"Extravagant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... historical painter, the following story is told: At the theatre she sat next to six German gentlemen of high rank, who were so impressed with her beauty and manner that they expressed great admiration for her among each other. The young lady spoke to them in German, saying that such extravagant praise in the presence of a lady was no real compliment. One of the party immediately repeated what he had said in Latin. She replied in the same tongue "that it was unjust to endeavor to deprive the fair sex of the knowledge of that tongue which was the vehicle of true learning." ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... joyousness; now the notes run at random hither and thither, now tumble about head over heels, now surge in bold arpeggios, now skip from octave to octave, now trip along in chromatics, now vent their gamesomeness in the most extravagant capers. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... favourites whom James I. of England raised to a power so extravagant, has always been surrounded with a tragic mystery. One of them, Buckingham, was stabbed by an assassin; the other, Somerset, was condemned to death for murder. The extravagant dignities and emoluments heaped ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... when a man is raging in a fever, the cat cast ower him will cure him; applied to them whom we hear telling extravagant things, as if they ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... theatres here—huge extravagant places! Algernon went over to an entrance of one, to amuse his mind, cynically criticizing the bill. A play was going forward within, that enjoyed great popular esteem, "The Holly Berries." Seeing that the pit was crammed, Algernon made ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... you've got me in the wrong deck," Morgan interrupted, unwilling to allow the judge to go on building his extravagant fancy. "I could no more fix a watch than I could repair a locomotive, and spectacles are as far out of ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... of his most extravagant, most indecent, and stupidest novels, La Folie Espagnole—a supposed tale of chivalry, which of course shows utter ignorance of time, place, and circumstance, and is, in fact, only a sort of travestied Gil Blas, with ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... felt like a clerk who has sought an interview with his principal to ask for an increase of salary, and then, fearing to broach the subject, pretends to have come on other business. He felt like a son longing to ask his father's counsel in some grievous scrape, or like an extravagant wife waiting her opportunity to confess ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... morose or unhappy. He taught me that you can't be happy yourself if you are making anyone else unhappy. He said the delightful thing about not possessing much was that one could be prodigal and extravagant about being happy. He said he had no obligation in this ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... first, but she put it aside and opened those from Nance Oldham and several other college mates. Then she discovered a thoroughly characteristic note from Aunt Clay, dry and dictatorial but enclosing a check for ten dollars on Monroe & Co., the Paris bankers. "For you and your extravagant mother to spend on foolishness," wrote ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... remembered that every single profession and claim put forward by the magician as such is false; not one of them can be maintained without deception, conscious or unconscious. Accordingly the sorcerer who sincerely believes in his own extravagant pretensions is in far greater peril and is much more likely to be cut short in his career than the deliberate impostor. The honest wizard always expects that his charms and incantations will produce their supposed effect; and when they fail, not only really, as they always do, but conspicuously ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... indeed, as was in a manner equal to the power of the tyrant himself, by the dread that all men had of him, and by the great riches he had acquired; for he took bribes most plenteously, and committed injuries without bounds, and was more extravagant in the use of his power in unjust proceedings than any other. He also knew the disposition of Caius to be implacable, and never to be turned from what he had resolved on. He had withal many other reasons why he ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Tumor, as he supposeth. Not to adde; that his account of the Progressive motion, which he fansieth to follow upon this Tumefaction, and by Acceleration to grow to so great a height near the Shoar (as in Chap. 13. and 14.) is a Notion, which seems to me too extravagant to be salved by any laws of Staticks. And that of the Moons motion onely Synchronizing with the Tydes, casually, without any Physical connexion; I can very hardly assent to. For it can hardly be imagined, that any such constant Synchronisme should ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... was Stumpy, sure enough. MacPhairrson shouted, and Stumpy, at the sound of the loud voice, went wild, trying to tear his way through the gate. When the gate opened, he had to brace himself against the frame, before he could grasp the Boy's hand, so extravagant and overwhelming were the yelping Stumpy's caresses. Gladly he suffered them, letting the excited dog lick his hands and even his face; for, after all, Stumpy was the best and dearest member of the Family. Then, to steady him, he gave him his bundle ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... do so, of course—he was a very rich man—he was also a careful man, never living up to his large yearly income. By no means extravagant in his tastes, not specially fond of hoarding money, but being really possessed of more than his wants required. He lay awake, and thought and thought, and after an early breakfast the next morning he did adopt Antonia's suggestion, and went to see his solicitor. From ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... had been stationed there. She was nineteen, very pretty, and alone in the world. They had married after five or six weeks' acquaintance, and parted by mutual consent after as many months. She had been self-willed and extravagant, he had nothing but his pay at that time, ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... from entertaining them in an extravagant way, as our leaders did. A few rich families furnished the silver plate and luxuries that dazzled the eyes of British officers." Here Washington referred to what he never approved, "borrowing silver and begging luxuries" to treat British ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... expenditures were the subject of censorious criticism. The necessary repairs of the fort, the enlargement and improvement of the buildings from time to time, were too often resisted as unnecessary and extravagant. The company, as a mere trading association, was doubtless successful. Large quantities of peltry were annually brought by the Indians for traffic to the Falls of St. Louis, Three Rivers, Quebec, and Tadoussac. The average number of beaver-skins ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... be content with a few plain articles. She should buy all her furniture at Messrs. David & Saul's. People call them dear, but their work will prove cheapest in the end, and there is an air and style about their things that can be told anywhere. Of course, you won't go to any extravagant lengths,—simplicity ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... again expressed the most violent and extravagant grief; they threw themselves upon the ground, weeping and screaming at the height of their voices, lacerating their bodies and inflicting upon themselves wounds upon their heads, from blows which they gave themselves ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... quiet, respectable, and decently clad, sometimes a little merry, but never noisy, and none of them tipsy. As we travelled along the road, we must have fallen in with several hundreds of these pilgrims coming and going; nor is this likely to be an extravagant estimate, seeing that the hospice can make up more than five thousand beds. By eleven we ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... after the great procession at Monks Barton. Yet Will demanded her separate praises for each beast. In the little garden he had made, budding flowers, untimely transplanted, hung their heads. But she admired with extravagant adjectives, and picked a blossom and set it in her dress. Anon the sun set, with no soft lights and shadows amidst the valley trees she knew, when sunset and twilight played hide-and-seek beside the river, but slowly, solemnly, in hard, clean, illimitable ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... inquiries about Father Damien, I can only reply that we who knew the man are surprised at the extravagant newspaper laudations, as if he was a most saintly philanthropist. The simple truth is, he was a coarse, dirty man, head-strong and bigoted. He was not sent to Molokai, but went there without orders; did not ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on cases of allegiance of a knight to his lady-love, and competitions in poetry, in which the reward was a golden violet. Each troubadour thought it needful to be dedicated to the service of some lady, in whose honor all his exploits in arms or achievements in minstrelsy were performed. To what an extravagant length this devotion was carried, is shown in the story of Jauffred Rudel, Lord of Blieux, who, having heard from some Crusaders a glowing account of the beauty and courtesy of the Countess of Tripoli, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the night, the silence and solitude of the place, the indistinct images of the trees that appeared on every side, stretching their extravagant arms athwart the gloom, conspired, with the dejection of spirits occasioned by his loss, to disturb his fancy and raise strange phantoms in his imagination. Although he was not naturally superstitious, his mind began to be invaded with an awful horror that ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... blazed in the evening; the multitude ran to the palace of the Pope, called for him, threw themselves prostrate on the earth before him, and received his blessing in devout silence. Many of the pardoned offenders were still more extravagant in their demonstrations of joy and thankfulness. Among them was Galletti, of Bologna, afterward one of the Pope's ministers, and most active in those measures which ended in the assassination of Rossi and in driving Pius into exile. He had been sentenced to imprisonment for life, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... when he saw this, praised the greatness of the gift over-zealously, and declared that no one was equal to King Gaut in kindliness. But Ref, though he owed thanks for the benefit, could not approve the inflated words of this extravagant praiser, and said that Gotrik was more generous than Gaut. Wishing to crush the empty boast of the flatterer, he chose rather to bear witness to the generosity of the absent than tickle with lies the vanity of his benefactor ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... in the nature of gush or effervescence in our dispositions. I know that I was glad to see my parents, and the rest, and they were all unmistakably glad to see me, and we manifested our feelings in a natural, homely way, and without any display whatever of extravagant emotions. Greetings being over, about the first inquiry was whether I had yet had any breakfast, and my answer being in the negative, a splendid old-time breakfast was promptly prepared. But my mother was keenly disappointed at my utter lack of appetite. I just couldn't eat hardly a bit, and ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... before business seized upon it, tore out its whole lower floors, and converted it into a strong and commodious bank. It is the one building in all Appleboro that keeps a light burning all night, a proceeding some citizens regard as unnecessary and extravagant; for is not Old Man Jackson there employed as night watchman? Old Man Jackson lost a finger and a piece of an ear before Appomattox, and the surrender deprived him of all opportunity to repay in kind. It was his cherished hope that ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... enclosed in little caskets, which the pious might wear in their bosoms. After the tears, the next most precious relics were drops of the blood of Jesus and the martyrs, and the milk of the Virgin Mary. Hair and toe-nails were also in great repute, and were sold at extravagant prices. Thousands of pilgrims annually visited Palestine in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, to purchase pretended relics for the home market. The majority of them had no other means of subsistence than the profits thus obtained. Many a nail, cut ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... And so honorary monuments, triumphal columns, statues and tombs sprang into being. Again, with the growth of a people, wealth increases, and every new victory assuring an added degree of ease introduces at the same time extravagant tastes; a people after enduring suffering cries out for its portion of pleasure; it was to satisfy this demand that circuses were built, and amphitheatres where the eyes could feast on imposing spectacles; private houses became more comfortable, they were improved in arrangement, ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... and imagination; and many particular acts will be wrong, though their general principle be right. It cannot be denied that a just conviction of the restraint necessary to be laid upon the appetites has produced extravagant and unnatural modes of mortification, and institutions, which, however favourably considered, will be found to violate nature ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... Abies Pattoniana, the upper edge of the timberline on the portion of the Cascades opposite the Sound. A thousand feet below the extreme limit of tree growth it occurs in beautiful groups amid parklike openings where flowers grow in extravagant profusion. ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... I know,—that so many men love me! But, after all, what sort of love is it? It is just as when you and I, when we see something nice in a shop, call it a dear duck of a thing, and tell somebody to go and buy it, let the price be ever so extravagant. I know my own position, Laura. I'm a dear ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... quixotic act, to be wondered at blankly, or, perhaps, to be almost angrily condemned. She stood away from her own impulsive, enthusiastic nature, and stared at it critically—as even her friends had often stared—and realized that it was unusual, perhaps extravagant, perhaps sometimes preposterous. This readiness to sacrifice—was it not rather slavish than regally loyal? This forgetfulness of personal joy, this burnt-offering of personality—was it not contemptible? Could such actions bring into being the respect of others, the respect of any man? Had ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... daily living practice with respect to slaves under such laws, is illegal and may be done away. But if so, all our West Indian slaves are, without exception, unlawfully held in bondage. There is no master, who has a legal title to any of them. This assertion may appear strange and extravagant to many; but it does not follow on that account that it is the less true. It is an assertion, which has been made by a West Indian proprietor himself. Mr. Steele[4], before quoted, furnishes us with what passed at the meeting of ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... She's so confidential, and perhaps she wanted me to know how she was placed. And—she's not that sort of person—she's generous and liberal, rather extravagant I should say.' ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... the lamp, with her shawl about her shuddering shoulders, waiting for the inevitable, begging him to assure her that it would be all right. It would, of course, be all right in the end. It must! Then things would be different. He made himself no extravagant promises of reform, no fevered reproaches; but things would be different.—He would take Lettice driving; he had the prettiest young wife in Greenstream, and he would show people that he realized it. She had been Lettice Hollidew, the daughter of old ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... scholastic method and the worship of Aristotle, the Disputation fell into disrepute because of the extravagant lengths to which it was carried. The following sarcastic criticism by the Spanish scholar, Juan Luis Vives (1462-1540), is one illustration of the growing revolt of his ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... meet the newcomers. Lord Rotherby was attended by Mainwaring, a militia captain—a great, burly, scarred bully of a man—and a Mr. Falgate, an extravagant young buck of his acquaintance. An odder pair of sponsors he could not have found had he been at ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... attentive eye on Polly, on her high and red cheek-bones, the extravagant fringe that vulgarised all her honest face, the Sunday dress of stone-coloured alpaca, profusely trimmed with ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... confession to be received with ineffable delight by the man to whom it was tendered, she dropped her eyes and a deep blush overspread her face. For some time no word passed between us; enough had been said. I knew that the look in my eyes had told more, a thousand times, than all the extravagant compliments with which I had, half banteringly, deluged her ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... caressed the dog, which, clearly seeing that he had gained his cause, bounded along the road in the most extravagant leaps, clearly indicative of his emotions of pleasure. In spite of all his efforts to keep them back, tears escaped from Lucien's eyes, and I had to turn my head away to avoid having to recall the promise he made to refrain from crying. But, nevertheless, although ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... hastily: "His brothers closed it up for him. They wouldn't stand any more of his extravagant nonsense. They shut down the factory and then shut down ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... that any term in the contract itself is not complied with. He may have been fraudulently induced to believe that B was another B, and that the barrel contained mackerel; but however much his belief on those points may have affected his willingness to make the promise, it would be somewhat extravagant to give his words a different meaning on that account. "You" means the person before the speaker, whatever his name, and "contents" applies to salt, as ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... to Rome to the court of Tiberius, who conceived a great affection for him, and placed him near his son Drusus, whose favour he very soon won. On the death of Drusus, Agrippa, who had been recklessly extravagant, was obliged to leave Rome, overwhelmed with debt. After a brief seclusion, Herod the Tetrarch, his uncle, who had married Herodias, his sister, made him Agoranomos (Overseer of Markets) of Tiberias, and presented him with a large sum of money; but his ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... road, with the late prisoner still whooping it up in the rear. Taking a fleeting look behind him, Rod could see that Oscar had now managed to scramble to his feet, doubtless deeming the danger point passed. He was wildly accentuating his extravagant gestures by renewed shouting; and Rod even imagined he could catch some movement further back, as though those who were being summoned might ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... her tiny brown hands, as she gloated over a length of rose and silver brocade. Standing beside her was the proud owner of this magnificence; a slim, graceful girl, wearing heavy gold ornaments and flowers in her hair, and, in spite of an extravagant use of pearl powder, undeniably pretty. Her slanting eyes were long-lashed and expressive, and her little mocking mouth ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... arranged as a play. There were but five characters in the play, which was the story of a girl who, holding a position as private secretary in the home of a man of wealth, discovers that his daughter, a girl about her own age, has been unduly extravagant and, needing money, has forged a check in her father's name. While she deliberates as to what is to be done, the father discovers the forgery, and taxing his daughter with it, she becomes panic-stricken and lays the forgery at the door of the ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... and that as far as the celebrated closing scene in "The Broken Heart" was concerned, Charles Lamb's comment on it was "worth more than all Ford ever wrote."[92] Hazlitt's dispassionate sanity in this instance forms an instructive contrast: "Except the last scene of the Broken Heart (which I think extravagant—others may think it sublime, and be right) they [Ford's plays] are merely exercises of style and effusion of wire-drawn sentiment."[93] The same strength of judgment rendered Hazlitt proof against the excessive sentimentality in Beaumont and Fletcher and gave a distinct ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... brilliant and unanswerable and analogous to other things. He hardly ever took the trouble to say all this; he was far too much interested in what he already knew, or was just on the point of finding out, to treat of these extravagant and complicated ramifications of his subject. When he really got to know his mice and bats, as they deserved to be known, it might be possible to turn his attention to other things. Meanwhile, it ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... the younger died in 1668, and was succeeded by his cousin John. "This gentleman," says Jones (Hist. of Brecknock, ii., 482), "being of a gay and extravagant turn, left the estate, much encumbered, to his son Charles, and soon after his death it was foreclosed and ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... disadvantage by his numerous enemies at the Court of Lisbon. It was suggested to the King, who was very jealous of his authority in the distant parts of Asia, that Albuquerque threatened and desired to make himself an independent prince at Goa. He was attacked as extravagant in his expenses and grandiose in his views, just as Lord Wellesley was censured by the directors of the East India Company nearly 300 years later. And these views became so prevalent at Court, that King Emmanuel resolved to supersede Affonso ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... was at least one snug chamber in Versailles, and that was the room of the Red-Cross prisoners. However extravagant the degrees of frost registered without, the boys' sick-room was always pleasantly warm. How the good Soeur, who was on duty all day, managed to regulate the heat throughout the night-watches was her secret. A half-waking boy might catch a glimpse of her, apparently robed as by day, ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... notice of the precautions employed by the merchants there, in order to guard against adulteration and fraud. Cinnamon, another of the exports of Arabia to Rome, though not a production of that country, was also in high repute, and brought an extravagant price. Vespasian was the first who dedicated crowns of cinnamon, inclosed in gold filagree, in the Capitol and the Temple of Peace; and Livia dedicated the root in the Palatine Temple of Augustus. The plant itself was ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... she has had the use of one of the ponies here sometimes, but I hope that has not made her extravagant in her ideas. I did not think that there was anything of that ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... together on the stamped Spanish-leather cushions by the plate-glass observation-window at the rear end, watching the surge and ripple of the ties crowded back behind them, and, it is believed, making notes of the scenery. Cheyne moved nervously between his own extravagant gorgeousness and the naked necessity of the combination, an unlit cigar in his teeth, till the pitying crews forgot that he was their tribal enemy, and did their ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... was the most elegant in the assembly, completed this costume. Next him was the King of Wurtemberg with his enormous stomach, which forced him to sit some distance from the table; and the King of Naples, in so magnificent a costume that it might almost be considered extravagant, covered with crosses and stars, who played with his ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... "Extravagant!" he exclaimed as though to himself. "You have cost me my self-respect, a big part of my future and the cream of my best friendship. What higher price could a man pay ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... described, I am still more convinced of the very great, one might almost say of the tremendous, importance of deep-breathing exercises. What has struck me so forcibly in this little book is the fact that there is no undue enthusiasm evident; no embellishment of the subject; no extravagant claims for the system advocated; just a plain sane, sober and intelligent description of procedures of immense value to all who would either keep, or improve, their health. The authoress has, as it were, laid before the reader a feast of good things in the way ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... excluded, you cannot find a verdict of conviction. The government is to prove that the prisoner enticed and seduced these negroes, and you have no right to presume he did so unless every other possible explanation of the case is positively excluded by the testimony. Is it so extravagant a supposition that Mr. Foote's speech, and the other torch-light speeches heretofore alluded to, heard by these slaves, or communicated to them, might have so wrought upon their minds as to induce them to leave their masters? I don't say that they had any ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... knows how really good a time she is having, I do believe. She is the rarest combination of old woman and baby I have ever known, cynically wise, almost, and soft innocence. She has a dozen beaux and is extravagant about, and ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... much envied by Amico of Bologna, an eccentric man of extravagant brain, whose figures, executed by him throughout all Italy, but particularly in Bologna, where he spent most of his time, are equally eccentric and even mad, if one may say so. If, indeed, the vast labour which ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... whole body necessarily suffer; democracy alone secures the rule of the general will; and this can be thoroughly secured only in a democratic republic. He then attacks the English constitution as unjust and extravagant, claiming that the formation of a close alliance between England, France, and America would enable the expenses of government (Army, Navy, and Civil List inclusive) to be reduced to a million and ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... period could not be said to have assumed definite shape: life down there in the pleasant country by the Meuse, marriage, a little house, a little field to till whose produce should suffice for the needs of two people whose ideas were not extravagant. Now the dream was become an eager longing, a penetrating conviction that, with a wife as loving and industrious as she, existence would be a veritable earthly paradise. And she, the tranquillity of whose mind had never in those days been ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... be no day of thoughtless joy; it brings me sad retrospective thoughts and the consciousness of weighty duties. On this day my father seems to me to die anew. Dismiss, therefore, your extravagant fancies to a more fitting time. I cannot trust you, Pollnitz, with the decorations of the throne, your taste is too oriental for this occasion; I will therefore place this affair in the hands of M. Costellan, who will order the simple ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... possessed of such merits. No more should I question the justice of his admiration, nor wonder at its warmth. The rude hyperbole that had occasionally escaped him, when speaking of the "girl"—as he called her—no longer appeared extravagant. In truth, the charms of this magnificent maiden were worthy of metaphoric phrase. Perhaps, had I seen her first—before looking upon Lilian—that is, had I not seen Lilian at all—my own heart might have yielded to this half-Indian damsel? Not so now. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... were together, thought of the exchequer took wings. There were theater parties, at which tired Maizie was a happy though protestant third. There were boxes of candy and flowers, seeing which Shirley would cry, "Oh, you extravagant boy!" in a tone that made David very glad of his extravagance. They loved; therefore they were rich. What had they to do with caution ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... refused to believe that these novices in government and their friends were aught but scamps and fools. Under the circumstances occurring directly after the war, the wisest statesman would have been compelled to resort to increased taxation and would have, in turn, been execrated as extravagant, dishonest, and incompetent. It is easy, therefore, to see what flaming and incredible stories of Reconstruction governments could gain wide currency and belief. In fact the extravagance, although great, was not universal, and much of it ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... the parson, whose eyes seemed trying to bind Shelton to his will, "I must say your ideas do seem to me both extravagant and unhealthy. The propagation of children ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... bottom, forest and field, with what was termed the Island, consisting of a hundred more, which had never been overflowed in the century of cultivation it had known, constituted a snug and valuable plantation. It had been the seat of an old family once, but extravagant living and neglect of its resources had compelled its sale, and it had passed into the hands of its present owner, of whose vast possessions it formed an ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... gradually insinuated into the sacred formulae. Scientific habits of thought, I venture to suggest, would tend to free a man from the dominion of these abstract phrases, which sometimes make men push absolute dogmas to extravagant results, and sometimes blind them to the complete transformation which has taken place in their true meaning. The great test of statesmanship, it is said, is the knowledge how and when to make a compromise, and when to hold fast to a principle. The tendency ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... think I can live very well on fifty pounds a year, papa. I am not very extravagant, and I could make my own dresses ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... is only in fiction that a man is able to live a double life successfully to the grand climax. I failed because the mounting fortunes of the Little Clean-Up, my share of which was as yet merely giving me money to squander on the extravagant whims and caprices of Agatha Geddis, were making all three of us, Gifford, Barrett ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... Caesar took place on the 26th of February, 1500. Although this was the great Jubilee year, the festivals of the carnival began none the less for that, and were conducted in a manner even more extravagant and licentious than usual; and the conqueror after the first day prepared a new display of ostentation, which he concealed under the veil of a masquerade. As he was pleased to identify himself with the glory, ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of zeal in his present mission in the thought that it would be displeasing to the unkingly mind of the King. He had seen the ungainly monarch riding through Westminster one day not long since, and the sight of his slovenly and undignified figure, trapped out in all the extravagance of an extravagant age, his clumsy seat on horseback (of which, nevertheless, he was not a little proud), and his goggle eyes and protruding tongue, filled the young man with disgust and dislike. But for the noble bearing and boyish beauty of the Prince of Wales, who rode beside his ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... will begin to be extravagant, at once. In the first place, I will go down to that confectioner's, round the corner; and we will celebrate my appointment with a cold chicken, and a bottle of port. I shall be back in ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... report of Dr. Detmers, to whom he refers, and like Dr. George, either did not understand or intentionally misconstrued it for political purposes. Perhaps what Dr. Detmers did report was bad enough and extravagant enough, but it had exclusive reference to hog cholera then prevalent, as any one can satisfy himself who will turn to the reports or the Department of Agriculture for the several years ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... extravagant slaughter which he chronicles bears little comparison to the hunts in which others engaged. The cruel and wanton destruction of the bison takes its place in history with the more fierce and relentless persecution which the Indians ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... had learned from the police all that was to be known about her husband: 'A clerk in the Home Department, of regular habits and good repute, and, moreover, a thinking man, but married to a very pretty woman, whose expenses seemed somewhat extravagant for her modest position.' That ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... had advanced as far as Phalara on the Malian bay. Here the decree was presented to him, and then he proceeded to Lamia, where he was received by the populace with marks of the warmest attachment, with clapping of hands and shouting, and other signs by which the extravagant joy ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... Pop did not come in fawning and full of extravagant praise, as most scroungers will. He just assumed equality with us right from the start and he talked in an absolutely matter-of-fact way, neither praising nor criticizing one bit—too damn matter-of-fact and open, for that matter, to suit my taste, but then I have heard ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... side of the Parliament, and became notorious for persecuting the Royalist clergy in the country round, whose lot in any case was a sorry one. John sold some of his estates and left a portion to his younger son, so that his eldest son (another John) and his wife, both of whom were extravagant, soon found themselves in difficulties. John Wichehalse made himself justly unpopular by the part he played after Sedgemoor. A Major Wade, in the Duke of Monmouth's army, had escaped from the battle-field and, with two other men, was ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... time, I began to suspect that when we had married I was only second in her affection, and the result was that, after a severe struggle with myself, I took measures to have my wife watched. This step soon resulted in the discovery that the woman whom I loved with such extravagant devotion, and whom I had, up to then, believed equally devoted to me, was in the habit of secretly meeting a young Italian after nightfall in a secluded spot at the bottom of our own garden. So great, even then, was my faith in your mother, Leo, that ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... anterior to the time when India first becomes, in any real sense, historical; but there is no reason to doubt that they represent the progressive evolution into different forms of very ancient germs already present in the Vedas themselves. They abound in the same extravagant eclecticism, leading often to the same confusions and contradictions that Hindu theology presents. The Sankhya Darshana, or system, recognising only a primary material cause from which none but finite beings can proceed, regards the universe and all that exists ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... furred cloak. His beard was closely shaved, his doublet reached to the middle of his leg, and the girdle which secured it, and at the same time supported his ponderous sword, was embroidered and embossed with gold work. We have already noticed the extravagant fashion of the shoes at this period, and the points of Maurice de Bracy's might have challenged the prize of extravagance with the gayest, being turned up and twisted like the horns of a ram. Such was the dress of a gallant of the period; and, in the present ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... anxiety by adding that some officers whom he had met at the Hotel de l'Europe were talking of making a sortie en masse just before daylight. An extremely excited state of feeling had prevailed since the tenor of the German demands had become known, and measures the most extravagant were proposed and discussed. No one seemed to be deterred by the consideration that it would be dishonorable to break the truce, taking advantage of the darkness and giving the enemy no notification, and the wildest, most visionary schemes were ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... to Major Hockin to take him for an extravagant man or a self-indulgent one because of the good dinner he had ordered, and his eagerness to sit down to it. Through all the best years of his life he had been most frugal, abstemious, and self-denying, grudging every penny of his own expense, but sparing none for his family. And now, when he found ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... now reprinted will need some indulgence at the reader's hands. Its blemishes are not a few; and no great exercise of critical ability is required to discover that the language is often strained and the drawing extravagant. The atmosphere in which the action of the piece moves is hot and heavy. Sebastian's presence in the third act brings with it a ray of sunlight; but he is quickly gone, and the gloom settles down more hopelessly than before. Onaelia, the forsaken lady, is so vixenish that she ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... the meaning of Chiquita's passionate longing for the man she loved; a thing which the worldliness of the life she had lived hitherto had taught her to be too extravagant to exist anywhere outside of books, but which was true nevertheless. Her intuition told her this in the face of all the world might say to the contrary. As she looked back over the years and thought of her friends, she realized ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... once more to the river's brink, where a short distance down stream could be seen the Lebanon, the family rowboat. Surely the place did warrant the boy extravagant use of "a correct adjective," and did look "adjectivey" away ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... culpable; and I make no peculiar charge, when I say that until I can see more individual consecration, more clearness of perception and firmness of conduct in regions outside of the walls of the household among the mass of women, than now, I shall not cherish extravagant hopes of the great immediate ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... from an indoor lamp those vent-pipes cannot be made to discharge into a place of safety, while, as stated before, a generator in which the vent-pipes come into action with any frequency is but an extravagant piece of apparatus for the decomposition of so costly a material as calcium carbide. Looked at from one aspect the holder of a fixed apparatus is merely an economical substitute for the wasteful vent- pipe, ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... terms should be demanded. A paper, containing propositions which statesmen of our age will think reasonable, but which to the most humane and liberal English Protestants of the seventeenth century appeared extravagant, was sent to the camp of the besiegers. What was asked was that all offences should be covered with oblivion, that perfect freedom of worship should be allowed to the native population, that every parish should have its priest, and that Irish Roman Catholics should be capable of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... notices of forty-roomed Tudor mansions, which seem to abound in the market, mansions with timbered parks, ornamental waters, Grecian temples, ha-has, gazebos, herds of graceful bounding gazebos, and immediate possession. I do more than this. I send him extravagant eulogies of lands across the seas, where the grapes grow larger, the pear-trees blossom all the year round and separate thrushes laid on to each estate never cease to sing. I suggest the advantages of the mercantile marine and a life on the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... taken cold. And she never made any remark about the gifts with which the drawers were filled. She did not even seem to see them, arranging them without a word either of praise or dispraise. But her whole nature rebelled against this extravagant generosity, of which she could never have conceived the possibility. She protested in her own fashion; exaggerating her economy and reducing still further the expenses of the housekeeping, which she now conducted on so narrow a scale that she retrenched even in the smallest expenses. ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... holding her head up again and her eyes were sparkling with animation. "You blessed people!" she exclaimed in extravagant accents. "You came to the rescue just in the nick of time. If I had had to languish here all summer there wouldn't have been enough left of me to go to college in the fall. Think what a misfortune you have averted from that institution! An hour ago I was wallowing in the ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... Mr. Perkupp said: "Pray don't discuss the matter; it is at an end. Your son will bring his punishment upon himself." I went home in the evening, thinking of the hopeless future of Lupin. I found him in most extravagant spirits and in evening dress. He threw a letter on the ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... women be urged to use their influence on fashions in dress to keep them as economical as possible, and to register their disapproval of such styles as the melon and peg-top skirt, or any other styles that imply extravagant changes in the wardrobe, to the end that the time and money thus saved from clothes may be devoted to the needs ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... lived with them in the Eysvogel house and still ruled her daughter as if she were a child, had opposed her engagement to Wolff, but their resistance had ceased since the betrothal. On the other hand, she had often heard that Fran Eysvogel, the haughty mother, dowerless herself, had many poor and extravagant relations besides her daughter and her debt-laden, pleasure-loving husband, Sir Seitz Siebenburg, who, it could not be denied, all drew heavily upon the coffers of the ancient mercantile house. Yet ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... things, that, while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour. When Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way, holding his sides, rolling his head, and twisting his face into the most extravagant contortions, Scrooge's niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled friends, being not a bit ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... Flowers" was never brought to a glorious completion by the Madigans, even though they skipped uninteresting and difficult parts, and, like the early Elizabethans, permitted no intermission between acts. It was very often laughed to death. At times it became a saturnalia of extravagant action, and it frequently ended in a free fight, when the Rose and the Lily hinted too openly at the Recluse's incurable tendency to sing off key. But that night it might have dragged its saccharine length of melody to the coronation ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... undefined and obscure. Thus, in the central portion of the Lower Park the low grounds have been generally filled, and the high grounds reduced; but the two largest areas of low ground have been excavated, the excavation being carried laterally into the hills as far as was possible, without extravagant removal of rock, and the earth obtained transferred to higher ground connecting hillocks with hills. Excavations have also been made about the base of all the more remarkable ledges and peaks of rock, while additional material has been conveyed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... of all your proceedings. This, as your guardian, is my duty. I should further warn you, that I shall not, whilst you choose to live in a rank below your own, supply you with your customary yearly allowance. Two hundred guineas a year would be an extravagant allowance in your present circumstances. I do not mention money with any idea of influencing your generous mind by mercenary motives; but it is necessary that you should not deceive yourself by ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... talk and your extravagant expenses will be the cause that some day thieves will come and cut my throat, in the belief that I am ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... don't know, Stephen. We're short of money, you know, and the fund is dwindling every day. Don't you think it's a little extravagant to have a turkey for two people? And somehow I don't feel a bit Christmassy. I think I'd rather spend it just like any other day and try to forget that it is Christmas. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... South America, called Guiana, a country as yet undiscovered, there were mines and treasures far exceeding any which Cortes or Pizarro had met with. Raleigh, whose turn of mind was somewhat romantic and extravagant, undertook at his own charge the discovery of this wonderful country. Having taken the small town of St. Joseph, in the Isle of Trinidado, where he found no riches, he left his ship, and sailed up the River Oroonoko in pinnaces, but without meeting any thing to answer his expectations. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... these extravagant fables have generally some foundation in fact, we are informed by Servius, Tzetzes, and Zenobius, that, in the absence of Minos, Pasiphae fell in love with a young noble of the Cretan court, named Taurus, who, according to Plutarch, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... spend several months. Martin and Barney were much annoyed at this; for the former was impatient to penetrate further into the interior, and the latter had firmly made up his mind to visit the diamond mines, about which he entertained the most extravagant notions. He did not, indeed, know in the least how to get to these mines, nor even in which direction they lay; but he had a strong impression that as long as he continued travelling he was approaching gradually nearer to them, and he had no doubt whatever that he would ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... closer circle, they pass around to give, each to each, a farewell grasp of the hand; and amid that extravagant merriment the lips begin to quiver, and eyes grow dim. Then, two by two, preceded by the miscellaneous band, playing 'The Road to Boston,' and headed by a huge base-viol, borne by two stout fellows, and played by a third, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... greatly surprised at something he saw when he got there, and so bewildered by it that he forgot all about the money he had in his pocket, and the stockings, shoes and tobacco of which his father stood so much in need. There was David making the most extravagant purchases, and there was Silas bowing and smiling and acting as politely to him as he ever did to his richest customers. If Dan was astonished at this, he was still more astonished, when David threw down a ten-dollar bill and ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... mother said, "my son." The former bowed with formal civility, but gave a baffling effect of mockery which, Howat discovered, enveloped practically every movement and speech. He was, he said, enchanted to meet Mr. Penny; and that extravagant expression, delivered in a slightly harsh, negligent voice, heightened the impression of a personality strong and cold; a being as obdurate as an iron bar masquerading in coloured satin and formulating pretty phrases like the sheen on the surface of a deep November ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... "I'm afraid Ben's gettin' extravagant," said Uncle Job. "I've always heerd that the Astor House is a fashionable hotel where they charge big prices. Ben ought to have gone to a cheap ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... after. Juries were always liable to be imposed upon, and generally gave liberal compensation, altogether apart from the market value. Experts, such as land agents and surveyors, were always in request, and indeed these experts in value caused the most extravagant amounts to be awarded. Even the mean sum between highest and lowest was a monstrously unfair guide, for one old expert used to instruct his pupils that the only true principle in estimating value was to ask at least twice ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... general rule of man's being a social animal; especially when it appears (as is sufficiently and admirably proved by my friend the author of An Enquiry into Happiness) that these men live in a constant opposition to their own nature, and are no less monsters than the most wanton abortions or extravagant births. ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... for, after all, the best dressmakers are bornees. It is too early in the year for velvet. I shall put on my dark green brocade with the old Flanders lace. I am so glad you like lace. It is my chief weakness. Even dear Edward, who was so generous, thought me a little extravagant in the matter of lace. But when one once begins to collect, the study is so interesting. One is ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... nations. Why search through the East to account for its worship in Greece? More easy to suppose that the inhabitants of a land, whom the sun so especially favoured— saw and blessed it, for it was good, than, amid innumerable contradictions and extravagant assumptions, to decide upon that remoter shore, whence was transplanted a deity, whose effects were so benignant, whose worship was so natural, to the Greeks. And in the more plain belief we are also borne out by the more sound inductions of learning. For it is noticeable that neither ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... loans were made upon the extravagant rate of interest of seven and three-tenths per cent. The reason for this was the fact that there was no currency the secretary could receive in exchange for bonds. As already stated, specie payments were suspended by the banks December ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... of the last emperor of the Sui dynasty, the power was in the hands of the emperor's uncle, Yang Su. He was proud and extravagant. In his halls stood choruses of singers and bands of dancing girls, and serving-maids stood ready to obey his least sign. When the great lords of the empire came to visit him he remained comfortably seated on his couch while ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... away shortly afterward to deal with booksellers, and I wondered how a bank clerk aged twenty could put into my hands with a profligate abundance of detail, all given with absolute assurance, the story of extravagant and bloodthirsty adventure, riot, piracy, and death in unnamed seas. He had led his hero a desperate dance through revolt against the overseers, to command of a ship of his own, and ultimate establishment of a kingdom on an island "somewhere ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... of those men that don't know how to manage. Good situation. Regular income. Quite enough for luxuries as well as needs. Not really extravagant. And yet the fellow's always in difficulties. Somehow he gets nothing out of his money. Excellent flat—half empty! Always looks as if he'd had the brokers in. New suit—old hat! Magnificent necktie—baggy trousers! Asks you to dinner: cut glass—bad mutton, or Turkish coffee—cracked cup! ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... shall allow myself no interruption until this work is finished, hoping thereby to obtain a little freedom, for if my position here is not changed I shall be forced to seek the means of existence elsewhere. Meantime, extravagant projects present themselves, as is apt to be the case when one is in difficulties. That of accompanying you to the United States was so tempting, that I am bitterly disappointed to think that its execution ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... man and long-dead beast. There had been no thinking round the central interest, no attempted reading of its bearing upon normal events. Mind and imagination were fascinated by it to the exclusion of all else. It acted as an extravagant dream acts, abrogating all known laws of cause and effect, giving logic and science the lie, negativing probability, making the untrue true, the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... her; still there is no doubt that her fortune will come in very handy for Hawley. As to the girl herself, I think she has made a very good choice. She has plenty of money for both, and as he has managed to keep up on his younger son's portion, he can have no extravagant tastes, and will make her a very good husband. There is no other engagement ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... to mention this to the Queen after the drive that afternoon, and point out the necessity for being rather more economical than they had been hitherto. "I'm sure, Sidney," she protested, "no one can say I am extravagant! It was absolutely necessary to have the whole Palace done up—I had to order some new dresses, as I couldn't be expected to wear ready-made robes in my position, and one or two tiaras and things from the Court Goldsmith, whose charges certainly ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... Julius in the tenth for no other reason, than because he had of old continued in that rule; for the natural Prince hath fewer occasions, and less heed to give offence, whereupon of necessity he must be more beloved; and unless it be that some extravagant vices of his bring him into hatred, it is agreeable to reason, that naturally he should be well beloved by his own subjects: and in the antiquity and continuation of the Dominion, the remembrances and occasions of innovations are quite extinguished: for evermore one change leaves a kind of ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... books. Eggs are an entirely satisfactory substitute for meat and fish, and are therefore often served for the main dish at dinner or supper. Many people like an egg every morning for breakfast, but this is a rather extravagant habit. If eggs are served for breakfast they are usually cooked in the shell, poached or scrambled. The men of the family sometimes prefer their eggs fried, but this is not a good method for the children. Only ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... century, and that their faith in this dogma was as difficult to shake as the opinion of our ancestors, that the earth was never the abode of living beings until the creation of the present continents, and of the species now existing,—it is easy to perceive what extravagant systems they would frame, while under the influence of this delusion, to account for the monuments discovered in Egypt. The sight of the pyramids, obelisks, colossal statues, and ruined temples, would ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... conjecture identified the Zacharias, who is mentioned in the Gospels as having been slain between the temple and the altar (Matt. xxiii. 35), with this Zacharias the father of the Baptist. And in the extravagant romance called the Protevangelium, which is occupied mainly with the birth, infancy, and childhood of our Lord, the Baptist's father is represented as slain by Herod 'at the vestibule of the temple of the Lord' [256:1]. Our author therefore supposes that these Christians of Gaul are quoting ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... neglected nothing which he thought might conduce to enable him to attain the object which he thought he might propose to himself without being accused of extravagant pretensions. Excited by the advice of a great many persons, whose judgment, as well as their noble and generous sentiments, commanded implicit confidence, he resolved to go to the very fountain of favors, to carry ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... its degenerative effect on mankind. The author even goes so far as to say that "had man been represented in his true and noble form, then war would have been impossible." Now although the present critic is and always has been an ardent prohibitionist, he must protest at this extravagant theory. Vast and far-reaching as are the known evil effects of drink, it is surely transcending fact to accuse it of causing mankind's natural greed, pride, and combative instincts, which lie at the base of all warfare. It may, however, be justly suggested that much of the peculiar ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... humors, had made the most of his easy disposition; and, when her quick temper had got the better of her, had seldom hesitated in her cooler moments to acknowledge that she had been wrong. She had been extravagant, it is true, and had irritated him by fits of unreasonable jealousy; but these were faults not to be thought of now. He could only remember that she was the mother of his child, and that she lay ill but two rooms away ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... promise to Mr. D'Arcy to sit to him for his picture of Zenelophon, and the prosaic fact that I had not money in my pocket to travel with; for it was part of the delicate method of Mr. D'Arcy to furnish me with everything money could buy, but to give me no money. His extravagant expenditure upon me in the way of dress, trinkets, and every kind of luxury that could be placed in my room by Mrs. Titwing appalled me. Mrs. Titwing's own bearing, when I spoke to her about them, would have made one almost suppose that they grew there like mushrooms; ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... only one, and that came slowly and elaborately, a long gradual separation wrought by the accumulation of years and mental decay, but many close friends and many whom I have counted upon for sympathy and fellowship have passed out of my world. I miss such a one as Bob Stevenson, that luminous, extravagant talker, that eager fantastic mind. I miss him whenever I write. It is less pleasure now to write a story since he will never read it, much less give me a word of praise for it. And I miss York Powell's friendly laughter and Henley's exuberant welcome. ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... party statement, that Mrs. Clark was a low, vulgar, and extravagant woman, was entirely untrue. Mrs. Clark, however imprudent and devoid of virtue, was no more the daughter of a journeyman bricklayer than she was the daughter of Pope Pius. She was really, as Mr. Cyrus Redding, who knew most of the political secrets of his day, has ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... acquaintance, for experience had often shown me that where gold and myself failed, a pair of flashing eyes and other felicities will often succeed. Like all the other women of that set in Belgrade, Mlle. Valon was woefully extravagant. She gambled heavily and one night I assisted her with a loan of 500 francs. I came to know her ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... using remedies of this character and since many of the most widely advertised preparations are extremely harmful, even poisonous, we have taken the liberty of pointing out a few "danger signals," in the guise of extravagant assertions and impossible claims, which are characteristic signs of the patent medicines ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... Ruby, firing up under this extravagant charge and bridling, "pray remember whose roof you're under, with your ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... easy, rattling, gentlemanly fellow, and nobody's enemy but his own. His wife, they say, is dreadfully extravagant: and, indeed, since his marriage, and in spite of his wife's large income, he has been in the Bench several times; but she signs some bills and he comes out again, and is as gay and genial as ever. All mercantile speculations he has wisely long since given up; ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... those contracted in high life, are usually the most unjust, probably the result of honesty being more a virtue of necessity than of choice, and of the disgraceful system of imposing on the extravagant and wealthy. Experience, it is granted, is a treasure which fools must purchase at a high price; but however largely we may hold possession of that commodity, it will not excuse that scheme of bare-weight honesty, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various
... consummately artificial, in human shape, that the person impresses us as an unreality and as having hardly pith enough to cast a shadow upon the floor. As regarded Feathertop, all this resulted in a wild, extravagant, and fantastical impression, as if his life and being were akin to the smoke that curled upward ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the news of the capitulation of Paris to the allied powers, and of the overthrow of the power and dynasty of Napoleon. I recollect that at the Cape there was great rejoicing and jubilee on this occasion; but I confess, as to myself, I did not see any reason for giving vent to this extravagant joy; and I must have had even at that time somehow or other a presentiment of what would soon happen, as in communicating this intelligence to a friend in India I made use of these words: "get a court dress made, my good friend, and a big wig, ruffled ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... had been said and written about Richmond that our boyish minds had wrought up the most extravagant expectations of it and its defenses. We anticipated seeing a City differing widely from anything ever seen before; some anomaly of nature displayed in its site, itself guarded by imposing and impregnable fortifications, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... commend the treatise to a lawyer as I would the multiplication table to a student of mathematics. And now let me say that when you have been with me one year we will begin to talk about other matters, the question of money, for instance. Don't be extravagant—don't give money because you don't know what else to do with it—and I will see that you shall not want for anything. Oh, yes, I know you are thinking of getting married, but it won't cost much to keep your wife. We'll fix all that, ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... be superseded.' The motion was seconded by Sir Francis Burdett, who said: 'Whoever has seen Ireland, has seen a country where the fields are desolated, and the prisons overflowing with the victims of oppression—has seen the shocking contrast between a profligate, extravagant Government, and an enslaved and impoverished people.' The motion was rejected by a majority of 136. Lord Moira made a last and an almost despairing appeal on November 22, in the same year. In his speech he said: 'I have ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... to see each other from the time of their marriage, because the sister had gone to Madrid with her husband, the wealthy Polentinos, who was as rich as he was extravagant. Play and women had so completely enslaved Manuel Maria Jose that he would have dissipated all his fortune, if death had not been beforehand with him and carried him off before he had had time to squander it. In a night ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... development: we require our resources for more immediate ends. Faced with such problems, our practical sense may no doubt suffice to keep us straight; but it is apt to do so at the expense of a complete inversion of the real issues. If, for instance, we call for Governmental retrenchment on what we deem extravagant policies of housing and education, we usually speak as though they represented the profligacy of a spendthrift as contrasted with the saving that is indispensable. The truth is rather that these policies represent a saving, an investment for future ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... sashes of Transvaal green. Between the wooden pillars of the stoep dangled curtains yet other, of chopped, dyed, and threaded bamboo, while whitewashed drain-pipes, packed with earth and set on end, overflowed with Indian cress, flowering now in extravagant, gorgeous hues of red and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... too severe, so, when seated at another man's table, after a long fasting, (like wolves and eagles, who, like them, live by plunder, and are rarely satisfied,) their appetite is immoderate. They are therefore penurious in times of scarcity, and extravagant in times of plenty; but no man, as in England, mortgages his property for the gluttonous gratification of his own appetite. They wish, however, that all people would join with them in their bad habits and expenses; ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis
... seen. The looks of the company are past my power to describe, being such as to make me feel as if I had broke into Bedlam. Their faces were all red and blotched with drink, and their heads covered with extravagant ringlets, which might never have seen a comb, while their dress was disordered to indecency, and the whole table was covered with a confusion of tankards and bottles and tobacco-pipes, not to mention playing-cards ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... greatest in the nation. Corn fields were platted out into town sites, and additions to existing cities were arranged in every direction. For a time it appeared as though there was little exaggeration in the extravagant forecast of future greatness. Town lots sold in a most remarkable manner, many valuable corners increasing in value ten and twenty-fold in a single night. The era of railroad building was coincident with the town boom craze, and Eastern people were so anxious to obtain a share of the enormous ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... holiday at the seaside during a big strike. Six of the party spent exactly half a sovereign each, but Bill Harris was more extravagant. Bill spent three shillings more than the average of the party. What was the actual amount of ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... satisfy the expectation of things strange, which have been prompted by the mystery or the majesty of the surrounding scene. And thus, your leaving forms more or less undefined, or carrying out your fancies, however extravagant, in grotesqueness of shadow or shape, will be for the most part in accordance with the temper of the observer; and he is likely, therefore, much more willingly to use his fancy to help your meanings, than his judgment ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin |
