"Embellishment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Tertullian is generally accepted as substantially correct. Scapula was chief magistrate of Carthage and, under the circumstances, the author would not have indulged his tendency to rhetorical embellishment. Furthermore, the book is written with what was ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... elegance of English social life. This gentleman, now in the decline of life, has an exquisitely beautiful place, situated in a park of some sixty acres. The railroad has been run through his estate, and, of course, has made it very much more valuable for building; but as it injures the park for the embellishment of the mansion, it was a fair subject for damages, and the jury of reference gave its proprietor the pretty verdict of eleven thousand pounds. At the table we had the finest dessert which the hothouse ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... vast project of LE BRUN was never completed. Lewis XIV, captivated by Versailles, soon turned all his thoughts towards the embellishment of that palace. The works of the GALLERY OF APOLLO were entirely abandoned, and, of all this grand composition, LE BRUN was enabled to execute no ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... where conspicuous buildings are the seat of the chief cadet-school in Germany. Here are accommodations for eight or nine hundred cadets, the flower of German youth. Neither pains nor expense has been spared in the erection and embellishment of these extensive buildings. The "Flensburg Lion," erected by the Danes to commemorate a former victory in Schleswig-Holstein over the Prussians, and later captured by the latter, stands here before ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... false principles. Its leading feature is glitter—and in that one word how much of all that is detestable do we express! Flickering, unquiet lights, are sometimes pleasing—to children and idiots always so—but in the embellishment of a room they should be scrupulously avoided. In truth, even strong steady lights are inadmissible. The huge and unmeaning glass chandeliers, prism-cut, gas-lighted, and without shade, which dangle ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the idea that ornament was a leading consideration in the employment of these coarse fabrics, we have the well-known fact that simple cord-markings, arranged to form patterns, have been employed by many peoples for embellishment alone. This was a common practice of the ancient inhabitants of Great Britain, as shown by Jewett. The accompanying cut (Fig. 60) is copied from ...
— Prehistoric Textile Fabrics Of The United States, Derived From Impressions On Pottery • William Henry Holmes
... on the subject of her favorites' marriages is well known, and her anger was lasting, in proportion to the value which she set on the incense of Raleigh's flattery. He retired, on his disgrace, to his new estate, in the improvement and embellishment of which he felt great interest. But though deeply alive to the beauties of nature, he had been too long trained to a life of ambition and adventure to rest contented in the tranquil routine of a country ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... hope. And how a man ought to order what relates to his descendants and his kindred and friends and fellow-citizens, and the rites of hospitality taught by Heaven, and the intercourse which arises out of all these duties, with a view to the embellishment and orderly regulation of his own life—these things, I say, the laws, as we proceed with them, will accomplish, partly persuading, and partly when natures do not yield to the persuasion of custom, chastising them by might and right, and will thus render our state, if the Gods co-operate with ...
— Laws • Plato
... and appears destined to have still greater results. It is the simple narrative of an uneducated and unprotected female, who escaped from the old Black Nunnery of Montreal, or Hotel Dieu, and told her tale of sufferings and horrors, without exaggeration or embellishment. Though assailed by all the powers of the Romish priesthood, whom she accused, and by the united influence of the North American press, which, with very small exceptions, was then unenlightened by the discoveries of the present day, the book remains unimpeached, ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... evacuating waste matter. While the larvae of the Hunting Wasps, unable to do better, stipple themselves with uric acid, there are plenty of industrious creatures that are able to make themselves a superb dress by preserving their excretions in spite of their own open sewers. With a view to self-embellishment, they collect and treasure up the dross which others hasten to expel. They turn filth ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... Josephus, another indication that there was in Philo's own day communication between Alexandria and Palestine. The Jewish historian marks the influence of Hellenic ideas in Palestine in fullest measure, and like Philo he seeks by embellishment to recommend the histories and Scriptures of his people to the non-Jew and to bring home their thought to the cultured Roman-Greek world. Thus, in the preface to his "Antiquities," he notes, as Philo noted in his commentary, ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... from going direct to the heart. The high-water mark of his genius was reached in two or three poems in which the words are in full harmony with the thought and reflect it limpidly, with no attempt at the "embellishment" which he too ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... of the German operations the present volume must appeal as forecasting movements strictly within the bounds of actuality. A literal translation is all that has been attempted, with absolutely no embellishment to make it "popular" or easy reading. With characteristic bluntness this German officer brushes aside non-essentials and goes to the main point in daring fashion. For that very reason it is exceedingly pertinent ...
— Operations Upon the Sea - A Study • Franz Edelsheim
... confined to architecture. It formed the grand embellishment of the interior of the palaces and ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... commenced the work of improvement and embellishment by enlarging the park, appropriating a good slice of Enfield Chace, with parts of Northaw and Cheshunt Commons, and surrounding the whole with a high brick wall ten miles in circumference. Within this ring he found ample scope for the indulgence ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... Irish eloquence and wit crowd upon our recollection, but we forbear. The examples we have cited are taken from real life, and given without alteration or embellishment. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... a waistcoat pocket and, fumbling therein, touched caressingly a little pellet of soft paper. Its possessor did not require to examine it to reassure himself as to its legitimacy as a work of art, nor as to the prominence of the Roman C in its embellishment ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... required to corroborate these traditions by comparing one account with another and noting their remarkable similarity! These sketches are real native stories put into readable English, without any attempt at embellishment or enlargement. ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... Where is it that I have read, that a Frenchman has no idea of gardening? Nothing can be more false: the French peasants infinitely excell the English of the same order in the knowledge and practice of this embellishment. ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... strive to approach and benefit the poor of London. It is situate in Little Saffron Hill, Farringdon Road, the service being held in a barn-like room, which on weekdays serves for school, and is capable of accommodating a thousand children. No money has been expended in architectural embellishment, and no question of a controversial character is likely to arise in connection with accessories in the shape of altar, surplice, or candles. The Ragged Church avoids these stumbling-blocks by the simple expedient of doing without candles, surplices, ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... the conscience, it developed more fully the sense of sin and guilt, and it made man conscious of his inability to save himself from sin and guilt; and "the day that humanity awakens to the want of something more than mere embellishment and culture, that day it feels the need of being saved and restored from the consequences of sin" by a higher power. AEsthetic taste had found its fullest gratification in Athens; poetry, sculpture, architecture, had been carried to the highest ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the king would by no means give his consent to this proposal, observing that he would soon find a sufficient number of Badagry heads to render the plan perfectly uniform, and learning that a hundred and twenty seven were required to complete this extraordinary embellishment, he ordered that number of captives to be brought forth and slaughtered in ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... always preserved amicable relations with the Government Department of Antiquities in Egypt. Excavations are conducted by skilled explorers, and the results published promptly with due regard to scientific accuracy and pictorial embellishment. The antiquities found are either deposited in the National Museum at Cairo, or distributed among public museums in the United Kingdom and the United States of America and Canada, in strict proportion to the contribution of each locality. ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... circumference, possessing many good statues, fine bas-reliefs, and a noble colonnade. In some respects, it is one of the finest palaces in Europe. The interior is, however, unfinished, though in the course of slow embellishment. Now a principal and very conspicuous window, in the pavilion that caps the entrance to the Carrousel, is unglazed, the weather being actually excluded by the use of coarse unplaned boards, precisely in the manner in which one is apt to see a shingle palace embellished at ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... delight in swilling liquors and battening upon gross and luscious meats, which help to swell out their tall and goodly figures. Many of them have died possessed of considerable riches, part of which they have not unfrequently bequeathed to the erection or embellishment ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... banks of the Euphrates not far from the scene of the battle, marked the spot which the conqueror wished to be recognised henceforth as the frontier of his empire. He re-entered Thebes with immense booty, by which gods as well as men profited, for he consecrated a part of it to the embellishment of the temple of Amon, and the sight of the spoil undoubtedly removed the lingering prejudices which the people had cherished against expeditions beyond the isthmus. Thutmosis was held up by his subjects to the praise of posterity as having come into actual contact with that ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... species of verse, which probably prevailed among the natives of Provence (the Roman Provincia), and into which, at a later period, rhyme was introduced as an embellishment, the Troubadours derived the metre of their ballad poetry, and thence introduced it into the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... own selection. He stopped the plundering of farms and the dragging of laborers off to military service. He established in Venezuela an excellent monetary system. Great sums were expended in the erection of public and private buildings and in the embellishment of Caracas. European capital and immigration were encouraged to venture into a country hitherto so torn by chronic disorder as to deprive both labor and property of all guarantees. Roads, railways, and telegraph lines were constructed. The ministers of the Church were rendered submissive ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... papers, clothing, everything I will need, outside the reservation. Suppose you just let me leave here. Then, if there is any trouble, you can use this fiction about the indiscreet underlings, without the unnecessary embellishment of my suicide—" ...
— The Mercenaries • Henry Beam Piper
... (80) that "we know definitely at least, that tattooing is regarded by the Eskimo as an embellishment." He bases this inference on Cranz's assertion that Eskimo mothers tattoo their daughters in early youth "for fear that otherwise they would not get a husband." Had Grosse allowed his imagination to paint a particular instance, he would have seen how grotesque ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... preferred."—"Write," said Bonaparte, "to Fontaine and Percier, the architects, and ask what they think of it." I wrote and they stated in their answer that "bridges were intended for public utility and the embellishment of cities. The projected bridge between the Louvre and the Quatre-Nations would unquestionably fulfil the first of these objects, as was proved by the great number of persons who daily crossed the Seine at that point in boats; that ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... the old puzzles are capable of improvement, embellishment, and extension. Take, for example, magic squares. These were constructed in India before the Christian era, and introduced into Europe about the fourteenth century, when they were supposed to possess certain magical properties that I am afraid they have since lost. Any ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... Firemen's corps, where there are any, are volunteer organizations. For charity work, hospitals, educational work, etc., local committees are formed which raise funds by private subscription or by lottery, and in a number of towns the embellishment of the plazas is in charge ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... entertainers conducted me about the building, of which the extent, the magnificent architecture and richness of embellishment, astonished me. It seemed that it was not merely a dining-hall, but likewise a great pleasure-house and social rendezvous of the quarter, and no appliance of ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... in the language of Lower Brittany, and be wholly ignorant of the rules of rhetoric; and those whose minds are stored with the most agreeable fancies, and who can give expression to them with the greatest embellishment and harmony, are still the best poets, though unacquainted ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... now fully employed from day to day on a variety of great projects for the embellishment and improvement of the city, as well as for guarding and extending the bounds of the empire. In the first place, he meditated the construction of a temple to Mars, which should exceed in grandeur every thing of that kind in the world. For this purpose, he intended to fill up the ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... introduced. This of all others is the most unfavourable era for an historian. A reader of sentiment and imagination cannot be entertained or interested by a dry detail of such transactions as admit of no warmth, no colouring, no embellishment, a detail which serves only to exhibit an inanimate picture of tasteless vice ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... fact, for the boldest imagination must have some definite point from which to take its flight; but the ungarnished truth is seldom literature in itself, though it may offer excellent material for literary embellishment. The amateur, content with knowing that he is recounting what did actually happen, falls into the most inartistic ways, because he does not understand that facts are properly only crude material ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... of art, that this development is almost wholly due. The reaction against paganism began to die out when the Christian religion was more firmly established, and representations of Christ and the Saints executed in mosaic became more and more to be regarded as a necessary, or at any rate a regular embellishment of the numerous churches which were built. For these mosaics panel paintings began in time to be substituted; but it was long before any of the human feeling of art was to be found in them. The influence of S. Francis of Assisi was needed to ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... justified the ancient descriptive name of "the Hoar rock in the wood;" but though there are traces of trees visible on the engravings published a hundred years ago, in Dr. Borlase's "Antiquities of Cornwall," these are most likely due to artistic embellishment only. At present no writer will discover in St. Michael's Mount what could fairly be called either trees or a ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... series has made it his special object to confine himself very strictly, even in the most minute details which he records, to historic truth. The narratives are not tales founded upon history, but history itself, without any embellishment or any deviations from the strict truth, so far as it can now be discovered by an attentive examination of the annals written at the time when the events themselves occurred. In writing the narratives, the author has endeavored to avail himself of the best ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... which a host of imitators could not exhaust,—still I am far from wishing to deny that the author of these great poems found a rich fund of tradition, a well-stocked mythical storehouse, from whence he might derive both subject and embellishment. But it is one thing to use existing romances in the embellishment of a poem, another to patch up the poem itself from such materials. What consistency of style and execution can be hoped for from such an attempt? or, rather, what bad taste ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... lawyer of full and exact learning, an ingenious pleader, and a powerful advocate, but an exceptionally accomplished scholar. His knowledge of Greek, Latin, French, and German rendered their literature a perennial source upon which to draw for the illumination and embellishment of the pure and virile English of which he was master. It was from him that Eugene inherited his delight in queer and rare objects of vertu and that "rich, strong, musical and sympathetic voice" which would have been invaluable on the stage, and of which he made such captivating ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... occasionally even journalistic in tone, but the author's foreign origin and his military life and training partially explain this. Further, the work being intended for public recitation, some rhetorical embellishment was necessary, even at the cost of simplicity. It is a striking fact that Ammianus, though a professional soldier, gives excellent pictures of social and economic problems, and in his attitude to the non-Roman peoples ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... always the Passion at Easter; in another, always the Nativity at Christmas, and so forth. On the mountain they have the procession at irregular intervals, after perhaps three or four years, and the story, though now, as a rule, scriptural, is never the same again. When it does occur, it is as an extra embellishment of the annual harvest thanksgiving; it takes place by night and always introduces the Madonna di Custonaci. And now it is time to say a few words about this famous Madonna, whose influence is felt throughout ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... most scrupulous exactness; the opening gradual and engaging, the peripeteia surprising, and the catastrophe affecting. In short, I judged it by the laws of Aristotle and Horace, and could find nothing in it exceptionable but a little too much embellishment in some few places, which objection he removed to my satisfaction, by a quotation of Aristotle's poetics, importing, that the least interesting parts of a poem ought to be raised and dignified by the ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... rivalry in the embellishment of these crude homes. Upon completing ours I decided upon a "Tradesmen's Entrance" and carved this out, together with a winding approach, the entrance being flanked by two mounds on one of which I planted a small flag improvised from a piece of cardboard which ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... peace, not certain whether Lucilla would consider Maria an embellishment to his ideal parsonage; but they talked on with cheerful schemes while descending through the wood, unlocking a gate that formed the boundary between the Holt and the Beauchamp properties, crossing a field or two, and then coming out into the park. Presently they were in sight of ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... paint like nature dying; Whose dissolving struggle lent Wealth of hues so richly blent That, through weary years of trying, Artist skill pre-eminent May not copy or invent Such divine embellishment. ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... This was no passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed at more convenient places of business. Tellson's (they said) wanted no elbow-room, Tellson's wanted no light, Tellson's wanted no embellishment. Noakes and Co.'s might, or Snooks Brothers' might; but ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... fair way of using a story," said the doctor. "You should take a story as you get it, and not play the dissector upon it, mangling its poor body to discover the bit of embellishment; and as long as a raconteur maintains vraisemblance, I contend you are bound to ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... our western forests. But he brought with him taste, and science, and wealth; and "lo the desert smiled!" Possessing himself of a beautiful island in the Ohio, he rears upon it a palace, and decorates it with every romantic embellishment of fancy. A shrubbery, that Shenstone might have envied, blooms around him. Music, that might have charmed Calypso and her nymphs is his. An extensive library spreads its treasures before him. A philosophical ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... alone. They had neighbors, of course, but none of them could tell how they contrived to subsist. The mother did no work, except for herself and her child; she had but a small garden in front of the house, the embellishment of which was her particular care; and she was surrounded with books, in the reading of which she spent all her leisure time, having little intercourse with her neighbors. The gossips that exist everywhere in society, if curious ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... I must lay aside the dream of four sweet years, and take up my lonely life without disguise or embellishment. I cannot dispute your decision. I will not by one word or look urge you to change it; for I too deeply respect the truthfulness of your character to dream that it is capable of change. I do not say ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... farewells on the part of our host, we resumed our journey, gratified at this glimpse of the interior of a native home. The Parsees are generally rich, and their houses or bungalows are large and handsome. Their adoration of light tends greatly to the embellishment of their dwellings, as to every upper panel of the wainscoting they attach a branch for wax-candles, which are lighted every night, and give to the building the appearance of being illuminated. These 'children of the light' are a fine race, very handsome and intelligent. The upper servants at Parell ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... unusually picturesque, for they have none of the geometrical formalities of the exploded school of landscape-gardening, or of Nature trimmed and tortured into artificial embellishment. We have often wondered where the old gardeners acquired their mathematical education; they must have gone about with the square and compasses in their pockets—for knowledge was then clasped ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... be the initial point of a new order of development? Away back in the days of Palmyra and Thebes the rulers of those cities seemed to understand it, if the people did not—that is to say, the value of embellishment. And had we now but one American Nebuchadnezzar we might have a Babylon at our Pacific seaport. For a six-months' world's fair any considerable city can get from the government five or ten millions. And why not? There's politics in it. Can we not have some of "those politics" ...
— Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam • Hubert Howe Bancroft
... six o'clock, roaming the fields, and plundering the hedges, far and wide, for nosegays of wild flowers, with which he would return laden, home; and which it took great care and consideration to arrange, to the best advantage, for the embellishment of the breakfast-table. There was fresh groundsel, too, for Miss Maylie's birds, with which Oliver, who had been studying the subject under the able tuition of the village clerk, would decorate the cages, in the most approved taste. When the birds were made all spruce and smart for the ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... city of America. The country immediately about it is naturally beautiful and romantic, especially up the Potomac, in the region of the Great Falls; and, though the soil be poor as compared with that of my present home, it is susceptible of easy improvement and embellishment. The social advantages cannot be surpassed even in London, Paris, or Vienna; and among the resident population, the members of the Supreme Court, Senate, House of Representatives, army, navy, and the several executive departments, may be found an intellectual class one cannot encounter ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... be simply to present it to thee plain and unadorned, without any embellishment of preface or uncountable muster of customary sonnets, epigrams, and eulogies, such as are commonly put at the beginning of books. For I can tell thee, though composing it cost me some labour, I found none greater than the making of this Preface thou art now reading. Many times did ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... held up in the air for fifteen years; the tiger hunt; the method of catching the elephant in Ceylon; the pearl fishery; Sepoy establishment; in short I must have appeared to them a Ulysses or a Sindbad, and I dare say that they thought I added from time to time a little embellishment from my imagination, tho' I can safely and solemnly aver that I did not extenuate nor exaggerate any thing, but simply related what I had ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... over life size. There were also the Colossi, and it will be seen later on that the Domopera gave him further commissions for bronze doors, Cantoria, altar and stained glass; he also was employed as an architectural expert. Years of Donatello's life were spent on the embellishment of Santa Maria del Fiore, a gigantic task which he shared with his greatest predecessors and his most able contemporaries. The task, indeed, was never fully accomplished. The Campanile is not crowned by the spire ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... the ancient religion after more than four centuries of Moslem rule. The repose now enjoyed by it under the almost entirely unseen but distinctly felt influence of the English promises to reproduce something like the palmy days of the Moguls in the matter of improvement and embellishment, with a security to life and property under fixed and just laws quite unknown ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... be able to approach the matter with an unbiased viewpoint. Don't read that hooey put out by an inspired reporter who blames the laxness of the city government; I'll give you the facts without embellishment. Nothing beyond the bare fact of the disappearance is known about the first case. Robert Prosser, aged eleven, was sent to the grocery store by his mother about six-thirty last night and failed to return. That's all we know about it, except ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... well-furnished apartment, opening on one side into an ante-room, on the other into a music-room. It had several tables stationed at convenient distances; one consecrated to the novelties of literature, another to the novelties of embellishment; others unoccupied, and at the disposal of the company. The walls were covered with a copious collection of ancient and modern books; the ancient having been selected and arranged by the Reverend Doctor Folliott. In the ante-room were card-tables; in the music-room were ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... many tricks of embellishment and decoration of which we old ones never dreamed. But I doubt if even the most favored of progressive moderns has laid eyes upon any sight more beautiful than that which I recall now, as the events of ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... The paper upon which the letters of royal and distinguished personages in the East are written is usually perfumed, and covered with curious devices in gold. This was scented with amber. The degree of embellishment is generally regulated according to ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... of the varnisher or vibrate to the hammer of the carpenter, little is thought by the public, and little need be said by the Committee. Truth, however, is not to be sacrificed to the accommodation of either, and he who should pronounce that our edifice has received its final embellishment would be disseminating falsehood without incurring favour, and risking the disgrace of detection without participating ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... has visited this country at intervals during the last ten years said, "There is no such uniformity of beautiful interiors anywhere else in the world. There are palaces in France and Italy, and great country houses in England, to the embellishment of which generations of owners have devoted the best art of their own time; but in America there is something of it everywhere. Many unpretentious houses have drawing-rooms possessing colour-decoration which ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... heart. She struggles for no kind of chimerical credit, disclaims the appearance of every affectation, and is in all things just what she seems, and others would be thought. Nature, not art, is the great standard of her manners; and her exterior wears no varnish, or embellishment, which is not the genuine signature of an open, undesigning, and benevolent mind. It is not in her power, because not in her nature, to hide, with a fawning air, and a mellow voice, her aversion or contempt, where her delicacy is hurt, here temper ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... hitched my six-shooter around to the front, resolved to find out how good I was at wing-shooting horses. But Tunemah declared he would die for his convictions. "All right," said we, "die then," with the embellishment of profanity. So we stripped him naked, and stoned him into the raging stream, where he had one chance in three of coming through alive. He might as well be dead as on the other side of that stream. He won through, however, and now I believe ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... is a mockery. Where is the woman of character who would sell the be-all and end-all of her existence for a neat catalogue of possible advantages? Where is the man who would frankly and without embellishment dare make such proposal? You point to yourself. But you have never explained yourself to Hester, and even to me you are embellishing the matter with all the might ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... more as she gazed out into the dusty grass. There were tears in her eyes, hot blinding ones that wouldn't drop for pride, but stayed and scalded. She knew the story, with all its embellishment of heartaches. She knew the ring, too. She remembered the day she had kissed and wept and fondled it, until it seemed her heart must burst under its load of grief before she took it to the pawn-broker's that another might be eased before the end came,—that ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... selling a few thousands of them to fight the battles of a bad cause on the other side of the world, he had the best of motives, and faithfully applied the proceeds to the payment of the state debt and the embellishment of the capital. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... recorded in the Pitakas differ from those of later works, whether Mahayanist literature or the Hindu Puranas and Epics, chiefly in their moderation. They may be classified under several heads. Many of them are mere embroidery or embellishment due to poetical exuberance, esteemed appropriate in those generous climates though repugnant to our chilly tastes. In every country poetry is allowed to overstep the prosaic borders of fact without criticism. When an English ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... conceive I have the authority to declare that I am counsel in this case for the defendant; therefore, my Lord, I shall not flourish away in words; words are no more than filligree work. Some people may think them an embellishment; but to me it is a matter of astonishment how any one can be so impertinent to the detriment of all rudiment. But, my Lord, this is not to be looked at through the medium of right and wrong; for the law knows no medium, and {69}right and wrong ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... fifty cents per double-columned quarto page for shaking my young boughs over his foolscap apron? Was it not an intoxicating vision of gold and glory? I should doubtless have revelled in its wealth and splendor, but for learning the fact that the fifty cents was to be considered a rhetorical embellishment, and by no means a literal expression of past fact ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... who deserve it; and to be sure, as he lives among all the great people, if there were any such, he would know them." This was all of Mr Joseph Andrews's speech which I could get him to recollect, which I have delivered as near as was possible in his own words, with a very small embellishment. But I believe the reader hath not been a little surprized at the long silence of parson Adams, especially as so many occasions offered themselves to exert his curiosity and observation. The truth is, he was fast asleep, and had so been from the beginning of the preceding narrative; ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... which the wizard transforms himself. It is to be regretted that we have no such general term in English. The bright moonlight which figures in some of these were-wolf stories is perhaps not a mere embellishment of the tale but has its own significance; for in some places it is believed that the transformation of were-wolves into their bestial shape takes place particularly at full moon. See A. de Nore, Coutumes, Mythes et ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... for he wished to tell neither truth nor falsehood about himself. The anticipation of the topic arising was not an agreeable one, and it was likewise unpleasant to dwell upon the possibility of embarrassment arising from Cleo's habit of embellishment. He wondered what her schemes were, though he could not take them seriously. And this train of thought ultimately brought back to him the fear that perhaps after all pressure might be brought to bear on him to make him avail himself of his father's purse. The ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... The true realist is such a man as Parent du Chatelet; exploring all that most tries the senses and the sentiments, and reporting all truthfully, but soberly, chastely, without needless circumstance, or picturesque embellishment, for a useful end, and not ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... She had thought that the young woman would try to adorn her habitation. That she would place flowers at the windows, and ask for new papers, curtains and carpets. When she suggested some repairs, some kind of embellishment, her niece ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... upon this man with a feeling akin to horror, no ways abated when informed that he had voluntarily submitted to this embellishment of his countenance. What an impress! Far worse than Cain's—his was perhaps a wrinkle, or a freckle, which some of our modern cosmetics might have effaced; but the blue shark was a mark indelible, which all the waters ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... rolled on and human skill advanced By almost imperceptible degrees Of slow, experimental tutorage, Along a nobler, more artistic plane, He hewed the stones in form of ornament, Sculptured device of various design, Embellishment of cunning symmetry, Man's first attempt to ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... this is the most unfavourable for a historian; that no reader of sentiment and imagination can be entertained or interested by a detail of transactions such as these, which admit of no warmth, no colouring, no embellishment; a detail of which only serves to exhibit an inanimate picture of tasteless vice and mean degeneracy." On the contrary,—and Smollett might have discovered it, if he had been in the humour,—the subject is capable of inspiring as much interest as ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... us in his preface that his province is to write an anglers' guide without embellishment. It would have been well if he had adhered to this plan. After some pages of high-flown periods he informs us that twenty-six years ago fly-fishing was in its infancy, being scarcely known in America, and but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... my first steps had been to ask Aunt Helen to come and live with me; to which she finally consented, though the consequent necessity of disestablishing her cosey little parlor, upon the embellishment of which she had spent the overflow of her income for years, cost her many a pang. But she was a far-seeing woman, and had I dare say, while accepting my offer, a delightful vision of helping me to live up to ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... gliding on the waters, a fine procession, too, is seen, village nymphs strewing flowers before priests, brides, bridegrooms, and their attendants, who, all entering into the temple of Hymen, disappear from the delightful eye. The painting and embellishment of this front are most masterly, and reflect the highest honour on the artists by whom they were executed; and the whole view is terminated with fountains, waterfalls, shepherds, shepherdesses, and other peasants, as pastoral sports and rural ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... attentions which they lavished upon Adrienne, there seemed to be at least as much of affection as of deference and respect. They appeared to derive an ardent pleasure from the services which they rendered to their lovely mistress. One would have thought that they attached to the dressing and embellishment of her person all the merits and the enjoyment arising from the execution of a work of art, in the accomplishing of which, fruitful of delights, they were stimulated by the passions of love, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... without quite understanding it. Allowances, large allowances, she knew, must be made for the ideas of those who spoke. She heard it all under embellishment. All that sounded extravagant or irrational in the progress of the reconciliation might have no origin but in the language of the relators. Still, however, she had the sensation of there being something more than immediately appeared, in Mr Elliot's ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... the breast left without any shelf. Many simple variations with the informal brick chimney breast will occur to everyone. In general, with these summer shacks or bungalows, the fireplace is the chief architectural feature of the living-room and for that reason will stand a moderate amount of embellishment, but this latter should take the form of a slightly better finish of the materials used throughout the room rather than the introduction of more elaborate ...
— Making a Fireplace • Henry H. Saylor
... articles—from the deep damnation of the heavy black capitals in which he printed the name Francis Todd, to the small caps in which appeared the words, "sentenced to solitary confinement for life," and which he flanked with two terrible indices. But the articles did not need such embellishment. They were red hot branding irons without them. One can almost smell the odor of burning flesh as he reads the words: "It is no worse to fit out piratical cruisers or to engage in the foreign slave-trade, than to pursue a similar trade along our coast; and the men who have the wickedness ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... the imaginary flowers which adorned the chain, not that man should wear his fetters denuded of fanciful embellishment, but that he should throw off the chain, and break ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... soon added to the enrichment of these golden spangles, plates, or discs, which were enlarged to receive a design.[213] Of this style of embellishment we know none so striking as the saddle in the Museum at Munich, said to have been taken from a Turkish general in the fifteenth century. This is Italian of the finest cinque-cento style: blue velvet, ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... finest pears, and the crop increased yearly. The doctor pointed out repeatedly the excellence of his culture in contrast with the American mode, which leaves the weeds to grow undisturbed among the trees, and disregards entirely all regularity and beauty. He, on the contrary, insisted no less on embellishment than on neatness and order; and this was no vain boast. Carefully-kept walks led through the grounds; verdant turf, flowerbeds and charming shady arbors met us at every turn; there were long beds planted with flourishing currant, raspberry and blackberry bushes, and large tracts set with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... infant liberty in the New World, as in the Memoirs of the patriot Miller;—the daring and recklessness of crime, as in the vivid sketch of First and Last;—the picturesque country and ceremonies of Arabia and its religious people, as drawn by Burckhardt;—and the architectural embellishment of the Metropolis, as shown ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... Coffee-house, Front Street," was published amidst preparations for war. The publisher apologized for lack of variety in the year's work, by saying that we in America "are deprived of one considerable fund of entertainment which contributes largely to the embellishment of the magazines in Europe, viz., discoveries of curious remains of antiquity.... We can look no further back than to the rude manners and customs of the savage aborigines of North America ... but the principal difficulty in our way is the present importunate situation ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... Madame S. de R——d is not more distinguished by its profuse decoration, than by the fine taste which has guided the vast expenditure. Its halls of arabesque are almost without a rival; there is not the slightest embellishment in which the hand and feeling of art are not recognised. The rooms were very crowded; everybody distinguished in Paris was there: the lady of the Court, the duchess of the Faubourg, the wife of the financier, the constitutional Throne, the old Monarchy, ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... note will, if he also possesses a proper taste, more thoroughly enjoy the whole, so he who examines each part of a fine view may also thoroughly comprehend the full and combined effect. Hence, a traveller should be a botanist, for in all views plants form the chief embellishment. Group masses of naked rock even in the wildest forms, and they may for a time afford a sublime spectacle, but they will soon grow monotonous. Paint them with bright and varied colours, as in Northern Chile, they will become fantastic; clothe them with vegetation, they must ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... seemed vaguely to have lost. And then she began at the beginning—with her daughter's engagement to young Andrew McCrae, her happiness, her security—and quietly, with only now and then a slight tension of her body and her voice, she told it all to them, exactly as it happened, without plea or embellishment. She had only one stress, and that she tried to make reasonable ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Spanish conquistadores, in particular, lived in an atmosphere of fancy. They looked at American savages and their ways through Spanish spectacles; and knowing nothing of the modern science of ethnology, quite misunderstood the import of what they saw. Beset by the national vice of flowery embellishment, they were also pardonably ignorant of savage life, and had an indiscriminating thirst for the marvelous. Thus, we see plainly how the Cibola myth arose and grew; and why most official Spanish reports of the conquest of the Aztecs were so distorted by false ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... volume of the MIRROR with an embellishment quite novel in design from the generality of our graphic illustrations, but one which, we flatter ourselves, will excite interest among our friends, especially after so recently, presenting them with a Portrait and Memoir of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... to have stolen some public gold, with the connivance of Pericles, for the embellishment of ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... merely nominal allowance of costume tolerated by this crustacean professor, his chest and arms were entirely covered with a wild arabesque of tattoo-work, in blue and red. Many and original artists must have been employed in the embellishment of Robert's tawny hide. The one to whose sense of the fitness of things was intrusted the illustration of his right arm had seized boldly upon the oval protuberance of the biceps, a few skilfully disposed dots and dashes upon which had converted ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... effect? As the instinct of the true Parisienne teaches her the mystery of setting off the graces of her person by the fascinations of dress, so the instinct of the nation to set off the city by the fascinations of architecture and embellishment. Hence a chief superiority of Paris to London. The Seine is straight, and its banks are laid out in broad terraces on either side, called quais, lined with her stateliest palaces and gardens. The Thames forms an elbow, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is no arising emergency for which you are unprepared," she said at length. "It now befalls that you may be put to a speedy test. Is the nature of this imagined scene"—thus she indicated the embellishment of ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... element in a small company; the interest never flagged when he talked. Then, too, Millard had a knack of repeating in a way that seemed almost accidental, or at least purely incidental, what this or that noted person had said to him. It was in appearance only an embellishment of his talk, but it served to keep up a belief in the breadth, and especially the height, of his acquaintance. If he had only been presented to Mrs. Manorhouse, and she had repeated her stock witticism ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... will remember Virginia Water as the favourite retreat of the late King; and this embellishment, (if so artificial a term can be applied to a cascade,) was made at the bidding of the Royal taste. It is perhaps the most successful of all the contrivances hereabout to aid the natural enchantment of the scene. We believe ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... variants, but in every instance I have retained that particular version which seemed to me to be the most characteristic, and have given it without embellishment and without exaggeration. ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... of annuals are largely employed in the embellishment of flower gardens, they are adapted for many uses to which they may with advantage be more frequently applied. A few misconceptions prevail as to the relative merits of this class of plants. By some they are regarded as 'weedy' and ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... settlers who had "turned out" growled or chaffed, according to temperament, as they followed suit, and the natives spent half an hour in uproarious merriment over Booby's dramatic representation of the whole incident, which he performed with graphic power and much embellishment. ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne |
