"Unadorned" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were mad, irreverent moments when Carl Granberry delivered his poker sermons with the eloquent mannerisms of the pulpit, save, as Payson held, they were infinitely more logical and eloquent, but to-night, husking his logic of these externals, he fell flatly to preaching an unadorned philosophy of continence acutely at ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... intellectual rest, when the brain is wearied with protracted toil, which far surpasses the mere animal enjoyment which follows relaxation from physical labor. That rest I cannot find in society. I must seek it among wild and primeval solitudes, where I can be alone with nature in her unadorned simplicity, away from the barbarisms, so to speak, of civilization, where I can act and talk and think as a natural, and not an artificial man, where I can be off my guard, and free from the weight of ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... Miss Wright,—it is impossible to imaging any thing more striking than her appearance. Her tall and majestic figure, the deep and almost solemn expression of her eyes, the simple contour of her finely formed head, unadorned excepting by its own natural ringlets; her garment of plain white muslin, which hung around her in folds that recalled the drapery of a Grecian statue, all contributed to produce an effect, unlike anything I had ever seen before, or ever expect to ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... (of whom, as of Goldsmith, it may hereafter be said, he "left no species of writing untouched or unadorned by his pen") has resuscitated the interest attached to this spot, in his masterly novel of Woodstock.[2] It is here that the beautiful Alice meets the facetious Charles in his disguise of an old woman; and on the bank over the Well is the spot where tradition relates fair Rosamond yielded ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... of all higher education to impart, the art, namely, of so relieving the ideal or poetic traits, [54] the elements of distinction, in our everyday life—of so exclusively living in them—that the unadorned remainder of it, the mere drift or debris of our days, comes to be as though it were not. And the consciousness of this aim came with the reading of one particular book, then fresh in the world, with which he fell in about this time—a book which awakened ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... enthusiasm. "It's the bare and unadorned truth, Prince Pierre. My fine Galahad, if you came within eye-shot of her there'd be a ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... the inventive descendant of Zeus, On the unadorned round of the shield, With knowledge divine could, reflected, produce Earth, sea, and the star's shining field,— So he, on the moments, as onward they roll, The image can stamp of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... publishing his "Lays of Ancient Rome;" but as he knew what he could do and what he could not do, or rather what would be popular, he was not disappointed. The poems were well received, for they were eminently picturesque and vital, as well as strong, masculine, and unadorned; the rhyme and metre were also felicitous. He had no obscurities, and the spirit of his Lays was patriotic and ardent, showing his love of liberty. I think his "Battle of Ivry" is equal to anything that Scott wrote. Yet Macaulay is not regarded by the critics as a true poet; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... how little I understand the art of flattery; even my best intended compliments can be readily changed into their opposites. Allow me, then, to speak the simple, unadorned truth. You are more beautiful than your picture, and yet I wonder at the genius of Pesne, which has enabled him to represent so much of your rare loveliness, even as I wonder at the poet who has the power to describe the calm beauty of ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... Walt Whitman never stood apart from or above any human being. The common people—workingmen, the poor, the illiterate, the outcast—saw themselves in him, and he saw himself in them: the attraction was mutual. He was always content with common, unadorned humanity. ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... collections of low grey huts, separated from each other by some muddy pool where the cattle were wont to drink and the women to draw water; long streets lined with high houses, irregularly shaped open spaces, bazaars, gardens, courtyards, and shabby-looking palaces which, while presenting a plain and unadorned exterior, contained within them the refinements of luxury and the comforts of wealth. The population did not exceed a hundred thousand souls,* reckoning a large proportion of foreigners attracted hither by commerce or ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... are always short, unadorned, and practical. He has endeavoured, by moving a resolution, to reduce the inordinate length of the speeches in the House as the only way of saving time to get through the yearly increasing work of legislation, and he has proposed some other resolutions ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... the poetical idea of "sweet simplicity" always and everywhere. Not that the rich gown is in itself objectionable, or the inexpensive dress intrinsically beautiful. It is not invariably true that "beauty unadorned is most adorned." It is not true that a "simple calico" is more charming than a sheeny silk, nor is cotton edging to be compared ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... which waylay early poverty, and breaking forth like the sun in meridian splendor after a morning of tempest, clouds, and darkness, it will be a fit companion for that of Hodgkinson. As a piece of composition, it is perhaps the very finest specimen to be found in any language of the unaffected, unadorned modest style that becomes a biographer, and particularly a writer of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... A novel from the North, its solid structure, its clear, unadorned form are purely Latin. A woman's novel, in its integral and violent sincerity it can only be compared to certain ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... mercurial rising and falling of spirits, plans, dreams. Some days she saddled her horse, which she had bought under the doctor's guidance at Meander, and rode, singing, over the hills, exalted by the wild beauty of nature entirely unadorned. There was not yet a house in the whole of what had been the Indian Reservation, and there never had been one which could be ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... on the fourth morning, brought to the office the inner history of the truce. His version was brief and unadorned, as was the way with his narratives. Such things as first causes and piquant details he avoided, as tending to prolong the telling excessively, thus keeping him from the perusal of his cowboy stories. He gave the thing out merely as an item of general interest, a bubble on the surface ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... contradiction of that proverb which we so often quote with reference to young ladies, and which so seldom can be quoted with truth, "Beauty unadorned, ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... substantial, and unadorned, suggested unlimited spaciousness and comfort within; and was redeemed from positive ugliness without, by the fine ivy, magnolia trees, and wistaria, of many years' growth, climbing its plain face, and now covering it with a mantle ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... a necklace of diamonds to match those in the diadem sent by Caesar, Claudia felt that her cup was full of happiness. Even Virgilia was pleased and for the moment, being young and fond of pretty things, forgot that the Christian maiden should be unadorned save by her ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... prepossessing, and seems to have improved its sanitary features since my visit four years ago. There are many charming views; an interesting place for the tourist, alike for the virtuous and the vicious, for those so inclined can see human nature "unadorned." Wide streets pierce the city, the stores on which are a continuous bazaar, lined with many exquisite productions of necessity and Eastern art. But I have previously dwelt on ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... of the Speaker, with its rows of clerks and recorders, make an impression of orderliness, tinged nevertheless with a faint revolutionary flavour. Perhaps it is the straight black Chinese hair and the rich silk clothing, set on a very plain and unadorned background, which recall the pictures of the French Revolution. It is somehow natural in such circumstances that there should occasionally be dramatic outbursts with the blood of offenders bitterly ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... remembered, when the cactus had once rewarded her by producing two bright-red blossoms. That was long ago, and it had never done anything so brilliant again. Content with its one effort it had since remained unadorned, yet as it stood there, with its fat green leaves and little bunches of prickles, it had the air of saying to itself, "I have done it once, and if I liked I could do it a second time." Even now as she bent tenderly over it Lilac thought she ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... others young and better conditioned than might be conceived of men fed, or rather starved, as they were represented to be. Their features appeared generally to be coarse and vulgar. The chapel itself was perfectly plain, and unadorned but by a few of the customary figures and paintings, representing disgusting situations of saints and martyrs under voluntary torture and privation. Lamps that "shed a pale and ineffectual light," crucifixes, and images of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... well, and which is now so near being finished. My wishes and my plan were to make you shine and distinguish yourself equally in the learned and the polite world. Few have been able to do it. Deep learning is generally tainted with pedantry, or at least unadorned by manners: as, on the other hand, polite manners and the turn of the world are too often unsupported by knowledge, and consequently end contemptibly, in the frivolous dissipation of drawing-rooms and ruelles. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... is unkind, and the ground penurious, so that the most fruitful years will produce only enough to maintain themselves; where life unimproved, and unadorned, fades into something little more than naked existence, and every one is busy for himself, without any arts by which the pleasure of others may be increased; if to the daily burden of distress any additional weight be added, nothing ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... capital." Lord Airlie, the High Commissioner, held brilliant receptions at Holyrood. There were gay scenes—women in their smartest gowns, men wearing their medals and ribands. General Sir H. Stisted was there in his red collar and cross and star of the Bath. Burton "looked almost conspicuous in unadorned simplicity." On 4th June [260] Burton left for Iceland. The parting from his friends was, as usual, very hard. Says Miss Stisted, "His hands turned cold, his eyes filled with tears." Sir W. H. Stisted accompanied him to Granton, whence, with new hopes and aspirations, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... it is scarcely possible to imagine any place more completely wretched. It was a swamp, containing a small space of firm ground at one end, and almost wholly unadorned with trees of any sort or description. There were, indeed, a few stinted [sic] firs upon the very edge of the water, but these were so diminutive in size as hardly to deserve a higher classification than ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... diminished store towards the close of day. Truth is nowhere highly esteemed in Morocco,[52] and the colouring superimposed upon most stories must have destroyed their original hue, but it served to please the Moors and Berbers who, like the men of other countries one knows, have small use for unadorned facts. Perhaps the troubles that were reported from every side of the doomed country accounted for the professional story-teller's thin audience. By the side of tales that had some connection with fact the salt of his ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... expense, and say that you don't mind your own business. We hadn't yet got rid of Hsiang Ling with all her rubbish, and here we have a chatterbox like you thrown on us! But what is it that that mouth of yours keeps on jabbering? What about the bathos of Tu Kung-pu; and the unadorned refinement of Wei Su-chou? What also about Wen Pa-ch'a's elegant diction; and Li I-shan's abstruseness? A pack of silly fools that you are! Do you in any way behave like ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... silver-handled brushes, Brushes forged with golden bristles. When they hear the magic playing, Hear the harp of Wainamoinen, Fall their brushes on the billows, Fall their combs with silver handles To the bottom of the waters, Unadorned their heads remaining, And uncombed their sea-green tresses. Came the hostess of the waters, Ancient hostess robed in flowers, Rising from her deep sea-castle, Swimming to the shore in wonder, Listened to the minstrel's playing, To the harp of Wainamoinen. As the magic tones re-echoed, ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... covered, with sweeping arches, an interior more vast than any I had ever entered. Hope was gowned in white silk, a crescent of diamonds in her hair—a birthday gift from Mrs Fuller; her neck and a part of her full breast unadorned by anything save the gifts of God—their snowy whiteness, their ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... Bandusia, clearer than glass, worthy of delicious wine, not unadorned by flowers; to-morrow thou shalt be presented with a kid, whose forehead, pouting with new horns, determines upon both love and war in vain; for this offspring of the wanton flock shall tinge thy cooling streams ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... time to time his spouse, who seemed to be going on with her supper in orderly fashion. Mr. Bounder was not misled by this, and watched curiously. He had acquired in a few months a large respect for his wife. Her very unadorned attire, and her peculiar way of knotting up her hair, did not hinder that he had a great and growing value for her. Christopher would have liked her certainly to dress better and to put on a cap; nevertheless, and odd as it may seem, he was ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... was the greatest known to any traveler, but the temples built to the god, Mazda, and his son, Ihua'Mazda, were empty and unadorned—the ...
— The Sun King • Gaston Derreaux
... exception of the cathedral, the tower of which is very high, and is perhaps the purest specimen of Gothic architecture at present in existence. The interior of the edifice is neat and appropriate but simple and unadorned, for I observed but one picture, the Conversion of St. Paul. One of the chapels is a cemetery, in which rest the bones of eleven Gothic kings, whose souls I trust in Christ ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... sin by drawing men nearer to God, and to each other. The style is that of a man unlettered, but with natural refinement and delicate sense of fitness, the purity of whose heart enters into his language. There is no attempt at fine writing, not a word or phrase for effect; it is the simple unadorned diction of one to whom the temptations of the pen seem to have been wholly unknown. He wrote, as he believed, from an inward spiritual prompting; and with all his unaffected humility he evidently felt that his work was done in ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... off that girdle, first; there is magic in it; she will bewitch you. For that matter, she has no right to come thus tricked out and painted,—just like a courtesan! She ought to show herself unadorned. ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... didn't further him in Rhoda's regard. She thought him rude, as indeed he was, though he tried to conceal it. He seldom spoke to her, and when he did it was with an unadorned brevity that offended her. Mostly he let her alone, and saw Peter when he could outside his home. Rodney, himself a celibate, thought matrimony a mistake, though certainly a necessary mistake if the human race ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... that is noble and heroic in the feelings of the nineteenth century has its hidden roots in the thirteenth. Gothic architecture and Gothic poetry are the children of the same mother; and if the true but unadorned language of the heart, the aspirations of a real faith, the sorrow and joy of a true love, are still listened to by the nations of Europe; and if what is called the Romantic school is strong enough to hold its ground against the classical taste and its royal patrons, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... by scuttles in the ship's side, and right aft, big armoured doors opened on to the stern walk. It lacked conspicuously the adornments usually associated with the Captain's apartment. Bare corticene covered the deck; the walls of white enamelled steel were unadorned save for a big scale chart of the North Sea and a coloured map of the Western Front. A few framed photographs stood on the big roll-topped desk in one corner, and a bowl of purple heather occupied ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... the duckers and divers of both sexes. Situations for obtaining favourable views are anxiously sought after by elderly gentlemen, by whom opera glasses and pocket telescopes are much patronised. Greatly as we admire the investigation of nature in her unadorned simplicity, Ramsgate would be the last place we should select, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... but it was a woman infinitely free, infinitely unhampered. The plain, serviceable clothes fitted the slight figure as though they had been long worn and loved; the hair was closely coiled, so that the young face looked out upon the world frank and unadorned as a boy's. Here, as in the first picture, the eyes looked forth with a curious, proud directness; but beneath the directness was a glint of humor, a flash of daring absent in the other face; the mouth smiled, seeming to anticipate ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... you all about it, taking my time, like, it seems that won't do. I said, "Why don't you write it down as I tell it, so as other people could read all about it?" But "No," he says; "I could do it in my fashion, but I want it to be in your simple unadorned style; so set to and ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... it, he was piqued as well. A country girl, poor enough, that was evident; living with her family in a cheap and most unattractive frame house, such as carpenters build in America, scantily furnished and unadorned; without the adventitious aids of dress or jewels or the fine manners of society—Harry couldn't understand it. But she fascinated him, and held him just beyond the line of absolute familiarity at the same time. While he was with her she made him forget that the Hawkins' ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... minutes afterwards,' she says, 'there was a rush of officers down the stairs, and among them I saw a short pale man with his hat in his hand, who, as I thought, resembled Lord Erskine in profile....' This of course is Bonaparte, unadorned amidst all this studied splendour, and wearing only a little tricoloured cockade. Maria Cosway, the painter, who was also in Paris at the time, took them to call at the house of Madame Bonaparte mere, where they were received by 'a blooming, courteous ecclesiastic, powdered ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... small boats are crossing river and bay to the little red school-house at Popham. Moved, we confess, more by curiosity than by any thirst for religious consolation, we joined the procession. Gathered within the cheerless room, unadorned, save here and there by wretchedly-executed prints of early patriots who would scarcely be recognized by their own friends, old and young alike presented ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... precious stone sparkled in the hilts of their swords. The representatives of the Commons were allowed neither feathers, nor embroidery, nor swords; but were forced to content themselves with plain black cloaks, and an unadorned homeliness of attire, which seemed as if intended to exclude all idea of their being the equals of those other orders of which they had for a moment become the colleagues. And, in a similar spirit it was arranged that, after the folding-doors of the ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... queen did not raise her head again. She looked unspeakably sad in her simple, unadorned attire—in her modest, gentle bearing— and it was most touching to see the pale, fair features which sought in vain to disclose nothing of the painful emotions ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... Great Hall. Standing near her, looking very grave, was Father Bright. Against the blaze of color on the walls of the room, the two of them stood out like ink blots. Father Bright wore his normal clerical black, unrelieved except for the pure white lace at collar and cuffs. The Countess wore unadorned black velvet, a dress which she had had to have altered hurriedly by her dressmaker; she had always hated black and owned only the mourning she had worn when her mother died eight years before. The somber looks on their faces seemed to ...
— The Eyes Have It • Gordon Randall Garrett
... it—was also an individual and highly variant matter. Some of the women, like Belle and Fao, were content with one solid but unnatural shade. One shaven head—Mirea Mitala's—was deeply tanned, but unadorned, even though the rest of her body was almost covered by precious stones. Another was decorated with geometrical and esoteric designs in eye-searing colors. A third supported a structure—it could not possibly be called a ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... Acton, cheerfully. "Sorry I upset you, Chalmers, but you elected me captain, and I do want a little success in the houses, and how can we get it if the fellows don't combine? Say no more about it; I was rather afraid you weren't going to come, which is the unadorned truth." ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... petit-maitreship as of humanity. He has some of the sickly sensibility and pampered refinements of Pope; but then Pope prided himself in them: whereas, Cowper affects to be all simplicity and plainness. He had neither Thomson's love of the unadorned beauties of nature, nor Pope's exquisite sense of the elegances of art. He was, in fact, a nervous man, afraid of trusting himself to the seductions of the one, and ashamed of putting forward his pretensions to an intimacy with the other: but ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... transparent, diaphanous, limpid, perspicuous, unadorned, distinct, lucid, plain, unambiguous, evident, manifest, straightforward, unequivocal, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... remained, with a palpitating heart, for half an hour. At the expiration of which time Mr. Bumble thrust in his head, unadorned with the cocked ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... his grandmother, who had long been dead, and whom he had never seen. On these occasions they used to take on a white dish tied up in a table napkin a special sort of rice pudding with raisins stuck in it in the shape of a cross. He loved that church, the old-fashioned, unadorned ikons and the old priest with the shaking head. Near his grandmother's grave, which was marked by a stone, was the little grave of his younger brother who had died at six months old. He did not remember him ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... by affecting the reproductive system of male birds, frequently checks the development of their secondary sexual characters, but has no immediate influence on any other characters; and I am informed by Mr. Bartlett that eight or nine specimens of the Knot (Tringa canutus) retained their unadorned winter plumage in the Zoological Gardens throughout the year, from which fact we may infer that the summer plumage, though common to both sexes, partakes of the nature of the exclusively masculine plumage of many other birds. (80. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... coate and crests of Hungerford. Quaere de hoc. [There is not any cross remaining in Trowbridge; and that at Cricklade, in the high street, is merely a single shaft, placed on a base of steps. The one at Salisbury is a plain unadorned building; but that of Malmesbury is a fine ornamented edifice. It is described and illustrated in my "Dictionary of the Architecture and Archaeology of the Middle Ages". - ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... carrying these pompous shows having also about them such magnificent ornaments as were both extraordinary and surprising. Besides these, one might see that even the great number of the captives was not unadorned, while the variety that was in their garments, and their fine texture, concealed from the sight the deformity of their bodies. But what afforded the greatest surprise of all was the structure of the pageants that were borne along; for indeed he that met them could not ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... and other public squares were made by him, walks and drives laid out; the place for each tree, with its kind and variety determined, and the work of planning mainly executed. He, with an artist's eye, saw the then unadorned beauties of the location of the capital; the broad sweep of the Potomac, the valley and the plain environed by its rim of varied hills, broken here and there by glens and ravines. He spoke of it with enthusiasm, and no doubt, above other ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... contrast marked the opposing Englishmen that summer afternoon. The plain men handled plain firelocks. Oxhorns held their powder, and their pockets held their bullets. Coatless, under the broiling sun, unincumbered, unadorned by plume or service medal, pale and wan after their night of toil and their day of hunger, thirst, and waiting, this live obstruction calmly ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... no journalist's hack to stab in secret—concealing his name, or assuming a forged one; no masked caricaturist, responsible to none. His philosophy was of the straightforward, clear-sighted English school; his theories—stern, simple, and unadorned—thoroughly English; his determination—proved in his love as well as in his hate—quite English; there is a firmness of purpose, a rough dignity, a John-Bull look in his broad intelligent face; the very fur round his cap must have been plain English rabbit-skin! ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Inn Road, was not like an ordinary undertaker's shop. The window was heavily draped with black cloth, but was otherwise unadorned. There were no letters from grateful mourners, no little model coffins, no photographs of marble memorials. Even more surprising was the absence of any name over the shop-door, so that the uninformed stranger could not possibly tell what trade was carried on within, or who was responsible ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... either held too near them, or has left {there}, now about the break of day, thus did the God burst into a flame; thus did he burn throughout his breast, and cherish a fruitless passion with his hopes. He beholds her hair hanging unadorned upon her neck, and he says, "And what would {it be} if it were arranged?" He sees her eyes, like stars, sparkling with fire; he sees her lips, which it is not enough to have {merely} seen; he praises both her fingers and her hands, and her arms and ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the entire day, examining with never-ceasing interest and delight the treasures of art which the rich patricians of Amsterdam had collected in their princely homes and the public museums. No one supposed that this small man in the brown coat, with dusty shoes and coarse, unadorned hat, could be a king—a king whose fame resounded throughout the whole of Europe. Frederick had enjoyed the great happiness of pursuing his journey and his studies unnoticed and unknown. He had many amusing and romantic adventures; and the joy of being an independent man, of which ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... of this air of simplicity, a particular care should be taken to express with all plainness those moral sentences and proverbial speeches which are so numerous in this poet. They have something venerable, and as I may say, oracular, in that unadorned gravity and shortness with which they are delivered: a grace which would be utterly lost by endeavouring to give them what we call a more ingenious (that is, a more modern) turn ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... own character than by luxury or parade. He would not wear silk, and no tapestry hangings ornamented his apartments; but the walls were covered with the portraits of his literary friends; and in the unadorned simplicity of his study, his books, his papers, and his letters were scattered about him on the tables, the seats, and the floor. There, stealing from the world, he would sometimes admit to his spare supper his friend Gassendi, "content," says that amiable philosopher, "to have ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... tall branches of brushwood ascended to the roof. Out of the cool gloom of this silent chamber there glimmered, as it seemed, a thousand little lamps dotted everywhere on the sticks and walls and ceiling. Not a place where a worm could climb or spin was unadorned, for the oval, shining cocoons, scattered like small, ripe fruit upon the twigs, made a delicate light on every side through the sombre dusk. Mr. Redmayne's silkworms were descended, through countless generations, from those historic eggs stolen by Nestorian pilgrims from China, and ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... hurt the edification of successive generations, for two or for ten centuries. No ornamentation can compensate for that injury. The science of acoustics is as yet but little understood; all that we seem to know thus far is that the plain, unadorned parallelogram is the best form. And even if we must stick to that, I had rather have it than a church half ruined by architectural devices. Our Protestant churches are built, not for ceremonies and spectacles and processions, but for prayer and preaching. And the fitness of means to ends ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... proper settings. "Caught By The Witch" would not be ineffective if, on a dark night, it were acted in the vicinity of a graveyard! And one ballad—if I may be permitted to dignify it by that name—called "Promises of Freedom" is characterized by an unadorned narrative style and a dramatic ending which are associated with the best English folk-ballads. The singer tells simply and, one feels, with a grim impersonality of how his mistress promised to set him free; ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... colour in the cathedral of Arles—only nine great pieces of Flemish tapestry, green and soft pale yellow, that are suspended in the aisles. All the rest is of unadorned limestone blocks, unadorned save for the chipping marks of the old masons seven hundred ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... truth, that he should fail for want of words; and truth was always prettiest when naked. In the main, the General was correct; but there are some who lie with a naivete so perfect that even he would have deemed it truth naked and unadorned. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... an early date in Egypt, but was rarely employed there in the decoration of buildings, while in Chaldaea the use of such enamelled plaques was common. The substructures of palaces and the exterior walls of temples were left unadorned, but the shrines which crowned the "ziggurat," the reception-halls, and the headings of doors were covered with these many-coloured tiles. Fragments of them are found to-day in the ruins of the cities, and the analysis of these pieces shows the marvellous skill of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... should be indissoluble. Afterwards, from the natural influence of association, we expect in real life to meet with virtue when we see grace, and we are disappointed, almost disgusted, when we find virtue unadorned. This false association has a double effect upon the conduct of women; it prepares them to be pleased, and it excites them to endeavour to please by adventitious charms, rather than by those qualities which merit esteem. Women, who have been ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... Sufi was a cat. This unadorned statement would have wounded Omar Ben to the marrow of his pride, for he chanced to be a splendid tiger-marked feline of purest Persian breed, with glorious yellow eyes and a Solomon-in-all-his-glory tail. His pedigree could be traced directly back to Padisha Zim Yuki ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple
... the remains in the rock of the primitive Marmoutier. The grottoes of S. Gatianus and of the disciples of S. Martin have been cleared out. There is a little arcade of three round-headed unadorned arches cut in the cliff that served as a cloister, and there is the old baptistry where Martin admitted his converts into the Christian Church, sunk in the rock for adult and complete submersion, and the niches in the wall for the ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... the finest of stitches in tuck and hem. The lamp burning low made her needle fly swiftly. In her own room was an old chest nearly full of dainty garments which she was never to wear. She had wrought miracles of embroidery upon some of them, and others were unadorned ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... the waters covered and concealed it from view; secondly, that which it derives from being adorned by herbs and plants, for which reason it is called "empty," or, according to another reading [*Septuagint], "shapeless"—that is, unadorned. Thus after mention of two created natures, the heaven and the earth, the formlessness of the heaven is indicated by the words, "darkness was upon the face of the deep," since the air is included under heaven; ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... aesthetic, licit, and normal side of natural eroticism. It does not depict sexual vice so as to emphasize its ugliness and its tragic consequences, but to glorify it. Whether it is represented as brazen nudity unadorned, or enveloped in a transparent veil which reveals everything it pretends to hide; whether it reels in bacchanalian orgies; whether it appears in brilliant fancy dress illuminated by electric lights, or in the discreet ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... little of myself if I did not despise a girl like Miss Oliphant. Is it likely I should care to imitate one whom I despise? There was a brief, dreadful hour when I absolutely pined to have pretty things in my room as she has in hers; now I can do without them. My room shall remain bare and unadorned. In this state it will at least ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... long, weather-board structure of four walls, and a sloping roof of corrugated iron, unadorned save by an array of cylindrical tanks—also of corrugated iron—at each corner, for being on the top of a rise, there was no chance of possessing a well or a waterhole; and upon the contents of the tanks, saved from the rain, the residents ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... which her husband had offered me a bed. It was a low room in the roof, containing a plain wooden bedstead, one chair, a small wash-hand stand, and a square of looking-glass hanging on the wall. There was no other furniture, and, indeed, there was room for no other, and the room was unadorned except by three or four funeral cards in dismal black frames, which were hanging at different heights on the wall opposite the bed. But the square casement window was thrown wide open, and the pure sea air filled the little room, and the coarse white coverings ...
— Christie, the King's Servant • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... but looked at her as she stood before him, majestic as a young empress in her straight, unadorned ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... what matter? It meant order and prevented the wares from falling into the hands of the enemy. His small shop had enabled himself together with his wife and daughter to eke out a comfortable existence. Their cozy home while unmistakably plain and unadorned with the finer appointments indicative of opulence, nevertheless was not without charm and cheeriness. It was delightful in simplicity ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... was the secretary. Honora looked around her. The membership of the Society, judging by those present, was surely of a sufficiently heterogeneous character to satisfy even the catholic tastes of her hostess. There were elderly ladies, some benevolent and some formidable, some bedecked and others unadorned; there were earnest-looking younger women, to whom dress was evidently a secondary consideration; and there was a sprinkling of others, perfectly gowned, several of whom were gathered in an opposite corner. Honora's ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... (and little inferiour to any in fortune) that was at that tyme in ether of the three Kingdomes; who could well remember the tyme when he ledd those people, who then pursued him to his grave. He was a man of greate partes and extraordinary indowments of nature, not unadorned with some addicion of Arte and learninge, though that agayne was more improoved and illustrated by the other, for he had a readynesse of conception, and sharpnesse of expressyon, which made his learninge thought more, then in truth it was. His first ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... secret jealousy of their sex, and contribute to set off the person of those who not unfrequently treat them with hauteur. However, they are now and then amply revenged: sometimes the proud rich lady is eclipsed by the humble little milliner. The unadorned beauty of the latter destroys the made up charms of the coquette: 'tis the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... "a thorough Yankee, born on a windy part of the coast, and reared chiefly on salt-fish; keeps a young ladies' school exactly as he would have kept a hundred head of cattle—for the simple, unadorned purpose of making just as much money in just as few years as ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... hoop, the first seen in those parts, managing it with a grace that made her an overwhelming spectacle, in contrast with Betty, in her close-fitting dark-grey homespun, plain white muslin apron, cap, kerchief, and ruggles, scrupulously neat and fresh, but unadorned. The visit was graciously designed for "good cousin Harry," but his daughter was obliged, not unwillingly, though quite truly, to declare him far too suffering with ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Anna's leg lying on the counter, and observed it with due respect, as the prop of a hero. With this leg, which is fitted with a very handsome boot, he reviews his troops next Sunday, putting his best foot foremost; for generally he merely wears an unadorned wooden leg. The shoemaker, a Spaniard, whom I can recommend to all customers as the most impertinent individual I ever encountered, was arguing, in a blustering manner, with a gentleman who had brought a ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... OF ORNAMENTS.—Beauty needs not the foreign aid of ornament, but is when unadorned adorned the most, is a trite observation; but with a little qualification it is worthy of general acceptance. Aside from the dress itself, ornaments should be very sparingly used—at any rate, the danger lies in over-loading oneself, and not in ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... luxurious, but MacMaine hadn't expected that they would be. The walls were a flat metallic gray, unadorned and windowless. The ceilings and floors were simply continuations of the walls, except for the glow-plates overhead. One room held a small cabinet for his personal possessions, a wide, reasonably soft bed, a small but adequate ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... wives; and the episode of Bertha and Rudenz, though beautiful, is very brief, and without effect on the general result. It is delightful and salutary to the heart to wander among the scenes of Tell: all is lovely, yet all is real. Physical and moral grandeur are united; yet both are the unadorned grandeur of Nature. There are the lakes and green valleys beside us, the Schreckhorn, the Jungfrau, and their sister peaks, with their avalanches and their palaces of ice, all glowing in the southern sun; and dwelling among ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... phrase, in which modern English poetry is rich, would scarcely suit the translation of an old Epic whose predominating characteristic is its simple and easy flow of narrative. Indeed, the Maha-bharata would lose that unadorned simplicity which is its first and foremost feature if the translator ventured to decorate it with the art of the modern day, even if he had been ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... the Blood Bath, or, The Demon of Dahomey! Strongly Sensational Melodrama, in Five Acts, and a Special Death Dance Tableau!!! The Toilet! The Torture!! The Tub!!! Beauty unadorned and Bloodshed Undisguised! Mirth-moving Murders and Side-splitting Suicides! Fun and Funerals! Roars of Laughter and Tremendous Thrills of Pleasing Horror Nightly! Open at ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., January 3, 1891. • Various
... penniless, in the great commercial Babel of the world. They found the portion of the Crystal Palace assigned to our country unprepared for the specimens of art and industry which they had brought with them; naked and unadorned by the side of the neighboring arcades and galleries fitted up with elegance and splendor by the richest governments in Europe. The English press began to launch its too ready sarcasms at the sorry ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... the way of the world; the least misfortune causes us to be slighted by those who before caressed us. Come along, brother, let us go and seek our fortune somewhere else; I perceive they love nothing here but outward show, and have no regard for worth unadorned. ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... justified of its own beauty and glory. Of course poetry may be too ornate, but in demanding a simplicity of utterance from the poet it is easy for the critic to forget how wide and how various are poetry’s domains. For if in one mood poetry is the simple and unadorned expression of nature, in another it is the ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... humour she dressed herself in her best. I do not deny a love of fine clothes in Damaris. Yet in her own home, and for delectation of the men belonging to her, a woman is surely free to deck herself as handsomely as her purse allows. "Beauty unadorned" ceased to be practicable, in self-respecting circles, with the expulsion of our first parents from the paradisaic state; while beauty merely dowdy, is a pouring of contempt on one of God's best gifts to the human race. Therefore I find no fault with Damaris, upon ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... an observation of the course of actual life—namely, the superiority of high over low principles, and of greatness over littleness of mind. These writings are like photographs, in which no feature is softened; no ideal expression is introduced, all is the unadorned reflection of the natural object; and the value of such a faithful likeness must increase as time gradually works more and more changes in the face of society itself. A remarkable instance of this is to be found in her portraiture of the clergy. She was the daughter and the sister ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... it a front with no back to it; it is crowded with useless and restless ornament. The rose-windows, for instance, in the gables, give light to nothing but the rafters of the roof. The designer was evidently afraid of leaving any surface plain and unadorned; he felt impelled to fill every inch with decoration. Indeed, I cannot doubt that if one saw the West Front reproduced now, the connoisseurs, who praise it so blandly in its mellow softness, would overwhelm it with disapproval ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in light attire. This stumpy old woman with a face like a large wrinkled lemon, beady eyes, and a shock of iron-grey hair, was dressed in a garment of some ash-coloured, silky, light stuff. It fell from her thick neck down to her toes with the simplicity of an unadorned nightgown. It made her appear truly cylindrical. She exclaimed: ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... unadorned words," concluded the Senator, "need no comment. Their force and significance cannot be enhanced by anything I can say. I do not know that I could listen quietly to shrieking and exploding shells while I spoke words of courage and good cheer; but I do know that I wish ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... breathing witnesses of the power of the Spirit in renewing and sanctifying the heart. And then it was that art and wealth and genius poured out their treasures to raise fitting tabernacles for the dwelling of so divine a soul. Alike in the village and the city, amongst the unadorned walls and lowly roofs which closed in the humble dwellings of the laity, the majestic houses of the Father of mankind and of his especial servants rose up in sovereign beauty. And ever at the sacred gates sat Mercy, pouring ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... across his knees, and his face upturned to a palace beautiful of pearl and saffron cloud; but the woman mounted the steps, and, crossing the boards, came up to the door and the men beside it. Her dress was gray and unadorned, and she was young ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... grinned K. Rhodes cheerfully. "Beauty unadorned. Say Cap, tell me something. What is the attraction for friend Conrad south of La Partida? I seem to run against a stone wall when I try to feel out the natives on that point. Now just what ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... carried much of the wealth of their parents on their persons, and were entitled to wear it until they should be relegated to the ranks of the married—the supposed-to-be unfrivolous, and the evidently unadorned! ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... or "mercy-seat," and its ark of stone or wood, in which an inscribed tablet of stone was kept. Like the temple of Jerusalem, the Babylonian temple looked from the outside much like a rectangular box, with its four walls rising up, blank and unadorned, to the sky. Within the open court was a "sea," supported at times on oxen of bronze, where the priests and servants of the temple performed their ablutions and the sacred ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... costly, is not made of coarse materials: for it has been the wish and aim of the Publishers, that this impression should rank among books worthy of the DISTINGUISHED PRESS from which it issues. Nor is it unadorned by the sister art of Engraving; for, although on a reduced scale, some of the repeated plates may even dispute the palm of superiority with their predecessors. Several of the GROUPS, executed on copper in the preceding edition, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... they had not been protracted as in the old days. Around the country of the red man was drawn closer and more securely, day by day, the girdle of civilization. Within its constricting grasp the spirit of savagery, if not crushed, was at least subdued. Tribes naked but for their blankets, unadorned save by the tattoo, found themselves pressed close to other tribes which, already civilized, had relinquished the chase for agricultural pursuits. Primeval men, breathing this quickened atmosphere of modernity, either grew more sophisticated, or perished like wild flowers brought ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... reprehensible? To all these inexorable accusations he was forced to confess himself guilty. He had undoubtedly, only a few minutes before, looked almost impatiently for something from Rosemary Roselle. Beyond cavil she should have had an unadorned C last month. And these easily proved him ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... expression, the modest and simple phrase, in the drawing-room; the sort of nicety which is unobtrusive exactness and delicacy; an artistry which in no way labels itself skilful. But underneath all, the woof of the process is social skill—that skill which is the ability to go back to unadorned first principles with the dexterity of one who has acquired the power to do the simple thing perfectly by having mastered the entire ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... to the cross, in that adoration he is sharer with us . . You worship victories, for in your trophies the cross is the heart of the trophy. The camp religion of the Romans is all through a worship of the standards . . . I praise your zeal: you would not worship crosses unclothed and unadorned."[23] ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... the oratory which distinguish these above every other class of men. And yet, how few of them ever attain to the eminence of finished orators. Eloquence and oratory are by no means identical: one is the attribute of the heart, the other of the head; and eloquence, however unadorned, is always effective, because it is born of the feelings; and there is ever a sympathy between the hearts of men, and the words, however rude and original, which bubble up from the heart freighted with its feelings, rush with electrical force and velocity to the heart, and stir to the extent ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Beyle's and equal to anything of Flaubert's or Maupassant's. But the real cause of admiration is the nature of the grasp itself. Here, and perhaps here only—certainly here in transcendence—Balzac grapples with, and vanquishes, the bare, stern, unadorned, unbaited, ironic facts of life. It is not an intensely interesting book; it is certainly not a delightful one; you do not want to read it very often. Still, when you have read it you have come to one of the ultimate things: the flammantia moenia of the world of fiction forbid any one to go further ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... dismal, gives up selling fish, goes to sea, is wrecked on a desert island, stays there some years, on his return finds his wife married to a miller, speaks to a landlady on the subject, and dies. Told in the pure and simple, the unadorned and classical style, this story would not have taken three pages, but Mr. Tennyson has been able to make it the principal—the largest tale in his new volume. He has done so only by giving to every event and incident in the volume an accompanying ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... impossible, even at this distance of time, to turn the pages of his ponderous volumes without feeling the matchless force of his energy, the strength of his masterly array of facts, his biting sarcasm, his bold assumptions, and his clear, unadorned style. There is about it all an impassioned conviction, as if he spoke because he could not keep silent, making it impossible to avoid the belief that the whole soul and conscience of the writer were in his work. Day after day, with kaleidoscopic change, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... can be considered, are very shallow, being merely the depth of the double aisles of the nave and choir, and are bare and unadorned so far as any notable sculpture or glass is concerned, though the arched windows which hold the plain glass are of grand proportions and excellent ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... These unvarnished details of human weal and human wo, coming right from the mint of nature, decline the superfluous embellishments of art, and, in the absence of all borrowed lustre, clearly demonstrate that they are "adorned the most when unadorned." They bear a most diametrical contrast to those figments of diseased fancy, that nauseating romance about virgins betrothed and lady love, which in so many instances elbow decency and common sense from the pages of our periodical ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... window of the Provost's lodging in the High Street, and made her wild appeal, in all the force of impassioned and terrible emotion, to the overawed and excited crowd. They saw her in the carelessness of misery half-dressed, unadorned, disenchanted, and delivered from the maddening delusion which had carried her away, recognising in its full extent the horrors of the result—and their hearts were rent with pity. But notwithstanding that pity and all the innate chivalry which her sufferings called forth, Edinburgh and ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... or false noses, some carry feathers or tin whistles. Some, with bamboos and Chinese lanterns, swing them up outside on the terrace. The medley of noises is very great. Such ringleaders as exist in the confusion are a GROUP OF STUDENTS, the chief of whom, conspicuous because unadorned, is an athletic, hatless young man with a projecting underjaw, and heavy coal-black moustache, who seems with the swing of his huge arms and shoulders to sway the currents of motion. When the first surge of noise and movement subsides, he calls ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Hippolyte Schinner. Early in the nineteenth century she lived at Paris with her unmarried daughter, Adelaide. On the fourth story of a house belonging to Molineux, on rue de Surene, near the Madeleine, Madame Leseigneur occupied unadorned and gloomy apartments. There she frequently received Hippolyte Schinner, Messieurs du Halga and de Kergarouet. She received from two of these friends many delicate marks of sympathy, despite the gossip of the neighbors who were astonished that Madame de Rouville and her daughter should have different ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... "She is nature unadorned as far as her complexion goes, believe me," said I to my sister. "During my constant journeys she has always slept at my side, and her face at waking has always been as at noon and all day long. She ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... bright, with very black pupils, surrounded by the clearest white, each color more brilliant by contrast. Her hair is naturally curled, and, as Homer's saying is, like the hyacinth. The neck is white and proportioned to the face, and though unadorned more conspicuous by its delicacy; but a necklace of gems encircles it, on which her name is written in jewels. She is tall and elegantly dressed in garments fitted to her body and limbs. When dressed her appearance is beautiful; when undressed she ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... paused to remember, Howkan translated and a clerk reduced to writing. The court-room listened stolidly to each unadorned little tragedy, till Imber told of a red-haired man whose eyes were crossed and whom he had killed ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... contained all colours within its sphere, and which was kept only to be handled and admired. Tops were there, too, from polished little beauties with shining steel tips, which were intended only for amusement, and were spun with fine white cord, to unadorned, massive, vicious-looking warriors with sharpened projecting points, which were intended for the battlefield, and were spun with rough, strong twine, and which, dexterously used, would split another top from head to foot as when you slice butter with a knife. Her stock of kites in the ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... towers, and the interior is a perfect blaze of gilding. The monastery attached to it is one of the largest in the world, but the greater part of it is in ruins, and one of the wings is used as a barrack. Those unsightly, unadorned convents, which cling to every church save the cathedral, have neutralized nearly ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... earth the road to heaven. Her religion was pre- eminently practical, while it was deeply spiritual; in fact, it was the religion of sanctified common sense. The true grace of her character gained the admiration which she never sought. As some simple unadorned column rising in the midst of richly-carved sculptures arrests attention by its mere dignity of height and grace of perfect proportion, so in the unassuming wife of Bernard Oliphant there was a loftiness and symmetry of character which made people feel that in her was the true ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... upon taste," returns Molly, who, though angry, finds a grim amusement in watching the flounderings of this tactless old person. "If we are to believe that beauty unadorned is adorned the most, I may certainly flatter myself I shall be the best dressed woman in the room. But there may be some who will not call ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... according to Fetis, was characterized by great simplicity and apparent facility. His few and unadorned notes, full of grace, were yet deep and varied in their expression. In his simplicity was the proof of his abundance. It was not necessary for him to have recourse to musical artifice and complication ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... eventful anniversary. There was so much to hope—so much to fear. "If I should fail," was repeated again and again; and their hearts throbbed wildly as the signal-bell was heard, which called them to pass the dread ordeal. Such a display of beauty—genuine, unadorned beauty—rarely greets the eye of man. More than a hundred young girls, from timid fifteen to more assured one-and-twenty, robed in pure white, with tresses untortured by the prevailing mode, decorated only by wreaths of delicate wild flowers, or the rich coral berry of the ground-ivy, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... and a third gathered violets until her hands were fragrant. An old, haggard woman, passing by, asked, "Who will give me a gift, for I am poor?" all three denied her; but another who sat near, unwashed in the stream, unstained with fruit, unadorned with flowers or perfume, gave her a little gift, and satisfied the poor woman. Then the woman asked them what was the subject of their dispute; and they told her, and lifted up before her their beautiful hands. "Beautiful indeed!" she exclaimed, as she saw them. But when they asked her which was ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... heathen, had base conceptions of home, and abused its highest and holiest prerogatives by his ideas of polygamy. We find too that in the ethics of Aristotle, the most lovely and sacred attributes of the family are totally discarded. The home which he holds up to view is unadorned with chastity and virtue. And Sophocles follows in the same path, stripping home of all that is sacred and essential to its true constitution. And when we come down to the present age, and view this ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... the sobs that came surging up from her great bosom, and weaving to and fro as she fought back her tears. The Doctor sat beside her and took her red unshapely hands unadorned except by the thin gold wedding ring that she had worn in toil for over ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... authentic, upon the subject of which it treats, of all that have yet been presented to the public of Great Britain. The press has been prolific in fabulous writings upon these times, which have been devoured with avidity. I hope John Bull is not so devoted to gilded foreign fictions as to spurn the unadorned truth from one of his downright countrywomen: and let me advise him en passant, not to treat us beauties of native growth with indifference at home; for we readily find compensation in the regard, patronage, and admiration of every nation in Europe. I am old ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... Thetis with Jupiter; his promise, unwillingly given, to avenge Achilles; and the assembly of the gods, in which the promise is angrily alluded to by Juno, and the discussion peremptorily checked by Jupiter. The poet, throughout this book, maintains a simple, unadorned style, but highly descriptive, and happily adapted to the nature of ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... might have thought her expression sad, but her sensitive mouth was mirthful as well as tender; in merriment her eyes danced. When she talked earnestly she caught her breath in the prettiest way; she had indescribable charm. Her hands were long and slender, unadorned with rings; she simply didn't care for them. She usually wore white, and the larger the hat ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... was one of the last relics among us of that class of men who were loyal to their country but despised the negro, was fixed upon a beautiful child of olive complexion and wavy hair, who stood gazing in innocent wonder at the passing column. The child was indeed a picture of unadorned beauty, in her long coarse garment of "negro cloth." The captain turned to a staff officer and as a tear stole down his rough cheek at the thought of the degradation of the beautiful child, he exclaimed, "Isn't ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... all that may be said in honor of the unadorned style of composition, writers have ever found that even in prose ideas are most forcibly conveyed by means of imagery. Hazlitt, it should be remembered, was an ardent admirer of the picturesque qualities in the prose of Burke, the most brilliant of the eighteenth century. In recalling ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... entree simultaneously. It had never yet dawned upon her that as a rule it is because one has not experienced a feeling that one is able to describe it; she reasoned in the contrary direction, and came to the conclusion that those persons have no hearts at all whose sleeves are unadorned with the same. Therefore it was intolerable to her when Christopher—who had played with her as a child, and had once very nearly made her grow up into a woman—talked to her about ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... surrounded by an iron railing; a low wooden paling extended a small distance around; and the whole was overhung by three decaying willows. The appearance of the place was plain and appropriate. Nothing was wanting to its unadorned and affecting simplicity. Ornament could not have increased its beauty, nor inscription have added to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... originally meant an inscription on a monument, hence it came to signify any pointed expression. It now means a statement or any brief saying in prose or poetry in which there is an apparent contradiction; as, "Conspicuous for his absence." "Beauty when unadorned is most adorned." "He was too foolish to commit folly." "He was so wealthy that he could not ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... but he has no brain left, and he cannot rearrange his verbal stock-in-trade in fresh and vivid combinations. The old, old sentences trickle out in the old, old way. Our friends, "the breach than the observance," "the cynosure of all eyes," "the light fantastic toe," "beauty when unadorned," "the poor Indian," and all the venerable army come out on parade. The weariful writer fills up his allotted space; but he does not give one single new idea, and we forget within a few minutes what the article pretended to say—in an hour we ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... Mary this evening on her return, and it was lying on the table by Master Gifford's side, as he sat in the spotlessly clean parlour, with the Bible open before him, and a sheet of parchment, on which he was jotting down the heads of his sermon to be delivered next day in the plain unadorned room at the back ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... shoulders, giving the usual barbaric touch to her stateliness. Ellen, in contrast, wore iris-tinted gowns that displayed nacreous arms and shoulders, and her hair passed in great dark shining licks over her little unadorned ears. ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... of his duties and affections. He had related them to me clearly and ingenuously, and I had listened with interest. After some time spent in watching him plow, it occurred to me that I might write his story, though that story were as simple, as straightforward, and unadorned as the furrow ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... that was to come. Then the life stirred in her, and whereas she would not that her women should find her there, she stood up, and clad herself somewhat more seemly; yet she did on her black raiment; and determined in her mind that nought would she wear save black unadorned while ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... elegant palace, ninety feet by sixty, and forty high, in which an unadorned simplicity reigns. It is light and pleasing, without the addition of wings or lesser parts, which too frequently wanting a sufficient uniformity with the body of the edifice, are unconnected with it in effect, and divide the attention. Large and ample offices are conveniently placed ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... an acquaintance would grow up, he thought, and then in the day of distress he could no doubt obtain the necessary credit. So he took his place at a small square table close to the desk, intended probably for casual comers, for the two clean serviettes were unadorned with rings. Lucien's opposite neighbor was a thin, pallid youth, to all appearance as poor as himself; his handsome face was somewhat worn, already it told of hopes that had vanished, leaving lines upon his forehead and barren furrows ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... gathered for the debate. Jeremiah, much older looking than his years, was the center of attraction. He was tall and erect. His face was somewhat drawn and showed wrinkles of worriment. He was dressed in an unadorned brown mantle that singled him out among the holiday-attired priests and prophets with ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... sister listened to her in attentive silence, impressed by the deep significance of the unadorned story of a human being, who was regarded as cattle are regarded, and who, without a murmur, for a long time felt herself to be that which she was held to be. It seemed to them as if thousands, nay millions, of lives spoke through her mouth. Her existence had been commonplace ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... tragedy is laid at the Bell Inn, in Wood-street, and the heroine may possibly be daughter to the poor old clergyman who is reading the direction of a letter close to the York waggon, from which vehicle she has just alighted. In attire—neat, plain, unadorned; in demeanor—artless, modest, diffident: in the bloom of youth, and more distinguished by native innocence than elegant symmetry; her conscious blush, and downcast eyes, attract the attention of a female fiend, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... described as decent, reputable folk, following honest trades—millers, maltsters, and doctors, playing the character parts in the Waverley Novels with propriety, if without distinction; and to an orphan looking about him in the world for a potential ancestry, offering a plain and quite unadorned refuge, equally free from shame and glory. John, the land-labourer, is the one living and memorable figure, and he, alas! cannot possibly be more near than a collateral. It was on August 12, 1678, ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... embellished a good deal, in that dramatic way of hers. She had written so much fiction and lived so much in her imagination that it was doubtful if she could (with the best intentions) tell the exact and unadorned truth about anything. Besides, even if things had happened exactly as she had chronicled them, it was not a fair test anyway; it was a very different case from those of the heroines in the two stories. Jane Vail ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... fairly observed, that the unadorned manner in which the whole account from Agram is written; the agreement of the different witnesses, who had no reason to accord in a lie; and the similarity of this history to that of the Eichstedt stone; makes it at least very probable, that there was indeed something ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King
... riband, and all other female gear. What a multiplicity of pretty things we women require to render us what we consider presentable! And how few of us, however good-looking we may chance to be, would agree with the poet, that "loveliness needs not the foreign aid of ornament, but is, when unadorned, adorned ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... knew his Boswell so well, could have accused him of 'speaking of foreign travel with the fierce and boisterous contempt of ignorance' would be a puzzle indeed, did we not know how often this great rhetorician was by the stream of his own mighty rhetoric swept far away from the unadorned strand of naked truth. To his unjust and insulting attack I shall content myself with opposing the following extracts which with some trouble I ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... caricatures of the real beauty of sensibility, dropping glibly from the tongue, vitiate the taste, and create a kind of sickly delicacy that turns away from simple unadorned truth; and a deluge of false sentiments and over-stretched feelings, stifling the natural emotions of the heart, render the domestic pleasures insipid, that ought to sweeten the exercise of those severe duties, which educate a rational and immortal being for a nobler ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... lower part of the city, there would be no presumption in the inference—selected no doubt with due appreciation of its view both from river and hills on western side. Truly its striking beauty might give rise to the well established title of "Celestial City." Though unadorned by lofty monuments of imposing stateliness, costly public buildings, or princely residences, Fredericton lays claim to a higher and more primitive order of architecture than that of Hellenic ages. The Universal Architect lingered lovingly in studying the effect ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... there is no sign of any human habitation, save that of a miserable police guard of four or five, who occupy a wretched hut on the side of the road midway, and seem by their presence to render the scene around more dreary.[4] the road is a mere footpath unimproved and unadorned by any single work of art; and, except in this footpath, and the small police guard, there is absolutely no single sign in all this long march to indicate the dominion, or even the presence, of man; and yet it is between two contiguous [sic] capitals, one occupied by one of the most ancient, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... repeated scornfully. 'Will you listen to my version of what has happened—the barest, unadorned tale? I was your host and Miss Foster's. I had begun to show the attraction that Miss Foster had for me, to offer her the most trifling, the most ordinary attention. From the moment I was first conscious of my own feeling, I knew that you were against me—that you were influencing—Lucy'—the ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it stood another log structure, about twelve feet square,—the weaving shop of the family. On entering the dwelling I found the numerous household all clothed in substantial garments of their own manufacture. The floor was unadorned by a carpet and the room devoid of superfluous furniture; yet they had all that necessity required for their comfort. One needs but little experience like this to learn how few are our real wants,—how easily most ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott |
