"Bric-a-brac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Shepherd's Inn into Holborn, and looked for a while at Woodgate's bric-a-brac shop, which I never can pass without delaying at the windows—indeed, if I were going to be hung, I would beg the cart to stop, and let me have one look more at that delightful omnium gatherum. And passing Woodgate's, we come to Gale's ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... and four poets of the present dynasty; notes on archaeological, supernatural and other topics, first published in the 9th century; notes for bibliophiles on the care of books, and on paper, ink, pictures and bric-a-brac; a collection of famous criminal cases; night thoughts suggested by a meteor. Add to the above, numerous short stories relating to magic, dreams, bilocation, and to almost every possible phase of supernatural manifestation, and the reader will have ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... of the bids gave courage to the gathering of second-hand booksellers present, who began to mingle with us, and become more familiar. The dealers in old brass and bric-a-brac pressed forward in their tun, waiting for the doors of an adjoining room to be opened; and the voice of the auctioneer was drowned by the jests ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... it—and the two men grappled and went down, fighting furiously; Harleston letting out shouts all the while, and even managing to overturn a table, which fell with a terrific smash of broken glass and bric-a-brac, to attract attention and lead to ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... off the coast of Africa; his wife, dead too these many years; her other sons as well (she had borne four); their wives and children—grown men, fashionable women, beautiful children, fat babies: the likenesses of them all were around her, standing amid china and flowers and bric-a-brac on the crowded tables and what-nots of the not inharmonious and yet shabby Victorian room. Mrs. de Tracy, it might at a glance be seen, was no innovator, either in furniture, in dress, or probably in ideas. As she was dressed now, in the severely simple black ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... pacing up and down her little sitting room which always looked so quaintly attractive with its jumble of paintings and bric-a-brac, its distinctive furniture and draperies—all symbolic of the helter-skelter artistry which was a part of Aleta's nature. She took Frank's hand and ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... trading-post on some piratical expedition, or looted from a Spanish planter's home during a raid on a coast town, or more prosaically acquired in exchange for curios. However that may be, it was considered a rare bit of bric-a-brac in Siminol, and the possessor was counted a most fortunate ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... and waiting-maids with her, so, after the departure on the recent occasion, of those, who followed Hsueeh P'an, no more than one or two men-servants remained in the outer quarters. Mrs. Hsueeh repaired therefore on the very same day into the study, and had the various ornaments, bric-a-brac, curtains and other articles removed into the inner compound and put away. Then bidding the wives of the two male attendants, who had gone with Hsueeh P'an, likewise move their quarters inside, along with the other women, she went on to impress upon Hsiang Ling to put everything ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... flowers. There was a large pier-glass mirror between the two windows. A large, soft, green, plush-covered couch occupied one corner, and several rocking-chairs were set about. Some pictures, several rugs, a few small pieces of bric-a-brac, and the tale of ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... Nor, indeed, does she live in a very fashionable street, if I must confess it. There are many old houses in New York that have been abandoned by their owners because of the uptown movement and the west-side movement of fashion. These houses are as quaint in their antique interiors as a bric-a-brac cabinet. In an upper story of one of these subdivided houses Rob Riley and his wife, Henrietta, have two old-fashioned rooms; the front room is large and airy, with a carved mantelpiece, the back room small and cosy. The furniture is rather plain and scant, for Rob ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... the establishments they represented, whereof the glories and mysteries could be but too feebly told in words. And upon the sidewalks all about him, swarms of itinerant musicians, instantaneous photographers, dealers in bric-a-brac, toilet articles, precious stones, soda water, and other needful and nutritious wares, urged themselves upon ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... which he sat was essentially a man's room, furnished for comfort rather than for beauty, and one saw in it an unconscious striving after large effects, a disdain of useless bric-a-brac as of small decorations. On the mantel the solitary ornament was an exquisite bronze figure of a wrestler at the triumphant instant when he subdues his opponent, a spirited and virile study of the nude male figure, and just above it hung a portrait in oils of Madame Alta, painted in a large ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... Margery said she wished to do some shopping on Via dei Fossi, which was close at hand—that street whose shop windows are ever filled with most fascinating groups of sculptured marbles and bronzes, and all kinds of artistic bric-a-brac—and begged her ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... bearing was that of Napoleon making a temporary stay in some German or Italian palace for the purposes of national reorganization and public weal. At the present instant she was enthroned amid cushions in a corner of the sofa, watching Olivia dispose of such bric-a-brac as had not been too ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... and fluffles of the average bedroom, must go. The good father's chiffonier may have to be put in the bath room; heavy floor coverings must be discarded, to be replaced by one or two small, light-weight rugs; wall decorations and the usual bric-a-brac of dressers, tables, etc., should be carefully packed away. In fact, there should be nothing in the room save the parents' bed, dresser (several drawers of which must be devoted to baby's necessities), table, low rocker, a stool, baby's ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... light upon Michelangelo's mind in the transaction, is a letter written by him from Venice to his friend Battista della Palla on the 25th of September. Palla, who was an agent for Francis I. in works of Italian art, antiques, and bric-a-brac, had long purposed a journey into France; and Michelangelo, considering the miserable state of Italian politics, agreed to join him. These explanations will suffice to make the import of ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... guided and limited by his capacity.—Thus, fat men will spin forth cathedrals, opera-houses and railway stations. Thin men will devote themselves to obelisks, church spires, factory chimneys, and artistic bric-a-brac. Short men will willingly produce artisans' dwellings, busts of famous men and, perhaps, now and then, pyramids or villa residences. Constant work of this description will not alone render us independent of landlords, but, by atrophy of ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... of whose work is not represented on my walls, either in London, Paris, or Scotland; or at Marsfield, where so much of my time is spent; although the house is not mine, it's my real home; and thither I have always been allowed to send my best pictures, and my best bric-a-brac, my favorite horses and dogs, and the oldest and choicest liquors that were ever stored in the cellars of Vougeot-Conti & Co. Old bachelor friends have their privileges, and Uncle Bob has known how to make ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... The butler was suspected of getting drunk upon rare and costly vintages, and the new parlour-maid had turned out to be a Sunday reporter in disguise. The man who had come every day for ten years to wind the clocks of the establishment was dead, and the one who took care of the bric-a-brac was sick, and the housekeeper was in a panic over the prospect ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... demi-monde, lived like a princess, cultivated letters and art, and had many poets as well as many nobles among her friends. Her floors were carpeted with velvet rugs, her walls hung with golden cloth, and her tables loaded with costly bric-a-brac. The Spanish courtier suddenly turned and spat copiously in the face of his lackey and then explained to the slightly startled company that he chose this objective rather than soil the splendor he saw around him. The disgusting act passed for ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... my bric-a-brac dealer was a veritable Capharnaum. All ages and all nations seemed to have made their rendezvous there. An Etruscan lamp of red clay stood upon a Boule cabinet, with ebony panels, brightly striped by lines of inlaid ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... fine houses, the people of Paris and London mixing with the picturesque costumes of the natives, the bazaars, music in the air coming from the Kasbah, once the stronghold of the merciless Janizaries, now the barracks for French zouaves, the bric-a-brac merchant with his extraordinary wares spread out, while he calmly smokes a cigarette and plays upon ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... brains, who to fashion a ridiculous Chicken have taken a wing from that one, a topknot from this. I say that in such Cocks nothing remains of the true Cock. They are Cocks of shreds and patches, idle bric-a-brac, fit to figure in a catalogue, not in a barnyard with its decent dunghill and its dog. I say that those befrizzled, beruffled, bedeviled Cocks were never stroked and cherished by Nature's maternal hand. I say that it's all Aviculture, and Aviculture is flapdoodle! And I say that those preposterous ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... signal for a free-for-all fight. Del Mar and Smith leaped at the intruder. Over and over they rolled, breaking furniture, overturning and smashing bric-a-brac. ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... music-room, a large room on the opposite side of the hall, which Mrs. Ivy, a firm believer in the psychological effect of color, had fitted out in blue to induce a contemplative mood in the occupants. On the mantel and tables were the same miscellaneous collection of bric-a-brac that characterized the parlor. Several pictures of Gerald adorned the walls, the most imposing of which presented him seated at the piano, with his mother standing beside him, a rapt expression on ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... your bric-a-brac?" suggested Stuyvesant. "But what are these alluring adventures of yours that stretched through the ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... of an iron bracingness and bareness; and the beauty in them was not for eyes like Netta's. She had wandered out forlornly on the dank paths descending to the stream. Edmund as usual was interminably busy fitting up one of the lower rooms for some of his minor bric-a-brac—ironwork, small bronzes, watches, and clocks. Anastasia and ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... acknowledging mediocrity, and mistaking mystification for mastery, enters the fog of dilettantism, and, graduating connoisseur, ends its days in a bewilderment of bric-a-brac ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... either side the fireplace. Lloyd, after building the agency, had felt no scruple in choosing the best room in the house and furnishing it according to her taste. Her room was beautiful, but very simple in its appointments. There were great flat wall-space unspoiled by bric-a-brac, the floor marquetry, with but few rugs. The fireplace and its appurtenances were of brass. Her writing-desk, a huge affair, of ancient and almost black ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... Dunlap's evident desire to present him with a whole housekeeping equipment as quickly as possible. Louis's desk became loaded with ornaments, his room at Mrs. Green's became filled with nearly Wedgwood vases, candlesticks, and other bric-a-brac. He acquired six mission hall-clocks, a row of taborets stood outside of his door like Turkish sentinels, and his collection of ash-receivers was the best ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... The oak joists and planking above were stained brown. At one end of the kitchen two doors led to as many rooms, at the other a large stone fireplace, with a great slab for mantelpiece. On this slab stood bits of china bric-a-brac, and what not, relics abandoned by the gallant and chivalrous Fraser for the bride and her house furnishing. The prints, too, upon the wall, hunting scenes of the old land, sea-scenes, moorland and wild cattle, with many useful and ornamental ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... engravings graced the delicately tinted walls; choice statuettes, bric-a-brac, and old-world curios of every description, which she knew must have cost a small fortune even in the countries where they were produced, were artistically arranged ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... youth at the beck of her smile-Fleur incomparable! It was an evil moment. Jon, however, had a great idea that one must be able to face anything. And he braced himself with that dour refection in front of a bric-a-brac shop. At this high-water mark of what was once the London season, there was nothing to mark it out from any other except a grey top hat or two, and the sun. Jon moved on, and turning the corner into Piccadilly, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... The signs are a study, and if you are ignorant of the language, you ask your learned guide to interpret them for you. He will tell you that Hop Wo does business here as a grocer, that Shun Wo is the butcher, that Shan Tong is the tea-merchant, that Tin Yuk is the apothecary, and that Wo-Ki sells bric-a-brac. Some of the signs, your guide will tell you, are not the real names of the men who do business, that they are only mottoes. Wung Wo Shang indicates to you that perpetual concord begets wealth, Hip Wo speaks to you of brotherly love and harmony, Tin ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... weird little glass statuette among the usual bric-a-brac. It rather resembled a ground hog, had seven fingers on each of its six limbs, and smiled up at him ...
— The Perfectionists • Arnold Castle
... in a flutter of pleasant, heroic excitement all through December. Everything beautiful or rare garnered in the homes of the rich was given for exhibition, and in some cases for raffle and sale. There were many fine paintings, statues, bronzes, engravings, gems, laces—in fact, heirlooms, and bric-a-brac of all sorts. There were many lovely Creole girls present, in exquisite toilets, passing to and fro through the decorated rooms, listening to the band clash out the ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... them, were not indirectly complimentary to ourselves, the expression might pass; but, as it is, the self-praise is rather too obvious to carry conviction. For Japan's claim to culture is not based solely upon the exports with which she supplements our art, nor upon the paper, china, and bric-a-brac with which she adorns our rooms; any more than Western science is adequately represented in Japan by our popular imports there of kerosene oil, matches, and beer. Only half civilized the Far East presumably is, but it is so rather in ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... one intimate man friend, Adolph Jensen, a Swede, appeared as the deus ex machine. He had, he declared, an elder brother in New York, an art dealer. This brother had just written him, describing the millionaires who bought his pictures and bric-a-brac. His shop was crowded with them. Adolph's brother was shrewd and hard to please, but let his cher Stefan go himself to New York with his canvases, impress the brother with his brilliance and the beauty of his work, and, undoubtedly, his fortune ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... delighted," he puffed. "I have been looking for you everywhere. I was in town, and I went to that bric-a-brac shop. The fan is undoubtedly a real ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... know. Among the bric-a-brac of my heart I still cherish some of those little slips of paper with which we made ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... something more like a palace than a country-house. Lawson was by no means a luxurious man. At present he was well content with a Wolseley valise, and shaved cheerfully out of a tin mug. It struck me as odd that a man so simple in his habits should have so sumptuous a taste in bric-a-brac. I told myself, as I turned in, that the Saxon mother from the Midlands had done little to dilute the strong wine ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... havoc one of those mischievous creatures would make! In the first place it would accomplish the destruction of these little canaries of ours which now flit about this lovely disordered room, perching confidently upon folios and bric-a-brac and hopping blithely over the manuscripts and papers on the table. In the basement against the furnace, three beautiful fleecy little chickens have just hatched out. How long do you suppose it would be before that wicked little kitten discovered and compassed the demolition of those innocent baby ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... where a pressing crowd and a subdued glare of candle-light seemed to indicate a focus of interest hardly second to the picture gallery itself. Little O'Grady caught this anxious look. "Is she afraid for her bric-a-brac or her spoons?" he wondered. "No, ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... work on illustrated papers. His father, who belonged to what is called a good family, began life in easy circumstances, and gained some reputation as a connoisseur of art; imprudence and misfortune having obliged him to sell his collection, Mr. Franks took to buying pictures and bric-a-brac for profit, and during the last ten years of his life was associated in that capacity with a London firm. Norbert, motherless from infancy and an only child, received his early education at expensive schools, but, showing little aptitude for study and much for use ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... which the ceremony was to take place was the ordinary cottage parlor, with crochet work on the chairs, and a profusion of vases and bric-a-brac on the tables. The Rev. John Langdon requested Anna and Sanderson to stand by a little marble table from which the housekeeper brushed a profusion of knick-knacks. There was no Bible. Anna was the first to notice the omission. This seemed to deprive the ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... snug here," he said pleasantly, running his eyes appreciatively over the simple decorations, the cheap bric-a-brac which lined the walls and, in a world where all decoration was chiefly conspicuous by its absence, gave to the place a suggestion of richness. The red pine walls looked warm, and the carpeted floor was so unusual as to give one a feeling of extraordinary refinement. Then, too, the chairs, scattered ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... Stackpole appeared to have neither difficulty nor dread. Mr. Bantling, a stout, sleek, smiling man of forty, wonderfully dressed, universally informed and incoherently amused, laughed immoderately at everything Henrietta said, gave her several cups of tea, examined in her society the bric-a-brac, of which Ralph had a considerable collection, and afterwards, when the host proposed they should go out into the square and pretend it was a fete-champetre, walked round the limited enclosure several times with her and, at a dozen turns of their talk, bounded ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... developed considerable powers as an artist. Cribb, Spring, Langan, and many others, were successful publicans. Strangest of all, perhaps, was Broughton, who spent his old age haunting every sale of old pictures and bric-a-brac. One who saw him has recorded his impression of the silent old gentleman, clad in old-fashioned garb, with his catalogue in his hand—Broughton, once the terror of England, and now the ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "Dictionnaire du Mobilier Francais" in six volumes by Viollet-le-Duc; narrated as history by M. Labarte, M. Molinier, M. Paul Lacroix; catalogued in museums by M. du Sommerard and a score of others, in works almost as costly as the subjects,—all the vast variety of bric-a-brac, useful or ornamental, belonging to the Church, increased enormously by the insatiable, universal, private demands for imagery, in ivory, wood, metal, stone, for every room in every house, or hung about every neck, or stuck ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... short notice that night, as she stood in her bedroom window in the late afternoon she discovered that she was quite tired. Ten years before she would have lain down and slept, but now she had a feeling that things needed watching: maids were cleaning down-stairs, bric-a-brac was all over the floor, and there were sure to be grocery-men that had to be talked to imperatively—and then there was a letter to write Donald, who was fourteen and in his first year away ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... anonymous works and busts of standard authors; frequently an ambitious original etching by an artist unknown to you; and an occasional print of the "September Morn" kind of thing; together with many "art objects" and a great deal of "bric-a-brac." Upon the windows you are informed that "restoring," "artistic framing," "regilding," and "resilvering" are done within. And, in some cases, that "miniatures" are painted there. There are, too, a number of "Japanese art stores" along the way, containing vast ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... part of him as the clothes he wore. Every detail of the room was engraved in his mind with ... clarity; the old center leg table with its green covering and stained glass lamp; the mantelpiece with the dusty bric-a-brac; the pendulum clock that told the time of day as well as the day of the week and month; the elephant ash tray on the tabaret and, most important of all, ...
— The Street That Wasn't There • Clifford Donald Simak
... insane sums of money in bric-a-brac, tall copies, binding, Elzevirs, &c.; '20 Port, outrageously fine horses, ostentatious entertainments, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... studio gazing up at the ceiling, or, to be more exact, at a Venetian church-lamp—which he had just hung and to which he had just attached a red silk tassel bought that morning of a bric-a-brac dealer whose shop was in the next street. There was a bare spot in that corner of his sumptuously appointed room which offended Waldo's sensitive taste—a spot needing a touch of yellow brass and a note of red—and the silk tassel completed the color-scheme. The result was a combination ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the dealer remarked, thinking, like all his fraternity, that, having uttered this ne plus ultra of bric-a-brac, there was ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... the excitement, but later when all was over, it was found that she had rescued all the treasures possible, the pictures and bric-a-brac, the sofa pillows and all the linen and family silver that had been packed away in the bottom ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... various seasons,—upon trees, flowers, birds, fishes, or reptiles,—upon insects and the ways of them, —upon all kinds of small details, delicate trifles, amusing curiosities. Then it was that the race-genius produced most of that queer bric-a-brac which still forms the delight of Western collectors. The painter, the ivory-carver, the decorator, were left almost untroubled in their production of fairy-pictures, exquisite grotesqueries, miracles of liliputian art in metal and enamel ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... the atelier—the first she had ever been in in her life— disappointed her. She had expected to behold a gorgeous collection of bric-a-brac, according to accounts she had heard of the studios of several celebrated masters. That of Marien was remarkable only for its vast dimensions and its abundance of light. Studies and sketches hung on the walls, were piled one ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... place is rather too richly and densely rugged, and there is rather more curtaining and shading of the windows than we should like; but Mrs. Makely is too well up-to-date, as she would say, to have much of the bric-a-brac about which she tells me used to clutter people's houses here. There are some pretty good pictures on the walls, and a few vases and bronzes, and she says she has produced a greater effect of space by quelling the furniture—she means, having few pieces and having ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... Joyeuse family was gathered in the little drawing-room, last relic of its splendour, still containing two upholstered chairs, many crochet decorations, a piano, two lamps crowned with little green shades, and a what-not covered with bric-a-brac. ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... Bric-a-brac there was none, although here and there, in the mass of plaster on the floor, gleamed bits of glass and china which might once have been parts of ornaments. Hawkinsite had evidently not been quite as powerful as its inventor had imagined, but it had certainly ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... the many straggling streets, almost hidden behind a few large shops of curious build, stood a small boutique full of ancient relics and jeweled bric-a-brac. ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... he died he changed his policy, and with all but a few million dollars of his outside wealth bought up rare minerals in bulk, which he deposited in the safety vaults of banks all over the world, marked as bric-a-brac. His son, Braddock Tarleton Washington, followed this policy on an even more tensive scale. The minerals were converted into the rarest of all elements—radium—so that the equivalent of a billion dollars ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... If I put it out in the yard, it forthwith organized a search for me in which the entire neighborhood was compelled to take part, willy-nilly. Its manner of doing it boomed the local trade in hair-brushes and mantel bric-a-brac, but brought on complications with the landlord in the morning that usually resulted in the departure of Bob and myself for other pastures. Part with him I could not; for Bob loved me. Once I tried, when it seemed that there was no choice. I had been put ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... me," continued my lady, "is the unbreakableness of the dishes. There are no nicks in the edges of the best plates here; and, oh! it is a happy thing to have a home without bric-a-brac. There is nothing here that needs to ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... striped with garnet; Persian rugs cast here and there at random; paintings by Petenkofen—Hungarian farms and battle-scenes, sentinels lost in the snow; two consoles loaded with books, reviews, and bric-a-brac; and a round table with Egyptian incrustations, covered with an India shawl, upon which were fine bronzes of Lanceray, and little ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... been in the suburbs of Boston was fairly in the heart of the city when I first made its acquaintance, and one of the famous houses of the town. And it was no wonder it was famous, for such a collection of Oriental furniture, bric-a-brac, and objects of art never was seen outside of a museum. There were ebony cabinets, book-cases, tables, and couches wonderfully carved and inlaid with mother-of-pearl. There were beautiful things in bronze and jade and ivory. ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... Nor is 'bindings' included, for the man who collects these is no book-lover in the truest sense of the word, and his hobby does not fall properly within the category of book-collecting, being classed rather under the heading Art and Vertu, Bric-a-Brac, or what you will. Naturally all book-collectors (save perhaps the 'original-boards-uncut' man) are sensible to the charm of a choicely bound copy, provided always that the binding be appropriate and that it is impossible to ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... few pieces of furniture and bric-a-brac that Harvey could claim as his own. He stared gloomily at the floor for a long time, thinking. Of what use were they to him now? And where was he to put them in ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... subdued excitement. Helen sat by the window, blushing, and talking eagerly to old Fisbee. One of the gentlemen from Gaines County was walking about the room exclaiming, "A glorious conception! A glorious conception!" addressing the bric-a-brac, apparently. (He thought the conception his own.) Mr. Martin was tugging at his beard and whispering to Landis and Homer, and the two Amo men were consulting in a corner, but as the judge came in, one of them turned and said ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... produced by the novels of Flaubert is that of solidity. This is particularly the case with his historical books. The bric-a-brac and fustian of the Romantics has disappeared, to be replaced by a clear, detailed, profound presentment of the life of the past. In Salammbo, ancient Carthage rises up before us, no crazy vision of a picturesque and disordered imagination, but in all the solidity ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey |
