"Ornamental" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and foolish one!" she said aloud, apostrophising the figure in the glass with the familiar Du of the days before her mother died, "Art thou then so much better than others, that thou must for ever be only ornamental and an expense? Canst thou not live, except in luxury? Or walk, except on carpets? Or eat, except thy soup be not of chocolate? Go to the ants, thou sluggard; consider their ways, and be wise." And she wrapped herself in her cloak, and ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... please the eye for a while, but a model to be realised in their own lives; and I daresay it has helped to make them such a fine people. They are clever architects and gardeners. Indeed, the whole country may be described as a vast ornamental garden. In the middle zone, which borders on the wilderness, their wonderful art of beautifying natural scenery is at its best. They have a good many simple machines and implements, but I should not call them a scientific ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... retarded the convocations; for three months, the agitation attendant upon successive assemblies kept France in suspense. Paris was still voting on the 28th of April, 1789, the mob thronged the streets; all at once the rumor ran that an attack was being made on the house of an ornamental paper-maker in the faubourg St. Antoine, named Reveillon. Starting as a simple journeyman, this man had honestly made his fortune; he was kind to those who worked in his shops: he was accused, nevertheless, amongst the populace, of having declared that a journeyman could live on ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of trees is most marked, including all those which yield timber employed in the useful and many of those employed in the ornamental arts. Indeed, nearly all the species found in the United States, east of the Rocky Mountains, are found in North Carolina. Her wealth in this respect will be appreciated when the striking fact is mentioned that there ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... will do," said the Abbot. "If Brother Gerasimus can make his friend eat porridge and herbs like the rest of us we will let him join our number. He might be very useful,—as well as ornamental,—in keeping away burglars and mice. But we cannot have any flesh-eating creature among us. Some of us are too fat and tempting, I fear," and he glanced at several of the roundest monks, who shuddered in their tight gowns. But the Abbot himself ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... Noun must always be either (1) the ordinary word for the thing, or (2) a strange word, or (3) a metaphor, or (4) an ornamental word, or (5) a coined word, or (6) a word lengthened out, or (7) curtailed, or (8) altered in form. By the ordinary word I mean that in general use in a country; and by a strange word, one in use elsewhere. So that the same word may obviously be at once ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... du Sablon is very striking from the space it occupies, and on it is a fountain erected by Lord Bruce.[5] The fountains which are to be met with in various parts of the city are highly ornamental, and among them I must not omit to mention a singularly grotesque one which is held in great veneration by the lower orders of the Bruxellois and is by them regarded as a sort of Palladium to the city. ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... elengi) is the same as the Bakula, frequent mention of which is made is some of the Puranas. It bears a strong-smelling flower, which, according to Sir W. Jones, is ranked among the flowers of the Hindu paradise. The tree Is very ornamental in pleasure-grounds. ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... where one was supported by the other being in this way overcome. Hundreds of thousands of horse power of this design were built, giving great satisfaction. The boiler was known as the "C. I. F." (cast-iron front) style, an ornamental cast-iron front ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... guard the republic the Ten in fact destroyed its liberties, disposed of its finances, overruled the constitutional legislators, suppressed and excluded the popular element from all voice in public affairs, and finally reduced the nominal prince—the doge—to a mere puppet or an ornamental functionary, still ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of seeing ostrich and other ornamental feathers, denotes that she will advance in society, but her ways of gaining favor ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... the fact that she was bred to be an ornamental rather than what is called a useful member of society. This is all very well so long as fortune favors those who are chosen to be the ornamental personages; but if the golden tide recedes and leaves them stranded, they are more to be pitied than almost ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... on which vegetables should be put down, and the kinds most suitable to the locality, and the best method of growing them should also be noted, as well as the most suitable kinds of fruit, and the most desirable kinds of ornamental trees. The rainfall register should also be given, as well as any other information of interest, as for instance, a list of ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... cupboard and in the thickness of the wall can be opened. This again reveals a narrow passage, or staircase, leading up to the joists above the ceiling, and thence to a recess situated immediately behind the carved ornamental facing over the entrance door of the summer-house. In this there is a narrow chink or peep-hole, from which the fugitive could keep on the look-out either for danger or for the friendly Royalist agent of ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... silent seated figure and took refuge on the very crown of its head. Sanctuary! So we turned aside to scrutinise the strange symbolical figures of the twenty-fourth cave and the stories of the chaste and unchaste wives which are hewn in the ornamental gateway ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... aspect. Inside, there are spacious courts and well-furnished guest rooms, roomy apartments, and offices for the mandarin, as well as comfortable quarters for Mr. Jensen and his body of Chinese clerks and operators. There is a pretty garden all bright and sunny, with a pond of gold fish and ornamental parapet. Wandering freely in the enclosure are peacocks and native companions, while a constant playmate of the children is a little laughing monkey of a kind that is found in the woods beyond Tali. At night ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... ebony block were lacquered—probably to conceal a joint—and bore a number of Chinese characters, and at the top was a little gold image with a hole through it, presumably for a string to suspend it by. Excepting for the pearl, the whole thing was uncommonly like one of those ornamental tablets ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... transomed in each face, and the lower tier is canopied; each angle is rounded off with an octagonal turret and the whole structure is a marvellous example of architectural harmony, and in every way a work of transcendent beauty. The two buttressing arches and the ornamental braces which support it were added at the end of the fifteenth century by Prior Goldstone, to whom the building of the whole tower is apparently attributed in the following quaint passage from a mediaeval authority: ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... appliance so small for the great work it has to do. Look at the anchors hanging from the cat-heads of a big ship! How tiny they are in proportion to the great size of the hull! Were they made of gold they would look like trinkets, like ornamental toys, no bigger in proportion than a jewelled drop in a woman's ear. And yet upon them will depend, more than once, the very life of ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... chief public offices and halls for the assembly of congress are contained in one building known as the Capitol. It stands on a hill, and is said to be the finest building in the Union. It is surrounded by ornamental grounds, and overlooks the ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... for the time being. So Dolly, leaving her companion with a bright farewell, and amiably disposing of Lady Augusta, slipped up-stairs to the retiring-room for her wraps. In the course of three minutes she came down again, the scarlet shawl draped around her, and the highly ornamental hood donned. She was of so little consequence in the Bilberry household that no one met her when she reappeared. Even the servants knew that her convenience or inconvenience was of small moment, so the task of summoning her cab would have devolved upon herself, had it not been for a little ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and those numerous bells loosened from the bodies of elephants and broken into fragments by those falling creatures, and those hooks with handles set with stones of lapis lazuli fallen upon the Earth, and those ornamental yokes of steeds, and those armours set with diamonds for their breasts and those rich cloths, adorned with gold and tied to the ends of the standards borne by horsemen, and those variegated coverlets ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Ashdown Lodge is a large square edifice, built in the formal French taste of the seventeenth century, with immense casements, giving it the appearance of being all glass, a high roof lighted by dormer windows, terminated at each angle by a tall and not very ornamental chimney, and surmounted by a lofty and lantern-like belvedere, crowned in its turn by a glass cupola. The belvedere opens upon a square gallery defended by a broad balustrade, and overlooking the umbrageous masses ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... again, with mechanical contentment and perfect satisfaction, both to himself and to his superficial admirers, with no more exertion of intellect nor awakening of feeling than any tradesman has in multiplying some ornamental pattern of furniture. Be this as it may, however, (for we cannot enter upon the discussion of the question here,) the falsity and imperfection of such distances admit of no dispute. Beautiful and ideal they may be; true they are not: and in the same way we might go ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... planter of the South increased the ability of both to purchase manufactures in the Eastern markets. Both sections had wants which they could not supply by their simple household industries. They had to import not only their farming implements, but most of those articles, useful or ornamental, which were thought indispensable to a higher civilization. "Spots in Tennessee, in Ohio, and Kentucky," comments an English traveler, "that within the lifetime of even young men, witnessed only the arrow and the scalping knife, now present the traveler ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... berry of a bluish white colour, the produce of the white cornel tree, which is named musqua-meena, bear-berry, because these animals are said to fatten on it. The dwarf Canadian cornel, bears a corymb of red berries, which are highly ornamental to the woods throughout the country, but are not otherwise worthy of notice, for they have an insipid farinaceous taste, and are ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... neighbour and his wife came in. He and she and the two ladies played bridge, while Gussie looked on or fidgeted aimlessly about the room, taking up and putting down again books and papers, looking into empty ornamental jars, continually comparing his own ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... of the "father of the family" was about to be extended over a new and vast area. A whole continent was to be "fenced around," and "olive-trees," and "fig-trees," and all plants useful and ornamental, were destined to flourish in that vast garden to the end of time. The great and eternal Father was, by his providence, directing the mighty operation from above, and marking the various points of the compass to which the ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Hohen-Cremmen, whose weather vane glistened in the sunshine, having only recently been regilded. The front of the house, the wing, and the churchyard wall formed, so to speak, a horseshoe, inclosing a small ornamental garden, at the open side of which was seen a pond, with a small footbridge and a tied-up boat. Close by was a swing, with its crossboard hanging from two ropes at either end, and its frame posts beginning to lean to one side. Between the pond and the circular bed stood a clump of giant ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... the Winds, has been very justly termed "the most curious existing monument of the practical gnomonics of antiquity." In architecture no very elevated rank can be assigned to this edifice, nor is there, even in its ornamental portions, any very remarkable evidence of the higher order of Grecian art; the execution, indeed, can in nowise be considered equal to the conception, which, if somewhat fancifully elaborated, is at least highly to be esteemed, as uniting in a more than ordinary degree the practically ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... her mostly through her breathing; it was short and very fast, but she was as cool of the flesh as the fresh linen she donned. That was part of the clean young wonder of her. Her vitality flowed and showered back upon itself, like the ornamental waters of a fountain. She awoke like a rose with the dew on. Even Albert Penny, rubbing the grit out of his eyes, had marveled at the ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... asking where the fair wearers of the article he had bought could be seen, he told me that all the ladies had gone into the interior. I hope they found my importations useful; they certainly were not ornamental. ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... of the hill, just below the slope of the Square, was the terminus of the electric tram-line from the city. In summer it was a pretty spot, well shaded by ornamental trees, with a small Gothic church and its parsonage in the center of a trimly kept lawn. It was prettier still as Thor Masterman approached it, at the close of a winter's day, with the great soft flakes, heaping their beauty on roof and shrub and roadway, the ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... fig, and guava, succeed better; they are both abundant and good, but there are not any plantains or bananas. On the higher lands, that is, above the general height of the vineyards, the walnut and chesnut grow most luxuriantly, and are both ornamental and useful. The chesnuts are so plentiful that, in the fruit season, they form a considerable article of food amongst the lower orders of the people. The fine old forest trees, the original occupiers of the soil, are ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... us lengthwise through the wonderful Santa Clara country, straight up a wide box plait of valley tucked in between an ornamental double ruffle of mountains. I suppose if we passed one ranch we passed a thousand—cattle ranches, fruit ranches, hen ranches, chicken ranches, bee ranches—all the ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... descend any thing but gracefully; they are too small to have any grace in them; and a pair of sham cotton epaulettes, or large unmeaning wings, are supposed, by a pleasing fiction of the military tailors, to adorn their shoulders. Now, this garment, we contend, is neither ornamental nor graceful: were it cut down into the common jacket, it would be better; were the excrescences at the shoulders removed, it would be more seemly; it has no warmth in it, and offers little or no protection against the rain. No soldier, who has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... pretty thorough demoralisation on their part I conducted my examination of the ground with the utmost circumspection; for I knew not at what moment a volley might rattle out at me from one or another of the large clumps of ornamental shrubs that were scattered about here and there upon the lawns, or the still larger masses of bamboo, palmetto, and other wild vegetation that at one particular spot was still allowed to flourish almost within musket-shot ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... "Peep; to look through a crevice; to look narrowly, closely, or slyly."—Webster's Dict. "Hence the confession has become a hacknied proverb."—Wayland's Moral Science, p. 110. "Not to mention the more ornamental parts of guilding, varnish, &c."—Tooke's Diversions, Vol. i, p. 20. "After this system of self-interest had been rivetted."—Brown's Estimate, Vol. ii, p. 136. "Prejudice might have prevented the cordial approbation of a ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... few discarded head-pieces altogether, under the impression, apparently, that nature had supplied a covering which was in itself sufficient. These costumes varied not only in character but in quality, according to the circumstances of the wearer; some being highly ornamental and mended—evincing the felicity of the owner in the possession of a good wife—while others were soiled and torn, or but slightly ornamented. The voyageurs were collected, as we have said, in groups. Here stood a ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... just the sort of an aggressive, undoubtedly irritable old fellow it pictured, but somehow, try as I would, I could not see any such old fellow wasting his moneyed hours clipping bells, umbrellas, and camel's heads on his ornamental greenery. It left just that incongruity which is at once the lure, the humour, and the perplexity of human life. Instead of satisfying my curiosity I was more anxious than ever to see Old Toombs with ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... he said, "but I'm awfully afraid you'll get the worst of it. I'm not an ornamental escort for a lady, as you see." He looked at his broken shoe, and then at her. Her expression showed entire indifference to the point he ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... I cannot go to the expense of engraving this most subtle example; but Plate IV. shows the average conditions of temper and imagination in religious ornamental work of ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... arrangement of which I could not very well see, as it was unlighted, save for the lamplight that issued from the open door of the saloon; I caught a glimpse, however, of polished panels of rare, ornamental woods, with gleams of gilded mouldings and polished metal handrails, and found my feet sinking into the pile of a soft, thick carpet, which gave me a hint as to the luxurious appointments of the ship. From this vestibule I passed into the saloon itself by a partially open door on the port side, ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... our imports. But I shall make one observation, and with great satisfaction, respecting them. They gradually diminish, as our own manufactures of the same description spread into their places; while the account of ornamental articles which our country does not produce, and we cannot wish it to produce, continues, upon the whole, to rise, in spite of all the caprices of fancy and fashion. Of this kind are the different furs[47] used for muffs, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... there since daybreak, and the expression on his ornamental face had varied between the blank and the idiotic. That the only woman in the world had miraculously appeared at Sagamore Lodge he had heard from Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... I say, the strangest dinner Rollo had ever attended. It was served in a private room of the handsome edifice owned by Mr. Ritz, and the menu or bill-of-fare was most elaborate, consisting of beautiful, ornamental dishes which were whisked before Rollo's eyes in rapid succession. Each course was accompanied by a different beverage, and toward the end the serving gentlemen filled large tumblers with a most delicious sparkling cider, which Rollo vowed the best ...
— Rollo in Society - A Guide for Youth • George S. Chappell
... the street, presented many of the characteristics of a prison. It had massive doors behind a row of highly polished steel gates, which would prove as useful in case of attempted invasion as they were now ornamental, and heavily barred windows, while on either side of the portico were great marble columns hung with chains and surmounted with bronze lions rampant. It was unusual to keep the town house open so late in the summer, but Mr. Ryder was obliged for business ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... become identical, just as the Beautiful and the Good assimilate, as we trace them to their source in Truth. While art becomes more practical, it loses none of its beauty. In the infancy of science, it was mainly devoted to the illustration of the fanciful and ornamental. Even architecture, in the early ages, looked less to permanent comfort than to artistic effect. But everything now tends to realization. Poetry and art fall in with this influence of the age. Science ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a very different class of apple-trees, grown only for ornament and usually known as "flowering apples." They are mostly native in China and Japan. They are small trees, or even almost bushes, with profuse handsome flowers and some of them with very ornamental little fruits. They have come to this country largely from Japan where they are grown for decoration, as the cherries of Japan are grown not for fruit but for their flowers, being of very different species from the cherries of Europe and America. The common apple itself ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... against the bulkhead, out of the way, thus leaving plenty of air space above me when I should be turned in. At the foot of the bunks there was a nice deep, double chest of drawers, surmounted by an ornamental rack-work arrangement containing a brace of water-bottles, with tumblers to match, together with vacant spaces for the reception of such matters as brushes and combs, razor-cases, and other odds and ends. Then there was a wash-stand, with a toilet-glass above it, and a ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... slowly; his mouth looked almost square as he fought to say something. Then he slumped, tumbling from the saddle into the embrace of an ornamental bush as his horse clattered along the sidewalk. Drew knew ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... dinner, to give me welcome and pleasure, but to exhibit to the eyes of their guest, their wealth, luxury, and social importance. If I had failed to perceive this, the conversation of the Paysons would have made it plain, for it was of style and elegance in house-keeping and dress—of the ornamental in all its varieties; and in no case of the truly domestic and useful. Once or twice I referred to the Wightmans; but the ladies knew nothing of them, and seemed almost to have forgotten ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... pointed arch. It may be that it was derived from that mystical figure of a pointed oval form, the vesica piscis. It may be, lastly, that it was suggested simply by the intersection of semicircular arches, so frequently found in ornamental arcades. The last cause may perhaps be the true one; but it matters little whence the pointed arch came. It matters much what it meant to those who introduced it. And at the beginning of the Transition or semi-Norman period, it seems to have meant ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... are about forty acres in extent, and contain a large piece of ornamental water, on the shore of which is a pavilion, or summer-house, with frescoes by Eastlake, Maclise, Landseer, Dyce, and others, illustrating Milton's "Comus." The channel of the Tyburn, now a sewer, passes under the palace. The Marble Arch, at the north-east corner ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... buildings, the remains of which could be seen in what was called the Abbey Close. The house itself, embosomed in honeysuckles and creeping roses, was an ornament to the whole village, nor were its internal arrangements less exemplary than its outside was ornamental. Report said that Mrs Pontifex starched the sheets for her best bed, and I can ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... fond of thinking that she had a womanly taste and touch in making a room pretty. She was accustomed to survey with pride her mother's drawing-room, which she had garnished with cheap cretonnes, Japanese paper fans, and knick-knacks in ornamental pottery. She felt now that if she slept once in the bed before her, she could never be content in her mother's house again. All that she had read and believed of the beauty of cheap and simple ornament, and the vulgarity of costliness, recurred to her as a ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... and took up her sunshade, and went with him meekly through the cultivated shrubbery of ornamental timber to the rougher pathway that wound through a copse of Scotch fir, which formed the outer boundary of Lady Maulevrier's domain. Beyond the fir trees rose the grassy slope of the hill, on the brow of which sheep were feeding. Deep down in the hollow below the lawns and ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... forms an attractive enough presentment to please most observers who do not delve too deeply into cause and effect. The north portal is less ornate, but its beautifully carved doors are by the same hand as that which worked the opposite portal. The ornamental stonework here is unusual, suggesting an arrangement which may or may not have been intended as a representation of the "Tree of Jesse." In any case it is a remarkable work of flowing Gothic "branches," which, though ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... they had to be filled. So, behind his house there was a little yard, reached by a passage from the back street, and in that yard was a pole, and under the pole a shop of quite another description than the ornamental one in the front street. Here on Saturday nights from seven till ten he took an almost innumerable succession of twopences from the farm laborers who flocked thither in crowds from the country. And thus ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... like exact knowledge of the intellectual pursuits of the many studious foreign youth of all ages and sexes whom one meets in Rome. As I say, our acquaintance with Italian is far less useful, however ornamental, than it used to be. The Romans are so quick that they understand you when they speak no English, and take your meaning before you can formulate it in their own tongue. A classically languaged friend of mine, who was hard bested in bargaining for rooms, tried his potential landlord in Latin, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... Rector's study the labourer was speaking, standing shufflingly on the margin of the Turkey carpet. The Rector listened, his hand on an open folio where fat infants peered through the ornamental initials. ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... Sophia Willing, who was much older. The Lancaster house was also a colonial mansion, much after the fashion of Eudora's, but it showed signs of continued opulence. Eudora's, behind her trees and leafing vines, was gray for lack of paint. Some of the colonial ornamental details about porches and roof were sloughing off or had already disappeared. The Lancaster house gleamed behind its grove of evergreen trees as white and perfect as in its youth. The windows showed rich slants of draperies behind their green ...
— The Yates Pride • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... flitting across those grave courts and passages turned to glance curiously at the pretty little widow. She had the air of a person not used to be on foot and unattended—a kind of aerial butterfly air, as of one who belonged to the useless and ornamental class of society; utterly different from the appearance of such humble female pedestrians as were wont to make the courts and alleys of the Temple a short-cut in their toilsome journeys to and fro. Happily a porter appeared, who was able to direct her to Mr. Saltram's chambers, ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... ornamental species is of modern introduction, having been received by Mess. LEE and KENNEDY, a few years since from the Cape, of which it ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 6 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... deal—more, indeed, than they had ever done before on a single occasion—they made their way into the dining room of the hotel, which was a spacious restaurant, with a fountain in the middle, a great many tall plants in ornamental tubs, and an array of French waiters. The first dinner on land, after a sea voyage, is, under any circumstances, a delightful occasion, and there was something particularly agreeable in the circumstances in which our young Englishmen found ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... not be supposed that Sir William Devereux was an ungallant man. On the contrary, never did the beau sexe have a humbler or more devoted servant. As nothing in his estimation was less becoming to a wise man than matrimony, so nothing was more ornamental than flirtation. ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... colleagues were as ignorant of constitutional history as the sovereign himself? But some knew—some must know! And the King, who but a few hours before had believed himself the most helpless of emblems, a mere ornamental topknot to the constitutional edifice, now found himself armed with weapons of far-reaching precision that would enable him to carry war into the enemy's country. Metaphorically he clapped his wings and crowed. Yes, it was as though that weathercock, to which hitherto he had likened himself, that ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... his first. This one vibrated half-seconds and accordingly could be made with a pendulum short enough for the timepiece to be placed on a shelf as the former one had been. It was, however, of an entirely new design, having a dial in the upper half, painted glass in the door and an ornamental pillar at each side of the case. On top was a decorative scroll of wood and altogether it was a product so novel and well suited to the home that immediately the ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... feudal lord an ample revenue and the means of raising a large army. Breslau, the capital of the duchy, upon the Oder, contained a population of over eighty thousand. Built upon several islands of that beautiful stream, its situation was attractive, while in its palaces and its ornamental squares, it vied with the finest capitals ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... buildings and the improvement and maintenance of the older ones." The initiative has passed out of the king's hands into those of his subject; he is active, the king is passive; all the glory is Amenhotep's; the king merely comes in at the close of all, as an ornamental person, whose presence adds a certain dignity to ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... supposed, from the foregoing remarks, that I object to female education; on the contrary, I would have every woman an educated woman. But I would have this education an useful and proper education; one not wholly ornamental and of no practical use, but one obtained at home, and under the parental care and influence—such an one as made Mrs. Ripley, of Concord, Massachusetts, the wonder and admiration of every sensible man. She who studied La Place's ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... thousand times more useful, Sally. I don't pretend to compare with you in the useful arts, and I am only a bungler in ornamental ones. Sally, I feel like a useless little creature. If I could go round as you can, and do business, and make bargains, and push ahead in the world, I should feel that I was good for something; but ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... elevated above the pit, enabling the occupants to converse, as is the fashion, with friends in the stalls. Both tiers have the appearance of an ordinary dress circle, with a low partition to distinguish one box from another. There are wide lobbies at the back, and an ornamental iron grating in front. Like most houses in Cuba, the theatre is without drapery, the stall-seats and box-chairs, which are cane-bottomed, not excepted. The interior of a Cuban theatre ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... convinced you, you have only two alternatives: you must suppose that divinity is temporarily lodged either in the actor—a Polus, an Aristodemus, a Satyrus—, or else in the actual masks, buskins, long tunics, cloaks, gloves, stomachers, padding, and ornamental paraphernalia in general of tragedy—a manifest absurdity; for when Euripides can speak his own sentiments unfettered by dramatic necessity, observe ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... have described are also many studios for artists. These attelliers are very ornamental in appearance, being placed in the centre of a large court. They are of various fanciful shapes, according to the design of the artist, generally open on the sides, with a dome supported by pillars, ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... The words employed were few, but a journalist of McMurtrie's experience instinctively covered the bare bones with a respectable integument, and clothed this with a quite picturesque raiment by force of the more ornamental ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... "All bear fruit." "All have pretty flowers." "All grow on bushes." "All are valuable" (or useful). "They grow close to a house." "All are ornamental." "All are shrubbery." ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... made them of belts and scarfs woven from hair and fur, and other small articles of Indian manufacture, brilliantly colored and richly embroidered with shells. They had also knee-bands and wrist-bands which were quite ornamental. ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... be understood here as opposing the erection of good, substantial, and even ornamental buildings by the Government wherever such buildings are needed. In fact, I approve of the Government owning its own buildings in all sections of the country, and hope the day is not far distant when it will not only possess ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... otherwise have been laid out in forming substantial works, with a view to a return in income of some sort or another, for the remainder of their own lives and of those of their children, were expended in tombs, temples, sarais, tanks, groves, and other works—useful and ornamental, no doubt, but from which neither they nor their children could ever hope to derive income of any kind. The same feeling of insecurity gave birth, no doubt, to this preposterous usage, which tends so much to keep down the great mass of the people of India to that grade in which they were ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... and Bill marks it with a chuckle and four crosses at the corners—and an extra one at each side perhaps—and sends it on to Jim; he reckons it'll rather corner old Jim. The crosses are not over ornamental nor artistic, but very distinct; Jim sees them from the reverse side of the sheet first, maybe, and turns it over with interest to see what it is. He grins a good-humoured grin as he reads—poor old Bill is just as thick-headed and obstinate as ever—just as far gone on his old fad. It's ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... very well up in the subject. To put it both candidly and vulgarly, I haven't any use for Doris Hayward at all. Ethel I admire tremendously, though I don't think she likes me; and Basil is a saint straight out of heaven, suffering martyrdom for no conceivable reason, but Doris is like a useless ornamental china shepherdess, which ought to be put on a hight shelf where it can't get itself nor any one else into trouble. I'm really dreadfully afraid if I had to spend a whole evening alone with her, I should drop her and break her to relieve ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... reached by the vibrations of the coach-horn, or of public opinion. It was an important-looking village, with a fine old church and large churchyard in the heart of it, and two or three large brick-and-stone homesteads, with well-walled orchards and ornamental weathercocks, standing close upon the road, and lifting more imposing fronts than the rectory, which peeped from among the trees on the other side of the churchyard:—a village which showed at once the summits of its social life, and told the practised eye that there ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... latter may be straight or plain, but commonly it has a short projection midway of its length, which serves as a finger-hold and as a hook for attachment to the belt. Quite frequently the handle is decorated with thin circles or bands of brass, while ornamental designs sometimes appear on ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... rocks, and those of us who could jump, jumped out, and those who couldn't, clambered out; and Jimmy Anstice flopped into the water above his knees, as usual, and had to sit by the fire getting dry, when he should have been running errands and making himself useful. Small boys, being neither ornamental nor interesting, should be either useful ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... Twickenham is properly described by Roscoe as lying on both sides of the highway, rendering it necessary for him to cross the road to arrive at the higher and more ornamental part of his gardens. In order to obviate this inconvenience, he had recourse to the expedient of excavating a passage under the road from one part of his grounds to the other, a fact to which ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... it is not the ornamentation your friend objects to?[4] If it is, I would observe that there is no evidence of progress in the decorative and ornamental arts during the Ming Dynasty; and even in the Jesuit instruments that part of the work is purely Chinese, excepting in one instrument, which I am persuaded must have been ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... learning neglected in the ornamental parts, for I had an uncommon natural genius for many things, and soon topped in accomplishments most of the persons around me. I had a quick ear and a fine voice, which my mother cultivated to ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sometimes obliged to attend the weighty affairs of the nation? Lord Fop. Sir, as to weighty affairs, I leave them to weighty heads; I never intend mine shall be a burden to my body. Ber. Nay, my lord, but you are a pillar of the state. Lord Fop. An ornamental pillar, madam; for sooner than undergo any part of the fatigue, rat me, but the whole building should fall plump to the ground! Aman. But, my lord, a fine gentleman spends a great deal of his time in his intrigues; you have given us no account of them yet. Lord Fop. [Aside.] ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... Pollajuolo of Florence. Antonio (that is to say) the Poulterer—so named from the trade of his grandfather, and with just so much of his grandfather's trade left in his own disposition, that being set by Lorenzo Ghiberti to complete one of the ornamental festoons of the gates of the Florentine Baptistery, there, (says Vasari) "Antonio produced a quail, which may still be seen, and is so beautiful, nay, so perfect, that it wants nothing ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... the eyes; and one cares the less to read it, as she herself condemned it, in the preface to the "Professor," by saying that in this story she had got over such taste as she might once have had for the "ornamental and redundant in composition." The beginning, too, as she acknowledges, was on a scale commensurate with one of Richardson's novels, of seven or eight volumes. I gather some of these particulars from a copy of a ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... also a word to say to MR. NICHOLS on his remarks on MR. ELLACOMBE'S view. He imputes to MR. E. ignorance of the "real formation of the collar." He could only mean that the S hook or link gave the idea of such an ornamental chain; and I believe he is correct: which ornament the taste of the workman would adopt and fashion as we now have it, with the insertion of another link both for the comfort of the wearer, and for ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... above the level of the ground, and a magnificent flight of steps in the centre. The columns of the portico are of the Doric order, supporting a balcony, or gallery, which is to be covered by a verandah, erected on small ornamental iron pillars, placed over those below. The upper part of the Stand is to have a balustrade the whole width of the front. With reference to the interior arrangements, there are four large and well-proportioned rooms for refreshments, &c.; a spacious hall, leading through a screen of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... way. The ordinary short cut from Luz to St. Sauveur crosses the bridge over the Gave leaving the Gavarnie road on the left, and turning sharply up a short distance beyond the river, joins the high road above the "Pharmacie Clavarie," near an ornamental pillar. We, however, bore up the Gavarnie road till, reaching a cottage, we pursued the narrow path obviously conducting to the river, over which a wooden bridge—whence a pretty view can be obtained,—leads to the Jardin a l'Anglaise. This garden, much frequented during the summer ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... the manuscript rolls of Herculaneum, and has three columns to the page, which is of the quarto size. Originally it had at the end of particular sections a small empty space of the breadth of a letter or half a letter, but no ornamental capitals, marks of punctuation, or accents, though some of these have been added by later hands. The divisions into sections made by the empty spaces above named are peculiar to this codex, not agreeing with those of any other system. Of these Matthew has 170; Mark, 62 (so says Cardinal ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... family and to the profit and comfort also of a numerous body of clients a man much respected in the neighbourhood of Chancery Lane, and beloved, I do not doubt, in the neighbourhood of Bushey, in which delightfully rural parish he was possessed of a genteel villa and ornamental garden. With Mr Green's private residence we shall, I believe, have no further concern; but to him at his chambers in Stone Buildings I must now introduce the reader of these memoirs. He was a man not yet forty years of age, with still much of the salt ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... their maintenance, are easily allowed to pass their time, and take their degrees, with little or no improvement; than which there cannot well be a greater absurdity. For, if no advancement of knowledge can be had from those places, the time there spent is at best utterly lost, because every ornamental part of education is better taught elsewhere: And as for keeping youths out of harm's way, I doubt, where so many of them are got together, at full liberty of doing what they please, it will not answer the end. But, whatever abuses, corruptions, or deviations ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... blossoming plants, which every morning were a mass of many-colored airy blooms, waving in graceful sprays, and looking at themselves in the water. The water-barrel, in fact, became a celebrated stroke of ornamental gardening, which the ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... an infernal machine—of a different sort than any you have probably ever heard of. The less you know now the less likely you are to give anything away by a look or an act. Come now, make yourself useful as well as ornamental. Take these wires and lay them in the cracks of the floor, and be careful not to let them show. A little dust over ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... the good Tyrolese, however, would call them monks and nuns dwelling in cells, rather than "citizens." Formerly they delighted in erecting the most ornamental dwellings which they could devise for them, helping them in their constant toil by planting balmy thyme and other sweet honey-yielding flowers around the hives. These were constructed of wood, gayly painted with holy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... Roger's" neck, (for I had hitherto been walking,) and cantered up the steep hill before me. When I reached the top, I found myself upon a broad table land, encircled by old and well-grown timber, and at a distance, most tastefully half concealed by ornamental planting, I could catch some glimpse of Callonby. Before, however, I had time to look about me, I heard the tramp of horses' feet behind, and in another moment two ladies dashed up the steep behind, and came towards me, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... a Turk, with a towel for a turban; Joan a sportsman in her gymnasium knickers; Sheila, in a tricolor cap, represented France; and Lorna was draped with the Union Jack; Jess with a plaid arranged as a kilt made a sturdy Highlander; Mary was an Irish colleen; while Delia, in a wrapper ornamental with fringes of tissue paper, stood for "Carnival." A white dressing jacket trimmed with green leaves, and a garland of flowers were waiting for Peachy, and when the latter was popped on her head she was promptly proclaimed "Queen ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... the general inferiority of design compared with the style it succeeded, from the meagre and clumsy execution of sculptured and other ornamental work, from the intermixture of detail founded on an entirely different school of art, and the consequent subversion ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... contrary be proved. If it be a deformity he asks whether a slight alteration may not convert it into a beauty; and he destroys nothing till he has convinced himself by reflection that no alteration, no diminution or addition, can make it ornamental. Modern Reformers reverse this judicious maxim. If a thing is before them, so far from deeming that it has on that account a claim to continue and be deliberately dealt with, its existence with them is a sufficient warrant for its destruction. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... must be life, real life, something that had happened, and the same may be said of what followed. For instance, there was what we call a review. Infantry marched, some of them armed with swords and spears, though these I took to be an ornamental bodyguard, and others with tubes like savage blowpipes of which I could not guess the use. There were no cannon, but carriages came by loaded with bags that had spouts to them. Probably these were charged with poisonous gases. There were some cavalry ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... frigidarium are recesses for boots and for linen. The frigidarium—about 15 ft. square—has benches fitted up like one side of a divan, bay windows with space for plants and flowers, lavatory and toilet-table, and an ornamental fountain. A lobby separates this apartment from the bath rooms, and off it are a w.c. and a towel closet, which latter could be supplied with hot air. The combined lavatorium and tepidarium—14 ft. square—is a domed chamber, with semicircular recesses containing ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... of beauty and lightness; in no part of the world do we see them excelled in speed and portability—two very important qualities in the craft of a savage; and in ornamental workmanship, the skill of both men ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... statues of rarest loveliness, but all higher national life was wanting to her during those centuries in which she degraded 'virtuoso,' or the virtuous man, to signify one skilled in the appreciation of painting, music, and sculpture; for these, the ornamental fringe of a people's life, can never, without loss of all manliness of character, be its main texture and woof—not to say that excellence in them has been too often dissociated from all true virtue and moral worth. The opposite exaggeration of the Romans, for whom 'virtus' meant predominantly ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... heart set on things higher than this world and its vanities. Nor do the objects of daily use found in the tombs suggest any austerity in the Egyptian character. There is no reflection of the Underworld to be looked for in the ornamental bronze mirrors, nor smell of death in the frail perfume pots. Religious abstraction is not to be sought in lotus-formed drinking-cups, and mortification of the body is certainly not practised on golden chairs and soft cushions. These were ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... blood, as many plebeians are; he gloried in it. He disliked show, with a calm and deep aversion. He was a plain man with a simple, unostentatious taste for money. The difference between Helen's name and her ornamental raiment gave him pleasure in the name. But he had not been examining her for more than half a minute when he began to find pleasure in her rich clothes (rich, that is, to him!). Quite suddenly he, at the age of sixty, abandoned without an effort his dear prejudice ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... paths, Orators, Preachers, and Reciters are holding forth, for the delectation of small groups, who are mostly engaged in discussing some totally different subject. A set debate, with a time-limit, and a purely ornamental Chairman, is in progress between a Parnellite and an Anti-Parnellite. The reader will kindly imagine himself to be passing slowly along ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... the tobacco plant were first brought to Europe by Gonzalo Hernandez de Oviedo, who introduced it into Spain, where it was first cultivated as an ornamental plant, till Monardes[22] extolled it as possessed ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings |
