"Homely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lay a wagon, from which the horses had been detached, and which now offered a tempting though homely shelter to those among the pedestrians who might choose to sit on the shady side, or to avail themselves of the accommodation afforded by the awning over the interior. Ferrers threw himself full length inside the cart: and Louis, drawing Alfred ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... hamlet, there was an echo from every fireside, and a wedding dropt its white flowers at every threshold. There was not a grave in the churchyard but had its story, not a crag or glen or aged tree untouched with some ideal hue of legend It was here that Wordsworth learned that homely humanity which gives such depth and sincerity to his poems. Travel, society, culture, nothing could obliterate the deep trace of that early training which enables him to speak directly to the primitive instincts of man. He was apprenticed ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... dank air that clothes by night the broad East Anglian lands, and came again to some old perilous pool where the soft green mosses grew, and there plunged downward and downward into the dear dark water till it felt the homely ooze once more coming up between its toes. Thence, out of the lovely chill that is in the heart of the ooze, it arose renewed and rejoicing to dance upon the image ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... not one maiden here, Whose homely face and bad complexion Have caused all hopes to disappear Of ever winning man's affection? To such a one, if such there be, I swear by heaven's arch above you, If you will cast your eyes on me, - However plain you be - ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... the indifference of the Government to a public need; and in them we have a remarkable instance of a people forcing a legislature to comply with demands at once reasonable and imperative. Taken as a whole series, they are homely and quaint, wanting in beauty, but not without a curious ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... And he has given us a series of reproductions of portraits, of the highest importance in the study of one who is not merely a difficult poet, but a very ambiguous human being. They begin with the eager, attractive, somewhat homely youth of eighteen, grasping the hilt of his sword so tightly that his knuckles start out from the thin covering of flesh; passing into the mature Donne as we know him, the lean, humorous, large-browed, courtly ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... mayor of the arrondissement, the local autocrat, and the soured temper of the unsuccessful candidate who has never been returned since the year 1816. As to countenance—a wizened, wrinkled, sunburned face, and long, sleek locks of scanty gray hair; as to character—an incredible mixture of homely sense and sheer silliness; of a rich man's overbearing ways, and a total lack of manners; just the kind of husband who is almost entirely led by his wife, yet imagines himself to be the master; apt to domineer in trifles, and to let more important things slip past unheeded—there ...
— The Message • Honore de Balzac
... songs and psalms, stopping suddenly, mingling the Psalms of David, and the diviner words of his Son and Lord, with homely odds and ends ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... Geoff. But still they had never been altogether at their ease with Lady Markland. Mrs. Warrender went back into the drawing-room, and looked round upon it with eyes more critical than when she had regarded it in relation to herself, wondering if Lady Markland would think it a homely place, a residence unworthy her future husband's mother. She made some little changes in it instinctively, put away the work on which she had been engaged, and looked at Chatty's little workbox with an inclination to put ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... than around his wife, for fear he should be thought silly. He was very proud of her, though, and felt a thrill of satisfaction in seeing how superior, both in look and manner, she was to Melinda Jones, whose buxom, healthy face grew almost coarse and homely from comparison ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... "the plan had to be given up. The whole of G.H.Q. sat for days in my dug-out with their feet in hot water and mustard. . . . A most homely spectacle—especially towards the end when, to while away the time, they started sneezing in unison. ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... when the English soldier, reeling from his anguish and weariness, was admitted into the beleaguered fortress, his first words, more homely in expression than Murat's, were to the same dreadful purpose—"Your honour," he said, "all is dished;" and this being uttered by way of prologue, he then delivered himself of the message with which he had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... The homely hearth, the simple reward earned by the day's industry, maternal chidings, forgiveness so ingenuously sought, so freely given, promises of amendment, so sincere, so joyously received.... Is this all gone forever? ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... then, cold and proud. "Honest, Cis, you make me sick!" he told her. "Homely! Huh!" He would have liked to cast an aspersion upon a certain Royal countenance, just to get even, but feared Cis might refuse to hide his books for him. However, he decided that he would never again be as nice as formerly to King George's son. He left the tiny ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... his own. Poor Tetlow!—he deserved a better fate than to be drawn into this girl's trap—for, of course, she never could care for such a heavy citizen—heavy and homely—the loosely fat kind of homely that is admired by no one, not even by a woman with no eye at all for the physical points of the male. It would be a real kindness to save worthy Tetlow. What a fool she'd make of him!—how she'd squander his money—and ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... sense of the incongruity of her circumstances had crept upon her. The tasteful surroundings, the cultured conversation, the musical evenings, the refinement of all around, had enchanted the young girl, and the humble lot and homely ways of her Forest friends had on her return to them stood out in striking contrast. And, alas! for the time being she refused to see in all these things the guiding hand of God. But after the day we ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... men call thee, seeing thus bright Even yet the laughing and the weeping light That still thy kind old eyes are kindled from? Small care was thine to assail and overcome Time and his child Oblivion: yet of right Thy name has part with names of lordlier might For English love and homely sense of home, Whose fragrance keeps thy small sweet bayleaf young And gives it place aloft among thy peers Whence many a wreath once higher strong Time has hurled: And this thy praise is sweet on Shakespeare's tongue— "O good old man, how well in thee appears The constant ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... dough-nuts which had puzzled me on the preceding day: a magnificent golden-brown fougasso, so perfect of its kind that any Provencal of that region—though he had come upon it in the sandy wastes of Sahara—would have known that its creator was Mise Fougueiroun. To compare the fougasso with our homely dough-nut does it injustice. It is a large flat open-work cake—a grating wrought in dough—an inch or so in thickness, either plain or sweetened or salted, fried delicately in the best olive-oil ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... reading, he began an address full of homely wit and pathos, in which, with all the rich and striking imagery culled from a varied life in the wildernesses of the great forests and the great cities of our continent, he appealed to that consciousness of "the true, the beautiful and the good" which he believed ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... subject would certainly have wanted that tinge of chivalrous feeling which the manners of the age and the character of the king alike demanded. But with Burns's ardent admiration of Bruce, and that power of combining the most homely and humorous incidents with the pathetic and the sublime, which he displayed in Tam o' Shanter, we cannot but regret that he never had the leisure and freedom from care, which would have allowed him to try his hand on a subject ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... fade, and a large piece of newspaper lay where the sunlight struck the carpet. In the middle of the room sat Mrs. Quincy, and before her on a kitchen chair stood a little tub of foamy soap-suds. A maid was stationed at hand with a bar of soap and a bottle of ammonia, and the steam of homely cleanliness filled the air. ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... a cause of annoyance to Victoria, and a pretext for her repression. Importance flowed in on me unasked, unearned. To speak in homely fashion, she was always "a bad second," and none save herself attributed to her the normal status of privileges of an elder sister. Her wrath was not visited on me, but on those who exalted me so unduly; even while she resented my position she was not, as I have shown, above using it for her own ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... blithe and restful as this quiet grass, Content only to listen and to know That years shall turn, and summers yet shall shine, And I shall lie beneath these swaying trees, Still listening thus; haply at last to seize, And render in some happier verse divine That friendly, homely, haunting speech of thine, That perfect utterance of content ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... interested me especially. She was a small person; I couldn't decide whether she was a child or a woman. I kept thinking her homely, and then when she spoke I forgot everything but the music of her voice,—it was so restful, so rich and mellow in tone, and she seemed so small for such a splendid voice. Somehow I kept expecting her to squeak like a mouse, but every ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... her day off. There is no mistaking this. Nineteen or twenty years old, homely as a mud fence; ungraceful, doltish, she sits staring out of the window and her eyes blink at the rain. A peasant from southeastern Europe, a field hand who fell into the steerage of a transatlantic liner and ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... and strong in ruin; Elibank, the home of that Muckle Mou'd Meg, who made Harden after all a better bride than he would have found in the hanging ash-tree of her father. These are unaltered, mainly, since Scott saw them last, and little altered is the homely house of Ashiesteil, where he had been so happy. And we, too, feel but little change among those scenes of long ago, those best-beloved haunts of boyhood, where we have had so many good days and bad, days of rising trout and ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... chain of happy thoughts arise in her mind, which she expressed as frankly as the girl of forest product had spoken, that she might not retard the welcome of these homely friendships: ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... out,—as in the damasks,—without the assistance of color, simply by exposing silken or flaxen fibre at different angles to the light; and they have fallen, as their work shows, on the right methods of producing it. And the Egyptians anticipated us in even our most homely household contrivances. They even fermented their bread and trussed their fowls after the same fashion; and thus gave evidence, in these familiar matters, that they thought and contrived "after the manner of men." Now, in ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... judge's first bankruptcy came upon him, a homely human angel intruded upon him with an offer of $1,500 for the Tennessee Land. Mrs. Hawkins said take it. It was a grievous temptation, but the judge withstood it. He said the land was for the children—he could not ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... no further propitiatory efforts, but sat and stared in simple blankness at the country, which seemed to increase in loveliness at each new point of view. Sometimes she saw sweet wooded, rolling lands made lovelier by the homely farmhouses and cottages enclosed and sheltered by thick hedges and trees; once or twice they drove past a park enfolding a great house guarded by its huge sentinel oaks and beeches; once the carriage passed through an adorable little village, where ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... savory passages, and the textual attestations of the elaborate, but utterly juiceless sermons of the time. The entries in his almanacs afford a curious variety, in which interesting events of public importance alternate with homely details touching the affairs of his neighborhood and the incidents in the domestic life of his relatives and acquaintance. One matter, as we shall soon see, on which a fact in the life, of Governor Winthrop depends, finds an unexpected disclosure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... him from the window, by opening the door of his room, was an aged-looking woman, in a plain dress of coarse black serge. She bore in her hands a coarse brown porringer filled with steaming viands, a lump of dark homely bread, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... of this, one of the most pathetic of histories, was at hand; the end was not the less pathetic because it came in so homely a fashion. On a cold day in March he stopped his coach in the snow on his way to Highgate, to try the effect of cold in arresting putrefaction. He bought a hen from a woman by the way, and stuffed ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... worry is not to be overcome by unaided resolution. It is hoped that the victim of this unfortunate tendency may find, among the homely illustrations and commonplace suggestions here offered, something to turn his mind into more healthy channels. It is not the aim of the writer to transform the busy man into a philosopher of the indolent and contemplative type, ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... the day on the new stable, and he enjoyed the homely work. Sometimes he filled in the deeper places in the floor with chunks of dead wood and then heaped the leaves on top. When it was finished it was all in such condition that the animals could occupy it without danger, and he also set up a thick hedge of boughs about the entrance, ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... "good my lord, We pay your governors here Abundant for their bed and board, Six thousand pounds a year. (Your highness knows our homely word,) Millions for self-government, But for ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... echoed from the ice and the sides of the fiord, sounding so close that he felt disposed to stretch out his hand and try to touch that which seemed to be within reach. Then he began to wonder how many thousands there would be, and where they had come from; and then how it was that this plain, homely Norwegian should know so much better than he, and show that he had passed his life picking up knowledge peculiar to his surroundings, so that he was able to teach those ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... term he uses has the full value he intends it to carry, connotes all he wishes it to cover, and has the full emotional power and suggestion that it has for himself. Two quite simple illustrations may serve. The English-born clergyman in Canada who spoke of a meeting of his congregation as a "homely gathering" did not produce quite the effect he intended; "home-like" is one thing in Canada, "homely" quite another, and the people laughed at the slip—they knew, what he did not, that "homely" meant hard-featured and ugly. ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... you may be right," exclaimed Randal, as if struck and half-convinced by his companion's argument—"very possible; and certainly I think that the homely folks at the Hall would fret and fume at first, if they heard you were married to Madame di Negra. Yet still, when your father learned that you had done so, not from passion alone, but to save him from all pecuniary sacrifice—to ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Margaret, in her last passionate interview with her father on his way to the Tower, was succeeded by Margaret Giggs and a maid-servant, who embraced and kissed their condemned master, "of whom, he said after, it was homely but very lovingly done." Of these and other of his servants, Erasmus remarks, "after Sir Thomas More's death, none ever was touched with the least suspicion of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... remember the picture of an Italian girl that Tom Demming sent to the Academy exhibition two years ago? A homely face with lots of character in it, and a ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... convenience, and who can if they please let everything go for a time, are more easily broken down by trouble than those whose household duties still have to be done, in the midst of sorrow and trial. There is something in homely material duties which heals and calms the mind and gives it power to come back to itself. And in sudden calamities those who know how to make use of their hands do not helplessly wring them, or make trouble worse by ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... us to erect a memorial slab, and, hardest of all, to write to the widow and orphans. This was done in a homely way, but with sympathetic, aching hearts away off there ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... the prayers, the aspirations, the disappointments, all he hoped to be and was not—all are written there—nothing is hidden, nor can it be. Here was one born in poverty, nurtured in adversity, and yet uplifted and sustained by homely friendships and rugged companions who dumbly guessed the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... religion. But any adequate religion must find its main application in the duties and services of the immediate present; and the men and women who were possessed day and night by the wrongs of those to whom they could render little service, were apt to be thrown out of touch with near and homely relations, and become what ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... homely, an' yo' clo'es dey may be po', But yo' shinin' eyes, dey hol's a light Dat, my Honey, w'en you opens dem so big an' roun', Makes you lubly ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... has not humbled his meditations to the industry of compliment, nor afflicted his brain in an elaborate leg. His body is not set upon nice pins, to be turning and flexible for every motion, but his scrape is homely and his nod worse. He cannot kiss his hand and cry, madam, nor talk idle enough to bear her company. His smacking of a gentlewoman is somewhat too savoury, and he mistakes her nose for her lips. A very woodcock would puzzle him in carving, and he wants the logick ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... was in some degree put to rest by the appearance of the supper which his friend had ordered, which, although homely enough, had the appetising cleanliness in which Mrs. Mac-Guffog's cookery was so eminently deficient. Dinmont also, premising he had ridden the whole day since breakfast-time, without tasting anything ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... their neighbors. "I am a part of this people," said Lincoln proudly in one of his famous debates of 1858; "I was raised just a little east of here"; and this nearness to the audience, this directness and simplicity and genuineness of our best political literature, its homely persuasiveness and force, is an inheritance of ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... people, the fountains were spouting, a band was playing, clusters of chairs were gathered beneath all the lime-trees, and buxom, white-capped nurses, seated along the benches, were offering to their infant charges the amplest facilities for nutrition. There was an easy, homely gayety in the whole scene, and Christopher Newman felt that ...
— The American • Henry James
... Jerry, philosophizing about it in his homely way, "there's that little devil of a Carmen, the most fascinating woman I ever knew—it would take the Bank of England to run her. Why, when I see that Golden House going up, I said I'd give 'em five years to balloon in it. I was mistaken. They've floated it ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the good old-fashioned "grandfather" type. It stood eight feet high, in a carved-oak case, and had a deep, sonorous, solemn tick, that made a pleasant accompaniment to the after-dinner chat, and seemed to fill the room with an air of homely dignity. ...
— Clocks - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... journey'd to-day in a light wagon ten or twelve miles through the country, nothing pleas'd me more, in their homely beauty and novelty (I had either never seen the little things to such advantage, or had never noticed them before) than that peculiar fruit, with its profuse clear-yellow dangles of inch-long silk or yarn, in boundless profusion spotting ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... distress was sure to move the tenderness of Tom, but this especially. Tears and sobs from her were arrows in his heart. He tried to comfort her; sat down beside her; expended all his store of homely eloquence; and spoke in words of praise and hope of Martin. Aye, though he loved her from his soul with such a self-denying love as woman seldom wins; he spoke from first to last of Martin. Not the wealth of the rich Indies would ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... not be cultivated persons. Cultivation does not come by nature; and the incessant and increasing duties of farm life leave one, however well disposed, but little time and but scant strength for aesthetic study. The farmhouse is the centre of the home life and of the homely thought and feeling of its inmates. The farm on which one has been born and bred is the centre and standpoint from which he regards the world without. All those more tender emotions which are common to our nature, and which attach themselves to the ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... obliges them to confess the infirmity of the natural feelings. They do not ask your sympathy, and you offer it quite at your own risk, with a chance of having it thrown back upon your hands. The contributor assumed the risk so far as to say, "Pretty rough!" when the stranger paused; and perhaps these homely words were best suited to reach the homely heart. The man's quivering lips closed hard again, a kind of spasm passed over his dark face, and then two very small drops of brine shone upon his weather-worn ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... his hand, and kissed it with a homely pathos and affection, in a homely rapture of devotion and gratitude, that he ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... fissures, and, contrary to the general rule, the plants, especially the sorrel (Rumex) and the dandelion (Taraxacum), instead of dwindling, gained in stature. The strong-smelling Ferula looked like a bush, and the Sarh grew into a tree: the Ar'ar,[EN23] a homely hawthorn (hawthorn-leaved Rhus), whose appearance was a surprise, equalled the Cratgus of Syria; and the upper heights must have been a forest of fine junipers (Habbah Juniperus Phnicea), with trunks thick as a man's body. The guides spoke of wild figs, but we failed to find them. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... homely Maria, whose home had rung with laughter by the taunt and ridicule of those who made fun of her ugliness, [94] now graced her house with sweet smiles and engaging features, which drew scores of visitors to her home. Juan confessed his sins, and underwent penance for his wickedness; and the two ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... the lowly of the earth, Contented with our homely fare, How cheerful was the orphan's hearth Before ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... observers have hazarded that our postponement of haircuts is due to mere lethargy and inertia, but that is not so. Every time we get our locks shorn our wife tells us that we have got them too short. She says that our head has a very homely and bourgeois bullet shape, a sort of pithecanthropoid contour, which is revealed by a close trim. After five weeks' growth, however, we begin to look quite distinguished. The difficulty then is to ascertain just when the law of diminishing returns comes ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... The homely artisans and workmen who this day had dined in Gotzkowsky's halls felt somewhat constrained and uncomfortable, and their countenances did not wear a free, joyous expression until they had risen from table, ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... because Baldy possessed no trivial graces and manifested no disdain for the homely virtues of the work dogs whose faithfulness has won for them an honorable place in the community, that Dubby had soon given unmistakable signs of friendliness that helped to ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... cold, and dissonant and tame—Found me at last with ears to hear. It sang Of lowly sorrows and familiar joys, Of simple manhood, artless womanhood, And childhood fragrant as the limpid morn; And from the homely matter nigh at hand, Ascending and dilating, it disclosed Spaces and avenues, calm heights and breadths Of vision, whence I saw each blade of grass With roots that groped about eternity, And in each drop of dew upon each blade The mirror ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... appeal of virtue, self-control, abnegation. She fasted till two o'clock on the Great White Fast when she was seven years old and accomplished the perfect feat at nine. When she read a simple little story in a prize-book, inculcating the homely moralities at which the cynic sneers, her eyes filled with tears and her breast with unselfish and dutiful determinations. She had something of the temperament of the stoic, fortified by that spiritual pride which does ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the homely figure—the human being turned inside out. All that moves in the mind is symbolized in Nature. Or, to use another more philosophical, and certainly not less poetic figure, the world is a sensuous analysis of humanity, and hence an inexhaustible wardrobe for the clothing of ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not—and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul. My immediate ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... you do with Nancy if you didn't marry her off? If she were homely she'd have to fill in chinks in other people's lives, but with her nice little basket of eggs, good looks, money, not too much wit, and a desire to please, she just naturally is put up for sale and off ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... tasted of their homely fare, the sultan and vizier rose up, and having presented the three maimed companions with a few deenars, took leave and departed. They strolled onwards. It was now near midnight when they reached a house in which, through a lattice, they could perceive ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... their constitution. But on the brink of the gulf of prostitution in Paris, the young girl of sixteen, beautiful and pure as the Madonna, had met with Castanier. The old dragoon was too rough and homely to make his way in society, and he was tired of tramping the boulevard at night and of the kind of conquests made there by gold. For some time past he had desired to bring a certain regularity into an irregular life. He was ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... could have entered college with a more homely appearance than Garfield. His rustic manners and still more rustic dress invited criticism among the smart young men of his college, yet because he was by nature a gentleman, he was treated from the first as such, by both teachers and ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... "isn't this a dandy day?" and Amy felt herself on good, homely, familiar ground, and she answered him with a heart grown suddenly light ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... chat on trivial affairs passed away the short time between the coming of Natura, and dinner being brought in; on which, the yeoman intreated him to sit down, and partake of such homely food as he found there.—'That I shall gladly do,' answered Natura, 'but I waited for your fair daughter; I hope we shall have her company. I do not know,' said the yeoman, 'I think they told me she was ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... dear, dear friend, who died, and whom he called Aunt. She used to visit him in his dreams sometimes; and her face, though it was homely, was a thousand times dearer to him than that of Mrs. Pastoureau, Bon Papa Pastoureau's new wife, who came to live with him after aunt went away. And there, at Spittlefields, as it used to be called, lived Uncle ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Tut, tut, tut, tut, tut!" And as the young subaltern gave utterance to these homely sounds, he was recalling certain sarcastic remarks of the stern master of drill respecting officers and gentlemen demeaning themselves ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... dinner we observed the usual ceremonial, with the drinking of healths and the burning of candles; and Dolly and her father and her maid sang a grace at the beginning and end—with a carol or two afterwards that was a surprise to me. It was very homely and friendly and Christian; and I saw my man James with his arm around one of the dairymaids—which is pretty Christian too, I think. We kept it up till it was near time to get supper ready, telling of stories all the while about the fire in the old way. Some of ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... believe that someday by a turn of good fortune she and her Danny would know the America and the good things of which they had dreamed, sitting in the gloaming of their Ireland, their lover's hands close clasped? But for that hope why would they have left their dear hillsides with the homely life and the kindly neighbors and good Father Murphy who had taught her from his own dog-eared books because she was eager and quick to learn? Through the fourteen years since they had come to America those girl-and-boy dreams had gone sadly astray, ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... struggles, led to the formation of joint-stock companies. Competition was giving way before a stronger force, the force of co-operation. There was still competition, but it was more and more between giants. To adopt a very homely simile, the bigger fish ate up the little ones so long as there were any, and then turned to ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile The short and simple annals ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... the great Catholic divines; enchanted with the portrait of Herber the loving ascetic; awed by the mystic breath of Crashaw. Then the cavalier poets sang their gallant songs; and Herrick made Dean Prior magic ground by the holy incantation of a verse. And in the old proverbs and homely sayings of the time he found the good and beautiful English life, a time full of grace and dignity and rich merriment. He dived deeper and deeper into his books; he had taken all obsolescence to ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... in a sound Latinity when your scholarship is riper; or in English if you please, though for my part I prefer the stronger tongue. You have rolled much; quae regio in terris—what parish in Scotland (to make a homely translation) has not been filled with your wanderings? You have shown, besides, a singular aptitude for getting into false positions; and, yes, upon the whole, for behaving well in them. This Mr. Thomson seems to me a gentleman of some choice qualities, though ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Nature had closely curled the locks of dark-brown hair, which relieved and set off the features, such as we have described them, displaying a bold and animated disposition, much more than might have been expected from his situation, or from his previous manners, which hitherto had seemed bashful, homely, and awkward. ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... them at least an unacknowledged conspiracy to taboo her, or an understanding that she was to be ignored almost completely. This Bernice attributed to her looks. Ever since she could remember, she had been called "homely," "ugly," "plain," and similar epithets. Now, though she preserved a calm exterior, she could not help being unhappy ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... that we have discharged our commission faithfully; and I hope the blessing of the Lord shall be upon them that have given us an invitation of this kind: and it may be your greatest comfort, that now ye may go homely unto the Lord, being formerly in covenant with Him; and your greatest credit also, for ye never got such a credit, as to lend your Master's honour a lift. ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... further selection of 11 from these, on the principle already explained. Here is the result. It is very interesting to note the stamp of culture and refinement on the composite officer, and the honest and vigorous but more homely features of the privates. The combination of these two, officers and privates together, gives a very ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... grayed hair—a kind of premonitory powdering. Over her full skirt of lavender-striped cotton stuff fell a broad, competent white apron. Except for the thudding of the spoon against the bowl, and a faint, homely echo of clashing china and tin, mingled with occasionally raised voices and laughter from some farther kitchen region, all was utterly, ...
— Mrs. Dud's Sister • Josephine Daskam
... fact, he found her a charming hostess in a cozy little apartment, comfortably furnished, with pretty dishes on the table and even a few pictures on the walls. And clearly, to eyes that saw, it was homely faithful Maizie whose arduous but well-paid secretaryship financed this menage; Maizie who, returning home tired from her long day, got the dinner; Maizie who washed the dishes, that Shirley's hands might not be spoiled, and did the mending ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... years ago, within the compass of my narrative, there appeared often in some of our New England villages, professed fugitives from slavery, who recounted their personal experi- ence in homely phrase, and awakened the indig- nation of non-slaveholders against brother Pro. Such a one appeared in the new home of Frado; and as people of color were rare there, was it strange she should attract her dark brother; that he should inquire her out; succeed in seeing her; ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... lady's chamber; and she, as if expecting some more distinguished visitant, looked with an eye of disappointment and impatience upon the intruder as he made his homely salutation. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... customer WAS there; a little hand was tapping on the counter with a pretty impatience; a pair of arch eyes were gazing at the boy, admiring, perhaps, his manly proportions through the homely and tightened garments ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... His dark, homely face turned to the larger man with a singular expression of awe. He whispered: "D'you hear? She's in the next room whippin' Joan for runnin' away, and never a yap out of ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... and were conducted, after this ceremony, to their respective seats in a spacious hall. The royal table and couch, covered with carpets and fine linen, was raised by several steps in the midst of the hall; and a son, an uncle, or perhaps a favorite king, were admitted to share the simple and homely repast of Attila. Two lines of small tables, each of which contained three or four guests, were ranged in order on either hand; the right was esteemed the most honorable, but the Romans ingenuously confess, that they were placed on the left; and that Beric, an unknown chieftain, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... forward with longing, though unspoken interest to the homely object of Dixon's return from Milton; where, until now, the old servant had been busily engaged in winding up all the affairs of the Hale family. It had appeared a sudden famine to her heart, this entire cessation of any news respecting the people ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... are other matters of more import than such homely things; so now we come to the time when Stern felt the pressing imperative of a return to the tower. For he lacked tools in every way; he needed them to build furniture, doors, shutters; to clear away the brush and make the place orderly, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... extreme shabbiness: the stuffing was showing through holes in the sofa, the strips of carpet were worn threadbare. A couple of photographs and a few books were ranged in line on the bureau—that was all that had been done towards giving the place a homely air. It was like a room that had never properly been ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... for a certain homely, useful quality of intellect, that guards a person from committing mistakes to the injury of his fortunes or common reputation; but for that master-principle of business, literature, and talent, which gives him strength in any ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... tall, thin, and homely, when he entered this office. The other clerks were inclined to jeer at his awkwardness and his plain, home-made, ill-fitting clothes. But Henry's sharp retorts quickly silenced them, and they soon grew to respect and like him. He was an earnest student. He stayed ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... perfections. But, such as it is, it is a fine specimen of fourteenth-century English. He translated not for scholars or for nobles, but for the plain people, and his style was such as suited those for whom he wrote—plain, vigorous, homely, and yet with all its homeliness full of a solemn grace and dignity, which made men feel that they were reading no ordinary book. He uses many striking expressions, such as (II Tim. ii. 4): "No man holding knighthood to God, wlappith himself with worldli ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... it possible," said Gabrielle, indignantly running into mamma's room with an open volume in her hand, "that papa was as homely and awkward when a boy and young man as this writer describes him? 'Tow-head,' 'gawky,' 'plain,' and 'clownish,' are some of the most uncomplimentary epithets applied to him. He is described as having ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... Those homely ones seem to make straight for a home the first thing. Ellaphine carried off Eddie Pouch—the very Eddie of whom his mother used to say, "He's little, but oh, my!" The rest of the people said, "Oh, my, ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... I thought of his homely comparison after I had left him for the night. It moved me strangely. I read the letter he had lent me the letter of Cecilia, who found the Berkshire moors so banal. Yes, she promised to prove a very undesirable help-meet on the veld, so far as I could judge. I thought over things ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... dressed up in rich robes of a clerical kind, that all the good folk call my Lord Bishop of Hereford. Here is a certain fellow with a sour temper and a grim look—the worshipful, the Sheriff of Nottingham. And here, above all, is a great, tall, merry fellow that roams the greenwood and joins in homely sports, and sits beside the Sheriff at merry feast, which same beareth the name of the proudest of the Plantagenets—Richard of the Lion's Heart. Beside these are a whole host of knights, priests, nobles, burghers, yeomen, pages, ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... casually, "that although those poor people meet here in this public way, their gathering is really quite a homely pastoral and a national custom; and these girls are all honest, hardworking peons or servants enjoying themselves in quite the old ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... a marked spread of the aristocratic spirit—selfish, heartless, subtle, of mere physical 'refinement'; a spirit, too, all the more inhuman because it is for the most part not tempered by any intercourse with homely dependants, as in the feudal aristocracy. It would seem to be the product of 'the higher education,' a university priggishness, poor as proud. It is the deadliest spirit abroad; but, of course, though it may poison life and especially art for a ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... thought he had never beheld so lovely a maiden; and he was right, for in all England there were few to compare with Anne of Bletso. She had seen him too, and had observed how far superior he was in appearance to other rustic swains, for the shepherd's frock of homely grey could not conceal the graces of his person, which also attracted the notice of the worthy knight, her father, who, on one occasion, said ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... described, had stopped there for refreshment about two hours before. He found it now necessary to stop for the same purpose. Bread and milk, the only provisions of the place, were set before him, and his attendants would have been well contented, had there been sufficient of this homely fare to have satisfied ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... want to tell you about Bel's kitchen Crambo. I want to show you how what is in a woman, in heart and mind, springs up and shows itself, and may grow to whatever is meant for it, out of the quietest background of homely use. ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Peggy from the little platform where she sat in the old mahogany chair, she thought with a throb of satisfaction that she was glad she didn't have to change places with that homely little thing. Evidently, Peggy was just up from a severe illness. Her hair had been cut so short one could scarcely tell the color of it. She was so thin and white that her eyes looked too large for her face and her neck too slender for her head, and the ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... mounted on a red camel, which carried, besides his person, a bag of corn, a bag of dates, a wooden dish, and a leathern bottle of water. Wherever he halted, the company, without distinction, was invited to partake of his homely fare, and the repast was consecrated by the prayer and exhortation of the commander of the faithful. [80] But in this expedition or pilgrimage, his power was exercised in the administration of justice: ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... to do at home. The Boyle house was only partly furnished. Each morning he and Nan went downtown and prospected for things needed. This was Nan's first experience of the sort; and she confessed to a ludicrous surprise over the fact that pots, pans, brooms, kitchen utensils, and such homely matters had to be thought of ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... life against Greek influence in literature and in manners, which he felt would be fatal to his ideal of a Roman citizen. In a letter to his son Marcus he says Quandoque ista gens suas litteras dabit, omnia corrumpet. He was famous for his homely wisdom, which gained him the title of Sapiens, e.g. Rem tene: verba sequentur—'Take care of the sense: the words will take ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... possessed. Striking example of its display is connected with Yedo Castle. This fortress, as built originally by Ota Dokwan, was not of imposing dimensions even as a military stronghold, and the dwelling-house in the keep presented most homely features, having a thatched roof and a porch of rough boat-planks. Yet Ieyasu was content to make this edifice his palace, and while he devoted much care to strengthening the fortifications, he bestowed none on the enlargement and adornment ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... that he was not a good dancer. As she looked up into Abe's homely face, she decided that he had a great future ahead of him. She remembered something she had once said as a little girl: "When I grow up, I want to marry a man who will be ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... disorder, the victorious General of the Commonwealth was seated in a large easy-chair, covered with damask, and deeply embroidered, the splendour of which made a strong contrast with the plain, and even homely character of his apparel; although in look and action he seemed like one who felt that the seat which might have in former days held a prince, was not too much distinguished for his own fortunes and ambition. Wildrake stood before him, nor did he ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... corn. But, for that moping son of Idleness Why can he tarry yonder?—In our church-yard Is neither epitaph nor monument, Tomb-stone nor name, only the turf we tread. And a few natural graves. To Jane, his Wife, Thus spake the homely Priest of Ennerdale. It was a July evening, and he sate Upon the long stone seat beneath the eaves Of his old cottage, as it chanced that day, Employ'd in winter's work. Upon the stone His Wife sate near him, teasing matted wool, While, from the twin cards tooth'd with glittering wire, ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... nearly fell over backwards. To a naturally shy man this sudden and wholly unexpected declaration was disconcerting: and the clerk was, moreover, engaged. He blushed violently. And yet, even in that moment of consternation, he could not check a certain thrill. No man ever thinks he is as homely as he really is, but Jno. Peters had always come fairly near to a correct estimate of his charms, and it had always seemed to him, that, in inducing his fiancee to accept him, he had gone some. He now began to wonder if he were not really rather a devil of ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... their work and but half-tamed, has a simplicity and grandeur of effect not easy to parallel in modern art. The motif of the tale is that you often go far to search for the good fortune that lies close to your door. Never was so homely an adage more freshly and prettily illustrated; yet how slight are the materials, how plain is the outline! Germain, the well-to-do, widowed laborer, in the course of a few miles' ride, a journey undertaken in order to present himself and his addresses ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... of the promised story was a German of that particular type in which the sombre irony of Goethe's Mephistopheles is blended with a homely cheerfulness found in the romances of August Lafontaine of pacific memory; but the predominating element in the compound of artlessness and guile, of shopkeeper's shrewdness, and the studied carelessness ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... opinions by an apothegm, illustrate them by a parable, or drive them home by a story. He was skilful in analysis, discerned with precision the central idea on which a question turned, and knew how to disengage it and present it by itself in a few homely, strong old English words that would be intelligible to all. He excelled in logical statement more than in executive ability. He reasoned clearly, his reflective judgment was good, and his purposes were fixed; but, like ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... to have a brother like him," she thought. "I don't care if he is slangy—and fresh. I guess he wouldn't be so if—as he says—everybody didn't try to poke fun at his red hair. And how homely he is!" ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... "Wherefore has the Word of God been likened to wine and milk?" The reply made was, "As these fluids cannot be preserved in golden vessels, but only in those of earthenware, so those minds will be the best receptacles of learning which are found in homely bodies." ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... evidently one of those ballads which calls Mr. Sheldon "godfather." The original ballad, which has been "baptized and remodelled," is called "The Factor's Garland." It begins in the following homely manner:— ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... The homely house furnishings seemed to leap out of the darkness; the stove, the littered table, and the couch, the iron crucifix, and the carved cradle in the corner—all his long life Juan will see them so—and 'Cencion turned; the ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... bright bird we sometimes find To mingle with the barn-door brood awhile, Then vanish from their homely domicile - Into man's poesy, we wot not whence, Flew thy strange mind, Lodged there a radiant guest, and sped for ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... embarrassing commonplaces. And, with the suspicion of some indefinable insincerity—either of his own or Louise's—haunting him, Minty's frank heartiness and outspoken loyalty gave him a strange relief. It seemed to him as if the clear cool breath of the forest had entered with her homely garments, and the steadfast truth of Nature were incarnate in her shining eyes. How far this poetic fancy would have been consistent or even coexistent with any gleam of tenderness or self-forgetfulness in Louise's equally pretty orbs, ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... her maiden choice, Her husband, lover, friend. Oh, were she woman could she less To homely sorrows lend! ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... as simple and homely as their house. The man wore a seaman's cap and a blue coat with brass anchor buttons, and was more than delighted if you took him for a seafaring man. He had, in fact, been to sea once, as ship's cook, ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... I am sure, excuse my presumption, Dr. Watson," said he as he came panting up to where I stood. "Here on the moor we are homely folk and do not wait for formal introductions. You may possibly have heard my name from our mutual friend, Mortimer. I am Stapleton, of ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... man's daughter is coming home wealthy and happy as never before, and the old woman's daughter is somewhere around as homely and wicked ...
— Folk Tales from the Russian • Various
... in Theophrastus; to me, at least, from the closeness of its analogy, it seems to have a peculiar expressiveness, though Caecilius censures it, without telling us why. "Philip," says the historian, "showed a marvellous alacrity in taking doses of trouble."[1] We see from this that the most homely language is sometimes far more vivid than the most ornamental, being recognised at once as the language of common life, and gaining immediate currency by its familiarity. In speaking, then, of Philip as "taking ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... wet hens wandered aimlessly by the doorstep; a tiny bed of white clove-pinks and tall white phlox exhaled a homely welcome as the lame man hobbled up the steps, pulled the leather ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... daughter with me and gave up the largest room for her and the maid who was to take care of her. I was lodged in a little hole on straw, to which I went up by ladder. As we had no other furniture but our beds, quite plain and homely, I brought some straw chairs and some Dutch earthen and wooden ware. Never did I enjoy a greater content than in this little hole, which appeared so very conformable to the state of Jesus Christ. I fancied everything better on wood than on plate. I laid ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... himself in a series of letters to the Joneses of Jonesville, each Jones addressed being a typal character and such as is of frequent occurrence in our midst. Homely and excellent advice, appropriate to their faults and needs, is administered to each individual Jones in turn, as he falls under the salutary but sharp scalpel of this keen dissector. There are twenty-four letters, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... trembles when I offer you this. Many times I have come bearing flowers such as my garden grew; but now I offer you this poor, brown, homely growth, you may cast it away as worthless. And yet—and yet—it is something better than flowers; it is a SEED-CAPSULE. Many a gardener will cut you a bouquet of his choicest blossoms for small fee, but he does not love to let the seeds of his rarest varieties ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Dilke's two volumes on the French Renaissance, in 1880, to the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, with an admiring report, and Sir Charles's admiration for Renan's writing was great. Of Mme. Renan he says: 'This homely-looking old dame was not only a good wife, but a woman of the soundest sense and ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... rain, and length or decline of days received from His hand; all joy, and grief, and strength, or cessation of labour, indulged or endured, as in His sight and to His glory. And the familiar employments of the seasons, the homely toils of the peasant, the lowliest skills of the craftsman, are signed always on the stones of the Church, as the first and truest condition of ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... writer I know. Sterne is never obscure, and never moral; and the costume of his subjects is drawn from the familiar experience of his own time and country: and Swift, again, has the same merit of the clearest perspicuity, joined to that of the most homely, unaffected, forcible English. These points of difference seem to me the chief ones which bear against the success of the Sartor. On the other hand, there is in Teufelsdrockh a depth and fervor of feeling, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... and physically. Studious as ever, I could yet contemplate an active career without positive repugnance; I knew how to meet and treat my fellow-men; I was acquainted with society in its most refined and most homely phases. I had tasted of pleasure, of disappointment, of love—of ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... look, on one of the many places provided with seats, the old gentleman began to come out. They had passed a great many cherry trees, hanging full of their just ripe fruit; roses were all around them, as well as a multitude of other flowers both old-fashioned and homely and rare; the grounds were perfectly kept; the air was full of perfume. In the midst of all this, ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... Macaulay was so often content with an effect of an essentially vulgar kind, offensive to taste, discordant to the fastidious ear, and worst of all, at enmity with the whole spirit of truth. By vulgar we certainly do not mean homely, which marks a wholly different quality. No writer can be more homely than Mr. Carlyle, alike in his choice of particulars to dwell upon, and in the terms or images in which he describes or illustrates them, but there is ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... She feared the noisy people in the streets; and, turning timidly towards an old citizen who stood by his garden-gate, chatting to his housekeeper, and watching the passers-by—there was a kindness in his look which gave her confidence—so, with a homely courtesy, she ventured to inquire of him where she might find ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... rhymes. Now, my ancestor's poem is not excelled in grace by anything within the range of our literature; but there's nothing else in it whatever. Eliza Cook's versification is, in a measure, forced and imperfect, her language occasionally homely and rugged, but the strong beating of a sincere, sympathetic heart ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... attractiveness of his sermons, especially so far as the younger and less educated of his hearers were concerned. From this solicitude for the dignity of the pulpit have come "the pulpit manner," "the pulpit tone," "the pulpit vocabulary," all of which, as being departures from honest Nature's homely plans, have helped to spoil the charm and prevent the triumph of holy, lovely truth. Still another may be dull from intellectual pride. Not unknown is the man who may often be heard explaining the ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... other hand, many a homely name has a complimentary meaning. Mr. Wegg did not like the name Boffin, but its oldest form is bon-fin, good and fine. In 1273 Mr. Bumble's name was spelt bon-bel, good and beautiful. With these we may group Bunker, of which the oldest form is bon-quer (bon coeur), ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley |
