that a few of the words I had previously selected seemed, when I came to pronounce them, as extravagant, and so I had substituted others in their place, not so liable to be censured for that fault; beside, a lapse of memory had once or twice occasioned temporary delay and embarrassment; but I had got along thus far, I say, as I presumed, exceedingly well, when, oh, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... withheld from parents, especially by boys, to an extent probably little suspected by most parents. Education must be addressed to freedom, which recognizes only self-made law, and spontaneity of opinion and conduct is manifested, often in extravagant and grotesque forms. There is now a longing for that kind of close sympathy and friendship which makes cronies and intimates; there is a craving for strong emotions which gives pleasure in exaggerations; and there ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... alone be suitable. It is almost certain that electricity and other mysterious radiant forces (of which we have so recently discovered the existence) have played an important part in the origin and development of organised life, and it does not appear to be extravagant to assume that the extraordinary way in which these cosmic forces have remained hidden from us may be due to that central position which we are found to occupy in the whole universe of matter discoverable by us. Indeed, it may well be that these wonderful ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... has not yet been fixed, though he has long since wished it; he is at a loss to understand it all. He hopes that the additions and alterations made on his account whilst neat, have not been in an extravagant style. The latter would not only be contrary to his wishes but repugnant to his interest and convenience, as it would be the means of keeping him from the use and comforts of the house until a later day; and because the furniture and everything else must then be in accordance with ...
— Washington in Domestic Life • Richard Rush

... "framed" or "joyned" table, name the "carpett of Turky werke" which covered it, and in many cases there was still another covering to protect the best one, and when Frederick, Duke of Wurtemburg, visited England in 1592 he noted a very extravagant "carpett" at Hampton Court, which was embroidered with pearls and cost ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield

... Something of the same kind is now passing in India. Anew taste, not without some political ingredients, has sprung up for the ancient literature of the country; amore intelligent appreciation of their real merits has taken the place of the extravagant admiration for the masterworks of their old poets; there is a revival in the study of Sanskrit, asurprising activity in the republication of Sanskrit texts, and there are traces among the Hindus of a growing feeling, not very different from that which ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... should be at the expense of it; and they doubted whether the citizens themselves generally approv'd of it. My allegation on the contrary, that it met with such approbation as to leave no doubt of our being able to raise two thousand pounds by voluntary donations, they considered as a most extravagant ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... exhilaration produced by the juice of the grape. His ecstatic worship, characterised by wild dances, thrilling music, and tipsy excess, appears to have originated among the rude tribes of Thrace, who were notoriously addicted to drunkenness. Its mystic doctrines and extravagant rites were essentially foreign to the clear intelligence and sober temperament of the Greek race. Yet appealing as it did to that love of mystery and that proneness to revert to savagery which seem to be innate in ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... of a blow to me. Public opinion would naturally reflect that of the husband, and it would require very strong evidence indeed to combat a logical supposition of this kind with one so forced and seemingly extravagant as that upon which my own theory was based. Yet truth often transcends imagination, and, having confidence in the inspector's integrity, I subdued my impatience for a week, almost for two, when my suspense and rapidly culminating dread of some action being ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green

... his horoscope he would prize it but little; when it is so difficult to obtain an introduction to me, and it is regarded as a matter of favour to be allowed to consult me, people are ready to pay extravagant sums for my advice. And,' he said with a smile, 'the fact that ten days or a fortnight always elapses between the time I am asked to receive a new client and his or her first interview with me, enables me to make such minute inquiries that I can not only gain their complete confidence ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty

... possesses the minds of multitudes, as civil freedom, or the religious sentiment, the powers of persons are no longer subjects of calculation. A nation of men unanimously bent on freedom or conquest can easily confound the arithmetic of statists, and achieve extravagant actions, out of all proportion to their means; as the Greeks, the Saracens, the Swiss, the Americans, and the French ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... there be an extreme view, when one is considering individual freedom? Set bounds to the political, social, or religious liberty of a man, and what figures of speech would he employ? The advocates of the XV. Amendment put words into our mouths, and they must answer for them if they seem too extravagant. There is nothing under the sun that will so arouse man or woman as the fact that another, as needy, as finite as himself, sets stakes in the path of his progress, and says, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther." ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... would have persuaded himself that his lovely wife was under the influence of one of her odd whims, and that she was only amusing herself and him with her extravagant inventions. He wished it might be so. But with whatever emphasis he said this to himself, he still could not credit the hope for a moment: a strange shivering shot through his soul; unable to utter a word, ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... were answered on both sides, the natives were informed by their comrade of the nature and objects of the establishment at Ungava, and they exhibited the most extravagant signs of joy on hearing the news. When their excitement was calmed down a little, they conducted the party to their principal tent, and set before them the choicest viands they possessed, talking vehemently all the while, and ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne

... have cause or not; but, laugh as we may at the sage advice of our fathers, it is too plain that our present expensive habits are productive of much domestic unhappiness, and injurious to public prosperity. Our wealthy people copy all the foolish and extravagant caprice of European fashion, without considering that we have not their laws of inheritance among us; and that our frequent changes of policy render property far more precarious here than in the old world. However, it is not to the rich I would speak. They have an undoubted right to spend ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child

... speech was greeted with a hubbub of laughter, approval, and protest confusedly mixed; in the midst of which it occurred to me that I would select Audubon as the next speaker. My reason was that Ellis, as I thought, under cover of an extravagant fit of spleen, had made rather a formidable attack on the doctrine of progress as commonly understood by social reformers. He had given us, as it were, the first notes of the Negative. But Audubon, I ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson

... full use of their privileges. It was believed that railway investments would yield high dividends, and the more optimistic expected to see all taxes made unnecessary by the profits earned. Town vied with town in extravagant enterprises.[3] Not a cent brought a dividend; instead, the municipalities found themselves saddled with heavy interest payments. One after another declined to pay; Port Hope was $312,000 in arrears by 1861 and Cobourg $313,000. The provincial government had {90} not the political ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton

... friend," she answered. "But the American in question was a person of culture and intelligence, and at heart he was no more a democrat than I am. Further, I am an extravagant woman, and ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... sent to your principal cities, I wish I had flesh enough to be dispersed through Christendom, to attest my dying attachment to my king.' It was the calm employment of his mind, that night, to reduce this extravagant sentiment to verse. He appeared next day, on the scaffold, in a rich habit, with the same serene and undaunted countenance, and addressed the people, to vindicate his dying unabsolved by the church, rather than to justify an invasion ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott

... spends on science, regret that the sums allotted to it should not be applied with the strictest economy. If the Astronomer Royal really has a right to these volumes, printed by the government at a large expense, it is, perhaps, the most extravagant mode which was ever yet invented of paying a public servant. When that right was given to him,—let us suppose somebody had suggested the impolicy of it, lest he should sell the costly volumes for waste paper,—who would have listened for one moment to such a supposition? He ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage

... small change he had in his pocket: it was like him to be extravagant, even extreme. "And fifty-three cents?" he pursued, ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... Little Dorrit is written, like all the later books, frankly and somewhat sadly, de haut en bas. In them Dickens recognizes that quite everyday men are as grotesque as Bunsby. Sparkler, one of the most extravagant of all his gargoyles, is an untouched photograph almost. Wegg and Riderhood are sinister and terrifying because they are simply real, which Squeers and Sikes are not. And please remark that whilst Squeers and Sikes have their speeches written with anxious verisimilitude ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... necessary. He surrendered himself to the pleasant tickling of his vanity which was an immediate result of the adventure. For, whatever Clem might be hiding, it seemed to him beyond doubt that she was genuinely attracted by his personal qualities. Her demonstrations were not extravagant, but in one noteworthy respect she seemed to give evidence of a sensibility so little in keeping with her general character that it was only to be explained as the result of a strong passion. In conversing with him she at times displayed a singular ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... she had a consciousness of doing something very wrong. In truth, she had pictured to herself so many impossible scenes beforehand, had rehearsed the probable questions and answers in so many strange dialogues, had soothed her fancy with so many extravagant ideas, that she had at last created, bit by bit, a situation very different from the reality, and then threw herself into it, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... alternate bolting in and bolting out continued for many days; finding that I could not get rid of him, I sent him away forty miles in the country; but he returned the next day, expressing the most extravagant joy at the sight of the ponies, who, strange to say, were equally pleased, allowing him to put his paws upon them, and bark in their faces. But although the ponies were partial to the dog, I was not; and aware that a voyage is a great specific for ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... here is good, but the comparison might have been dropped sooner without damage. The poem of Mrs. BRADSTREET, entitled 'Contemplations,' possesses a great deal of merit, and proves her to be worthy of the extravagant praise of her extravagant admirer. The extracts from the poetry of Governor WOLCOTT are very favorable to the poetic reputation of the governor. But the richest thing in the whole collection is the 'Simple Cobbler of Aggawam,' occupying ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... interested, and the most extravagant stories were set afloat, not only concerning the trouseau of the bride, but the bride herself. What ailed her? What made her so cold, so white, so proudly reserved, so like a walking ghost? She, who had been so full of vigorous life, so merry, so light-hearted. ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... it is not indiscreet, may I ask what you mean to do with me?" The insolence and irony of the tone stung through the words. The Duchess quite believed that she read extravagant love in Montriveau's speech. He had carried her off; was not that in itself an acknowledgment of ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... master!" cried Charolais in a tone of extravagant relief; and he danced round the room snapping ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson

... most wonderful thing in the world. To know the Old and New Testaments by heart, and be able to recite them glibly, forward or backward, or begin at random anywhere in the book and recite both ways and never trip or make a mistake, is no extravagant mass of knowledge, and no marvelous facility, compared to a pilot's massed knowledge of the Mississippi and his marvelous facility in the handling of it. I make this comparison deliberately, and believe I am not expanding ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Sir Henry—of your bride—with all my heart. And a bonny bride she is, and well able to take her place in the world. Though you'll be rich and well to do, you'll not find her over-extravagant. And though her fortune's not much for a man like you, perhaps, she might have had less, mightn't she? ha! ha! ha! Little as it is, it will help—it will help. And you'll not find debts coming home after her; I'm sure of that. She'll keep your house well together; and your money ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... completely deceiving his friends and the world, I naturally could not divine; but I knew that such things had happened before, and also I gathered that he was a man who would hesitate at no caprice, however extravagant, once it had suggested itself to him as expedient for the satisfaction ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett

... "Better extravagant with the taxpayers' money than sorry for ourselves," Alec replied, pulling the avalanche gun from his holster. It looked like an early-day Very pistol, with its big, straight-bore muzzle. "Let's get back a ...
— The Thirst Quenchers • Rick Raphael

... entered a house of worship for years. Prayer-meetings were established by the various denominations, in different quarters, at almost every hour, business men assembling at midday for prayer and praise. There was no extravagant excitement, but an almost universal solemnity on the minds of the people. His work, like that of the early Reformers, tended rather to convince the understanding and arouse the conscience than merely to excite ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... not make much of 'Progress of the Species,' as handled in these times of ours; nor do I think you would care to hear much about it. The talk on that subject is too often of the most extravagant, confused sort. Yet I may say, the fact itself seems certain enough; nay we can trace out the inevitable necessity of it in the nature of things. Every man, as I have stated somewhere, is not only a learner but a doer: he learns with the mind given him ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... hedge, seemed to him to be perfectly beautiful; but the Turner of the later period, the Turner so wildly upheld by Ruskin, seemed to Hugh to have lost sight of nature, in the pleasure of constructing extravagant and fantastic schemes of colour. The true art seemed to Hugh not to be the art that trumpets beauty aloud, and that drags a spectator roughly to admire; but the art that waits quietly for the sincere nature-lover, and gives ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... was much talk of money and luxury everywhere about us. Even in our quiet neighbourhood, where simple living was the rule, many had burst into ostentation, and moved away into newer and more pretentious quarters, and there was a rumour that some of these sought unlimited opportunities for extravagant expenditure. We saw them driving in new carriages, and condescendingly stopping before the white doors and the green window-shutters of our old-fashioned colonial houses. They had made money through the war. For the first time in ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... language and will sound very strange and extravagant in many ears; and yet is it really stronger language than that often used by inspired prophets and apostles? or than that of Augustine, Bernard, Luther, Hooker, Fenelon, Bunyan, and of many saintly women, whose names adorn the annals ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... "you mane to the poor, I suppose, and you're right; but maybe I'm of sarvice to the rich, too. Many a face I save from—I could save from shame, I mane—if I liked, and could get well ped for it, too. Some young, extravagant people that have rich ould fathers do be spakin' to me, too; but thin, you know, I have a sowl to be saved, and am a religious man, I hope, and do my duty as sich, and that every one that has a sowl to be saved, ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... for colleges," growled Mr. Carter. "They turn out nothing but a grist of extravagant snobs. I never went to college myself and I have contrived to pull along and make my pile, thanks to nobody. I've a big half mind to have Melville do the same. But his mother wants him to go, and I suppose I shall have to give in and let him. It ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett

... nothing to do, and nothing to wish for, she naturally imagined she must be ill—an impression which was most assiduously promoted by her medical attendant, Dr. Wosky, and her handmaid Agnes: both of whom, doubtless for good reasons, encouraged all her extravagant notions. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... inclinations, of our habits, it would not be possible to set one's hopes upon anything depending upon the resolve of others, since it would not be possible to fix something indefinite, or to conjecture into what roadstead the uncertain weather of an extravagant indifference will drive the ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... told Madame Campan that Napoleon visited it during the Hundred Days, and that the pupils were so delighted to see him that they crowded round him, endeavouring to touch his clothes, and evincing the most extravagant joy. The matron endeavoured to silence them; but Napoleon said, 'Let them alone; let them alone. This may weaken the head, but it ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... been a highly successful one. Enoch was bringing back four bateaux well packed under thin oilskin covers with rare peltries, including some choice black-beaver skins and sea-otter furs from the remote West, which would fetch extravagant prices. On the best estimate of his outward cargo of tea, spirits, powder, traps, calico, duffle, and silver ear-bobs, breast-buckles, and crosses, he had multiplied ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... yet be done without the suffrage of the people. This case was wholly new, and contrary to all the forms—wanting every condition, and serving none of the ends which were required in regular adoptions—so that, on the first proposal, it seemed too extravagant to be treated seriously, and would soon have been hissed off with scorn, had it not been concerted and privately supported by persons of much more weight than Clodius. Caesar was at the bottom of it, ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... more extravagant acts of her reign are some which are still familiar to the people of to-day. Always, even while her husband was alive, she was present, behind a curtain, at councils and audiences; after his death she was accustomed to take her place openly among the ministers of state, wearing a false beard. ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles

... since I have had a new dress." Alice looked up with interest. "Now that I have you to help me to choose, I think I will be extravagant enough to renew my entire wardrobe. I wish you would take this opportunity to get some things for yourself. You will find that my dress-maker, Madame Smith, is to be depended on for work, though she is expensive ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... remedies of this character and since many of the most widely advertised preparations are extremely harmful, even poisonous, we have taken the liberty of pointing out a few "danger signals," in the guise of extravagant assertions and impossible claims, which are characteristic signs of the patent ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various

... forced and unnatural incidents, and the equally fashionable affectation of extravagant language. Her style and diction are remarkable for their purity and ease. In the conception and delineation of character she has shown herself possessed of the ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... of vacation began. She packed the gifts which she had bought for her father and Evelyn and Ida, and took them to the express office. The day after that she received the remembrances of which Ida spoke. They were very pretty. Aunt Maria thought them extravagant. Ida had sent her a tiny chatelaine watch, and her father a ring set with a little diamond. Maria knew perfectly well how her father's heart ached when he sent the ring. She never for one moment doubted ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... for Gus said I must go to the best place, to be sure, and have none of our cheap and common East End stuff. I might have had one for sixteen and six in Cheapside, every whit as good; but when a young lad becomes vain, and wants to be fashionable, you see he can't help being extravagant. ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray

... genuine. These children of the Sun are so impulsive! We, of course, feel a little pity for the person who thus transcends our standard of good taste and violates our conventional canon,—but they are always sincere. The cold New Englander saw nothing wrong in one or two direct and extravagant compliments, that would have insured his visitor's early dismissal if tendered in the clipped metallic phrases of the ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... and that if a man wished to describe the habits of South Sea Islanders, it is useless to go to Greenland; we might also confess a partiality for pate, and a tenderness for truffes, and acknowledge that, considering our single absence would not put down extravagant, pompous parties, we were not strong enough to let the morsels drop into unappreciating mouths; or we might say, that if a man invited us to see his new house, it would not be ungracious nor insulting to his hospitality, ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis

... and many people of other nationalities—had reason to bless his acquaintance! How kind, how warm-hearted, how foolishly extravagant on others was Landi! His brilliant cleverness, which made him received almost as an Englishman among English people, was not, however, the cleverness of the arriviste. Although he had succeeded, and success was his object, no one could be less self-interested, less pushing, less scheming. ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson

... their junction would, of course, have militated against every rule of common prudence. To the influence of this lady, particularly, we are indebted for one or two of Hamilton's agreeable novels: she had taste enough to laugh at the extravagant stories then so much in fashion, "plus ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... pursuits of laborious industry. For such men, the vague and the uncertain possess irresistible attractions. For them, emigration was like the hazard of the gaming-table; ruin was a possible consequence, but fortune might also crown the most extravagant hopes. The merchant regarded with favor a scheme which would furnish employment for his ships by the transportation of men and stores. Besides, the fisheries had always been productive; they might be largely extended, and a trade in furs and other products of the ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... not improbable that he could have gained the farther side of this obstacle by daylight. But is it not also probable that his corps would have been in questionable condition for either a march or a fight? It would be extravagant to expect that the organization of the corps could be preserved in any kind of form, however slight the opposition. And, as daylight came on, the troops would have scarcely been in condition to offer brilliant ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... is proposed for adoption must be neither Utopian nor extravagant, but accordant throughout ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... hand, we are told that "gastronomically and chemically considered the flesh of the mushroom has been proven to be almost identical with meat, and possesses the same nourishing properties." We frequently hear them referred to as "vegetable beefsteak," "manna of the poor," and other equally extravagant and misleading terms. On the other hand, we see vast quantities of the most delicious food rotting in the fields and woods because they are regarded by the vast majority of the people as "toadstools" and as such particularly ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

... I went to the fair. It made my heart ache to do it—for I'd already been pretty extravagant, one way and another—but I put a ten-dollar bill in my wallet, resolved to spend every cent of it rather than ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... woman was Jewish too. On the whole he thought not. She was half crying, half laughing, her hands now clasping her husband's arm, now travelling, with a gesture of tenderness, up to his fleshy face, while he seemed to tolerate rather than respond to her endearments and extravagant terms of affection. "Adieu, mon petit homme adore!" she finally exclaimed, just as the tickets were being examined, and to Coxeter's surprise the adored one answered in a very English voice, albeit the utterance was slightly thick, "There, there! That'ull do, my dear girl. ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... made loans. Instead of carrying on wars in their own name, they contrived an authority, at once irresistible and irresponsible, in whose name they might ravage at pleasure; and being thus freed from all restraint, they indulged themselves in the most extravagant speculations of plunder. The cabal of creditors who have been the object of the late bountiful grant from His Majesty's ministers, in order to possess themselves, under the name of creditors and assignees, of every country in India as ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... subjunctive and the indicative moods."—Ib., p. 208. "The very general approbation, which this performance of Walker has received from the public."—Ib., p. 241. "Lest she carry her improvements this way too far."—CAMPBELL: ib., p. 371. "Charles was extravagant, and by this means became poor and despicable."—Murray's Key, 8vo, p. 189. "We should entertain no prejudices against simple and rustic persons."—Ib., p. 205. "These are indeed the foundations of all solid merit."—Blair's Rhet., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... Samuel did not see his divinity again. He lived upon the memory of their brief interview, and while he trimmed the hedges he was dreaming the most extravagant dreams of rescues and perilous escapes. For the first time he began to find that his work was tedious; it offered so few possibilities of romance! If only he had been her chauffeur, now! Or the guide who escorted her in her tramps about the wilderness! Or the man who ran the wonderful motor- ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair

... profound as many of them are, must not of course be referred to the years in which they were given to the world. They belong unquestionably to the order of marginalia, the scattered notes of which De Quincey speaks with not extravagant admiration, and which, under the busy pencil of a commentator always indefatigable in the strenua inertia of reading, had no doubt accumulated in considerable quantities over ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... rise, and go to my fire, for Patrick tells me I have a fire; yet it is not shaving-day, nor is the weather cold; this is too extravagant. What is become of Dilly? I suppose you have him with you. Stella is just now showing a white leg, and putting it into the slipper. Present my service to her, and tell her I am engaged to the Dean, and desire ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... were paid a trifle, and promised the remainder when they came back from their cruise; and although, as the case stood then, it might appear that two of the parties were ill-used, yet in the long run they were more than indemnified, for their charges were so extravagant, that if one-third of their bills were paid, there would still remain a profit. About five o'clock the orders were given for the ship to be cleared. All disputed points were settled by the sergeant of marines with a party, who divided their antagonists from the Jews; and every description ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... child, listen to me. Girls are apt to imagine noble and enchanting and totally imaginary figures in their own minds; they have fanciful extravagant ideas about men, and sentiment, and life; and then they innocently endow somebody or other with all the perfections of their day-dreams, and put their trust in him. They fall in love with this imaginary ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... to say extravagant, was the great cathedral, which was laid out on strange 'lines,' having a huge circular chapel or pavilion of immense height in front, whose round roof was capped by a vast bulbous spire, in shape something after the pattern of a gigantic mangel-wurzel! ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald

... some show of surprise, that he had not, adding that that wood was rendered so valuable to the turner by its hardness that few people would be extravagant enough to use it for fuel. I assented, and felt the more certain that the Jesuit's remark contained a hidden meaning. The only other clue I had consisted in the apparent mistake the father had made as to the king's residence, and this might have ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various

... 21st of February 1513. "A prince," says Guicciardini, "of inestimable courage and tenacity, but headlong, and so extravagant in the schemes he formed, that his own prudence and moderation had less to do with shielding him from ruin than the discord of sovereigns and the circumstances of the times in Europe: worthy, in all truth, of the highest glory had he been a secular ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... much-abused, lock-broken, unhinged portmanteau unpacked and laid ignobly to rest under the household eaves! Stay a moment,—let us pitch our inky passport into the fire. How it writhes and grows black in the face! And now it will trouble its owner no more forever. It was a foolish, extravagant companion, and we are glad to be rid of it. One little blazing fragment lifts itself out of the flame, and we can trace on the smouldering relic the stamp of Austria. Go back again into the grate, and perish with the rest, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... shrieking ghostly voices from the sky overhead had melted into the fog. No longer did the howling devils of mid channel disturb him. No longer did he fear the raging golf. With his mascot goat at his side, no evil luck could touch him. Courage returned, and with it extravagant language. "Lily, no doggone ghos' better git uppity wid me. I'd bus' a ol' ghos' in de haid ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley

... luminary among the most popular deities of ancient nations. Why search through the East to account for its worship in Greece? More easy to suppose that the inhabitants of a land, whom the sun so especially favoured— saw and blessed it, for it was good, than, amid innumerable contradictions and extravagant assumptions, to decide upon that remoter shore, whence was transplanted a deity, whose effects were so benignant, whose worship was so natural, to the Greeks. And in the more plain belief we are also borne out by the more sound inductions of learning. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... independent musical value. In the last movement of his Eighth Symphony and the scherzo of his Ninth, he tunes them in octaves, his purpose in the latter case being to give the opening figure, an octave leap, of the scherzo melody to the drums solo. The most extravagant use ever made of the drums, however, was by Berlioz in his "Messe des Morts," where he called in eight pairs of drums and ten players to help him to paint his tonal picture of the terrors of the last judgment. The post of drummer is one of the most difficult to fill in a symphonic orchestra. He ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... outside a narrow circle of devoted admirers; while for all his pride he could match Hatton himself in preposterous adulation of the Queen. He could be as chivalrous as Sidney, and as merciless as an Inquisitor: he could be gorgeously extravagant, or the veriest Spartan, as circumstances demanded. He was in brief the epitome of Elizabeth's England: a figure assuredly very far from godlike ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... at first received to a Comparison of my Estate with that of a former Lover, and that I am now in like manner turned off, to give Way to an humble Servant still richer than I am. What makes this Treatment the more extravagant is, that the young Lady is in the Management of this way of Fraud, and obeys her Fathers Orders on these Occasions without any Manner of Reluctance, and does it with the same Air that one of your Men of the World would signifie the Necessity of Affairs for turning another out of Office. When I came ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... These have proceeded not from individuals merely, but from associations of ten or twelve, who, after working for some time, have not reaped the ordinary profits on their expenses; whereas, they were also entitled to expect high wages for their labour, in addition to extravagant profits on their outlay. Yet, suppose this to have been otherwise, what shadow of an argument can be drawn from the case of those privileged few, who entered upon a virgin harvest, applicable to the multitudes who will succeed to an inheritance of ordinary labour, tried in all quarters of the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... "A wickedly extravagant cable," she said, frowning at it. "He could have expressed himself perfectly well at a quarter ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse

... of the Constitution, the merely literal possibilities of which have been so little developed as the full faith and credit clause. Congress has the power under the clause to decree the effect that the statutes of one State shall have in other States. This being so, it does not seem extravagant to argue that Congress may under the clause describe a certain type of divorce and say that it shall be granted recognition throughout the Union, and that no other kind shall. Or to speak in more general terms, Congress has under ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... made no reply, whilst from the group of the young and idle sycophants who had hung on Dea Flavia's honeyed words just as they had done round her litter a while ago, came murmurs of extravagant adulation and well-chosen words in praise of her exquisite diction, her marvellous pity, her every talent and virtue ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... enough, not only to live within the compass of it, but carried home little presents for his father and mother, which he showed me at Turin. In short, I know there is no place so expensive, but a prudent single man may live in it on L100 per annum, and an extravagant one may run out ten thousand in the cheapest. Had you (said I to him) thought rightly, or would have regarded the advice I gave you in all my letters, while in the little town of Islestein, you would have laid up L150 per annum; ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... along the route, the most extravagant suggestions were offered. Even those who would not admit that the mysterious chauffeur must be Satan in person allowed that he might be some monster escaped from the fantastic visions of ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne

... Hall, was a slattern and a minx, Mrs. Score was a far superior shrew; and for the seven years of her apprenticeship the girl was completely at her mistress's mercy. Yet though wondrously stingy, jealous, and violent, while her maid was idle and extravagant, and her husband seemed to abet the girl, Mrs. Score put up with the wench's airs, idleness, and caprices, without ever wishing to dismiss her from the "Bugle." The fact is, that Miss Catherine was a great beauty, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... in Paris," said Gatien, "meet as many different women as there are days in the year. But at Sancerre, where there are not half a dozen, and where, of those six, five set up for the most extravagant virtue, when the handsomest of them all keeps you at an infinite distance by looks as scornful as though she were of the blood royal, a young man of two-and-twenty may surely be allowed to make a guess at her secrets, since she must then treat him ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... reassuring about the book. It reconciles one to life even at the moment it is piling up life's extravagant miseries. Its buoyant and resilient energy, full of the unconquerable irreverence and glorious shamelessness of youth, takes life fairly by the throat and mocks it and defies it to its face. It indicates courageous gaiety as the only victory, and ironical ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... faults, my dear Madam," said our Uncle Peter, "they are essentially feminine and therefore enchanting! It is only when ladies ape the faults of men that men resent the same!—Your extravagant indulgency—" he bowed towards the toys—"your absolute innocence of all business guile—" he bowed towards Tiger Lily—"nerves strung so exquisitely ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... with the picture—he would probably have smiled at the notion—but he had a curious feeling that he would meet the girl some day, and that it would then be a privilege only to speak to her. This was, after all, not so extravagant a fancy as it might appear, for romance, the mother of chivalry and many graces, still finds shelter in the hearts of such men as him from the wide spaces of the newer lands. Shrewd as they are, and practical, they see visions now and then, and, what is ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... the soil had been washed from their hands and faces, and their cotton shirts were clean, though patched and worn. The negresses, also, appeared, with their kinky hair done up in multitudes of "horns," and tied with bits of the most extravagant-colored ribbon that their wearers possessed. Every one was attired in his best, as though on a holiday occasion, which, in ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey

... means of which he was enabled to maintain a secret correspondence with the imprisoned felons: by others, that an under-ground passage led to extensive vaults, where such malefactors as he chose to screen from justice might lie concealed till the danger was blown over. Nothing, in short, was too extravagant to be related of it; and Jonathan, who delighted in investing himself and his residence with mystery, encouraged, and perhaps originated, these marvellous tales. However this may be, such was the ill report of the place that few passed along the Old Bailey without bestowing a glance of ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... disagreeable odor and effect upon the throat and nostrils while handling it in a dry state; but because they could not be persuaded that such a small measure of stuff—200 lbs. measures about three bushels—could possibly produce any effect upon the crop. Their astonishment and consequent extravagant laudation of the effect produced, has often afforded us hours of amusement while listening to their recital of "massa's big crop," of perhaps ten bushels to the acre, which was at least double that of any one ever seen upon the same field, "fore he put dem little ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson

... should consider one's own faults before admonishing a brother concerning his defects. But the perhaps subtle intimation that the desire to commit adultery is as reprehensible as the act, and the rather extravagant statement that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, these, originally, were perhaps uniquely Talmudic. Currently cited with multiple others they were all so ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus

... crimes, committed by reckless and remorseless men for the benefit of others, who, though they would be deterred by their scruples of conscience or their moral sensibilities from perpetrating such deeds themselves, are ready to repay, with the most extravagant honors and rewards, those who are ferocious and unscrupulous enough to perpetrate them in their stead. Were it not for some very few and rare exceptions to the general rule, which have from time to time appeared, the history of mankind would show that, to be a ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... erection of such edifices cost much in suffering to the artificers employed on them, but Sennacherib brought his great enterprise to a prompt completion without extravagant outlay or unnecessary hardship inflicted on his workmen. He proceeded to annex the neighbouring quarters of the city, relegating the inhabitants to the suburbs while he laid out a great park on the land thus cleared; this park was well planted ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... had nothing in the world but his pay, and he felt that this was rather a "mean" income to offer Miss Gressie. Therefore he did n't put it forward; what he offered, instead, was the expression—crude often, and almost boyishly extravagant—of a delighted admiration of her beauty, the tenderest tones of his voice, the softest assurances of his eye and the most insinuating pressure of her hand at those moments when she consented to place it in his arm. ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James

... further inquiry. He was a persistent, and sometimes troublesome practical joker; but he usually wanted Will to know of his pranks beforehand, that Will's steady good sense might keep him from anything too extravagant in ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts

... end of the year to the other. She is always seeing apparitions and hearing death-watches; and was the other day almost frighted out of her wits by the great house-dog that howled in the stable, at a time when she lay ill of the toothache. Such an extravagant cast of mind engages multitudes of people not only in impertinent terrors, but in supernumerary duties of life, and arises from that fear and ignorance which are natural to the soul of man. The horror ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... satisfied; I wanted only a little walled space in which I could seclude myself, free from external annoyance. Certain comforts of civilized life I ceased even to regret; a stair-carpet I regarded as rather extravagant, and a carpet on the floor of my room was luxury undreamt of. My sleep was sound; I have passed nights of dreamless repose on beds which it would now make my bones ache only to look at. A door that locked, a ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... prodigious number of magnificent edifices, both public and private! If you view the pyramids, you will be seized with astonishment: you will turn stiff and immoveable at the sight of these masses of stone of an extravagant thickness, which rise to the skies: and you will be obliged to confess, that the Pharaohs, who employed such riches, and so many men in building them, must have surpassed all the monarchs that have appeared since, not only in Egypt, but all the world over, in magnificence ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... fortunate. However," she continued, lightly, as if pleased with the absurdity of the thought, "my fondness for you will probably never demand any very extravagant expression." ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... every thing to his influence. It contemplates his dominion as infinite, and his will as the law of nature and of nations. It fully believes, that naturally and spiritually "in him we live, and move, and have our being." Irreligion—and we may comprehend in the term, not only extravagant immorality or gross impiety, but a system which is found to exist under the cloak of religion, and the pretence of doing God service—irreligion of every class and in every form is perpetually limiting the empire of the Deity, prescribing bounds to his ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... kindly to begin with, and gratified her by the handsome robes which he gave her in order that she might appear attired in German fashion at her coronation. Before long, however, he began to find fault with her extravagant habits, and complained that she had spent 2000 florins, presented to her by the city of Cologne, in one single day. Brasca himself felt obliged to remonstrate with her on her foolish tricks, especially for eating her meals on the floor instead of ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... in which some especial ones are noticeable in certain men, but we declare that the bad man and the fool possess all vices; we do not even acquit them of fear when they are rash, or of avarice when they are extravagant. Just as a man has all his senses, yet all men have not on that account as keen a sight as Lynceus, so a man that is a fool has not all vices in so active and vigorous a form as some persons have spine of them, yet he has ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca

... Yet, when I read it, I could not but feel a pang to which heretofore I have been a stranger. Clarence, you know I love you, and should not make the sacrifice you demand a test of my regard. True, I cannot say (and most heartily I regret it) that there exists between us the same extravagant fondness we cherished as children—but that is no fault of mine. Did you not return to me, each year, colder and colder—more distant and unbrotherly—until you drove back to their source the gushing streams of a sister's ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... may render as great a service to the extravagant plutocracy of this country as your democracy has rendered to our democracy. To make life better, that's the work of all intelligent people. That's what our democracy is after, and, because your democracy is after the ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... myself to die. The sound of my voice seemed to arouse all the latent fury of the animal. He precipitated himself at full length upon my body; but what was my astonishment, when, with a long and low whine, he commenced licking my face and hands with the greatest eagerness, and with the most extravagant demonstration of affection and joy! I was bewildered, utterly lost in amazement—but I could not forget the peculiar whine of my Newfoundland dog Tiger, and the odd manner of his caresses I well knew. It was he. I experienced a sudden rush of blood to my temples—a giddy and overpowering ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... that one thing I am a little concern'd for you, Tories, that your Absoloms and Achitophels, and the rest of your Grinning Satyres against the Whiggs, have this one unpardonable Fault, That the Lash is more against a David, than an Achitophel; whilst the running down of the PLOT at so extravagant a rate, savours of very little less (pardon the Expression) than ridiculing of Majesty it self, and turning all those several Royal Speeches to the Parliament on that Subject, onely into those double-tongu'd Oracles that sounded one ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.

... war but $1,600,000,—hardly a hundredth part of the necessary means. Failing to raise money directly, recourse was bad to the so-called loan-office certificates. These were issued to creditors of the government, and bore interest. The greater part of the military supplies were paid for in this extravagant and demoralizing fashion, and in 1789 they had to be settled, with accumulated interest amounting to nearly fifty per cent. Better success was had in Europe. No private banker would lend money to a set of rebels not recognized by any government as ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart

... of wide dominion sometimes led the otherwise sagacious Bello into the most extravagant actions. If the chance accumulation of soil and drift-wood about any detached shelf of coral in the lagoon held forth the remotest possibility of the eventual existence of an islet there, with all haste he dispatched canoes to the spot, to take ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... you expect me to indulge an extravagant wife, who seeks to become a social queen, and still save anything out ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon



Words linked to "Extravagant" :   spendthrift, unrestrained, excessive, overweening



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