"Elegancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cattle, the swarms of bees, and the variety of all kinds of flowers." Bacon considered that a garden is "the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man, without which buildings and palaces are but gross handyworks, and a man shall ever see, that when ages grow to civility and elegancy men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if gardening were ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... we have mentioned, he provided them with all the ornaments, furniture, and utensils suitable for the performance of divine service. To these sacred edifices are to be added his private dwellings, one in Florence, of extent and elegance adapted to so great a citizen, and four others, situated at Careggi, Fiesole, Craggiulo, and Trebbio, each, for size and grandeur, equal to royal palaces. And, as if it were not sufficient to be distinguished for magnificence of buildings in Italy ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... Newburyport where the clipper ships were built, and down to the West Indies. These ships brought back sugar, molasses, and rum, and from the old country came clothing, and furniture, and all sorts of luxuries, for the thriving merchants were building comfortable homes and furnishing them in elegance and taste. ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... whole, as we have it, is a deliberate attempt to convey an historical belief which the writers knew to be false. But these learned authorities do not like the word forgery. It is crude." (Joseph McCabe, "The Forgery of The Old Testament.") They veil the meaning of this word in the elegance, the subtlety, the resources, of diplomatic language. They talk of certain books in terms of "their legendary character," "their conformity to a scheme," and "their didactic purpose." To the Martian these are but an ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... an extended and charming view of the village, with its cottages, its workshops, and the villas of the proprietors of the latter. These villas, each set in extensive grounds, are models of architectural elegance, and are surrounded by most artistic landscape gardening. Conspicuous among these is the residence of the subject of this sketch, facing, as it does, a spacious well-kept lawn, and overlooking a lake, an exquisite ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... had become widely known as a medical and general scholar. As a teacher in the various departments of medical science with which he was connected he was also eminently successful. His lectures, always prepared with great care, were written with remarkable clearness and elegance, and were often listened to with attention by many outside the ranks of the profession. "His lectures to the under-graduates of the college," says a contemporary,[45] "would be thought, I am persuaded, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... feet in length, with a beautifully carved roof resembling that of Westminster-hall and windows adorned with all the elegance of gothic tracery, is still in being, and admirably serves the purposes of a barn ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... They live more in moveable tents, and to the south their great wealth is their horses. They are not, like the coast Indians, of small stature and inelegantly made, but remarkable for comeliness of person and elegance of carriage. They are equestrian in their habits, and shew to great advantage on horseback. The principal tribes are the Shoshones and Walla-walla, between whom, as between the former and the Blackfeet, there has been continual ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... of France upon England, and for that reason properly belongs to the seventeenth century more than to the Georgian era in which the letters were written. Chesterfield might be called the last of the courtiers. He believed in accomplishments and personal elegance as a means of advancing oneself in the world, long after the Court had ceased to care for such qualities, or to be of much account in the destinies of leading Englishmen. Republicanism was in the air. Chesterfield was thinking of the France of his youth; but France had changed. ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages with open heart; await occasions, hurry never; ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... extensively, and appeared to be on terms of intimacy with the literature of every European people. He had not the faintest idea of the pronunciation of the English language, but he wrote it currently and with some approach to elegance, and his knowledge of English letters put Paul to shame. With all his learning and his philosophic agnosticism, he was as simple-hearted as a child. Annette took the greatest fancy to him and welcomed his visits, and played ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... be one of Rembrandt's melancholy heads—the sad "Portrait of a Rabbi"—or the sweet introspection of a Rousseau stream. A solemn Dutch housewife, rendered with the bold fidelity and resonant enameled surfaces of a Hals or the cold elegance of an Ingres, commanded his utmost enthusiasm. So he would sit and wonder at the vision and skill of the original dreamer, exclaiming at times: ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... to give advice to a painter; and it is even impracticable to excel in the latter art, without the assistance of the former. We must have an exact knowledge of the parts, their situation and connexion, before we can design with any elegance or correctness. And thus the most abstract speculations concerning human nature, however cold and unentertaining, become subservient to practical morality; and may render this latter science more correct in its precepts, and more ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... each kept within due bound, And elegance was sprinkled o'er his figure; Like swift Camilla, he scarce skimm'd the ground, And rather held in than put forth his vigour; And then he had an ear for music's sound, Which might defy a crotchet critic's rigour. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... pupil, who thinks a riding habit should be worn over two or three skirts, and is consequently sitting with the aerial elegance of a feather bed, is riding with her snaffle rein, the curb tied on her horse's neck, and is clasping it by the centre, allowing the rest to hang loose, so that Clifton, supposing that she means to give him ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... state of mothers, and cows that chew the cud. But the baby slept a great deal, and much of its time was claimed by Betty. Those hours, and they were many, Gyp found difficult. She had lost interest in dress and household elegance, keeping just enough to satisfy her fastidiousness; money, too, was scarce, under the drain of Fiorsen's irregular requirements. If she read, she began almost at once to brood. She was cut off from the music-room, had not crossed its threshold ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... eternal renown, much more for his fashions and his merit than for the nobility of his blood, being grown full of years, delighted oftentimes to discourse with his neighbours and others of things past, the which he knew how to do better and more orderly and with more memory and elegance of speech than any other man. Amongst other fine things of his, he was used to tell that there was once in Florence a young man called Federigo, son of Messer Filippo Alberighi and renowned for deeds of arms and courtesy over every other bachelor in Tuscany, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... simply as a distraction, will never truly succeed either in acquiring the accomplishment or in using it half-acquired as a distraction; though the one is the most perfect of distractions, and though the other is unsurpassed by any other accomplishment in elegance or in power to impress the universal snobbery of civilised mankind. Literature, instead of being an accessory, is the fundamental sine qua non of complete living. I am extremely anxious to avoid rhetorical exaggerations. ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... over the wall like the classic draperies in the background of one of David's pictures. Chairs and tables, lamps and sconces, and every least detail had evidently been sought with patient care in furniture warehouses. There was the elegance of antiquity about the classic revival as well as its fragile and somewhat arid grace. The man himself, like his manner of life, was in grotesque contrast with the airy mythological look of his rooms; and it may be remarked that the most eccentric characters are found among men ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... the flat so charmingly furnished with carpets and decorative furniture that Liszt himself was surprised into admiration as he entered my 'petite elegance', as he called it. Now for the first time I enjoyed the delight of getting to know my friend better as a fellow-composer. In addition to many of his celebrated pianoforte pieces, which he had only recently written, we went through several new symphonies with great ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... reviewers are! 'these bugs do fear us all.' They made you fight, and me (the milkiest of men) a satirist, and will end by making * * madder than Ajax. I have been reading Memory again, the other day, and Hope together, and retain all my preference of the former. His elegance is really wonderful—there is no such thing as a vulgar line ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... movements on foot they are heavy and ungraceful, and they are, on the whole, a slovenly and unattractive race of men. But the instant they mount their horses they seem to be entirely changed, and surprise the spectator with the ease and elegance of their movements. Their great and distinctive peculiarity as horsemen is the power they have acquired of throwing themselves suddenly on either side of their horse's body, and clinging on in such a way that no part ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... twisting of two threads on four sides. The patterns are simple, and are outlined with a loose flax thread of silky appearance. The straight edges which characterise Old Lille lace certainly did not lend elegance to it. A large manufacture in black lace was commenced, and the black silk mantles of the eighteenth century were lavishly trimmed with it. It is entirely out of favour at this day, however, only the finest white variety ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... her shoulders the wraps which he had brought, modest wraps of common life, whose poverty contrasted with the elegance of the ball dress. She felt this and wanted to escape so as not to be remarked by the other women, who were enveloping themselves ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... stone could do justice to the beauty of a pure child of nature? The marble may present a most perfect form; but what becomes of the glow of life and flush of beauty upon the maiden's cheek, the ruby lips and the grace and elegance of her movements and winning manners? We may speak of ideal beauty in countries where the physical development of the inhabitants is blasted by the severities of the extreme heat and cold of an inhospitable clime, where the blasts of winter make ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... School. That marble of Paros whose gleaming transparency seemed expressly created for the representation of the ever-youthful flesh of the immortals, were borne after the statue of Hercules, which admirably relieved the harmony and elegance of their proportions by contrast with its ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... picturesque in appearance. The officials are well paid, so is everyone else, yet they never think of spending money to improve the looks of the village or even their own. Most of them are ragged. A few exhibit an inadequate elegance, dressed in white suits, derby hats, and very high collars. But in spite of the seeming poverty, there is not a seringueiro who could not at a moment's notice produce a handful of bills that would strike envy to the heart of many prosperous business men ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... world of Byron seems a sad and faded world, a weird and inhuman world, where men were romantic in whiskers, ladies lived, apparently, in bowers, and the very word has the sound of a piece of stage scenery. Roses and nightingales recur in their poetry with the monotonous elegance of a wall-paper pattern. The whole is like a revel of dead men, a revel with splendid vesture ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... at the beginning of the sixteenth century were men of a wholly different kind from the Latinists Bembo and Giovio. They wrote Italian, not only because they could not vie with the Ciceronian elegance of the philologists, but because, like Machiavelli, they could only record in a living tongue the living results of their own immediate observations and we may add in the case of Machiavelli, of his observation of the past—and because, as in the case of Guicciardini, Varchi, and many others, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... the problem in all its phases, he concluded that the end to be attained could thus be stated: to devise a sombre effect by means of cheerful objects, or rather to give a tone of elegance and distinction to the room thus treated, meanwhile preserving its character of ugliness; to reverse the practice of the theatre, whose vile tinsel imitates sumptuous and costly textures; to obtain the contrary effect by use of splendid fabrics; ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... scarlet, and in the bottom of each of those large veined blossoms lay, like a great drop of dew, a single splendid diamond. The women were noble samples of fair and dark beauty, and their whole appearance, coming in together attired with such elegance and becoming magnificent simplicity, produced an effect of surprise and admiration on the whole brilliant assembly." Of this year's Drawing-rooms we happen to have two characteristic reports. Baroness Bunsen attended ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... years of this period, elegance of personal appearance was believed to rest more upon the texture of garments than upon their shaping. A silk dress needed no remodelling when it was a year or so old; it remained distinguished by merely remaining silk. Old men and governors wore broadcloth; "full dress" ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... Industrious habits in each bosom reign, And industry begets a love of gain. Hence all the good from opulence that springs, With all those ills superfluous treasure brings, Are here display'd. Their much-lov'd wealth imparts Convenience, plenty, elegance, and arts: But view them closer, craft and fraud appear, Even liberty itself is barter'd here. At gold's superior charms all freedom flies, The needy sell it, and the rich man buys; A land of tyrants, and a den of slaves, Here wretches seek dishonourable ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... imitate the folds and wrinkles of the dress, trimmed round the edge with white Brussels lace, having an underskirt of amber satin trimmed with Brussels lace, to show underneath; lined throughout with silk 1 large Brussels shawl, of 700 exquisite fineness and elegance of design, to go with it 1 crimson velvet dress, lined 400 throughout with rose-colored silk; train very long, trimmed with rich silk, blonde lace covering the entire train, being carried around and brought up the front of the dress and body, forming the bertha; ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... fit for dames of loftiest grades, Some only fit for scullery maids Ann is too plain and common, And Nancy sounds but ill; Yet Anna is endurable, And Annie better still, There is a grace in Charlotte, In Eleanor a state, An elegance in Isabel, A haughtiness in Kate; And Sarah is sedate and neat, And Ellen innocent and sweet Matilda has a sickly sound, Fit for a nurse's trade; Sophie is effeminate, And Esther sage and staid; Elizabeth's a matchless name, Fit for a queen to wear In castle, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... courtesy, and the wealth and cleanliness of Holland. Mansions of white stone are replacing the old brick buildings, and the cosy comfort of Batavian interiors is fast yielding before the capricious elegance of Parisian novelties. ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... serge, which followed the delicate girlish frame with perfect simplicity, and was relieved at the neck and wrists with the plainest of white collars and cuffs. But there was something so brilliant in the hair, so fawnlike in the carriage of the head, that she seemed to Helbeck to be all elegance; had he been asked to describe her, he would have said she was in grande toilette. Little as he spoke to her, he found himself perpetually conscious of her. Her evident—childishly evident—dislike of her new surroundings half amused, half embarrassed him. He did not know what topic to start ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... embellished, carved into hollow tracery, added for the satisfaction of the age. Mora was what was seen in France and throughout Europe of the Empire. If he fell, the monument would find itself bereft of all its elegance, split as by some long and irreparable crack. And how many lives would be dragged down by that sudden fall, how many fortunes undermined by the weakened reverberations of the catastrophe! None so completely as that of the big man sitting motionless ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... into forms divinely beautiful, and the poet for singing the hopes, the loves, the memories, and the aspirations of the world. This surplus has given us the books in which we converse with the dead and living kings of the human race. It has given us all there is of beauty, of elegance, ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... exactly proportioned, but so large that they denoted the strength rather of a ploughman than any other. His shoulders were broad beyond all size, and the calves of his legs larger than those of a common chairman. In short, his whole person wanted all that elegance and beauty which is the very reverse of clumsy strength, and which so agreeably sets off most of our fine gentlemen; being partly owing to the high blood of their ancestors, viz., blood made of rich sauces and generous wines, and partly to ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... towering aloft on its own self-supported basis, but resting on, and upheld by, some internal principle of necessity. I regretted in it the total absence of what I desired to find; and thus it seemed a mere work of art, serving only by its elegance and exquisite finish to captivate the eye. Nevertheless, I listened with pleasure to this eloquently gifted man, who diverted my attention from my own sorrows to the speaker; and he would have secured my entire acquiescence ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... a force and dignity of style that accord well with his character. "His orations and addresses are marked by classical purity, chaste elegance of expression, a certain nobleness of diction, and a just proportion of sentence to ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... about the same time," said Ferris. "Besides, the abbate di casa had a charm of his own, the charm of all rococo things, which, whatever you may say of them, are somehow elegant and refined, or at least refer to elegance and refinement. I don't say they're ennobling, but they're fascinating. I don't respect them, but I love them. When I think about the past of Venice, I don't care so much to see any of the heroically ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... of a few good friends, he has passed through all the stations belonging to a seaman, from an apprentice boy in the coal trade, to a post-captain in the royal navy, he has had no opportunity of cultivating letters. After this account of myself, the public must not expect from me the elegance of a fine writer, or the plausibility of a professed book-maker; but will, I hope, consider me as a plain man, zealously exerting himself in the service of his country, and determined to give the best account he is ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... by William Earl of Kilmarnock, the representative of an ancient and noble family, which, as an historian remarks, "sometimes matched with the blood-royal." "He was," adds the same writer, "in the flower of his age, being about forty years old. The elegance of his person, and comeliness of his features, which were every way handsome, bespake internal beauties."[65] It is remarkable, that, at this very time, the young Lord Boyd, Lord Kilmarnock's son, held a commission in the British army and ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... altar stood Lady Dora Earle and Valentine. People said afterward they could not decide whom they admired most—Lady Helena's stately magnificence, Dora's sweet, simple elegance, or the Princess Borgezi's statuesque ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... of their cacique. In all the markets and public places of this city are seen daily many laborers and persons of various employments waiting for some one to hire them. The inhabitants of this city pay a greater regard to style in their mode of living, and are more attentive to elegance of dress and politeness of manners, than those of the other provinces and cities; since as the Cacique[4] Muteczuma has his residence in the capital, and all {157} the nobility, his vassals, are in the constant habit of meeting there, a general courtesy ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... would be of the same style, comfortable chairs in which patrons would be tempted to linger. The windows would be heavily draped. In a word, the place would have atmosphere; not the loud and blaring, elegance which I had observed in the smartest of New York establishments, with shrieking decorations and tables jammed together, but an atmosphere of distinction which, though subtle, would yet impress shop-assistants, plate-layers and ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... respect, without admiration, without affection. There are the blue eyes, sunny hair, peach-bloom complexions of the north; there are the dark-eyed, black-haired, heavy-browed women of the Black Forest; there is often a Quakerish elegance of figure and apparel to be seen on the streets of the cities, and from time to time one sees a real Germania, big of frame, bold of brow, fearless of glance — ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... her story. Mrs. Copley examined and wondered at the elegance of the work. Mr. Copley promised Dolly a ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... and for the first time raising my eyes I found myself face to face with the haughty belle. She was very tall and queenlike in her figure, and though she could hardly be called handsome, there was about her an air of elegance and refinement which partially compensated for the absence of beauty. That she was proud one could see from the glance of her large black eyes and the curl of her lip. Coolly surveying me for a moment, as she would any other curious specimen, she resumed her book, never speaking ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... used in its stead with the same correctness of diction. As, for example, "The snow is slowly descending from the dark cloud." To use a word synonymous with "descending" in the above sentence it must express the same thought and present the same elegance of style. We find such a synonym in the word "falling." "The snow is slowly falling from the dark cloud." The idea expressed by these two sentences is precisely the same, and both are good grammar. Let us now read Rom. 6:4: "Therefore we are buried ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... that they can supply, by the labours of industry, the deficiencies of nature. Paulus Manutius frequently spent a month in writing a single letter. He affected to imitate Cicero. But although he painfully attained to something of the elegance of his style, destitute of the native graces of unaffected composition, he was one of those whom Erasmus bantered in his Ciceronianus, as so slavishly devoted to Cicero's style, that they ridiculously employed the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... silver-tipped walking-stick, and he kept constantly taking off and putting on one of those slouched sombreros which are the traditional property of the Virginian or Carolinian of romance. When this was on, he was very picturesque, in spite of his mock elegance; and when it was off, and he sat nursing it and turning it about and not knowing what to do with it, he could hardly be said to be awkward. He evidently had a natural relish for brilliant accessories, and appropriated what came to his hand. This ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... bankrupts, and low scribblers, living in great splendour, or men taken from laborious professions, more sincere in their principles, more ignorant and brutal—and who dissipate what they have gained in gross luxury, because they have been told that elegance and delicacy are worthy only of Sybarites, and that the Greeks and Romans despised both. These patriots are not, however, so uninformed, nor so disinterested, as to suppose they are to serve their country without serving themselves; and they perfectly understand, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... architect, unknown to fame, (Nor symmetry nor elegance his aim), Who spread his floors of solid oak on high, On beams rough-hewn from age to age that lie, Bade his wide fabric unimpaired sustain The orchard's store, and cheese, and golden grain; Bade from ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... Spain; and of which Venice (the true model of the barbaric decorations with which Louis the Fourteenth corrupted the taste of Paris) was probably the original inventor. In an alcove, beneath a silken canopy, was prepared a table, laden with wines, fruits, and viands; and altogether the elegance and luxury that characterised the apartment were in strong and strange contrast with the half-ruined exterior of the abode, the gloomy and rude approach to the chamber, and the mean and servile aspect of the Jew, who stood, or rather cowered by the door, as if waiting for further orders. With ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of synonyms with which the language of the original abounds and amid also the melodious flow of the rhythm, the defects become glaring in translation. At the latter, however, of faithfulness, I have been obliged to sacrifice elegance, in rendering ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... languages; in the imperative and infinitive moods they are wanting in all except the present, and a subjunctive mood does not exist. (104) Now, although all these defects in moods and tenses may be supplied by certain fundamental rules of the language with ease and even elegance, the ancient writers evidently neglected such rules altogether, and employed indifferently future for present and past, and vice versa past for future, and also indicative for imperative and subjunctive, with the ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... floor was as brilliant as the scarlet geranium on the window sill—this meant that his servants were good and plentiful, that the custom was constant, and of that order which necessitated the keeping up of the coffee-room to a high standard of elegance and order. ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... this building, in Billings's architectural account of it, interested me; and that is, that it is finished with the most circumstantial elegance and minuteness in those concealed portions which are excluded, from public view, and which can only be inspected by laborious climbing or groping; and he accounts for this by the idea that the whole carving and execution was considered ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... no discordant voices on either side of the Atlantic with regard to the literary merits of William H. Prescott. Truth, dignity, research, candor, erudition, chaste and simple elegance, mark all he has ever written. His noble powers were in perfect consonance with his noble soul. His strict sense of justice shines in all its brilliancy, in his evident desire to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, of every character appearing in his conscientious pages. No current of popular ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... REVIEW says: "The Globe Editions are admirable for their scholarly editing, their typographical excellence, their compendious form, and their cheapness." The BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW says: "In compendiousness, elegance, and scholarliness, the Globe Editions of Messrs. Macmillan surpass any popular series of our classics hitherto given to the public. As near an approach to miniature perfection ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... give them credit for the translation, but am free to maintain that the elegance of diction, force of expression, and choiceness of synonyms are ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... most soft and touching, most brisk and enlivening, most lofty and elevating. So that whatever the Artist intends, whether to set an Air, or compose a Te Deum, he does either, with an equal Genius, that is, with equal Propriety and Elegance. Thus ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... therefore, as a man of wit and gallantry, is called upon to support our author against the censures of pedantic severity. Whatever may be thought of the subject, the appeal is made with all Dryden's spirit and elegance, and his description of the attic evenings spent with Sedley and his gay associates, glosses over, and almost justifies, their occasional irregularities. We have but too often occasion to notice, with censure, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... post-prandial hour, flopped into it backwards. It was always a difficult thing to put this warrior to confusion, and his sudden descent left him as composed as before. He had sat down just opposite to Nastasia, whose fingers he now took, and raised to his lips with great elegance, and much courtesy. The general had once belonged to a very select circle of society, but he had been turned out of it two or three years since on account of certain weaknesses, in which he now indulged with all the less restraint; but ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... cette Asie, quelles en sont, enfin, les frontieres reelles?... Ces frontieres sont d'une nettete qui ne permet aucune erreur. L'Asie est la ou cesse la vulgarite, ou nait la dignite, et ou commence l'elegance intellectuelle. Et l'Orient est la ou sont les sources ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... not a syllable the old man had said. He was absorbed, entranced, struck with a sensation of wonder, surprise, agitation, joy, and confusion, all nearly at the same moment. Such a blaze of beauty, such elegance of person, such tenderness and feeling as chastened the radiance of her countenance into something that might be termed absolutely divine; such symmetry of form; such harmony of motion; such a seraphic being in the shape of woman, he had, in fact, never seen or dreamt ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Mr. Thrale, however, that she was a little painted puppet, of no value at all, and quite disguised with affectation, full of odd airs of rural elegance; and he made out some comical scenes, by mimicking her in a dialogue he pretended to have overheard. I do not know whether he meant such stuff to be believed or no, it was so comical; nor did I indeed ever see him represent her ridiculously, ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... in his youth, which was far less brilliant than his present, married a poor orphan, a teacher. But Malvina Darvid was of those women who need only a golden setting to sparkle like diamonds. She shone in the great world with a charm, an elegance, a power of speech which were the same as if she had been its own daughter. She was radiant with satisfaction, with serenity, often even with joyous animation, and only now and then did a slight wrinkle, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... here, and we rolling in wealth!" said she to herself. "Poor man, he has indeed been punished—he who was elegance itself." ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... citizens, and a general plan in which all chances of disorder and means of repression are wisely calculated. Without this community of action and effort slavery, with its miseries and excesses, will survive as it did in ancient Rome,* along with elegance of manners, progressive intelligence, and all the charms of the civilization which its presence accuses, and which it threatens to destroy, whenever the hour of vengeance shall arrive. (* The argument deduced from the civilization of Rome and Greece in favour of slavery is much in vogue ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... elegance and beauty since she went away; she had entered into the life of the cultivated, the intellectually great. In spite of her deep affection for Aunt Raby, she came back to the ugliness and the sordid surroundings of home with a pang which she hated herself for feeling. She forgot Aunt Raby's ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... The quiet elegance of its furnishings, the soft leather-bound books on the table, the dreamy face of the occupant, who sat with folded hands looking out of the window, were all in strange contrast to the dreariness of the scene below, where the one long street of the little Manitoba town, piled high with ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... board—distinguished for the sea—elegant in the style of Munich, with clothes of indescribable colors that suggested Persian art and the vignettes of mediaeval manuscripts. The husband admired Bertha's elegance, lamenting her childlessness in secret, almost as though it were a crime of high treason. Germany was magnificent because of the fertility of its women. The Kaiser, with his artistic hyperbole, had proclaimed that the true German beauty should ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... given in these roomy old houses with broad verandas, surrounded with lawn and garden. But this need not deter those having less delightful surroundings from offering their best to their friends. It is not so much the elegance of what we offer as the manner in which it is offered that makes our friends remember their visit ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... no reflections with regard to other households. I only look, and think, and pray for the welfare of my own beloved ones. They want for nothing. Heaven has bounteously furnished us with every comfort, with every elegance, with every luxury. Why need we be bounden to others, who have been ourselves so amply provided? I should consider it ingratitude, Colonel Newcome, want of proper spirit, to allow my boys to accept money. Mind, I make no ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Dr. Fenton drowsed through the discourse. Next to him, her party dress and slipper-bag concealed by a rain-coat, sat Annette, hot and rebellious, and in anything but a prayerful frame of mind. Beside her sat Sandy, rigid with elegance, his eyes riveted on the preacher, but his thoughts on his feet. For, stationary though he was, he was really giving himself the benefit of a final rehearsal, and mentally performing steps ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... pure and simple language which distinguishes so many of Addison's papers in the "Spectator." The fragment is too short to afford the means of judging whether he had much dramatic talent, as the persons of the story are not thrown into conversation. But altogether the elegance and composure of style are such as one would not have expected from this vehement and ill-fated young man. He had a stronger desire for literary fame burning in his heart, than even that which occasionally flashed up in his sisters'. He tried various outlets for his talents. He wrote and sent ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the floor a soft gray that would blend with anything, and after it was dry we laid on it one of our chief treasures. It was a grass rug, in two shades of green, with a stenciled border and a general air of elegance that almost overpowered us. It was large enough almost to cover the floor, and we stenciled green borders on our curtains and drapery in the ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... there were a seance held, if the scrap of paper were spirit-writing in answer to some awkward question, why—and here I come to my first question, which M. Ricardo has omitted—why did Mlle. Celie dress herself with so much elegance last night? What Vauquier said is true. Her dress was not suited to a seance. A light-coloured, rustling frock, which would be visible in a dim light, or even in the dark, which would certainly be heard at every movement she made, however lightly she stepped, ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... to Acton-Common, where he had a house furnished with great elegance—"kept a post-chaise, saddle-horses, and pointers—and fished, fowled, hunted, coursed, and lived in an easy independent manner." There he continued his irregular but rapid and energetic course of ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... agitation; she forbade her heart to beat, or her inward terrors to betray themselves, and the brave girl appeared before all with a calm and collected aspect. She had declined every ornament of dress, and the very simplicity of her attire added to the charming elegance of her appearance. Her hair was bound with the "snood," the usual head-dress of ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... natural; it had undoubtedly been written with great labour; and who is willing to think that he has been labouring in vain? He had infused into it much knowledge and much thought; had often polished it to elegance, often dignified it with splendour, and sometimes heightened it to sublimity: he perceived in it many excellencies, and did not discover that it wanted that without which all others are of small avail, the power of engaging ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... could also espy M. de Fondege ferociously twirling his mustaches as usual, together with Kami-Bey, who was conspicuous by reason of his portly form and eternal red fez. However, among these men, all noticeable for their studied elegance of attire and manner, and all of them known to M. de Valorsay, there moved numerous others of very different appearance. Their waistcoats were less open, and their clothes did not fit them as perfectly; on the other hand, there was something else than a look ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... with the elegance and magnificence of it all. One thing, however, jarred upon his sense of propriety: he wondered how such swell folk could say such commonplace things. The Holsmas said nothing. Only once, when Uncle Sybrand pointed to a certain box, did they ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... in mind by the grace and beauty of her surroundings. For the room was a work of art in itself, an Adams room, with carved white panels, framing spaces of rich brocade, delicately tinted, on the walls; with furniture chosen for comfort as well as elegance, and no more of it than was absolutely necessary, no crowding of chairs and tables, no congestion of useless ornaments, no plethora of pictures, putting each other out—only two, in fact, one a summer seascape, with tiny waves bursting ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Mr. and Miss Darling were conducted by an attendant to one of the housekeeper's rooms, where they were asked to partake of some refreshment. They had never before seen such a display of magnificence and elegance; and as they took their meal, they could scarcely help smiling at the contrast between their own humble home and the luxuries which were strewn around them. The housekeeper knew how at once to please the Duchess and her visitors, ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... servant. That June the Marchesino was married at Milan to a daughter of Count Giovanni Borromeo, and on this occasion, doubtless, he employed the gifted Roman sculptor to design the magnificent doorway which now adorns the Louvre and is a masterpiece of classic elegance. But now a fresh invitation reached ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... nave differs only from the north side in its having two doorways from the cloisters, in the superior elegance of the south-west spire, and in the unfinished state of the south-west tower. The portion of this tower above the roof Mr Paley pronounces, from the details of the windows on the east side, to be of much ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... with official, commonplace elegance. A pier-glass, a sofa, a dressing-table and a cupboard or two provided the necessary furniture. On the walls hung a few engravings, relics of the mother, who had known the glories of the old Opera in the Rue le Peletier; portraits of Vestris, Gardel, Dupont, Bigottini. ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... understand! at sixteen the child became a fallen angel! She lost her reason through sorrow and shame. This relative—this gentleman, illustrious and noble, tender and compassionate—took her to the seclusion of his country house, where she lived in elegance, luxury and honor. But as the years passed her malady increased; her presence became dangerous; in a word, the gentleman, distinguished and noble, saw the advertisement of my 'Calm Retreat,' my institution ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... immense front, straightening all its indentures until it swept the heavens in one vast and infinitely extended line. Other lesser bodies also united with each other as they happened to approach, and with such ease and elegance of evolution, forming new figures and varying these as they united or separated, that I was never tired of contemplating them. Sometimes a hawk would sweep on a particular part of the column from a great height, when almost ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... circumstances, falling within what the Abbe styles, "the wide empire of chance," would have afforded a fine field for thought; and I wish, for the sake of that elegance of reflection he is so capable of using, that he had ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... complexion and hair were faded and there were faint lines on her charming face. She was a blonde of the French type, and her light figure, although indifferently carried and a stranger to gowns, possessed an indefinable elegance. ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... best statues, and were the best architects: of course, they were the best tailors, too,' said he; and was never weary, when he could find a tolerant listener, of dwelling on the simplicity, the economy, the elegance both of means and effect, which made ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... more familiar to well-educated people in England, than Spanish ever was to the French, and that Smollett had lived much in France; whereas Le Sage knew from books alone the language which he has employed with so much colloquial elegance and facility. We now turn to the phrases and expressions in French which Le Sage has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... better pleased with Appius Caecus [h] than with Cato? Cicero had his adversaries [i]: it was objected to him, that his style was redundant, turgid, never compressed, void of precision, and destitute of Attic elegance. We all have read the letters of Calvus and Brutus to your famous orator. In the course of that correspondence, we plainly see what was Cicero's opinion of those eminent men. The former [k] appeared to ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... than labour themselves. There was also, what I cannot help disliking at breakfast, cheese: it is the custom over all the Highlands to have it; and it often smells very strong, and poisons to a certain degree the elegance of an Indian repast. The day was showery; however, Rasay and I took a walk, and had some cordial conversation. I conceived a more than ordinary regard for this worthy gentleman. His family has possessed ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... In Paris she was a friend of a very fashionable dressmaker and decorator, master of modern elegance. Sometimes she designed dresses for him, and sometimes she accepted from him a commission to decorate a room. Usually at her last sou, it gave her pleasure to dispose of costly and exquisite things for other people, and then be rid ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... privacy, as one might count it, the broad fine brush dipped into clear umber and passed, full and wet, straight across the strong scheme of colour, would represent the security itself, all the uplifted inner elegance, the condition, so ideal, of being shut out from nothing and yet of having, so gaily and breezily aloft, none of the burden or worry of anything. Thus, as I say, for our friend, the place itself, while his vivid impression lasted, portentously ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... should always be so well dressed that his dress shall never be remarked at all. Does this sound like an enigma? It is not meant for one. It only implies that perfect simplicity is perfect elegance, and that the true test of dress in the toilet of a gentleman is its entire harmony, unobtrusiveness, and becomingness. Displays should be avoided. Let a sensible man leave the graces and luxuries of dress to his wife, daughters, and sisters, ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... For the war seemed to run along the course of rivers, though it also passed through the forests and lakes, and went up into the mountains. Our wonderfully clever and kind member of the British army was delighted with the movements of General Lee, who alone showed scientific elegance in slaying his fellow-countrymen; and the worst of it was that instead of going after my dear Uncle Sam, Colonel Cheriton was always rushing about with maps, plans, and telescopes, to follow the tracery of Lee's ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... ravine, the short but bloody assault, the shouts, the rush, and the retreat, of the outer world, to the scene of domestic security we found within the Nest, embellished, as was the last, by woman's loveliness and graces, and, in many respects, by woman's elegance. Anneke and her friend received us in a bright, cheerful, comfortable apartment, that was rendered so much the more attractive by their tears and their smiles, neither of which were spared. I could see that both had been dreadfully agitated; but joy restored their colour, and brought back ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... of opinion that in these matters there should be an equality of station and fortune, and that a man accustomed to Society should look out for a woman accustomed to Society and capable of bearing her part in it with—an ease and elegance of carriage—that.' Mrs Podsnap stops there, delicately intimating that every such man should look out for a fine woman as nearly resembling herself as ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Boulingrin, lending herself to an intercourse for which she had no temperamental inclination, but which she thought suitable to her rank, and useful to her interests. Their intrigue was conducted with an art which revealed their good taste, and the elegance of the prevailing morality; the connection was openly avowed, and thereby stripped of all base hypocrisy; but it was at the same time so reserved in appearance that even the severest critics saw no cause for ...
— The Story Of The Duchess Of Cicogne And Of Monsieur De Boulingrin - 1920 • Anatole France
... lightness and warmth, which can be obtained from the union underclothes, a princess skirt and dress, with a shoe that allows full development and use of the foot. While decoration and elegance are desirable, they should not sacrifice comfort ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... But I am sure the daughter is. Not that veneer which passes for it, but that deep inner culture, which gives a deft, artistic touch to the hand, softens the voice, gives elegance to the carriage, with a heart and mind nicely balanced. Judge for yourself, when you see her. If there is any rare knickknack in the house, it will have been put there by the mother's hand or the daughter's. The admiral, I believe, occupies himself with his books, ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... one evening at Padua, while we sat talking with some pleasant Paduans in one of the magnificent saloons of the Caffe Pedrocchi, that I should like to go there for society, if I could always find it there, much better than to private houses. There is far greater ease and freedom, more elegance and luxury, and not the slightest weight of obligation laid upon you for the gratification your friend's company has given you. One has not to be a debtor in the sum of a friend's outlay for house, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... in the late World's Exhibition. Some years ago, when visiting Rome, I related Sojourner's history to Mr. Story at a breakfast at his house. Already had his mind begun to turn to Egypt in search of a type of art which should represent a larger and more vigorous development of nature than the cold elegance of Greek lines. His glorious Cleopatra was then in process of evolution, and his mind was working out the problem of her broadly developed nature, of all that slumbering weight and fulness of passion with ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... and was tainted with gaseous odors which had been tormented forth by the processes of science. The severe and homely simplicity of the apartment, with its naked walls and brick pavement, looked strange, accustomed as Georgiana had become to the fantastic elegance of her boudoir. But what chiefly, indeed almost solely, drew her attention, was ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... melted, and that the precious stones were disposed of in various ways, so as to deprive them of their identity, is easy to understand, but where have the vases gone? Were it not for the rough sketches made at the time of discovery we should not be able to form an idea of their beauty and elegance of shape. They were not the work of goldsmiths of the fifth century, but were of classical origin; in fact they represent a portion of the imperial state jewels, which Honorius had inherited from his predecessors, and which he had offered ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... of them, Freda felt that her poor little face could never rival the inimitable reserves, the secure distinction of Miss Nethersole's. There was nothing, so to speak, to take hold of in Julia's dark, attenuated elegance; nothing that betrayed itself anywhere, from the slender brilliance of her deep-lidded, silent eyes, to her small flat chin, falling sheer from the immobile lower lip. Miss Nethersole's features and her figure were worn ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... form, for the use of Seminaries of Education; more particularly for Young Gentlemen intended for the Pulpit, Senate, Bar, or Stage; and for all who wish to speak with propriety and elegance. ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More
... the restitution of the holy sepulchre, and to propose an offensive and defensive league with the enemy of the Christian name. In these unworthy hands, of Isaac and his brother, the remains of the Greek empire crumbled into dust. The Island of Cyprus, whose name excites the ideas of elegance and pleasure, was usurped by his namesake, a Comnenian prince; and by a strange concatenation of events, the sword of our English Richard bestowed that kingdom on the house of Lusignan, a rich compensation for the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... from the wild vines that overran the surrounding trees; reciting for their amusement all the epitaphs on the tombstones; or sauntering, with a whole bevy of them, along the banks of the adjacent mill-pond; while the more bashful country bumpkins hung sheepishly back, envying his superior elegance ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... at the rococo elegance as if there were fifty things it didn't give her, so that he suggested with urgency the most absent. But she met his remedy with a smile. "I've the best advice in the world. I'm acting under it now. I act upon it in receiving you, in talking ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... three miles long and one broad, very populous; the environs are crowded with people settled in large villages, resembling (for population, not elegance) the environs of Birmingham. The first is about a mile south of the city; at nearly the same distance are the public jail and the general hospital. Brother Gordon, one of our deacons, being the jailer we preach ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... footlights, and, pulling back the edge of the curtain, allowed her to peep past him out into the dance-hall. She had never pictured a place like this, and in spite of her agitation was astonished at its gaudy elegance. The gallery was formed of a continuous row of compartments with curtained fronts, in which men and women were talking, drinking, singing. The seats on the lower floor were disappearing, and the canvas cover was rolling back, showing the polished hardwood underneath, while out ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... you for sending to me so gracious a gentleman as Mr. Stanley, who interested us in every manner, by his elegance, his accurate information of that we wished to know, and his surprising acquaintance with the camp and military politics on our frontier. I regretted that I could see him so little. He has used his time to the best purpose, and I should gladly have learned all his adventures ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Brazier. She wore corsets; she had silk, or handsome woollen and cotton dresses, according to the season, expensive neckerchiefs, embroidered caps and collars, lace ruffles at her throat, boots instead of shoes, and, altogether, adopted a richness and elegance of apparel which renewed the youthfulness of her appearance. She was like a rough diamond, that needed cutting and mounting by a jeweller to bring out its full value. Her desire was to do honor to Max. At the end of the first year, in 1817, she brought a horse, styled English, from Bourges, for ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... imputation of folly and arrogance, in presuming to intrude among Caesar's writings. For it is agreed on all hands, that no composition was ever executed with so great care, that it is not exceeded in elegance by these Commentaries, which were published for the use of historians, that they might not want memoirs of such achievements; and they stand so high in the esteem of all men, that historians seem rather deprived of than ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... minor matters, subsidiary to elegance, if not elegancies, and therefore worth attention. Do not habitually prop your sentences on crutches, such as Italics and exclamation-points, but make them stand without aid; if they cannot emphasize themselves, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... access to Edinburgh by the great London road was long a subject of general regret. In entering the city from this quarter, the road lay through narrow and inconvenient streets, forming an approach no way suited to the general elegance of the place. In 1814, however, a magnificent entrance was commenced across the Calton Hill, between which and Prince's street a deep ravine intervened, which was formerly occupied with old and ill-built ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... a shrivelled brain, or to digest the smoke of a profitless lamp. Nevertheless it cannot be concealed from the enlightened judgment of the holy and good, to whom these discourses are specially addressed, that the pearls of salutary admonition are threaded on the cord of an elegance of language, and the bitter potion of instruction sweetened with the honey of facetiousness, that the taste of the reader may not take disgust, and himself be debarred from the pleasure of approving of them: "On our ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... the medium of bestowing it upon others. She had seen, too, by Mr Harrel, how wretchedly external brilliancy could cover inward woe, and she had learned at Delvile Castle to grow sick of parade and grandeur. Her equipage, therefore, was without glare, though not without elegance, her table was plain, though hospitably plentiful, her servants were for use, though too numerous to be for labour. The system of her oeconomy, like that of her liberality, was formed by rules of reason, and her own ideas of right, and ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... of the carpet-bed lies largely in its unity, sharp contrast and harmony of color, elegance—often simplicity—of design, nicety of execution, and the continued distinctness of outline due to scrupulous care. A generous allowance of green-sward on all sides contributes greatly to the general effect,—in fact ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... and this is the difficult part of the subject to make clear, the most vulgar slang like that quoted above, is scarcely worse than the attempted elegance which those unused to good society imagine to be ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... silly proceedings were then thought highly diverting by "vastly genteel" people, it is not, perhaps, much to be wondered at that so poor a piece of wit as this should have furnished diversion to a couple of light-hearted girls, with no special pretensions to elegance or education. Once they were driving together in a post-chaise on the road to Newcastle, and my aunt, having at hand in a box part of a military equipment intended for some farce, accoutred her upper woman in a soldier's cap, stock, and ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... confided Miss Conway, at the end of an hour. "We were going to be married next spring. I don't want you to think that I am stringing you, Mr. Donovan, but he was a real Count. He had an estate and a castle in Italy. Count Fernando Mazzini was his name. I never saw the beat of him for elegance. Papa objected, of course, and once we eloped, but papa overtook us, and took us back. I thought sure papa and Fernando would fight a duel. Papa has a livery business—in ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... velvet sleeves was different in style from the gowns the other women were wearing under their furs? Had sleeves of a different colour from the bodice, which Miss Polly considered the last touch of elegance, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... disgracefully. It was the popular impression in Puerto Rico that every American soldier was a full-fledged millionaire, but even they expressed some disappointment at our evident disregard for the external superfluities of elegance. But, when you stop to consider it, we did not go to the Antilles to make love to the pretty girls. We were quite sufficiently clothed and fed to march through tropical underbrush, take several cities, and put our more gaudily equipped enemies to ignominious flight. ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman
... was Mr. Jefferson known to be to the French style of cooking that no less a man than Patrick Henry, on the stump, had accused him of having "deserted the victuals of his country." His table was set and served with as much elegance as any at any foreign court. At the door of the city of Washington, even in the summer season, there was the best market of the world. As submitted by his chef de cuisine, Mr. Jefferson's menu was of no pell-mell sort. If we may credit it as handed down, it ran thus, in the ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... has formed a pleasing lawn, margined in the higher part by a well-planted thriving shrubbery, and on a rising ground a banqueting-room, which ranks very high among the most beautiful edifices I have anywhere seen; it has much elegance, lightness, and effect, and commands a fine prospect. The rising ground on which it stands slopes off to an agreeable accompaniment of wood, beyond which on one side is Dublin Harbour, which here has the appearance of a noble river crowded with ships moving to and from ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... which he shews so little learning or taste in writing, as to make Carteret a dactyl[4]. In matters of genealogy it is necessary to give the bare names as they are; but in poetry, and in prose of any elegance in the writing, they require to have inflection given to them. His book of the Dialects[5] is a sad heap of confusion; the only way to write on them is to tabulate them with Notes, added at the bottom of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... the best I ever was in. My little apartment, consisting of three rooms and other conveniences, is a perfect curiosity of completeness. You never saw such a charming little baby-house. It is infinitely smaller than those first rooms we had at Meurice's, but for elegance, compactness, comfort, and quietude, exceeds anything I ever met with at ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... collect all such stories as I thought adapted to the faculties of children, but to connect these by continued narration.... As to the histories themselves, I have used the most unbounded licence.... As to the language, I have endeavored to throw into it a greater degree of elegance and ornament than is usually to be met with in such compositions; preserving at the same time a sufficient degree of simplicity to make it intelligible to very young children, and rather choosing to be diffuse ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... But I don't know as we can blame her if she did. The poor child is doubtless unversed in polite correspondence, and she did her best,—but she felt she needed a little more elegance of construction and so forth, and she picked out some dressy phrases from ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... the second number, the reviewer says it is by no means inferior to the first either in music or in poetry. The air "Oh! weep for the hour" ("The Pretty Girl of Derby O!") is harmonized in a style of great elegance; and that, and "The Red Fox," "The Black Joke," and "My Lodging is on the Cold Ground," have particularly pleased us in their arrangement. The song which Mr. Moore has written to "The Black Joke," is both poetical and political, and though the affairs of Spain have now ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... the Spanish court, not as a painter, but as a cavalier upon a diplomatic mission. Bearing many beautiful presents to King Philip III., he went to Madrid, where his elegance, manly beauty, dashing manner, and ability to speak several languages made him a wonderful success. He remained for three years at the court and studied the methods of Spanish painters. He also painted the members of the Spanish court, as Velasquez had done, but they looked like ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... for any doocal dinin'-room; the carpets throughout are as elegantly hesthetick in design, as they are substantial in fabric, whilst the—ahem! sleeping apartments, are perfect pickters of combined solidity and chaste elegance. I always say, that as a real gentleman is known by his linen, so the 'ome of a party of true taste may be tested by the bed-rooms. You'll excuse me, Madam—(smirks)—but such are my sentiments, not as a salesman, but as ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various
... The Numidian Crane, or Demoiselle, from the elegance of its appearance, and its singular carriage, is called the Demoiselle, which means the Young Lady; for this bird walks very gracefully, and sometimes skips and leaps, as though it ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset |
