"Extravagance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... prostrated for several days afterward, the struggle between pride and parsimony being quite too great a strain upon her. It was necessary, in order to maintain her standing in the community, to furnish a good "set out," yet the extravagance of the proceeding goaded her from the first moment she began to stir the marble cake to the moment when the feast ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and the worried and anxious look which had settled down on her usually quiet little face. Primrose determined to do what she had never done yet since they had come to London—she would commit the unheard-of extravagance of ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... tempting an ordeal for the young man. He associated with those above him both in rank and fortune, who leading him into their extravagant follies, quickly dissipated his allowance, which, though ample, permitted not extravagance. About this time the noble proprietor of the Llangwillan parish died, and its patronage fell to the disposal of a gay and dissipated young man, who succeeded to the large estates. Inordinately selfish, surrounded by ready flatterers, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... ingenious and plausible, but as uncharitable. The weakness I have just acknowledged is undoubtedly attributable to my circumstances, though I trust I am still beyond the reach of the graver imputation. But I should be ambitious of proving more than this—the utter extravagance of such a theory; for it is a cruel one, and has caused both mischief and misery. How many otherwise inoffensive persons have I known implicitly to adopt an opinion to the prejudice of their less fortunate acquaintance, merely from their deficiency of the world's wealth! But, not ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... and be railroads indeed. But so long as money is obtained on false pretences, to be played for by State and Wall Street gamblers on the one hand, and ravenous contractors on the other hand, they will be what they are,—worthless monuments of extravagance and folly. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... to find the glad tidings of the Christian faith and its "reasonable service" of devotion transformed by fanaticism and credulity into superstitious terror and wild extravagance; but, if possible, there is one still sadder. It is that of men in our own time regarding with satisfaction such evidences of human weakness, and professing to find in them new proofs of their miserable theory of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of his children's future, as if he were ruining them; and of what his economical Remedios would say of his considerably augmented expenditures. Well he knew that Remedios haggled for everything down to the last centimo, and that her one extravagance was an occasional new shawl for the local Virgin, and an annual fiesta for the Saint with a large orchestra and hundreds of candles! He broke off relations with the Galician boulevardiere, and found the ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... has a certain strain of extravagance which the imitators catch hold of and give us the eccentric body without the ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... Abraxoids, whose "erudition" would have filled Mnesarchus with envy, and challenged the admiration of the Samian lapidary who engraved the ring of Polycrates; these and numberless articles of vertu testified to the universality of what St. Elmo called his "world-scrapings," and to the reckless extravagance and archaistic taste of the collector. On a verd-antique table lay a satin cushion holding a vellum MS., bound in blue velvet, whose uncial letters were written in purple ink, powdered with gold-dust, while the margins were stiff with gilded ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... year to each of us will pay that. I think my wife would rather make her bonnet wear doubly as long than give up a single one of our papers. When you think of the comparative amount of pleasure given by a paper that comes to you fifty-two times in a year, and a little extra extravagance in dress, I think you will decide ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... had to be drunk, and he responded in a little well-turned speech, full of neat allusions to my future and to the United States; my health followed; and then my father's must not only be proposed and drunk, but a full report must be despatched to him at once by cablegram—an extravagance which was almost the means of the master's dissolution. Choosing Corporal John to be his confidant (on the ground, I presume, that he was already too good an artist to be any longer an American except in ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... disconcerted by this little extravagance, that he forced the passage, and himself opened the door to admit the comte and his son. Truechen was quite dressed: costume of the shopkeeper's wife, rich and coquettish; German eyes attacking French eyes. She ceded the apartment after two curtseys, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... suddenly go. He would talk in the gravest and most earnest way of the wrongs he had suffered at the hands of a dear friend, and then the moment his eloquence had drawn from me an exclamation of sympathy for him, he would turn round and heap upon the same individual an extravagance of praise for his fidelity and good faith. And now, he so classed his contemporaries as to leave no doubt that he was duly sensible of his own place amongst them, preserving, meantime, a dignified reticence as to the extent ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... Frank Hayman (at that time one of our first historical painters) and happening to call upon him one morning, soon after the death of the painter's wife with whom he lived but on indifferent terms, he found him wrangling with the undertaker about the extravagance of the funeral expenses. Macklin listened to the altercation for some time: at last, going up to Hayman, with great gravity he observed, Come, come, Frank, though the bill is a little extravagant, pay it in respect to the memory of your wife: for by G— I am sure she would do twice ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... not consent to her friend's extravagance on her behalf, so the two children paid each their halfpenny and passed ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... (and travel to England) about our young nobility here. Mademoiselle Meruel has been sent to the Fort l'Evesque; they say she has ordered not only plate, but furniture, and a chariot and horses (under that lord's name), of which extravagance his unfortunate ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... of the day he behaved much like a human being. He took the girl to the park to see the zoo, and bought her popcorn and peanuts—a wild extravagance, for him. Later in the day they went to a picture show and finally entered a down-town restaurant, quite different from and altogether better than the one where they had always before eaten, and enjoyed a really ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... continually suggest that lyric, youthful face, as gay as his was grave. For Adriance, though he was ten years the elder, and though his hair was streaked with silver, had the face of a boy of twenty, so mobile that it told his thoughts before he could put them into words. A contralto, famous for the extravagance of her vocal methods and of her affections, once said that the shepherd-boys who sang in the Vale of Tempe must certainly have ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... up shamefully,'" she said at last, "and you get up so early. I shall write you a note from the hospital, delivering a little lecture on extravagance—because how can I now, with this joy shining on me? And about how to keep Katie in order about your socks, and all sorts of things. ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... soundly, and rather late in the morning arose and breakfasted, and paid the bill, in which, by its extravagance, I found the purification had not been forgotten. The travelling merchants had departed at daybreak. We now led forth the horses, and mounted; there were several people at the door staring at us. "What is the meaning of this?" said I ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... town in which she had the semblance of a friend; but there did live in Tite Street a young couple with whom the Minchins had at one time been on friendly terms. That was in the day of plenty and extravagance; and the acquaintance, formed at an hotel in the Trossachs, had not ripened in town as the two wives could have wished. It was Mrs. Carrington, however, who had found the Minchins their furnished house, while her husband certainly ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... that he wrote afterward, and among his later pieces, the Planting of the Apple Tree and the Flood of Years were as fresh as any thing that he had written in the first flush of youth. Bryant's poetic style was always pure and correct, without any tincture of affectation or extravagance. His prose writings are not important, consisting mainly of papers of the Salmagundi variety contributed to the Talisman, an annual published in 1827-30; some rather sketchy stories, Tales of the {518} Glauber Spa, 1832; and impressions ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... reckless extravagance. In butter, eggs and flour a single chocolate layer cake could support three men at the front for two days, Lizzie," ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... mildly that he was overdoing it, but was voted down by an indignant chorus of admirers, who urged the low comedian on to still further extravagance, until, had his part been that of a clown, he could scarcely have thrown more dramatic ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... mistake of thinking the same motives induce a municipality to provide a public service."[692] To the Socialist administrators it is quite immaterial whether their enterprises are run at a profit or at a loss, so long as they can draw freely on the rich and well-to-do to pay for their extravagance. "The Socialist view of the fair way of dealing with profits on trading concerns is to have none—if one may be excused so paradoxical a statement. Fair wages and good conditions generally for the employees, and selling at cost so that all may use freely the commodity or service, ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... one of the greatest political evils. It undermines the virtues necessary for the support of the social system and encourages propensities destructive of its happiness; it wars against industry, frugality, and economy, and it fosters the evil spirits of extravagance and speculation. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... deep solemnity was suddenly diffused upon the assembly of world-worn people, to most of whom the things that mattered were those which gave them diversion. They were wont to swim with the tide of indolence, extravagance, self-seeking, and sordid pleasure now flowing through the hardy isles, from which had come much of the strength of the Old World and the vision and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... leap at which his friend chose to ride. Young Rose came up to the same College, having been kept back for that express purpose by his father. He spent a quarter's allowance in giving Buckram a single dinner; but he knew there was always pardon for him for extravagance in such a cause; and a ten-pound note always came to him from home when he mentioned Buckram's name in a letter. What wild visions entered the brains of Mrs. Podge and Miss Podge, the wife and daughter of the Principal of Lord Buckram's College, I don't know, but that reverend old gentleman ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of fanaticism, in which seven persons lost their lives, one was killed, two were murdered, and four executed for the murders. A signal and melancholy instance of the weakness and frailty of human nature, and to what giddy heights of extravagance and madness, an inflamed imagination will carry unfortunate mortals. It is hard for the wisdom of men to conceive a remedy for a distemper such as religious infatuation. Severity and persecution commonly add strength ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... the frightful consequences of this extravagance in money matters, this living too fast and beyond their means, of which American women, especially, are guilty. Great financial crises, in which colossal schemes burst like bubbles, and vast estates are swallowed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... de Saint-Maixent's own fortune was much impaired by his extravagance and by the exactions of the law, or rather, in plain words, he had lost it all. The marchioness was heiress presumptive to the count: he calculated that she would soon lose her own husband; in any case, the life of a septuagenarian did not much trouble a man like the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... a silken cord with which to hang himself, as an imperial extravagance on the part of Heliogabalus (and of this only one strand was silk); and he mentions that Alexander Severus rarely allowed himself a dress of silk (holosericum), and only gave away robes ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... I had the means (if I could only make you trust me) of being useful to you in the future. Of course, I never supposed that you—a gentleman—had stolen the Diamond for the mere pleasure of stealing it. No. Penelope had heard Miss Rachel, and I had heard Mr. Betteredge, talk about your extravagance and your debts. It was plain enough to me that you had taken the Diamond to sell it, or pledge it, and so to get the money of which you stood in need. Well! I could have told you of a man in London who ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... and his forces, and had run up bills in Paris, and in London, and elsewhere. The most successful of comedies will pass out of vogue. To be idle, to be extravagant in one's own person, and to be milked perpetually by the extravagance of another—could better ways to ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... not too frequently supersede moral obligations. But, with respect to reputation, the attention is confined to a single virtue—chastity. If the honour of a woman, as it is absurdly called, is safe, she may neglect every social duty; nay, ruin her family by gaming and extravagance; yet still present a shameless front —for truly she ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... too dear, the large majority blame the improvidence of the poor. "They eat bacon and drink tea where potatoes and milk or porridge and milk used to be good enough for them." It is difficult to imagine the extravagance. ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... at Stornham Court was not the luxurious affair it was in the house in Fifth Avenue. Things were shabby and queer and not at all comfortable. Fires were not lighted because a day was chilly and gloomy. She had once asked for one in her bedroom and her mother-in-law had reproved her for indecent extravagance in a manner ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... was Christmas Eve, when I suddenly found myself inside that curiosity shop, pricing the diamonds, and not without an emotion of guilty extravagance, and of the difficulty of not buying if the price proved too high.... As is always the case with me at that season, my soul was irradiated with a vague sense of festivity, perhaps with the lights of rows of long-extinguished Christmas trees in the fog of many years, like the lights ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... doubt. We have many teachers who have never seen a truth in their lives. There are many who have never felt the impact of an idea. There are many who have lost their own orientation in their youth, and who have never since been able to point out the sunrise to others. It is no extravagance of language to say that diacritical marks lead to the cocaine habit; nor that the ethics of metaphysics points the way to the Higher Foolishness. There are many links in the chain of decadence, but its finger-posts ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... guests amongst others, by Prince Astor at his palatial residence in New York. As for the profusion of gold plate, glittering glass, innumerable yellow wax-candles in ormolu chandeliers, and general exhibition of splendid and luxurious extravagance, and all manner of costly wines and rarest gourmandise, I never have seen its like before or since; and more than this (if I may state the fact without much imputation of vaingloriousness), the intellectual treat was, to my amour propre at least, of a still more exquisite character, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... health added to his restless desire for travel and change, but unfitted him for close or continued application to any special line of thought or interest, while his early independence in the management of his fortune placed in his way strong temptations to extravagance and idleness. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... is to be hoped that the loss may at least check the foolish pride and extravagance of young Bursal, who, as my son ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... not Susan Shepherd either—would have wished to rush with her as she rushed. She had asked him at the last whether, being on foot, she might go home so, or elsewhere, and he had replied as if almost amused again at her extravagance: "You're active, luckily, by nature—it's beautiful: therefore rejoice in it. Be active, without folly—for you're not foolish: be as active as you can and as you like." That had been in fact the final push, as ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... above all words of praise; all extravagance of expression is silenced before her simplicity. Hers is the beauty of symmetrically developed womanhood; the perfect poise of her figure is not more marked than the perfect poise of her character. Not one false note, not one ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... neighbors saw this general renovation, of the estate, which could not have been accomplished without considerable expenditure of time, money, and labor, they shook their heads in strong disapprobation, and predicted that that woman's extravagance would bring Herman ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... have a right to eat, my dear," said Mrs. Ambler. "It seems a useless extravagance when every ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... when he talks of art as a luxury he speaks from the heart and in answer to bitter experience of want. There is a genuine element of moral indignation in his feeling that there must be something wrong with a public conscience that countenances, even glorifies extravagance, all the while that women slave and children die of underfeeding and neglect. This feeling is intensified when he compares the thousands paid for a single hour of a prima donna's song or a playwright's wit with his own yearly wage laboriously earned. ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... expensive liquors were the ordinary beverages of waggoners and shepherds; and, on his visit to Port Phillip in 1843, Governor Gipps found the suburbs of Melbourne thickly strewed with champagne bottles, which seemed to him to tell a tale of extravagance and dissipation. ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... your light view of your brother's extravagance," said the rector, addressing Oscar with his loftiest severity of manner, at the door. "I deplore and reprehend Mr. Nugent's misuse of the bounty bestowed on him by an all-wise Providence. You will do well to consider, before you encourage your brother's extravagance by ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... one of his teachers and guardians, named Leonnatus, who was standing by, thought he was rather profuse in his consumption of frankincense and myrrh. He was taking it up by handfuls and throwing it upon the fire. Leonnatus reproved him for this extravagance, and told him that when he became master of the countries where these costly gums were procured, he might be as prodigal of them as he pleased, but that in the mean time it would be proper for him to be more prudent and economical. Alexander ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... compassion. Graham had, no doubt, suffered nothing he had not deserved, but the man had once been a social favourite, and it was painful to think of his dying alone in poverty. His extravagance and the shifts by which he evaded his creditors were known, and Blake could imagine how hard he would be pressed when he lay sick and helpless. It must have been a harrowing experience for a young girl to nurse him ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... The silly extravagance of the festival, with its afternoon display of draped galleys and saluting ships gay with flags, and its absurd mock show of a tournament in ridiculous costumes, I have no temptation to describe, nor did I see this part of it. It was meant to honour Sir William Howe, ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... of an Irish country squire, who used, with hardly any means, to give entertainments to the militia, &c., in his neighborhood; and when a friend expostulated with him, on the extravagance of giving claret to these fellows, when whiskey punch would do just as well, he answered, "You are very right, my dear friend; but I have the claret on tick, and where the devil would I get credit ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... his own follies. Then having got a bad name in this trade, too, by showing his speeches to the other side, he bounded on the stage of public life, where his profits out of the city were as enormous as his savings were small. Now, however, the flood of royal gold has floated his extravagance. But not even this will suffice. No wealth could ever hold out long against vice. In a word, he draws his livelihood not from his own resources but from your dangers. What, however, are his qualifications ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... accused him of taking up with a dirty trollops; this is a notorious falsehood, since all his mistresses, of whom one was legitimised, came of good houses and had notable establishments. He did not go in for waste and extravagance, always put his hand upon the solid, and because certain devourers of the people found no crumbs at his table, they have all maligned him. But the real collector of facts know that the said king was a capital ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... former, you have grievously offended; you know that he has quarrelled irremediably with his son Dartmore, and he insists that you are the friend and abettor of that ingenuous youth, in all his debaucheries and extravagance—tu illum corrumpi sinis. I tell you this without hesitation, for I know you are less vain than ambitious, and I do not care about hurting you in the one point, if I advance you in the other. As for me, I own to you candidly and frankly, that ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... believed in the mysterious protector to whom the auctioneer alluded. Led away by such hopes and by the natural extravagance of happy love, Monsieur and Madame Rabourdin spent nearly one hundred thousand francs of their capital in the first five years of married life. By the end of this time Celestine, alarmed at the non-advancement ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... India for it witnessed the careers not only of Vallabhacarya and Caitanya, but also of Nanak, the founder of the Sikhs. In the west it was the epoch of Luther and as in Europe so in India no great religious movement has taken place since that time. The sects then founded have swollen into extravagance and been reformed: other sects have arisen from a mixture of Hinduism with Moslem and Christian elements, but no new and original current of thought ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... three other young and beautiful women alone, dressed with equal extravagance, their gowns as low, their hats as big; only she, his Juliet, was more beautiful than any. That was the difference between them. But was it the only difference? The young man, whose eyes still reflected the golden light of vast desert spaces, asked himself the question with a ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the present day, by means of a system which provides disinterested officers to determine and collect the tax, and independent judges to decide all cases of dispute, the evils are almost wholly avoided. The only difficulty now is the extravagance and waste with which the public money is expended, making it necessary to collect a much larger amount than would otherwise be required. Perhaps some future generation will discover some plain and simple ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... title, and wanting some leaves at the end, on the subject of Richard the Second. I think with Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, who printed eleven copies of this piece, that it is anterior to Shakespeare's play. There is less extravagance of language than in most of the plays belonging to that early date (circ. 1593?); and the blank verse, though it is monotonous enough, has perhaps rather more variety than we should expect to find. Much of ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... slighted traditions of Greek belief, he undertakes to interpret to an audience composed of people who, like Scyles, the Hellenising king of Scythia, feel the attraction of Greek religion and Greek usage, but on their quainter side, and partly relish that extravagance. Subject and audience alike stimulate the romantic temper, and the tragedy of the Bacchanals, with its innovations in metre and diction, expressly noted as foreign or barbarous—all the charm and grace of the clear-pitched ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... said in praise of a critic? And does an extravagance or an error here and there lie validly against the saying of it? I think not. I could be a professor if I would and show you slips enough—certain ponderous nothings in the Ibsen essays, already mentioned; a too easy bemusement at the hands of Shaw; a vacillating ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... and self-reliant, as a rule, but she does not object to be courted. When they plan a Saturday outing she will not propose what she knows to be beyond his means, but she will pardon him for a little extravagance in ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... attained his fifteenth year. No greater pleasure could be given his mother than to tell her, that her son was the leader of the jeunesse doree. He understood how to let the money fly, and when the marquis, alarmed at his son's extravagance, reproached his wife, the latter ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... We cannot hear their story. All we know is from parties prejudiced, to the highest degree, against them. Sarah Good was an unfortunate and miserable woman in her circumstances and condition: but, from all that appears on the record, making due allowance for the credulity, extravagance, prejudice, folly, or malignity of the witnesses; giving full effect to every thing that can claim the character of substantial force alleged against her, it is undeniable, that there was not, beyond the afflicted ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... dollar shoes and forty dollar hats for MY wife," his young friend had raged and he condemned to Jimmy the wicked extravagance of his own younger sisters. "The woman who gets me must be a home-maker. I'll take her to the theatre occasionally, and now and then we'll have a few friends in for the evening; but the fireside ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... Home. For a shilling he gave to a beggar, because he was poorer than himself, I can find no receipt, but hope it is filed in heaven. An eight-shilling meal stands out, among eightpenny teas, as a rare extravagance.... ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... have not been misinformed by our historians," Dr. Leete answered, "it was not college education but college dissipation and extravagance which cost so highly. The actual expense of your colleges appears to have been very low, and would have been far lower if their patronage had been greater. The higher education nowadays is as cheap as the lower, as all grades of teachers, like ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... now discuss, the times in history when they are most written are those in which a nation or mankind renews its youth. Their production in the days of Elizabeth was enormous, their passion various and profound, their fancy elaborate, their ornament extravagant with the extravagance of youth; and, in the hands of the greater men, their imagination was as fine as their melody. As that age grew older they were not replaced but were dominated by more serious subjects; and though love in its fantasies ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... his dues and his insurance premiums for years and years. They were his one extravagance. Also he had persuaded Mrs. Thropp's brother Sol to do the same. Sol had died recently and left his insurance money to Mrs. Thropp. Sol's own wife, after cherishing long-deferred hopes of spending that money herself, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... second of these qualities, we may take his well-known reply when, to the surgeon dressing the wound made by the "style" or stiletto,—who spoke of its "extravagance," rudeness, and yet ineffectiveness,—Fra Paolo quietly answered that in these characteristics could be recognized the style of ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... the first, which is still presented upon the stage. It has been called, with just critical point, "A great and glorious flight of a bold but frenzied imagination, having as much absurdity as sublimity, and as much extravagance as passion; the poet, the genius, the scholar ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... married lady of rank wore diamonds valued at a cost seeming fabulous. Others followed in the wake of such extravagance by wearing necklaces, bracelets, head-dresses, ear-rings, and brooches, in almost unlimited profusion. Add to this the magnificent array of Sir Howard's supper table, its glittering plate in massive style, its enormous chandeliers, its countless ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... fair hair, carefully brushed, fell to his shoulders. His face was long and sharply pointed, and the surface of it bronzed and wrinkled by long exposure, out of all likeness to human skin. The eyes were weirdly prominent and blue; the gestures had the deliberate extravagance of an actor; and the whole man recalled a ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... itself in answer to the latter question as the cause of such boundless extravagance is the inherited giantism of the Latins, to which reference has been more than once made in these pages, and to which the existence of many of the principal buildings in Rome must be ascribed. Next, we may consider that at one time or another, each of the greater Roman palaces has been, in all ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... his brothers, horrified at this extravagance, 'are you mad? How do you ever mean to pay ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... associated with these defects are quite as noticeable in the old French rooms of the Louvre. Clearness, compactness, measure, and balance are evident in nearly every canvas. Everywhere is the air of reserve, of intellectual good-breeding, of avoidance of extravagance. That French painting is at the head of contemporary painting, as far and away incontestably it is, is due to the fact that it alone has kept alive the traditions of art which, elsewhere than in France, have ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... composed exclusively for Faustina. By increasing the salary of her more tractable rival they finally disposed of Cuzzoni, who thenceforth through her exaggerated demands, managed to disgust her patrons wherever she appeared. Her reckless extravagance left her wholly destitute after losing her voice and her husband, Signor Sandoni, a harpsichord-maker. She passed her last years in Bologna, subsisting on a miserable pittance earned ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... notions, her own customs, he had better marry a poor girl without fortune! This one will simply ruin him. My dear, I am continually amazed at the way people are living whose incomes I know to the last sou. What an example for Jacqueline! Extravagance, fast living, elegant self-indulgence.... Did you observe the Baronne's gown?—of rough woolen stuff. She told some one it was the last creation of Doucet, and you know what that implies! His serge costs more than one of our velvet gowns . . . . And then her artistic tastes, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... crowns, and heralds scampering about, while idleness and indifference were gazing or gossiping round about the royal remains. I would rather be quietly consigned to the grave by a few who cared for me (if any such there might be) than be the object of all this parade and extravagance. The procession moving slowly through close ranks of Horse and Foot Guards holding tapers and torches in their hands, whilst at intervals the bands played a dead march, had, however, a very imposing effect. The service was intolerably long and tedious, and miserably ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... and the Saviour of mankind, he would have fought Hawes tooth and nail; he could not have helped it. But he did not love either; he only liked them—he was commonplace. When the thief cursed this man, he was guilty of an extravagance as well as a crime; the man was not ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... and Old Foxy was obliged to succumb to the inevitable. Waitstill had a basket packed with luncheon for three and a great demijohn of cool ginger tea under the wagon seat. Other farmers sometimes served hard cider, or rum, but her father's principles were dead against this riotous extravagance. Temperance, in any and all directions, was cheap, and the Deacon was a very temperate man, save ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... mine—strange debauches of colour and Turkish lamps, Marshall's taste, an old cabinet, a faded pastel which embalms the memory of a pastoral century, my taste; or will it be a library,—two leather library chairs, a large escritoire, etc.? Be this as it may, whether the apartments be the ruthless extravagance of artistic impulse, or the subdued taste of the student, she, the woman of thirty, shall be there by night and day: her statue is there, and even when she is sleeping safe in her husband's arms with fevered brow, he, the young man of refined mind, alone and lonely ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... where is reason? where is truth? Not a sound side of contemporary intelligence that has not received a shock, not a just conquest of the age that has not been thrown down and broken. All sorts of extravagance become possible. All that we have seen since the 2nd of December is a gallop, through all that is absurd, of a commonplace ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... industrious as our own peasants (and that, too, in a very different temperature), as economical, provident, and orderly, though more hospitable and more charitable. If the lower orders in the towns have become addicted to extravagance, idleness, and mendicity, it is because they have discovered the impossibility, even by the most heroic efforts and the most rigid economy, of gaining either capital or independence or position. Let us not confound discouragement with want of courage, nor tax a poor fellow with ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... the downfall of the creative school and the rise of the critical, a period during which imagination has been in its decrepitude, and taste in its infancy. Such a revolutionary interregnum as this will be deformed by every species of extravagance. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... politeness by the aid of "the lie to follow." English people, Puritan by ancestry and by inclination, are nevertheless driven into frequent subterfuge by their good nature, and having pared their language and gesture of that extravagance in expression which they despise in the foreigner, they are thrown back upon a naturalness that betrays them in delicate situations. The consequence is that it is in Anglo-Saxon Society at its best that the art of delicate fence in ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... negro out of his path and treat a poor-white man with scant courtesy. He suspected Delamere of cheating at cards, and knew that others entertained the same suspicion. For while regular in his own habits,—his poverty would not have permitted him any considerable extravagance,—Ellis's position as a newspaper man kept him in touch with what was going on about town. He was a member, proposed by Carteret, of the Clarendon Club, where cards were indulged in within reasonable limits, and a certain set were known to bet dollars in terms ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... was received with great politeness; after which they formed a ring, and danced around me. This jollity had a wonderful effect upon my spirits. I was infected with their gaiety, and in spite of my dismal situation, forgot my cares, and joined in their extravagance. When we had recreated ourselves a good while at this diversion, the ladies spread their manteaus on the ground, upon which they emptied their knapsacks of some onions, coarse bread, and a few flasks of poor wine: being invited to a share of the banquet, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... that some of them speculate on this barbarous practice of the natives. In their huts, pompously called conventos,* (* In the Missions, the priest's house bears the name of the convent.) I have often seen stores of chica, which they sold as high as four francs the cake. To form a just idea of the extravagance of the decoration of these naked Indians, I must observe, that a man of large stature gains with difficulty enough by the labour of a fortnight, to procure in exchange the chica necessary to paint ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... house.... Every incident and experience that we had had at the war, every incident and experience that I have related in these pages seemed to be gathered into this house.... As I look back upon it now it seems, without any extravagance at all, the very heart of the fortress of the enemy. I do not mean in the least that life was solemn or pretentious or heavy. It was careless, casual, as liable to the ridiculous intervention of unimportant things as ever it had been; but it was life pressed so close to the fine presence of Fate ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... claim to the title of "the first of Romanticists," the full influence of his whole work has hardly yet begun to show itself. Schumann died before even such enthusiasts as the editors of the Bach-Gesellschaft began to find more beauty than extravagance in Bach's ordinary musical language (see, for example, Hauptmann's letters passim, The Letters of a Leipzig Cantor, trans. by A. D. Coleridge, London, Novello, Ewer, 1892), or, indeed, to grasp the main features of his designs.[3] The labours of the Bach-Gesellschaft ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... said Paul. "Yes. But, then, you see, I needed most of them, and books are my one extravagance. ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... in the quarter For mortifying brick and mortar, Or pocketing the odd piastre By substituting lath and plaster? With plan and two-foot rule in hand, He by the foreman took his stand, With boisterous voice, with eagle glance To stamp upon extravagance. For thrift of bricks and greed of guilders, He was the ...
— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ornament. What, then, must he think of the Almighty Being, all whose useful work is so overlaid with ornament? There is not a fly's leg, nor an insect's wing, which is not polished and decorated to an extent that we should think positive extravagance in finishing up a child's dress. And can we suppose that this Being can take delight in dwellings and modes of life or forms of worship where every thing is reduced to cold, naked utility? I think not. The instinct to adorn and beautify is from him; it likens us to him, and if rightly ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... keeping watch over their goods, and were looking with great interest and many earnest remarks upon this first appearance of their new home. Not far from them a collection of newly imported African negroes, naked, save a strip of cloth about their loins, were rivaling in volubility and extravagance of gesture even the Frenchmen. Native islanders, from the mountains, in picturesque, brigand-like dresses, with long knives stuck jauntily in their girdles, gazed with stupid wonder at the crowd of foreigners. ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... which had been made in one of General Jackson's presidential messages.[324] In his later years the United States became his ideal, and he never tired of comparing its cheap and honest enactment with the corruption and extravagance at home. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... production. The "thrift" and "economy" ideas have been overworked. The word "economy" represents a fear. The great and tragic fact of waste is impressed on a mind by some circumstance, usually of a most materialistic kind. There comes a violent reaction against extravagance—the mind catches hold of the idea of "economy." But it only flies from a greater to a lesser evil; it does not make the full journey from error ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... room nor a farthing left." A woman once bought an old door-plate with "Thompson" on it because she thought it might come in handy some time. The habit of buying what you don't need because it is cheap encourages extravagance. "Many have been ruined by buying ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... and most of its extensions and branches had been wisely planned and had proved profitable. The operating management of the railroad was generally good and it usually secured its proportion of what business was to be obtained. But the steady increase in its debts over a number of years, its extravagance in dividend payments, and its painful efforts to keep down its operating expenses had so weakened the property that, when the hard times of 1893 to 1896 arrived, it was in no position to weather the storm. The only wonder is that the management succeeded in keeping the system ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... was casually told that Madame de Netteville had left England for some time. As a matter of fact he never set eyes on her again. After a while the extravagance of his self-blame abated. He saw things as they were—without morbidness. But a certain boyish carelessness of mood he never afterwards quite recovered. Men and women of all classes, and not only among ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... opposition, and his main charge against Van Buren especially, was, that it was he who had introduced into our politics the fatal principle of "the spoils to the victors," a principle which, as the orator maintained, with prophetic sagacity, threatened ruin to the Republic. Still there was no extravagance in his way of bringing the charge. I remember his saying, "Does Mr. Van Buren, then, wish for the ruin of his country? No; Caesar never wished for the glory of Rome more than when he desired her to be laid, as a bound victim, ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... History of the Conquest of Mexico" published in Philadelphia in 1859. The special aim of this work is to deny utterly the civilization of the Aztecs. The author has ability, earnestness, and knowledge of what has been written on the subject; he writes with vigor, and with a charming extravagance of dogmatic assumption, which must be liked for its heartiness, while it fails to convince those who study it. This writer fully admits the significance of the old ruins, and maintains that a great civilization formerly existed in that part of the continent. This he ascribes to the ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... and leisure ample, I felt the writing of letters other than business ones to be a delightful necessity. This is a form of literary extravagance only possible when a surplus of thought and emotion accumulates. Other forms of literature remain the author's and are made public for his good; letters that have been given to private individuals once for all, are therefore characterised by ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... vitality in existing architecture all over the world. (Compare "Seven Lamps," chap. ii.) All the Gothics in existence, southern or northern, were corrupted at once: the German and French lost themselves in every species of extravagance; the English Gothic was confined, in its insanity, by a strait-waistcoat of perpendicular lines; the Italian effloresced on the mainland into the meaningless ornamentation of the Certosa of Pavia and the Cathedral of ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... expensive—as theatres go—for it is to the mind and not to the eye that it must appeal. A sufficient audience is there ready; what is lacking is the point of focus, a single-hearted and coherent devotion to the best, and the means to pursue that ideal without extravagance but without halting. Alas! in England, though people will endow or back almost anything else, they will not endow or back an ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... without seeing her name announced as having been present at a party the night before. I did not envy her her life of dissipation, for I preferred to secure happiness in a different course; but still I could not help wondering how her husband managed to support such extravagance. Too soon did I learn the secret; for one day he sought me out, and with a gloomy brow, announced that his purpose in visiting me was to obtain money to meet notes ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... mother," replied Aladdin, "that I am not mad, but in my right senses; I foresaw that you would reproach me with folly and extravagance; but I must tell you once more, that I am resolved to demand ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... English noblemen, who were indifferently acquainted with the French language. At this moment a young man came forward, of extremely handsome features, and whose dress and arms were remarkable for their extravagance of material. He approached the princesses, who were engaged in conversation with the Duke of Norfolk, and, in a voice which ill concealed his impatience, said, "It is time now to disembark, your royal highness." The younger of the princesses rose from ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... go also. If a dozen suitors had followed Melanthius into the house they could have attacked Ulysses in the rear, in which case, unless Minerva had intervened promptly, the "Odyssey" would have had a different ending. But throughout the scene we are in a region of extravagance rather than of true fiction—it cannot be taken seriously by any but the very serious, until we come to the episode of Phemius and Medon, where the writer begins ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... Accordingly, on January 24th, the Government resolved to place the Prussian army on a peace-footing and recall the troops from Franconia, as a daily saving of 100,000 thalers might thereby be effected. Never was there a greater act of extravagance. As soon as the retreat and demobilizing of the Prussian forces was announced, the French troops in Bavaria and Franconia began to press forward, while others poured across the Rhine. Affecting to ignore these threatening moves, the Prussian Court strove ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... occurred to Maisie, comfortably settled by the waiting-room fire, that it was much more pleasant to send a man to the booking-office than to elbow one's own way through the crowd. Dick put her into a Pullman,—solely on account of the warmth there; and she regarded the extravagance with grave scandalised eyes as the train moved out into ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... The chivalrous extravagance of Richard awakened the spirits of the assembly, and when at length they arose to depart Saladin advanced and took Coeur ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... Imperial Extravagance.—Asses' milk is said to be a great beautifier and preserver of the skin. Poppaea, wife of the Emperor Nero, used it for that purpose, having four or five hundred asses constantly in her retinue, to furnish her every morning with a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... like a madman," says Rochefoucauld, "but not like a fool." Says Addison, who was a bachelor, and knew little about the heart: "Ridicule, perhaps, is a better expedient against love than sober advice; and I am of the opinion that Hudibras and Don Quixote may be as effectual to cure the extravagance of this passion as any one of the old philosophers." "Love lessens woman's delicacy and increases man's," says Richter. This accords with common observation. "It makes us proud when our love of a mistress is returned," says Hazlitt, in a rambling manner; "it ought to make us prouder still when ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... surfaces of things only are to be examined, we have a right to expect that lawgivers should take into account the various tempers and dispositions of mankind: while some are led, by the existence of a legislative provision, into idleness and extravagance, the economical virtues might be cherished in others by the knowledge that, if all their efforts fail, they have in the Poor Laws a 'refuge from the storm and a shadow from the heat.' Despondency and distraction are no friends to prudence: the springs of industry will relax, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... 12. The common extravagance of the Leviathan and the Social Contract is the suppression of the individual, with his rights and his very personality, which is all blended in the State. (See Rousseau's words above quoted, n. 5, and those of Hobbes, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... kind-hearted man, and seemed to take a particular interest in Agnes, with whose father and grandfather he had been intimately acquainted. Mr. Fairland had made quite a fortune by successful speculation, in a large Eastern city; but the extravagance of his wife and daughters, who were not willing to be outdone in dress or establishment by any of their neighbors, made such rapid inroads upon his newly-acquired wealth, that Mr. Fairland soon became convinced that it was leaving him as rapidly as it came. So he thought it the part of prudence ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... the rest of it, with the slaves, slaves, slaves everywhere, whole villages of negro cabins. And there were also, most noticeable to the natural, as well as visionary eye—there were the ease, idleness, extravagance, self-indulgence, pomp, pride, arrogance, in short the whole enumeration, the moral sine qua non, as some people considered it, of the wealthy slaveholder of aristocratic descent ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... came back that night I was in two minds whether to tell Eliza or not. She hates anything like extravagance, and if I told her I felt sure she would be displeased. At the same time, if I did not tell her, and she found it out afterward, she would be still more displeased. However, I decided to say nothing ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... abolish imprisonment for debt, the abolishment of litigation, and in lieu thereof the settlement of disputes by reference to neighbors; to establish some more equal and universal system of public education; to diminish the salaries and extravagance of public officers; to support no men for offices of public trust, but farmers, mechanics, and what the party call "working men"; and to elevate the character of this class by mental instruction and mental ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... OF OLD FATHER CHRISTMAS for encouraging his Majesty's subjects in Idleness, Drunkenness, Gaming, Rioting, and all manner of Extravagance and Debauchery, at the Assizes held in the city of Profusion before the Lord Chief Justice Churchman, Mr. Justice Feast, Mr. Justice Gambol, and several other his Majesty's Justices of Oyer ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... several other affidavits, of an equally unimpeachable character as the above, yet we deem the evidence advanced more than enough to show the entire, falsehood and extravagance of the fabrications ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... been held in Vineland, attended by the women who are opposed to extravagance in dress. They propose, not only by formal resolution, but by personal example, to teach the world lessons of economy by wearing less adornment and ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... is extravagance. On the plea that "the best is always the cheapest," and to be sure of a large factor of safety, or as the late Mr. Holley called it a "factor of ignorance," without much trouble to themselves, some engineers use more or better materials than the work requires, and thus greatly increase the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... was one thing; and the wild extravagance of the story was another. There must be, of course, an explanation for these phenomena other than a supernatural one. Such things do not happen except in medieval romance and tales of sorcery and doom. And of all regions on earth Brittany swarms with such tales and ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... of extreme extravagance in the use of building material—of the use, for instance, of Hymettian and Numidian marble—are furnished by the houses of the orator Lucius Licinius Crassus (built about 92 B.C.) and of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, consul in 78 B.C. This growth of luxury will be treated when we come to ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... the mother whom she was taught to consider as dead, the mother whom she has mourned as dead, is living—a divorced woman, going about under an assumed name, a bad woman preying upon life, as I know you now to be—rather than that, I was ready to supply you with money to pay bill after bill, extravagance after extravagance, to risk what occurred yesterday, the first quarrel I have ever had with my wife. You don't understand what that means to me. How could you? But I tell you that the only bitter words that ever came from those sweet lips of hers were on your account, ...
— Lady Windermere's Fan • Oscar Wilde
... antinomian. It is the love which is incompatible with marriage, for the chevalier who never comes, of the serf for the chatelaine, of the rose for the nightingale, of Rudel for the Lady of Tripoli. Another element of extravagance came in with the feudal spirit: Provencal love is full of the very forms of vassalage. To be the servant of love, to have offended, to taste the subtle luxury of chastisement, of reconciliation—the religious spirit, ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... was painted or rather finished in the succeeding year, 1523, for the little Church of S. Niccolo de' Frari, and is now in the Pinacoteca of the Vatican, the keynote is suavity, unbroken richness and harmony, virtuosity, but not extravagance of technique. The composition must have had much greater unity before the barbarous shaving off, when the picture went to Rome, of the circular top which it had in common with the Assunta, the Ancona, and the Pesaro altar-pieces. Technically superior ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips |
