"Gaudy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The moralists, who utter their heathenish oracles in the commonplace complaints of a heathenish discontent, tell us, that we are born but to pursue, and pursue but to be deceived. They say, that man in his career after earthly honours, is like the child that chases the gaudy insect; the pursuit idle; the object worthless. They tell us, that it is but a deceitful though a deceptive star, which beams from the summit of the distant hill; advance, and its light recedes; ascend, and a higher hill is seen beyond, and ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... managed to express themselves: Caroline in the superb attempt at overcoming her age, and Sophia in the softness of her apparel; Rose, in filmy black and pearls round her firm throat, gently proud and distant; and Henrietta was like some delicately gaudy insect, dancing hither and thither, approaching ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... my cloth. Am I not half naked? Is this the cloth I should respect—this gaudy frippery, which your citizens have made a target for ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... how much of his admiration is dependent merely upon the picture being larger than any other in the room, and having bright masses of red and blue in it: let him be assured that the picture is in reality not one whit the better for being either large, or gaudy in color; and he will then be better disposed to give the pains necessary to discover the merit of the more profound and solemn works of Bellini and Tintoret. One of the most wonderful works in the whole gallery is Tintoret's "Death of Abel," on the left of the "Assumption;" the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... apes sat sad and listless, and on the roof-ridges storks were dying. Over the branches of the trees, whose leaves were as thin as though we had had a six months' drought, the toucans and Martian parrots hung limp and fashionless like gaudy rags, and in the courtyard ground the corn-rats came up from their tunnels in the scorching earth to die, squeaking in scores ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... foreshows. Rang'd on the line oppos'd, Antonius brings Barbarian aids, and troops of Eastern kings; Th' Arabians near, and Bactrians from afar, Of tongues discordant, and a mingled war: And, rich in gaudy robes, amidst the strife, His ill fate follows him- th' Egyptian wife. Moving they fight; with oars and forky prows The froth is gather'd, and the water glows. It seems, as if the Cyclades again Were rooted up, and justled in the main; Or floating ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, Bear 't that th' opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice: Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy: For the apparel oft proclaims the man. Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine own self be true; And it ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... are we drawn aloft—that is, to the realm of the clouds: on these do we set our gaudy puppets, and then call them ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... illustrated poster which hung on a board beside the barrack door. It proclaimed the attractiveness of service in the British army. It moved him to no interest, because he had seen it every day since he first came to Ballymoy. The gaudy uniforms depicted on it excited no envy in his mind. His own uniform was of sober colouring, but it taught him all he wanted to know about the discomfort of such clothes in hot weather. His eyes wandered from the poster ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... the Repulsive; one is synonymous with purity, truth and excellence, and the other with vice and diplomacy. The world is often imposed upon when the latter counterfeits the former. Men are dazzled by the glitter and gaudy show of the pretended, and pass by, unnoticed, the less flashy attractions of the real, but I pride myself that I have never been deceived in this way. The girl that I have brought to my home is as genuine a sample of noble, good, pure and honorable ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... the map of history till we trace almost every actor in the pageant to a bloody grave, we can scarcely believe that it is a scene of joy and festivity that we are witnessing. The angel of death seems to hover over them; there is something dreadful in their rejoicing; their gaudy robes, their mantles, their vases, their fringes of gold, assume the sable hue of the grave; and, instead of a baptismal train, it seems like a funeral ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... don't." It was perfectly true. Except for the gaudy decorations and the twanging accents of the arrogant young women, Gabriella might have imagined herself in the last century atmosphere of Broad ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... maintained the retinue, and exercised more than the power of an Oriental prince. Such was the man who, prematurely worn out, and assured by physicians that he had not six weeks of life, had come to Aleppo with the gaudy escort of an Eastern satrap, had caused himself to be borne in his litter to the mud-hut of Haroun the Sage, and now called on the magician, in whose art was his last hope, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... worse: and if two or three faces can be rendered happy and contented, by a trifling improvement of outward appearance, I cannot help thinking that the object is very cheaply purchased, even at the expense of a smart gown, or a gaudy riband. There is a great deal of very unnecessary cant about the over- dressing of the common people. There is not a manufacturer or tradesman in existence, who would not employ a man who takes a reasonable degree ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... the opening of the oration; but the coarser members were stimulated to laughter by the speaker's strange appearance. D'Israeli had dressed himself in utter defiance of all conventions; he wore a dark green coat which came closely up to his chin, a gaudy vest festooned with chains, and glittering rings. His ringlets were combed in a heavy mass over his right shoulder; and it is said that he looked like some strange actor. The noise grew as he went on; his finest periods were lost amid howls of derision, and at last he raised his arms above ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... Subtle requested Gammon, whose ability he had soon detected, to sit immediately beneath him; next to Gammon sat Quirk; then Snap; and beside him Mr. Titmouse, with a staring sky-blue flowered silk handkerchief round his neck, a gaudy waistcoat, a tight surtout, and white kid gloves. He looked exceedingly pale, and dared hardly interchange a word with even Snap, who was just as irritable and excited as his senior partners. It was quickly known all over the court which was Titmouse! Mr. Aubrey scarcely ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... the regatta—noon—the sun just overhead. The boats draw up in line on the sparkling river, before a tent gaudy with streamers. On the bank the mayor with his staff of office, gendarmes in yellow shoulder-belts, and a swarm of summer dresses, open parasols, and straw hats. Bang! the signal-gun is fired. The ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... fox in a fowl-run. For years the tradesmen of Wrykyn had jogged along in their comfortable way, each making his little profits, with no thought of competition or modern hustle. And now the enemy was at their doors. Many were the gloomy looks cast at the gaudy building as it grew like a mushroom. It was finished with incredible speed, and then advertisements began to flood the local papers. A special sheaf of bills was ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the sad remains."—PRIOR: in Johnson's Dict., w. Hover. "Constantia saw that the hand writing agreed with the contents of the letter."—ADDISON: ib., w. Hand. "They have put me in a silk night-gown, and a gaudy fool's cap."—ID.: ib., w. Nightgown. "Have you no more manners than to rail at Hocus, that has saved that clod-pated, numskull'd ninnyhammer of yours from ruin, and all his family?"—ARBUTHNOT: ib., w. Ninnyhammer. "A noble, that is, six, shillings and eightpence, is, and usually hath ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... streets. I found that there was a masquerade at the house of a lady, with whom I had been intimately acquainted. The clamours of the mob, eager to see the dresses of those who were alighting from their carriages, the gaudy and fantastic figures which I beheld by the light of the flambeaux, the noise and the bustle, put me in mind of various similar nights of my past life, and it seemed to me like a dream, or reminiscence of some former state of existence. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... the black, ragged, tangled locks that streamed from their confinement under a woollen cap, accorded but ill with other details which spoke of comparative wealth. The shirt, open at the throat, was fastened by a brooch of gaudy stones; and two pendent massive gold chains announced the foppery ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the farther end of it, stretches his slippered feet well out upon the threshold. It is near closing time now, and many of the dealers, with their wives and children, are sitting out in front of their shops, and, if not under their own vines and fig-trees, at least under their own gaudy flannels and "loud-patterned" cotton goods, which are waving overhead in the sluggish evening breeze. Nothing can be more suggestive of lazily industrious Jewry than this short, thick-set clothier, with the curved nose, and spiral, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... was the truth. The valley stood with its steep sides raying blue from myriad wild lilacs; olives and oranges sloped down to the flat floor, where cultivated ranches and gardens were so screened by eucalyptus and pepper trees, palm and live oak, myriads of roses of every color and variety, and gaudy plants gathered there from the entire girth of the tropical world, that to the traveler on the highway trees and flowers predominated. The greatest treasure of the valley was the enthusiastic stream of icy mountain water that wandered ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... All the windows had lattices of mashrebeeyeh work fitted to them, and all these lattices were closed. Against the walls, which were as dark in colour as the mashrebeeyeh work, there were a number of carved brackets, on which were placed various extremely common things—cheap and gaudy vases from Naples and Paris, two more Swiss cuckoo-clocks, a third clock with a blue and white china face—and a back that looked as if were made of brass, a musical-box, and a grotesque monster, like a dragon with a dog's head, in rough yellow and blue earthenware. There ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... steady, sober, industrious. They dress comfortably. They adapt themselves to the season,—neither shivering in winter, nor perspiring in summer. They do not toil after a "fashionable appearance." They expend more on warm stockings than on gold rings; and prefer healthy, good bedding, to gaudy window-curtains. Their chairs are solid, not gimcrack. They will bear sitting upon, though they may not ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... object of his passion was Mrs. Elizabeth Porter, a widow, who had children as old as himself. To ordinary spectators the lady appeared to be a short, fat, coarse woman, painted half an inch thick, dressed in gaudy colors, and fond of exhibiting provincial airs and graces which were not exactly those of the Queensberrys and Lepels. To Johnson, however, whose passions were strong, whose eyesight was too weak to distinguish ceruse from natural bloom, and who had seldom or never ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... a Mulatto woman. He and Jacques got a fresh rig-out of clothes at once, and went down to the port to inquire about ships. Ralph was greatly amused at the aspect of the streets crowded with chattering negroes and negresses, in gaudy colors. The outlay of a few pence purchased an almost unlimited supply of fruit, and Ralph and his companion sat down on a log of wood by the wharves and enjoyed a feast of pine apples, bananas, and custard apples. Then they set about their work. In an hour both were suited. Jacques ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... I can contentedly live at the meanest rate, and think not myself above the lowest condition, that I am also above making an exchange of my honesty for all the riches of the Indies. When I come to be proud and vain of gaudy apparel, and outside finery, then (which I hope will never be) may I rest my principal good in such vain trinkets, and despise for them the more solid ornaments of a good fame, ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... heaped upon your memories. If you, with united zeal and fortitude, oppose the torrent of oppression; if you feel the true fire of patriotism burning in your breasts; if you, from your souls, despise the most gaudy dress which slavery can wear; if you really prefer the lonely cottage, while blessed with liberty, to gilded palaces, surrounded with the ensigns of slavery you may have the fullest assurance that tyranny with her whole accursed train, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... you, and your taste requires the eastern magnificence in which you were born, because this flatters your vanity and reminds you, each time you gaze upon it, that you are wealthy and powerful—you commanded your architect to set aside simple grandeur, and to build this gaudy monstrosity, which is no more like the banqueting-hall of a Pericles than I or you, Cleopatra, in all our finery, are like the simply clad gods and goddesses of Phidias. I mean not to offend you, Cleopatra, but ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and, but that saw the snowy cone of Pike's Peak rising over the crest of the cliff, I might have fancied myself in the Sierra Asturias, with a beautiful gitana standing before me. The soft fawn-skin tilma, with its gaudy broidering of beads and stained quills—the fringed skirt and buskined ankles—the striped Navajo blanket slung scarf-like over her shoulders— all presented a true gipsy appearance. The plumed circlet upon the head was more typical of Transatlantic ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... a hush came over the bunch. The imitation was so perfect that every fellow could imagine again the tail end of a gaudy circus parade and the ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... sudden I thought of what Serenus said about a woman twice my size dressed in gaudy red, forever takin' after folks—What would Josiah do if she took after him? And no doubt she would, for looked at through the magnifying lens of Absence and Anxiety he looked passingly beautiful. As I thought of her I knowed what I would do. Sez I, "I ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... stood. With its roses, and broad arched windows, its bell-turret, and roofs of slate, it looked as though painted in sepia against the blue of the sky. He fixed his eyes at last on the sombre depths of the Rue Montorgueil, where fragments of gaudy sign boards showed conspicuously, and on the corner of the Rue Montmartre, where there were balconies gleaming with letters of gold. And when he again glanced at the cross-roads, his gaze was solicited by other sign boards, on which such ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... sick and ashamed when I thought of this vain and gaudy scene and the object which I supposed it ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... mortar. The woman enters into the work with intelligent zest, and when completed the whole array of blended colours is beyond the criticism of the tribe. The back of an Indian's war-bonnet and war-shirt is always more gaudy and sumptuous than the front view and this because when Indians pass each other their salutation is brief and formal. They ride right on. But after the meeting they turn in the saddle and look back to take an inventory. The wealth of the Indian, his ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... Florence,[15] while yet she was confined within the ancient boundary which still contains the bell that summons her to prayer, abided in peace, for she was chaste and sober. She had no trinkets of chains then, no head-tires, no gaudy sandals, no girdles more worth looking at than the wearers. Fathers were not then afraid of having daughters, for fear they should want dowries too great, and husbands before their time. Families were ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... were engaged in thatching an old shed as shelter from the sun, and strewing the ground with a thick carpet of palm-leaves. Ere long, a cavalcade of between thirty and forty amazons - they all rode astride - came racing up the valley at full speed, their merry shouts proclaiming their approach. Gaudy strips of MARO were loosely folded around their legs for skirts. Their pretty little straw hats trimmed with ribbons, or their uncovered heads with their long hair streaming in the wind, confined only by a wreath of fresh orange flowers, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... heaped on the grass. Here and there high circles of lights threw a strong, steady glare upon the half-clad figure of a robust acrobat, or the thin, drooping shoulders of a less stalwart sister. Temporary ropes stretched from one pole to another, were laden with bright-coloured stockings, gaudy, spangled gowns, or dusty street clothes, discarded by the performers before slipping into their circus attire. There were no nails or hooks, so hats and veils were pinned to ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... after supper, and I shall send this letter by them. There are no new books, no new Plays, no new novels; nay, no new fashions. They have dragged old Mademoiselle Le Maure out of a retreat of thirty years, to sing at the Colis'ee, which is a most gaudy Ranelagh, gilt, painted, and becupided like an Opera, but not calculated to last as long as Mother Coliseum, being composed of chalk and pasteboard. Round it are courts of treillage, that serve for nothing, and behind it a canal, very like a horsepond, on which there are fireworks and justs. Altogether ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... would cast anchor about five miles from land. The news spread through Athens, and the whole city poured out at the gate of the Piraeus, down the roads, through the vineyards, the olive woods and plantations of fig-trees, towards the harbour. The noisy joy of the populace, the gaudy colours of their dress, the tumult of carriages and horses, the march of soldiers intermixed, the waving of banners and sound of martial music added to the high excitement of the scene; while round us reposed in solemn majesty the relics of antient time. To our right ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... truth or good. It is either ignorant or malicious. The malicious form of animal magnetism ultimates in moral idiocy. The truths of immortal mind sustain man; and they annihilate the fables and mortal mind, whose flimsy and gaudy pretensions, like silly moths, singe their own wings and fall into dust. In reality there is no mortal mind, and consequently no transference of mortal thought and will-power." Page five hundred two: "Spiritually followed, the ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... performed by an artist, of no renown, and judging by the cool reception given her by the public, not a favourite, but she was not destitute of talent. She was a young, and not very pretty, black-eyed girl with an unequal and already overstrained voice. Her dress was ill-chosen and naively gaudy; her hair was hidden in a red net, her dress of faded blue satin was too tight for her, and thick Swedish gloves reached up to her sharp elbows. Indeed, how could she, the daughter of some Bergamese shepherd, know how Parisian dames aux camelias dress! And she did not understand how to ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... grandfather's detestation of the British redcoats must have descended to me. My childhood's antipathy to wearing red enabled me later to comprehend the feelings of a little niece, who hated everything pea green, because she had once heard the saying, "neat but not gaudy, as the devil said when he painted his tail pea green." So when a friend brought her a cravat of that color she threw it on the floor and burst into tears, saying, "I could not wear that, for it is the color of the devil's tail." I sympathized with the child and had it changed for ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... by winning a scholarship which sent him on to continue his triumphant career at Cambridge. He was, I remember, extremely well connected, and even when we were all little boys together we knew that his mother's brother was Lord Holdhurst, the great conservative politician. This gaudy relationship did him little good at school. On the contrary, it seemed rather a piquant thing to us to chevy him about the playground and hit him over the shins with a wicket. But it was another thing when he came out into ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... man cultivates his own peculiarities unhindered, Ben was considered a "character." He was a short, thick man of enormous physical strength, and he sported a beard like a quickset hedge, hence his nickname. He was clad in an entire suit of fur like an Eskimo, with a gaudy red worsted ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... brotherly love and Christian fellowship well; but drunkenness and gluttony, feasting and carousing I hate, especially now when the kirk of Scotland is going in dool-weed: therefore be sober. 1. Be sober in your apparel; I think there is too much of gaudy apparel among you. 2. Be sober in your conceits. 3. Be sober in your judgments. 4. Be sober in your self-conceiting. 5. Be sober in your speaking. 6. Be sober in your sleeping. 7. Be sober in your lawful recreations. ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... the pestilential hospital, quarrelled with Sheldon over the dead, and, in anger, set her own men to work building a new, and what she called a decent, hospital. She robbed the windows of their lawn and muslin curtains, replacing them with gaudy calico from the trade-store, and made herself several gowns. When she wrote out a list of goods and clothing for herself, to be sent down to Sydney by the first steamer, Sheldon wondered how long she had made ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... stir in the gipsy encampment. Two carts were standing at the entrance to the hollow, and upon these the gipsies were piling their household goods—iron pots and kettles, bundles of rags, some gaudy crockery, and a variety of miscellaneous articles whose use it ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... him, an official of the Peshwa, to demand tribute; he would have them destroyed. Beyond, not two kos away, were a thousand soldiers,—which was a gorgeous lie,—who if he but sent a messenger would come and behead the lot, would cast the sacred bones in the gaudy bags upon the dunghill of the ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... man of gigantic stature, dressed in coarse canvas breeches, and with a handkerchief of gaudy dye twisted about his head. His bold features wore the usual Indian expression of saturnine imperturbability, and he half sat, half reclined upon the log as motionless as a piece of carven bronze, staring at Landless with large, ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... where the street gets into its most tangled traffic—there has hung for many years the painted signboard of a veterinary surgeon. Its artist was in the first flourish of youth. Old age had not yet chilled him when he mixed his gaudy colors. The surgeon's name is set up in modest letters, but the horse below flames with color. What a flaring nostril! What an eager eye! How arched the neck! Here is a wrath and speed unknown to the quadrupeds of this present Long ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... plenty jasper somewhere in the world— And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts, And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs? —That's if ye carve my epitaph aright, Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word, No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line— Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need! And then how I shall lie through centuries, And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, And see God made and eaten all day long, And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke! ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... of Lucera with its stones, even as Frederick quarried them out of the early Roman citadel beneath; but it is at least a harmonious desolation. There are no wire-fenced walks among the ruins, no feeding-booths and cheap reconstructions of draw-bridges and police-notices at every corner; no gaudy women scribbling to their friends in the "Residenzstadt" post cards illustrative of the "Burgruine," while their husbands perspire over mastodontic beer-jugs. There ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... hold and showed what the "cranks" called their trade goods and asked to select what I thought was a fair thing in exchange for the provisions I had given them. Heavens! Such a collection of utter, utter rubbish! second-hand musical boxes in piles, gaudy lithographs, iron bedsteads, "brown paper" boots and shoes eaten half away by cockroaches. Sets of cheap and nasty toilet ware, two huge cases of common and much damaged wax dolls, barrels of rotted dried apples, and decayed ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... Egg of Night, on Chaos hurl'd, Burst, and disclosed the cradle of the world; 415 First from the gaping shell refulgent sprung IMMORTAL LOVE, his bow celestial strung;— O'er the wide waste his gaudy wings unfold, Beam his soft smiles, and wave his curls of gold;— With silver darts He pierced the kindling frame, 420 And lit with ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... topping the Kerreri ridge, the invaders caught their first glimpse of Omdurman. Already the gunboats were steaming up to the Mahdist capital to throw in their first shells. They speedily dismounted several guns, and one of the shells tore away a large portion of the gaudy cupola that covered the Mahdi's tomb. Apart from this portent, nothing of moment was done on that day; but it seems probable that the bombardment led the Khalifa to hazard an attack on the invaders in the desert on the side away from ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... of the realistic effects obtained. But these are the result usually of experiment, not of directed knowledge. Furthermore, little thought is given to the emotional value of light, shade, and color. The flood of light and the spot of light are varied with gaudy color-effects, but how seldom is it possible to distinguish a deep relation between the ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... gaudy dress and gentle air May slightly touch the heart; But it's Innocence and Modesty ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... sometimes so beautifully and artistically coloured? Seeing that many are coloured to escape danger, I can hardly attribute their bright colour in other cases to mere physical conditions. Bates says the most gaudy caterpillar he ever saw in Amazonia (of a Sphinx) was conspicuous at the distance of yards from its black and red colouring whilst feeding on large green leaves. If anyone objected to male butterflies having been made beautiful by sexual selection, and asked why should they not have been ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... subscription lists, which show that the system is managed in the most efficient manner. Those who can look back fifteen and twenty years, will remember that our country was literally flooded with the bulletin boards of lotteries, printed in the most gaudy and attractive colors, showing a brilliant schedule of prizes, and pledging almost certain wealth to all who would venture their money on the "grand scheme." They will also call to mind how many a victim there was to this deceptive and depraved system of legal ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... I had squandered as fast as I obtained it, and had realised a considerable sum. I could not help comparing myself to a chrysalis previous to its transformation. I had before been a caterpillar, I was now all ready to burst my confinement, and flit about as a gaudy butterfly. Another week I continued my prudent conduct, at the end of which I was admitted to my superior, in whose hands I placed a sum of money which I could very conveniently spare, and received his ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... nicer resources of recent art could not render more genuinely marine; fountains disclosed the most bewitching of Naiads; and Druidical oaks, expanding, surrendered the imprisoned Hamadryad to the air of heaven. Fairies and Elves, Satyrs and Forsters, Centaurs and Lapithae, played their parts in these gaudy spectacles with every conventional requirement of shape, costume, and behavior point-de-vice, and were supplied by the poet, to whom the letter-press of the show had been confided, with language and a plot, both ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... that the present education which was given them, and their diligence in learning, fitted them for such an employment. And as for the women, whenever they saw them adorned with their mother's clothes, they threatened, that instead of their present gaudy apparel, they should be clothed in sackcloth, and confined so closely that they should not see the light of the sun. These stories were presently carried by Salome to the king, who was troubled to hear them, and endeavored ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Let us fly, Fiesco! let us with scorn reject these gaudy nothings, and pass our future days only in the retreats of love! (She presses him to her breast with rapture.) Our souls, serene as the unclouded sky, shall never more be blackened by the poisonous breath of sorrow; our lives shall flow harmoniously ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... public, who are kept at a distance by a rope fence. At last, from the main inclosure the procession emerges for the purpose of whetting and astonishing the curiosity of the public to a greater extent. The procession is headed by a gaudy band-wagon, drawn by six prancing horses with fine harness, and feathers on their heads. The riders on the saddles are in the costume of French postilions. On the other wagons come cages of lions, and in every cage is seated a lady with an olive branch in her ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... man liberated from prison; but I have reason to believe that the people are in general amazingly disappointed in my pulpit exercises. They expected great things—things gaudy, stately, and speculative,—and I gave them the simplest and most practical things I can find in the Bible, and that in the plainest way. You would be amused at the sayings of some of the plain Methodist people; they think that it is the "real pure Gospel, but they did not expect ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... were very fond of bright colors. Their dresses did not amount to much. They wore a short skirt and rebosa. Their head-dress covered their hair and came together in front under the chin and hung to the belt. What dress she wore must be very bright and gaudy and I have known a pretty Mexican girl with about $2.50 worth of dress on come in and purchase an $8.00 pair of shoes. If she wanted an extra nice pair of shoes she said she wanted a pair of shoes "made out of Spanish leather." ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... critic says that Jerusalem is disappointing he generally means that the popular worship there is weak and degraded, and especially that the religious art is gaudy and grotesque. In so far as there is any kind of truth in this, it is still true that the critic seldom sees the whole truth. What is wrong with the critic is that he does not criticise himself. He does not honestly ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... when a person is asked to give an opinion of something which is considered vulgar—that a gaudy article of dress will look well in a country ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... in the comic operas to ours is, they have no refinement or colours or subtleties to please the eye—all is gaudy and blatant. The "Merry Widow," for instance, could make one weep, it is so vulgar and changed, especially the end. But if the people prefer it like that the managers are quite right to let ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... this they follow or lead what is called the town, to furnish out these gaudy and pompous entertainments, must collect so much more from the public. It was but just before the breaking out of hostilities, that they levied for themselves the very tax which, at the close of the American war, they represented ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in order also, to show the rich furniture of the room. All poets do not revel in such gaudy trappings as I do, but I cannot write well in a bare and ill-furnished room. In these apartments there is also a window which does not show in the engraving. I have tried over and over again to write a poem in a room that had no window in it, but I cannot say that I ever wrote one under ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... came a dashy checked suit. Above it was a large Panama hat with a gaudy ribbon. A red necktie was also visible, even at a considerable distance. Between the hat and the necktie a face several degrees darker in color than the tie came into view as the distance lessened. It was Mr. Montgomery Hicks, whose ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... replied Fevrier, and striking another match he held up what he had found, dirty and crumpled, in a corner of the shop. It was a little tricolour flag of painted linen upon a bamboo stick, a child's cheap and gaudy toy. But Fevrier held it up solemnly, and of the ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... sweetheart," he cried, "and the rose you wear on your heart and—and all these rings that mar your sweet, white hand with their gaudy reds and blues. Leave only mine to prove that you are ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... Starry Campion, whose protruding stamens and fringed petals give it a certain fleeciness, are dainty enough for spring; by midsummer we expect plants of ranker growth and more gaudy flowers. To save the nectar in each deep tube for the moths and butterflies which cross-fertilize all this tribe of night and day blossoms, most of them—and the campions are notorious examples—spread their calices, and some their pedicels as well, with a sticky substance to ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... just before moon-set she was laid away so that her funeral might cast no sadness on the coming visitors. On the grave, the silent women of the household placed the treasures that had been dear to the heart of the White Chief's favorite: a string of cheap beads, a scarlet shawl, gaudy painted cup and two dead pigeons, progenitors of the flock that now cooed and fluttered in and out of the high wire enclosure back of ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... bedrooms and private sitting rooms. The ten-cent stores have done a great deal of good in educating the poor, white and black alike. These stores have everywhere sold small brown art prints of many of the great paintings, to take the place of the gaudy ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... going into a large, a spacious, and a splendid Dome thro' the Conveyance of a narrow and obscure Entry. A Glare of Light suddenly breaks upon you beyond what the Avenue at first promis'd: and a thousand Beauties of Genius and Character, like so many gaudy Apartments pouring at once upon the Eye, diffuse and throw themselves out to the Mind. The Prospect is too wide to come within the Compass of a single View: 'tis a gay Confusion of pleasing Objects, too various to be enjoyed but in a general Admiration; and they ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... nearly as much as he admired himself if they had seen him setting off on horseback with his hand on his hip and his pockets full of letters and orders, at the head of quite a procession of huge white cart-horses with pack-saddles, and big brown native men with nothing on but gaudy kilts. Mighty well he managed all his commissions; and those who saw him ordering and eating his single-handed luncheon in the queer little Chinese restaurant on the beach declare he looked as if the place, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her royal brother. A man would receive quicker reward for inventing an amusement or a gaudy costume for the king than by winning him a battle. Later in life the high road to his favor was in ridding him of his wife and helping him to a new one—a dangerous way though, as Wolsey found to his sorrow when he sank his glory in poor ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... cloth bundles; while the men, moving about with violent gesticulations and loud exclamations, employ themselves in their well-known and allotted tasks. By degrees graceful forms arise, and richly-tinted pavilions, with gilded summits, glitter in the sunbeams, while gaudy banners flutter in the air. Long lines of canvas sheets appear, and spacious enclosures formed of kanauts secure the utmost privacy to the dwellers of the populous camp; while the elephants, ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... the velvet carpets. There was laughter without joy—there was frivolity without merriment—there was the surface of enjoyment and the substance of woe, for beneath those painted cheeks was the pallor of despair and broken health, and beneath those whitened bosoms, half veiled with gaudy silks, were hearts that were aching with remorse, or, yet more unhappy, benumbed and ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... contribution towards the expenses of some music in the Saint's honour, so we gave him whatever it may have been, and his messenger departed: well satisfied. At six o'clock in the evening we went to the church—close at hand—a very gaudy place, hung all over with festoons and bright draperies, and filled, from the altar to the main door, with women, all seated. They wear no bonnets here, simply a long white veil—the 'mezzero;' and it was the ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... other side of the street, upstairs in his dusty real estate office, with tin placards of insurance companies on the wall, and gaudy calendars tacked everywhere, Silas Buckner stands at the window counting the liars and scoundrels, and double-dealers and villains, and thieves and swindlers who pass. Since Silas was defeated for Register of Deeds he has become a pessimist. He has soured on the town, and when he ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... and how the Prince would never ride any other but himself when hunting or riding in the royal processions. 'Only think of the come-down,' he used to add, 'from having a Prince of the royal blood on your back to a common circus rider in gaudy skirts! Then my blankets and trappings were of velvet, studded with real precious stones. Now they are velveteen with glass to imitate the precious jewels. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! That I should ever ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... crowd of people was pouring through the gate of the enclosure. Fully four thousand people were already on the grounds; and a gaudy array of "side shows" at once attracted our attention. There were counters and carts for cider, gingerbread and confectionery. Loud-voiced auctioneers were selling "patent medicines" and knickknacks ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... wine. With his arms folded, and with one bandaged leg deposited upon the table, he seemed to think himself entitled to some consideration. He evidently prided himself much upon every inch of his personal appearance, but took more especial delight in calling attention to his gaudy-colored surtout. This, to say the truth, must have cost him no little money, and was made to fit him exceedingly well—being fashioned from one of the curiously embroidered silken covers appertaining to those glorious escutcheons which, in England and elsewhere, are customarily hung up, in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... up, for I had no faith in the influence of Rufus Blight, whom I had always associated with packages of tea and prizes. Penelope grown, I feared, might have become fat and florid, might speak with a twang and wear gaudy hats and gowns. My life in New York, even though I was but a quiet observer, had made me critical of women, and when I could brood unhappily over Gladys Todd's stray wisps of hair I could have little sympathy with the type of the imaginary Penelope Blight. But this morning, when the far-borne ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... which as uniformly refines, elevates, and arrays with new beauty and power. If we would reach the highest nobleness possible to us, we must stand with Esther at the gate, and not envy or imitate Ahasuerus on his gaudy throne. 'He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for My sake and the gospel's, the same ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the birth of the Republic of Labour. The story was illustrated by a drawing showing McGregor leading a vast horde of men across an open plain toward a city whose tall chimneys belched forth clouds of smoke. Beside McGregor in the picture and arrayed in a gaudy uniform was Mosby the ex-army officer. In the article he was called the war lord of "The secret republic growing up within a ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... Wisconsin, and Verona was our little village; but they both served the soul of youth as well as the real places would have done, and were as really Italian as anything else in the situation was really this or that. Heaven knows what gaudy sentimental parade we made in our borrowed plumes, but if the travesty had kept itself to the written word it would have been all well enough. My misfortune was to carry it into print when I began to write a story, in the Ik Marvel manner, or rather to compose ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... form of the roof, however, is always excessively flat, so as never to let it intrude upon the eye; and the consequence is, that, while an English village, seen at a distance, appears all red roof, the Italian is all white wall; and therefore, though always bright, is never gaudy. We have in these roofs an excellent example of what should always be kept in mind, that everything will be found beautiful, which climate or situation render useful. The strong and constant heat ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... temples of Egypt must have filled even the rude people with a certain awe and wonder, even as the majestic cathedrals of mediaeval Europe, with their imposing pomps, stimulated the poetic conceptions of the Gothic nations. Art is popular. The rude savage admires a gaudy picture even as the cultivated Leo X. or Cardinal Mazarini bent in admiration before the great creations of Raphael or Domenichino. Art appeals to the senses as well as to the intellect and the heart, and is capable of inspiring the passions as well as the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... melancholy, decayed look, being generally very old, and few of the owners being able to spend much in or on them. A few that look tolerably fresh, are found to be occupied by the post, the customs, or some other office, the insignia of which figure in gaudy colouring over the principal entrance. In connection with most of the palaces, the name of some architect of reputation is mentioned. They are wholly of marble; and, in many cases, round stones of a precious kind, or pieces ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... the ingathering of the harvest, a host of customs have been kept up from time immemorial, which have been duly noticed by Brand, while towards the close of the month we are reminded of St. Bartholomew's Day by the gaudy sunflower, which has been nicknamed St. Bartholomew's star, the term "star" having been often used "as an emblematical representation of brilliant virtues or any sign of admiration." It is, too, suggested by Archdeacon Hare that the filbert may owe its name to St. Philbert, whose festival ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... was the winter wild While the Heavenly Child All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies. Nature in awe of Him Had doffed her gaudy trim With her great Master so ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... the orchard and up on the porch. Barby was wearing an ornamental plastic head band, not too gaudy for daytime wear, but not too simple for anything dressy. She had arranged her hair so the gadget was hardly noticeable. A wave of smooth blond hair hid the little ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... your handkerchief," went on Andy. "Give us a whiff," and before the dude could stop him the younger Racer boy had snatched it from his pocket. "Whew! Yes, this is it!" he cried, holding his nose as he handed the gaudy linen back. "How did it happen, Chet? Did you drop it somewhere? It's awful!" and he pretended to stagger back. "Better ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... good-natured expression; one's first impression of him is apt to be less flattering to his head than to his heart. He is a person, however, that improves with acquaintance, and is probably more intelligent than he looks. He seems to be living here in a very plain and unpretentious manner; no gaudy stained glass, no tinsel, no mirror-work, no vain gew-gaws of any description impart a cheap and garish glitter to the place; no gorgeous apparel bedecks his ample proportions. Clad in the ordinary ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... ascended the hill of Addouna to the barracks. The cafes had closed their doors to the drinkers and domino players. The lounging Arab boys had deserted the sandy Place de la Marine. In their small and dusky bazaars the Israelites had reckoned up the takings of the day, and curled themselves up in gaudy quilts on their low divans to rest. Only two or three gendarmes were still about, and a few French and Spaniards at the Port, where, moored against the wharf, lay the steamer Le General Bertrand, in which Domini had ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... death the inhalation of deity. He breathes out, and the Universe flames forth with all her wings—her suns and clusters of suns—down to her mote-like earth, the butterfly of space, trimmed with its gaudy seasons, and nourishing on its back the ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... strangers saw nothing on each side of the street but blank houses and closed doors. But when they had passed, the curtains were parted, the doors were ajar again, and curious eyes looked after the big mailed figures, the gaudy cloaks, and the enormous cross-hilted swords of the Frenchmen. Of the poorer people in the streets and those whose business kept them abroad on that day, the men scowled resentfully at the intruders and the women drew their veils closely across their ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... Opera season opened to Mrs. Hawley-Crowles another avenue for her astonishing social activities. With rare shrewdness she had contrived to outwit Mrs. Ames and secure the center box in the "golden horseshoe" at the Metropolitan. There, like a gaudy garden spider in its glittering web, she sat on the opening night, with her rapt protegee at her side, and sent her insolent challenge broadcast. Multimillionaires and their haughty, full-toileted dames were ranged on either side of her, brewers and packers, distillers ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... further end of the Museum, reached by three steps, was a gaudy throne chair of solid gold and silver enamelled. The throne had amphoras at the sides and a sunflower in diamonds behind it. The seat was of red brocade, and the chair had very small arms. It rested on a six-legged platform with two supports ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... vast accumulations of knowledge perfectly fresh; and I notice in him that, instead of growing more staid and commonplace in his style as he increased in years, he grew more vigorous, until he actually slid into the excess of gaudy redundancy. I am sorry that his prose ever became Asiatic in its splendour; but even that fact shows how steadfast effort may prevent a man from writing away his originality and his freshness of manner. Observe the sad results of an antagonistic proceeding for even the mightiest of brains. Sir ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... dew, their song of the chaffinch and their rapturous music of the thrush. Appreciation is heightened by contrast; and the buttercup—England's gift to her little children—is pronounced far brighter than the "gaudy melon-flower" which the exiled Englishman has at ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... from below; By him the Archer,[203] with his bended bow; Near him the Bird, with gaudy feathers spread; And the fierce ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... coral blocks, and congregate beneath detached masses and loose stones. In these fervid and fecund waters life is real, life is earnest. Here, are elaborately armoured crayfish (PALINURUS ORNATUS), upon which the most gaudy colours are lavished; grotesque crabs, fish brilliant in hue as humming-birds. Life, darting and dashing, active and alert, crawling and slithering, slow and stationary, swarms ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... feeling upon him that if he refused to make another trial he would either be laughed at or looked upon as a contemptible coward, he took the long rod, with the line sufficiently drawn from the reel to allow the gaudy fly to hang down by ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... recreations of the populace. The streets themselves afforded a quaint and curious spectacle, for in promiscuous and gay confusion were seen the splendid apparel of the noble, and the modest garb of the peasant; the shining armour and waving plumes of the Christian warrior, and the gaudy fantastic habiliments of the Moslem. With them appeared the solemn and lugubrious vestments of the ecclesiastical dignitaries, and the coarse habit and shaven crown of ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... found the girl Lucretia a mere walking vanity bag: idle, shiftless, eager for compliments, and without two ideas in her vain little head. "Whoever is at the bottom of the affair, she isn't," was his mental comment. "She is just a gadfly, just a gaudy, useless insect, born without a sting, or the spirit to use ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... careless of where her smiles might fall. For her the immodest theatrical poster drooped in the windows of saloons, or caught a transient hold upon the hoardings of uncompleted buildings; brazen blare and gaudy placards (disgusting rather than indecent) invited the passer-by into cheap museums and music-halls; all the unclassifiable riff-raff that is spawned by a great city leered from corners, or slouched along ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... that does not owe its origin, directly or indirectly, to these men. Cheap and tawdry enough were the commodities bartered for these wonderful beaver and otter pelts—ribbons and gewgaws, looking-glasses and combs, blankets and shawls of gaudy color. But scissors and knives, gunpowder and shot, tobacco and whiskey, went also in the traders' packs, though traffic in fire-water was forbidden. These goods, upon arrival at Mackinac, were sent out by canoes and bateaux to the different ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... soul, pushed and jostled; past rows of gaudy tents and shows, each with its platform before it, where men and women, in outlandish livery and spangled tights, danced and sang, cracked broad jokes, beat drums, blew horns, or strove to out-roar each other in crying up their respective wares and wonders. One in especial drew my ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... for the time being is most in fashion or request. When he salutes a friend he pulls off his hat, as women do their vizard-masks. His ribbons are of the true complexion of his mind, a kind of painted cloud or gaudy rainbow, that has no colour of itself but what it borrows from reflection. He is as tender of his clothes as a coward is of his flesh, and as loth to have them disordered. His bravery is all his happiness, and, like Atlas, he carries his heaven on ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... of her father and her mother, who sought her love. Yet, strangely enough, her heart was filled not with tears, but with contempt and icy anger. She did not shrink away from him as he came towards her in his gaudy clothes, with an assumed air of insolent confidence, but sat pale and proud, as she had sat at Umgugundhlovu, when the Zulus brought their causes before her ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... the Nieuwe Kerk's many bells are rippling a silver tune over the old roofs and gables; who has drunk his beer full opposite the stadhuis at Leyden, and seen Haarlem's huge church across magnificent miles of gaudy tulips, and watched from a brown-sailed boat on the Zuider Zee a buoy on the horizon grow into the water-gate of Hoorn; who knows his Gouda and Bois-le-duc and Alkmaar and Kampen and Utrecht: this man does ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... guess it is," was the rather doubtful response, for Poly, in her swift survey of the narrow, gaudy parlor, discerned little ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... diversified patch of colour. The hue of their faces ranged from the clear olive of the pure-blood Spaniards down through the yellow and brown shades of the Mestizos to the coal-black Carib and the Jamaica Negro. Scattered among them were little groups of Indians with faces like stone idols, wrapped in gaudy fibre-woven blankets—Indians down from the mountain states of Zamora and Los Andes and Miranda to trade their gold ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... his room was open; he went in. A gnarled old woman sat on the edge of the bed; a female consoler was on either side. At the sight of Suvaroff the mourner rose and stood trembling before him, rolling a gaudy handkerchief into ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... I hate the place; I hate it—a nasty, gaudy, vulgar place, in a vulgar suburb, where nothing but money-grubbing is thought of from morning, noon, till night; how much percentage can be got out of everything; cut down the salaries of the employees; ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... moment a thin, tense-faced Hebrew girl of eighteen or nineteen came rushing in, carrying a wire basket full of typewritten sheets. She was as gaunt as a plucked spring chicken, and her cheap, gaudy clothes might have been thrown on her. She looked as if she were running to catch a train and in mortal dread of missing it. While Miss Devine examined the pages in the basket, Becky stood with her ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... deluding joyes, The brood of folly without father bred, How little you bested, Or fill the fixed mind with all your toyes; Dwell in som idle brain And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, As thick and numberless As the gay motes that people the Sun Beams, Or likest hovering dreams The fickle Pensioners of Morpheus train. 10 But hail thou Goddess, sage and holy, Hail divinest ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... person's imitation, for the poorest may thus turn their necessary expenses into virtuous actions. In this they excel others, as much as the bee does the common butterfly; they both feed on the same flowers, but while the butterfly only gains a transient subsistence and flies and flutters in all its gaudy pride, the bee lays up a precious store for its future well-being, and may brave all the rigours of winter. Man, indeed, often encroaches on the labours of the bee and disappoints it of its reasonable hope; but no one without ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... by the wayside,—where the train waited in a kind of moist dejection to be admitted, and to look dispiritedly after the passing diligence. The alert gentleman heard from what the conductor gathered from an old woman wrapped in a many-colored gaudy-patterned scarf of chintz, which, wet through, covered her head and shoulders clingingly, that this was the funeral of a poor peasant-man and his wife, who had both died suddenly and both on the same day. The old woman held ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... expression for celestial ecstasy; and to delineate the joy of heaven upon those multitudes of domes and semi-domes was a point of religious etiquette. False lights, dubious foreshortenings, shallow colourings, ill-studied forms, and motiveless agitation suited the taste that cared for gaudy brightness and sensational effects. The painters, for their part, found it convenient to adopt a mannerism that enabled them to conceal the difficult parts of the figure in feather beds of vapour, requiring neither effort ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... Fresh Praise is try'd till Madness fires his Mind, The Waves he lashes, and enchains the Wind; New Pow'rs are claim'd, new Pow'rs are still bestow'd, Till rude Resistance lops the spreading God; The daring Greeks deride the Martial Shew, And heap their Vallies with the gaudy Foe; Th' insulted Sea with humbler Thoughts he gains, A single Skiff to speed his Flight remains; Th' incumber'd Oar scarce leaves the dreaded Coast Through purple Billows and a floating Host. ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... and much according to my expectations, the evening proved. There were many people all smart and gaudy, and so pert and low-bred, that I could hardly endure being amongst them; but the party to which, unfortunately, I belonged, seemed all ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... seen a pillar and a red velvet curtain, and (distantly) a fine storm of clouds and lightning. Never was a respectable old sailorman so misrepresented; but all his descendants except one regarded this gaudy daub with almost religious veneration. Every family has its one great man; the admiral was ours. His was the distinction of being the only Pendarves who had ever managed to amass a fortune. It had ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in, Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man, And they in France of the best rank and station Are most select and generous, chief in that. Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... shining on objects quite new, and (although you have made the voyage a dozen times,) quite strange. Mrs. X. and you occupy a very light bed, which has a tall canopy of red "percale;" the windows are smartly draped with cheap gaudy calicoes and muslins; there are little mean strips of carpet about the tiled floor of the room, and yet all seems as gay and as comfortable as may be—the sun shines brighter than you have seen ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... least suspect it. When a poor girl who owns but one jewel on earth—the priceless one that adorns and ennobles her lowliness—barters that treasure away for the cheap glitter of polished stones or the rustling sweep of gaudy silk, is not the basilisk gleam of the Mephistophelean eye visible in the sparkling of those gewgaws and the sheen of that stuff? When your friend Asmodeus, honest in his modest self-respect, is most ignominiously ignored by the stylish Mrs. Money,—her father ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... the ground, Swift o'er the land the dismal rumour flies, And publick mournings pacify the skies; The laureate tribe in venal verse relate, How virtue wars with persecuting fate; [ff]With well-feign'd gratitude the pension'd band Refund the plunder of the beggar'd land. See! while he builds, the gaudy vassals come, And crowd with sudden wealth the rising dome; The price of boroughs and of souls restore; And raise his treasures higher than before. Now bless'd with all the baubles of the great, The polish'd marble and the shining plate, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... beauteous damsels whose smiles they were ambitious to deserve. True it is, their merits would make but a very inconsiderable impression upon the heart of a modern fair; they neither drove their curricles nor sported their tandems, for as yet those gaudy vehicles were not even dreamt of; neither did they distinguish themselves by their brilliancy at the table, and their consequent rencontres with watchmen, for our forefathers were of too pacific a disposition to need those guardians of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... according to the genuine and natural importance of words, will appear to be inconsistencies and absurdities.' Nor would he have gone very far astray had he put philosophy and politics under the same category. Strip the gaudy dress and trappings from an expression, and it will have a most marked result. Analysis is a terrible humiliation to your mysticism and your grandiloquence—and an awful bore to those who depend for effect on either. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... gown, nor a flashy waist with aurora borealis sleeves. There was not a curl paper, nor even a threat of crinoline. Raiment was an after thought, the mask of a tainted soul, born of original sin. Beauty was unmarred by gaudy rags; Eve was dressed in sunshine, ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... process of transformation in detail, it will be sufficient to say that the next twenty minutes wrought a decided change in the appearance of Mr. and Mrs. Felix Montgomery. The former was arrayed in a suit of canonical black, not of the latest cut. A white neckcloth was substituted for the more gaudy article worn by the jeweler from Syracuse, and a pair of silver-bowed spectacles, composed of plain glass, lent a scholarly air to his face. His hair was combed behind his ears, and, so far as appearance went, he quite looked the character of a clergyman from ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... The castle glittered with gaudy furniture; sweet music was heard in every room; the whole company, who were all of the most beautiful forms that could be conceived, strove who should be most obliging to this their new guest. They omitted nothing that could amuse and delight the senses. And ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... officer, who was foolish enough to imagine he loved me, foolish enough to propose every three days for the last three years and foolish enough to bore me until in self-defense I escaped from his clutches. As for myself, at least I am not the young woman who can stand staying in that gaudy theatrical hotel for another day longer. I have done so many bold, unmaidenly things that you may believe it easy ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... finished—we ran short of trimming. I can't go out, because the Simons are coming in to afternoon tea; so you just hurry and go over to Balding's to match it. I got it there, and they had plenty. Here's a bit." She held out a fragment of gaudy sequin trimming. "I think you could finish the dress without me getting in the dressmaker again—she's that run after she makes a ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... clothes made of deer-skin; cut much in the same fashion as the garments worn by Jasper Derry. The women wore short gowns, also made of leather, and leggings of the same material; but it was noticeable that the women had leggings more ornamented with gay beads than those of the men, and they wore gaudy kerchiefs ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... flaming preface for your third volume. I see every day new musical publications advertised; but what are they? Gaudy, hunted butterflies of a day, and then vanish for ever: but your work will outlive the momentary neglects of idle fashion, and ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... by the highway of the Lake. The door was open, and we walked in. There was no light burning on the altar, nor any water in the stone basin by the door. But there was all the apparatus of worship—the gaudy toyshop above the grand altar, the tiny side chapels, with their pictures of the dying Saviour, and the confessional box, now thick with dust, and echoless of sob of penitent or counsel of confessor. It was evidently a poorly endowed chapel, the tinsel adornments being of the ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... ceremonies affected me, like all others of that faith, as tedious and empty. Each of the cardinals, as he entered the chapel, blew a sonorous nose; and was received standing by his brother prelates—a grotesque company of old-womanish old men in gaudy gowns. One of the last to come was Antonelli, who has the very wickedest face in the world. He sat with his eyes fastened upon his book, but obviously open at every pore to all that went on about him. As he passed out he ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... gaudy, eh?" He grinned at her, happily. "You know, you might steer me a bit about my ties. I have the taste of an African savage. I nearly bought a purple one, with red stripes. And Aunt Lucy thinks I should wear white ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... thoroughly aware of the trials her nature was enduring, and his power of sympathetic insight enabled him to read upon her countenance, in her tones, precisely what Lilian imagined she could conceal. Amid surroundings such as those of the newly furnished house, she seemed to him a priceless gem in a gaudy setting; he felt (and with justice) that the little drawing-room at Clapham, which spoke in so many details of her own taste, was a much more suitable home for her. What could be said of the man who had thus ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... concealed by a coarse straw hat, untrimmed save for some gaudy flowers embroidered on the ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... as the other. The circumstantial difference of the one getting only his bread and wages, the second a plentiful, and the third a superfluous estate, is no more intrinsical to this matter than the difference between a plain, a rich and gaudy livery. I do not say that he who sells his whole time and his own will for one hundred thousand is not a wiser merchant than he who does it for one hundred pounds; but I will swear they are both merchants, ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... at bottom, are almost identical with those of the artisans. He, too, has his chariot races, his castaways, his carnivals of blood in the arena. He, too, takes us through shipwrecks, revolutions, assassinations, gaudy heroisms, abominable treacheries. But always he illuminates the nude and amazing event with shafts of light which reveal not only the last detail of its workings, but also the complex of origins and inducements behind it. Always, he throws about it a probability which, in the end, becomes ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... admitted to myself that from a woman who wilfully assumed such a name little could be hoped. Still, I would like to see her off the stage...without all those gaudy fripperies and gewgaws...merely from curiosity.... Then too, they said those actresses were ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... their glory yield To crown the Votary of Love and Joy, Misfortune's Victim hails, with many a sigh, Thee, scarlet POPPY of the pathless field, Gaudy, yet wild and lone; no leaf to shield Thy flaccid vest, that, as the gale blows high, Flaps, and alternate folds around thy head.— So stands in the long grass a love-craz'd Maid, Smiling aghast; while stream to every wind Her gairish ribbons, smear'd with dust and rain; But brain-sick ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward |
