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Extravagant   Listen
noun
Extravagant  n.  
1.
One who is confined to no general rule.
2.
pl. (Eccl. Hist.) Certain constitutions or decretal epistles, not at first included with others, but subsequently made a part of the canon law.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Extravagant" Quotes from Famous Books



... are grateful Under skies serene; But the human type is hateful On a tragic scene; When the outlook's drear and cloudy Punch would rather see you dowdy Than extravagant and rowdy In your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various

... was published in three fat volumes, and a pretty green cover, and I sat down to await events. At the best I did not expect to win a fortune out of it, as if every one of the five hundred copies printed were sold, I could only make fifty pounds under my agreement—not an extravagant reward for a great deal of labour. As a matter of fact, but four hundred and fifty sold, so the net proceeds of the venture amounted to ten pounds only, and forty surplus copies of the book, which I bored my friends by presenting to them. ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... the turkey. Some, I noticed, beginning with fowl, then taking roast beef, then boiled mutton, then fish, and then some pastry,—all on the same plate, and—faugh!—portions of most of them there at the same time! No change of plate,—that would have been extravagant, and would have savoured of aristocracy. Freedom, it seemed, allowed every one to help himself; and that with his own knife and fork, which he had before used for all sorts of purposes. Such luxuries as salt-spoons and mustard-spoons are ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... thus claimed for the scenery was sometimes so extravagant as to make us look for a continuance of it, a reproach of this kind being so often made against the Americans; but we are bound to add this note, to say that we very seldom met afterwards with anything of the kind, and ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... of language thou hast taught us, And whatever eloquence thou hast inspired us with, As we praise thee For the bounty which thou hast diffused, And the mercy which thou hast spread abroad: And we pray thee to guard us From extravagant expressions and frivolous superfluities As we pray Thee to guard us From the shame of incapacity and the disgrace of hesitation: And we entreat thee to exempt us from temptation By the flattery of the admirer or connivance of the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... appraisement of the scoop proved not extravagant. The Post's five columns next morning threw the city into something like an uproar. It is doubtful if you would not have to go back to the '60's to find a newspaper story which eclipsed this one in effect. For a generation, the biography ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... joy, Sir Henry—of your bride—with all my heart. And a bonny bride she is, and well able to take her place in the world. Though you'll be rich and well to do, you'll not find her over-extravagant. And though her fortune's not much for a man like you, perhaps, she might have had less, mightn't she? ha! ha! ha! Little as it is, it will help—it will help. And you'll not find debts coming home after her; I'm sure of that. She'll keep your house well together; and your money too—but I guess ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... monuments, triumphal columns, statues and tombs sprang into being. Again, with the growth of a people, wealth increases, and every new victory assuring an added degree of ease introduces at the same time extravagant tastes; a people after enduring suffering cries out for its portion of pleasure; it was to satisfy this demand that circuses were built, and amphitheatres where the eyes could feast on imposing spectacles; private houses became more comfortable, they were improved in arrangement, they ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various

... I was beggared to begin with." He hastened to disclaim the extravagant generosity of which she accused him. "I had only three or four pounds to my name that night we met.... I haven't ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... lending each of his forepaws to the grasp of a human hand and as ready for the dance as any in that circle. His inferior nature rose halfway to meet his companions as they stooped. Other faces wore the similitude of man or woman, but distorted or extravagant, with red noses pendulous before their mouths, which seemed of awful depth and stretched from ear to ear in an eternal fit of laughter. Here might be seen the salvage man—well known in heraldry—hairy as a baboon and girdled with green leaves. By his side—a nobler ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... satisfying his doubt than by going himself to the remotest headwaters of the mighty stream. He therefore went there, for with him to think is to determine, to determine is to act. Friends tried to persuade him he was engaging in a useless and extravagant expedition, and those to whom he applied for information respecting the country through which he must pass warned him that he would have to undergo many hardships; but to all this advice he turned a deaf ear. His active, energetic, and enterprising temperament was proof against all fear of discomfort, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... quantities as factors the value of which is precisely ascertained; nor, for the purposes of the present argument, is quantitative exactness important. I employ numerical statements simply as a means of aiding the imagination to form a general and certainly not extravagant idea of the extent of geographical revolutions which man has done much to accelerate, if not, strictly ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... Eumenes with especial hatred, and frequently referred to his quarrels with Hephaestion. Eumenes, however, being a shrewd man, determined that what seemed likely to become his ruin should prove his salvation. He won Alexander's favour by inventing new and extravagant modes of showing honour to his friend, and spent money profusely in providing ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... the law that regulated their intercourse greater importance, higher improvement, and more binding force. Among these causes we may enumerate a common extraction, a common religion, similar manners, institutions, and languages; in earlier ages the authority of the See of Rome, and the extravagant claims of the imperial crown; in later times the connexions of trade, the jealousy of power, the refinement of civilization, the cultivation of science, and, above all, that general mildness of character and manners which arose from the combined ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh

... morning adventure on the beach, espied him, and with a red-mouthed huskie smile, came bounding up the trail, wriggling an extravagant and clumsy welcome. With loud whispers hissed through fiercely protruding lips, Loll tried to shoo him away, but the dog only whirled about, thumping him with a joyously wagging tail and poking a cold damp nose down the neck of ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... small lake, generally, if not always, applied to the lakes up in the mountains, and which are the feeders of those in the vallies. This address to the wind will not appear extravagant to those who have heard it at night, in a mountainous country. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... generation is sinfully extravagant. Forests, mines and soil fertility are wasted with wanton prodigality. We speak of our coal deposits and oil and gas wells as inexhaustible. We simply mean that it will be impossible for this and probably for the next generation to exhaust ...
— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst

... of any kind, even preparation for the Christmas festival, stupid and tiresome; therefore she welcomed the diversion of Harcourt's coming with double zest; and with extravagant exclamations of delight summoned him to her side. Miss Martell stood at some distance, and had turned her back towards them. Harcourt did not see her at first, but the quest of his restless eyes indicated his hope that she was there. ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... by Masui Nanzan. There is little reason to believe that Jubei's madness was assumed, a rather extravagant explanation of the more than probable fact that his well-known travels were inspired by the Sho[u]gun's government. Actual knowledge and inspection of the conditions and feelings in far-off Satsuma, made by an ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... steady respectability, and an irresistible inclination to that glittering style of untrammelled life which is believed by those who live it to be the true Bohemianism. He should be weak in character, he may be pleasant in manner and appearance, and he must be both poor and extravagant. If to these qualities be added, first a wife, young, good-looking, and in most respects similar to her husband, though of a stronger will, and secondly a friend, rich, determined, strictly unprincipled, and thoroughly unscrupulous, the conditions which produce the Tolerated ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various

... Mimble has this luminous sentence: "With the single exception of Ecuador there was no European government that the Liberator did not transform into a pure Smithocracy, and although some of them relapsed transiently into the primitive forms, and others grew into extravagant and fanciful systems begotten of the intellectual activity to which he had stirred the whole world, yet so firmly did he establish the principle that in the thirty-second century the civilized world had become, and has ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... treated her kindly to begin with, and gratified her by the handsome robes which he gave her in order that she might appear attired in German fashion at her coronation. Before long, however, he began to find fault with her extravagant habits, and complained that she had spent 2000 florins, presented to her by the city of Cologne, in one single day. Brasca himself felt obliged to remonstrate with her on her foolish tricks, especially for eating her meals on the floor instead of at table, and other bad habits ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... speak with, I must repeat what I have said to you; and as for lying, whether a philosopher can do it or not I cannot tell: I am sure I cannot do it. But though these discourses may be uneasy and ungrateful to them, I do not see why they should seem foolish or extravagant; indeed, if I should either propose such things as Plato has contrived in his 'Commonwealth,' or as the Utopians practise in theirs, though they might seem better, as certainly they are, yet they are so different from ...
— Utopia • Thomas More

... Forgetting altogether the state of her kitchen, she rushed through the slop to the flour-barrel. Flour, she had always heard, was the thing for burns and scalds. The pesky calf should be treated right, if it took the whole barrel. Scooping up an extravagant dishpanful of the white, powdery stuff, and recklessly spilling a lot of it to add to the mixture on the floor, she rushed out into the yard to apply her treatment, and, if possible, ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... pardon me for following you! You will pardon me, will you not? If I trouble or annoy you, lay the blame entirely upon my love, which I can not restrain, and which drives me at times to do the most extravagant things; call it reckless, insane love, if you will; but believe it to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... gallant English troops should be sent to his assistance, and that the fleet which was ready for service should be ordered to the Weser; for that the support which the fleet would give to the King would encourage him to advance with good heart. And then, as they added with extravagant hopefulness, the King of Sweden, who had already offered his aid, would come forward actively, if only he had some security; the Elector of Brandenburg, who had just married his sister to the King of Sweden, would declare himself; the Prince of ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... Mr H. told me. It appears that a dinner was to be given in the earlier days to some great official from England, and an English lady, who knew how such things should be done, was appointed manager. She determined that everything should be in good style, and ordered even such extravagant and unknown luxuries as napkins and finger-glasses. Among those who sat at the well-appointed table were miners, cattle-men, and so on, and one of them on sitting down took up his finger-bowl, and saying, "By golly, I'm thirsty," emptied it at a draught. Then, ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts

... performance an oppressive silence pervaded the house, then the audience, wild with excitement, burst into thunders of applause. In his dressing-room Diotti was besieged by hosts of people, congratulating him in extravagant terms. ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa

... mining and sawmill men that through reckless and extravagant methods of lumbering they were bringing on a timber famine by great strides; he characterized their whole policy as one of utter disregard for the future of the country; and he demanded forcible and immediate action on the part of the Federal authorities. These pioneers had seen uncounted ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... These extravagant misrepresentations do infinite damage to the Confederate cause and to the Confederate leaders in history. They reveal in strong light the method by which those leaders were willing to impose and actually did impose upon the almost unlimited credulity of the white population of their ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... was that Malvey had been only too sincere in his boorishness toward Boca; Flores equally sincere in his indifference, and Boca herself actually frightened by the turn Malvey's drink had taken. That old Flores had knocked Pete out with a bottle was the one and extravagant act that even Malvey himself could hardly have anticipated had the whole miserable affair been prearranged. In his drunken stupidity Flores blindly imagined that the young stranger was the ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... seemed, indeed, scarcely wise, because of the uncertainty of events. Giles knew nothing of legal procedure, but he did know that for him to step up to Grace as a lover before the bond which bound her was actually dissolved was simply an extravagant dream of her father's overstrained mind. He pitied Melbury for his almost childish enthusiasm, and saw that the aging man must have suffered acutely to be weakened to ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... place in Holland which gave birth to this heroic line. He was strong-built, long-limbed, and as stout in soul as in body; a fit successor to the warrior sachem of yore, and, like him, delighting in extravagant enterprises and hardy deeds of arms. But, before I enter upon the exploits of this worthy cock of the Boost, it is fitting I should throw some light upon the state of the mansion, and of the surrounding country, at ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... and so it has all my colours; the rest of me is nothing but a root, fit for the ground and the dark. And if I write all this egotism, ... it is for shame; and because I feel ashamed of having made a fuss about what is not worth it; and because you are extravagant in caring so for a permission, which will be nothing to you afterwards. Not that I am not touched by your caring so at all! I am deeply touched now; and presently, ... I shall understand. Come then. There will be truth and simplicity for you in any case; and a friend. And do not answer this—I ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... late that night when Micky turned up at the Delands'. He had taken extravagant pains with his toilet, lingering over it as long as possible. Ever since the arrival of that parcel from Esther, he had been trying to make up his mind to take the irrevocable step, and ask Marie Deland to be his wife. He was miserably sure that she ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres

... that when a man is raging in a fever, the cat cast ower him will cure him; applied to them whom we hear telling extravagant things, ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop

... commonplace, everyday life, but a good and easy one—had not a trouble, not a care, was rich in bees, in sheep and in olives. Then forsooth I must marry the niece of Megacles, the son of Megacles; I belonged to the country, she was from the town; she was a haughty, extravagant woman, a true Coesyra.[476] On the nuptial day, when I lay beside her, I was reeking of the dregs of the wine-cup, of cheese and of wool; she was redolent with essences, saffron, tender kisses, the love of spending, of good cheer and of wanton delights. I will ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... constrained, which, however, none of the young men remarked, far less allowed themselves to imagine that his sudden retreat, during the first drinking, perhaps occurred from the sole object of avoiding it. But soon was he again one of the most extravagant; promised each youth who would study theology a living on his estate when he should once get it into his own hands; and proposed that the Latin disputations should commence with him, and on the following Friday. Otto Thostrup, however, should be of the party—if he chose, of ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... held the money in his hand, his love for prodigality once more awoke. He rode pampered steeds, clothed himself in the finest furs, went back to his wine, and led such an extravagant life that the money gradually came to an end. Instead of wearing brocade he had to wear cotton, and instead of riding horseback he went to the dogs. Finally he was again running about barefoot and in rags as before, and did not know how to satisfy his hunger. Once more he stood in ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various

... child and kept Christine in the country far away in Paris, meaning to provide a good dowry in due course. At forty-two she had not got the dowry together, nor even begun to get it together, and she was ill. Feckless, dilatory and extravagant, she saw as in a vision her own shortcomings and how they might involve disaster for Christine. Christine, she perceived, was a girl imperfectly educated—for in the affair of Christine's education the mother had not ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... surely an authorial topic. The absurdly extravagant profusion in which thousands of pounds are now being continually flung away in advertising, is one which was never approved by me, and as long as my books remained in print, at my suggestion they all got sold without it. At present there are almost none in the market ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... in luxury with Alexandre Dumas and Lamartine, who, before the Revolution of 1848, were the most prodigal and extravagant authors in the five continents. For anything like a chance of finding his elusive millions, he would have gone to China. Indeed, on one occasion, he took it into his head he would start, together with ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... relaxation are passed in wild and extravagant frolics amongst the lofty forests of palms and spicy groves of the Torrid Zone, and amidst the aromatic and beautiful flowering vegetable productions of that region. He has fruits delicious to taste, and as companions, the unsophisticated daughters of Africa and the Indies. It would be supposed that ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... and needy men are wont to be clamorous. Then—as now, as always— the sufferers looked about them for a cause of their distress, and found it in any event that was nearest at hand. But we know that the style of living after the plague was incomparably more luxurious and extravagant than it was before. The country was producing less, it may be; but the people, man for man, were ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... literature and philosophy, his collections of curios, such as the bourgeois of to-day does not yet understand, his furniture, his pottery, his pewter-work, and particularly his bookbindings, of which he was very proud. And he was turning his wife into a copy of himself, perverting her by his extravagant opinions and his promiscuous friendships, so that the little devotee who had been confided to his keeping was now on the high road to every kind of folly. She still went to mass and partook of the holy communion; but she was each day growing more and more familiar with wrong-doing. A disaster must ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... their knowledge. The fact that the bank controls, and in some cases substantially owns, and by its money supports some of the leading presses of the country is now more clearly established. Editors to whom it loaned extravagant sums in 1831 and 1832, on unusual time and nominal security, have since turned out to be insolvent, and to others apparently in no better condition accommodations still more extravagant, on terms more unusual, and some without any security, have ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson

... Caecina had deserted him and had been imprisoned by the army. On his insensate nature joy had more effect than trouble. He returned in triumph to Rome and at a crowded meeting praised the devotion of the troops in extravagant terms. He gave orders for the imprisonment of Publilius Sabinus, the prefect of the Guards, on the ground of his intimacy with Caecina, and appointed Alfenus ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... then, follow that 'Man,' as the subject of contradictory attributes, is a nonentity? This doctrine, or something like it, has been seriously entertained; but if to any reader it seem extravagant (as it certainly does to me), he will no doubt find an error in the above arguments. Perhaps ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... But a man, having filled it to the brim, would seize the bale and drag it along the flooring to the hatch, unhook a descending bucket, hook on the full one, sing out an inarticulate cry, and drag the empty back to the coal to be filled in its turn—all with a never-lessening display of extravagant muscular force. ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson

... to stay and play awhile. There will be a few weeks more. One will find extravagant diversions in Munich during the next few weeks. I am already Egelhofer's right-hand man. I will organize the Soviet army, assist in the conduct of the government, try to buy coal from Rathenau in Berlin, make speeches, compose earth-shaking proclamations, and end up smoking a cigarette ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... better put them off, as I have asked Daisy and Frank Mutlar to come." I said I could not think of doing such a thing. Lupin said: "Then I will send a wire, and put off Daisy." I suggested that a post-card or letter would reach her quite soon enough, and would not be so extravagant. ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith

... much pleased with both. The man seemed to understand his business thoroughly; without making extravagant promises, he expressed himself willing to serve my purpose to the utmost of his power, at any reasonable risk to himself, and spoke very moderately about the horse, asking for nothing more than a fair trial of his merits. I ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... not dreamed of now; a thousand vanities and baubles that will soon erase my poor and hollow claim from her recollection? Can you suppose that, if she marry another, her husband will ever consent to a child's romance? And even were all this possible, were it possible that girls were not extravagant, and that husbands had no common-sense, is it for me, Lord Vargrave, to be a mendicant upon reluctant bounty,—a poor cousin, a pensioned led-captain? Heaven knows I have as little false pride as any man, but still ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... on the tea-kettle, too," she told herself, "and be real comfortable and extravagant for once, and have a cup of tea ready when they come," for the good lady had no intention of going to bed, assuring herself she would not sleep if she did. So, moving about, she refilled the lamp, and drawing the machine ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin

... a style above his means—the companion of men of higher social position than himself, profuse in their habits and expenditure. That he lived in the midst of society of this kind can hardly be doubted. It is more doubtful how far his own habits had become those of an extravagant man of the world. His chief companion was one who remained bound to him through all the rest of his life, Pascal’s influence having drawn him also from the world when the time of his own change came. This was the Duc de Roannez, a young man of fewer years than himself, who ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch

... phenomenon: that of the artist endowed with all the powers of craftsmanship yet serving an end neither basically spiritual nor basically aesthetic, but definitely professional. We have George Vasari's word for it; and Vasari's blame upon the extravagant and too-well-beloved Lucrezia. To-day we are so accustomed to the idea of the professional attitude to art that we can accept it in Andrea without concern. Not that other and earlier artists were unconcerned with the aspect ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)

... the extravagant fancy that it is possible, except in some rare instances of premature thoughtfulness, to turn inward into deep habitual reflection, the spirit that naturally goes outward in these vivacious, active, careless beings, when we assert that it is possible to teach many of ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... the People: finally, that Letters in the King's Name should be dispatched to the Pope, according to the Tenor following. Philip by the Grace of God, King of France, to Boniface, who stiles himself universal Bishop, little or no greeting. Be it known to thy great Folly and extravagant Temerity, that in things temporal we have no Superior but God; and that the Disposal of the Vacancies of certain Churches and Prebends belong to us of Regal Right; that it is our due to receive the profits of ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman

... his warning "Th' extravagant and erring spirit hies "To his confine, whether in sea or air, "Or earth, ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... that extravagant statement, I can only measure by the preposterous amount of money the melody has brought me. Perhaps there is a magic about it. For myself, I cannot hear it—ground on a street-organ, given on the stage, played on a phonograph record or delicately ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram

... extraordinary means the President used, as having their ships nigh at hand, and being determined to set fire unto the city and retreat. They had now been at Porto Bello fifteen days, in which space of time they had lost many of their men, both by the unhealthiness of the country and the extravagant debaucheries ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring

... long as in England. A good many students live with their families, which is cheaper than living in lodgings; and as nearly all classes are represented, there is a considerable difference in their standards of life. Some are certainly extravagant, as in all Universities, which tends to raise prices, but, on the other hand, many of them are men whose parents can ill afford the expense, but are tempted by the value which attaches to a University career in Holland, and these bring the average ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... industry of Mrs. Carmichael, who hurried from one Chinese lantern to the other, breathless but determined. The task was doubtless an ignominious one for an Anglo-Indian lady of position, but Mrs. Carmichael, who acted as a sort of counterbalance to her husband's extravagant hospitality, cared not at all. England, half-pay and all its attendant horrors, loomed in the near future, and economy had to ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie

... knew what was coming than do troops under sudden fire. Indeed, there were the same extravagant gestures and contortions as attend wounds and deaths in war; the very same uncanny cessations of speech—for the trombone was cut off at midslide, even as a man drops with a syllable on his tongue. They clawed, they slapped, they fled, leaving ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... carrying fertility and beauty in its course, and altogether forming a rich and charming landscape." They then arrived at Wa-wa, a large city, through which the Houssa caravans pass, and which has a population of 15,000. The inhabitants are dissolute and extravagant, spending all their money in drinking and festivity. The ladies were very attentive to the English, especially a fat widow called Zuma, who even pressed marriage upon Clapperton, after she had exhibited to him all her wealth. She afterwards gave him ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... know,—that so many men love me! But, after all, what sort of love is it? It is just as when you and I, when we see something nice in a shop, call it a dear duck of a thing, and tell somebody to go and buy it, let the price be ever so extravagant. I know my own position, Laura. I'm a dear ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... in the mine. With an obstinacy, however, that amounted almost to a moral conviction, he refused to include the house and potato-patch in the property. When the company had yielded the point, he declined, with equal tenacity, to part with it to outside speculators on even the most extravagant offers. In vain Mrs. Mulrady protested; in vain she pointed out to him that the retention of the evidence of his former humble occupation was a green blot ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte

... many months, Finley and his companions returned to North Carolina, with the most glowing accounts of the new country which they had found. Their story of the beauty of those realms was so extravagant, that many regarded them as gross exaggerations. It subsequently appeared, however, that they were essentially true. A more lovely and attractive region cannot be found on earth. It is man's inhumanity to man, mainly, which has ever caused ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... Pinzons also, in all probability, exerted their influence in quelling the murmurs of their townsmen and encouraging them to proceed, when ready to rebel against Columbus. These circumstances may have become mixed up in the vague recollections of the seamen who gave the foregoing extravagant testimony, and who were evidently disposed to exalt the merits of the Pinzons at the expense of Columbus. They were in some measure prompted also in their replies by the written interrogatories put by order of the fiscal, which ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... few forces which remained faithful to the old monarch. He possessed equal fierceness of spirit with his brother, and surpassed him in craft and vigilance. His very name was a war-cry among his soldiery, who had the most extravagant opinion of his prowess. ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... reply to many long exhortations in his parents' letters, and especially in his mother's, couched in the extravagant language of the very pious of those days, to seek first the welfare of ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... one thing I am a little concern'd for you, Tories, that your Absoloms and Achitophels, and the rest of your Grinning Satyres against the Whiggs, have this one unpardonable Fault, That the Lash is more against a David, than an Achitophel; whilst the running down of the PLOT at so extravagant a rate, savours of very little less (pardon the Expression) than ridiculing of Majesty it self, and turning all those several Royal Speeches to the Parliament on that Subject, onely into those double-tongu'd Oracles that sounded one thing, ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.

... may be fixed at from 200 pounds, as a minimum, to 300 pounds a-year; the latter being the utmost needful. But a fool may spend any amount, and get nothing for it. The fashion of drinking has gone out to a great extent; and the present race of undergraduates are not more random and extravagant than any set of young men of the same age and number would be if thrown together for two ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... wicked and extravagant as in the days of the Regency. Madame Viardot in the "Orphee," most splendid. An opera of "Faust," a very sad and noble rendering of that sad and noble story. Stage management remarkable for some ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... name among the French for what is known as Jingoism among the English, i. e. an extravagant zeal for the glory of one's country or party, from one Chauvin, who made threatening displays of his devotion to Napoleon ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... remarkable, that even among the humorists the same simplicity should have prevailed. Our own Hogarth, both the Tenierses, Hans Holbein, Ostade, even Callot himself, with all his extravagant and capricious fantasies, fall into the general rule; and the lady artists, Diana Chisi, Angelica Kaufmann, and Anna Maria Schurman, may be cited as equally exhibiting the same simplicity. There are some, indeed, in whom this affectation of simplicity ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various

... think I'll telephone them—they're stopping at the Savoy—extravagant people!—to say that I'll run in this afternoon and have tea. Oh! and, by the way," she added, as he turned towards the house, "there's another item. Lord Leighton has been called home suddenly on some business, and will be here ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... Vivie were at last alone within the charmed circle of the Botanic Gardens. They made their way slowly to the great Palm House and thence up twisty iron steps to a nook like a tree refuge in New Guinea, among palm boles and extravagant ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... of this kind, Jomini advanced rapidly to the rank of colonel and brigadier-general, and at the resumption of hostilities in 1813 was chief-of-staff to Marshal Ney. Seduced, however, by the extravagant promises made by the Russians, he deserted, in possession of much information about Napoleon's plans of campaign. It was fear that on hearing of this defection Napoleon would change these plans, that induced the allies ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... do, in that building means backing your belief in your town—yours to you and peculiarly. Confound all other towns whatsoever. Behind the crowd of business men the weekly town paper plays as a stockwhip plays on a mob of cattle. There is honour, heaped, extravagant, imperial for the good—the employer of labour, the builder of stores, the spender of money; there is abuse, savage and outrageous, for the bad, the man who 'buys out of the town,' the man who intends to go, the sitter on the fence; with persuasion and invitation in prose, verse, and ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... not the retrenchment of an extravagant assertion, but the expansion of one which was faltering and inadequate. The traditional statement did not need paring down so as to pass the meshes of a new and exacting criticism. It was itself a net meant ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... candle-wedge. It was a little frame of rings or cups with pins, by which our frugal ancestors held up the last dying bit of burning candle. They were sometimes of pewter with iron pins, sometimes wholly of brass or iron. They have nearly all disappeared since new and more extravagant ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... difficulty had been to get it heard and considered and this "militancy" secured. The anti-suffrage press believed that it would kill the movement and it was this belief which encouraged them to give it the widest possible publicity. The wilder and more extravagant the "militants" became the more they were quoted, described and advertised in every way. The sort of "copy" which anti-suffrage papers demanded was supplied by them in cartloads and not at all by law-abiding suffragists, who were an immense majority of the whole. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... master!" cried Charolais in a tone of extravagant relief; and he danced round the ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson

... dreadfully weary, but, scarcely understanding what had occasioned the change in my thoughts, I felt no longer any great aversion from the labor imposed. I had become most unaccountably interested—nay, even excited. Perhaps there was something, amid all the extravagant demeanor of Legrand—some air of forethought, or of deliberation—which impressed me. I dug eagerly, and now and then caught myself actually looking, with something that very much resembled expectation, for the fancied treasure, ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... daughters followed her to the carriage, bowing and uttering good wishes in the extravagant metaphor of their country; and as they drove away, Hope waved her hand to them as she sank closer against ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... story is like the dream of a child. We therefore expect the Anti-Willians to endeavour to disable the evidence of Jonson, Heywood, Heminge, and Condell. Their attempts take the shape of the most extravagant and complex conjectures; with certain petty objections to Ben's various estimates of the MERITS of the plays. He is constant in his witness to the authorship. To these efforts of despair we return later, when we hope to justify what ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang

... restrained on the other hand by their habitual reverence for their feudal princes. Artevelde stepped forth, and in their startled ears pronounced the word "Resist!" His eloquence was well seconded by the grasping severity of a needy and extravagant court, until gradually combining their wrath and intelligence with the energies of the populace jealous of their rights, the merchants and citizens of the cities of Flanders rose upon the bears and butterflies who infested and robbed them, and, thrusting them forth, set ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various

... throng that theatre. The manager will reap a fortune, and so will Lola Montez; and those short-sighted conductors of the Press will be begging for tickets and quarrelling among themselves as to who can say the most extravagant things in her favour. Public curiosity will be gratified at any price; and if Lola Montez is a capital dancer she will soon dance down all opposition. With what grace can the public talk about virtue in a public ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... wandering round them full of a fresh set of ideas. All these many-hued dresses which covered the sands like nosegays, these pretty stuffs, those showy parasols, the fictitious grace of tightened waists, all the ingenious devices of fashion from the smart little shoe to the extravagant hat, the insinuating charm of gesture, voice and smile, all the coquettish airs in short displayed on this sea-shore, suddenly struck him as stupendous efflorescences of female depravity. All these bedizened women aimed at pleasing, bewitching, and deluding some man. They ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... bestowed a number of valuable shares in the Grand Company upon the brother of Angelique, making the fortune of that extravagant young nobleman. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... the taste, she showed, yet not displaying her superiority—the address, temper, and patience, with which she at last accomplished her purpose, and prevented Lady Clonbrony from doing any thing preposterously absurd, or exorbitantly extravagant. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... is not a natural fact, but a purely human construction. But, if admitted, it is a two edged weapon. For, if assumed anywhere, it must be assumed to exist everywhere. And designing intelligence must be made responsible for the whole scheme. But this the most extravagant piety refuses to do. Either we have the primitive theory of a devil who divides with God the responsibility for the state of the world, or we have the plea that evil may be only good disguised, or good in the making, ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... extravagant," she said fretfully. "But really it's too bad of Nora to say that I could have my old blue one done up. She never seems to care how her mother looks. If all this fuss is going to be made about Constance and I am to take her out, ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... nothing to wish for, she naturally imagined she must be ill—an impression which was most assiduously promoted by her medical attendant, Dr. Wosky, and her handmaid Agnes: both of whom, doubtless for good reasons, encouraged all her extravagant notions. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... should know better," he replied; "no, depend upon it, (with a gallant bow,) that in addressing Mrs. Weston I should understand whom I might praise without any danger of being thought extravagant in my terms." ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... celebrated dwellers in mediaeval Lombard Street was William de la Pole, father of Michael, Earl of Suffolk. He was king's merchant or factor to Edward III., and in 1338, at Antwerp, lent that warlike and extravagant monarch a sum equivalent to L400,000 of our current money. He received several munificent grants of Crown land, and was created chief baron of the exchequer and a knight banneret. He is always styled in public instruments "dilectus mercator et valectus noster." His son ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... that for any of them to thrust forward, and reach at the name of wise, is but to make themselves the more remarkable fools, such an endeavour, being but a swimming against the stream, nay, the turning the course of nature, the bare attempting whereof is as extravagant as the effecting of it is impossible: for as it is a trite proverb, That an ape will be an ape, though clad in purple; so a woman will be a woman, a fool, whatever disguise she takes up. And yet there is no reason women should take it amiss to be thus charged; ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus

... hearsay evidence to give. They had heard this and that report, they suspected something else, they had been told that certain things had been said or done. Nothing definite could be obtained, and there was no proof whatever of any of the extravagant and incredible charges. Similar proceedings took place in Lincoln and York, and also in Scotland and Ireland; and in all places the results were the same, and the matter ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... a statement which had appeared in several popular histories, that, during the eight years of the Revolutionary War, the thirteen colonies sent two hundred and thirty-two thousand men to the Continental army. He traced the origin of this extravagant statement. In 1790, General Knox, then Secretary of War, presented to President Washington a report on the number of troops furnished during the war. He showed the number credited to the several States, making no distinction between those who served for a shorter or a longer ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... Alexis left upon its register the only autograph written in person in a public place, bestowing upon the institution the most extravagant encomiums, both himself and his suite of traveled and titled gentlemen pronouncing it a wonder ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... enjoyed in detail, the attraction of passion was almost nil with him. Constant satiety had weakened in his heart the sentiment of love. Like old men and people disillusioned, he had no longer anything but extravagant caprices, ruinous tastes, fantasies, which, once satisfied, left no pleasant memory in his heart. Amongst young people love is the finest of the emotions, it makes the life of the soul blossom, it nourishes by ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac

... then only distinguished, admiral was sixty-two years old at the time of assuming a command where he was to win an undying fame. Of distinguished courage and professional skill, but with extravagant if not irregular habits, money embarrassments had detained him in exile in France at the time the war began. A boast of his ability to deal with the French fleet, if circumstances enabled him to go back to England, ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... special rates for a period of years, and our minimum meter rate was charged in all other cases, regardless of the quantity of water consumed. In most instances these special rates have since been found much too low, parties paying in this way being exceedingly extravagant in the use of elevators. However, the object sought was obtained, and now they are very extensively used. In fact, so much has their use increased, that the question is no longer how to encourage their more general adoption, but how to properly govern ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various

... was still alive. His lordship's reasons for effacing himself, and so completely deceiving his friends and the world, I naturally could not divine; but I knew that such things had happened before, and also I gathered that he was a man who would hesitate at no caprice, however extravagant, once it had suggested itself to him as expedient for the satisfaction ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett

... all the extravagant excitability of his southern blood, beat his forehead and his breast, bemoaned himself as a betrayed and ruined man, and bewailed his wife and children. Rufinus, however, put an end to his ravings. He had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... you like to hear what moderate wishes life brings one to at last? I used to be very ambitious,—wasteful, extravagant, and luxurious in all my fancies. Read too much in the "Arabian Nights." Must have the lamp,—couldn't do without the ring. Exercise every morning on the brazen horse. Plump down into castles as full of little milk-white princesses as a nest is of young sparrows. All ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... the house. Many of the half-naked impostors, who perambulate the streets of London in the daytime, and obtain a livelihood by their deceptions, after having thrown off their bandages, crutches, &c., may be found here in their true character; some regaling themselves in the most extravagant manner; others gambling or playing cards, while the worst of language proceeds from their lips. Quarrels and fights are very common, and the cry of murder is frequently heard. The public-houses ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... puns remarkable for an absurdity so extravagant as to be noteworthy. There is a string of derivations of names of places constructed ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... Sassafras chips were sometimes added for giving the drink a flavour. Salep obtained from the tubers of foreign Orchids was specially esteemed; and even now that sold in Indian bazaars is so highly valued for its fine qualities that most extravagant prices are paid for it by wealthy Orientals. Also in Persia and Turkey it is in great repute for recruiting the exhausted vitality of aged, and enervated persons. In this country it may be purchased ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... of road reform was not extravagant. He mainly urged that only two good tracks should be maintained, and the road be not allowed to spread out into as many as half-a-dozen very bad ones, presenting high ridges and deep ruts, full of big stones, and many quagmires. Breaking out into ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... personal violence.[204] Luis de Leon was not behindhand: he sought to have Zumel disqualified on technical grounds, and further accused his opponent of breaking the law governing elections. In the heat of conflict, the very best of men seem able to persuade themselves that the most extravagant assertions are true. No one but the candidates can have taken these amenities seriously. When the battle was ended on August 14, 1578, Luis de Leon, who received 301 votes, was in a majority of seventy-nine.[205] This check appears ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly

... Indian chintz, but in such simple toilet had still more distinctively that air of youthful modesty which he had found so charmingly tantalizing. He hasted to her side. He blessed his good angel for sending him such an enchanting surprise. He said the most extravagant things, in the most truthful manner, as he watched the blushes of pleasure come and go on her lovely face, and saw by glimpses, under the veiling eyelids, that tender light that never was on sea or ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr

... could not help it, they mocked the public provision which, leaving no interval between disgraceful squalor and ludicrous splendor, accommodates our democratic menage to the taste of the richest and most extravagant plebeian amongst us. He, unhappily, minds danger and oppression as little as he minds money, so long as he has a spectacle and a sensation, and it is this ruthless imbecile who will have lace curtains to the steamboat ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... that it was one of the royal caprices of a recent tenant of the palace to emulate her chaste prototype of the silver bow by choosing this artistic basin for her ablutions, a sufficient number of civil guards being posted to prevent the approach of Castilian Actaeons. Ford aptly remarks of these extravagant follies: "The yoke of building kings is grievous, and especially when, as St. Simon said of Louis XIV. and his Versailles, 'II se ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... but she had always been so self-centred. Why had she never fallen in love like other girls? There had been a boy at Brighton when she was at school there—quite a nice boy, who had written her wildly extravagant love-letters. It must have cost him half his pocket-money to get them smuggled in to her. Why had she only been amused at them? They might have been beautiful if only one had read them with sympathy. One day he had caught her alone on the Downs. Evidently he had made it his business to hang ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... the supply were inexhaustible. We are now beginning to realize that we have been spending our capital, at a disastrous rate, and it is time we should take a real, concerted, national effort to replenish it. I put forward this proposal, not a very extravagant one, as ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... pronounce them a people of general intelligence, refinement of manners, personal accomplishments, and true politeness. As to their style of dress and mode of living, were we disposed to make any criticism, we should say that they were extravagant. In refined and elevated conversation, they would certainly bear a comparison with the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... Landor used, in his "tumultuous" fashion, to proclaim that he would set fire to the house and burn it to the ground to prevent its being profaned by less sacred associations. He had done things even more extravagant than this, and would take boisterous roars of laughter as ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald

... too just Occasion to be jealous of me. Would to God that he had beat me, and you had died in his Stead! Zadig more astonish'd, and more exasperated than ever he was in all his Life, said to her: Really, Madam, you put on such extravagant Airs, that you tempt me, pretty as you are, to thresh you most cordially in my Turn; but I scorn to concern my self any more about you. Upon this, he remounted his Dromedary, and made the best of his Way towards the Village: But before he had got near a hundred Yards, he return'd upon an ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire

... presents are given to the living, and offerings to the dead, the poor are feasted, and the general din is heightened by messengers perambulating the streets with gongs, calling them to the different banquets. When the fortnight of rejoicing is over its signs are removed, and after the outbreak of extravagant expenditure the Chinese return to their quiet, industrious habits ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... have your share. Yes, I like this notion. It grows on me. I'd like to earn some money to do what I please with. You'll be surprised to see what strange and extravagant tastes I'll develop!" ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe

... you will come into habitual contact with men of every grade, make special associates only of those whose influence on your character is felt to be good. Some men love to tell extravagant stories, to indulge in vulgar wit, to exult in a swaggering carriage, to pride themselves on their coarse manners, to boast of their heroism, and to give utterance to feelings of revenge against the enemy. All this is injurious to young and impressible minds. If you admire such things, you will ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy

... except at this: Pish! you are too timorous, and full of doubt. Then he, a patient, shall reject all physic, 'Cause the physician tells him, you are sick: Or, if I say, that he is vicious, You will not hear of virtue. Come, you are fond. Shall I be so extravagant, to think, That happy judgments, and composed spirits, Will challenge me for taxing such as these? I ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson

... packed the gifts which she had bought for her father and Evelyn and Ida, and took them to the express office. The day after that she received the remembrances of which Ida spoke. They were very pretty. Aunt Maria thought them extravagant. Ida had sent her a tiny chatelaine watch, and her father a ring set with a little diamond. Maria knew perfectly well how her father's heart ached when he sent the ring. She never for one moment doubted him. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... that Carrie Cockayne avoided her: and what those furtive nods of the head and stolen smiles at her could mean? On the other hand, how had she offended Mrs. Cockayne? Happily, Mrs. Rowe was on Lucy's side; for it had pleased Mrs. Cockayne to show her social superiority by extravagant coldness and formality whenever she had occasion to address "the landlady." One thing Mrs. Cockayne admitted she could NOT understand—viz., Why Jane the servant took so much upon herself with her mistress; and what all the mystery was about a Mr. Charles, who seemed to ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold

... same courses I now pursue. But look you; I know not what may be the amount of the annuity you can raise. I shall not, however, require more than will satisfy wants, which, if not so scanty as your own, are not at least very extravagant or very refined. As for the rest, if there be any surplus, in God's name keep it for yourself, and rest assured that, so far as I am concerned, you shall be molested ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... months. Martin and Barney were much annoyed at this; for the former was impatient to penetrate further into the interior, and the latter had firmly made up his mind to visit the diamond mines, about which he entertained the most extravagant notions. He did not, indeed, know in the least how to get to these mines, nor even in which direction they lay; but he had a strong impression that as long as he continued travelling he was approaching gradually ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... gathered around them as they stood talking. The speckled chicken, who, as a result of being brought up "by hand," was developing an extravagant fondness for human society, came up peeping shrilly, evidently under the impression that in so sizable a gathering, there must be some one who had nothing better to do than minister to his wants. Hobo, too, made ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith

... account of De la Salle's Expedition, says: "They are so extravagant as to believe that every thing in the world has a spirit. It is upon this principle that are grounded all the foolish superstitions of their jugglers or Manitous, who are their priests ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... to himself, "and I must manage to struggle through this dull season some way or another. I will venture to run in debt a little, I think; for any way is preferable to reducing our household expenditures, which are by no means extravagant. At all events, Lizzie must not know what my circumstances are, for she would insist upon a change in our style of living, and revive the subject of doing ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... extravagant exaggeration of American humour it is hardly necessary to give examples. This, to the ordinary observer, has perhaps been always its salient feature; and stock examples will occur to everyone. It is easy to see how readily this form of humour can ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... that the judges saw there was no effort, and suspected something big might be yet in store to-night. At the end of her song she did let out for a moment, and, at this well-timed foretaste of her power, there was applause, but nothing extravagant. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... here as your doctor"; and Mahony drew up a blind and opened a window. Instantly the level sun-rays flooded the room; and the air that came in with them smacked of the sea. Just outside the window a quince-tree in full blossom reared extravagant masses of pink snow against the blue overhead; beyond it a covered walk of vines shone golden-green. There was not a cloud in the sky. To turn back to the musty room from all this lush and lovely life was like ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... perhaps, on the whole, would be thought incongruous. Gentlemen, I cannot pretend that our position either at home or abroad is in my opinion satisfactory. At home, at a period of immense prosperity, with a people contented and naturally loyal, we find to our surprise the most extravagant doctrines professed and the fundamental principles of our most valuable institutions impugned, and that, too, by persons of some authority. Gentlemen, this startling inconsistency is accounted for, in my mind, by the circumstances under which the present administration was ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... one with edges and mingling, this makes it show when there is opposition, this makes it show a sheet. And yet a plaything is honorable and an extravagant silence is well spent and surely if the temper show that then being happy is everything. Resembling is not a suspicion. It is autocratic. There is no rebuke. A fence is not furnished. No mind is matter. ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein

... which the inspiration of the famous leader no doubt partly explains. This plan, which had been formulating itself in Nelson's mind as far back as the pursuit of the French fleet to the West Indies, may be regarded as the product of his ripest experience and genius; the praise is perhaps not extravagant that "it seems to gather up and coordinate every tactical principle ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... the other. "He's assisted three or four score young men to start in business in the last year, to my certain knowledge, by lending them sums ranging from one to three thousand dollars. And it's the most wasteful and extravagant ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne

... that such novel duties would be likely to produce among a group of Indian warriors, with whom it was a species of religious principle never to forget a benefit, or to forgive an injury. Fortunately, the previous explanations of Hist had prepared the minds of the Hurons for something extravagant, and most of that which to them seemed inconsistent and paradoxical, was accounted for by the fact that the speaker possessed a mind that was constituted differently from those of most of the human race. Still there were one or two old men who had heard similar doctrines from the missionaries, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... fused materials, that heat—but never water—was always the agent by which the induration and crystallisation of rock-materials (even siliceous conglomerate, limestone and rock-salt) had been effected! These extravagant "anti-Wernerian" views the young student might well regard as not one whit less absurd and repellant than the doctrine of the "aqueous precipitation" of basalt. There is no evidence that Darwin, even if ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... did not really burn! The institution was at first derided, then it triumphed and prevailed in such fame and greatness that, shining forth like a new sun, it consumed the splendor of the lesser lights of heaven, eclipsing the glitter of all those academies—the Thunderstruck, the Extravagant, the Humid, the Tipsy, the Imbeciles, and the like—which had hitherto formed the glory ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... the meantime formed many conjectures on the origin of this strange sound, which were as contradictory as they were extravagant. It is unnecessary to relate every particular: in short, whenever Antonelli supped at home, the alarming noise was heard at the same hour, sometimes stronger, at others weaker. This occurrence ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various

... standing in front of the fireplace, warming himself and filling a pipe. The flames behind him made an aureole in his extravagant white hair and beard. He smiled and puffed slowly at his pipe. ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke

... life does not break its sad news in advance. Dreams are free, and in their flights of fancy young folks may be as extravagant as they wish. There may be breakers ahead, and trials, days of discouragement and despair, but life tells us nothing of them ...
— Making the House a Home • Edgar A. Guest

... IX. down to that of Philippe le Bel, who was the most extravagant of kings, and at the same time the most ingenious in raising funds for the State treasury, the financial movement of Europe took root, and eventually became centralised in Italy. In Florence was presented an example ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... be observed in all our operations. And we protest, most solemnly protest, against the adoption of your views, as alike destructive of the ends of justice, of policy, and of humanity. No wild dream of the wildest enthusiast was ever more extravagant than that of turning loose upon society two millions of blacks, idle and therefore worthless, vicious and therefore dangerous, ignorant and therefore incapable of appreciating and enjoying the blessings of freedom. Could your wishes be realized, your gratulation would be quickly changed into mourning, ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... awarded to him for his prowess in war, has been so materially reduced by his inordinate passion for play, that although he appears at Court, and is a favourite, the demon Poverty stares him in the face. But this is a vile world, and half one hears is not to be believed. He is certainly extravagant, fond of women, and fond of wine; but all these foibles are overshadowed with so much glory as scarcely to remain perceptible. Here is the Palace," said Tom, directing his Cousin's attention to the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... an extensive system of internal improvements, in the form of railroads and canals, altogether beyond the actual needs of transportation for the then existing population of the State, and the consequent reckless creation of a State debt for money borrowed at extravagant interest and liberal commissions. The State underwent a season of speculative intoxication, in which, by the promised and expected rush of immigration and the swelling currents of its business, its farms were suddenly to become villages, its ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... of its revolution in an orbit of its own. What I dared not expect from constitutions of Government and whole nations, I hoped from religion, and a small company of chosen individuals, formed a plan, as harmless as it was extravagant, of trying the experiment of human perfectibility on the banks of the Susquehannah; where our little society, in its second generation, was to have combined the innocence of the patriarchal age with the knowledge and genuine ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... met in December last the business of the country had just been crushed by one of those periodical revulsions which are the inevitable consequence of our unsound and extravagant system of bank credits and inflated currency. With all the elements of national wealth in abundance, our manufactures were suspended, our useful public and private enterprises were arrested, and thousands of laborers were ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan

... advantage. The breeches were of the same cloth, but showed little, as silk stockings were drawn high up over them, almost meeting the vest or waistcoat, which was always long. He had shoes with high though not extravagant heels, and gilt buckles; a gold cord with tassels adorned his jaunty three-cornered hat; and his girdle and sword belt were of gold ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green



Words linked to "Extravagant" :   extravagance, prodigal, exuberant, unrestrained, wasteful



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