"Riband" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But, see, it is dawn already. Draw back the curtains and open the windows wide. How cool the morning air is! Piccadilly lies at our feet like a long riband of silver. A faint purple mist hangs over the Park, and the shadows of the white houses are purple. It is too late to sleep. Let us go down to Covent Garden and look at the roses. Come! ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... be seen in the heads of people who have applied themselves during many years to a weary and laborious course of study; and which would have been sufficient, without the additional eyeglass which dangled from a broad black riband round his neck, to warn a stranger that he was very near-sighted. His hair was thin and weak, which was partly attributable to his having never devoted much time to its arrangement, and partly to his having worn for five-and-twenty years the forensic ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... jewels and gold in every shape; the Child, which is of a tawny marble, looked like some favourite little 'nigger,' so bedizened was he with finery. She is a much more popular Madonna than my friend of the Pantheon, to whom I went, as in honour bound, and hung up my horse-shoe by a purple riband (my racing colour) round one of the candlesticks on the altar, with this inscription—C.C.G., P.G.R.N. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... understood, by his friends, to imply the customary offer, whenever it was not expressed in words. Then, still keeping his stick in his hand, he sat down; and, opening a double eye-glass, which he wore attached to a broad black riband, took a view of Oliver: who, seeing that he was the object of inspection, coloured, and ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... curly hair. On the other hand, the character of the face shows perfect self-confidence in its best sense, as well as self-control and determination. A scrap of drapery covers the outer edge of either shoulder, and round his neck is a riband, at the end of which hangs a large oval gem, Cupid in a chariot making his horses gallop. Thus the throat and breast are bare, and show exceptionally good rendering of those thin bones and thick tendons which must always be ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... was coldly received at Paris. "He is much inconvenienced by a sciatica," writes the advocate Barbier, "and cannot walk but with the assistance of two men. He comes back with grand decorations: prince of the empire, knight of the Golden Fleece, blue riband, marshal of France, and duke. He is held accountable, however, for all the misfortunes that have happened to us; it was spread about at Paris that he was disgraced and even exiled to his estate at Vernon, near Gisors. It is true, nevertheless, that ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Shoshonees, who had stolen twenty-three of their horses: we gave them some boiled venison and a few presents; such as a fishhook, a steel to strike fire, and a little powder; but they seemed better pleased with a piece of riband which we tied in the hair of each of them. They were however in such haste, lest their horses should be carried off, that two of them set off after sunset in quest of the robbers: the third however was persuaded ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... has a right to inscribe a motto upon a garter or riband, except those dignified with one of the various orders of knighthood. For any other person to do so, is a silly assumption. The motto should be upon a scroll, either over the crest, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... attract notice but the long line of the telegraph posts, their wires vibrating in the breeze like the strings of a harp. The road could be distinguished from the rest of the plain only by the clouds of fine dust which rose under the wheels of the tarantass. Had it not been for this white riband, which stretched away as far as the eye could reach, the travelers might have thought ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... footsteps coming down a paved footpath which ran like a white riband through the cobble-beaded width of the high-street, and withdrew swiftly to the shelter of a disused tannery adjoining the village end of the bridge. A cloaked female figure sped past. Though the night ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... ten thousand of that sort would never think of retreating. Their spectral advance on quaking London through Kentish hopgardens, Sussex corn-fields, or by the pleasant hills of Surrey, after a gymnastic leap over the riband of salt water, haunted many pillows. And now those horrid shouts of the legions of Caesar, crying to the inheritor of an invading name to lead them against us, as the origin of his title had led the army of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... yells of the Jovians, Capellus of the corps had carried off both the long and the high jump. Big Brebix the Gaul had out-thrown the long guardsman Serenus with the fifty pound stone. Now, as the sun sank towards the western ridge, and turned the Harpessus to a riband of gold, they had come to the final of the wrestling, where the pliant Greek, whose name is lost in the nickname of "Python," was tried out against the bull-necked Lictor of the military police, a hairy Hercules, whose heavy hand had ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... creature, Heaven knows! in common weather; but her stifled sobs showed that the mournful sight had stirred up all the woman within her. She had opened the bosom of the poor boy's shirt, and untying the riband that fastened a small gold crucifix round his neck, she placed it in his cold hand. The young midshipman was of a respectable family in Limerick, her native place, and a Catholic—another strand of the cord that bound her to him. When ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... on her knees close beside me, and I took both of her hands between my own. But presently I sought for a riband that was around my neck, and drew out a locket. Within it were pressed those lilies of the valley I had picked for her long years gone by on my birthday. And she smiled, though the tears shone ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... fool Honesty is! and Trust, his sworn brother, a very simple gentleman! I have sold all my trumpery; not a counterfeit stone, not a riband, glass, pomander, brooch, table-book, ballad, knife, tape, glove, shoe-tie, bracelet, horn-ring, to keep my pack from fasting;—they throng who should buy first, as if my trinkets had been hallowed, and ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... patting and a flickering of the toes incredibly intricate. For the celebration of these rites her partner would array himself in morocco pumps with cunningly contrived buckles of silver, silk stockings, salmon-colored silk breeches tied with abundance of riband, exuberant frills, or "chitterlings," which puffed out at the neck and bosom not unlike the wattles of a he-turkey; and under his arms—as the fowl roasted might have carried its gizzard—our grandfather pressed the flattened simulacrum of a cocked ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... having their age put down in every lexicon. A black tulle cap with flame-coloured ribands covered her head; round her neck she wore a string of large amber beads, a gold watch-chain, and a velvet riband from which her eyeglass was suspended. She was quiet, and retiring, spoke little, and passed the greater portion of the day in the cabin. Fru Nyberg was returning from Paris, and had with her a young lady of distinguished family, Emily Holmberg ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... single beauty of the Hog's Back, though to walk high in the wind along open spaces is possible only on a few roads in the county. The Hog's Back has a treble charm belonging wholly to the roadway itself; its width, its spacious grassy rides on each side of the broad hard riband of metal that runs white and unswerving east and west, and most gracious of all, its deep and exuberant hedges. All along the road in a light wind you will get the scent of bed-straw and thyme and clover from the ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... intimately acquainted with the subjects and interests which formed the heritage of English county gentlemen, he was, as a chairman of Quarter Sessions, recognised and often appealed to as the very representative and pattern of the class; and when afterwards he accepted the blue riband of Parliamentary representation as member for the University of Oxford, from first to last, through all the waves and weathers of political and personal bitterness, he retained the trust of friend and opponent. So long ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... being most satisfactorily demonstrated by the fact that her skysail-yards were aloft and crossed notwithstanding the circumstance that she had only just begun to receive her cargo. She was painted grey, with a broad white riband and painted ports, her top-sides being black. She carried a very handsome, well-executed carving of a woman, with long, streaming hair and fluttering drapery, under her bowsprit, by way of figurehead; and Ned noted ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... himself in front of Marylebone Church. The silent roadway looked like a long riband of polished silver, flecked here and there by the dark arabesques of waving shadows. Far into the distance curved the line of flickering gas-lamps, and outside a little walled-in house stood a solitary hansom, ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... gratification; but as a leaf before the eye will hide a universe, self-love limits the intellectual horizon to a compass inconceivably narrow; and the prosperity of nations, when placed in the balance with a riband or a pension, has too often kicked the beam. Professional business, and the love of detail, which is so deeply rooted in most English natures, tends also to contract the thoughts, to erect a false standard of merit, and to fill ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... when they hear it. It has nothing to recommend it to the pruriency of curious ears. There is nothing at all new and captivating in it. It has nothing of the splendour of the project which has been lately laid upon your table by the noble lord in the blue riband. It does not propose to fill your lobby with squabbling colony agents, who will require the interposition of your mace, at every instant, to keep the peace amongst them. It does not institute a magnificent auction of ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... face, ma?" said her dutiful daughter, "I'm sure I hope not! Really, I'm very well satisfied with it;" and, getting up and going to the mirror, she set about altering the riband in her hair, humming ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... due to the fact that the college awoke more rapidly from the sleep of the eighteenth century than most of Oxford, and as early as 1828 threw open its scholarships to free competition. Hence even as early as the time of Dr. Arnold at Rugby, a "Balliol scholarship" had become "the blue riband of public-school education." It has now passed into popular phraseology to such an extent that lady novelists, unversed in academic niceties, confer a "Balliol scholarship" on their heroes, ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells
... is a mysterious path by which the Virgin Mary is said to have led Queen Isabella to attack an old Moorish castle on the summit of the mountain: you see this path like a riband up the mountain side; but the miracle is, that though it can be seen at a distance, when ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... that it might very easily be devoted to worse: and if two or three faces can be rendered happy and contented, by a trifling improvement of outward appearance, I cannot help thinking that the object is very cheaply purchased, even at the expense of a smart gown, or a gaudy riband. There is a great deal of very unnecessary cant about the over- dressing of the common people. There is not a manufacturer or tradesman in existence, who would not employ a man who takes a reasonable degree of pride in the appearance of himself and those about ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... mandoline, with a blue riband attached to it cruising round the bottles; which seemed quite out of its latitude there! But, ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... hour appointed, Jeanie, dressed in white, was led out by the town- officers, and in the midst of the magistrates from among the ladies, with her hands tied behind her with a black riband. At the first sight of her at the tolbooth stairhead, a universal sob rose from all the multitude, and the sternest e'e couldna refrain from shedding a tear. We marched slowly down the stair, and on to the foot of the scaffold, where her younger ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... in silence of the cloudy night, Though it was morning, did he take his flight. But what the secret trusty night concealed Leander's amorous habit soon revealed. With Cupid's myrtle was his bonnet crowned, About his arms the purple riband wound Wherewith she wreathed her largely spreading hair. Nor could the youth abstain, but he must wear The sacred ring wherewith she was endowed When first religious chastity she vowed. Which made his love through Sestos to be known, And thence unto Abydos ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... fortune in a variety of ways. I am told that she has absolutely fasted for six Wednesdays and three Fridays successively, having understood that it was a sovereign charm to ensure being married to one's liking within the year. She carries about, also, a lock of her sweetheart's hair, and a riband he once gave her, being a mode of producing constancy in her lover. She even went so far as to try her fortune by the moon, which has always had much to do with lovers' dreams and fancies. For this purpose she went out in ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... towards the sun shining in his glory, with a label upon the lower rays of it, 'Sol Justitiae,' i.e., the Sun of Righteousness. On the right and left sides of this monument are instruments of husbandry hanging by a riband out of a death's head, as ploughs, whips, yokes, rakes, spades, flails, harrows, shepherds' crooks, scythes, etc., over which is writ, 'Vos estis Dei Agricultura,' i.e., ye are God's husbandry. On ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... had done for a previous generation of Americans, when Iroquois snatched the Blue Riband of the Turf from the English and bore it across the Atlantic, Ikey meant to do some ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... associates were not only noblemen, but literary noblemen; and need he have been so petulantly fastidious at bearing the venerable title of author, when he saw Lyttleton, Chesterfield, and other peers, proud of wearing the blue riband of literature? No! it was after he had become an author that he contemned authorship: and it was not the precocity of his sagacity, but the maturity of his experience, that made him willing enough ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... backs to my horses, which were pawing the mud and snorting and smoking like steam engines, with nostrils like safety valves, and four of my footmen hanging behind the coach, like bees in a swarm. There had not been so much riband in my family since my poor father's failure at Coventry—and yet how often, over and over again, although he had been dead more than twenty years, did I, during that morning, in the midst of my splendour, think of him, and wish that he could see me in my ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... have slipped for one lawless little moment out of the iron rule of cause and effect; and so we revert at once to some of the pleasant old heresies of personification, always poetically orthodox, and attribute a sort of free will, an active and spontaneous life, to the white riband of road that lengthens out, and bends, and cunningly adapts itself to the inequalities of the land before our eyes. We remember, as we write, some miles of fine wide highway laid out with conscious ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... new clothes made from this splendid material, for the approaching procession. "Magnificent! Charming! Excellent!" resounded on all sides; and everyone was uncommonly gay. The Emperor shared in the general satisfaction; and presented the impostors with the riband of an order of knighthood, to be worn in their button-holes, and the title ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... a short time the propositions were read. 'Proposed that the committee be impeached, for not providing suitable pens.' 'Lost, a pencil, with a piece of India-rubber attached to it, by a blue riband,' &c. &c. ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... heard the measured strains of music, and he saw coming towards him a band of harpers, dressed in green and gold, and when the harpers had saluted the prince they marched in front of the cavalcade, playing all the time, and it was not long until they came to a stream that ran like a blue riband around the foot of a green hill, on the top of which was a sparkling palace; the stream was crossed by a golden bridge, so narrow that the horsemen had to go two-by-two. The herald asked the prince to halt and to allow all the champions to go ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... Frenchmen with whom she had been brought in temporary contact. She was familiar, through newspaper paragraphs, with the name of his brother-in-law, the French duke who had won the Derby. The Duc d'Eglemont, that was the racing French duke who had carried off the blue riband of the British Turf—the other name was harder to remember—then it came to her. Count Paul de Virieu. How kind and courteous he had been to her and her friend in the Club. She remembered him very vividly. Yes, though not exactly good-looking, he had fine eyes, ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... yon birkie, ca'd a lord, Wha struts, and stares, and a' that; Tho' hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof for a' that: For a' that, and a' that, His riband, star and a' that. The man of independent mind, He looks ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... thy yard of blue riband, poor Fingal, recall The fetters from millions of Catholic limbs? Or, has it not bound thee the fastest of all The slaves, who now ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... session, the Portland party joined the ministerial ranks. The Duke of Portland received a blue riband, with the office of third secretary of state; Earl Spencer accepted the privy seal, which he soon laid aside to preside over the admiralty; and Mr. Windham, was made secretary at war. Before the close of the year, Lord Fitzwilliam was promoted ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... yellow riband, I tied it in my hair, That, walking in the garden, The birds might ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... looked faithfully far up and down the stream, for they knew the Indian stratagem. Presently Calloway leaped up for joy. "God bless my child!" cried he; "they have gone this way." He had picked up a little piece of riband which one of his daughters had dropped, purposely to mark the trail. Now they were on the track. Travelling on as rapidly as they could, from time to time they picked up shreds of handkerchiefs, or fragments of their dresses, that the girls had scattered by the way. Before the next day ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... their fine network. His hair, so much praised for its uncommon beauty, was tied, on the day of his execution, according to the fashion of the times. When his grave was opened, half a century afterwards, the riband was found in perfect preservation, and sent to his sister in England. When it was known that the sarcophagus containing his remains had arrived in New York, for London, many ladies sent garlands and emblematic devices, to be wreathed around it, in memory of the 'beloved and lamented ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... addressed the Indians in French, very distinctly, fluently, and loud: "I observe you have the portrait of my father; will you permit me to present you with mine?" The marquess then produced four large and weighty gold coronation peer medallions of his majesty, suspended by a rich mazareen blue silk riband. The chiefs, seeing this, dropped again upon their knees, and the king took the four medallions successively into his hand, and said: "Will some gentleman have the goodness to tie this behind?"—upon which Sir Edmund Nagle, with whom ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... resolution she had taken had a strange, daring, and adventurous character, to which she could hardly reconcile herself when the moment approached for putting it into execution. Her hands trembled as she snooded her fair hair beneath the riband, then the only ornament or cover which young unmarried women wore on their head, and as she adjusted the scarlet tartan screen or muffler made of plaid, which the Scottish women wore, much in the fashion of the black silk veils still a part of female dress in ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... showed the pretty calicoes to Susan, was now at his door, and when he saw the lamb, and heard that it was Susan's, and learned its history, he said that he would add his mite; and he gave the children some ends of narrow riband, with which Rose ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... 196.).—The cockade was simply the knot of the riband that served to cock the broad flapped hat worn by military men in the seventeenth century, and which in fine weather, or going into action, &c., they used to cock, by means of hooks, laces, and ribands. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... kingdome of Mobar there is a wonderfull strange idole, being made after the shape and resemblance of a man, as big as the image of our Christopher, et [sic passim—KTH] consisting all of most pure and glittering gold. And about the neck thereof hangeth a silke riband, ful of most rich and precious stones, some one of which is of more value then a whole kingdome. The house of this idol is all of beaten gold, namely the roofe, the pauement, and the sieling of the wall within and without. Vnto this idol the Indians go on pilgrimage, as we do ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... of Probable Starters (who are all coming on well, and might therefore be called, in the quaint turf Italian, "comeystarters"), I cannot help feeling that this year the Blue Riband of the Turf will fall to the flower of the flock—as, indeed, it should. But if it does not, why, there are other really sound horses that are sure to give a good account of themselves. We may take it, that the winner will be out of the common. As the glorious animal passes ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... belong to the lotiform type. The shaft is composed of eight triangular stalks rising from a bunch of leaves, symmetrically arranged, and bound together at the top by a riband, twisted thrice round the bundle; the capital is formed by the union of the eight lotus buds, surmounted by a square member on which rests the architrave. Other columns have Hathor-headed capitals, the heads being set back to back, and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... those castellated rocks which abound in the neighbourhood of Beaucaire, as also a singular defile near the post-house of La Pin. The high gray rocks which inclose this spot appear as if seared to the quick with drought, and for some distance leave room only for the road and a narrow riband-shaped line of rich cultivated ground of a few yards in breadth; which is again succeeded by a small village, whose houses completely block up the defile. From this point you creep and wind gradually to the hill called La Viste, from which we were instructed to expect ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... him like a man, he would have quailed before you, and not had the pluck to reply, and gone home, and years after written a foul epigram about you—watched for you in a sewer, and come out to assail you with a coward's blow and a dirty bludgeon. If you had been a lord with a blue riband, who flattered his vanity, or could help his ambition, he would have been the most delightful company in the world. He would have been so manly, so sarcastic, so bright, odd, and original, that you might think he had no object in view but the indulgence of his humour ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... sea that neighbours to her neare, All with gay girlands goodly wel beseene*. 40 And let them also with them bring in hand Another gay girland, For my fayre Love, of lillyes and of roses, Bound truelove wize with a blew silke riband. And let them make great store of bridale poses, 45 And let them eke bring store of other flowers, To deck the bridale bowers: And let the ground whereas her foot shall tread, For feare the stones her tender foot should wrong, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... Captain struck his riding boot a resounding blow with his whip, and whistled; while the Marquis dangled his eyeglass by its riband, viewing it with eyes of mild surprise, and the Viscount glanced from one to the other with an ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... wicket-gate which led into his father's grounds. The first thing to see and recognise him was a graceful pet fawn of his sister's, which at his whistle came trotting to him with delight, jingling the little silver bell which was tied by a blue riband round its neck. Barely stopping to caress the beautiful little creature's head, he bounded through the orchard into the garden, and the next instant the delighted shout of his brothers and sisters welcomed him back, as they ran up, with all the glee of innocent and happy childhood, to ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar |
