"Florid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the progression of influences was, strange to say, a dream. Our residence was then on Grosvenor street,—a Florid Gothic one after the model of Desdemona's House in Venice. My own little room was fitted up ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... Marston in with a gracious smile. It is in the south where the polite part is played by the negro. Deacon Rosebrook and Elder Pemberton Praiseworthy, a man of the world, follow Marston into the room. Marston is rather tall of figure, robust, and frank of countenance. A florid face, and an extremely large nose bordering on the red, at times give him an aldermanic air. He rubs his fingers through the short, sandy-coloured hair that bristles over a low forehead (Tom, the barber, has just fritted it) smiles, and introduces us ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... has some grand strains in it, but it is a tune of florid and difficult vocalization, and is now heard only ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... did not love his country home and parish or his people. We are told that the gentry round about loved him "for his florid and witty discourses." But his people do not seem to have loved these same discourses, for we are also told that one day in anger he threw his sermon from the pulpit at them because they did not listen attentively. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... effect. The same might be said of his clothes, which though of ordinary regulation colour and cut—plus neat black tie and stiff-fronted white shirt, collar, and wristbands—possessed style, and that farthest from the cheap or flashy. Only the gold bangle challenged Damaris' taste as touching on florid; but its existence she condoned in face of its wearer's hazardous and inherently romantic calling. For the sailor may, surely, be here and there permitted a turn and a flourish, justly denied to the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... reasonable. Just as the ordinary color-blind person is congenitally insensitive to those red-green rays which are precisely the most impressive to the normal eye, and gives an extended value to the other colors,—finding that blood is the same color as grass, and a florid complexion blue as the sky,—so the invert fails to see emotional values patent to normal persons, transferring those values to emotional associations which, for the rest of the world, are utterly distinct. Or we may compare inversion to such ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... a large, smooth, florid face eyed her in amused astonishment. "Where'd you jump from?" ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... library copies of Keats and buying an edition of my own. And this, too, may have been not unconnected with the gracious influence of the other sex as exhibited in a neighbouring athenaeum; and was accompanied by a gruesome spate of florid lyrics: some (happily) secret, and some exposed with needless hardihood in a college magazine. The world, which has looked leniently upon many poetical minorities, regards such frenzies with tolerant charity and forgetfulness. But the wretch concerned may ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... Duc de Mersch glowed with light and talked voluminously, as if he had for years and years been starved of human society. He glowed all over, it seemed to me. He had a glorious beard, that let one see very little of his florid face and took the edge away from an almost non-existent forehead and depressingly wrinkled eyelids. He spoke excellent English, rather slowly, as if he were forever replying to toasts to his health. It struck me that he seemed to treat ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... the selfish interests of those concerned in the business of transportation or in the sale of land. It seems to have been mainly the greed of shipping merchants, at first, that spread abroad in the German states florid announcements of the charms and riches of America, decoying multitudes of ignorant persons to risk everything on these representations, and to mortgage themselves into a term of slavery until they should have paid the cost of their passage by their labor. ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... liked, with the result that he had been defeated for nearly every office within the gift of a proud people. He was a fair jury lawyer, and an orator of considerable repute among those susceptible to the blandishments of the florid school. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... is very graceful; the body of the church, in the latest and most debased style of Gothic architecture, stands signally contrasted with St. Stephen,—St. Stephen the simple vigor of the prime, St. Pierre the florid weakness of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... one, I believe, a little florid, stout German. I think he is a paranoiac who believes there has fallen on himself a divine mission to end all warfare. Quite likely he is one of those who have fled to America to avoid military service. Perhaps, why certainly, ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... British Governor-General." Judging from a luscious account that Lola gives of a big durbar, to which all the officers and their wives were bidden, these strictures were not unjustifiable. Thus, after Lord Auckland ("in sky blue inexpressibles") and his host had delivered patriotic speeches (with florid allusions to the "British Raj," the "Sahib Log," and the "Great White Queen," and all the rest of it) gifts were distributed among the assembled company. Some of these were of an embarrassing description, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... vanished. The newcomer came forward with the quiet assurance of the born aristocrat. He was a slender, well-knit man, dressed fastidiously, with clear-cut, classical features; cool, keen eyes, and a gentle, you-be-damned manner to his inferiors. Beside him Ridgway bulked too large, too florid. His ease seemed a little obvious, his prosperity overemphasized. Even his voice, strong and reliant, lacked the tone of gentle blood that Hobart had ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... architecture. I do anyhow. And those columns with Corinthian capitals have got to be a sort of symbol for me for everything in Europe that I don't want and have no sort of use for. It isn't a bad sort of capital in its way, florid and pretty, but not a patch on the Doric;—and that a whole continent should come up to it and stick at it and never ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... in the fourteenth century, are in alliterative verse; under Elizabeth alliteration became one of the peculiarities of the florid prose called Euphuism. Nearer to our own time, Byron makes ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... to be resolved to guide themselves altogether by his conduct. The Red Rapparee was a huge man of about forty, and the epithet of "Red" had been given to him in consequence of the color of his hair. In expression his countenance was by no means unhandsome, being florid and symmetrical, but hard, and with scarcely any trace of feeling. His brows were far asunder, arguing ingenuity and invention, but his eyes, which were small and treacherous, glared—whenever he became excited—with the ferocity of an enraged tiger. ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... of weakness in his hero, Mr. Max set up a renewed babble of fear at his side. The train was in the Reuton suburbs now. At a neat little station it slowed down to a stop, and a florid policeman entered ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... chintz window-curtains. The service-room was already crammed with chairs and tables till it resembled a furniture-store. A maid was established, a Cape Verde Portygee girl from Mashpee. All day long Father had been copying the menu upon the florid cards which he had bought from a bankrupt Jersey City printer—thick gilt-edged cards embossed with forget-me-nots in colors which ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... The world would have felt that some great law of mechanics had been wilfully violated. But here is a whole commercial society suddenly wrecked, in a moment of general peace, after ten years of high, but not very florid or very unwholesome prosperity, on the heel of an abundant recompense to the efforts of labor,—when there has occurred no public calamity, no war, no famine, no fire, no domestic insurrection, scarcely one startling event, and when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Our rooms being unprepared, we sat downstairs, though the inn was full in anticipation of some horse races tomorrow, and some of the gentlemen decidedly in liquor. My attention was early engaged by a lady of prettyish appearance at a table near by, whose bonnet and spencer bespoke a florid taste hardly in keeping with her uncurled ringlets and—dare I add it—unwashed hands. She was accompanied by a good-looking man in regimentals, of handsome but, as I thought, somewhat dissolute presence (so different from the solid worth of my Admiral!), who was evidently ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... instance among others of the liberality prevailing here, I mention that one of the latest donations of M. Dollfus is the piece of ground, close to the cit ouvrire, on which now stands the new, florid Catholic church. ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... advancing party was a tall, martial looking man, wearing the dress and insignia of a general officer. His rather florid countenance was eminently fine, if not handsome, offering, in its more Roman than Grecian contour, a model of quiet, manly beauty; while the eye, beaming with intelligence and candour, gave, in the occasional ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... be a florid, strongly-built man, in the most robust health, save that probably a love of too many of the good things of this life had made ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... long and 81 feet high, open from one end to the other, and forms a very striking and imposing effect. 'The west end,' to quote a few words from the best technical authority, 'consists of florid Norman arches and piers, whose natural heaviness is relieved by the beautifully diapered patterns wrought upon the walls, probably built by Henry I., who destroyed the previously existing church by fire. Above ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... was a man of fifty, stout and florid—the latter peculiarity especially marked in his nose; he looked like a substantial merchant, and spoke with rather pompous geniality. Thrusting his arm through the clerk's, he walked with him over Blackfriars Bridge, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... about a big graystone farmhouse. They were cooking supper over big trench fires and, as usual, they were singing. The light shone up into the faces of the cooks, bringing out in ruddy relief their florid skins and yellow beards. A yearling bull calf was tied to a supply-wagon wheel, bellowing his indignation. I imagine he ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... is known by a stout, well-defined form, a full face, florid complexion, moderate plumpness, firm flesh, chestnut or sandy hair, and blue eyes. This is the tough, hardy, working temperament, excessively fond of exercise and activity, and a great aversion to muscular ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... the parties; so were the Georges, Father and Grandfather of Fred: little Fred himself was highly charmed, when told of it; even little Wilhelmina, with her dolls, looked pleasantly demure on the occasion. So it remained settled in fact, though not in form; and little Fred (a florid milk-faced foolish kind of Boy, I guess) made presents to his little Prussian Cousin, wrote bits of love-letters to her; and all along afterwards fancied himself, and at length ardently enough became, her little lover and intended,—always rather a little fellow:—to ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... "Invitation,"—one of those profusely florid in runs, and trills, and quavers, which delighted the ears of a former generation; and Miss Ruey, innocently unconscious of the effect of old age on her voice, ran them up and down, and out and in, in a way that would have made a laugh, had there been anybody there ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... deeply in love with this handsome, bold woman of the people. Some lovers of flowers prefer full blown-roses, ripe and red, to the most exquisite buds. Gabriel's tastes were the same, and he admired the florid beauty of Bell with all the ardour of his young and impetuous heart. He was blind to her liking for incongruous colours in dress: he was deaf to her bold expressions and defects in grammar. What lured him was her ripe, rich, exuberant ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... extreme limits of human voice so far known were found in the voices of Ludwig Fischer, a bass singer, and of Lucrezia Agujari (La Bastardella), a florid soprano. Fischer created the role of Osmin in Mozart's "Entfuehring aus dem Serail." His voice went down to contra F [Music: F1] an entire octave lower than the ordinary bass singer. La Bastardella sang as high as [Music: C7] or an octave higher than what ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... in her massive, florid clothes, that always seemed part of her massive, florid furniture, and to have the same expression of violent, almost ominous conventionality, without the slightest touch of austerity to tone it down. Her throat and figure seemed ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... were sheltered so deeply beneath florid rolls of flesh that all one saw of them was an inscrutable gleam of blue; but, small though they were, they were not shifty, for they met Mellin's with a squareness that was almost brutal. He offered a fat paw, ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... hours ago," responded Miss Saidie, from behind the florid silver service. "I believe he has gone rabbit hunting ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... her bulk down with a sigh of enforced content. Her florid face was beaded with perspiration as a result ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... Corporal Van Spitter was without a shadow of feeling—on the contrary, he had pleasure in administering punishment; and if Vanslyperken had told him to blow any man's brains out belonging to the vessel, Van Spitter would have immediately obeyed the order without the change of a muscle in his fat, florid countenance. The corporal was an enormous man, tall, and so corpulent, that he weighed nearly twenty stone. Jansen was the only one who could rival him; he was quite as tall as the corporal, and as powerful, but he had not the extra weight ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... president his whole character seemed to be changed. Instead of the relentless partisan of the past, he became the apostle of benevolence and charity. His inaugural address, in that florid rhetoric of which he was master, enunciated principles of government to which no friend of human liberty could object. The spirit of conciliation breathed in every sentence. "Every difference of opinion," he said, "is not a difference of principle. We have called ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... than Dave's, with walls bare of any adornment, save dirty garments that hung from nails driven in the logs. On the rude bed lay an old man; she could see only part of his face; a grey moustache drooping over an open mouth, and a florid cheek turned to the glow of the setting sun. On a chair beside the bed sat a bottle, and the room reeked with the smell of breath charged with alcohol. She gently closed the door, and busied herself through the long evening ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... girl not hitherto visible. She was just eighteen years of age, and resembled neither of the elder ladies, being handsomer than either of them had ever been, yet not sufficiently so to be termed beautiful. A clear complexion, rosy but not florid, golden-brown hair and plenty of it, dark grey eyes shaded by dark lashes, and a pleasing, good-humoured, not self-conscious expression—this was Lettice, who said in a clear musical voice, "Yes, Aunt," and ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... hands, so busily engaged in manipulating the materials from which she was to re-trim her hat. Then he looked at Pa Blanchard, whom he touched lightly and familiarly upon the shoulder. Alf was a rather squarely built young man of thirty, well under six feet, but not ungainly. He had a florid, reddish complexion, and his hair was of a common but unnamed colour, between brown and grey, curly and crisp. He was clean-shaven. Alf was obviously one who worked with his hands: in the little kitchen he appeared to stand upon the ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... and of a surprising head of florid hair, had barely time to draw back into the shadow of the corridor and notice an approaching face like that of one walking in his sleep, when the clove-eater swung disjointedly by him, with jingling lantern, and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... astonishment he was not alone. A stout florid man, wearing a white waistcoat which bellied out like the sail of a racing yacht, a frock coat and general resplendency of garb, stood planted in the middle of the room, while Paragot still in nightshirt but trousered, sat swinging ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... sat down; Monsieur Derozerays got up, beginning another speech. His was not perhaps so florid as that of the councillor, but it recommended itself by a more direct style, that is to say, by more special knowledge and more elevated considerations. Thus the praise of the Government took up less space in it; religion and agriculture ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... the shop, while Madame Raquin ran off to her stewpots. Therese, who had not yet pronounced a word, looked at the new arrival. She had never seen such a man before. Laurent, who was tall and robust, with a florid complexion, astonished her. It was with a feeling akin to admiration, that she contemplated his low forehead planted with coarse black hair, his full cheeks, his red lips, his regular features of sanguineous beauty. For an instant ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... tone, and endeavoured to raise up the forlorn creature. She effected this with difficulty, and as she placed her against the tree in a sitting posture, she observed with surprise, that her complexion, usually florid, was now deadly pale, and that her face was bathed in tears. Notwithstanding her own extreme danger, Jeanie was affected by the situation of her companion; and the rather, that, through the whole train of her wavering and inconsistent state of mind and line of conduct, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... him our cards, and announced us in florid language, the genial old fellow touched his forehead again, and in his best Bugis Malay begged the great Rajah and Ranee to enter ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... elegant and ornamented character, but possessing a happy simplicity and regularity of composition which renders it more easy of application than any other. In like manner in the later, which has been called the florid style of Gothic architecture, there are buildings astonishingly rich and elaborate; but we find this excess of ornament supported and rendered practicable by a principle of simplicity in design and construction. In the earlier and middle styles of Gothic there are various difficulties ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Furley, broad-shouldered, florid, with tanned skin and grizzled hair, was still wearing the high sea boots and jersey of the duck shooter. His companion, on the other hand, a tall, slim man, with high forehead, clear eyes, stubborn jaw, ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... therefore, no quotations from post-Augustan writers). His style shows the defects of an age in which men had ceased to feel the full meaning of the words they used, and strove to hide the triviality of a subject under obscure phrases and florid expression. Yet, on the whole, he is a very interesting writer, and the last that can in any ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... the train again and moving on. The greyness of dawn began. There were several people in the compartment, large florid Belgian business-men with long brown beards, talking incessantly in an ugly French she ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... covered could not now be traced or credited without reference to the authority of Gentile Bellini. The greater part of the marble mouldings have been touched with it in lines and points, the minarets of St. Mark's, and all the florid carving of the arches entirely sheeted. The Casa d'Oro retained it on its lions until the recent commencement ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... return from this other desperate digression: Alfred, the great and wise, deserves his Saxon cross; or let him lie enshrined in a grove of florid Gothic pinnacles, a fretted roof on clustered columns reverently keeping off the rain; or, best of all, let him stand majestic in his own-time costume, colossal bronze on a cube of granite, and so put to shame the elegancies of a Windsor uniform, and the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... she found a rather florid man, about fifty years of age, dressed as a farmer would dress when out on a holiday. ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... portico stood Phormio the fishmonger, behind a table heaped with his scaly wares. He was a thick, florid man with blue eyes lit by a humourous twinkle. His arms were crusted with brine. To his waist he was naked. As the friends edged nearer he held up a turbot, calling for a bid. A clamour answered him. The ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... industry was great; and he had an acquired dexterity and skill in the forms of the court; and although he was a bon companion, and followed much the bottle, yet he made such dispatches as satisfied his clients, especially the clerks, who knew where to find him. His person was florid, and speech prompt and articulate. But his vices, in the way of women and the bottle, were so ungoverned, as brought him to a morsel.... When the Lord Keeper North had the Seal, who from an early ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... see the man cringe in abasement and contrition. But the heavy jaw thrust forth in truculent defiance; hate blazed forth from the deep-set eyes; the florid features were empurpled with rage. He made as if to reply, but turned away from the withering scorn ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... venture, and he knew it. There was natural curiosity about this untutored man from the West. An exaggerated report of his wit prepared the way for probable disappointment. The surprise which awaited his hearers was of a different kind; they were prepared for a florid Western eloquence offensive to ears which were used to a less spontaneous turgidity; they heard instead a speech with no ornament at all, whose only beauty was that it was true and that the speaker felt it. The ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... two winters was added the distress of losing a comrade to whom he was deeply attached; he perished in the spring of '42 under the hardships of the war. The Eloge in which Vauvenargues commemorates the virtues and the pitiful fate of his friend, is too deeply marked with the florid and declamatory style of youth to be pleasing to a more ripened taste.[5] He complained that nobody who had read it observed that it was touching, not remembering that even the most tender feeling fails to touch us, when it has found stilted and turgid expression. Delicacy ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... deserted stable; she passed on, between a stretch of thin woodland and a grove of giant pines; and there she came upon a cross-road. She looked to the right—it was empty. She looked to the left—and behold there was "Opportunity," large, florid, and agitated, coming directly toward her from one of the tile-roofed houses, and puffing audibly under the combined weight ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... abstractions as realities are just the very persons who turn solid and commonplace realities into shining and splendid abstractions. Young Heron regarded England not as an island with a bad climate, where some millions of florid men made money or worked for it, but as a sort of divine influence inspiring youth to noble deeds and patriotic devotion. He was of course the very man to get into a muddle when he had anything to do with the administration of a new settlement. ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... the speaker's appearance. He was a man of middle height, rather stout, with a florid complexion, ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the chairs, which he had drawn close to this apology for a fire. He was wrapped in a camlet cloak, of which the collar was turned up, his knees touched the bars, his hands were spread in the very smoke, and yet he shivered for cold. The second—a big, florid, fine animal of a man, whose every gesture labelled him the cock of the walk and the admiration of the ladies—had apparently despaired of the fire, and now strode up and down, sneezing hard, bitterly blowing his nose, and proffering ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... advance of the returning companies. The major is a man a trifle over forty, short, stout, with massive shoulders, chest, and thighs, a neck like a bull, a well-shaped head covered with straight, close-cropped, brown hair, innocent of kink or curl; a florid face, bronzed and tanned by years of life in sun and wind and storm; clean-shaven but for the drooping brown moustache that conceals the rugged lines of his mouth, and twinkling blue-gray eyes that ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... would know him anywhere from the description that Wunpost had given, and as he came towards the hole she took in every detail of this man who was predestined to be her enemy. He was big and fat, with a high George the Third nose and the florid smugness of a country squire, and as he returned Wunpost's greeting his pendulous lower lip was thrust up in arrogant scorn. He came on confidently, and behind him like a shadow there followed a mysterious second person. ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... disproportioned to the occasion, and words were laughably trivial and scanty to set forth the feeling even such as it was. Juvenal des Ursins chronicles calamity after calamity, with but one comment for them all: that "it was great pity." Perhaps, after too much of our florid literature, we find an adventitious charm in what is so different; and while the big drums are beaten every day by perspiring editors over the loss of a cock-boat or the rejection of a clause, and nothing is heard that is not proclaimed with sound of trumpet, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... works, and in them the order resembles the Ionic, but with the important exceptions that the capital of the column is quite different, that the proportions are altogether a little slenderer, and that the enrichments are somewhat more florid. ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... of Santa Cruz is one of the most precious specimens extant of those somewhat confused but beautiful results of the transition from florid Gothic to the Renaissance. The plateresque is young and modest, and seeks to please in this splendid monument by allying the innovating forms with the traditions of a school outgrown. There is an exquisite and touching reminiscence of the Gothic in the superb ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... He came early in the evening, with his usual air of determination and a somewhat unusual spruceness. Mr. Peter Butts was a florid, blonde person, a little stout, a little pompous, sturdy and immovable in the attitude of a self-made man. He had been a poor boy when she was a rich girl; and it gratified him much to realize—and to call upon her to realize—that their positions ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... and partly burnt five centuries ago, spite of its fortifications, of which to-day a dilapidated gateway alone remains. The church is ancient and curious, and a few quaint old houses are here and there met with, notably one with a florid Gothic window enriched with a moulding of grapes and vine-leaves. The vineyards of Vertus were originally planted with vines from Burgundy, and in the 14th century yielded a red wine held in high ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... book after years of neglect, and the odour, which is not that of sanctity, is still perceptible—a potent reminder of the past. And Lady Betty Modish? She must be—well-nigh on to two hundred years old (a thousand florid pardons, sweet madame, for bringing in your age), but she is as blooming, saucy, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... on the stranger's equal progress. The flash of jet, and the voluble, substantial shoulders of the lady so profusely introducing him, were an assurance of how that pilgrimage would terminate, since it was Ella Buller who was parading him. She even wondered before which of the florid pictures at the far, other end of the room, as before a shrine, the ceremony ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... not eloquent; and in the very same page gave an instance to the contrary:—I repeat the observation, and a fact which contradicts it again.—He was not eloquent,—it was not easy to my uncle Toby to make long harangues,—and he hated florid ones; but there were occasions where the stream overflowed the man, and ran so counter to its usual course, that in some parts my uncle Toby, for a time, was at least equal to Tertullus—but in others, in my own opinion, infinitely ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... pamphlet, entitled, "The History of the Britons;" but these objections have, perhaps, been set at rest for many minds by Dr. Guest and Mr. Green. Nevertheless, what little Gildas has to tell us is of slight historical importance. His book is a disappointing Jeremiad, couched in the florid and inflated Latin rhetoric so common during the decadence of the Roman empire, intermingled with a strong flavour of hyperbolical Celtic imagination; and it teaches us practically nothing as to the ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... Nevertheless, this is but matter of taste. The Netherlanders were so eminently a law-abiding people, that, like the American patriots of the eighteenth century, they on most occasions preferred punctilious precision to florid declamation. They chose to conduct their revolt according to law. At the same time, while thus decently wrapping herself in conventional garments, the spirit of Liberty revealed none the less ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hours which should be spent with a spiritual adviser, in his useless attempts to take out a Policy in that office. The Boreal couldn't insure men who ought to be upon their dying beds instead of coughing around Insurance offices. Ha, ha, ha! Another gentleman, florid of countenance and absolutely without neck, was quickly checked in the act of giving his name at one of the desks; one clerk desiring another clerk to look, under the head of "A.," in his book, for "Apoplexy," and let this man see that we ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... I lived was an old and much respected clergyman who was called upon to preach a sermon on a day of some national significance. He made it the occasion for a florid panegyric upon American institutions, which, he declared, assured freedom to all men. Here he paused, "When I spoke of all men enjoying freedom under our flag," he resumed, "I did not, of course, include the Ethiopians whom Providence has brought to our shores for their own good ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... are certain cases in which the lower inch or two of the rectum are found red and congested, and in which every stool is followed by the loss of a certain quantity of florid arterial blood, and yet no distinct haemorrhoidal tumour is to be seen. In such cases the ligature is not applicable, and relief is obtained by the application of pure nitric acid, or other potential caustics to the bleeding surface, as recommended by Houston, Lee, Smith, Ashton, and others. ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... personal appearance you may find in the thoroughfare at, any hour of the day. There is nothing about him to attract attention. He is nearly forty-five years of age, and weighs, perhaps, two hundred pounds. His face is florid and his hair sandy. His eyes are small, piercing, and gray. His motions are slow, and none are made without a purpose. Intellectually he is above the average, and his perceptive faculties are well developed. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... Hormayr, concealing himself anxiously behind the pillar. A renewed shout of laughter greeted Hofer's words, and all eyes turned toward the side where they had been uttered. And there sat the good Andreas Hofer, in his handsome national costume, with his long black beard, and his florid, kind-hearted face. There he sat, quite regardless of the gaze which the audience fixed upon him, utterly unaware of the fact that he was the observed of all observers, and quite engrossed in looking at the stage, ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... Counter-Currents" was written and delivered as an Oration, a florid rhetorical composition, expressly intended to secure the attention of an audience not easy to hold as listeners. It succeeded in doing this, and also in being as curiously misunderstood and misrepresented as if it had been a political harangue. This ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... oratory when frequent resort is made to it. It seems to be too easy, and to contain too little of argument. It was this, probably, of which his contemporaries complained when they declared him to be florid, redundant, and Asiatic in his style.[199] This questioning runs through nearly the whole speech, but the reader cannot fail to acknowledge its efficacy in reference to the matter in hand. Catiline was sitting there himself in the Senate, and the questions were for the most part addressed to ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... the head of the staircase, a couple curiously unlike not only in appearance but in disposition and tastes. Lady Grenside was tall and fair, almost florid in complexion, remarkably well-preserved, with a splendid presence and figure. She had been one of the beauties of her day, and even now, in the sixth year of her widowhood, was accounted a remarkably handsome woman. ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... came a trampling of feet upon the stairs, another door was thrown open, and in walked Sir Harry Raikes himself, followed by D'Arcy and Hammersley, with three or four others whose faces were familiar. They were all in boisterous spirits, Sir Harry's florid face being flushed more than ordinary with drinking, and there was an ugly light in his prominent ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... of persons and events which are lit up by humorous intention in the speaker—we distinguish this charming play of intelligence which resembles musical improvisation on a given motive, where the farthest sweep of curve is looped into relevancy by an instinctive method, from the florid inaccuracy or helpless exaggeration which is really something commoner than the correct ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... ample time and verge enough to assume another and a foreign dress, the corpus however remaining untouched. Under the hands of a host of editors, scribes and copyists, who have no scruples anent changing words, names and dates, abridging descriptions and attaching their own decorations, the florid and rhetorical Persian would readily be converted into the straight-forward, business-like, matter of fact Arabic. And what easier than to islamise the old Zoroasterism, to transform Ahriman into Iblis the Shaytan, Jan bin Jan into Father Adam, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... unscrupulous, rapacious way, the way of the predatory creature with his mate. She had but a moment in which to consider whether this glimpse of the fireside man mitigated her repugnance, or gave it, rather, a more concrete and intimate form; for at sight of her he was immediately on his feet again, the florid and dominant Rosedale of Mattie ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... burly man. In bulk he was of much the same proportions as old John Allandale. But while John was big with the weight of muscle and frame, Lablache was flabby with fat. In face he was the antithesis of the other. Whilst "Poker" John was the picture of florid tanning—While his face, although perhaps a trifle weak in its lower formation, was bold, honest, and redounding with kindly nature, Lablache's was bilious-looking and heavy with obesity. Whatever character was there, it was lost in the heavy folds of flesh with which it was wreathed. ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... professed to teach: then he was always just, and although he was strict, and could be very severe on occasions, he was one of the kindest-hearted men I ever met. We all thought so; and boys are not bad judges of their elders. He was a tall, fine man, with a florid complexion. His eyes were large and clear, and full of intelligence and expression. And then his voice!—how rich and mellow it sounded when he exerted it. His smile, too, was particularly pleasing; and, old as he was, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... go further, the dusky porticos of Bayonne. It contains, moreover, a great wide place d'armes which looked for all the world like the piazza of some dead Italian town, empty, sunny, grass-grown, with a row of yellow houses overhanging it, an unfrequented cafe with a striped awning, a tall, cold, florid, uninteresting cathedral of the eighteenth century on one side, and on the other a shady walk which forms part of an old rampart. I followed this walk for some time, under the stunted trees, beside the ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... front facade resemble somewhat the same part of the edifice at Amiens, excepting that it is far more florid, and less strict and severe in its main divisions. At Amiens the details are kept in strictest subservience to the structural lines of the edifice. At Rheims it is the magnificent wealth of details that crowds upon the view, the walls and arches ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... women were walking, one elderly, florid and stout, with a yellow-brown Paisley shawl and a coarse serge dress, the other young and fair, with large grey eyes, and a face which was freckled like a plover's egg. Her neat white blouse with its trim black belt, and plain, close-cut skirt, ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... who was in constant communication with Franklin, brought in a conciliation bill. It was a strange composition, florid in terms, embracing a multiplicity of subjects, and depending for its operation on the good-will of the Americans. He proposed to assert the supremacy of parliament, specially in matters of trade, to confine taxation to the provincial assemblies, and to legalise ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... luxurious; it was silk, of a faint color between blue and gray, and the handkerchief, protruding from the pocket, was delicately fine. Extreme neatness was characteristic of Simeon, but he disliked anything florid in dress or appearance, anything opposed to the austere simplicity that marked his manner of living. She wondered whether such things ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... at once a courtship as ardent and eager as it was open and avowed. His people, florid and colorful in temperament, are natural wooers, free of the language of affection and adroit in its use. Grant was very much in love with the girl, and she meant even more to him than that, since in aspiring to her his ambition stepped hand in hand ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... as Mr. Crow?" inquired the foremost of the two strangers, halting abruptly. He was a tall, florid man of forty or thereabouts, with a deep and not unpleasant voice. His companion was also tall but very gaunt and sallow. He wore huge round spectacles, hooked over his ears. Both were well dressed, one in grey flannel, ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... part, gave myself to the study of the types about me, and I dwelt long and luxuriously upon the vision of a florid and massive matron in diaphanous evening dress, whom I imagined to be revisiting the glimpses of her girlhood in the ancient watering-place, and to be getting all the gaiety she could out of it. These are the figures one mostly sees at Saratoga; there is very little youth of the present ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... language was forcible, and sometimes warm and pathetic; he had many strokes of humour, which were always tempered with a becoming dignity; and, what is a difficult character to hit, he was at once very florid, and very concise. In a close contest, he never met with his equal; and there was scarcely any kind of causes, in which he had not signalized his abilities; so that he enrolled himself very early among the first Orators of the time. He ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... met the Bremers. Their cottage was a little way out in the country, and they had a few trees about it and a flower bed. But the house was not large, and it was well filled with a family of nine children. Johann, the father, was big and florid, with bristling hair. He was marked in the town because he called himself a "Socialist," but Samuel did not know that. His wife was a little mite of a woman, completely swamped by child-bearing. Most interesting to Samuel was Friedrich, who played the violin; a pale ascetic-looking ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... people had then, as now, the reputation of being great beef-eaters; nor should we blame them, as the florid complexion the Englishman generally wears is mainly owing to the free use of this non-febrile and healthy food, washed down with a few potations of ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... knowledge so ruthlessly thrust upon her. It was too horrible to contemplate. She shuddered from head to foot, and shivered as with ague. Out into the open she ran, among the dust-laden crotons and azaleas, and the florid shrubberies of the Indian garden, now bathed in soft moonlight. Scarcely heeding her footsteps, she stumbled to a bench beneath a laburnum. If it harboured reptiles, she was indifferent. Let her be bitten and die! She was ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... this period, but the example in which both masters can be most closely followed is the great picture in the Academy, the "Madonna enthroned," where she sits under a baldaquin surrounded by saints. Here the Gothic surroundings become very florid, and have a gingerbread-cake effect, which Italian taste would hardly have tolerated. Many features are characteristic of the German; the huge crown worn by the Mother, the floriated ornament of the ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... is situated, we were surprised at its extent, and the respectability of its architecture. We then made for the church—along the cloisters—and found it nearly deserted. A few straggling supplicants were however left behind—ardent in prayer, upon their knees: but the florid style of the architecture of the interior of this church immediately caught my attention and admiration. The sides are covered with large oil paintings, which look like copies of better performances; while, at each lower corner of these pictures, stands a large figure of a saint, boldly sculptured, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... a tall young man of consumptive features, accompanied by a stout, florid woman, older than himself; and upon this couple followed half-a-dozen miscellaneous callers, some of whom Alma knew. These old acquaintances met her with a curiosity they hardly troubled to disguise; she herself was reserved, and took no part in the general chatter. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... gradually recovering my health, which I lost between Calcutta and Singapore. I believe I do not look quite as blooming as usual; but it is of no use my claiming sympathy on this score, for, as the Bishop of Labuan appears to have said, I always have a more florid appearance than most people, and never therefore get credit for being ill, however ill I may feel. I found two mails from home.... The Government approves of my having sent my troops to India, and Clarendon's letter seems to imply that they are not quite insensible to the difficulties ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Dallow had replied, "No, I've not gone," but she had in no case added that she was glad, nor had she offered an explanation. She never offered explanations; she always assumed that no one could invent them so well as those who had the florid taste to desire them. ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... sorrow lie before our view, naturally give us a seriousness and attention, check that wantonness which is the growth of prosperity and ease, and head us to reflect upon the deficiencies of human life itself; that every man at his best estate is altogether vanity. This would correct the florid and gaudy prospects and expectations which we are too apt to indulge, teach us to lower our notions of happiness and enjoyment, bring them down to the reality of things, to what is attainable, to what the frailty of our condition will admit of, which, ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... it was exactly that, and decided it was not. It was not. He was thinking of her husband as he had known him—only by sight and by report. He remembered the florid gentleman perfectly; he had often seen him tooling his four; he had seen him at the traps in Monte Carlo, dividing with the best shot in Italy; he had seen him riding to hounds a few days before that fatal run of the Shadowbrook Hunt, where ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... He took not the slightest notice when I entered, and I had leisure enough to survey him: he was a huge athletic man, somewhat taller than myself, who measure six feet two without my shoes; his complexion was florid, his features fine and regular, his nose quite aquiline, and his teeth splendidly white: though scarcely fifty years of age, his hair was remarkably grey; he was dressed in a rich morning gown, with a gold chain round his neck, and ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... so I gathered after reading up the subject at the British Museum; yet I did warn "Balloonist," whoever he might be, to take all necessary precaution against accident. What more could I have done? Ten days afterwards a florid-faced lady called at the office, leading by the hand what, she explained, was her son, aged twelve. The boy's face was unimpressive to a degree positively remarkable. His mother pushed him forward and took off his hat, and then I perceived the reason for this. He had no eyebrows whatever, and ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... of that block rose a great public building of florid and hideous architecture, absurdly expensive for so small a town, and running fast to seed. On the corner ahead, at the crest of the slope, stood the handsomest and most prosperous-looking building they had yet seen. Its ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... porch is denuded of its decorative statues, and there is a rank Renaissance excrescence in the rear which is unseemly, but for all that, as a mediaeval religious monument of rank, it appeals to all quite as forcibly as the brilliantly florid cathedral at Beauvais, or the richly proud Amiens, its nearest neighbours ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... writer, Rector of Weston Favell, Northants, was the author of Meditations among the Tombs (1745-47), Theron and Aspasio, and other works, which had a great vogue in their day. They are characterised by over-wrought sentiment, and overloaded with florid ornament. H. was a devout and unselfish man, who by his labours broke ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... glad step, and choose at will Whate'er bright spoils the florid earth contains, Whate'er the waters, or the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... from without: within she becomes too sensuous and civic in her splendor to let me think much of souls. "Rest and be indolent" is the motto for the life she teaches. The architecture is the song of the lotos-eater built into stone—were I in a more florid mood I would have said "swan-song," for the whole stands finished with nothing more to be added: it has sung itself out: and if there is a moral to it all, no doubt it is in Ruskin, and I don't wont to read ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... our young friend looked as he stood there shaking hands with the elderly man, whose broad, florid face now actually shone with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... Dutch schools, he found something to appropriate and make his own. From Rembrandt he took suggestions of lighting, and such sombre color harmonies as are seen in the portrait of Mrs. Siddons. Something of bloom and splendor he caught from the florid Rubens; something of the decorative effectiveness of such pictures as Lady Cockburn may be traced to the influence of Titian and the Venetians. Yet to all that he borrowed, Reynolds added his own individual touch. As a critic has said, he was ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... Angel on a Bicycle. It does definitely and indisputably represent a nude youth sitting on a wheel; but there is enough complication in the wheel and sanctity (I suppose) in the youth to warrant this working description. It is a thing of florid Renascence outline, and belongs to the highly pagan period which introduced all sorts of objects into ornament: personally I can believe in the bicycle more than in the angel. Men, they say, are now imitating angels; in their flying-machines, that is: ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... courageous if not the ablest opponent of Conkling in the convention. He may not have been an organiser of the machine type, but he was a born ruler of men. Robust, alert, florid, with square forehead, heavy brows, and keen blue eyes, he looked determined and fearless. His courage, however, was not the rashness of an impetuous nature. It was rather the proud self-confidence of a rugged character which obstacles roused ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander |
