"Lavishness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into the unkindest references to deaf old worldlings keeping in the deafening world; and gouty gluttons limping to their gouty gormandizings; and corseted coquets clasping their corseted cavaliers in the waltz, all for disinterested society's sake; and thousands, bankrupt through lavishness, ruining themselves out of pure love of the sweet company of man—no envies, rivalries, or other unhandsome ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... then, in the end to their average number? What prevents the development of the whole seven hundred? The simple answer is, continuous starvation. As usual, nature works with cruel lavishness. There are just as many spiders at any given minute as there are insects enough in the world or in their area to feed upon. Every spider lays hundreds of eggs, so as to make up for the average infant mortality by starvation, or by the attacks of ichneumon flies, or by being eaten themselves ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... marvelous fleetness of his stride had borne him far ahead in the few moments' start he had gained. He heard the beat of their many feet on the stones, the dull thud of their running, the loud clamor of the mob, the shrill cries of the Hebrew offering gold with frantic lavishness to whoever should stop his prey. All the breathless excitation, all the keen and desperate straining, all the tension of the neck-and-neck struggle that he had known so often over the brown autumn country of the Shires at home, he knew ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... this room, if they could not be accurately described as "artistic", from a European's point of view, were at least impressive on account of the wanton lavishness with which gems and the precious metals were used; for, look where one would, the eye encountered nothing but gold, silver, and precious stones; indeed the impression conveyed was that the architect had ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... and was flanked by four high dishes, one containing a pyramid of splendid peaches; the second, a monumental cake gorged with whipped cream and covered with pinnacles of sugar—a cathedral in confectionery; the third, slices of pine-apple floating in clear syrup; and the fourth unheard-of lavishness—black grapes brought from ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... word in expensive apartment hotel building. Architects declared that it was as far as modern lavishness and extravagance could go. Its interior arrangements were in keeping with its external splendor. Its apartments were of noble dimensions, richly decorated, and equipped with every device, new and old, that modern science and builders' ingenuity could suggest. That the rents were on a scale with ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... that I had not earned that; but that the money had been "talked out of" the worthy publisher by the earnestness of my brother, who made the bargain for me. I have known very much of publishers and have been surprised by much in their mode of business,—by the apparent lavishness and by the apparent hardness to authors in the same men,—but by nothing so much as by the ease with which they can occasionally be persuaded to throw away small sums of money. If you will only make the payment future instead of present, you may generally twist a few pounds in your own or your ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... the baby, and walked with him to the end of the block, and straight through the open door of the Cudahy cottage, and into the kitchen. Here they found Mrs. Cudahy, dashing through preparations for a meal whose lavishness startled Susan. Bottles of milk and bottles of cream stood on the table, Susan fell to stripping ears of corn; there were pop-overs in the oven; Mrs. Cudahy was frying chickens at the stove. Enough to feed the Carroll family, under their mother's exquisite ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... miser would vanish, and in his place would appear Cabinski the munificent, dispensing hospitality after the ancient custom of the Polish nobility, while certain deeply hidden hereditary cells of lavishness opened up in his ego. The guests were received and feted generously and no expense was spared. And, if later, as a result of this, advances on salaries were smaller for a month or so, their deferment more frequent, and the director's complaints ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... built as if to keep out an invading host. Even in this unfrequented place, each stone was carefully cut, and fitted with exact nicety in its place. There was no rubble, no mere filling. Here was a lavishness of expenditure, a conscience in building, rare in modern times. Leigh looked down the long succession of massive archways, dwindling into the distance, with vague thoughts of the Castle of Chillon and the Man with the Iron ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... to the island Princess, belonging to the Portuguese, which is in the Bay of Guinea. Here the people soon discovered they were pirates by their lavishness; but the Governor winked at it, because of the great gain he made by them. But afterwards, someone putting it into his mind that if the King of Portugal heard of this it would be his ruin, he plotted to destroy Davis. And when, before sailing, Captain Davis came on shore with the surgeon and ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... Hazel. He was not just in the genial mood of last night and the morning, but cool and gay, as it was his fashion to be; though gravely and punctiliously attentive to his charge. Cool, that is to say, as the day permitted; for the sun was fervent, and pouring down his beams with an overwhelming lavishness ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... patent right. Having invented American society, or at least the machine that at present controls it, they are entitled to all the royalties it brings in. The Rockerbilts got there all of a sudden by the sheer lavishness of their entertainment and their ability to give bonds to keep it up. The Van Varick Shadds flowed in through their unquestioned affiliation with the ever-popular Delaware Shadds and the Roe-Shadds of the Hudson, two of the oldest and most ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... close of the American War, however, the "Nabobs," as they were called,—or returned English adventurers,—began to make a deep impression on English society by the apparent size of their fortunes and the lavishness of their expenditure. Burke calculated that in his time they had brought home about $200,000,000, with which they bought estates and seats in Parliament and became a very conspicuous element in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... judgment; and he certainly could not have imitated so many writers so readily, if he had not had some solid basis in appreciation. The fact is that he shows a decided faculty for brisk, though not sustained, narration. This