"Tinsel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... qualities, altogether out of the common way of men. A pity that conditions do not allow you to be perfectly honest; but people in general are so foolish that you would get no credit for your superiority if you did not wear a little tinsel, practise a few harmless affectations. Some day your difficulties will be at an end, and then you can afford to show yourself in a simpler guise." When he looked in the glass, Clifford admired himself without reserve; when he talked freely, he applauded his ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... fleet of canoes from Quebec or Montreal was a fine sight. The trading canoe of bark was forty-five feet long, and carried four tons of goods. The crew of eight men, with their hats gaudy with plumes and tinsel, their brilliant handkerchiefs tied around their throats, their bright-colored shirts, flaming belts, and gayly worked moccasins, formed a picture that can not be described. When the axes, powder, shot, dry goods, and provisions were packed in the canoes, when ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... principality and leave me comparatively without resources. I detest this man so thoroughly that I cannot hate him. I abhor him. It is you who must save me from him; it is you who must also save me my principality. Oh, they envy me, these poor people, because I am a Princess, because I dwell in the tinsel glitter of the court. Could they but know how I envy their lives, their homes, their humble ambitions! Believe me, monsieur, as yet I love no man; but that is no reason why I should link my life to that of a man to whom virtue in a woman means nothing. ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... the fortune he had amassed, of the different colored papers which he kept in his desk. All would be his daughter's and perhaps this would save her from the danger toward which her longing to live amid the vanities and tinsel of feminine ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and when I had attended it in former debates, it exhibited the taste and skill which the French, more than any other people on earth, exhibit in temporary things. Nothing could exceed the elegance with which the Parisian decorators had fitted up this silk and tinsel abode, which was to be superseded, within a few months, by the solid majesty of marble. But, on this memorable and melancholy night, the ornaments bore, to me, the look of those sad frivolities ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... even ethics. Whether or no in all this there was not much that was superficial only, she was not herself deep enough to discover. Nor would she have been deterred from admiring him had she been told that it was tinsel. Such were the acquirements, such the charms, that she loved. Here was a young man who dared to speak, and had always something ready to be spoken; who was not afraid of beauty, nor daunted by superiority of rank; who, if he had not money, could carry himself on equal terms among ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... Rome. But M. Dumas scorns such commonplace dramatis personae, and is satisfied with nothing less than transporting a French ballet-dancer into the Appenines, with all her paraphernalia of gauze drapery, tinsel decorations, and opera airs and graces; not forgetting the orchestra, in the person of the luckless bass player. Yet so ingeniously does he dovetail it all together, so probable does he make his improbabilities ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... difficult to display any thing but tinsel," said Cranfield. "It is two years since the golden crucifix, the silver candlestick, and the saintly jewelry, mounted on horseback ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... speak for fear of discovery. The chief of the butchers, on his arrival, was next ushered up stairs, and his present received, then made to undress and put on a blue vest with a scarlet cap, ornamented with sea shells and bits of tinsel; but he had scarce time to finish, when a fourth loud rap was heard at the door, the scene of alarm was renewed, and the frightened gallant hurried into the room to keep company with his rivals. Now appeared the respectable merchant, who ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... popcorn the day before! The cranberries and popcorn were still there; but in addition were glittering balls, and strings of silver, and coloured glass bells, and candy birds and angels with spun-glass wings, and clouds of gold and silver tinsel and cornucopias, and candy in bags of pink net, and dozens of lighted candles, and on the very top the great ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... Certificates, Kenneth's bonnet, a thin packet of real letters, and the famous champagne cork. She kisses the letters, but she does not blub over them. She strokes the dress, and waggles her head over the certificates and presses the bonnet to her cheeks, and rubs the tinsel of the cork carefully with her apron. She is a tremulous old 'un; yet she exults, for she owns all these things, and also the penny flag on her breast. She puts them away in the drawer, the scarf over them, the lavender on the scarf. Her air of triumph well ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... always with a rose in her midnight-black hair, perhaps a black lace fan dangling at her wrist; wearing the dress of other days with shining black beads and flounces and trinkets—scorned by Miss Broadway as so much tinsel—conceding only her rouge and powder ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... cried Lord Berrington, who, having entered during the contest, had stood unobserved until this moment; "and their gold and tinsel would prove but dross and bubble, if struck by the Ithuriel touch of Merit ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... rule holds good. Under robes that are overladen with gold lace, I only see a rich man; what I want to see is a man. Pretty and simple draperies of severe tints are what we need, not a mass of tinsel and embroidery. "A courageous actress has just got rid of her panier, and nobody has found her any the worse for it. Ah, if she only dared one day to show herself on the stage with all the nobility and simplicity of adjustment that her characters demand; ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... apparently knocked the bottom out of his dream. Women were riddles which only they themselves could solve for others. For this one woman he was perfectly ready to throw everything aside. A man lived but once; and he was a fool who would hold to tinsel in preference to such happiness as he thought he saw opening out before him. Nora saw, but she did not care. That in order to reach another she was practising infinite cruelty on this man (whose one fault lay in that he loved her) did ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... tinsel or gold depends on the using,' said he, thoughtfully; 'there are some lumps of solid gold among those papers, I am sure, one, in particular, about a trifle. May I see ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Sir Marmaduke. No man can hold his own in print, now-a-days, unless he can see the difference between tinsel and gold." ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... could scarcely understand how a boy could so dislike circus life as to really want to run away from even Twomley & Sorber's Herculean Circus and Menagerie. There was a glitter and tinsel to the circus that ever appealed to ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... rain beat against the windows, and a draughty wind fluttered the tinselly decorations of last night. The floor was strewed with fragments of garments torn in the crush—paper and silken flowers, here a rosette, there a buckle, a satin bow, a tinsel spangle. Benches and tables were piled about the room, which was half dark; only to westward, through one window, was visible a paler gleam, which might by comparison be ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... is fun—pleasure and amusement. No; the real work of the stage lies in the creation of a character. A great character will live forever, when paint and canvas and silks and satins and gold foil and tinsel shall have gone the ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... to the contempt of superior minds if I say that all this seemed to him an insuperable impediment to his making up to Verena. His scruples were doubtless begotten of a false pride, a sentiment in which there was a thread of moral tinsel, as there was in the Southern idea of chivalry; but he felt ashamed of his own poverty, the positive flatness of his situation, when he thought of the gilded nimbus that surrounded the protegee of Mrs. Burrage. This shame was possible to him even while he ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... of the inviting kind, adapted to its wants, addressed to its affections and reason. Men have been fed on the letter, while needing the spirit and truth which the letter conceals. Preachers have spun too much gossamer and tinsel; and woven too little solid bang-up and beaver for wear and comfort. The people have been served with too many custards and candies of entertainment, while hungering hotly ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... fairyland. Cedar branches, decked with flakes of artificial snow, and great white snowbanks, completely hid the walls from view. Spread over the floor, except for a space in the middle reserved for dancing, were pine needles and more patches of snow; and everywhere frosty tinsel glimmered in the soft, blue light of the ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... moustache were, perhaps, the only ornaments his fine old head required. The last time I had seen him, he was arrayed entirely in scarlet and gold, and he had, no doubt, a large reserve of dresses and jewellery; but, in spite of his tinsel and gilding, he appeared a perfect little Eastern gentleman, and the only one I had met as yet in our travels. After expressing a great desire to open a correspondence with us, which, considering the small number of topics we possessed in common, was rather a strange ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... society, its ominous threats of thundered denunciation on the day when her tongue should be loosed and the present mesmeric spell broken—for she was under a spell, even that of this new world of tinsel and material veneer. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... nothing of the spurious forms of art that sprang out of this tendency—especially the romance and the history assuming the form of romance—the very style of these Asiatics was, as may readily be conceived, abrupt and without modulation and finish, minced and effeminate, full of tinsel and bombast, thoroughly vulgar and affected; "any one who knows Hegesias," says Cicero, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... committed to a short and vigorous exposition and defence of the point in question. The entire room became attentive. Then, as he paused, the strident voice of a noted and irascible man proclaimed, "That's not democracy and not Jefferson—that doctrine, Mr. Rand. Veil her as you please in gauze and tinsel, you've got conquest by the hand. You may not think it, but you're preaching—what's the ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... it's but a night-gown in respect of yours: Cloth of gold, and cuts, and laced with silver, set with pearls down sleeves, side-sleeves, and skirts, round underborne with a blueish tinsel: but for a fine, quaint, graceful, and excellent fashion, yours is ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... shore two or three feet in front of where they had stood—or behind, just as it happened; and their swords banged against their breast-plates and shields, proving that they were real metal and not merely tinsel; and they twirled round and round like beef on a roasting-jack, until at last Michele dealt the inevitable blow and the giant fell dead on the sand with a thud that jolted the coast, shook the islands, rippled ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... pleasant sides of life, and soon in her despair and anger his modest merits took heroic proportions in her eyes. She forgot her past dislike; she thought only of this, the simple good man, contrasted with the showy and fickle-hearted—true metal against glittering tinsel. His very weaknesses seemed homely and venial. He was of her own world, akin to the things which deep down in her soul she knew she must love to the last. It is to the credit of the man's insight that he saw the mood and took pains ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... occasionally leads to artful embroidering on humdrum actuality; but, after spending much time in scanning similar embroidery in the literature of the Napoleonic Era, I unhesitatingly place the work of Archibald Forbes, and that of several knights of the pen still living, far above the delusive tinsel of Marbot, Thiebault, and Segur. I will go further and say that, if we could find out what were the sources used by Thucydides, we should notice qualms of misgiving shoot through the circles of scientific ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... gay-colored rags, and tatters, he brandishing a sweep's broom and she a ladle. Jim Crow and a fancifully bedizened ballet-dancer in white muslin, often swelled the ranks, and the rest of the party rigged out in a profusion of gilt paper, flowers, tinsel and gewgaws, their faces and legs colored with brick-dust, made up a comical crowd. But even these mild remains of the great festival are almost entirely banished to the rural districts, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... representative of Winter was Tom Watkins, decorated superbly as a Christmas Tree. Boughs of Norway spruce were bound upon his arms and legs and covered his body. Shining balls hung from the twigs, tinsel glistened as he passed under the lantern light, and strings of popcorn reached from his head to his feet. There was no question of his popularity among the children. Every small boy who saw him asked if he had a present ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... applaud them. Each alone, Without the heat of conflict laboured on, Consuming brain and nerve; for throngs applaud Only the flash and tinsel of their day, Never the quiet runners with the torch. Night after night they laboured. Line on line Of intricate figures, moving all in law, They marshalled. Their long columns formed and marched From battle to battle, and no sound was heard Of victory or defeat. They marched through ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... for one symmetrical in shape and small of size and price, to fit our tiny flat and, oh yes, indeed, our casual income. I remember, too, that when it was finally bought I put it on my shoulder with a proud feeling, and we drifted farther, picking up the trimmings—the tinsel and gay ornaments, the small gifts for the one very small person who had so recently come to live with us, discussing each purchase with due deliberation, going home at last with rather more than we could afford, I fear, ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... him; but before that happens, I am going to have the satisfaction of speaking to just one person in the world—you—exactly what I think about it. From what Mrs. Lenox told me, after her visit in the country, and from what I saw myself, I think she is a vulgar little image overlaid with tinsel." ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... white; and side by side bowed the dark Kings of Iron and Lead, the one mighty in black, the other sullen in blue; and after them were the Copper King, gleaming ruddy and brave, and the Tin King, strutting in his trimmings of gaudy tinsel which looked nearly as well as silver, but were more economical. And this fine troop of lackey kings most politely led Thor and Loki into the palace, and gave them of the best, for they never suspected who these ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... down to show just what a Manitoba winter can do in the way of weather. The sky was sapphire blue, with fleecy little strings of white clouds, an innocent-looking sky, that had not noticed how cold it was below. The ground was white and sparkling, as if with silver tinsel, a glimmer of diamonds. Frost-wreaths would have crusted the trees and turned them into a fairy forest if there had been trees; but there was not a tree at the Chicken Hill School, so the frost-wreaths lay like fairy lace on the edges ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... candle-grease everywhere. When for the first time I set foot in one of these supposed charming nooks, I was shocked; but the mistresses of the house detected nothing. Their persons are in harmony with the surroundings. Mirrors being very rare, the women bedizen themselves with tinsel, the bizarre effect of which they have no ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... dropped into his armchair, and sat for a long while staring at the paper ornament with which Mrs Bowldler had decorated his summer hearth. It consisted of a cascade of paper shavings with a frontage of paper roses and tinsel foliage, and was remarkable not only for its own sake but because Mrs Bowldler had chosen to display the roses upside down. But though Cai stared at it hard, he ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... characteristic?—the ruling passions of Pope are nothing to it. Whilst the poor distracted manager was bewailing the loss of a building only worth 300,000 l., together with some twenty thousand pounds of rags and tinsel in the tiring rooms, Bluebeard's elephants, and all that—in comes a note from a scorching author, requiring at his hands two acts and odd scenes of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... society as that of Rome in the first century A.D., hardly any training could be more mischievous. Puffed up with presumed merits and the applause of the lecture-room and the salon, he became a shallow rhetorician, devoted to phrase-making and tinsel ornament, and ready to write and declaim on any subject in verse or prose at the shortest notice.' —Heitland. Silenced by Nero, in an enforced retirement—probably in the stately gardens spoken of by Juvenal vii. 79-80 contentus fama iaceat Lucanus in hortis Marmoreis—Lucan ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... Night's tinsel beams on smooth Lock-lomond dance, Impatient AEGA views the bright expanse;— 365 In vain her eyes the parting floods explore, Wave after wave rolls freightless to the shore. —Now dim amid the distant foam she spies A rising speck,—"'tis ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... civilization. And then, impatient of their intoxicating and tantalizing search, suddenly grown desperate, they clutched and stored away everything, and returned home tattered, soiled, bedecked with gold and with tinsel, laden with an immense uncouth burden of jewels, and broken wealth, and refuse and ordure, with pseudo-antique philosophy, with half-mediaeval Dantesque and Petrarchesque poetry, with Renaissance science, with humanistic pedantry and obscenity, with euphuistic conceits ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... display, all its tinsel, all its Jesuitism, all its bad taste, San Sebastian will become an important, dignified city within a very few years. When that time comes, the author who has been born there, will not prefer to hail ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... "Ah, fors' e lui che l'anima," with its passionate second section, "A quell' amor," and that most moving song of resignation, "Dite all' giovine." These things outweigh a thousand times the glittering tinsel of the opera and give "Traviata" a merited place, not only beside the later creations of the composer, but among those latter-day works which we call lyric dramas to distinguish them from those which we still call operas, with ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... never stilled, The skeptic's sneer, the bigot's hate, the din Of clashing texts, the webs of creed men spin Round simple truth, the children grown who build With gilded cards their new Jerusalem, Busy, with sacerdotal tailorings And tinsel gauds, bedizening holy things, I turn, with glad and grateful heart, from them To the sweet story of the Florentine Immortal in her blameless maidenhood, Beautiful as God's angels and as good; Feeling that life, even now, may be divine With love no wrong can ever change ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... movement of the time. For still the flood of 'Precious' literature poured from the press—dull, contorted epics, and stilted epigrams on my lady's eyebrow, and learned dissertations decked out in sparkling tinsel, and infinitely long romances, full of alembicated loves. Then suddenly one day a small pamphlet in the form of a letter appeared on the bookstalls of Paris; and with its appearance the long reign of ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... in general scanty enough; and their Art therefore consists in disposing it to the best advantage. But if such be the aim of the Writer, it is the Critic's business to detect and defeat the imposture; to warn the public against the purchase of shop-worn goods and tinsel wares; to protect the fair trader, by exposing the tricks of needy Quacks and Mountebanks; and to chastise that forward and noisy importunity with which they present themselves ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... everything coarse, vulgar, obtrusive, and commonplace. His spirit clothes itself in the garb of elder time; homelier, but more durable. He is borne along with no pompous paradoxes, shines in no glittering tinsel of a fashionable phraseology, is neither fop nor sophist. He has none of the turbulence or froth of new-fangled opinions. His style runs pure and clear, though it may often take an underground course, or be conveyed through old-fashioned conduits.... There is a fine tone of chiaro-scuro, ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... the great world came and called me I deserted all to follow, Never knowing, in my dazedness, I had slipped my hand from His— Never noting, in my blindness, that the bauble fame was hollow, That the gold of wealth was tinsel, as I since have learned it is— I have spent a life-time seeking things I've spurned when I have found them; I have fought and been rewarded in full many a petty cause, But I'd take them all—fame, fortune and the pleasures that surround ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... luck would have it he came straight to where we stood together, and stayed to look upon me as something unwonted to him, for I was wholly unarmed, save for a little knife in my girdle; and I was clad in a black gown and a cotehardy of green sprigged with tinsel, and had my fiddle and bow at my back. We louted low before him, and he spake to my friend: 'Is this big fellow a minstrel?' 'Yea, lord,' said the other. Said the Baron: 'Looking at his inches, 't is a pity of him that he hath not jack and sallet and a spear over his shoulder. ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... onepiece evening frock executed in moonlight blue, a tinsel sylph's diadem on her brow with her dancecard fallen beside her moonblue satin slipper, curves her palm softly, breathing quickly) Voglio e non. You're hot! You're scalding! The left ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... donkeys and harlequins in parti-coloured dresses. The crowd of holiday masqueraders, laughing and shoving, was exchanging jests and showers of paper ribbon with the clowns and flinging little bags of sugar-plums to the columbine, who sat in her car, tricked out in tinsel and feathers, with artificial curls on her forehead and an artificial smile on her painted lips. Behind the car came a motley string of figures—street Arabs, beggars, clowns turning somersaults, and costermongers hawking their wares. They were jostling, pelting, and applauding a figure ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... write no article just now; I am pioching, like a madman, at my stories, and can make nothing of them; my simplicity is tame and dull—my passion tinsel, boyish, hysterical. Never mind—ten years hence, if I live, I shall have learned, so help me God. I know one must work, in the meantime (so says Balzac) comme le ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the dainty oddments which a woman of means and taste collects in the course of years; trimmings and laces, and scraps of fine brocades; belts and buckles, and buttons of silver and paste; glittering ends of tinsel, ends of silk and ribbons that were really too pretty to throw away, and cunning little motifs which had the magic quality of disguising deficiencies and making both ends meet. Claire gave with a lavish hand, and Cecil's ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... finally even the late eminent Macfarren, the worst enemy music has ever had in this country, did not disdain to prepare "a performing edition," and to improve Mozart's improvements on Handel. One wonders whether Mozart, when he overlaid the "Messiah" with his gay tinsel-work, dreamed that some Costa, encouraged by Mozart's own example, and without brains enough to guess that he had nothing like Mozart's brains, would in like manner desecrate "Don Giovanni." Like "Don Giovanni," ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... women, who were, for all the world, just like ourselves, save that they walked more gracefully, and spoke in softer voice. But when the report went round that the cook was getting breakfast ready—out of doors, too!—we were more than compensated for the loss of such tinsel joys. Chattering and eager, we ran over to the dining-tent, and there, close beside it, found the little kitchen, its ovens smoking hot, and a man outside, aproned and capped, cutting up chops and steaks, with careless deftness, and laying them in the ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... in one wild panic-stricken surge of terror went tearing off through a blind alley of palms, dodging a cafe table, jumping an improvised trellis—a hundred pursuing voices yelling: "Where is she? Where is she?"—the telltale tinsel scarf flapping frenziedly behind her, flapping—flapping—till at last, between one high, garnished shelf and another it twined its vampirish chiffon around the delicate fronds of a huge potted fern! There was a jerk,—a blur,—a blow, the sickening crash of ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... invitation for you, Colonel." He was in one of his gently sparkling moods. "Get into your armor asinorum, for we fare forth to make contest with tinsel and gauze. In other words, we mingle with the proletariat. We go to see Margaret Anglin and Henry Miller in that superb and realistic Western libel, ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... It is a real thing," said Mrs. Mayflower. "It does not project itself in advance of us; but exists in the actual and the now, if it exists at all. We cannot catch it by pursuit; that is only a cheating counterfeit, in guilt and tinsel, which dazzles our eyes in the ever receding future. No; happiness is a state of life; and it comes only to those who do each day's work peaceful self-forgetfulness, and a calm trust in the Giver of all good for the blessing that ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... parade These shine magnificent, and press around The royal happy pair. Great in themselves, 360 They smile superior; of external show Regardless, while their inbred virtues give A lustre to their power, and grace their court With real splendours, far above the pomp Of eastern kings, in all their tinsel pride. Like troops of Amazons, the female band Prance round their cars, not in refulgent arms As those of old; unskilled to wield the sword, Or bend the bow, these kill with surer aim. The royal offspring, fairest of the fair, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... first time, and which she found altogether fascinating. Innumerable candles burned gayly among the spreading boughs, and at the very top hovered an angel with outspread, shimmering wings, her hands bearing a garland of glistening tinsel, and her garments ablaze with gold and silver decoration. Grown girl as she was, Nan was delighted. It was all so new and strange; so different from anything she had ever ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... a very good coloured print, nearly life size, of her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales. The scarlet walls were hung with large coloured prints, life size, of very beautiful women, with very gorgeous dresses, all the jewelry being imitated by pieces of coloured tinsel. A number of sporting prints, very large, and also coloured, were arranged in convenient places on the walls. There were fox-hunting scenes, and German stag-hunts, together with a few quiet landscapes, that always recalled the dear old ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... drawing to its close, he saw Denning and his wife approaching. Behind them he discerned the finely held head and chiseled features of the Lady of Compulsion, and close beside her a slender, girlish figure, shrouded in a silver and ermine cloak, a tinsel scarf half veiled a flower face, gentle, tremulous and inspired—a Jeanne d'Arc of high birth and luxurious rearing. Something tightened about his heart. The child's very appearance was dramatic coupled with the presence of her mother. What the one lacked, the other ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... be real," suggested Nellie. "Everybody will be all make-believe. I saw lots of people getting ready, and I'm sure they will all look like Christmas-tree things, tinsel and paper and ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... and all the men of the South, on their side, had made little altars between two trees, decked with white cloths and adorned with tinsel ornaments and little crosses and small carved images carefully brought, like household gods, from the far home, and treasured only next to their arms. The thin, dark faces of the men were fervent with southern faith, and their wild black eyes were ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... better halves have not returned the compliment. Here is another and a better comparsa, of mulattoes, with cheeks of flaming vermilion, wigs of yellow tow, and false beards. Their everyday apparel is worn reversed, and the visible lining is embellished with tinsel, paint, and ribbons. They are preceded by a band of music: a big drum, hand tambours, basket rattles, conch shells, and a nutmeg-grater. The members of this goodly company dance and sing as they pass ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... refused; whereupon Yakoob, a spoiled boy, cast aside the tinsel-covered wooden sword, and whipped out from his belt a toy dagger his father had given him that morning. It was not very sharp, but very little cuts a taut rope, and one furious slash severed some of the strands, the weight of the two children did the rest, ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... smiling too; 'but it does not turn to tinsel. Would it if I saw more of it?' and he looked at ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... divan was gorgeous with silk curtains and cushions embroidered with gold thread and embossed with tinsel ornaments, the work of the bride herself. The seat for the bridegroom was somewhat higher and larger than the bride's. At last the bridegroom approached in a large barge, which held about two hundred people. A small boat preceded it with three ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... lord and anointed sovereign, the eagle. "Now," said I to the Welshman, "to you and me, as men of refined sensibilities, how painful it would have been that this poor Brummagem brute, the 'Tallyho,' in the impossible case of a victory over us, should have been crowned with Birmingham tinsel, with paste diamonds and Roman pearls, and then led off to instant execution." The Welshman doubted if that could be warranted by law. And, when I hinted at the 6th of Edward Longshanks, chap. 18, for regulating the precedency of coaches, as being probably the statute relied on for the ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... article just now; I am PIOCHING, like a madman, at my stories, and can make nothing of them; my simplicity is tame and dull - my passion tinsel, boyish, hysterical. Never mind - ten years hence, if I live, I shall have learned, so help me God. I know one must work, in the meantime (so says Balzac) COMME LE MINEUR ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mrs. Peedles had one dress and one cap, both black and void of ostentation; but on Sundays and holidays she would appear metamorphosed. She had carefully preserved the bulk of her stage wardrobe, even to the paste-decked shoes and tinsel jewelry. Shapeless in classic garb as Hermia, or bulgy in brocade and velvet as Lady Teazle, she would receive her few visitors on Sunday evenings, discarded puppets like herself, with whom the conversation was of gayer nights before their wires had been ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... combat. The trumpets blew to the field the fresh, young gallants and noblemen, gorgeously apparelled with curious devices of arts and of embroideries, "as well in their coats as in trappers for their horses; some in gold, some in silver, some in tinsel, and divers others in goldsmith's work goodly to behold." Such was the array in which the young knights came forth at Richmond, in the splendid tournament which immediately succeeded Henry's coronation, "assuming the name and devices of the knights or scholars of Pallas, clothed in garments ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... to remember which was which. And back on the boat, in the hour of sunset, when dazzling tinsel and pale pink cloud-flowers sailed over a lake of clear green sky, the Set argued whether the King with the Horses, or the Queen with the Retrousse Nose was in this or that tomb. Sir John Biddell recalled the fact that Egyptian horses had been celebrated, and that it was ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... mysterious action, and now she thought she caught a glimpse of the reason underlying it all. In Sequoia, Bryce Cardigan was regarded as the heir to the throne of Humboldt's first timber- king, but Shirley knew now that as a timber-king, Bryce Cardigan bade fair to wear a tinsel crown. Was it this knowledge that had led ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... entirely out of his element, but Florence shows him the spirit in which to accept the tinsel and the rude fun-making. He soon comes to like it—and to think very well of the naively "different" girl ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... thou lovest him! That is not true to nature, Marion. I would not bid thee take a man's hand because he is rich and great if thou couldst not give him thy heart in return. I would not have thee break any law of God or man for the glitter of gold or tinsel of rank. But the good things of this world, if they be come by honestly, are good. And the love of an honest man, if thou lovest him thyself in return, is not of the less worth because he stands high ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... and a half ago; public declarations were sometimes a point of honour; bodily prostration was by no means exploded; matter-of-fact squires knelt like romantic knights; Sir Charles Grandison and Sir Roger de Coverley bent as low for their own purposes as fantastic gauze and tinsel troubadours. ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... with superior will Lay their base plans with disingenuous skill, Ope their stored treasures and with art display Their worthless figments to the air of day, Roll their large lids, and with grave gestures laud Each tinsel trinket and each painted gaud; With mystic signs of strange import apply Some gew-gaw bauble to the gloating eye; Touch with nice skill, yet craft-dissembled smile, Gems from the mine and spices from the Isle, Affect no care, yet hope ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... uncommon were these holders and candlesticks, so fantastic. They were so peculiar in style that it would seem as if they had been brought from the dream-world of an excited fancy to the world of existence. There was no color, no tinsel, no emblem of death, nothing in that sea of snowy whiteness save an avalanche of snow-covered flowers and the dazzling gleam of burning tapers, with the odor of lilies-of-the-valley, roses, alder-blossoms, hyacinths, to which was added incense of some ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... let the people have the rest. At last, it was enough for the proprietors to suggest anything for the people to negative it, whether it were good or bad. They not only avowed their natural right to do as they pleased, but deemed it due to their self-respect not to do what was pleasing to their tinsel sovereigns in London. And finally, when Colleton, one of the sovereigns in question, tried to declare martial law in the colony, on the plea of danger from Indians or Spanish, the indomitable freemen treated him as their brethren at Albemarle had treated Sothel. The ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... mummings that were once universal. The special survival here is of the Hobby Horse, that once played so prominent a part in these boisterous masquerades, but such life as it still enjoys at Padstow is somewhat a galvanised existence, just as children still occasionally dress in poor tinsel and gaiety in order to collect a few coppers. Such exhibitions are melancholy rather ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... mats; the guardsmen yawned and sprawled. Half a dozen rifles lay on a rock and a cutlass was leaned against a pillar: the armoury of these drowsy musketeers. At the far end, a little closed house of wood displayed some tinsel curtains, and proved upon examination to be a privy on the European model. In front of this, upon some mats, lolled Teburcimoa, the king; behind him, on the panels of the house, two crossed rifles represented fasces. He wore pyjamas which sorrowfully ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a Christmas tree: Loaded with pretty toys for you. Behold the blocks, the Noah's arks, The popguns painted red and blue. No solemn pine-cone forest-fruit, But silver horns and candy sacks And many little tinsel hearts And cherubs pink, and jumping-jacks. For every child a gift, I hope. The doll upon the topmost bough Is mine. But all the rest are yours. And I will ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... laughed at the idea of having a Christmas tree without the usual tinsel and glittering baubles. But after Robin and Harkness had worked for a half-hour she admitted the effect was very ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... bricks, over which were spread priceless Persian and Indian carpets from the "Tosho Khana" or Treasury. The sides and roof were stretched at one end with sulphur-coloured Indian silk, at the other with pale blue silk, the yellow silk with a two-foot border of silver tinsel, the blue edged with gold tinsel. Cunning craftsmen from Agra fashioned "camouflage" doorways and columns of plaster, coloured and gilt in the style of the arabesques in the Alhambra, and the thing was done; ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... nothing. Perhaps I shall discover some new species of antelope or some unknown plant. I may be fortunate enough to find a new waterway. That is all the reward I want. I love the sense of power and the mastery. What do you think I care for the tinsel ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... had veneration for titles. She considered them a tinsel, and the devotee on his knee-caps to them a lump for a kick. Adding: 'Of course I stand for my class; and if we can't have a manlier people—and it 's not likely in a country treating my brother so badly—well, then, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... tedious havock fabled knights In battles feign'd; the better fortitude Of patience and heroick martyrdom Unsung; or to describe races and games, Or tilting furniture, imblazon'd shields, Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds, Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights At joust and tournament; then marshall'd feast Serv'd up in hall with sewers and seneshals; The skill of artifice or office mean, Not that which justly gives heroick name To person, or to poem. Me, of these Nor ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... knowledge of his calling in all its aspects, with the aid of modern machinery, and with sobriety, thrift, and industry, will bring a kind of life to both adults and children that the crowded factory and tenements and the tinsel show of the city cannot give. But one must be willing to forego the social and physical display of the surface of things and to choose the better and more substantial part. If we are a people that can do this there is hope for an early and ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... variety of this insect in Ceylon, from the large black species, the size of the hornet down to the minute tinsel-green fly, no bigger than a gnat; but every one of these different species wages perpetual war against the ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... believe him guilty. Nothing was ever written more detestable in matter and manner. The narrations, the reflections, the jokes, the lamentations, are all the very worst of their respective kinds, at once trite and affected, threadbare tinsel from the Rag Fairs and Monmouth Streets of literature. A foolish schoolboy might write such a piece, and, after he had written it, think it much finer than the incomparable introduction of the Decameron. But that a shrewd statesman, whose earliest works are characterised ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... broad, livid scar, that extended from the corner of his mouth to his ear. Notwithstanding this, the fellow was a great dandy, spending many hours each day in greasing and arranging his long coarse hair, which he ornamented with plates of silver, bits of gaudy-colored cloth, bright feathers, and tinsel. Every hair was scrupulously plucked from his brows and eyelashes, and the lids of his eyes were painted a bright vermilion, giving to his face the expression of a demon rather ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... or tinsel taints the dress Of him who holds the natal power, No weighty helmet's fastenings press On brow that shares Columbia's dower, No blaring trumpets mark the step Of him with mind on peace intent, And so—HATS OFF! Here comes the State, A modest ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... "It is all tinsel, not worth looking at. That is the quality of all you will see at court; gold foil, king ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... piercing, and yet humble, which divines so well the hidden thoughts and secrets of the heart, and brings them all into the sacred bondage of love to God and man, how good and delightful a thing it is! Everything in it is smooth, even well put together, well thought out, but no display, no tinsel, no worldly ornaments of style. The moralist forgets himself and in us appeals only to the conscience. He becomes a ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... impudent young Cockney, who had the most miraculous faculty of telling lies—not only palpable lies, but lies absolutely impossible: yet they were so sublimely told often, and he contrived to lug into them such a quantity of gorgeous tinsel ornament, as, in his happier efforts, decidedly to carry the day against his opponent. The London hand had seen life too, of which, with respect to what is called the world, his competitor was as ignorant as a child. He had his sentimental vein, accordingly, in which he took the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... poetry and music set in brightest colors, the rays of light struggling through thy heavy darkness, that history weaves into threads of richest glory the woes and virtues of thy victims? Stripped of thy show and tinsel, what art thou but the slaying of men?—the slaying of men by the thousands, aye, often by the tens, by ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... carry heavy weights. A little later a marriage procession would strike into the Grand Trunk with music and shoutings, and a smell of marigold and jasmine stronger even than the reek of the dust. One could see the bride's litter, a blur of red and tinsel, staggering through the haze, while the bridegroom's bewreathed pony turned aside to snatch a mouthful from a passing fodder-cart. Then Kim would join the Kentish-fire of good wishes and bad jokes, wishing ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... Yet, at some weapons, men have still the worse. Why should not then we women act alone? Or whence are men so necessary grown? Our's are so old, they are as good as none. Some who have tried them, if you'll take their oaths, Swear they're as arrant tinsel as their clothes. Imagine us but what we represent, And we could e'en give you as good content. Our faces, shapes,—all's better then you see, And for the rest, they want as much as we. Oh, would the higher powers behind to us, And ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... about him now, no mockery. He was naked man, stripped of his tinsel, and laid bare to the soul by the inexorable Master, Pain. Across his chin, as though to mock him, ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... the splendidly-embroidered uniform which the board of general officers had adopted as the costume of the commander-in-chief of the armies of the United States, but he could not be persuaded to wear a suit bedizened with tinsel. He preferred the plain old continental blue and buff, and the modest, black-ribbon cockade. Magnificent white plumes, which General Pinckney had presented to him, he gave to the bride; and to the Reverend Thomas Davis, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... bed, we dressed the tree; it might better be said that Maude and Miss Allsop dressed it, while I gave a perfunctory aid. Both the women took such a joy in the process, vying with each other in getting effects, and as I watched them eagerly draping the tinsel and pinning on the glittering ornaments I wondered why it was that I was unable to find the same joy as they. Thus it had been every Christmas eve. I was always tired when I got home, and after dinner relaxation ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... has it; and much peace of mind it gave him!' answered Lancelot. 'I have grown sick lately of such dreary tinsel abstractions. When you look through the glitter of the words, your "spirit of beauty" simply means certain shapes and colours which please you in beautiful things ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... now come to the swift decision natural to her age and character. Anna was unworthy. She had been tried and found wanting. Gold had been offered to her, and she had chosen tinsel. It was not surprising that the Palmers should be preferred to herself, but that any one related to the Professor, able to see and know him, should be capable of turning aside and neglecting him for others, was a thing she could neither understand nor bear with patience. She ceased to ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... went thither came not home again, and a young man was lost to all that Africa held dear. In course of time she saw every native craft despised, and instead of the fabric that her own fingers wove her children yearned for the tinsel and the gewgaws of the trader. She cursed this man, and she called upon all her spirits to banish the evil. But when at last all was of no avail—when the strongest youth or the dearest maiden had gone—she went back to her hut and ate her heart out in the darkness. She wept for her children ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... of the liveliest activities for several days and nights before and after this biggest event of the winter season. Nor was the celebration confined to the more prosperous sections of the town, but extended into the heart of the mining settlement, where Christmas tinsel and lights were lavished without consideration of cost and nobody was allowed to pass the season without being impressively reminded as to just what turkey roast and ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... they are simple who prize The tongue that is smooth to deceive; Yet sure she had sense to despise, The tinsel that ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... single fact on record or capable of being shewn, to prove that Dr. Priestley was guilty of any other crime than being a dissenter from the church of England, and a warm friend of American Independence. For this he was abused by Porcupine—and Denny is only Porcupine with a little more tinsel to cover his dirt. It is worthy of remark, that after a whole sheet of promises of "literary lore" and "products of the master of spirits" of the nation—the first and second numbers of the Portable Foolery, are stuffed with extracts ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... for gold and silver; men have dreamed at night of fame; In the heat of youth they've struggled for achievement's honored name; But the selfish crowns are tinsel, and their shining jewels paste, And the wine of pomp and glory soon grows bitter to the taste. For there's never any laughter, howsoever far you roam, Like the laughter of the loved ones in the happiness ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... hold their ancient right. And the ages are rolled from the record of time; For the years of peace with its soft'ning beam, That soothed in love the Northman's heart, Are now but the mists of a warrior's dream. And the tinsel of life is burned in the glow That flames in his heart as in years long ago, When Norman sea-kings swept the wave, Who loved the night, the storm, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various |
