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Sumptuary   Listen
Sumptuary

adjective
1.
Regulating or controlling expenditure or personal behavior.  "Sumptuary laws forbidding gambling"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Sumptuary" Quotes from Famous Books



... the Council of state, the Parliament. Public finance. Maintenance of Order. Sumptuary laws and "blue laws." ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... behind them. If other importances, not to extend the question, kept themselves down, they were in no direction less obtruded than in that of our friend's dress, adopted once for all as with a sort of sumptuary scruple. He wore every day of the year, whatever the occasion, the same little black "cut away" coat, of the fashion of his younger time; he wore the same cool-looking trousers, chequered in black and white—the proper harmony with which, he inveterately considered, was a sprigged blue satin ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... commonwealth conferred knighthood on the deserving, according to the practice of sovereign princes. Persons of the highest social standing did not disdain to labor in their shops and counting-houses. Frugal in their domestic life, the Florentines strove to maintain habits of frugality by strict sumptuary laws. Limits were set to indulgence in finery, food, etc. The population of Florence somewhat exceeded one hundred thousand. In the neighborhood of the city, there was a multitude of attractive, richly furnished villas and country-houses. Among the industries in which the busy population was engaged ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... self-interest, of individual desires and ambitions, as the driving force of socially useful economic activity; he held that a better allocation of labor among different occupations would result, at least in England, if left to individual determination than if regulated or guided; he rejected some types of sumptuary legislation. ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville

... karma and sams[a]ra[47] is established, animal sacrifices are not only permitted but enjoined; and the epic characters shoot deer and even eat cows. We think, in short, that the change began as a sumptuary measure only. In the case of human sacrifice there is doubtless a civilized repugnance to the act, which is clearly seen in many passages where the slaughter of man is made purely symbolical. The only wonder is that it should have obtained so long ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... tight drab pantaloons, white silk stockings and dress shoes, all worn but once, a few days before, at a dress concert, at the Crown and Anchor Tavern." He proceeds to express his indignation at the idea of the manager presuming to enact sumptuary laws without the intervention of the Legislature, and adds threats of legal proceedings and an appeal to a British jury. "I have mixed," he continues, "too much in genteel society not to know that black breeches, or pantaloons, with black silk stockings, is a very prevailing full ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... of allowance to the stage performers. In these latter reforms, which simply restrained the exorbitant salaries of a class dedicated to the public pleasures, and unprofitable to the state, Marcus may have had no farther view than that which is usually connected with sumptuary laws. But in the restraints upon the gladiators, it is impossible to believe that his highest purpose was not that of elevating human nature, and preparing the way for still higher regulations. As little can it be believed that this lofty conception, and the sense of a degradation entailed upon human ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... other words, an unconstitutional law is no law. If our Congress, for example, were to pass a bill creating an order of nobility, or an established church, or to change the religion of the land, or to enforce a sumptuary code, it would have no more virtue and be entitled to no more deference than a similar enactment intended to bind the whole country passed by a town council. This we presume will not be denied. God has committed unlimited power to no man and to no set of men, and the limitation which ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... what are called "sumptuary laws"; that is, statutes regulating the food and drink, the habits and apparel of the individual citizen. This in turn harks back to the issue of paternal government. That, once admitted and established, ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... independence which followed from economic equality. There being no lower classes now which upper classes feel it their duty to bring up in the way they should go, in spite of themselves, all sorts of attempts to regulate personal behavior in self-regarding matters by sumptuary legislation have long ago ceased. A government in the sense of a coordinating directory of our associated industries we shall always need, but that is practically all the government we have now. It used to be a dream of philosophers that the world would some ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... public opinion and the law hold that it is a much less serious crime to smuggle than to steal. There are a dozen people who would smuggle, if tempted to do so, to one who would steal. Another illustration is the opposition shown to sumptuary laws on the ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker

... himself antiquated, and in primitive taste. Nancy's bedroom alone here. The furniture was old, solid, homely; the ornaments were displayed the influence of modern ideas. On her twentieth birthday, the girl received permission to dress henceforth as she chose (a strict sumptuary law having previously been in force), and at the same time was allowed to refurnish her chamber. Nancy pleaded for modern reforms throughout the house, but in vain; even the drawing-room kept its uninviting ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... be introduced into Italy from Greece the delicate art of fattening fowls. Even to drink Greek wines seemed for a long time at Rome the caprice of an almost crazy luxury. As late as 18 B.C., Augustus made a sumptuary law that forbade spending for banquets on work-days more than two hundred sesterces (ten dollars); allowed three hundred sesterces (fifteen dollars) for the days of the Kalends, the Ides, and the Nones; and one thousand sesterces (fifty dollars) for nuptial banquets. It is clear, then, that ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero

... there must first be a smaller number of cocottes. It is not impossible, indeed, that if the approachable-irreproachable young ladies were more numerous, the cocottes would be less numerous. If by some ingenious sumptuary enactment the latter class could be sequestrated or relegated to the background for a certain period—say ten years—the latter might increase and multiply, and quite, in vulgar parlance, get the ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... losing control of us? Apparently not. I had trouble on the road with a policeman over the rear light of my car. There is no doubt that England is efficiently policed. And so my mind stole back to America with a new uneasiness. I recollected tales which I had heard about sumptuary laws regulating the dress of American women, both in and out of the water. I saw the police invading restaurants and snatching cigarettes from the mouths of women. I saw drink being driven underground by Prohibition. I began ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... state measure in these crowded communities. On the small coral atolls, where the food supply was scantest, it was enforced by law. On Vaitupu, in the Ellice group, only two children were allowed to a couple; on Nukufelau, only one. Any violation of this unique sumptuary law was punished by a fine.[1008] On the congested Gilbert atolls, a woman rarely had more than two children, never more than three. Abortion, produced by a regular midwife, disposed of any subsequent offspring. Affection for children ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple



Words linked to "Sumptuary" :   restrictive



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