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Homely   Listen
adjective
Homely  adj.  (compar. homelier; superl. homeliest)  
1.
Belonging to, or having the characteristics of, home; domestic; familiar; intimate. (Archaic) "With all these men I was right homely, and communed with, them long and oft." "Their homely joys, and destiny obscure."
2.
Plain; unpretending; rude in appearance; unpolished; as, a homely garment; a homely house; homely fare; homely manners. "Now Strephon daily entertains His Chloe in the homeliest strains."
3.
Of plain or coarse features; uncomely; ugly; usually used of people, especially women; contrary to handsome. "None so homely but loves a looking-glass."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Homely" Quotes from Famous Books



... Parisians. But deeper than this; Moliere was by nature a great satirist. I call him a great satirist, because of the affluence of inward substance that fed his satiric appetite—namely, a clear, moral sensibility, distinguishing by instinct the true from the false, rare intellectual nimbleness, homely common sense, shrewd insight into men, a keen wit, with vivid perception of the comic and absurd. For a satirist so variously endowed, the stage was the best field, and for Moliere especially, gifted as he was with histrionic genius. The vices and abuses, the follies and ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... light, born of a life's devotion and the happy memories of half a century, lead me to mere naturalness and the use of simple homely words, even my own native telegraphese! that I may haply blunder at length into some fit form of expression which ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... a joke. "How you got here? Not on horseback! A little ship brought you, but to the ship I carried you on these shoulders of mine. They are broad, they bore you to the shore. And now you are safe at home, on your own land, the right land, the native land, where amid familiar pastures and homely joys, under the rays of the old sun, from death and wounds you blessedly shall recover!" The rough fellow presses his cheek to his master's breast, like a woman. There is silence. Tristan stares vacantly ahead, ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... tracts invented for those who could not read, wherein the substance of pages was condensed and gave itself to the eye and the touch. Let us not, from the height of our day, with the better appliances which a universal press gives us, sneer at the homely rounds of the ladder by which the first multitudes of the Lord's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... with notes, of the poetical books of the Old Testament, beginning with Job in 1827, were of great importance as aids, to the interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures. His translation of the New Testament, which appeared after his death, in 1868, gave the best results of critical studies in homely prose, and with painstaking fidelity to the original. That Noyes was in advance of the criticism of his time may be indicated by the fact that, when he published his conclusions in regard to the Messianic prophecies in 1834,[5] ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke

... The homely hearth, the simple reward earned by the day's industry, maternal chidings, forgiveness so ingenuously sought, so freely given, promises of amendment, so sincere, so joyously received.... Is this all gone forever? can I ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.

... battle of the kitchen gardens the foreigners beat us nearly all along the line, though I think that English asparagus is better than the white monsters of Argenteuil. A truffled partridge, or the homely Perdrix au choux, or the splendid Faisan a la Financiere show that there are many more ways of treating a game bird than plain roasting him; and the peasants of the south of France had crushed the bones of their ducks ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard

... wonderful beauty. In a dim way I knew this before, but the full mystery of your loveliness was not revealed to me until this third time. Can it be that love has transformed you a little and added grace to grace, or is it only my vision that has been purged of its earthly dulness? I could love a homely woman whose spirit was fair, but to love one who is altogether beautiful, in whose perfect grace I can find no spot or blemish—that is the miracle of my blessedness. There was a strange light in your eyes that haunts me yet. Such a light I ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... extend what he could of the better influence of the philosophic world as he saw it. In fact, there is a strong didactic streak in both father and daughter. Louisa May seldom misses a chance to bring out the moral of a homely virtue. The power of repetition was to them a natural means of illustration. It is said that the elder Alcott, while teaching school, would frequently whip himself when the scholars misbehaved, to show that the Divine Teacher-God-was pained ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... hobbledehoy, of about twenty five, ran out to obey the command, and, when he returned from No. 6, informed Wilkinson civilly that the water was in his room. Something in his homely but pleasant face, in his shock head and in his voice, seemed familiar to the dominie, yet he could not place his man; when Coristine came along and said, "You've got a brother on the Susan Thomas, haven't ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... however, a confession to make which ill accords with my luxurious surroundings of the moment. It is that I am accustomed to press my trousers myself by the homely and ignoble expedient of sleeping on them. My only excuse is that I am a heavy sleeper. So automatic is the process, that I was wrapped in sheets and darkness before it occurred to me that I had placed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various

... old native town will loom upon me through the haze of memory, a mist brooding over and around it; as if it were no portion of the real earth, but an overgrown village in cloud-land, with only imaginary inhabitants to people its wooden houses and walk its homely lanes, and the unpicturesque prolixity of its main street. Henceforth it ceases to be a reality of my life; I am a citizen of somewhere else. My good townspeople will not much regret me, for—though it ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... right in the word used. God is lonesome, though for an utterly different reason than was in the child's mind. God was lonesome that day, left standing alone under the trees of the garden. He is lonesome for fellowship with every one who stays away from Himself. That homely human word may well express to us the longing ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon

... this turns out to be a curious business, doesn't it?" he exclaimed, when, after leaving the public room of the Golden Ball, wherein the inquiry had been held, we had strolled on through the long straggling village of homely cottages with thatched roofs, and out upon the ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... A homely chime of bells was repeated from the town; a ship's fast strained resinously with the changing tide. "It will be getting on toward supper," Nettie told him. They walked slowly from the wharf, turned silently ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... singular compensation, the pride of ancestry increases in the ratio of distance. Adam was valiant, and did so well at Poictiers that he was knighted—a hearty, homely country gentleman, who lived humbly to the end. But young Lucifer, his representative in the twentieth remove, has a tinder-like conceit because old Sir Adam was so brave and humble. Sir Adam's sword is hung up at home, ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... aspect of the room itself to surprise him. It was homely and neat. The table was spread with a clean white cloth, on which the breakfast equipage was displayed with a degree of care and precision that betrayed the master-hand of Hobbs; but on the edge of the table sat a large black cat, calmly breakfasting ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... cot. I have sent away Maria, who has gone to visit her parents, and no woman in service is to come on this place while I am here. I have been studying hard with Mrs. Parker at the hotel, who seems to be an excellent housekeeper and accustomed to homely fare, and I have learned how to make and to cook a great many things which are simple and nutritious; I have had appropriate dresses made, and Maria has gone to town and bought me a great variety of household linen, all good and ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton

... the devil, and they dare not stay within hearing of the sacrilegious rites. In spite of multiform discouragements like these, the evangelist and his wife, a motherly woman of much quiet strength, whose gentleness made sweet a very homely face, talked of their work and prospects with a matter-of-course hopefulness which it was not easy to share. Nothing in their habits, they told us, had more amazed their Roman Catholic neighbors at first than their lavish use of water. But in that particular, at least, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... because he was trying to find a reason for reprieving a soldier. "It is butchery day," he said one Friday morning, and he denied himself to a committee because he did not think that hanging would help the boy who was condemned to die. "They said he was homely," said a poor woman, going away from the White House with a reprieve for her son; "he is the handsomest man I ever saw." It is this sympathy that runs through his letter to that mother, whose five sons had died gloriously on ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... pale-faced babes whom I had left In arms, now rosy prattlers at the feet Of a pleased grandame tottering up and down; And growing girls whose beauty, filched away With all its pleasant promises, was gone To deck some slighted playmate's homely cheek. Yes, I had something of a subtler sense, And often looking round was moved to smiles Such as a delicate work of humor breeds; I read, without design, the opinions, thoughts, Of those plain-living people now observed With clearer knowledge; ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various

... maidens are digging up the soil with the spade, and often pulling up the stubble with their hands, preparatory to another crop. Switzerland could not afford to be a Kingdom,—the expense of a Court and Royal Family would famish half her people. Yet everywhere are the signs of frugal thrift and homely content. I met only two beggars in that long day's ride through sterile Switzerland, while in a similar ride through the fertile plains of Italy I should have encountered hundreds, though there each day's labor produces as much as ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... upon his own account for a tour of the country. Right well he bore himself. If speech-making ever does any good toward the shaping of results Greeley's speeches surely should have elected him. They were marvels of impromptu oratory, mostly homely and touching appeals to the better sense and the magnanimity of a people not ripe or ready for generous impressions; convincing in their simplicity and integrity; unanswerable from any standpoint of sagacious statesmanship or true patriotism if the North had been in any mood to listen ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... would grow tired of flying alone, and after all, it is not necessary to fly to transact the ordinary business of the world. And perhaps at last he would learn to love somebody without wings, somebody who could not fly, and he would always want to be with her down on the homely earth, and not alone up in the heavenly heights. If a woman had all the genius of Plato or all the learning of Solomon, it would be forgotten at the touch of ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... that they have authority for the splendor of their descriptions. I cannot find a word in the older Chronicles about the jewels or dress of the brides, and I believe the ceremony to have been more quiet and homely than is usually supposed. The only sentence which gives color to the usual accounts of it is one of Sansovino's, in which he says that the magnificent dress of the brides in his day was founded "on ancient custom."[32] However this may have been, the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... back a little, because it is necessary to look at the three next pictures at one view: these are three sisters. She on the right hand, who is so beautiful, died a maid; the next to her, still handsomer, had the same fate, against her will; this homely thing in the middle had both their portions added to her own, and was stolen by a neighbouring gentleman, a man of stratagem and resolution, for he poisoned three mastiffs to come at her, and knocked down two deer-stealers in carrying her off. Misfortunes happen in all families: the theft of ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others

... road came arrow-straight to the first houses and their gardens, past them, and away to the streets. In every window and at each gate children, women, men, were looking down the road. Face after face was painted, various, by the sunlight, homely with line and wrinkle, curve and dimple, pallid or ruddy, but the look in the eyes of all these faces seemed the same. "I have waited so long," it said, "I cannot wait any more—I cannot!" Their ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... enjoyed a little pension from the Squire and a garden in which vegetables and flowers lived side by side in friendliest fashion. Bees worked and sang over the thyme and marjoram, blooming early in a sunny nook; and in a homely sty lived a solemn black pig, a pig ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless

... to the "highways and hedges" for their omens, to the felicitous encounters of the common road for their auguries and inspirations. They will listen reverently to the chatter of very simple people, and catch the shadow of the wings of fate falling upon very homely heads. The rough earth-wisdom of ploughed fields, heavy with brown sun-lit mud, will be redolent for them with whispers and hints and intimations of things that no philosophy can include ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... metrical irregularities, by such arbitrary methods as Duhm's, may occasionally enhance the music and sharpen the edge of an Oracle yet oftener dulls the melody and weakens the emphasis.(54) The figures again are always simple and homely, but sometimes even ugly, as is not infrequent in the rural poetries of all peoples. Even the dung on the pastures and the tempers of breeding animals are as readily used as are the cleaner details of domestic life and of farming—the house-candle, the ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... was, as Slim had said, a hammer-headed brute of imposing proportions. But for his eyes no turfman would have looked at him twice. They were large, clear, and unusually intelligent; they redeemed his homely face. Without them he would have been ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... tenderness that forms one of its chief attractions. Besides, it was unavoidably scorched in the preparation; but the mixed pepper and salt sprinkled over it improved the flavor. But the great thing was their insatiate appetites, for it is a homely truth that there is no sauce like hunger. So it came about that they not only made a nourishing meal, but had enough left to serve them in ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis

... bony, awkward figure of Abraham Lincoln, then a young man of twenty-two, guiding a flatboat laden with prairie products down this same tortuous waterway, from the Sangamon to the sea. He was six feet four inches tall, homely, sad-faced, handy, and as little promising outwardly as any other pilot or boatman of those days. It is still remembered in prairie legends, however, that at the beginning of the voyage, his boat being stuck midway across a dam, he had ingeniously managed to release it and save all ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... entertaining as well as instructive for young people to read of the toil and privations in the homes of those who came into a new world to build up a country for themselves, and such homely facts are not to be found in the real histories ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis

... hung the amulet about Her throat—the medicine, a bag Of dried, misshapen skin, that held The healing herbs—a homely guise That promised for them little worth; For, ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... Ellwell had stirred the placid waters of meeting-house faith until something like a primitive revival had spread into neighboring parishes. His wife, a learned woman, had managed half a dozen young men who were preparing their Greek and Latin for Camberton. Those were the homely and kindly days ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick

... to tell, ever since her return from Baden-Baden, a sense of the incongruity of her circumstances had crept upon her. The tasteful surroundings, the cultured conversation, the musical evenings, the refinement of all around, had enchanted the young girl, and the humble lot and homely ways of her Forest friends had on her return to them stood out in striking contrast. And, alas! for the time being she refused to see in all these things the guiding hand of God. But after the day we have written of, things went better. The girl strove to conquer her discontent, ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous

... the office to talk to him; how he had talked gently about Fatima, how sure-footed she was and how wise, and how little likely to be frightened as long as she was carrying her master. He had wandered off into simple homely talk, about the supply of turf, how the fair had gone, the price the people were getting for their beasts; now and again leaving off to say, when the moan of the wind came and the house shook: "Glory be to God, it's goin' to be a wild night, so it is!" Or "That was a smart little clap o' win'. It's ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... for many thin little Belgian legs. Nora, from Ireland, viewed its departure with satisfaction—it made one less thing to polish. Many odds and ends of silver followed, and were put into the melting-pot, being too homely to survive—I'm saving enough for heirlooms for my grandchildren, of course. One must not allow sentiment to go by the board; we need it especially now that we have lost such quantities of it out of ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane

... coffee with "the boys," but he disposed of it in great haste, hot as it was, as if he hoped by his example to induce them to do likewise. But Bob and his companions were in no hurry. They lingered a long time over their homely meal, and then the smokers were allowed to empty a pipe apiece before the order was given to "catch up." The squatter began to breathe easier after that, and when he saw the troopers in their saddles and ready to start, ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon

... few lines in a postscript. The little angel was rapidly recovering, and our hero was rejoiced beyond expression. The favorable termination of her illness was a joy which far outbalanced the loss of his money, and he was as cheerful and contented as ever. As he expressed it, in rather homely terms, he had got "the streak of fat and the streak of lean." Julia was alive; was to smile upon him again; was still to inspire him with that love of goodness which had given her such an ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic

... means divorce or murder. For him, sweetness, gentleness, self-control, sound common sense, shrewdness, and domestic virtues are incomparably superior to any mental brilliance or physical comeliness. He needs a "homely" woman, and should remember that no banking account can match a sweet, womanly personality, and no charms compare to a sunny heart, and an ability steadfastly to "see the ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... The poor man had no natural, spontaneous human speech. If he had his sincere moments, they were perforce inarticulate. Probably a good deal of his pretentiousness was due to the fact that he habitually expressed himself in a book learned language, wholly remote from anything personal, native, or homely. Mrs. Kronborg spoke Swedish to her own sisters and to her sister-in-law Tillie, and colloquial English to her neighbors. Thea, who had a rather sensitive ear, until she went to school never spoke at all, except ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... calls for death, my friend, for all his scorns? With Aesop's slave will leave his bush of thorns. But since these trait'rous lords will have my head, Their lordships here upon this homely bed Shall find me sleeping, breathing forth my breath, Till they their shame, and I my fame, attain by death. Live, gentle Marius, to revenge my wrong! And, sirrah, see they stay not over-long; For he that erst hath ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... three sons; but her bad temper has rendered her name proverbial for a conjugal scold. His physical constitution was healthy, robust, and wonderfully enduring. Indifferent alike to heat and cold the same scanty and homely clothing sufficed him both in summer and winter; and even in the campaign of Potidaea, amidst the snows of a Thracian winter, he went barefooted. But though thus gifted with strength of body and of mind, he was far from being endowed ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith

... reluctance on the part of England. The wearied Minister wrote to Mrs. Adams on the 30th of May, 1783: "Our son is at the Hague, pursuing his studies with great ardor. They give him a good character wherever he has been, and I hope he will make a good man." On the 9th of June he wrote in these homely, but manly words: "I am weary, worn, and disgusted to death. I had rather chop wood, dig ditches, and make fence upon my poor little farm. Alas, poor farm! and poorer family! what have you lost that your country might be free! and that others might catch fish and hunt deer and bears ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... vibrating force from lips unaccustomed indeed to such an outburst. The speaker stood a moment longer in silence beside the figure in the chair, and it seemed to Robert, gazing at him with fixed eyes, that the man's whole presence, at once so homely and so majestic, was charged with benediction. It was as though invisible hands of healing and consecration had been laid upon him. The fiery soul beside him had kindled anew the drooping life of his own. So the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... found much to admire in the works of the people who had passed on. From the river had been taken out great canals of good gradient, and it was clear that they had been dug by a people of homely thrift and of skill in the tilling of the soil. There still were to be seen piles of earth that marked where at least seven great communal houses had formed nuclei for a numerous people. These were served by 123 ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock

... picturesque. The fishing was the best in the bay, and the rocks were very attractive to people from the city. The harbor had deep water at any time of tide. For a summer residence, the only disadvantage was the want of suitable hotels or boarding-houses. Of the former there were two, of the most homely and primitive character, and not many of the inhabitants who had houses suitable for city people were willing to ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic

... arrival we were marched to General Scott's headquarters, and while drawn up in line Mr. Lincoln came out. He said a few words to us. His appearance was strange to me. A tall stooping figure, in what our village calls 'store clothes,' but very neat; the face big, homely, with a look of sadness in the eyes. He shook hands with each of us in turn, saying a word of encouragement. Why he spoke specially to me, I do not know. He asked my name. I said 'Penhallow.' 'Oh,' he said, 'a Cornish name—the great iron-works. Do you know the Cornish ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... cottage feeding a mare and foal which were tied in a small plot of ragged grass. He was much older now than when she had first seen him; daring and danger can lengthen time. He had the same indomitable frankness in his dark eyes, but his face was hardened and fanaticism was stamped thereon. It was a homely precinct, with utensils of house and stable-work lying about. The mare was drinking from a bucket, her gentle head so near his shoulder that her love for him ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... availed themselves of his benefaction, and the children for six miles around used to attend the little school which was started in the large hewn-log school-house on the roadside known as "Hall's Free School". Few people knew the plain, homely, hard-working man, or wholly understood him. Some thought him stingy, some weak-minded, some only queer, and at first his benefaction was hardly comprehended; but in time quite a little oasis began about the little fountain, which the poor farmer's bequest had opened under the big oaks by the wayside, ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page

... developed physique. It was so warm below the ground that the fire in the stove was maintained at the lowest state possible; but when the western light quickly vanished from the window, the glowing coals gave homely cheer to the ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis

... apologising for a venial offence, you forget it is to a man guilty of the same error. I knew your person, from having seen you on the Continent; and finding you disposed to go by the homely name of Sharp, in a moment of thoughtlessness, I took its counterpart, Blunt. A travelling name is sometimes convenient, though sooner or later I fancy all deceptions bring with them their ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... say That majesty dwelt here? Where is the throne? Where the imperial canopy of state? Must she not set her tender foot, still used To softest treading, on the rugged ground? With common pewter, which the lowliest dame Would scorn, they furnish forth her homely table. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... for homely features to keep home— They had their name thence: coarse complexions And cheeks of sorry grain will serve to ply The sampler and to tease ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various

... noble father, Three times to-day I holp him to his horse, Three times bestrid him; thrice I led him off, Persuaded him from any further act; But still, where danger was, still there I met him; And like rich hangings in a homely house, So was his will in his old feeble body. But, noble as he is, look ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... most ten or twelve in a homely, comfortable little salon, equally propitious to conversation and contemplation. Chopin took the place of Madame Viardot at the piano, and plunged us into ineffable raptures. I do not know what he played to us; I do not know how long our ecstasy lasted: we were no longer on earth; he had ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... Stephen was perforce laughing in response. He had never been able to resist Pixie's laugh. Tea was brought in, and the young hostess did the honours with a pretty hospitality. It was the first meal of which they had partaken a deux, and its homely intimacy brought back the wistful look into Stephen's eyes. Perhaps Pixie noticed it, perhaps a point had been reached when she felt it impossible to go on talking generalities; in any case, she laid down her cup, straightened herself in her chair ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey

... turned scarlet. "No," she answered, "it's two of them and I can't decide. One is rich and homely as a hedge fence and always says 'drawring' and 'reel,' but has lots of money and a fair enough family back of him. The other is handsome and oh, my! gay as a lark, but he had about run through with a fortune, and I'm afraid he will flirt now ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... your earnings? Is she thoroughly versed in all domestic affairs, so that she herself could do all things connected with household matters, should necessity require it? These, I acknowledge, are very ordinary, very homely inquiries; but nevertheless they are of the highest importance. A young man who will marry, without having thoroughly made all such investigations, and becoming satisfied that his intended is not ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin

... "get him now—before Hermy comes t' him!" Shuddering, Spike levelled the weapon he held, but at that moment Ravenslee was filling his pipe, and something in this homely action checked the lad, paralysed finger on trigger, and shrinking, he cowered down upon the grass despite the fierce hand that gripped him. "Get him now, Kid—get him now! Aim f'r his chest—y' can't miss ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol

... so intent upon hearing Voices which spoke for her ear alone, that an unwonted stir at the cottage door failed to rouse her, and it was not until Mrs. Palling hurried in, with excitement and pleasure written large on her homely face, that Isabella became aware that she had ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... to my shame, hang loose and tattered around you, and some of your faces are ink-stained or thumb-worn from contact with the years and my own carelessness. I would dress you in purple and fine linen if I may, yet you would reproach me and think I was weary of your homely faces. Like the beggar-maid you would entreat to be allowed to go back from queenly glory and pomp to the tatters and contentment of your years. So shall it be! but between you and me there must be no divorce, so long as time shall last for ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... go away on vacations. He was a homely man, with a large family, and he took serious views of life. He was country bred, and he had never outgrown a certain rusticity of appearance. It was said that his wife always cut his hair, and the concentric circles made by the neatly ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster

... "Wherefore has the Word of God been likened to wine and milk?" The reply made was, "As these fluids cannot be preserved in golden vessels, but only in those of earthenware, so those minds will be the best receptacles of learning which are found in homely bodies." ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... the countess, "are small, blond, sickly, and homely; all as like one to another as a pair of old boots. You have seen them. X. Z.—you know him—had a very pretty talent for verses; but he has ruined it and his mind, and made himself quite an idiot, by following my ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... over the fire, in drying her muslin dress. That did very well instead of talking. Mrs. Williams presently came in again, bearing a little tray with berries and a pot of cream. Julia eagerly played hostess and dealt them out. The service was most homely; nevertheless the wild berries deserved her commendation. The girls sat by the fire and eat, and their host from the corner of his couch watched them with his keen eyes. It was rather a romantic adventure altogether, Eleanor thought, in the midst of ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... the turkey, Bill?" began Master Robert Peabody, the flat-featured, rising from his pillow like a homely porpoise. ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews

... morning but for my thinking of that album, which I'm glad has amused you both, my dears, so well. Ah, children, children, there's nothing like having something to do. I'll tell you something one of the poets, Cowper I think, has written about this in his homely verse:— ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson

... in the second letter) gave the larger part of his originally large fortune to the founding of St. George's Guild. This was intended to be a sort of agricultural community of "old-world virtues" for young and old, "and ancient and homely methods." One of his great aims was the promoting of home industries. As regards Newman's reference to politics at the end of letter No. 2 in 1888, Gladstone's Government was but just breathing after ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... at night; it turns the mind toward meditation; it throws the soul back on itself. The sun, as it were, sheds us abroad in nature, scatters and disperses us; mist draws us together and concentrates us—it is cordial, homely, charged with feeling. The poetry of the sun has something of the epic in it; that of fog and mist is elegaic and religious. Pantheism is the child of light; mist engenders faith in near protectors. When the great world is shut ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... never lost the plain, downright, almost awkward ways of conversation and manner of his simple home—ways which might have seemed abrupt and rough but for the singular sweetness and charm of his nature. To those who looked on the outside he was always the homely, rigidly orthodox country clergyman. On Isaac Williams, with his ethical standard, John Keble also impressed his ideas of religious truth; he made him an old-fashioned High Churchman, suspicious of excitement and "effect," suspicious ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... of sun-rays—very bright and lovely. Where it came from I never thought, but of course it could not come from the sun, because there he was, with his bright coat off, playing the father of his family in the most homely Old-English-gentleman fashion possible. That it was a ladder of rays there could, however, be no doubt: if only I could climb upon it! I often tried, but fast as I lifted my feet to climb, down they came again upon the boards of the floor. At length I did succeed, ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald

... has taught him this. What learn our youth abroad, but to refine The homely vices of their native land? Give me an honest home-spun country clown Of our own growth; his dulness is but plain, But theirs embroidered; they are sent out ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... angel of gentleness, whose ugliness day by day decreased, driven out by the ineffable expression of moral qualities which shone upon her face. She was all soul. The spirit of prayer seemed to purify her and refine those homely features and make them luminous. Who has not seen the phenomenon of a like transfiguration on sacred faces where the habits of the soul have triumphed over the plainest features, giving them that spiritual illumination whose ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... stopped at the news stand on her way to the gymnasium. She was a homely woman at any time, and in her bloomers she looked like a soup-bone. Under ordinary circumstances she'd have seen the puffs from the staircase and have asked what they cost and told me they didn't match, ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... afternoon, did stay talking and playing the foole almost all the afternoon, and there saw two or three foolish sorry pictures of her doing, but very ridiculous compared to what my wife do. She grows mighty homely and looks old. Thence ashamed at myself for this losse of time, yet not able to leave it, I to the office, where my Lord Bruncker come; and he and I had a little fray, he being, I find, a very peevish man, if he be denied what he expects, and very simple in his ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... villages a great proportion are now occupied for several months in the year by people who, though willing to pay for simple accommodation, will not tolerate dirt, squalor, or want of sanitation. To their surprise they have found hundreds of cottages, homely, but not uncomfortable, kept with scrupulous neatness, and furnished by no means badly. Nearly all have ample kitchen accommodation, fair beds, and an equipment of glass, china, and crockery, which shows how cheap and good are the necessaries of life in England. The well-to-do agricultural ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... the full value he intends it to carry, connotes all he wishes it to cover, and has the full emotional power and suggestion that it has for himself. Two quite simple illustrations may serve. The English-born clergyman in Canada who spoke of a meeting of his congregation as a "homely gathering" did not produce quite the effect he intended; "home-like" is one thing in Canada, "homely" quite another, and the people laughed at the slip—they knew, what he did not, that "homely" meant hard-featured ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... till James had nearly dined, when Gowrie took them to their dinner, separately in the hall; 'he sat not down with them as the common manner is,' but again stood silent beside the King, who bantered him 'in a homely manner.' ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... Presbyterian Church was one of the first morgues opened and who has lived among dead bodies ever since is the cheeriest man in Johnstown. He made a prayer and an address. It was all straight-from-the-shoulder kind of talk, garbed in homely phrase. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... course of which we follow from the determination to prepare for it, to the risk of battle and to final victory; and then again in Henry V and Henry VI, the unhappy position into which a prince not formed by nature to be a ruler falls between violent contending parties, until he envies the homely swain who tends his flocks and lets the years run by in peace: lastly the path of horrible crime which a king's son not destined for the throne has to tread in order to ascend it: all these are great elements in the history of states, and are not only ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... unpopular. Other men, thoughtless, and headlong, and irritable as he, have lived and had friends; but there was something about O'Grady that was felt, perhaps, more than it could be defined, which made him unpleasing—perhaps the homely phrase "cross-grained" may best express it, and O'Grady was essentially a cross-grained man. The estate, when he got it, was pretty heavily saddled, and the "galled jade" did not "wince" ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover

... of the best fighters in the Revolution. He was a homely little man. He was also a very good man. Another general said, "Mar-i-on ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston

... Bush. Looking through the open door into the general living-room, which was also lighted, he could see a red twinkle beneath the register of the stove, beside which a woman was sitting sewing. She was a hard-featured, homely person in coarsely fashioned garments, which did not seem to fit her well, and Nasmyth felt slightly disconcerted when he glanced at her, for she was not the woman whom he had expected to see. Then his glance rested on a man, who had also figured in his uncertain memories, and now sat not far ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss

... most childish way, though she's our age. Her eyes are gray with dark lashes and when she looks at you they are like surprised stars. And she has the most beautiful complexion in the world, just pink and white. She is lovely to look at and I feel like a tanned, homely gipsy beside her. She's sweet too, but very easily shocked and I'm afraid she's not only good but pious. She can never take your place so don't worry, only, as I have to be here, I might as well have some fun ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown

... their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure: Nor grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... said the homely Mrs Twitter, "we won't be so hard on you here. I want you to assist me with my sewing and darning—of which I have a very great deal—and help to take care ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne

... like to have it between me and my village. I could not help preferring that homely relation in which the houses are built up like swallow-nests on to the very walls of the cathedrals themselves, to the arrangement here, where the river flowed, with what flow there was in it, between the ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... and we must, as far as possible, receive her in the way she has been used to here, a very homely dinner, served as she has always seen it—no fruit or flowers on the ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... of a shy, lonely girl, homeless, hopeless and despondent in a great city, then the picture of two old people waiting in some distant farmhouse, sick at heart and uncertain, seeing their daughter's face in the firelight, hearing her sigh in the night wind. He talked in homely words that left the baggage-man's face grave, then he told how Burns, in a cruel jest, had sent a starving boy out to solve the mystery that had baffled the best detectives. When he had ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... homely folk down there, and I'd have no fault to find if you were not a little too disputatious. What's the use of wrangling over doctrine? Right or wrong, it will matter very little to any of us in a hundred years. We're on our way to heaven, and, please God, ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... first big dance, the woman looking out from under the narrow brim of a snug winter hat, great furs framing her beautiful face, and her slender figure wrapped in furs. Here also was a picture of Florence Haviland, her handsome face self-satisfied, her trio of homely, distinguished-looking girls about her, and a small picture of Gardner, and two of Clarence's dead mother: one, as they all remembered her, a prim-looking woman with gray hair and magnificent lace on her unfashionable gown, the other, taken thirty years before, showing ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... those places where we might have spent half a day to advantage, and familiarized us only with one branch of knowledge,—the merit and demerit of most of the inns on the roads, whose characters I shall not fail to give as we found them. Homely as this species of information may be, I have often regretted the want of it beforehand; and concluding that others may be of the same opinion, I shall therefore afford it as far as I am able: premising, that it is as well not to vary, on this or any other road, from the practice of ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... point, for it claims to recall a series of adventures which we know nothing about—Till crossing the market place and smacking his whip at the good women there; Till in priestly attire delivering a homely sermon; Till making love to a young woman who rebuffs him; Till making a fool of the pedants; Till tried and hung. Strauss's liking to present, by musical pictures, sometimes a character, sometimes a dialogue, or a situation, or a landscape, or an idea—that is to say, the most ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... chafed in spirit at this time because I heard no word from friend Hicks. I am convinced at this present moment that had he felt it borne in upon him to indite me some words of homely comfort, I should have been gratified exceedingly. But his mind lay otherwise presumably, for no ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... When he came down to the evening meal, he found himself wondering foolishly upon what food the child lost in the sea had fed while she grew so rapidly to a woman's stature. The present meal was such as fell to the daily lot of that household. In homely blue delft cups a dozen or more eggs were ranged beside high stacks of buttered toast, rich and yellow. The butter, the jugs of yellow cream, the huge platter heaped with wild raspberries—as each of these met his eye he was wondering if the sea-maid ever ate ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall

... from the north down the valley of the Rhone, and everything is so cold that I have been obliged to indulge in a fire. There is a fine crackle and roar of burning wood in the chimney which is very homely and companionable, though it does seem to postulate a town all ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to be a piece of very homely, well-worn, and yet always needful, practical counsel to try not to magnify and prolong grief, nor to minimise and abbreviate gladness. We can make our lives, to our own thinking, very much what we will. We cannot directly regulate our emotions, but we can regulate them, because ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the eye, and therefore when worn as an ornament it competes with the eye, and in effect lessens the beauty it is supposed to enhance. He said that gems should be worn only by women who are not beautiful, who must rely on something extraneous to attract attention, since it would be better to a homely woman that men should look at her to admire a diamond or sapphire than not to look at her at all. She had laughed and asked him who the man was who had such strange ideas, and he had replied that he had ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson

... living-room, with its big fireplace and homely things, when they came chattering out of the enchanted place. She was sitting by the window which gave her a view of the dim gray road where it came over the grassy swells from Meander and the world, knitting a ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden

... animate or inanimate, to the very hours and lapses and changes of time itself. An almost burdensome fulness of expression haunted the gestures, the very dress, the personal ornaments, of the people on the highway. Even Jacques Bonhomme at his labour, or idling for an hour, borrowed from his love, homely as it was, a touch of dignity or grace, and some secret of utterance, which made [57] one think of Italy or Greece. The voice of the shepherd calling, the chatter of the shepherdess turning her spindle, seemed to answer, or wait for answer,—to be fragments ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater

... Glendower, and that I saw two females, whom his marauders had carried off from Cheshire or Shropshire to toil and slave in the Welshery, walking together after the labours of the day were done, and bemoaning their misfortunes in their own homely English. ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... parlor Anson Kirkpatrick, Marshall Field's man, was at the piano, playing airs from a musical comedy then running in Chicago. He was a dapper little Irishman, very vain, homely as a monkey, with friends everywhere, and a sweetheart in every port, like a sailor. I did not know all the men who were sitting about, but I recognized a furniture salesman from Kansas City, a drug man, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather

... and robs each part o'th world With borrowed beauties to enflame thine eye: The Sea, to fetch her Pearle, is div'd into; The Diomond rocks are cut to make her shine; To plume her pryde the Birds do naked sing: When my Enanthe, in a homely gowne— ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various

... him wearily, with a faint smile. It was a calm, sunny day. Bathing machines were on the beach; children were playing here and there; and white sails of pleasure boats were visible in the offing. The dullness of Sandyseal wore a quiet homely aspect which was pleasant to the eyes of strangers. Sydney said, absently, "I think I shall like the place." And Herbert added: "Let us hope that the air will make you feel stronger." He meant it and said it kindly—but, instead of looking at her while he spoke, he continued to look at ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins

... diffidence, or humility, from religious talk. I know it was from no lack of deep spiritual conviction. If ever the world contained a purer, sweeter sisterhood, I have not known it. Their work was homely, as their lives were secluded, but no one ever saw them idle or impatient. In one straight and narrow path they walked through earth's temptations ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... dales round Tavistock, and lovingly described them in his verse. Frequently he indulges in descriptions of sunrise and sunset; they leave no vivid impression, but charm the reader by their quiet beauty. It cannot be denied that his fondness for simple, homely images sometimes led him into sheer fatuity; and candid admirers must also admit that, despite his study of simplicity, he could not refrain from hunting (as the manner ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... balconies were crowded with spectators, and every pane of glass showed a face. In the open country, where timber was scarce, the houses were, between studs, impaneled with clay-red, white, or blue. One of the Spaniards who came over in the suite of Philip remarked the large diet in these homely cottages: "These English," quoth he, "have their houses made of sticks and dirt, but they fare commonly so well as the king." "Whereby it appeareth," comments Harrison, "that he liked better of our good fare in such coarse cabins, than ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... certain influence with Bessie, whom she had known all her life. It was she who had inspired Bessie with the desks to come to Mauleverer Manor, to be finished, after having endured eight years of jog-trot education from a homely little governess at home—who grounded the boys in Latin and mathematics before they went to Winchester, and made herself generally useful. Miss Rylance was the daughter of a fashionable physician, whose head-quarters were in Cavendish Square, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... Mozart's head with a vengeance. According to his picture of her, she was so ugly and untidy that even Mozart could not flirt with her. He draws an amusing picture of his predicament—a sort of Venus and Adonis affair, with a homely Venus: ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... finished, Jean had also brought his communication to a close. He passed it over the table for me to read, and I found that it was substantially to the same effect as I had suggested, but written in his own homely and not very precise style of composition. I looked it very carefully through to see that there was no covert suggestion therein of a character intended to betray me; but as far as I could see it was a perfectly straightforward affair ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... scholars, which at that time, from the imperfect culture of philology, they could not easily have been; men they were whom religious feeling guided correctly in choosing their expressions, and with whom the state of the language in some respects cooperated, by furnishing a diction more homely, fervent, and pathetic, than would now be available. For their apostolic functions English was the language most in demand. But in polemic or controversial cases Greek is indispensable. And of this Lady Carbery was sufficiently convinced by my own demur on the word metanoia. If I were right, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... humus filling the fissures, and, contrary to the general rule, the plants, especially the sorrel (Rumex) and the dandelion (Taraxacum), instead of dwindling, gained in stature. The strong-smelling Ferula looked like a bush, and the Sarh grew into a tree: the Ar'ar,[EN23] a homely hawthorn (hawthorn-leaved Rhus), whose appearance was a surprise, equalled the Cratgus of Syria; and the upper heights must have been a forest of fine junipers (Habbah Juniperus Phnicea), with trunks thick as a man's body. The guides spoke of wild figs, but we failed to find them. Our ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... Some linger in the drear poor-house—some are beyond the sea; One died behind the cold ditch—back beneath the open sky, And every star in heaven was a witness from on high. None dared to ope a friendly door, or lift a neighbor's latch, Or shelter by a warm hearthstone beneath the homely thatch. ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... under the sloping roof struck a chill to her heart as she entered; but when she had lighted the lamp (a new investment that helped up the temperature besides giving light), and set her little oil-stove going with the kettle on it, her surroundings took on an air of homely comfort that was grateful. As she busied herself preparing the tea, she noticed that her neighbour in the next attic was coughing a good deal, and then it occurred to her that she had not seen him about lately, and she wondered if he could be ill. The thought of a young man of small means, ill ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... the theoretical niceties of wifely submission, but with his creature comforts. His instructions as to how to make a husband comfortable positively palpitate with life; and at the same time there is something indescribably homely and touching about them; they tell more about the real life of a burgess's wife than a hundred tales of Patient Griselda or of Jehanne la Quentine. Consider this picture (how typical a product of the masculine imagination!) of the stout bread-winner, ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... thoughtless once Of beauty or of grace, Simple and homely in attire, Careless of form and face; Then whence this change? and wherefore now So often smoothe your hair? And wherefore deck your youthful form ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

... solid lady with a fine white bosom and strong white arms. Her face was homely and kind; I saw at once that she adored her husband; her placid smile carried beneath its placidity a tremulous anxiety that he should be pleased, and her mild eyes swam in the light of his encouragement. ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... would you do with Nancy if you didn't marry her off? If she were homely she'd have to fill in chinks in other people's lives, but with her nice little basket of eggs, good looks, money, not too much wit, and a desire to please, she just naturally is put up for ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... outstretched hand. She wore a blue skirt and a white blouse and brown boots. She was twenty-eight, but her rather small proportions and her plentiful golden, fluffy hair made her seem about twenty. Her face was less homely than Susan's, and more mobile. She smiled somewhat shyly, with an extraordinary radiant cheerfulness. It was impossible for her to conceal the fact that she was very good-natured and very ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... the woman just the opposite is the case. I am leaving out of consideration sexual impotence, because this is a real disability, and a man suffering with it only irritates the woman without satisfying her. For this she will not stand. But where the man is sexually potent—he may be aged and homely—his other physical attributes play but a small role with woman; his mental and spiritual qualities count with her for a good deal more. While a woman may be able to give a man perfect sexual satisfaction, and she may have an angelic character, if her body is not all that could be desired, the ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... and character of female education. It is dolefully affirmed that young ladies learn how to sing operas but not how to keep house,—that they can conjugate Greek verbs, but cannot make bread,—that they are good for pretty toying, but not for homely using. Doubtless there is foundation for this remark, or it would never have been made. But I have been in the East and the West, and the North and the South; I know that I have seen the best society, and I am sure I have seen very bad, if not the ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... waiting. He wrote of his handsome farm he had cleared with his own hands, and the beautiful wild country he lived in, telling her he hoped her future life would be free from all care. All this, and even more, dear reader, he told her—in plain, homely words, it is true; but love's language is always sweet, be it in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... sparrows came familiarly about the palm cabins and whitewashed houses and trilled on the rooftrees. It was a simple song, with just a hint of our northern white-throat's sweet and plaintive melody, and of the opening bars of our song-sparrow's pleasant, homely lay. It brought back dear memories of glorious April mornings on Long Island, when through the singing of robin and song-sparrow comes the piercing cadence of the meadowlark; and of the far northland woods ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... personal life in its simplicity and happiness has been a standing contrast to the turmoil and passion of his public energy. Meet Lloyd George among his family, and it is hard to realize that such a homely, genial person could be the man who tackled so rancorously the House of Lords. I went to 11 Downing Street one day after the Budget fight was over, and when, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lloyd George was preparing further legislative changes. Eleven Downing Street, it should be explained, ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot

... of any of her sex. Fifty miles from a doctor or a friend, except her weary and perhaps morose husband, she must keep strong under labor, and be patient under suffering, till death. And thus the household, the hamlet, the village, the town, the city, the state, rise out of her "homely toils, and destiny obscure." Truly she is one of the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... synagogue toward law, philosophy, and literature. The study of Spinoza (whose works he translated) gave form to his convictions concerning human life. It led him to spend his literary talents on materials so various as the homely simplicity of peasant scenes and peasant souls, on the one hand, and on the other the popularization of a high social and ethical philosophy, specially inculcated through his larger fictions. His college education was obtained at Tuebingen, Munich, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... wicked!" they cried. "They are simply flatterers," replied Madame de Gontaut. Little Mademoiselle resumed: "After having praised us without end, and telling us a hundred times that we were pretty,—for I heard it all perfectly,—to want to give me medicine because I was so homely and ill-looking! Oh, this is too much! I know now what flattery is,—to say just the contrary of the truth. But it's a sin. I ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... he had talked thus long to let her recover from her emotion. At last she thought to herself: "You can surely show that you are not too homely to speak to a noble gentleman, Elsalill! For you are a maiden of good ...
— The Treasure • Selma Lagerlof

... not a popular woman. She was conscious that she had married beneath her—more conscious lately that there had been no necessity to make the marriage, and she had grown a little soured. She could never mix with the homely wives of local millionaires; she professed a horror of the vulgarities with which she was surrounded, hated and loathed her lord and master's flamboyant home, which she described as something between a feudal castle and a picture-palace; and ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace

... reaching his awkward arms out to clasp her when Verrinder burst into the homely scene of their tragedy. He caught up the broken bottle and saw the word "Poison." Beneath were the directions, but no word of description, no ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... "Somehow it's homely when you can call a chap Mac, somehow! Now, if you was to do a play for us, and it went well, it'd put heart into you for something better. If you can find your way to the heart of a music-hall audience, Mac, my boy, you can find your way anywhere. ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine

... A similar homely parallel will serve to explain the Adriatic situation. You will imagine Seattle and the shores of Puget Sound, with its maze of islands, in Canadian possession. Seattle, Vancouver, and Victoria are strongly fortified bases for Canadian battle-fleets and flotillas ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell

... who "dine on homely fare" Were true and brave and a' that, And none whose garb is "hodden gray" Was fool or knave and a' that, The vice and crime that shame our time Would disappear and a' that, And plowmen be as great as kings, And churls ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... the business world and stiffens the economic backbone of the nation. It is no exaggeration to say that the whole German people, barring the inevitable though small percentage of weaklings, is trying with terrific earnestness to live up to the homely Hindenburgian motto, "Durchhalten!" ("Hold out,") or, in more idiomatic American, "See the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... less greasy or more noble, and so cast his thoughts upon the commonwealth, he will have leisure for her and she riches and honors for him; his sweat shall smell like Alexander's. My Lord Philautus is a young man who, enjoying his L10,000 a year, may keep a noble house in the old way, and have homely guests; and having but two, by the means proposed, may take the upper hand of his great ancestors; with reverence to whom, I may say, there has not been one of them would have disputed his place ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... the opening of the dawn, Still sprinkled with heaven's gracious dew, Her beauty and her bosom on the lawn Doth charmingly disclose, For nymphs and amorous swains with love to view; So delicate, so fair, Lucrezia yields New pearls, new purple to our homely fields, While Cupid plays and Flora ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... anything—I very much doubt whether the dunces of this world are not the very happiest people in it—Yes, Clara; leave to others the vain and empty distinctions of literary renown, which is but a bubble, and be happy in the homely path of obscure but ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various

... hands off these venerable stones! Parian marble, wrought with consummate skill, could not replace them. Connected with these homely monuments are historical associations that ought not to be forgotten. The scarcity of better materials, the rudeness of monumental sculpture, the poverty of the country, the early struggles and pecuniary embarrassments ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... who is He, with modest looks, And clad in homely russet brown? [B] He murmurs near the running brooks A music sweeter ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... ranged abroad, hatchet in hand, in search of fuel, and made the yet slumbering and dreaming wood resound with our blows. Then with our fire we burned up a portion of the loitering night, while the kettle sang its homely strain to the morning star. We tramped about the shore, waked all the muskrats, and scared up the bittern and birds that were asleep upon their roosts; we hauled up and upset our boat and washed it and rinsed out the clay, talking aloud as if it were broad day, until ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... dreariest of all the dreary ones they had already passed in their extemporised dwelling—"home" they called it, as people will style any shelter to which they can retreat from all the trials and exposures of the outside world, "no matter how homely!" ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... unconventional manners, who, without the slightest effort to put on dignity, treated all men alike, much like old neighbours; whose speech had not seldom a rustic flavour about it; who always seemed to have time for a homely talk and never to be in a hurry to press business; and who occasionally spoke about important affairs of State with the same nonchalance—I might almost say irreverence—with which he might have discussed an every-day law case in his office ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... work, hunt, exercise (he thus begun), Then scorn a homely dinner if you can; Fried eggs, and herbs, and olives, still we see: This much is left of ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss

... elm-shaded. Such hath it been depicted in their legends who went before me; What therefore, I have seen and heard, declare I unto you In measures artless and untuneful. Fearless of hardship, In costume, as in manners, unadorn'd and homely Were our ancestral farmers, the seed-planters of a strong nation. Congenial were their wives, not ashamed of the household charge, Yoke-fellows that were help-meets, vigorous and of a good courage; Revolting not at life's plain intent, but its duties ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... are both very much grown and very much improved," replied Edward, "but I must confess to you that I think it is high time that they were, if possible, removed from their present homely occupations, and instructed ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... The great philosopher, Dr. Franklin, inspired the mouthpiece of his own eloquence, "Poor Richard," with "many a gem of purest ray serene," encased in the homely garb of proverbial truisms. On the subject of frugality we cannot do better than take the worthy Mentor for our text, and from it address our remarks. A man may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, "keep ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... was a spring time of blossoming but once in a hundred years! How would men look forward to it, and old men, who had beheld its wonders, tell the story to their children, how once all the homely trees became beautiful, and earth was covered with freshness and new growth! How would young men hope to become old, that they might see so glad a sight! And when beheld, the aged man would say, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... typographically, William Caxton, with no fine models in contemporary English manuscripts to guide him, produced no single book that can stand comparison with the best work of foreign printers. But if he was a poor printer, he was a most enterprising and skilful publisher, and in his homely way a genuine and most prolific journeyman of letters. As the word journeyman is written, shame bids us strike out the first half of it, lest we seem to cast a slight upon one who did so excellent a work for English literature, ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... here wealth came in to do away with the resemblance. True, she was tall and angular, but she made up superbly, so that on looking at her one would exclaim: 'What a stylish woman!' True, her features were homely, and her complexion without freshness, but over these were spread the magic atmosphere of fashion and assured position. She had a consciousness which repelled any idea that she could be otherwise than handsome, fascinating, intelligent, and everything else ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... holding his opinions he kept to himself. The arguments of those who held contrary views he would listen to with great patience, even with interest; but his only reply would be a slow, irritating smile and a shake of the head. Peevy was homely, but there was nothing repulsive about his homeliness. He was tall and somewhat angular; he was sallow; he had high cheek-bones, and small eyes that seemed to be as alert and as watchful as those of a ferret; and he was slow and deliberate in all his movements, taking time to digest ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris



Words linked to "Homely" :   inelegant, home, homeliness, comfortable, plain, comfy, homey, homy, homelike



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