may be seen in The House of the Aylors. He has, moreover, a romantic lavishness of description that in spite of all technical faults still has some degree of merit. The following quotations, taken respectively from The Mowers and The Flight of Leeona, with all their extravagance, will exemplify both his weakness and his strength ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... reinforcements with Mr. Pleydell, and throughout throws in Hatteraick and Glossin, Jock Jabos and his mistress, and Sir Robert Haslewood, the company at Kippletringan, and at the funeral, and elsewhere, in the most reckless spirit of literary lavishness. Nor is he less prodigal of incident and scene. The opening passage of Mannering's night-ride could not have been bettered if the painter had taken infinitely more pains. Bertram's walk and the skirmish with the prowlers are simply first-rate; ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... so in love with everything that the mere repetition of common names delighted him. It took pages to tell what Pantagruel ate and still more pages to tell what he drank. This giant dressed with a more than royal lavishness and when he played cards, how many games do you suppose Rabelais enumerated one after the other without pausing to take breath? Two hundred and fourteen! So he treated everything; his appetite was like Gargantua's mouth. This was the very stamp of the age; it was gluttonous of all pleasures, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... other hand, the redeemable sins of avarice and prodigality are, in Dante's sight, those which are without deliberate or calculated operation. The lust, or lavishness, of riches can be purged, so long as there has been no servile consistency of dispute and competition for them. The sin is spoken of as that of degradation by the love of earth; it is purified by deeper humiliation—the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... its power. Even the collector, who may read little and care more for the externals than for the soul of his favorites, by the honor he pays them, by the solicitude he expends upon their preservation without spot, by the lavishness of expense upon binding, contributes much to the dignity of that art which preserves for the race the continuity of its thought and development. If Henderson loved books merely as a collector whose taste for luxury and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Statius became guilty of the sin of covetousness, for which he was doomed to tramp around the fifth circle. In reply Statius rejoins that it was not because of covetousness, but of its counterpart, over-lavishness, that he suffered so long, and principally because he was not brave enough to own himself a Christian. Then he inquires of Virgil what have become of their fellow-countrymen Terence, Caecilius, Plautus, and Varro, only to learn that they too linger in the dark ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... nonplussed with a lavishness that was most unusual, gradually overcame his diffidence, became warm with the wine, and so failed to notice that the Prince himself remained cool, and drank sparingly. At last the head of Haziddin sank on his breast, and he reclined at full length on ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... fleece of burning mist seemed to be fallen and caught and tangled in countless filaments upon the bare twigs,"—such traits as these are not to be found in the newspapers nor in the botanies. With all her seeming lavishness, she rarely wastes a word. Though she may sometimes heap upon a frail hepatica some greater accumulation of fine-spun fancies than its slender head will bear, she yet can so characterize a flower with a touch that any one of its lovers would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... heeded when they spoke of taking securities before the King was restored. "The warmer zeal of the House threw away all those formalities and affectations." They were not "to offend the King with colder expressions of their duty." The letter that was sent left nothing to be desired in the lavishness of its loyalty. Sir John Grenville was complimented, and before he was despatched with their reply to the King's letter, he was presented with 500, "to buy a jewel to wear, as an honour for being the messenger ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... a peal of laughter. He complacently accepted the tribute to his powers, but would have preferred it laid on with greater lavishness. Quite ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... short it falls of being good verse narrative—with its excesses of language and retarded movement. Wordsworth said finely of Shakspere that he could not have written an epic: "he would have perished from a plethora of thought." It is not so much plethora of thought as lavishness of style which clogs the wheels in Swinburne. Too often ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... grip on the earth he inherits, in his improvidence and generosity, in his lavishness with his gifts, in his manly vanity, in the obscure sense of his greatness and in his faithful devotion with something despairing as well as desperate in its impulses, he is a Man of the People, their very own unenvious force, disdaining to lead but ruling from within. Years afterwards, grown ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... assistants had been there in their absence, and were just leaving. They had turned the entire house into a rose-garden. Hall, drawing-room, and library, and the dining-room beyond were filled with such lavishness that it seemed as if June herself had taken possession, with all her court. Stuart and Eugenia paused before the tall gate of smilax ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... stared at this new lavishness, and Dotty said, quickly, "Oh, no, don't do that! We all want to be together, wherever we go. And I think, as Dolly does, that Bernice and Alicia must choose, for they ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... long career, had exercised a rigid watchfulness over the disbursements of public money, and he did not fully realize the great change which had been wrought in the people—a change sure to follow the condition of war if historic precedents may be trusted—a change in which economy gives way to lavishness and careful circumspection is followed by loose disregard of established rules. It is a condition not implying dishonesty or even recklessness, but one which follows from a positive inability in the public mind to estimate the expenditure of money by ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... born horseman, like Archer or Robinson, he may make his mark long before his indentures are returned to him, and he is at once surrounded by a horde of flatterers who do their best to spoil him. There is no cult so distinguished by slavishness, by gush, by lavishness, as jockey-worship, and a boy needs to have a strong head and sound, careful advisers, if he is to escape becoming positively insufferable. When the lad Robinson won the St. Leger, after his horse had been left at ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... future ships' biscuit and salt meat would constitute the principal part of the diet. The wine brought from France had also been nearly consumed. Instead of the latter, a cheap, unwholesome drink, tafia, bought at the island, was to be served out. This was amazing and depressing news, considering the lavishness with which the Government had fitted out the ships, and that nearly six weeks had been spent at a French colonial possession. By this time, too, as is clear from Peron's narrative, very little affection for the commander remained. The delays already permitted had brought the expedition in face ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... exactly what they do," replied Zametoff, "they murder, risk their lives, and then rush to the public house and are caught. Their lavishness betrays them. You see they are not all so crafty as you are. You would ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... women devote their leisure thought, and energy to the supervision of public institutions, the efficient distribution of public subscriptions, the succour and nursing of a community stricken by pestilence, are above praise. A careful study of Transatlantic examples might put our own boasted lavishness of charity to shame. ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... majority will admit— to themselves at least—that after a month's vacation, they return to work with an inward consciousness of being somewhat disappointed and beaten. We are free with our money when we have it. We are known throughout the civilized world for our lavishness in paying for our pleasures; but it humiliates us to know we have been beaten, and this is what the most of us know at the end of a summer vacation. To the man of millions it makes little difference. He is able to pay liberally for ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... a comparative lavishness about cheques that Bruce combined with a curious loathing to parting ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... Elsie, but it couldn't ward off the reaction that was to follow. The lavishness of the Middletons' gifts to her, which they justified by reminding her that it was her birthday (she had quite forgotten that Elsie Moss celebrated hers on Christmas!), quite weighed down her spirits. ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... wonderful solitude (for nowhere can one more perfectly immerse one's self in one's self than in a compartment full of silent, withdrawn, smoking males) is to me repugnant. I cannot possibly allow you to scatter priceless pearls of time with such Oriental lavishness. You are not the Shah of time. Let me respectfully remind you that you have no more time than I have. No newspaper reading in trains! I have already "put by" about three-quarters of ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... wear—shoes, stockings, lingerie, laces. In a crude way she had made a study of perfumes and cosmetics, though she needed the latter not at all, and these were present in abundance. She was not very orderly, and she loved lavishness of display; and her curtains, hangings, table ornaments, and pictures inclined to gorgeousness, which did not go well with the rest ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... with work, came in from his studio, Augustine did not put away her work so quickly but that the painter might find his wife mending the household linen, and his own, with all the care of a good housewife. She supplied generously and without a murmur the money needed for his lavishness; but in her anxiety to husband her dear Theodore's fortune, she was strictly economical for herself and in certain details of domestic management. Such conduct is incompatible with the easy-going ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... In truth, the lavishness of the entertainments which Honor had planned during the past two years had called the attention of even the English papers. Pixie had read aloud descriptions thereof in the journals in the northern ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... of grand fetes in Europe, when house decoration is done with lavishness, people, to make their homes more attractive, drape with beautiful rugs the balconies, the loggias, and the front walls of buildings. The richness and color of these rugs blend harmoniously with flags and other emblems, producing an effect of ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... must have gone off his head, thus to furnish his ship! For never before had a vessel sailed out of Plymouth harbor, provided after this fashion. An ample store of ropes and cordage, and of all matters required for a ship's equipage, were also laid in. To all questions as to the surprising lavishness ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... Upreared by Zim's ancestors in the days long past, And added to till now worth a sum untold. Howe'er rich no rarity was absent, it seemed, Fruit blushed upon the side-boards, groaning 'neath rich meats, With all the dainties palate ever dreamed In lavishness to waste—for dwellers in the streets Of cities, whether Troy, or Tyre, or Ispahan, Consume, in point of cost, food at a single meal Much less than what is spread before this crowned man—- Who rules his couchant nation with a rod of steel, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... lexicographer had even admitted Ernest II into the fellowship of Beethoven, but that fact was not widely known, and after "Diana von Solange" had been produced the most cogent argument in explanation of its production among the theatrical wits was based on familiar German stories of the lavishness of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in the distribution of orders, especially among musicians. No anecdote was more popular for the rest of the season in the corridors than that which told of how a concert party driving away from the ducal ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... various colours. In the out-buildings and the more retired rooms of the palace, the alabaster slabs were omitted, and plaster decorations used, from the ground upwards. The researches of MM. Botta and Place have shown that colour was used with a lavishness quite foreign to our notions, as the alabaster statues as well as the plaster enrichments were coloured. M. Place says that in no case were the plain bricks allowed to face the walls of an apartment, the joint being always concealed either by colour or plaster: in ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... speakers to sustain the cause of freedom for the slaves. The gift, which on the recommendation of Lord Grey's Ministry was placed at the disposal of the West Indian planters, was indeed a lavish gift; but the public in general made little complaint on the score of its lavishness, and did not calculate too jealously the value of the sacrifice which the State was invited to make for the purchase of negro emancipation. Thirty years and more had to pass before the great American republic was able to free itself from the curse of slavery, and ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... quickly in answer to his knock and Paul found himself in a great hall furnished with a lavishness which surprised him, in such an out of the way corner of the world. On the lofty walls hung priceless old engravings, and paintings on silk, with marvellous needlework cunningly aiding the artist's brush. Paul had seen such ancient works of art in the great Continental museums—but ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... surrounded by a bevy of young ladies, selected beauties of the court, whose natural charms were greatly enhanced by the lavishness of their attire. Always ready to further the plans of their mistress, they hesitated not to sacrifice reputation or honor to gratify her smallest whim. Her power was so generally recognized that foreign ambassadors, in the absence of the king, called her "that other king." When war ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... have I stripped myself of everything, but I have incurred an incalculable debt. I owe a woman the infinite debt of her love which I cannot repay. She sheds it on me hourly with a lavishness which scares me. But for her tireless devotion, the doctor tells me, I should not have lived. But for her selfish forbearance, sympathy, and compassion I should have gone as crazy as Anastasius Papadopoulos. Yet the burden of my debt lies ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... the pardonable pride of a son in the theatres of the London Hospital, but they were certainly eclipsed here. Each theatre was equipped with its own anaesthetizing room, its own surgeon's room, and its own sterilizing rooms and stores, all furnished with a lavishness beyond the financial capacity of any hospital in London. Perhaps some of the equipment was unnecessary, but it was abundantly evident that the State appreciated the value of first-class surgery, and that it was prepared to pay for it. I have never heard the same accusation ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... accounts for straw and manure were charged twice over, as some friendly accountant pointed out. Probably, too, his experiments in landscape-gardening were as costly as they had been to Chatham; for lavishness was in the nature both of father and son. Pitt once confessed to his niece, Hester Stanhope, that he never saw a house and grounds without at once planning improvements. In this phrase as in the suggestive item on farm expenses we can see why the sale of Holwood ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... acres, in sheets and tapestries of gold,—such an audacious, unreckoned plenty as went strangely with the frugal air and temper of the northern country, with the bare walled fields, the ruggedness of the crags above, and the melancholy of the treeless marsh below. And within this common lavishness, all possible delicacy, all possible perfection of the separate bloom and tuft—each foot of ground had its own glory. For below the daffodils there was a carpet of dark violets, so dim and close that it was their scent first bewrayed them; and as Laura ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... just here, in the perfection of the manner in which my minutest comfort was studied and provided for, I began to appreciate the significance of American hospitality—that combination of eager good-nature, Oriental lavishness, and sheer brains. We had time to spare. Close to the terminus we had passed by a hotel whose summit, for all my straining out of the window of the cab, I had been unable to descry. I said that I should ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... mistresses, And other such extravagancies; Which your uncle, Sir Giles Overreach, observing, Resolving not to lose so fair an opportunity, On foolish mortgages, statutes, and bonds, For a while supplied your lavishness; and Having got your land, then left you. While I, honest Tim Tapwell, with a little stock, Some forty pounds or so, bought a small cottage; Humbled myself to marriage with my Froth here; ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... hilarious comforts of the lap upon which they have sunk back, insomuch that they are apt to solace themselves for their intolerable anticipations of famine in the household by giving loose to one fit or more of reckless lavishness. Lovers in like manner live on their capital from failure of income: they, too, for the sake of stifling apprehension and piping to the present hour, are lavish of their stock, so as rapidly to attenuate it: they have their fits of intoxication in view of coming famine: they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the reputation of spending his fortune with elaborate yet careful lavishness, buying nothing that he did not enjoy, and giving away everything he did not want. At the same time his friends occasionally wondered on what he did spend both his time and his money. He was immensely popular, quite sought ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... B.C., as president of the murder commission, he brought three of Sulla's executioners to trial, and in 63 B.C. he caused the ancient procedure of trial by popular assembly to be revived against the murderer of Saturninus. By these means, and by the lavishness of his expenditure on public entertainments as aedile, he acquired such popularity with the plebs that he was elected pontifex maximus in 63 B.C. against such distinguished rivals as Q. Lutatius ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... embossed and engraved were pressed into the service as the native princes of Florence, Urbino, Ferrara, and other independent cities vied with Rome, Venice, and Naples in sumptuousness of ornament, and lavishness of expense, until the inevitable period of decline supervened in which exaggeration of ornament and prodigality of decoration ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... these performers aroused was pale and passionless in comparison with that evoked by Franz Liszt. This was not merely the outcome of Liszt as a player and musician, but of Liszt as a man. The man always impressed people as immeasurably bigger than what he did, great as that was. His nature had a lavishness that knew no bounds. He lived for every distinguished man and beautiful woman, and with every joyous thing. He had wit and sympathy to spare for gentle and simple, and his kindliness was lavished with royal profusion on the scum as well as the salt of the ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... of the material awaiting a capable writer there can be no question. There, ready to his hand, are the beauty of those islands of mid-ocean, the grandeur of their Alps and fiords, the strangeness of the volcanic districts, the lavishness, yet grace, of the forests; the mixture of quaintness, poetry, and ferocity in the Maori, and the gallant drama of their struggle against our overwhelming strength; the adventures of the gold-seekers and other pioneers; the high aims of the colony's founders, and the venturesome ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... think him the most jovial gentleman that ever was in New France," was the reply; "frank and open-handed to his friends, laughing and dangerous to his foes. His wit is like his wine, Angelique: one never tires of either, and no lavishness exhausts it. In a word, I, like the Intendant, I like his wit, his wine, his friends,—some of them, that is!—but above all, I like you, Angelique, and will be more his friend than ever for your sake, since I have learned his generosity ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... house was executed on Friday, Nichols agreeing to give possession within a week. The lavishness of the purchase price was a subject of much remark in the town, and Nichols's good fortune was congratulated or envied, according to the temper of each individual. The colonel's action in old Peter's case had made him a name for generosity. ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... whites are not—except at Johannesburg, where the lavishness of a mining population is conspicuous—large consumers of luxuries, so the blacks are poor consumers of all save the barest necessaries of life. It is not merely that they have no money. It is that they have no wants, save ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... Trapper. A symbolic figure, "The Call of Fortune," accompanies them. Some of the characters are actual portraits, as are also the Artist, Writer, Scholar, Architect and Sculptor in the opposite panel, "The Arrival in the West." In this the lavishness and opulence of California welcome the pioneers. Mr. Du Mond is a member of the International Jury of Awards in the Fine Arts Department of ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... share of little entertainments; a few pistoles at games of mere commerce; and other incidental calls of good company. The only two articles which I will never supply, are the profusion of low riot, and the idle lavishness of negligence and laziness. A fool squanders away, without credit or advantage to himself, more than a man of sense spends with both. The latter employs his money as he does his time, and never spends a shilling of the one, nor a minute of the other, but in something that ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... there from every quarter," he says. There was a great gathering of people in the interior court which led up to the temple. The statue, taken from its sanctuary, was placed before the peristyle upon a kind of repository. Wantons, arrayed with barbarous lavishness, danced around the holy image; actors performed and sang hymns. "Our eager eyes," Augustin adds maliciously, "rested in turn on the goddess, and on the girls, her adorers." The Great Mother of the Gods, the Goddess of Mount Berecyntus, was worshipped with similar license. ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... money from it. Everybody knows such instances. We hear men denounce the extravagance of women, while those very men spend on wine and cigars, on clubs and horses, twice what their wives spend on their toilet. If the wives are economical, the husbands perhaps urge them on to greater lavishness. "Why do you not dress like Mrs. So-and-so?"—"I can't afford it."—"But I can afford it;" and then, when the bills come in, the talk of extravagance recommences. At one time in Newport, that lady among the summer visitors who was reported to be Worth's best customer was also well known ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... as likely to impoverish the land and to eat out the hardihood of the people. "England spendeth more on wines in one year," complained Cecil, "than it did in ancient times in four years." In the upper classes the lavishness of a new wealth combined with a lavishness of life, a love of beauty, of colour, of display, to revolutionize English dress. Men "wore a manor on their backs." The Queen's three thousand robes were rivalled in their bravery by the slashed velvets, the ruffs, the jewelled ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... them; the brakes of ling—pink, faintly scented, a feast for every sense; the stretches of purple heather, glowing into scarlet under the touch of the sun; the scattered farm-houses, so mellow in colour, so pleasant in outline; the general softness and lavishness of the earth and all it bears, make these Surrey commons not a wilderness but a paradise. Nature, indeed, here is like some spoilt petulant child. She will bring forth nothing, or almost nothing, for man's grosser needs. Ask her to bear corn ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "Such exhibitions of uncalled-for lavishness are merely the signs of an ill-regulated and inordinate vanity," remarked a Mandarin of the eighth grade, who chanced to be passing, and who stopped to listen to Kai Lung's words. "Nevertheless, it is not fitting that a collection of decaying hovels, which Wu-whei assuredly is, should, ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... admit, with due humility, his unfitness to embellish his letters with the gorgeous and pyrotechnic lavishness of "fancy writing" which graces the letters of the New York Correspondents, but he is sure that the items which follow are infinitely more truthful than are the most of the statements furnished by those highly ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... Russia. These climatic differences produced the frugal Northerner, who had to provide in advance for the winter season, and the hospitable planter of the South, in whom prodigality was induced by the very lavishness of nature about him. It was not strange that by contrast, and seen through the haze of distance, the frugality of the North should appear to be avarice to the South; while the hospitality upon which that ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... of over-tipping at first in India, not realising that a couple of annas out here go as far as a shilling at home; but it is a mistake which should be rectified as soon as possible, for you get no credit for lavishness, but are merely regarded as a first-class idiot. No sane man would ever expend two annas ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... right—that speck yonder, which I believe to be Lucullus. Nothing that we know of Lucullus suggests that he was less inhuman than the churl of Arden. It does not appear that he had a single friend, nor that he wished for one. His lavishness was indiscriminate except in that he entertained only the rich. One would have liked to dine with him, but not even in the act of digestion could one have felt that he had a heart. One would have acknowledged that in all the material resources of his art he was a master, and also that ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... joyousness were unfailing. Everything was of interest, and she seemed to gather the flowers of life not so much for her own enjoyment as for the glory of shedding them on others. That is what disarmed people—this lavishness of the girl. She gave spice to life, and that has its value. If Nancy ever knew the natural desire to shine in her own light, not Joan's, she smilingly hid ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... love for his native land, he described the bustling life in his beautiful, wealthy home. There music and every art flourished; there, besides the Emperor and his august sister, were great nobles who with cheerful lavishness patronized everything that was beautiful and worthy of esteem; thither flocked strangers from the whole world; there festivals were celebrated with a magnificence and joyousness witnessed nowhere else on earth. There was the abode of freedom, joy, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... years ago Dor's bold and richly imaginative work was in great favour here; indeed, throughout his life he was much more appreciated by ourselves than by his countrymen. All the drawings were done straight upon wood. Lavish in daily life, generous of the generous, Dor showed the same lavishness in his procedure. Some curious particulars are given upon this head. Fabulous sums were spent upon his blocks, even small ones costing as much as four pounds apiece. He must always have the very best wood, no matter the cost, and it was only the whitest, smoothest and glossiest boxwood that ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... silent consent was a sign of true friendship. David began to describe with kindly and cordial eloquence the happy fortunes in store for them all. Unchecked by protests put in by Eve, he furnished his first floor with a lover's lavishness, built a second floor with boyish good faith for Lucien, and rooms above the shed for Mme. Chardon—he meant to be a son to her. In short, he made the whole family so happy and his brother-in-law so independent, that Lucien fell under the spell of David's ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... visitor: the first course was a pudding of Indian meal, molasses, and butter; then came a course of veal and bacon, neck of mutton, and vegetables. When the New Englander went to Philadelphia, his eyes opened wide at the luxury and extravagance of fare. He has given in his diary some accounts of the lavishness of the Philadelphia larder. Such ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... appreciative audience, he would reel off his yarns by the hour, in a reckless, devil-may-care fashion that set agape even old sea dogs who had sailed the western ocean since boyhood. Then he seemed always to have plenty of money, and he loved to spend it at the tavern tap-room, with a lavishness that was at once the wonder and ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... the thousand-franc notes out of his private cash-box—a sum sufficient to make the whole village happy, fifty-five thousand francs—and stuffed them into the pocket of his coat. But a millionaire's lavishness can only be compared with his eagerness for gain. As soon as a whim or a passion is to be gratified, money is dross to a Croesus; in fact, he finds it harder to have whims than gold. A keen pleasure is the rarest thing in these satiated lives, full ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... undertake to say that no favorite of destiny ever tried harder than I did to earn forgiveness for his wealth. I did not succeed."—No, indeed, he had not succeeded. From all the gold he had sown with such insane lavishness he had reaped naught but hatred and contempt. Hatred! Who else could boast of having stirred up so much of that as he, as a vessel stirs up the mud when its keel touches bottom? He was too rich; that took the ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... princely salary to perform before the crowned heads of Europe, and others, as the principal attraction of a vaudeville company contemplating a tour of Europe. I recall that he specifically mentioned crowned heads. Feeling that the importance of the event justified a lavishness in the matter of personal garb, he said that before sailing he had visited the establishment of a famous costumer located on the Bowery, in the city of New York, and there had purchased attire suitable to be worn on the occasion ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... river-front of Memphis. Only a week ago the victorious armies of Khem had brought their spoils and their prisoners across the eastern frontier. There had been fruit, bread, and flesh, and wine for the poor, and banquets of royal lavishness for those who could claim right of entry into the sacred circle which enclosed the Throne, the Temple, and the camp ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... Have you ever been to Ypres? If you have, it will act as a kind of antidote to those wretched picture post-cards which show it in its last phase—a heap of senseless wreckage. The 'Coal Boxes,' 'Jack Johnsons' and other varied presents from Krupp's had not fallen on the town with such lavishness at the time my regiment found shelter there. It was a June afternoon when I first found my way there. A mellow drowsiness hung over the Cloth Hall and Cathedral. It was indeed a very pleasant little town. The old ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... supposing that a tiny skin would cover but a very little land. But Iwar cut the hide out and lengthened it into very slender thongs, thus enclosing a piece of ground large enough to build a city on. Then Ella came to repent of his lavishness, and tardily set to reckoning the size of the hide, measuring the little skin more narrowly now that it was cut up than when it was whole. For that which he had thought would encompass a little strip of ground, he saw lying wide over a great estate. Iwar brought into the city, when he ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... marries, her wedding must be in keeping with the means of her parents. It is not only inadvisable for them to attempt expenditure beyond what they can afford, but they would lay themselves open to far greater criticism through inappropriate lavishness, than through meagerness of arrangement—which need not by any ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... the utilities of property become morbidly strong, and a mean lust of accumulation merely for the sake of accumulation, or even of labour merely for the sake of labour, will banish at last the serenity and the morality of life, as completely, and perhaps more ignobly, than even the lavishness of pride, and the likeness of pleasure. And similarly, and much more visibly, in private and household economy, you may judge always of its perfectness by its fair balance between the use and the pleasure of its possessions. You will see the ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... while Fabio's golden brows rose in slender arches on his pure, smooth forehead. Muzio was less animated in conversation also; nevertheless both friends were equally favoured by the ladies; for not in vain were they models of knightly courtesy and lavishness. ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... never buys much beyond his present need, unless it is to squander it in feast after feast, to which every one is invited and at which there is the greatest lavishness. If a son is born, or a black fox is caught, or a member of the family recovers from a severe illness, custom permits, if it do not actually demand, that a "potlatch" be given, and most Indians are eager, whenever they are able, to be the heroes ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... north. I cannot say that bonfires blazed on every hill, because there are no hills in Norfolk worthy of the name; but the rejoicing far and near was universal, and with all his old Highland hospitality and lavishness, General Grant Mackenzie, ably supported by Richards and the gallant M'Hearty, kept open house for a whole ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... curiously, wondering what had happened. He was tremulous with suppressed excitement; his high spirits were like the elation of intoxication and he ordered with a lavishness ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... had elaborate scenery and costumes, with just as much plot as would serve to string together the lyrics and dances. Sometimes an anti-masque of grotesque figures was introduced to serve as contrast to the beautiful figures of the masque. The masques were produced with the utmost lavishness, the most extravagant one of which we know costing over L20,000. Some of them, such as those written by Ben Jonson, contain charming poetry; but their chief interest to the student of Shakespeare lies in the fact that their ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... fault; she idealized everything and every one with whom she came into contact. She had a poet's soul, loving most dearly all things bright and beautiful; she was very affectionate, very impressionable, able, generous with a queenly lavishness, truthful, noble. Had she been trained by a careful mother, Marion Arleigh would have been one of the noblest of women; but the best of school training cannot compensate for the wise and loving discipline of home. She grew up a most accomplished and lovely girl; the greatest fault that could be ...
— Marion Arleigh's Penance - Everyday Life Library No. 5 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... dissipation, lavishness, redundance, surplus, exorbitance, overplus, redundancy, waste, extravagance, prodigality, superabundance, wastefulness. intemperance, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... found cause to wonder at her gentle ways, so was this man amazed at her great sweetness, now that he might cross the threshold of her heart. She gave of herself as an empress might give of her store of imperial jewels, with sumptuous lavishness, knowing that the store could not fail. In truth, it seemed that it must be a dream that she so stood before him in all her great, rich loveliness, leaning against his heaving breast, her arms as tender as his own, her regal head thrown backward that they might gaze ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... imposing charm. She might have been witty, intelligent, and kind to an exceptional degree. I don't know, and this is not to the point. All I know is that she was built on a magnificent scale. Built is the only word. She was constructed, she was erected, as it were, with a regal lavishness. It staggered you to see this reckless expenditure of material upon a chit of a girl. She was youthful and also perfectly mature, as though she had been some fortunate immortal. She was heavy too, perhaps, but that's nothing. It only added to that notion of permanence. She was barely nineteen. ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... proceeded to present Miss Adams with his usual lavishness. First of all he surrounded her with a superb company. It was headed by Robert Edeson, who played the title role, and included Guy Standing, George Fawcett, William H. Thompson, R. Peyton Carter, and ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... these drawbacks, however, the house was one that any doll agent would have been justified in describing as a "most desirable family residence"; and it had been furnished with a lavishness that bordered on positive ostentation. In the bedroom there was a washing-stand, and on the washing-stand there stood a jug and basin, and in the jug there was real water. But all this was as nothing. I have known mere ordinary, middle-class dolls' houses in which you might ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... midst of their tea and coffee when the West Hill party came. Miss Arabel was busy at the coffee-table between the two oaks, pouring out with all her might, and creaming the fragrant cups with a rich lavishness that seemed to speak of milky mothers without number or limit of supply; and Rosamond, as the most natural and hospitable thing to do, conducted the young gentleman as soon as she could to that lady, and commended ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... ransacked the art treasures of Europe, stripped medieval castles of their carvings and tapestries, ripped whole staircases and ceilings from the repose of centuries, and relaid them in this abode of splendor, and here he entertained with a lavishness that astounded New York. This single exploit pictures the man. Everything that Whitney did and was his house, his financial transactions, his Wall Street speculations, the rewards which he gave his friends assumed heroic proportions. ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... under the influence of absinthe in dreams, denotes that you will lead a merry and foolish pace with innocent companions, and waste your inheritance in prodigal lavishness ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... exploration, all our specimens were taken from the surface: we had not time to dig even a couple of feet deep. The lad 'Id almost fainted with joy and surprise when the silver dollars were dropped into his hand, one by one, with the reiteration of "Here's another for you! and here's another!" This lavishness served to stimulate cupidity, and every day the Bedawin brought in specimens from half a dozen different places. But the satisfaction was at its height when the crucible produced, after cupellation, a button of "silver" ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... no liking for these men, all of whom she knew. Caius Nepos, selfish and callous; Ancyrus, the elder, avaricious and self-seeking; young Escanes whom she knew to be unscrupulous; Philippus Decius whose ostentation and lavishness she despised. She vaguely wondered why my lord Hortensius Martius ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... one, that keeps me from putting a bullet through you while you sit there. We'll get to that in a moment. There is that little story first—shall I tell it to you now? For the past four years, and God knows how many before that, you've gone the pace. The lavishness of this bachelor establishment of yours is common talk in New York—far in excess of a bank cashier's salary. But you were supposed to be a wealthy man in your own right; and so, in reality you were—once. But you went through your fortune two ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... come from distant parts, if with wish as a guest to dwell in the monastery, and will be content with the customs which he finds in the place, and do not perchance by his lavishness disturb the monastery, but is simply content with what he finds: he shall be received, for as long a time as he desires. If, indeed, he find fault with anything, or expose it, reasonably, and with the humility of charity, the Abbot shall discuss ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... the ready road to an Hospital. If she be a bad Housekeeper, she lets all things run to destruction, that hath cost you so much care and trouble to get together. If she be a finical one, that will go rich in her apparel, she'l fill the Shopkeepers Counters with your mony. And in this manner her lavishness, shall destroy all your estate. To be short, let her be as she will, she shall never bring you much profit. In good troth, I esteem very little those sort of things, which you imagine to have a great delight in. 'Tis true, if you take a Wife, which is ugly, poor, innocent, ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... God, because of the abundance and lavishness of his gifts, is entitled to greater honor and glory. He is the true God, to whom alone belongs all glory; yea, the riches of glory. He pours out his blessings abundantly and above measure; he is the source of all blessings in heaven and on earth. Even his ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... king's permission in the king's own rose garden, the magnificent mascarado in the Italian manner, to which all who were associated with the court were summoned. This revelry which began at sunset was intended to overtop all possible courtly ceremonials in the splendour of its equipment, the lavishness of its display, the richness and ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Ibn Khallikan rather ungallantly, was "induced to marry her by the high esteem he bore her father." That her father, the vizier, saw no slight in this, but was not unwilling that his daughter should pass under the roof of another, we may perhaps gather from the lavishness of the wedding, which was celebrated at Fam As-Silh, with festivities and rejoicings, the like of which were never witnessed for ages before. The vizier's liberality went so far that he showered balls of musk upon the Hashimites, the commanders of the troops, the katibs, and the persons who ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... or profession of the wearer is indicated except that of the warrior chief. Female priests very frequently may be distinguished by a prodigality of charms, talismans, and girdle pendants, as also by a profuseness of embroidery on the jacket, but such lavishness is not necessarily an infallible sign of their rank as priestesses but rather of their wealth. Neither is it a mark of their unmarried condition, for in Manboland, as in other parts of the world, the maiden loves to display ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... by the inglorious device of anonymity and lavishness combined the King maintained his point, and sent his gift to the relief of one who was, as a matter of fact, just as legally a widow as any other you or I may like ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... children toil and rot like beasts, Robbers and robb'd by turns, the dreamer sees:— Land of poor-grinding lords and faithless priests, Where wisdom starves and folly thrones at ease 'Mid lavishness and lusts and knaveries; Times out of joint, a universe of lies, Till Love ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... they "received good company." On his return Napoleon had found Josephine's extravagance to be as unbounded as ever; but he could not well complain, because, although for the most part frugal himself, he had latterly encouraged lavishness in his family. Still, it was not agreeable to have dressmakers' bills flung into his carriage when driving in state with his consort, and on one occasion he sent an unprincipled but clever milliner to the prison of Bicetre ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... of the country have cafeterias and in some parts of the South, especially in Louisville, they are run quite extensively. But it is in the West, especially in California, that they have attained a dignity and even lavishness that makes them the surprise and delight of the tourist. Irvin Cobb says that this is the cafeteria belt of which ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... a Giostra sums which would suffice to found a library, and confer a lasting possession on mankind. Still, I conceive, it remains true of us Florentines that we have more of that magnanimous sobriety which abhors a trivial lavishness that it may be grandly open-handed on grand occasions, than can be found in any other city of Italy; for I understand that the Neapolitan and Milanese courtiers laugh at the scarcity of our plate, and think scorn of our ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... get that feel outa clothes. After all, now, when that tin-roof look wears off of 'em you won't appear so whittled-out in that suit. But now, layin' all jokes aside, are they just the thing for drivin' old Jack and Ned on the railroad grade? And didn't this sudden lavishness kinda set the company back on ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... give the average Asiatic the feast of a lifetime. In Europe, Americans are notorious as spendthrifts. In the Philippine Islands, they have thrown about their money in a way which has inaugurated an era of reckless lavishness comparable only to the California days of "forty-nine.'' In the port cities of China, the porters asked me extortionate prices because I was an American. Two or three coolies would seize a suit case or change it from man to man every few minutes, on the pretense that it was heavy. In Tien-tsin, ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... and the governor was out of town with the big bus." His pretty plan was for dinner and the theater and then supper and some dancing, but I thought there was just the least bit of the King and the Beggar Maid lavishness about that, so I discreetly revised ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... we have seen, had been cordially detested in his day of ascendency. All a reign's odium naturally condenses itself upon a royal favourite. His elaborate courtesy did not produce the effect of affability. His lavishness was thought ostentation. His good nature, for he was good natured, had too much an air of condescension. The scorn of rivals or his superiors in rank he met with scorn. His exploits by land and sea, as impartial critics noted, heightened instead of pacifying malignity. Later ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing |
