"Florid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... amusements, and habit at that time even made her conceive, that they were indebted to solitude for an additional relish. The youthful rustic had great integrity, great kindness of heart, and was a lad of excellent sense. He was florid, well-proportioned, and the goodness of his disposition made his manners amiable. Accomplishments greater than these she had never seen in human form, since the death of her father. In fact, she is scarcely to be considered as a sufferer in this instance; since, in her ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... refusal had seduced him into some angry words which gave a color of pique to my compliance, did I finally comply. The result, of course, did but prove how entirely the prey was in my toils; in less than an hour he had quadrupled his debt. For some time his countenance had been losing the florid tinge lent it by the wine; but now, to my astonishment, I perceived that it had grown to a pallor truly fearful. I say to my astonishment. Glendinning had been represented to my eager inquiries as immeasurably wealthy; and the sums which he had as yet lost, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Mirliflor, who was less given to florid phrases than the average Fairy Prince. "So ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... philosophers and men of music. And I admire that our friend Erato, that abominates all flourishing in songs, and blames good Agatho, who first in his tragedy of the Mysians ventured to introduce the chromatic airs, should himself fill his entertainment with such various and such florid colors; yet, while he shuts out all the soft delights that through the ears can enter to the soul, he should introduce others through the eyes and through the nose, and make these garlands, instead of signs of piety, to be instruments of pleasure. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... gentlemen," said a bland voice across the aisle, and the young men, turning, saw a much-bejewelled individual, with a florid, but very smiling face; "I see you have not yet become accustomed to the vast distances of this great country of ours in the northwest. Those mountains which you are discussing are ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... Orontes, and th' inspir'd Castalian Spring might with this Paradise Of Eden strive; nor that Nyseian Ile Girt with the River Triton, where old Cham, Whom Gentiles Ammon call and Libyan Jove, Hid Amalthea and her Florid Son Young Bacchus from his Stepdame Rhea's eye; Nor where Abassin Kings thir issue Guard, 280 Mount Amara, though this by som suppos'd True Paradise under the Ethiop Line By Nilus head, enclos'd with shining Rock, A whole dayes journey high, but ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... bearing. "Der Rosenkavalier," "Ariadne auf Naxos," "Joseph's Legende" and "Eine Alpensymphonie" are makeshift, slack, slovenly despite all technical virtuosity, all orchestral marvels. Every one knows what the score of "Rosenkavalier" should have been, a gay, florid, licentious thing, the very image of the gallant century with its mundane amours and ribbons and cupids, its petit-maitres and furbelows and billets-doux, its light emotions and equally light surrenders. But Strauss's music is singularly flat and hollow and ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... jacket of old-fashioned blue West-of- England cloth, so well preserved that evidently the article was relegated to a box whenever its owner engaged in such active occupations as he usually pursued. His complexion was fair, almost florid, and he had scarcely ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... people had then, as now, the reputation of being great beef-eaters; nor should we blame them, as the florid complexion the Englishman generally wears is mainly owing to the free use of this non-febrile and healthy food, washed down with a few potations ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... which his reputation was based). The Grove was a marine Ranelagh. Masquers moved among the trees, orchestras discoursed the latest airs, rockets soared into the sky. In the county paper for October 1st, 1798, I find the following florid reference to a coming event in the Grove:—"The glittering Azure and the noble Or of the peacock's wings, under the meridian sun, cannot afford greater exultation to that bird, than some of our beautiful belles ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... entrance to the court. Three men stepped out and hurried up the path. As they entered the hall Bobby recognized the sallow, wizened features of the coroner. One of the others was short and thick set. His round and florid face, one felt, should have expressed friendliness and good-humour rather than the intolerant anger that marked it now. The third was a lank, bald-headed man, whose sharp face released ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... to stir up his surveyors and Phil moved off that he might get a better look at Mr. Sully, the owner of the show. Phil found him to be a florid-faced, square jawed man whose expression was as repulsive as it was brutal. Sully wore a red vest and red necktie with a large diamond in it. He gave the Circus Boy a quick sharp look as he passed. "I'll bet he will know me the ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... sloping roof, which was, of course, covered with red tiles in the old fashion. The palace, at that time known as the Palazzo, or 'Palazzetto,' Borgia, was externally a very good specimen of Renascence architecture of the period when the florid, 'barocco' style had not yet got the upper hand in Rome. The great arched entrance for carriages was well proportioned, the stone carvings were severe rather than graceful, the cornices had great nobility both of proportion and design. The lower story was built of rough-faced ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... president his whole character seemed to be changed. Instead of the relentless partisan of the past, he became the apostle of benevolence and charity. His inaugural address, in that florid rhetoric of which he was master, enunciated principles of government to which no friend of human liberty could object. The spirit of conciliation breathed in every sentence. "Every difference of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... was Prince de Joinville, brother to Louis Philippe, King of France. The little man with red hair and beard, who moved quickly and who spoke sharply, was Seth Williams, Adjutant-General. The stout person with florid face, large, blue eyes, and white, straight hair, was General Van Vliet, Quartermaster-General. And the man at the table, was General Marcy, father-in-law to McClellan, and Executive ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... manly in feeling and habit of speech to deal in florid rhapsodies, but each line had its message from his heart to hers. He loved her purely and in truth, and there was not a sentence that did not tell her this, by inference, if not directly. He trusted her—and this, too, he told ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... the bliss that sense alone bestows, And sensual bliss is all the nation knows.[15] In florid beauty groves and fields appear; 125 Man seems the only growth that dwindles here. Contrasted faults through all his manners reign: Though poor, luxurious; though submissive, vain; Though grave, yet trifling; zealous, yet untrue; And ev'n in penance planning sins anew. 130 All ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... and imagery of the Trionfi have a beauty rather arabesque than classical, and resembling the florid tracery of the later oriental Gothic architecture. But the whole effect of the poem is pleasing, from the ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... one, I believe, a little florid, stout German. I think he is a paranoiac who believes there has fallen on himself a divine mission to end all warfare. Quite likely he is one of those who have fled to America to avoid military service. Perhaps, why certainly, you must know him—Annenberg, an instructor in economics ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... the procession into the church. He was carried by the crowd into a situation from which he could overlook the entire nave which was in the simplest style of Gothic architecture and naked of all the ornaments which belong to the florid Gothic of a later age. The massy pillars were left unviolated by the petty hand of household neatness: they stood severe in monumental granite, unwhitewashed, unstuccoed, without tricks or frippery. All the gingerbread work of plinths to the base, or fretted cornices to the capitals, ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... that she could not speak for a moment. Her face, which had been quite florid, turned pale. She suddenly put up her hand and caught Susy ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... susceptible to their flattery. The Emperor of Brazil had called on him, and the next day he could not stop talking about it constantly. Rather ostentatiously he called him "Don Pedro d'Alcantara." In French this would be "M. Pierre du Pont." Spanish inherently gives such florid sounds to ordinary names. This florid style is not frequent in French, and that is precisely what Corneille and Victor Hugo succeeded ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... was a group of daguerreotypes, hideous but rare and valuable. An oil painting of James Oglethorpe, long dead, hung over the fireplace; an amiable looking gentleman with long side-whiskers sprouting out of plump cheeks, a florid complexion, and the expression of a New Yorker who never shirked his civic obligations, his chairmanships of benevolent institutions, nor his port. Opposite was another oil painting of young James taken at the age of twelve, wearing a sailor suit and ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... great; and he had an acquired dexterity and skill in the forms of the court; and although he was a bon companion, and followed much the bottle, yet he made such dispatches as satisfied his clients, especially the clerks, who knew where to find him. His person was florid, and speech prompt and articulate. But his vices, in the way of women and the bottle, were so ungoverned, as brought him to a morsel.... When the Lord Keeper North had the Seal, who from an early acquaintance had a kindness for him which was well known, and also that he was ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... florid ornamentation appeared everywhere, and when at last Ethelyn stopped before an open door, and said, "This is your room," Patty gave a little cry of delight, for she entered what seemed a ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... the coffee, and while she sat up to drink it the door of her husband's dressing-room opened and he came in and stood, large, florid and ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... more than once to the capital, where their family had been well-known fifty years before, but few doors had been opened to them. They were farmers—only farmers—and Madame Lavilette made no remarkable impression. Her dress was florid and not in excellent taste, and her accent was rather crude. Sophie had gone to school at the convent in the city, but she had no ambition. She had inherited the stolid simplicity of her English grandfather. When her schooling was finished ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... she and the others appeared in the door, and removed his hat. He was a short, florid person, with a beard of fiery red. His eyes were of the lightest gray; and they ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... is, that she is decidedly beautiful,—and in the grand manner: tall, and rather plump. What is the orthodox description of a pretty girl?—white and red? Miss Blunt is not a pretty girl, she is a handsome woman. She leaves an impression of black and red; that is, she is a florid brunette. She has a great deal of wavy black hair, which encircles her head like a dusky glory, a smoky halo. Her eyebrows, too, are black, but her eyes themselves are of a rich blue gray, the color of those slate-cliffs which I saw yesterday, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... of the family, only shrugged her shoulders a little petulantly. It was Harriet, the wife, who spoke—a large, florid woman with a short upper lip, and a bewilderment of bepuffed light hair. She was already on her feet, pushing a chair ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... but what could be more expressive than the announcement of a marriage in such terms as these:—"On Tuesday se'n-night, Squire Brown of Bumpkin Hall was married to Miss Matilda Midas of Halifax, a handsome young lady with ten thousand pounds to her dowry"? We are much more florid nowadays, but by no means so precise. The leader-writer did not spread himself abroad a hundred years ago. Indeed, soon after the Leeds Mercury gave up discussing the amiable weakness that it attributed to ladies with well-turned ankles, it ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... relations to the other sex lives not upon this earth"—an assertion which one must take as one finds it, having neither confirmatory nor traversing evidence at hand. Whitman has light blue eyes, a florid complexion, a fleecy beard now grey, and a quite peculiar sort of magnetism about him in relation to those with whom he comes in contact. His ordinary appearance is masculine and cheerful: he never shows ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... long rectangular pools, each with a formal fountain, and each surrounded by a conventional balustrade with flower receptacles and lamp standards. In harmony with their surroundings, the buildings, too, are French, of florid, festival style. ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... I have ever seen upon a human being. I am sure that his top-hat, had I ever ventured to don it, would have slipped over me entirely and rested on my shoulders. He had the face and beard which I associate with an Assyrian bull; the former florid, the latter so black as almost to have a suspicion of blue, spade-shaped and rippling down over his chest. The hair was peculiar, plastered down in front in a long, curving wisp over his massive forehead. ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her breath in an agony of suspense, fascinated and appalled by the incomprehensible discourse. Behind the high railing, old Michael Arian's lips moved rapidly and nervously, as though he were muttering inaudible prayers; while Bale-Corphew's florid face flamed, as, with a rapid, agitated movement, he glanced over the tense faces of the congregation. For one moment it seemed that he was bracing himself for action, but before his intentions could ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... enters, dressed in mourning. He is a man of sixty-three, of commanding presence, with a head resembling that of Alexandre Dumas Fils in the portrait by Meissonier, and a bland, florid manner. He seems to derive much satisfaction from listening to the rich modulations ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... of Germany,—Otho the Red, as he was called, from his florid complexion,—succeeded to the Western Empire in 973, when in his eighteenth year of age. His reign was to be a short and active one, and attended by adventures and fluctuations of fortune which render it worthy of description. Few monarchs have experienced ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... delighted him, though he was the most abstemious of men. I am now speaking of his middle-class people—those wonderful philistines of either sex; those elaborately capped and corpulent old ladies; those muttonchop-whiskered, middle-aged gentlemen with long upper lips and florid complexions, receding chins, noses almost horizontal in their prominence; those artless damsels who trouble themselves so little about the latest fashions; those feeble-minded, hirsute swells with the sloping shoulders and the broad hips and the little hats cocked on one ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... day the excitement among the students of Winthrop increased when a mass meeting was held and various leading spirits of the college delivered very florid and perfervid addresses in which the student-body was urged to support the team and take advantage of the low rates offered to accompany it and be on hand on the field to cheer it on to victory. Shouts and cheers greeted the speakers, and when the meeting ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... Catholic;" a man of most striking personality, and of most courtly manners, whose influence upon younger men was fairly magnetic. In the case of this particular pupil, certainly, his intervention was of most powerful effect. Religious in his methods, as well as in his sentiment of art, the florid insincerities and mannerisms of the Florentine Academy, as they were still to be seen in the young Leighton's work, found in him an admirable chastener, but it took many years of painfully hard work, lasting until 1852, to undo the evil wrought ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... turned back along the road without having ascertained the name of the lady or her condition in life. The service hour arrived, so did the small but enthusiastic congregation. The rain had entirely ceased and the air was perceptibly cooler. The preacher had prepared a sermon of more florid style than the one delivered in the morning, and he appeared to have the absorbed attention of those who understood the language, while the French contingent listened respectfully. The passage of Scripture to be read aloud ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... guard, and the moment he had imparted his news there was a suppressed scream in the carriage. Instantly a lady came out, followed by a florid-faced gentleman, who scowled at the guard. We entered the now empty ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... the key of E, in which it was written. When it became one of Jenny Lind's display airs, it was transposed to F and tricked out with a great abundance of fiorituri. Adelina Patti in her youth used so to overburden its already florid measures with ornament that the story goes that once when she sang it for Rossini, the old master dryly remarked: "A very pretty air; who composed it?" Figaro enters at the conclusion of Rosina's song, and the two are about to exchange confidences when Bartolo enters with Basilio, ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... head of the staircase, a couple curiously unlike not only in appearance but in disposition and tastes. Lady Grenside was tall and fair, almost florid in complexion, remarkably well-preserved, with a splendid presence and figure. She had been one of the beauties of her day, and even now, in the sixth year of her widowhood, was accounted a remarkably handsome woman. Mr. Foley, her brother, ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... paint by actresses and dancers, is absolutely necessary; great exertion produces a florid complexion, which is incompatible with certain scenic effects, and requires a cosmetic to ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... who can therefore unriddle these little enigmas without difficulty. The manner of the book is, on the whole, not unworthy of the matter. The language, even where most faulty, is weighty and massive, and indicates strong sense in every line. It often rises to an eloquence, not florid or impassioned, but high, grave, and sober; such as would become a state paper, or a judgment delivered by a great magistrate, a Somers or ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... else would have written it, I only wish to record that no one else would have thought it worth while; I will not quote it, because when I tried to read this essay a year after I had written it, I was struck by the fact that it was altogether too florid for every-day use. Mr. Edwardes objected strongly to phrases which seemed to me beautifully rounded, and I gave them up slowly as one of my most cherished possessions. I could not share his feelings about them at that time, whatever I may think of them now, and they formed a part of a scheme to ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... Beverley is really a creation. How much the author's and how much the player's it would be an impertinence to inquire. This imperturbable trickster with his thin streak of genuine sensitiveness to psychic influence; his grotesquely florid style—the man certainly has style; his frank reliance on apt alcohol's artful aid; his cadging epicureanism; his keen eye for supplementary data for his inductions and prophecies; his cynical candour when detected, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... little group stood awaiting her, and as the train pulled slowly to the platform, Gabriella distinguished her mother's pallid face framed in the hanging crape of her veil; Jane, thin, anxious, anmic, with her look of pinched sweetness; Chancy, florid, portly, and virtuously middle-aged, and their eldest daughter Margaret, a blooming, beautiful girl. Alighting, Gabriella was embraced by Mrs. Carr, who shed a few ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... dough-coloured face wore a perpetual smile, and he was the happy possessor of a gold eye-tooth with which he constantly bit his moustache. The player who had come to aid him in plucking the pigeon was a big man with a florid complexion and heavy, sensuous features, which, however, wore a ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... would show crocketed pinnacles and indented battlements. Down obscure alleys, apparently never trodden now by the foot of man, and whose very existence seemed to be forgotten, there would jut into the path porticoes, oriels, doorways of enriched and florid middle-age design, their extinct air being accentuated by the rottenness of the stones. It seemed impossible that modern thought could house itself in such decrepit ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... is no need to choose: reading may be cultivated side by side with more florid accomplishments. To provide an interesting book and appoint an hour for its perusal may just as easily be done as to set apart an hour for the piano,—indeed, in some cases more easily, since there would be no bills coming in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... young—about Tom's age—and with a look on his florid face and a sound in his voice so like that of the dead man that Daisy half started to her feet when he first took his stand in front of her and announced the opening hymn. His text was: "Why stand ye here all the day idle?" and ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... surprised to see the Duc himself and equally dismayed. The Duc, full of his own plans, took no more notice of the Comte's dismay than had the Princess of his silence when she told him of her amour. He described his passion in florid terms and claimed that he would infallibly die if the Princess could not be persuaded to see him. The Comte replied coldly that he would tell the Princess all that the Duc wanted to convey and would return with her response. He then went back ...
— The Princess of Montpensier • Madame de La Fayette
... buying an edition of my own. And this, too, may have been not unconnected with the gracious influence of the other sex as exhibited in a neighbouring athenaeum; and was accompanied by a gruesome spate of florid lyrics: some (happily) secret, and some exposed with needless hardihood in a college magazine. The world, which has looked leniently upon many poetical minorities, regards such frenzies with tolerant charity and forgetfulness. But the wretch concerned may be pardoned ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... called. He came early in the evening, with his usual air of determination and a somewhat unusual spruceness. Mr. Peter Butts was a florid, blonde person, a little stout, a little pompous, sturdy and immovable in the attitude of a self-made man. He had been a poor boy when she was a rich girl; and it gratified him much to realize—and to call upon her ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... heavy-eyed with sleep, of all those touzled locks which they put in order as they ran, up to the very moment when a half-dozen of young girls, leaning over the rail, bade an echoing farewell to a little old gentleman neatly dressed and well brushed, whose florid face and slight figure disappeared at last in the convolutions of the staircase. M. Joyeuse had gone to his office. Thereupon the whole flock of fugitives from the bird-cage ran quickly up to the fourth ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... therefore, no quotations from post-Augustan writers). His style shows the defects of an age in which men had ceased to feel the full meaning of the words they used, and strove to hide the triviality of a subject under obscure phrases and florid expression. Yet, on the whole, he is a very interesting writer, and the last that can in any ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... front of us, and I can yet see him, his chapeau dripping with rain, his blue coat covered with embroidery and decorations, and his great boots. He was a handsome, florid man, with a short nose and sparkling eyes. He did not seem at all haughty; for, as he passed our company, who presented arms, he turned suddenly in his ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... of the fact that Grandpap Lusk led away Selim to the log stable. Lacey Rountree was gone home to the Far Cove, and Wade lingered in talk with Grandpap Lusk a while at the horse-block, then got on his mule and, with florid good-byes, rode back home, evidently at ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... of ordinary regulation colour and cut—plus neat black tie and stiff-fronted white shirt, collar, and wristbands—possessed style, and that farthest from the cheap or flashy. Only the gold bangle challenged Damaris' taste as touching on florid; but its existence she condoned in face of its wearer's hazardous and inherently romantic calling. For the sailor may, surely, be here and there permitted a turn and a flourish, justly denied to the safe ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the florid, smiling face of Pelham, his superior, appeared on the screen. "What can I do for you, ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... of many florid symbolical accessories, such as we find again in Ekkehart and other fifteenth-century mystics, and especially in Tauler, ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... of the portico stood Phormio the fishmonger, behind a table heaped with his scaly wares. He was a thick, florid man with blue eyes lit by a humourous twinkle. His arms were crusted with brine. To his waist he was naked. As the friends edged nearer he held up a turbot, calling for a bid. A clamour answered him. The throng pressed up the steps, elbowing and scrambling. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... away in long streams upon the waves, and among them, the crimson fish baskets, plashing and sparkling, and flaming as the morning sun falls on their wet tawny sides, and above, the painted sails of the fishing boats, orange and white, scarlet and blue, and better than all such florid color, the naked, bronzed, burning limbs of the seamen, the last of the old Venetian race, who yet keep the right Giorgione color on their brows and bosoms, in strange contrast with the sallow sensual degradation of the creatures ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... open, and his wonderful lustrous beard completely concealing the expanse of his shirt-front. It pleased her more than ever to think that papa was handsome and, though as high aloft as mamma and almost, in his specially florid evening-dress, as splendid, of a beauty somehow ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... feature was an absolute necessity for the support of the glass. Its evolution can be traced (Figs, 110, 111, 112) from the simple coupling of twin windows under a single hood-mould, or discharging arch, to the florid net-work of the fifteenth century. In its earlier forms it consisted merely of decorative openings, circles, and quatrefoils, pierced through slabs of stone (plate-tracery), filling the window-heads over coupled windows. Later ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... to catch the 12.53 from the Grand Central, in spite of Slade Wilson's invitation to talk all night and breakfast at the Brevoort. They spend the rattling, tunnel-like passage to 125th Street catching their breath again, a breath that seems to strike a florid gentlemen in a dirty collar ahead of them with an expression of permanent, sorrowful ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... evening. Flowers were being sold in profusion on street corners. Hurdy-gurdies played war tunes in the gutter. The streets were filled with soldiers in khaki and florid civilians in their summer clothes. Suddenly she remembered a passage in the Bible that always seemed beautiful to her, but now it seemed to have been specially ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... had evidently prospered without any of the favours of education; for he adhered with stern simplicity to the masculine gender, and in the course of the evening passed off some fancy futures in a very florid style of architecture. With him came his wife, a comely young woman with her hair tied in a yellow kerchief, and their son, a little fellow of four, in a blouse and military kepi. It was notable that the child was many degrees better dressed than either of the parents. We ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the same kind of architecture as the transept. Its vaulted roof is boarded, but assumes an imitation of the florid pointed style,—being disposed in several compartments by thin ribs. Over the altar end it is painted with an emblematical representation of Christ as a vine, and his disciples the branches. The ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... Wordsworth was very pleasant. He also is seventy-six, but his is a florid, fair old age. He walked with us to all his haunts about the house. Its situation is beautiful, and the "Rydalian Laurels" are magnificent. Still I saw abodes among the hills that I should have preferred for Wordsworth, more wild and still, more romantic; the fresh and lovely Rydal Mount ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... my shins—like the girl she is!—during a scuffle in the passage, and I was still rubbing them with one hand when I found that the uncle-on-approbation was half-heartedly shaking the other. A florid, elderly man, and unmistakably nervous, he dropped our grimy paws in succession, and, turning very red, with an awkward simulation of heartiness, "Well, h' are y' all?" he said, "Glad to see me, eh?" As we could hardly, in justice, be expected to have formed an ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... turned a different side out, from that which had captured Polly. With all her well-bred ease, there was a womanly deference in her manner, a readiness to be swayed, to stand corrected. The riding-dress set off her figure; and her delicate features were perfectly chiselled. ("Though she'll be florid before ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... seen him before—the chief co-ordinator of medical education on Hospital Earth, the "Black Plague" of the medical school jokes. Black Doctor Hugo Tanner was large and florid of face, blinking owlishly at Dal over his heavy horn-rimmed glasses. The glasses were purely decorative; with modern eye-cultures and transplant techniques, no Earthman had really needed glasses to correct his vision for the past two hundred years, but on Hugo Tanner's angry face ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... added the distress of losing a comrade to whom he was deeply attached; he perished in the spring of '42 under the hardships of the war. The Eloge in which Vauvenargues commemorates the virtues and the pitiful fate of his friend, is too deeply marked with the florid and declamatory style of youth to be pleasing to a more ripened taste.[5] He complained that nobody who had read it observed that it was touching, not remembering that even the most tender feeling ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... you what made me suspect the woman of whom I have spoken. First, the name. She calls herself Mrs. Philip Montgomery. It sounds like a fictitious name. Again, she is a stout, rather common-looking woman, with a florid complexion and larger features. Now Montgomery is an aristocratic name. Again, she says she is from Buffalo. Swindlers generally hail from some distant city. Then again, it is rather suspicious that she ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... window holding a rose at her face. For quite a minute she made no reply. I saw her sharp-cut, florid face in profile, steadily bent and smelling. She said presently in her cold, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... florid face had lost its color. The jaunty cock-sureness of the man had flickered out like the flame of ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... a little, and his florid face took on an added color. In his embarrassment he giggled like a bashful boy, and scraped one foot behind him in a ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... myself in a romance a la Radcliffe, constructed on the juridical base given me by Monsieur Regnault, when the door, opened by a woman's cautious hand, turned on the hinges. I saw my landlady come in, a buxom, florid dame, always good-humored, who had missed her calling in life. She was a Fleming, who ought to have seen the light in a picture ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... the inhabitants collected at the northern side; and I had scarcely time to ask a question of my father, whom I joined, before we saw a body of troops approaching, led by an officer on horseback. He was a strong-built man, of moderate height, with a fair and florid complexion, and, contrary to the fashion general among Puritans, his hair, in rich profusion, was seen escaping beneath his broad-brimmed hat, while he wore large whiskers, but no beard—his countenance unmistakably exhibiting firmness and ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... pronouncedly English than those of the remaining two, betokened the polished man of the world as well as the shrewd financier. He wore an elegant business suit and his linen was immaculate; his hair, dark and slightly tinged with gray, was closely cut; his smoothly shaven face, less florid than those of his companions, was particularly noticeable on account of a pair of dark gray eyes, cold and calculating, and which had at times a steel-like glitter. Though an attractive face, it was not altogether pleasing; it was too sensuous, and indicated stubbornness ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... white skin was glossy and tight; distracting curves, entrancing contours characterised her now; but her full red lips fairly trembled as she gazed at her parents' portraits in her bedroom, for they had both been of a florid texture and full habit; and she had now long refused sugar and the comforts of sweetmeats dear to the palate of her age and sex. And mostly was this self-denial practised for the sake of a young and unobservant friend, one Stephen Craig, who had so far evinced no unusual inclination for her, or for ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... home, it would be a violation of common prudence, and a breach of good manners, to treat a Prince like a Peasant. And this worthy Gentleman would deem himself much neglected, if we should show him no more Defference than to an ordinary Porter: And therefore these florid expressions, the Sons and Daughters of the First Adam, the Brethren and Sisters of the Second Adam, and the Offspring of God, seem to be misapplied to import and insinuate, that we ought to tender Pagan Negroes with ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... Living Skeleton liked the smell of it. Ten to one the Missing Link would be found hovering about Madame at such a time, garbed in his simian costume, but with the mask-like make-up turned back, exposing Nickie's florid countenance and rakish grin. Possibly at such moments Nickie would presume to squeeze Madame's waist. He might even venture to steal a kiss. If so, Madame's protest might be forcible, but it would ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... his tenderness to women whom he liked gave variety and charm, would supervene upon his seriousness with a rapidity which her far less flexible temperament could not follow. Hence she, thinking him still in earnest when he had swerved into florid romance, had been dangerously misled. He had no conscientious scruples in his love-making, because he was unaccustomed to consider himself as likely to inspire love in women; and Gertrude did not know that her beauty gave to an hour spent ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... that the crime was committed," he said in florid Italian. "Three of the chambers are empty. Now, at whom ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... could be frank with his cynicism; but inside the building, in the platform ante-room, Mr. Edward Fosdike, who was Sir William's locally resident secretary, had to discipline his private feelings to a suave concurrence in his employer's florid enthusiasm. Fosdike served Sir William well, but no man is a hero to ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... were few or no people in Lower California, which is a miserable, wretched, dried-up peninsula. I remember the proclamation made by Burton and Captain Bailey, in taking possession, which was in the usual florid style. Bailey signed his name as the senior naval officer at the station, but, as it was necessary to put it into Spanish to reach the inhabitants of the newly-acquired country, it was interpreted, "El ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... various Utopias. We must therefore allow it the merit of originality, and it evinces talent, for mere exaggeration would not be entertaining. The intention was to ridicule the marvellous travellers' stories then current. Much of this history is merely florid, and we may compare it to a waving line, in which the fable is constantly undulating ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... mystery matters as to which there was nothing to conceal, the love of intrigue, the tenacity of purpose—though this is perhaps more a Jewish than an invariably Oriental characteristic—the luxuriance of the imaginative faculties, the strong addiction to plausible generalities set forth in florid language, the passionate outbursts of grief expressed at times in words so artificial as to leave a doubt in the Anglo-Saxon mind as to whether the sentiments can be genuine, the spasmodic eruption of ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... imploring that officer to hasten and protect Bengal against Clive, whom 'may all bad fortune attend.' He ordered his army to march against the English. He countermanded his orders. He tore Clive's letters. He sent answers in the most florid language of compliment. He threatened to impale Mr. Watts, the English agent. He sent for Mr. Watts and begged pardon for ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... was the bow oar. Mechanically Deacon's hand sought the water, splashing the body of the man in front of him. Then suddenly a mahogany launch dashed alongside. In the bow was a large man with white moustache and florid face and burning black eyes. His lips were drawn in a broad grin which seemed an anomaly upon ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... two other sons—one a young officer in the army, home on a leave of absence; the other an Oxonian, just from the university. The squire was a fine healthy-looking old gentleman, with silver hair curling lightly round an open florid countenance, in which the physiognomist, with the advantage, like myself, of a previous hint or two, might discover a singular mixture ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... our prisoners. One was a tall thin man, about fifty years of age, with a sharp eye, a hollow aguish cheek, a scanty beard, wearing a pair of silken drawers, and a shawl undercoat. The other was a short round man, of a middle age, with a florid face, dressed in a dark vest, buttoning over his breast, and looked like an officer of the law. The third was stout and hairy, of rough aspect, of a strong vigorous form, and who was bound with more care than the others on account of the superior ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... moment the marauder reached out to seize Mr. Damon's coat. Then the object in Mr. Damon's hand spat a fine spray into the florid face of the enemy! ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... determining disease. It might also be useful in moral diagnosis. A microscopical and chemical laboratory attached to the courtroom would give information of more value than some of the evidence now obtained. For the anemic and the florid vices need very different treatment. An excess or a deficiency of iron in the body is liable to result in criminality. A chemical system of morals might be developed on this basis. Among the ferruginous sins would be placed murder, violence and licentiousness. ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... sought it, which his friends might view, When their kind host the guarding curtain drew. There were historic works for graver hours, And lighter verse to spur the languid powers; There metaphysics, logic there had place; But of devotion not a single trace - Save what is taught in Gibbon's florid page, And other guides of this inquiring age. There Hume appear'd, and near a splendid book Composed by Gay's "good lord of Bolingbroke:" With these were mix'd the light, the free, the vain, And from a corner ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... truth, Sir John, he seemed passably amused by the whole business. The fact is, prison has broken him up. A fine figure he must have been in his time, but a costly one to maintain . . . as tall as yourself, Sir John, if not taller; and florid, as one may say; the sort of man that must have exercise and space and a crowd to admire him, not to mention wine and meats and female society. The Fleet has broken down all that. Even with liberty I wouldn't promise him another year ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... day Samuel met the Bremers. Their cottage was a little way out in the country, and they had a few trees about it and a flower bed. But the house was not large, and it was well filled with a family of nine children. Johann, the father, was big and florid, with bristling hair. He was marked in the town because he called himself a "Socialist," but Samuel did not know that. His wife was a little mite of a woman, completely swamped by child-bearing. Most interesting to Samuel was Friedrich, who played the violin; a pale ascetic-looking ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... the florid, prosperous parent and the gaunt and famishing pauper are alone, confronting each other by the light of ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the Fairbanks-Valdez trail, was describing with considerable heat the rigors of the journey. The purple parka, which was the regalia of the Circle, seemed to increase his prominence of front and intensified the color in his face to a sort of florid ripeness. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... that a writer of wit, energy, and genius is at last sprung up; one who is profoundly skilled too in classical learning. My whole soul was bent on saying strong things, fine things, learned things, pretty things, good things, wise things, and severe things. Never was there more florid railing. My argument was a kind of pitiful Jonas, and my words were the whale in which it was ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... hide—hide from the knowledge so ruthlessly thrust upon her. It was too horrible to contemplate. She shuddered from head to foot, and shivered as with ague. Out into the open she ran, among the dust-laden crotons and azaleas, and the florid shrubberies of the Indian garden, now bathed in soft moonlight. Scarcely heeding her footsteps, she stumbled to a bench beneath a laburnum. If it harboured reptiles, she was indifferent. Let her be bitten and die! She was crushed and ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... was not too happy with the overall style of the book, which is too florid and long-winded. Practically every sentence could be greatly shortened without loss, and it is sometimes an amusing exercise to rest from reading, and then try ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... helped to call into being, and desirous to keep them, as he said, "respectable." Was it respectable for armed men to dictate to a Parliament, however just their cause? As often happens in the ferment of popular movements, the one leader who spoke undiluted truth and sense spoke it in florid and unmeasured language and was himself of a figure and behaviour little likely to inspire permanent confidence. This was the famous Bishop of Derry, called by Charlemont a blasphemous Deist, by Wesley an exemplary Divine, by Fox a dishonest ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... which begins to remind us unpleasantly of the still more artificial tone characteristic of the rhymed tragedies of the next generation. Massinger diverges in the opposite direction. The metre is felt enough and only just enough to give a more stately step to rather florid prose. It is one of his marks that a line frequently ends by some insignificant 'of' or 'from,' so as to exclude the briefest possible pause in reading. Thus, to take an example pretty much at random, the following ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... "The Smiler." He was fat and florid and comfortable, with a big, clean-shaven face and a bald head, the very model of a kindly father of a family. As I looked at his honest smile I could scarcely believe that this was, indeed, the infamous ruffian whose name was a horror ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... anomalies in composition, and his sins against good taste and propriety. One wishes that he had allayed the heat of his fancy with some cooling drops of discretion. Even his colouring so admired in general, has something florid and meretricious to my ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... no rule can be given why one should be mentioned before another; yet the memory wants the help of order, and the curiosity is not excited by suspense or expectation. His diction is in the highest degree florid and luxuriant, such as may be said to be to his images and thoughts "both their lustre and their shade;" such as invests them with splendour, through which, perhaps, they are not always easily discerned. It ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... branches, the main river is certainly as healthy as the Mississippi: the rapid current of the water and the continual movement of the air maintaining its salubrity. The few English residents (Messrs. Hislop, Jeffreys, and Hauxwell), who have lived here thirty or forty years, are as fresh and florid as if they had never left their native country. The native women preserve their beauty until late in life. Great is the contrast between the gloomy winters and dusty summers, the chilly springs and frosty autumns ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... Mr. Keller made his appearance, and was introduced to my aunt and to me. We both took a liking to him from the first. He was a handsome young man, with light hair and florid complexion, and with a frank ingratiating manner—a little sad and subdued, in consequence, no doubt, of his enforced separation from his beloved young lady at Wurzburg. My aunt, with her customary kindness and consideration, offered him a room next to mine, in ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... "furnist" this country, Is the Dean, "It's nothing like old Hingland," Says the Dean. In language somewhat torrid, With a countenance quite florid, He says our schools are "orrid," Does ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... thousand different shapes wit wears, Comely in thousand shapes appears; 'Tis not a tale, 'tis not a jest, Admired with laughter at a feast; Nor florid talk, which can this title gain,— The proofs of wit for ever ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... mother's carriage in front of the Winona apartments in Henley Street, Josephine Burnside dismissed her coachman and hurried eagerly into the florid vestibule. ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... Imagination wove this Flesh-Garment; and does not she? Metaphors are her stuff: examine Language; what, if you except some few primitive elements (of natural sound), what is it all but Metaphors, recognised as such, or no longer recognised; still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and colourless? If those same primitive elements are the osseous fixtures in the Flesh-Garment, Language,—then are Metaphors its muscles and tissues and living integuments. An unmetaphorical style you shall in vain seek for: is not your very Attention a Stretching-to? The ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... AND -TO (-SO). These words lose the final Latin syllable and keep the stress on the vowel which bore it in Latin. The stressed vowel, except in au, eu, is short, even when, as in 'vivid', 'florid', it was long in classical Latin. This, of course, is in accord with the English pronunciation of Latin. Examples are 'acid', 'tepid', 'rigid', 'horrid', 'humid', 'lurid ', 'absurd', 'tacit', 'digit', 'deposit', 'compact', 'complex', ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... nothing, or taking cold counsel of the long but still sketchy vista, as it struck him, of the northward Avenue, bright and bleak, fresh and harsh, rich and evident somehow, a perspective like a page of florid modern platitudes. He didn't quite know what he had expected for his return—not certainly serenades and deputations; but without Mrs. Ash his mail would have quite lacked geniality, and it was as if Phil Blood-good had gone off not only with so large a slice of his small peculium, but with ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... it rather well, you know," whispered the Grand Duke to the Baroness von Altenburg, "although the style is florid. Yet that last speech was quite in my earlier and ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... Betty or Betsey, is provincially used as a contraction for Elizabeth, her Christian name, but which to us seems ludicrous when applied to a woman of her age and appearance. Mr. Garrick described her to me as very fat, with swelled cheeks of a florid red produced by thick painting, and increased by the liberal use of cordials; flaring and fantastic in her dress, and affected both in her ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Inspector, when I first knew him, was a man of fourscore years, or thereabouts, and certainly one of the most wonderful specimens of winter-green that you would be likely to discover in a lifetime's search. With his florid cheek, his compact figure, smartly arrayed in a bright-buttoned blue coat, his brisk and vigorous step, and his hale and hearty aspect, altogether he seemed—not young, indeed—but a kind of new contrivance of Mother Nature in the shape of man, whom age and infirmity had no business to touch. ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Loiseau was noted for his practical jokes of every description—his tricks, good or ill-natured; and no one could mention his name without adding at once: "He's an extraordinary man—Loiseau." He was undersized and potbellied, had a florid face with ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... yards or more from the town gate, there stood at that time a two-storeyed house of more pretensions than its fellows—from which it drew back somewhat. A line of railings, covered with ironwork of a florid and intricate pattern, but greatly decayed, shut it off from the roadway. The visitor, on opening the broad iron gate over which this pattern culminated in the figure of a Triton blowing a conch-shell, found himself in a pebbled court and before a ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... room, a florid young man with dissipated eyes, who, at Amherst's signal, had attached himself to the party, stopped short and turned a furious glance ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... alternate in the box, was also one of the best men in his line that ever sent a ball whizzing across the plate. He was a great big fellow with a florid complexion and blue eyes, and was utterly devoid of fear, nothing that came in his direction being too hot for him to handle. He was a remarkable fielder and a good batsman for a pitcher, men who play that position being poor wielders of ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... forest-bough Some arm as stout in death reposes,— From wave-washed foot to heaven-kissed brow Her valour's life-blood runs in roses; Nay, let our brothers of the West Write smiling in their florid pages, One-half her soil has walked the rest ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... Barron's face, handsome in feature, save for some thickened lines and the florid tint of the cheeks, had somehow emptied itself of expression while Flaxman ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the king, the man of power, rose supreme. His eyes, of a light yellow, seemed at first sight extinct; but a spark of courage and of anger lurked there, and at the slightest touch it could burst into flames and cast fire about him. The doctor was a stout burgher, with a florid face, dressed in black, peremptory, greedy of gain, and self-important. These two personages were framed, as it were, in that panelled chamber, hung with high-warped tapestries of Flanders, the ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... reign in every district of the empire. The subject was well chosen and the material ample, and Procopius lost no opportunity of lauding his sovereign to the skies. It is an excellent example of the florid panegyric style which was, unfortunately, in great favour with the literary world of his own as well as later Byzantine times. But in spite of its faults, this work is a record of the greatest importance for the study of the period, since it is a storehouse ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... west end of the Seabroke Chapel, against the first pier of the nave, is a mural monument, rather florid in ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse |
