"Gaudy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this, my child. Not under such a plebeian's roof shouldst thou have lodged, nor from a stranger's board been fed: but at Rome, my last relative worthy of the trust is dead;—and at the worst, obscure honesty is better than gaudy crime. Thy spirit troubles me already. Back, my child; I must to my closet, and ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... a joyous dance, and the dresses were bright, Such as never were known till that famous night; For the gems and the flowers that shone in the scene, O'ermatched the regalia of princess and queen. No gaudy slave to a fair one's brow Was the rose, or the ruby, or emerald now, But lighted with souls by the playful elves, The brilliants ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... object of a passion that marked their religion, their institutions, their literature, and their art. Their virtues and their vices turned upon it. Hence the golden mean is eminently a Greek conception, a leading idea of the Hellenic race. The Greek hated a thing overdone, a gaudy ornament, a proud title, a fulsome compliment, a high-flown speech, a wordy peroration. Nothing too much was the inscription over the lintel of the national sanctuary at Delphi. It is the surpassing grace of Greek art of the best period, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... unfolded, and rendered according to the genuine and natural importance of words, will appear to be inconsistencies and absurdities.' Nor would he have gone very far astray had he put philosophy and politics under the same category. Strip the gaudy dress and trappings from an expression, and it will have a most marked result. Analysis is a terrible humiliation to your mysticism and your grandiloquence—and an awful bore to those who depend for effect on either. We have something to say hereafter on those astonishingly profound oracles ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... minstrels becomes obsolete. Their versification, which, having received its laws only from the ear, abounds in irregularities, seems licentious and uncouth. Their simplicity appears beggarly when compared with the quaint forms and gaudy coloring of such artists as Cowley and Gongora. The ancient lays, unjustly despised by the learned and polite, linger for a time in the memory of the vulgar, and are at length too often irretrievably lost. We cannot wonder that the ballads of ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... trust, and in vain to relieve. A few years ago two single- horse chairs were imported from Boston, to the great offence of these prudent citizens; nothing appeared to them more culpable than the use of such gaudy painted vehicles, in contempt of the more useful and more simple single-horse carts of their fathers. This piece of extravagant and unknown luxury almost caused a schism, and set every tongue a-going; some predicted the approaching ruin of those families that had imported them; others ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... may fetch f. 140. These articles are dispensed for medical effect by scraping off a little, which is taken internally with water. On their return trip the Dayaks bring salt from the government's monopoly, gaudy cloths for the women, beads, ivory rings for bracelets and armlets, and also rice for the journey. Should the supply of rice become exhausted they eat ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... tense-faced Hebrew girl of eighteen or nineteen came rushing in, carrying a wire basket full of typewritten sheets. She was as gaunt as a plucked spring chicken, and her cheap, gaudy clothes might have been thrown on her. She looked as if she were running to catch a train and in mortal dread of missing it. While Miss Devine examined the pages in the basket, Becky stood with her shoulders ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... others, to be exposed to the influence of cold, frosty nights, as when the "fell destroyer" commences to exert its power all plants touched by it rapidly decay. Gladioli will now be clothed in the full glory of their gaudy, but handsome dress; they are comparatively easy to manage in well-drained spots, and being such continuous bloomers, at least three or four or even half a dozen should be in every small garden. In winter they must be covered by about six inches of litter; but in cold and ill-drained soils it will ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... wonderful garden is here, Planted and trimmed for my Little-Oh-Dear! Posies so gaudy and grass of such brown— Search ye the country and hunt ye the town And never ye'll meet with a garden so queer As this one I've made for ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... heart, 'tis true, has often ranged, Like bees on gaudy flowers, And many a thousand loves has changed, Till it ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... and on us shine In glory and in grace; The gaudy world grows pale before The beauty of ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... virulence in the avenue of Atocha, and girdle the city at last with a belt of booths. While they last they give great animation and spirit to the street life of the town. You can scarcely make your way among the heaps of gaudy shawls and handkerchiefs, cheap laces and illegitimate jewels, that cumber the pavement. When the Jews were driven out of Spain, they left behind the true ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... they were carrying Doctor Sturk—that gaudy and dismal image—up his own staircase—his pale wife sobbing and shivering on the landing, among whispered ejaculations from the maids, and the speechless wonder of the awe-stricken children, staring through the banisters—to lay him in the bed where at last he is ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... made some hesitating remark about the weather—but he had the curious and unpleasant sensation of her seeing through him most thoroughly and clearly. He felt ridiculously like a captive, and his doubts as to his immediate escape increased. The gaudy drawing-room, the dingy stairs, the gas hissing in the hall, had been, in all conscience, depressing enough, but now this heavy, mute, ominous woman, trailing her black robes so funereally behind her, seemed, to his excited fancy, some implacable Frankenstein created ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... intricate a pattern. If it was cloudy, still, glancing over the cornfields, just as you turned partly round to look, there seemed a brilliant streak of sunshine across them. This was a broad band of charlock: its light yellow is so gaudy and glaring in the mass that as it first catches the eye it seems as if the land were lit up by the sun. After it the buttercups appear of a quiet colour, like dead ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... says that Jerusalem is disappointing he generally means that the popular worship there is weak and degraded, and especially that the religious art is gaudy and grotesque. In so far as there is any kind of truth in this, it is still true that the critic seldom sees the whole truth. What is wrong with the critic is that he does not criticise himself. He does not ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... on Saturday afternoon; hence the virulence of prohibition among the peasantry. The hard-working householder who, on some bitter evening, glances over the Saturday Evening Post for a square and honest look at his wife is envious of those gaudy drummers who go gallivanting about the country with scarlet girls; hence the Mann act. If these deviltries were equally open to all men, and all men were equally capable of appreciating them, their ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... along with the rest. Another man held to the high horn with both hands and weaved back and forth while a comrade riding beside him strove to keep him from toppling to the ground. Drew had an impression of bright, almost gaudy uniforms. The men of the Stronghold poured out to take the horses, helping down more than one blood-stained soldier. Their leader, a slender man with dusty gold lace banding his high collar, came ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellow'd to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... rose, wrapped in a green surtout. Doubtless in Eden thou didst blush as bright As these, thy puny brethren; and thy breath Sweetened the fragrance of her spicy air; But now thou seemest like a bankrupt beau, Stripped of his gaudy hues and essences, And growing portly ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... way to his room, stopped for a moment or two, to shout at them, "I say, the mater and Mary've come up from Devon. I got a wire this afternoon. I'm not grubbing with you to-night. They want to go to a theatre, and I've got to climb into gaudy garments and go ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... instead of one, and all kinds of seeds, perfumes and jewels, a scimitar, a bow, a litter, a golden vase, and a blazing fire, and amongst the living implements of the pageant, instead of the bards, gaudy courtesans, and besides the eight damsels, professors of divinity, Brahmanas, cows and pure kinds of wild beasts and birds, the chiefs of town and country-people and the citizens with ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... plainly the boatmen. It could be seen that they had decked themselves out for the occasion. Their heads were bound with bright-colored fillets, their necks with gay scarves. The paddles were adorned with gaudy woollen streamers. New leggings, of holiday pattern, were intermittently visible on the bowsmen and steersmen as they half rose to give ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... pamphlets of that epoch, there is one, however, as to which, all things considered, I will not attempt to defend Bailly. He accepted a livery from the city; on this point no blame was attached to him; but the colours of the livery were very gaudy. Perhaps the inventors of these bright shades had imagined, that the insignia of the first magistrate of the metropolis, in a ceremony, in a crowd, should, like the light from a Pharos, strike even inattentive eyes. But these explanations regard ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... Ella—there she does reign undisputed," he acknowledged, following her glance about the library, which wore an air of permanent habitation, of slowly formed intimacy with its inmates, in marked contrast to the gaudy impersonality of the ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... King Eyo had provided her with the Royal canoe, a hollow tree-trunk twenty feet long, and she lay in comfort under the cool cover of a framework of palm leaves, freshly lopped from the tree, and shut off from the crew by a gaudy curtain. Beneath was a piece of Brussels carpet, and about her were arranged no fewer than six pillows, for the well-to-do natives of Calabar made larger and more skilful use of these than ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... wearing an apron of cotton-cloth at four francs an ell, the rain was falling on the grandmother's bed and the little children's cradles. The roof and walls were repaired; we supplied the materials and paid the workmen; but no more money for gaudy aprons. In another case, an old woman had been reduced to beggary because she had listened too well to her heart, and given all she had to her children, who had turned her out of doors, or made her life so unbearable that she ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... 'Algerians' whom one finds all over France, and who are the most persistent, insolent and amusing of pedlars. I remember one who used to haunt the repetitions at the Alcazar at Tours,—but there! This individual was like the originals, yet unlike,—he was less gaudy, and a good deal dingier, than his Gallic prototypes are apt to be. Then he wore a burnoose,—the yellow, grimy-looking article of the Arab of the Soudan, not the spick and span Arab of the boulevard. Chief difference of all, his face was clean shaven,—and ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... the sun, and strewing the ground with a thick carpet of palm-leaves. Ere long, a cavalcade of between thirty and forty amazons - they all rode astride - came racing up the valley at full speed, their merry shouts proclaiming their approach. Gaudy strips of MARO were loosely folded around their legs for skirts. Their pretty little straw hats trimmed with ribbons, or their uncovered heads with their long hair streaming in the wind, confined only by a wreath of fresh orange flowers, added ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... of the devil, as being the most appropriate, and mounting a jackass, he rode down in his dress to the masquerade. But, as Jack was just going in, he perceived a yellow carriage, with two footmen in gaudy liveries, draw up, and, with his usual politeness, when the footmen opened the door, offered his arm to hand out a fat old dowager covered with diamonds; the lady looked up, and perceiving Jack covered with hair, with his trident and his horns and long tail, gave a loud scream, and would ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... figures, all gaudy and bright and glittering, crowded into his vision. He tried to raise himself to his elbow, a fierce wave of embarrassment rushing over him. Some one supported him from behind. As he came to a sitting position, ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... mind Had left his low terrestrial cares behind. But what an awful change of earth and sky All in a moment pass'd before my eye! Now rigid winter stretch'd her brumal reign With frown Gorgonean over land and main; And Flora now her gaudy mantle spread, And many a blushing rose adorn'd her bed: The momentary seasons seem'd to fleet From bright solstitial dews to winter's driving sleet. In circle multiform, and swift career: A wondrous tale, untold to mortal ear Before: yet reason's calm unbiass'd view Must soon pronounce ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... of his room was open; he went in. A gnarled old woman sat on the edge of the bed; a female consoler was on either side. At the sight of Suvaroff the mourner rose and stood trembling before him, rolling a gaudy handkerchief into ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... long suffering with thy good works. Florence,[15] while yet she was confined within the ancient boundary which still contains the bell that summons her to prayer, abided in peace, for she was chaste and sober. She had no trinkets of chains then, no head-tires, no gaudy sandals, no girdles more worth looking at than the wearers. Fathers were not then afraid of having daughters, for fear they should want dowries too great, and husbands before their time. Families were in no haste to separate; ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... gigantic stature, dressed in coarse canvas breeches, and with a handkerchief of gaudy dye twisted about his head. His bold features wore the usual Indian expression of saturnine imperturbability, and he half sat, half reclined upon the log as motionless as a piece of carven bronze, staring at Landless with ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... pleasing the eye, may be very definitely said to be the aim of ornamental art, it is difficult to arrive at a universal standard as to what constitutes beauty. What pleases one person will not always please another. The child loves glittering objects and gaudy combinations, which the mature taste of the man declares extravagant and unharmonious. Savages decorate their weapons, utensils, and their own persons with ornaments that appear uncouth ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... of Chioggia fluttered like gaudy butterflies before them, dipping their wings of orange and crimson and every conceivable sunset tint to catch the breeze; and the air was suddenly vibrant with sounds of traffic and busy life. Men called to each ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... joyes, The brood of folly without father bred, How little you bested, Or fill the fixed mind with all your toyes; Dwell in som idle brain And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, As thick and numberless As the gay motes that people the Sun Beams, Or likest hovering dreams The fickle Pensioners of Morpheus train. 10 But hail thou Goddess, sage and holy, Hail divinest Melancholy Whose Saintly visage ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... fell back to a high ridge, on the crest of which they marched and countermarched, threatening to charge down its face. Most of them were naked, and as their persons were painted in gaudy colors and decorated with strips of red flannel, red blankets and gay war-bonnets, their appearance presented a scene of picturesque barbarism, fascinating but repulsive. As they numbered about six hundred, the chances of whipping them did not seem overwhelmingly in our favor, yet Nesmith ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... supports than have yet been assigned to it. If it be a falshood, the sooner it is swept away to the gulph of oblivion the better. Let the inquisitive and the studious fix their minds on more substantial topics, instead of being led away by gaudy and deceitful appearances. The human head, that crowning capital of the column of man, is too interesting a subject, to be the proper theme of every dabbler. And it is obvious, that the professors of this so called discovery, if they be rash and groundless in their assertions, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... days of the Roman empire the simplicity and purity in decorative design that the Romans obtained from the Greeks, gave way to the ostentatious love of gaudy decoration taught at Byzantium. Jewellery became complicated in design; enrichment was considered before elegance. The old simple form of finger-ring varied much. Fig. 104 is given by Montfaucon. Fig. 105 is in the ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... out gaudy arm bands, and the three fastened them in place. Nearly everyone else already had them showing. The Planters were moving efficiently. They were grouped around the booths, and they had begun to line up their men, putting them in position to begin ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... network, and hanging over our heads in rich festoons or tendrils swaying in the breeze. There were trailers, i.e., (Freycinetia scandens) with heavy knotted stems, as thick as a frigate's stoutest hawser, coiling up to the tops of tall ohias with tufted leaves like yuccas, and crimson spikes of gaudy blossom. The shining festoons of the yam and the graceful trailers of the maile (Alyxia Olivaeformis), a sweet scented vine, from which the natives make garlands, and glossy leaved climbers hung from tree to tree, and to brighten all, huge morning glories of a heavenly blue opened a thousand ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... something French, and spelt, b-o-u-d-o-i-r,) and was waited upon by handsome pages, and took her airing on a dappled-gray palfrey, attended by trusty and obsequious grooms; when Sir Knight, followed by his sturdy henchmen, rode forth in gay and gaudy attire, with glittering helmet and cuirass, and entered the lists, and bravely fought for his fair lady's fame. She spoke with fervid eloquence, and with a glibness that betrayed a very recent perusal of the tournament-scene in Ivanhoe. I was about to reply, and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... were borne in mind by Mr Brooke. The rajah was now at Sar[a]wak, and the adventurer determined to enter the river of that name, and to proceed as far as the town. He was well supplied with presents; gaudy silks of Surat, scarlet cloth, stamped velvet, gunpowder, confectionery, sweets, ginger, jams, dates, and syrups for the governor, and a huge box of China toys for the governor's children. From Mr Brooke's own diary, we extract the following account of his position and feelings at this ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... then flew up with a gaudy feather, dyed blue, which belonged to me. I recognised it. It had come out of the brush with which the girl breaks the china ornaments in our drawing-room. At any other time I should have been glad to see him flying off with the whole thing, handle included. But now I felt the theft ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... in the most extraordinary, amusing, yet harmless ways. He never could pass by an old, bent, used-up nail, bit of string, pin or a straight stick without picking it up and putting it away. The collar of his coat and front of his gaudy flannel vest were stuck full of pointless pins and eyeless needles. The shed opposite the house was a museum of rubbish, odds and ends of the most worthless articles neatly sorted, tied up in small ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... who seemed to await the prince: a lady, who appeared to be the mistress of the mansion; a young girl apparently about the age of Edwy, who, calling her his fair cousin, saluted her fondly; and two or three youths, whose gaudy dress and affected manners were strongly in contrast with the stern simplicity ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... boy would as soon have thought of his father's doing a wrong thing as of his brother's doing it; and his brother was a calm light of common-sense, of justice, of truth, while he was a fantastic flicker of gaudy purposes which he wished to make shine before men in their fulfilment. His brother was always doing for him and for the younger children; while my boy only did for himself; he had a very gray moustache before he began to have any conception of the fact that he was sent ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... drawings and publications of the Sixties. When J. and I now allowed ourselves an afternoon out, it was to wander from Holywell Street to Mile End Road, from Piccadilly to Holborn, searching the booksellers' barrows and shops for the unsightly, gaudy, badly-bound volumes that contained the illustrations of the Sixties—illustrations ranked amongst the finest ever made. Our bookshelves that are still filled with them represent one of the most animated phases of the Nineties. And we looked upon the "men of the Sixties" as masters, among them ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... however, ask himself candidly, how much of his admiration is dependent merely upon the picture being larger than any other in the room, and having bright masses of red and blue in it: let him be assured that the picture is in reality not one whit the better for being either large, or gaudy in color; and he will then be better disposed to give the pains necessary to discover the merit of the more profound and solemn works of Bellini and Tintoret. One of the most wonderful works in the whole gallery is Tintoret's "Death of Abel," ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... doing something to the flower's advantage with a pair of scissors. As Bess hung over the leafy object of her solicitude, with her yellow wealth of hair coiled round and round, she herself looked not unlike a graceful, gaudy chrysanthemum. This poetic reflection, which would have been creditable to Mr. Fopling, never occurred to Richard; he was too full of Dorothy to have room for Bess. However, the good Bess found no fault with his loving preoccupation; she, too, was pensively thinking on poor ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... worship were goats; those who came were sheep. In vain might you delude yourself that you were a camel, horse, or bird of plumage; to Grace's thinking, there were no such animals in the religious world—her clear eye made nothing of hump, flowing mane, or gaudy feathers; that eye looked dispassionately for the wool upon your back—or the beard ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... no longer attend the sale of Malvolio's busts and statues, and gaudy books. I will fly to the Strand, or ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... clouds are apt to make reflection, [Footnote: Reflection of the sun.] And frequently produce infection: So Celia, with small provocation, Blasts every neighbor's reputation. The clouds delight in gaudy show, (For they, like ladies, have their bow;) The gravest matron* will confess, *[Footnote: Motherly woman.] That she herself is fond of dress. Observe the clouds in pomp array'd, What various colors are display'd; The pink, the ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... tuition, men began to understand that the resources of their native language were less limited than they had supposed, and that it was possible to convey their impressions with accuracy without the aid of a gaudy ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... high fireplace with its roaring flame were four men playing cards. They sat around a table, and three in appearance were villainous cutthroats, probably Mexicans by their dark visages, swaggeringly armed with knives and revolvers, with gaudy handkerchiefs knotted ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... artillery and supplies. This man, a middle-aged and rather plain sort of fellow—and the youthful Virginia colonel whom he may have met then for the first time—possibly attracted very little attention in the gaudy military array. But American history could ill have spared either Benjamin ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... regular palace of a place, with a splendid vestibule with walls and pavement of different-hued marbles, with palm trees over-shadowing a little fountain tinkling in a jade basin, with servants in gaudy liveries. The reception clerk overwhelmed me with the cordiality of his welcome to my companion and "the American gentleman," and after a certain amount of coquettish protestations about the difficulty of providing ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... is perfect about your magazine except that there are not enough stories in each issue. The uneven edges are just fine, for it makes the pages easier to turn. The covers are not too gaudy. The covers should depict a thrilling incident in a story; ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... at him as she answered. "Can't you look at me, and see? Starving!" She eyed his gaudy watch and chain greedily. "Money don't seem to be scarce with you. Have you made your fortune ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... of my life there, if such were the will of God. I sang songs of joy, which the maid who served me learned by heart, as fast as I made them. We together sang thy praises, O, my God! The stones of my prison looked in my eyes like rubies; I esteemed them more than all the gaudy brilliancies of a vain world. My heart was full of that joy which Thou givest to them who love Thee, in the ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... is quick with life. Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers They flutter over, gentle quadrupeds, And birds, that scarce have learned the fear of man, Are here, and sliding reptiles of the ground, Startlingly beautiful. The graceful deer Bounds to the wood at my approach. The bee, A more adventurous colonist than man, With whom he came ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... firing, I saw men in gray and brown clothes, with trailed muskets, running through the camp on our right, and I saw something else, too, that sent a chill all through me. It was a kind of flag I had never seen before. It was a gaudy sort of thing, with red bars. It flashed over me in a second that that thing was a Rebel flag. It was not more than sixty yards to the right. The smoke around it was low and dense and kept me from seeing the man who was carrying it, but I plainly saw the banner. It was going fast, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... 'profane,' of such scraps as might please a sick child, pictures from worn-out books or advertisements, which Ethel was colouring—Aubrey volunteering aid that was received rather distrustfully, as his love of effect caused him to array the model school-children in colours gaudy enough, as Gertrude complained, 'to corrupt a saint.' Nor was his dilettante help more appreciated at a small stand, well provided with tiny drawers, and holding a shaded lamp, according to Gertrude, 'burning something horrible ending in gen, that would kill anybody but Tom, who managed it,' but ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... most tangled traffic—there has hung for many years the painted signboard of a veterinary surgeon. Its artist was in the first flourish of youth. Old age had not yet chilled him when he mixed his gaudy colors. The surgeon's name is set up in modest letters, but the horse below flames with color. What a flaring nostril! What an eager eye! How arched the neck! Here is a wrath and speed unknown to the quadrupeds of this present ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... those on the left were black with shadow. What! was that the Corso then, that semi-obscure trench, close pressed by high and heavy house-fronts, that mean roadway where three vehicles could scarcely pass abreast, and which serried shops lined with gaudy displays? There was neither space, nor far horizon, nor refreshing greenery such as the fashionable drives of Paris could boast! Nothing but jostling, crowding, and stifling on the little footways under the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... toward them with a callow youth near her own age. Her dress was some soft, pale blue material that was neither gaudy nor fantastical. But it was far from modest. Lane had to echo Blair's eulogy of this young specimen of the new America. She simply verified and stabilized the assertion that physically the newer generations ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... the palm and cocoa-tree, the rice-field, the tank, the huge trees, older than the Mogul Empire, under which the village crowds assemble, the thatched roof of the peasant's hut, the rich tracery of the mosque where the Imam prays with his face to Mecca, the drums, the banners and gaudy idols, the devotee swinging in the air, the graceful maiden with the pitcher on her head, descending the steps to the riverside, the black faces, the long beards, the yellow streaks of sect, the turbans and the flowing robes, the spears and silver maces, the elephants with ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... the pretentiousness of a newly carpentered Western American settlement can only be compared to the "side" of a nigger wench, weighted down under the gaudy burden of her Emancipation Day holiday gown. Although, in many cases, the analogy is not without aptness, yet, in frequent instances, it would be a distinct libel. At any rate, Barnriff boasted nothing of pretentiousness. Certainly Barnriff was not newly carpentered. Probably ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... the gallery; and this room opens into others which run all round the house. The floors are marble or stucco—the roofs beams of pale blue wood placed transversely, and the whole has an air of agreeable coolness. Everything is handsome without being gaudy, and admirably adapted for the climate. The sleeping apartments have no windows, and are dark and cool, while the drawing-rooms have large windows down to the floor, with green shutters kept closed till ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... with false pearls. The native princes do these things; and why should not he? Why, Sir, simply because he is not a native prince, but an English Governor General. When the people of India see a Nabob or a Rajah in all his gaudy finery, they bow to him with a certain respect. They know that the splendour of his garb indicates superior rank and wealth. But if Sir Charles Metcalfe had so bedizened himself, they would have thought that he was out of his wits. They are not ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... flattering to his head than to his heart. He is a person, however, that improves with acquaintance, and is probably more intelligent than he looks. He seems to be living here in a very plain and unpretentious manner; no gaudy stained glass, no tinsel, no mirror-work, no vain gew-gaws of any description impart a cheap and garish glitter to the place; no gorgeous apparel bedecks his ample proportions. Clad in the ordinary dress of a well-to-do Persian nobleman, Heshmet-i-Molk, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... are azure with bluebells, among which the brake is thrusting itself up; others, again, are red with ragged robins, and the fields adjacent fill the eye with the gaudy glare of yellow charlock. The note of the cuckoo sounds above the rushing of the train, and the larks may be seen, if not heard, rising high over the wheat. Some birds, indeed, find the bushes by the railway the quietest place in which to build ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... palace and a prison on either hand;" but, in its stead, we could gaze at the festooned chains of Hammersmith Suspension Bridge in all its simple beauty, and see the Soapworks and the Mall on the hither and further shore. Our course led, not through serpentine canals and past Doges' palaces, gaudy with the lavish adornments of tricky Byzantine architecture; nor could we expect to see "lions" as historical as those which ornament the facade of Saint Mark's. However, as we glided up against the tide, in slow but steady progress, by willowy banks and osiered eyots, our boat yawning in and out ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... wild While the heaven-born Child All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies Nature in awe to Him Had doff'd her gaudy trim, With her great Master so to sympathise: It was no season then for her To wanton with the sun, her ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... company. Sometimes they were permitted to pass in their wares only through a window in the outer part of the fort. A beaver skin was the regular standard of value, and in return for their skins the savages received all manner of gaudy trinkets and also useful merchandise, chiefly knives, hatchets, guns, ammunition, and blankets. But before the end of the eighteenth century the activity of the Nor'westers had forced the Hudson's Bay Company out of its aristocratic slothfulness. The savages were now sought out in their prairie ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... the winter wild While the heaven-born Child All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies; Nature in awe to Him Had doffed her gaudy trim, With her great Master so to sympathize: It was no season then for her To wanton with the sun, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... marks an epoch. He was the son of one of the first "friends of the negro," whose honest industry and philanthropy were darkened by a religion of sombre smugness, which almost makes one fancy they loved the negro for his colour, and would have turned away from red or yellow men as needlessly gaudy. But his wit and his politics (combined with that dropping of the Puritan tenets but retention of the Puritan tone which marked his class and generation), lifted him into a sphere which was utterly opposite to that from which he came. This ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... all the evils of our anti-social system, and the tables are by far the least serious among them. It is an Influence for Good, because it mirrors our own world in all its naked, all its over-draped hideousness. There it rears its meretricious head, that gaudy Palace of Sin, appropriately decked in its Haussmanesque architecture and its coquettish gardens, attracting to itself all the idle, all the vicious, all the rich, all the unworthy, from every corner of Europe and America. But Monte Carlo didn't make them; it only gathers ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... had much better taste in selecting materials for dresses than we had supposed. They do not generally like gaudy colors, but prefer neat, quiet patterns. They are, however, very fond of all kinds of jewelry. I once asked the children in school what their ears were for. "To put ring in," promptly replied ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... specialists. Through a too common illusion, simplicity and beauty are considered as rivals. But simple is not synonymous with ugly, any more than sumptuous, stylish and costly are synonymous with beautiful. Our eyes are wounded by the crying spectacle of gaudy ornament, venal art and senseless and graceless luxury. Wealth coupled with bad taste sometimes makes us regret that so much money is in circulation to provoke the creation of such a prodigality of horrors. Our contemporary art suffers as much from the want of simplicity as does ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... blossom that exhaled a mingled odor of sea and shore. Hurlstone pointed out the cross as one of the earliest outposts of the Church on the edge of the unclaimed heathen wilderness. It was hung with strings of gaudy shells and feathers, which Hurlstone explained were votive offerings in which their pagan superstitions still mingled with their ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... vie with the Arcadian scenes which encircled the rude cottages of those men. Their humble dwellings were the abode of virtues, rarely found in the "cloud capt towers and [102] gorgeous palaces" of splendid ambition. And when peace reigned around them, neither the gaudy trappings of wealth, nor the insignia of office, nor the slaked thirst for distinction, could have added to the happiness ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... our amazing community, an evil is at work which gathers power daily and which is actually assassinating, as it were, every moral quality that has made England strong and beneficent. Begin with a picture. The long curved counter glistens under the flare of the gas; the lines of gaudy bottles gleam like vulgar, sham jewelry; the glare, the glitter, the garish refulgence of the place dazzle the eye, and the sharp acrid whiffs of vile odour fall on the senses with a kind of mephitic influence. ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... was fortunate enough to have a bed in the butterfly-room, so called on account of a gaudy wall paper, whereon Camberwell Beauties disported themselves among roses and lilies in a strictly conventional style of art. The butterfly-room was the most fashionable and altogether popular dormitory at the Manor. It ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... recapture The first fine careless rapture! And, though the fields look rough with hoary dew, All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower —Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... arrived at the big fort on June 20th. The settlers were thus given ample time for preparation, as the long siege did not begin until September 7th. The fort was invested by a powerful force flying the English flag—four hundred and forty-four savages gaudy in the vermilion and ochre of their war-paint, and eleven Frenchmen, the whole being commanded by the French-Canadian, Captain Dagniaux de Quindre, and the great Indian Chief, Black-fish who had adopted Boone as a son. In the effort to ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... edge off one's perceptions. Though not the case with all the fine churches and cathedrals of Normandy, yet with an unpleasantly large proportion—unfortunately including the magnificent Church of St Ouen at Rouen—there is beyond the gaudy tinsel that crowds the altars, an untidiness that detracts from the sense of reverence that stately Norman or Gothic does not fail to inspire. In the north transept of St Ouen, some of the walls and pillars have at various times been made to bear large printed notices which have been pasted ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... necessity and the difficulty, we cannot but congratulate Mr Leslie—notwithstanding the peculiarity of the dresses, and the quantity of white to be introduced, this is by no means an unpleasantly coloured picture. There is much richness, in fact; and the artist has, with very great skill, avoided a gaudy effect. So the Battle of Waterloo must derive its great value from the truth of the portraits. It is any thing, however, but an heroic representation of a battle. Perhaps the object of the painter was confined ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... usual, engaged in the Quarrel, and supported the several Pretensions of the Daughters with all that ill-chosen Sort of Expence which is common with People of plentiful Fortunes and mean Taste. The Girls preceded their Parents like Queens of May, in all the gaudy Colours imaginable, on every Sunday to Church, and were exposed to the Examination of the Audience ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... by the governor, was very scantily furnished: a few old chairs, a couple of tables, and the walls whitewashed and decorated with prints of the Virgin Mary and his excellency's patron saint. The house of the priests, which adjoined the cathedral, was in much better repair, and more gaudy in ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... inches high. Bands of silk, supplied by the spinnerets, unite the pieces, so that the whole resembles a coarse fabric. Without being absolutely faultless, for there are always awkward pieces on the outside, which the worker could not handle, the gaudy building is not devoid of merit. The bird lining its nest would do no better. Whoso sees the curious, many-coloured productions in my pans takes them for an outcome of my industry, contrived with a view to some experimental mischief; and his surprise is great when I confess who the ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... Huns rehearsed this scene for a week they could not have given us a more heathen reception. No one even made a show at politeness by a nod or a salute. A stout and ugly sergeant-major (named Muller), wearing a gaudy blue and red uniform and sword, bawled at us to dress by the right, as if he were addressing a squad of recruits. He very nearly exploded when we ignored his insolent words of command. A rather common little interpreter ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... elements with magnificent strength and skill. Let us be grateful that Hawthorne does not so covet the applause of the clever club-man or of the unconscious vulgarian, as to junket about in caravan, carrying the passions with him in gaudy cages, and feeding them with raw flesh; grateful that he never loses the archangelic light of pure, divine, dispassionate wrath, in piercing ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... preserved unruffled during his fall. Suddenly I remembered that in my pocket was a handbill of Uncle Obadiah's clock factory, upon which was broadly emblazoned a time-piece of modern fashion. Its effect was electric. No sooner was it displayed than the barbarian's eye glowed with anxiety; the gaudy picture carried his heart and soul captive to Uncle Sam. In his ecstacy he threw his arms about me, hugged me and fawned me, and in his joy was well nigh devouring me. Poor John stood outdone—dumfounded. The ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... top. The only idea we have of the cap of liberty is, the bonnet rouge of the French; but the Americans will not copy the French, although they will the English; so they have a cap of their own, which (begging their pardon), with its gaudy colours and gilding, looks more like a fool's cap ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... perfect simplicity of heart, and utter ignorance of the true cause of his wife's care of his comfort in the present instance—"Jenny, but that is a bonny thing," he said, looking admiringly at the gaudy commodity, into which he had now thrust his hand and part of his arm, in order to give it all possible extension, and thus holding it up ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... she washed and then proceeded with true feminine rapture to comb the wonderful waving locks. In the midst of this Kut-le entered. He gazed on Rhoda's new disguise with delight. Indeed her delicate face, above the many-hued garment, was like a harebell growing in a gaudy nasturtium bed. ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... the Rose of Love entwine Round the cheek-flushed god of wine: As the rose its gaudy leaves Round our twisted temples weaves, Let us sip the time away, Let us laugh as blithe ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... from the doubtful place of the head; others exhibited a nearer approach to the form of a man; and some, made with considerable attention to proportion, were small models of the human figure. They were colored according to fancy; and the most shapeless had usually the most gaudy appearance, being intended to catch the eye of an infant. Sometimes a man was figured washing, or kneading dough, who was made to work by pulling a string; and a typhonian monster, or a crocodile, amused a child ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... erection opposite the Albert Hall, gaudy in the last touch of sunset, I saw him shudder. The spell of the ship and sea and the blazing Sicilian sunshine lay still upon us, Etna's cones towering beyond those gilded spikes of the tawdry Memorial. I stole a glance at my companion. His light blue ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... merits they could not cross the boundary into white society. The bulk of the real negroes on the other hand, with an occasional mulatto among them, went their own way, the women frankly indulging a native predilection for gaudy colors, carrying their burdens on their heads, arms akimbo, and laying as great store in their kerchief turbans as their paler cousins did in their beflowered bonnets. The men of this class wore their shreds and patches with an easy swing, doffed their ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... obstructs the outer current," and it is nothing short of cruelty to over-stimulate his senses as does the modern city. This period is difficult everywhere, but it seems at times as if a great city almost deliberately increased its perils. The newly awakened senses are appealed to by all that is gaudy and sensual, by the flippant street music, the highly colored theater posters, the trashy love stories, the feathered hats, the cheap heroics of the revolvers displayed in the pawn-shop windows. This fundamental susceptibility is thus evoked ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... had provided for Susannah was large and high. On its Brussels carpet immense vases of flowers and peacock's feathers sprawled; stiff and gaudy furniture was ranged round the painted walls; stiff window curtains fell from stiff borders of tasteless upholstery. Susannah, long ignorant of anything but deal and rag carpets, knew hardly more than Smith how to criticise, and her taste ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... the first fetter could be dragged to where he knelt, he sprang up with the fire of fury in his eyes, and made a rush at the mandarin, seized him, and it would have gone ill with his gaudy costume, had not a couple of the officers dragged ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... should rise up, an' wrench off them bars!" suggested Heman Blaisdell, pointing out one cage where a great creature, gaudy in stripes, paced back and forth, throwing us an occasional look of scorn and great despite. "I wouldn't give much for my chances! Nor ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... and shining that it conveyed an unpleasant sense of nakedness, suggesting that its uncovering had been an act of indelicacy on the owner's part—rested on the back of his great chair, and hid from sight the gaudy escutcheon wrought upon the crimson leather. His eyes were closed, his mouth open, and whether from that mouth or from his nose—or, perhaps, conflicting for issue between both—there came a snorting, rumbling sound to proclaim that my Lord the Seneschal was hard ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... was furniture belonging to many a different age. Carpets and chair-cushions worked in tent stitch and cross stitch and old-fashioned harpsichord; gaudy white and gold furniture of the Louis Quatorze time, mixed with the spindle-legged tables of the Queen ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... bastard of great Mercury, Got on Thalia when she was asleep: My gaudy grandsire, great Apollo hight,[113] Born was, I hear, but that my luck was ill, To all the land ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... cold weather they lie in deep and easy water, but as the season advances, they draw into the great rough streams, taking up their stations where they are likely to be least observed. But there the wily wand of the practiced angler casts its gaudy lure, and "Kinmont Willie," "Michael Scott," or "The Lady of Mertoun," (three killing flies,) darting deceitfully within their view, a sudden lounge is made—sometimes scarcely visible by outward signs—as often accompanied ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... here as in St. Petersburg, the whole town boasting but one,—advertised as a wonderful rarity,—which was very badly situated. There were plenty of traktiri, or low-class eating-houses, some of which had "numbers for arrivers"—that is to say, rooms for guests—added to their gaudy signs. These were not to be thought of. But we had been told of an establishment which rejoiced in the proud title of gostinnitza, "hotel," in city fashion. It looked fairly good, and there we took up our abode, after due and inevitable chaffering. This hotel was kept, over shops, on the ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... forgotten, however, that it might very easily be devoted to worse: and if two or three faces can be rendered happy and contented, by a trifling improvement of outward appearance, I cannot help thinking that the object is very cheaply purchased, even at the expense of a smart gown, or a gaudy riband. There is a great deal of very unnecessary cant about the over- dressing of the common people. There is not a manufacturer or tradesman in existence, who would not employ a man who takes a reasonable degree of pride in the appearance of himself and those about him, in preference to a sullen, ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... high remaining piece of the ancient mudbrick wall, three Mexicans, with cigarettes and sombreros, and gaudy as tulips in their striped serapes, were gambling, sleepily, at cards: from one of the little houses came the sleepy tinkling of a mandolin—muy querida. I wandered over to the edge of the little cemetery, and, sitting down, leaned against the hot wall, under the sleepy, flickering shade ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... out her bunch of flowers for admiration. He took a great gaudy blossom—if flowers can ever be called gaudy—and stuck its stalk in the pocket of his coat. Then he led the way ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Lord of Pohja To the house returned directly, And beneath the roof he hastened, And he spoke the words which follow: "There are strangers swiftly sailing O'er the blue lake's watery surface, And a gaudy sledge is gliding On the shore of Sound of Sima; And a large boat is approaching To the shore of Bay of ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... crossing themselves before the images at the street corners; the same throngs of worshipers knocking their heads against the pavements of churches; and above all loomed, now as then, the tower of Ivan and the domes of St. Basil, gloomy, gaudy, and barbaric. Only one change had taken place which interested me: for the first time in the history of Russia, a man of world-wide fame in literature and thought was abiding ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... and every now and again collected by the shrill summons of the mother; and the mother herself, by a suggestive circumstance which might have afforded matter of thought to a more experienced observer than Archie, wrapped in a shawl nearly identical with Kirstie's, but a thought more gaudy and conspicuously newer. At the sight, Kirstie grew more tall - Kirstie showed her classical profile, nose in air and nostril spread, the pure blood came in her cheek evenly ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Comprehension, as Divines call it, but so as that the Church shall go a good deal more than halfway over to the Silent Meeting house. I have ever said that the Quakers are the only Professors of Christianity as I read it in the Evangiles; I say Professors—marry, as to practice, with their gaudy hot types and poetical vanities, they are much at one with the sinful. Martin's frontispiece is a very fine thing, let C.L. say what he please to the contrary. Of the Poems, I like them as a volume better than any one of the preceding; particularly, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... wrong, if He can only thereby secure the man's invaluable services. Be sure that every motive which comes not from the single eye; every motive which springs from self; is by its very essence unheroic, let it look as gaudy or as beneficent as ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... Nothing, I assure you, gaudy or striking, in the very least. He wore the ordinary dress of a gentleman, not conspicuous in any way. It was his air I meant, and the look of—of pride and joy and youth—ah! it was very beautiful. Vesta was beautiful too; you saw her travelling-dress, Aunt Marcia. Did you not think ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... ready for the intruder. When the time comes for him to touch the keys, there is going to break out a racket made by timbrels, drums, and horse-fiddles, so that you can't hear anything else. But hush! there's the hero of the occasion going into the church. Goodness! what gaudy clothes, what a neckcloth, what a high and mighty air! Come, hurry up, the archbishop came only a moment ago, and the mass is going to begin. Come on; I guess this night will give us something to talk about for many ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... upper end of the hall, as far as the dais extended, were covered with hangings or curtains, and upon the floor there was a carpet, both of which were adorned with some attempts at tapestry, or embroidery, executed with brilliant or rather gaudy colouring. Over the lower range of table, the roof, as we have noticed, had no covering; the rough plastered walls were left bare, and the rude earthen floor was uncarpeted; the board was uncovered by a cloth, and rude massive benches supplied ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... to a quarrel, but, being in, 10 Bear 't that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; 15 For the apparel oft proclaims the man, And they in France of the best rank and station Are most select and generous, chief in that. Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... took on the form of adoration. There was not a delicate, gaudy, winged creature of day that did not make so strong an appeal to my heart as to be almost painful. It seemed to me that the most exquisite thoughts of God for our pleasure were materialized in their beauty. My soul always craved colour, and more brilliancy could be found on one butterfly wing ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... gave it up. The gaudy, foolish trifle was worth about five thousand dollars. As the night wore on Mr. Macey began to have a pessimistic notion that perhaps some one had found the scarf but had been too "thrifty" to turn in such a precious article for so small ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... conquest over nature. But in this instance the occasion justified the widest interest. It was an historic moment—more epoch-making than those who gathered in that field in the environs of Paris could have possibly imagined. For in the clumsy, gaudy bag, rolling and tossing above a smoky fire lay the fundamentals of those great airships that, perfected by the persistence of Count Zeppelin, have crossed angry seas, breasted fierce winds, defied alike the blackest nights and the thickest fogs to rain their messages ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... Charles II. Georgian writers treated it somewhat as a survival, and were not always even tender to it. Says a writer in Bladud's Courier, describing a 'soire'e de beaute'' given by Lady Jersey, 'Mrs. —— (la belle) looked as silly and gaudy, I do vow, as one of the old Morris Dancers.' And many other writers—from Horace Walpole to Captain Harver—have their sneer at the Morris. Its rusticity did not appeal to the polite Georgian mind; and its Moorishness, which would have appealed ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... week Maballa had been dropping sly hints of a wonderful thing which she and the factor's half-breed wife were making for the baby. Jan had visions of a gorgeous garment covered with beads and gaudy braid, which would give the little Melisse unending delight. On the day before Cummins' arrival, Jan came in from chopping wood, and went to the cot. It was empty. Maballa was gone. A sudden fear thrilled him to the marrow, and he sprang ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... next street, the carriage standing at the door is just as rich, but its panelling is more gaudy—more striking in colour are the horses—more glitter—more profusion about the silver harness mountings. Though the livery has more eclat, there seems to be less distance between the social status of the groom and ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... accomplished this work as badly as he could, 'as if he had spoiled it out of principle.' But this is not credible. The painting was in the artist's usual manner, and neither better nor worse—and his best was bad enough, in all conscience. His usual faults of gaudy colour, bad drawing, and senseless composition were of course to be found; but then, these were equally apparent in all his other works. Later in life his sight began to fail him, and he received from Queen Anne a pension of L200 a year for his life. To the last royal favour was extended ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... of yellow fruit fell beside us, and my Lord Carnal, a mass of gaudy bloom in his hand, stepped from the wood. "I returned to lay our first-fruits at madam's feet," he explained, his darkly watchful eyes upon us both. "A gift from one poor prisoner to another, madam." He dropped the flowers ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... trains with my packed bag from big railway stations—what keeps me going, I sometimes ask myself; and I remember how, in his 'Masnavi I Ma'navi' or 'Spiritual Couplets,' Jalalu 'D-Din Muhammad Rumi says that our Desires, the swarm of gaudy Thoughts we pursue and follow, are short-lived like summer insects, and must all be killed before long by ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... end a band of gypsies had pitched their tents in true Romany fashion. There were dark-eyed gypsy maids in gaudy clothing, who gayly jingled their tambourines and wheedled good-natured sightseers into their main tent with extravagant stories of the wonderful Romany dancing girls whose unequaled dancing might be seen for the small sum of ten cents. While aged gypsies crouched here and there croaking mysteriously ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... no more to Dorothy, whose huge scissors clipped the square of gay stuff lying before her as if to make the gaudy quilt was the one object of her life, but she ran upstairs to the bedroom she shared with Betty, and found her there, as she expected, exchanging her working gown, with its large apron, for what was called an afternoon frock, with a dainty ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall |
