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Unadorned   /ˌənədˈɔrnd/   Listen
Unadorned

adjective
1.
Not decorated with something to increase its beauty or distinction.  Synonym: undecorated.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Unadorned" Quotes from Famous Books



... one, the remedy is not so difficult. Money, friends, adroitness, absence, long retirement, are enough. If a great one, and he is sensitive—and sated—he flies, he seeks seclusion. He is afflicted with remorse. He is open to the convincing pleasures of the simple and unadorned life; he is satisfied with simple people. The snuff of the burnt candle of enjoyment he calls regret, repentance. He gives himself the delights of introspection, and wishes he were a child again—yes, indeed it is so, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... orchestra, for they sang, or rather chanted, in high monotonous voices, as mournful as their gray expressionless faces. In two recesses, extended on teakwood couches, were Chinamen presumably of the same class as the diners, but wearing their daily blue silk unadorned and leisurely smoking the opium pipe. The room was heavily gilded and decorated and on the third floor as befitted its rank. Chinamen of humbler status dined on the floor below, and the ground ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton

... which Grayson was speaking was a tiny place of twelve or fifteen houses, all square, unadorned, and ugly, standing in the centre of an illimitable prairie that rolled away on either side exactly like the waves of the sea, and with the same monotony. It was a weather-beaten gathering. The prairie winds are not good ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... will, citoyenne. I will draw you the brand of the tyrannicide Harmodius,—a sword in a wreath,"—and pulling out his pencil, he sketched in a design of swords and flowers in the sober, unadorned style he admired. And as he drew, he expounded ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... though the utterance of thy prayer Be lost amid the torrent of thy tears, Yet does the sight of thy fair countenance And of thy pallid lips, all unadorned[123] And colourless in sorrow for my absence, Make me already ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa

... views of her own, he would not, one fancies, have been so stingless. Our England exposes a sorry figure in his Reminiscences. He struck heavily, round and about him, wherever he moved; he had by nature a tarnishing eye that cast discolouration. His unadorned harsh substantive statements, excluding the adjectives, give his Memoirs the appearance of a body of facts, attractive to the historic Muse, which has learnt to esteem those brawny sturdy giants marching ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... vision. She was symmetry itself; her hair was golden-hued, and flowed in sunny profusion down over her beauteous neck and shoulders; the painter's art had not exaggerated her natural grace and dignity—she was beauty unadorned. The dress was of white satin, with the puffed sleeves and short waist of the last century. A broad pink sash, fastened in front at the waist, reached down to a pair of tiny feet, clothed in rich embroidered slippers. I felt as if I was in the presence of ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff

... in prose and verse alike, of all removable decoration; that it may exist in its fullest lustre, as in Flaubert's Madame Bovary, for instance, or in Stendhal's Le Rouge et Le Noir, in a composition utterly unadorned, with hardly a single suggestion of visibly beautiful things. Parallel, allusion, the allusive way generally, the flowers in the garden:—he knows the narcotic force of these upon the negligent intelligence to which any diversion, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... uncommon occurrences in the air, should have been recorded. Yet, German accounts say expressly, that a thick, stinking mist advanced from the East, and spread itself over Italy; and there could be no deception in so palpable a phenomenon. The credibility of unadorned traditions, however little they may satisfy physical research, can scarcely be called in question when we consider the connection of events; for just at this time earthquakes were more general than they had been within the range of history. ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker

... from the beginning to the end of the trip, make the best of everything in every way, and I can assure you, if you are not ill-tempered and suffer not from your liver, Nature will open her bosom and lead you by these strange by-ways into her hidden charms and unadorned recesses of sublime beauty, uneclipsed for their kind ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... about his head and face, giving to his countenance the form of a parallelogram, to which there belonged a certain meanness of expression. He wanted the roundness of forehead, the short lines, and the graceful curves of face which are necessary to unadorned manly comeliness. His whiskers were small, grizzled, and ill grown, and required the ample relief of his wig. In no guise did he look other than a clever man; but in his dress as a simple citizen he would perhaps be taken as a clever ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... episode of Bertha and Rudenz, though beautiful, is very brief, and without effect on the general result. It is delightful and salutary to the heart to wander among the scenes of Tell: all is lovely, yet all is real. Physical and moral grandeur are united; yet both are the unadorned grandeur of Nature. There are the lakes and green valleys beside us, the Schreckhorn, the Jungfrau, and their sister peaks, with their avalanches and their palaces of ice, all glowing in the southern ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... "a thorough Yankee, born on a windy part of the coast, and reared chiefly on salt-fish; keeps a young ladies' school exactly as he would have kept a hundred head of cattle—for the simple, unadorned purpose of making just as much money in just as few years ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... postillion, who has seen him, pronounced no sham. Nor do I think the opinion of any man worthless, who has had the postillion's authority for speaking. But it is, I am told, a finer test to embellish much gentleman-apparel, than to walk with dignity totally unadorned. This simply tries the soundness of our faculties: that tempts them in erratic directions. It is the difference between active and passive excellence. As there is hardly any situation, however, so interesting to reflect upon as that of a man without a penny in his pocket, and a gizzard ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... origin, although it was being used as a cattle trough in a neighbouring farmyard before the restoration in 1884. The parish church of Levisham, standing alone in the valley below the village, has a very narrow and unadorned chancel arch. This may possibly belong to Saxon or very early Norman times, but Mr Joseph Morris[1] has pointed out that a similar one occurs at Scawton, which is known to have been built in 1146, and the evidence of a Saxon ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... descendant of Zeus, On the unadorned round of the shield, With knowledge divine could, reflected, produce Earth, sea, and the star's shining field,— So he, on the moments, as onward they roll, The image can stamp ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... looking after his guests and giving each his share of good things. He was a most good-natured, courteous old gentleman, although his costume consisted of nothing but a few bunches of ferns. The number of guests increased steadily; besides the real heathen in unadorned beauty, there were half-civilized Christians, ugly in ill-fitting European clothes, of which they were visibly vain, although they made blots on the beautiful picture of native life. All around the square grunted ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... parallel between the life and deeds of Ahmed Kiuprili and of the celebrated vizir of Soliman the Magnificent and his two successors, Mohammed-Pasha Sokolli; but we prefer to quote the impartial and unadorned portrait drawn by his contemporary Rycaut:—"He was, in person, (for I have seen him often, and knew him well,) of a middle stature, of a black beard, and brown complexion;[C] something short-sighted, which caused him to knit his brows, and pore ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... tin whistles. Some, with bamboos and Chinese lanterns, swing them up outside on the terrace. The medley of noises is very great. Such ringleaders as exist in the confusion are a GROUP OF STUDENTS, the chief of whom, conspicuous because unadorned, is an athletic, hatless young man with a projecting underjaw, and heavy coal-black moustache, who seems with the swing of his huge arms and shoulders to sway the currents of motion. When the first surge of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... difference is that Tolstoy is a consummate artist, a creator, in addition to the great preacher. For Marcus Aurelius is no artist. He is merely a speaker; he delivers his message in plain tongue, unadorned, often even unpolished. Epictetus, equally simple, equally direct with Marcus Aurelius, comes, however, already adorned with a certain humor which now and then sparkles through his serious pages. Ruskin brings with him quite a respectable load of artistic baggage; he brings an incisiveness, ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin

... the way down the hill, by the steep path that descended abruptly upon the rear of his bare and unadorned little dwelling; the doctor following with much foul language (for he had a terrible habit of swearing) at the difficulties of the way, to which his short legs were ill adapted. Aunt Keziah met them at the door, and ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... vast domain of oily brown by an Old Master. The Babbages at the Hall had a display of gold plate swaggering in the corner of the dining-room; and the visitor (restrained by a plush rope from examining the workmanship) was told the value, and so passed on. I like my art unadorned: thought and skill, and the other strange quality that is added thereto, to make things beautiful—and nothing more. A farthing's worth of paint and paper, and, behold! a thing of beauty!—as they do in Japan. And if it should fall into the fire—well, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... put on her body the one garment of hindu-widowhood, unadorned; but without marriage. She said, 'I will mourn for the children that have not been—that are not—that cannot be.' The women heard the voice of her mourning; and they forgot her too-great beauty, to serve her too-great ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... and sultry noon, when, through a small valley, skirted by rugged and precipitous hills, at the distance of several leagues from Granada, a horseman, in complete armour, wound his solitary way; His mail was black and unadorned; on his vizor waved no plume. But there was something in his carriage and mien, and the singular beauty of his coal- black steed, which appeared to indicate a higher rank than the absence of page and squire, and ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... made the discovery that a quantity of long black tresses, which, in the maiden fashion of his own country, were unadorned by any ornament, except a single chaplet lightly woven out of ivy leaves, formed a veil around a countenance which, in its regular features, dark eyes, and pensive expression, resembled that of Melpomene [the Muse of tragedy], though there was a ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... very elegant palace, ninety feet by sixty, and forty high, in which an unadorned simplicity reigns. It is light and pleasing, without the addition of wings or lesser parts, which too frequently wanting a sufficient uniformity with the body of the edifice, are unconnected with it in effect, and divide the attention. Large and ample offices are conveniently ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young

... would be simply to present it to thee plain and unadorned, without any embellishment of preface or uncountable muster of customary sonnets, epigrams, and eulogies, such as are commonly put at the beginning of books. For I can tell thee, though composing it cost ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... writers and readers, by calling forth materials which they have themselves thought worth notice, but which, for want of elaboration, and the "little leisure" that has not yet come, are lying, and may lie for ever, unnoticed by others, and presenting them in an unadorned multum-in-parvo form. To our readers therefore who are seeking for Truth, we repeat "When found make a NOTE of!" and we must add, ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various

... had your cruise in your ship of happiness on the waters of your cerulean imagination, permit me, who am land-born and a lover of the chase, to put my steed at a few fences in the difficult country of unadorned facts over which I propose to hunt the wily fox, matrimony. I have never hunted a fox, but I can quite well ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... no need of the name "Britt" above his head to proclaim his kinship with the man who stood on the tavern porch. The beard of the Britt in the door was gray, and his head was bald. But he was Tasper Britt, in looks, as Britt unadorned ought to have been. There was something like subtle reproach in his sticking to nature as nature had ordained. And the folks of Egypt had been having much to say about Usial Britt putting this new touch of ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day

... the simplicity of its presentation. Indeed, an unfriendly critic once paid him an unintended compliment, when trying to make out that he was no great speaker; that all he did was to set some interesting theory unadorned before his audience, when such success as he attained was due to the compelling nature ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... upon, and graphein, to write), originally meant an inscription on a monument, hence it came to signify any pointed expression. It now means a statement or any brief saying in prose or poetry in which there is an apparent contradiction; as, "Conspicuous for his absence." "Beauty when unadorned is most adorned." "He was too foolish to commit folly." "He was so wealthy that he could not ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin

... stood apart from or above any human being. The common people—workingmen, the poor, the illiterate, the outcast—saw themselves in him, and he saw himself in them: the attraction was mutual. He was always content with common, unadorned humanity. ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... sundry pages are wearisome for excess of prolixity or hardly intelligible for extreme conciseness. The perpetual recurrence of mean colloquialisms and of words and idioms peculiar to Egypt and Syria[FN306] also takes from the pleasure of the perusal. Yet we cannot deny that it has its use: this unadorned language of familiar conversation, in its day adapted for the understanding of the people, is best fitted for the Rawi's craft in the camp and caravan, the Harem, the bazar and the coffee- house. Moreover, as has been well said, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... boats are crossing river and bay to the little red school-house at Popham. Moved, we confess, more by curiosity than by any thirst for religious consolation, we joined the procession. Gathered within the cheerless room, unadorned, save here and there by wretchedly-executed prints of early patriots who would scarcely be recognized by their own friends, old and young alike presented ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various

... disposition, therefore, is ever so much more in evidence. Not a single one of this charming city's movements was intended for posterity. Her life stands before our eyes in clear reality, in naked, unadorned truth. Indeed, there were many things that the good folks would have loved to point to with pride. You have to search for these now. There are, alas and alack, a few things they would have hidden, had they only ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... flowing white beard, bowed gravely and gave them admittance. Through the cloisters, between the columns of which they caught glimpses of an overgrown garden, they advanced towards the main building, from whose unadorned, grey, and prison-like exterior an unpleasantly cool air was wafted. Olivo pulled the bellrope; the answering sound was high-pitched, and died away in a moment. A veiled nun silently appeared, and ushered the guests ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler

... former modes of treatment may, as we have said, be developed to any extent in the direction of tooling and gilding; the sheep has to be left unadorned—simplex munditiis. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... personages, but notable events have been engendered under the shadow of these hills. The Suffolk Resolves, which were the prelude of the Declaration of Independence, were adopted at the Vose House, which still stands, square and unadorned, easy of access from the sidewalk, as is suitable for a home of democracy. The first piano ever made in this country received its conception and was brought to fulfillment in the Crehore house, which, although still sagging a bit, is by no means out of commission. And Wilde's ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery

... signals for necessaries in the way of rugs and cushions. Life as bald and unadorned as it presents itself to Miss Bathgate is really not quite decent. I wish she would speak to me, but I fear she considers ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... Miss Wright,—it is impossible to imaging any thing more striking than her appearance. Her tall and majestic figure, the deep and almost solemn expression of her eyes, the simple contour of her finely formed head, unadorned excepting by its own natural ringlets; her garment of plain white muslin, which hung around her in folds that recalled the drapery of a Grecian statue, all contributed to produce an effect, unlike anything I had ever seen before, or ever expect ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... in all senses of the phrase. He was magnificent. His exposition of the state of Europe, perfectly unadorned, had yet an effect upon the House not unlike that of opening a volume to a multitude who had but just learned to read. All was novelty, conviction, and amazement. His appeal to the principles by which a great people should shape ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... was told. A close cap confined all the locks for whose rich luxuriance and golden hue she had once been noted,—for here they were not the victim of a vow, as in a nunnery they would have been,—and her dress was plain, simple, and unadorned. Save these alterations of attire, none were visible in her exterior: the torpor of her life seemed to have paralyzed even time; the bloom yet dwelt in her unwrinkled cheek; the mouth had not fallen; the faultless features were faultless ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the cool gloom of this silent chamber there glimmered, as it seemed, a thousand little lamps dotted everywhere on the sticks and walls and ceiling. Not a place where a worm could climb or spin was unadorned, for the oval, shining cocoons, scattered like small, ripe fruit upon the twigs, made a delicate light on every side through the sombre dusk. Mr. Redmayne's silkworms were descended, through countless generations, ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... every change she looked best; if she put on a shawl, then a shawl became the most feminine of ornaments; if she laid aside her shawl and her bonnet, then how nymph-like she seemed in her undisguised and unadorned beauty! Full-dress seemed for the time to be best, as bringing forward into relief the splendour of her person, and allowing the exposure of her arms; a simple morning-dress, again, seemed better still, as fitted to call out the childlike innocence of her face, by confining ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... acknowledge, that I long doubted the existence of this tree, until a stricter enquiry convinced me of my error. I shall now only relate simple unadorned facts, of which I have been an eye-witness. My readers may depend upon the fidelity of this account. In the year 1774 I was stationed at Batavia, as surgeon, in the service of the Dutch East-India Company. During my residence there I received ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... what is the cause of his sighing, and of his forehead being mutilated; when thus begins the Calydonian river, having his unadorned hair crowned ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... pleased her fancy; a casket, all inlaid in the inside with precious stones of various hue, so that there Should not be a hair's-breadth of the small interior unadorned with its resplendent gem. Then, conceive this minute wonder of a mosaic box, increased to the magnitude of a cathedral, without losing the intense lustre of its littleness, but all its petty glory striving to be sublime. The magic transformation from ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... regions nothing is known except from the reports of trappers, and the speculations of geologists. As far as these accounts go, all concur in representing it as a waste of sand and rock, unadorned with vegetation, poorly watered, and unfit, it is believed, for any of the useful purposes of life. A glance at the map will show what an immense area is embraced in these boundaries; and, notwithstanding the oral accounts in regard to it, it is difficult to bring ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant

... becomes a shining black under a paste of honey, lime and sal-ammoniac. This "patching" is alluded to by Strabo and Galen (Lane M. E. chapt. ii.); and we may note that savages and barbarians can leave nothing of beauty unadorned; they seem to hate a plain surface like the Hindu silversmith, whose art ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... cave temples of continental India, they appear to exhibit three stages of progress,—first mere unadorned cells, like those formed by Dasartha, the grandson of Asoca, in the granite rocks of Behar, about B.C. 200; next oblong apartments with a verandah in front, like that of Ganesa, at Cuttack; and lastly, ample halls with colonnades separating the nave from the aisles, and embellished externally ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... wishes and my plan were to make you shine and distinguish yourself equally in the learned and the polite world. Few have been able to do it. Deep learning is generally tainted with pedantry, or at least unadorned by manners: as, on the other hand, polite manners and the turn of the world are too often unsupported by knowledge, and consequently end contemptibly, in the frivolous dissipation of drawing-rooms and ruelles. You are now got over the dry and difficult ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... with church feeling; and Phoebe was the least in the world out of favour for the confession, that though it was well that choirs should offer the most exquisite and ornate praise, yet that her own country-bred associations with the plain unadorned service at Hiltonbury rendered her more at home where the prayers were read, and the responses congregational, not choral. To her it was more devotional, though she fully believed that the other way was the best for those who had begun ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... D. Straight house have been passed, we are once more in the region of unprepossessing chaos. Between Ninety-third Street and the end of the Park there is a riot of hideous signboards, and vacant lots, and lots that though occupied, are unadorned. The only relief in the unpleasant picture is the Mount Sinai Hospital at One Hundredth Street. In name at least the Avenue marches on, its progress being suspended for a space where Mount Morris ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... a violent effort to subdue her rising wrath; and, with a sort of convulsive smile, addressed Lady Juliana: "Your Ladyship, I perceive, is not of the opinion of our inimitable bard, who, in his charming poem, 'The Seasons,' says' Beauty needs not the foreign aid of ornament; but is, when unadorned, adorned the most.' That is a truth that ought to be impressed on ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... poverty of knowledge—helps to define the situation. The situation lives for a moment in those few words of Mr. Lathrop's. The initiated mind, as I have ventured to call it, has a vision of a little unadorned parlour, with the snow-drifts of a Massachusetts winter piled up about its windows, and a group of sensitive and serious people, modest votaries of opportunity, fixing their eyes upon a bookful of Flaxman's ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... very remarkable with the exception of the cathedral, the tower of which is very high, and is perhaps the purest specimen of Gothic architecture at present in existence. The interior of the edifice is neat and appropriate but simple and unadorned, for I observed but one picture, the Conversion of St. Paul. One of the chapels is a cemetery, in which rest the bones of eleven Gothic kings, whose souls I trust in Christ have ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... for keeping out of storms. "The gentlemen were just saying, as we came up, how much they would like a walk towards the woods. So with your permission, Miss Clorinda, we will leave you to the feminine duties of the toilet; though beauty when unadorned is ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... pipes, the water pipes, the speaking tubes, the cranks and wires for the bells—whatever really belongs to the building. They might all be decorated if that would make them more interesting, but even if they were quite unadorned they ought not to be ugly. If we could see them we shouldn't feel that we are surrounded by hidden mysteries liable at any time to explode or break loose upon us unawares. Those things that get out of order ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... his nephew; and again in the quarrel between these two ruffians. Allenso's affection for his little cousin and solicitude at their parting are tenderly portrayed with homely touches of quiet pathos. The diction of the Two Tragedies is plain and unadorned. In reading Arden we sometimes feel that the simplicity of language has been deliberately adopted for artistic purposes; that the author held plenty of strength in reserve, and would not have been wanting if the argument had demanded a loftier style. ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... house, solid, substantial, and unadorned, suggested unlimited spaciousness and comfort within; and was redeemed from positive ugliness without, by the fine ivy, magnolia trees, and wistaria, of many years' growth, climbing its plain face, and now covering it with a mantle of soft green, ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... him humorously, and yet with a bit of intensity, too,—as if searching for the meaning under such an unadorned question. ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... cheek of Gertrude they uttered their salutations with more than common respect. Where they then were the building swept round in a circular form; and at its base it is supposed by tradition to retain something of the ancient Roman masonry. Just before them rose the spire of a plain and unadorned church, singularly contrasting the pomp of the old with the ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... conceive, he is from time to time aided by the zealous amateur, though I find very little in his dispositions to show that he relies on that amateur's hard-won information. There exists—unlike some other publication, it is not bound in lead boards—a work by one "M. de C.," based on the absolutely unadorned performances of one of our well-known Acolyte type of cruisers. It contains nothing that did not happen. It covers a period of two days; runs to twenty-seven pages of large type exclusive of appendices; and carries ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... hardly any confession, transfigured in the luminous halo of poetry, is reproached as self-exposure. A beauty shows herself under the chandeliers, protected by the glitter of her diamonds, with such a broad snowdrift of white arms and shoulders laid bare, that, were she unadorned and in plain calico, she would be unendurable—in the opinion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... me have neither of them—that would be the end of it. I can't make out why I fooled with that 'Dora' at all. I'll write and ask Ernest to give me a week;" and with her characteristic promptitude she sat down, and favoured a style as unadorned as that of ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... the greatest known to any traveler, but the temples built to the god, Mazda, and his son, Ihua'Mazda, were empty and unadorned—the people had ...
— The Sun King • Gaston Derreaux

... Imber paused to remember, Howkan translated and a clerk reduced to writing. The court-room listened stolidly to each unadorned little tragedy, till Imber told of a red-haired man whose eyes were crossed and whom he had killed with a ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... face, which was covered with blushes at the recollection, withdrew abruptly from the window. The cause of her retreat was easily conjectured, and increased the general enthusiasm for a Princess, who had forgotten her rank in her haste to acknowledge the services of her subjects. The unadorned beauties of the lovely woman, too, moved the military spectators more than the highest display of her regal state might; and what might have seemed too free in her mode of appearing before them, was more than atoned for by the enthusiasm of the moment and by the delicacy evinced in her hasty ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... matrimonial occasion in the town. Her cousin waited on Alonzo to the ball, and introduced him to Melissa, who received him with politeness. She was dressed in white, embroidered and spangled with rich silver lace; a silk girdle, enwrought and tasseled with gold, surrounded her waist; her hair was unadorned except by a wreath of artificial flowers, studded by ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.

... of myself if I did not despise a girl like Miss Oliphant. Is it likely I should care to imitate one whom I despise? There was a brief, dreadful hour when I absolutely pined to have pretty things in my room as she has in hers; now I can do without them. My room shall remain bare and unadorned. In this state it ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... suited to the occasion, with prayers to Almighty God for his blessing, and in the midst of this cloud of witnesses, we have begun the work. We trust it will be prosecuted, and that, springing from a broad foundation, rising high in massive solidity and unadorned grandeur, it may remain as long as Heaven permits the works of man to last, a fit emblem, both of the events in memory of which it is raised, and of the gratitude of those ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... phrase, in the drawing-room; the sort of nicety which is unobtrusive exactness and delicacy; an artistry which in no way labels itself skilful. But underneath all, the woof of the process is social skill—that skill which is the ability to go back to unadorned first principles with the dexterity of one who has acquired the power to do the simple thing perfectly by having mastered the entire gamut of ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin

... great powers to force Lincoln into emancipation. It is impossible, even at this distance of time, to turn the pages of his ponderous volumes without feeling the matchless force of his energy, the strength of his masterly array of facts, his biting sarcasm, his bold assumptions, and his clear, unadorned style. There is about it all an impassioned conviction, as if he spoke because he could not keep silent, making it impossible to avoid the belief that the whole soul and conscience of the writer were in his work. Day after day, with kaleidoscopic change, he marshalled arguments, facts, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... the incense of flattery, until she is constrained to force herself up to unnatural heights of goodness, in appearance and expression, lest her lover be compelled to lower his conception of his paragon, and at length see her, a poor, unadorned sharer of humanity, just ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey

... not luxurious, but MacMaine hadn't expected that they would be. The walls were a flat metallic gray, unadorned and windowless. The ceilings and floors were simply continuations of the walls, except for the glow-plates overhead. One room held a small cabinet for his personal possessions, a wide, reasonably soft bed, a small but adequate desk, and, ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett

... the mountains, perfumed with the breath of pines and cedars, the wild lilacs, the sweet-pea vines, and a thousand aromatic shrubs and plants that render every hillside ever green from base to summit. Lay aside the follies of social conditions, and get back to nature, pure and unadorned, except with nature's ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves

... another was laid to Its fellow's foundation; with full knowledge of the end ere yet was the beginning accomplished; In every gesture, every pause, intonation, invocation, stave of song, phrase of prayer; by painful degrees wrought in the soul's sweat and tears, unadorned, cold as fine stone, yet glittering none the less like fair marble set in the sun—was that solemn Mass sung through in the bare Church to the glory of God and His angels, who must ever rejoice in a work done so that the master-mind is straining and on watch over heart and voice. ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... settled on the plain, straightforward title of unadorned truth, viz. "Four Possibilities, Six Exaggerations, and some Bits of Fact"; and with this we went to the publisher. But, as I entered his shop, a boy from Dutton's rushed in with his ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... Angélique, the Mère Agnès, Jacqueline Pascal, and Dr Hanlon the physician. Two portraits of the Mère Agnès particularly impressed me. The lines of the face were exquisitely touching in their gentle bravery and patience. As I looked at the noble and sweet countenances grouped on the bare unadorned walls, the sacred memories of the place rose vividly before my mind. It was here alone that the recluses from the neighbouring Grange met the sainted sisterhood, and mingled with them the prayers and tears ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch

... that lost nothing of its horror from the simple, unadorned style of this West Country farmer's son. He had been one of the ragged, emaciated band of British prisoners of war who had shivered through that first long winter in the starvation camp of Friedrichsfeld, ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams

... exhibitions; and thinks every minister should mind his own business, and leave other people alone. But he is far too good for a parson. A gentle melancholy seems to have got hold of him. He always preaches sincerely; a quiet spirit of simple unadorned, piety pervades his remarks—but he depresses you too much; and is rather predisposed to a calm mournful consideration of the great sulphur question. He never gets into a lurid passion, never horrifies, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... of Penrod's inner texture, a mere unadorned walk from one point to another was intolerable, and he had not gone a block without achieving some slight remedy for the tameness of life. An electric-light pole at the corner, invested with powers of observation, might have been surprised to find itself suddenly enacting a role of dubious honour ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington

... is difficult to speak in ordinary words. The enrichments of the surface, which is covered by beautiful groups set in a graceful framework of marble, with scarcely a flat or unadorned spot from top to bottom, have been ever since the admiration of artists and of the world. But we confess, for our own part, that it is the structure itself that affords us that soft ecstasy of contemplation, sense of a perfection before which the mind stops short, silenced ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various

... dozen advocates—which certainly is true.[262] Further on he comes to Caesar, and praises him very highly. But here Brutus is made to speak, and tells us how he has read the Commentaries, and found them to be "bare in their beauty, perfect in symmetry, but unadorned, and deprived of all outside garniture."[263] They are all that he has told us, nor could they have been described in truer words. Then he names Hortensius, and speaks of him in language which is graceful and graphic; ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... large cold unadorned vaults, a tall grayheaded slave, a rural laborer, as it required no second glance to perceive, was presiding over piles of cheese, stone-jars of honey, baskets of autumn fruits, and sacks of grain, by the red light of a large smoky flambeau; while ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... needs not the foreign aid of ornament, but is when unadorned adorned the most, is a trite observation; but with a little qualification it is worthy of general acceptance. Aside from the dress itself, ornaments should be very sparingly used—at any rate, the danger lies in over-loading oneself, and not in using too few. A young girl, and ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... exist'?' he repeated scornfully. 'Will you listen to my version of what has happened—the barest, unadorned tale? I was your host and Miss Foster's. I had begun to show the attraction that Miss Foster had for me, to offer her the most trifling, the most ordinary attention. From the moment I was first conscious of my own feeling, I knew that you were against ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... best. I do not deny a love of fine clothes in Damaris. Yet in her own home, and for delectation of the men belonging to her, a woman is surely free to deck herself as handsomely as her purse allows. "Beauty unadorned" ceased to be practicable, in self-respecting circles, with the expulsion of our first parents from the paradisaic state; while beauty merely dowdy, is a pouring of contempt on one of God's best gifts to the human race. Therefore I find no fault with Damaris, upon this rather fateful ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... so well, could have accused him of 'speaking of foreign travel with the fierce and boisterous contempt of ignorance' would be a puzzle indeed, did we not know how often this great rhetorician was by the stream of his own mighty rhetoric swept far away from the unadorned strand of naked truth. To his unjust and insulting attack I shall content myself with opposing the following extracts which with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... worms and snails, with as much an appearance of petit-maitreship as of humanity. He has some of the sickly sensibility and pampered refinements of Pope; but then Pope prided himself in them: whereas, Cowper affects to be all simplicity and plainness. He had neither Thomson's love of the unadorned beauties of nature, nor Pope's exquisite sense of the elegances of art. He was, in fact, a nervous man, afraid of trusting himself to the seductions of the one, and ashamed of putting forward his pretensions ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... lofty towers, and the interior is a perfect blaze of gilding. The monastery attached to it is one of the largest in the world, but the greater part of it is in ruins, and one of the wings is used as a barrack. Those unsightly, unadorned convents, which cling to every church save the cathedral, have neutralized nearly ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... habitation, save that of a miserable police guard of four or five, who occupy a wretched hut on the side of the road midway, and seem by their presence to render the scene around more dreary.[4] the road is a mere footpath unimproved and unadorned by any single work of art; and, except in this footpath, and the small police guard, there is absolutely no single sign in all this long march to indicate the dominion, or even the presence, of man; and yet it is between two contiguous [sic] capitals, one occupied by one of the most ancient, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... hats; orders glittered on their breasts; and many a precious stone sparkled in the hilts of their swords. The representatives of the Commons were allowed neither feathers, nor embroidery, nor swords; but were forced to content themselves with plain black cloaks, and an unadorned homeliness of attire, which seemed as if intended to exclude all idea of their being the equals of those other orders of which they had for a moment become the colleagues. And, in a similar spirit it was arranged that, after the folding-doors ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... in Mr Verloc's hand. But when she understood that her brother was "capering all over the place downstairs" she swung out in one sudden movement on to the edge of the bed. Her bare feet, as if poked through the bottom of an unadorned, sleeved calico sack buttoned tightly at neck and wrists, felt over the rug for the slippers while she looked upward ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... earth, till now Desert and bare, unsightly, unadorned, Brings forth the tender grass, whose verdure clads Her universal face with pleasant green; Then herbs of every leaf, that sudden flower, Opening their various colours, and make gay Her bosom, swelling sweet; ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... though, detained in their present position for some brief and restless season, they dreamed ever of unknown voyages yet to be made on the sea of life. They were very poor, very old. Some of them were painted red in front, some of them had only a red door, being otherwise quite brown and unadorned. There was one exception,—Emily Gaskell's—that stood on the hill, and was painted all ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... with being good, without considering that unadorned virtue may command esteem, but will never excite love; and both are necessary in marriage, which I suppose to be the state every woman of honor has in prospect; for I own myself rather incredulous as to the assertions ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... be ineffective if, on a dark night, it were acted in the vicinity of a graveyard! And one ballad—if I may be permitted to dignify it by that name—called "Promises of Freedom" is characterized by an unadorned narrative style and a dramatic ending which are associated with the best English folk-ballads. The singer tells simply and, one feels, with a grim impersonality of how his mistress promised to set him free; it seemed as if she would never die—but ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley

... Gifford's side, as he sat in the spotlessly clean parlour, with the Bible open before him, and a sheet of parchment, on which he was jotting down the heads of his sermon to be delivered next day in the plain unadorned room at the back of his ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall

... he sat moodily staring at the gigantic Revolving Beryl stood a woman of most striking appearance. Her name was Jaska, and according to ideas of the Days Before the Discovery, she seemed a trifle younger than Sarka. Her hand, unadorned by jewelry of any kind, rested on Sarka's shoulder as he studied the Revolving Beryl, while her eyes, whose lashes, matching her raven hair, were like the wings of tiny blackbirds, noted afresh the wonder ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... obtained; and if the garden seems to our taste to have been laid out in rather a formal way, with its box-trees cut into different shapes of animals and birds, he was in that respect only following the fashion of his day, and his delight in the unadorned beauties of the surrounding country has a genuine ring in it. In another curious respect Pliny was ahead of his times. He had no taste for the Circensian games and the brutalities of the gladiatorial shows. Writing to Sempronius Rufus ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger

... dishonest, frivolous and wholly reprehensible? To all these inexorable accusations he was forced to confess himself guilty. He had undoubtedly, only a few minutes before, looked almost impatiently for something from Rosemary Roselle. Beyond cavil she should have had an unadorned C last month. And these easily proved ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... fiftieth year. They were converted to Islamism about 1406, when the Arabian Chick-Ibn Molana came over, and, marrying the daughter of the king of Damak, received as her portion the province of Cheribon. Their mosques are generally of wood, and perfectly unadorned; but the tomb and mosque of the said Ibn Molana form a magnificent edifice. They do not place their dead in coffins, but wrap them in linen, and place a stone at the head and another at the foot of the grave, as seats for the two angels who, after their ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... present in the school. It has been typical of whole sections of rural country. Dilapidated school buildings, plain and unkempt in appearance and cheap in construction, have been set in the midst of barren surroundings, unshaded by trees and unadorned with shrubs, without walks or drives to the entrance, and without even a flagpole as an evidence of patriotic enthusiasm. Inside the building there is insufficient light and ventilation, and the old-fashioned furniture is ill adapted to the needs of the pupils. The whole structure ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... magnificent seat of the Duke of Westminster, is not, except for this, interesting to the stranger. There is a pedestrian route along the banks of the river Dee, over the lower ferry and across the meadows. But for the most part the way lies along dreary wastes, unadorned by any of the beautiful landscape scenery so common in Wales. Broughton Hall, its pleasant church and quiet churchyard, belonging to the Hawarden estate, are passed on the way. The village lies at the foot of the Castle, and outside of the gates of Hawarden Park. The parish ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... sound and useful learning. All that remains for me then to wish, to recommend, to inculcate, to order, and to insist upon, is good breeding, without which all your other qualifications will be lame, unadorned, and to a certain degree unavailing. And here I fear, and have too much reason to believe, that you are greatly deficient. The remainder of this letter, therefore, shall be—and it will not be the last by a great many—upon the subject ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... her appointment unpainted and unadorned, afraid and overbold by turns. When she found that she was merely expected to sit still, she grew calmer, and criticised the appointments of the studio with freedom and some point. She liked the warmth and the comfort and the release from fear of physical pain. Dick made two or three studies of her ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... shading lines only are brown, the rest of the figuring black; the base in this as in most Zuni pottery is reddish or slate colored. This may be considered as the type of one variety of decorations, readily distinguished by the unadorned circular spaces, the large scrolls, and the absence of animal forms. The larger forms of these vases are called by the Zunians k[-a]h'-wi-n[-a]-k[ae]-t[-e]hl-le; the ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson

... property, besides the many-acred farm which was to be his when "grandmother" should relinquish her claim to all earthly possessions. So he was really able to live in comfort; but, instead of that, the old red farmhouse, which was his father's before him, was a model of angularity, unadorned and unattractive, both inside and out, only preserving a decent aspect ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... increased one's capacity for enjoyment. He was acquiring what it is the chief function of all higher education to impart, the art, namely, of so relieving the ideal or poetic traits, [54] the elements of distinction, in our everyday life—of so exclusively living in them—that the unadorned remainder of it, the mere drift or debris of our days, comes to be as though it were not. And the consciousness of this aim came with the reading of one particular book, then fresh in the world, with which he fell in about this time—a book which awakened ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... these early Conventions more unsparingly ridiculed, and more maliciously falsified, than in their personal appearance; it may therefore be wise to say that in dignity and grace of manner and style of dress, the majority of these ladies were superior to the mass of women; while the neat and unadorned Quaker costume was worn by some, many others were elegantly and fashionably attired; two of them in such extreme style as to call forth much criticism from the majority, to whom a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... feudatory chiefs who still rule their states on ancient lines beyond the limits of direct British administration. The members of the new Indian Legislatures, most of them in sober European attire, though many of them retained their own distinctive head-dress, were assembled within the white and unadorned walls of the temporary building in which they will continue to sit until the statelier home to be built for them in new Delhi is ready to receive them. But Delhi itself with all its age-long memories was around one to provide the historic ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... more advantageous to the rude multitude, and tend more to mollify that fierce and gloomy spirit of devotion to which they are subject. Even the English church, though it had retained a share of Popish ceremonies, may justly be thought too naked and unadorned, and still to approach too near the abstract and spiritual religion of the Puritans. Laud and his associates, by reviving a few primitive institutions of this nature, corrected the error of the first reformers, and presented to the affrightened and astonished mind some sensible, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... alternative. I think that almost everything depends upon the course which Althorp takes, as far as the rest of this session is concerned. His popularity in the House of Commons is very great, and even surprising; it is a proof of the influence which personal character may obtain when unadorned with great abilities and shining parts; his remarkable bonhommie, unalterable good nature and good temper, the conviction of his honesty and sincerity, and of his want of ambition, his single-mindedness, his unfeigned desire to get out of the trammels and cares of office, have all combined to procure ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... shoulders were uncovered, and except for the narrow puff which seemed but a continuation on either side, of the daintily-edged bodice, the arm hung pink and fair over the amber satin, uncovered and unadorned save at the wrist, where a narrow circlet of gold clung light and close about it. Her hair was dressed in the same manner as the elder lady's, and differed only in its golden sheen. The customary lamp had been banished, and colored wax-candles, brought ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... tomb with a pomp of mournful splendour. A staircase of 240 stone steps leads to the top of the hill, where, above and behind all the stateliness of the shrines raised in his honour, the dust of Iyeyasu sleeps in an unadorned but Cyclopean tomb of stone and bronze, surmounted by a bronze urn. In front is a stone table decorated with a bronze incense-burner, a vase with lotus blossoms and leaves in brass, and a bronze stork bearing a bronze candlestick in its mouth. A lofty stone wall, surmounted by a balustrade, surrounds ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... churchyard. There is a tablet to his memory in the church itself, but no one now knows exactly where the mortal remnant was laid, for no memorial marked that last resting-place. The epitaph on Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey runs: "He left no spheres of writing untouched or unadorned by his pen. Noble, pure, and delicate, his memory will last as long as society retains affection, friendship is not devoid of honour, and reading wants not her admirers." Intimately we are guided most of all by ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland

... with knots of pale green leaves, very gay and bright. There was a straw matting on the floor. White muslin half-curtains hung in the windows, upon the sills of which certain plants bearing pink waxen flowers of which Presley did not know the name, grew in oblong green boxes. The walls were unadorned, save by two pictures, one a reproduction of the "Reading from Homer," the other a charcoal drawing of the Mission of San Juan de Guadalajara, which Presley had made himself. By the east window stood the ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... fine bosses, and, like those in the nave, they have been treated in a tentative way with colour and gold. As a whole, the effect of decorated bosses standing out in such strong relief from the simple, unadorned stonework is rather spotty and distracting. The arms of the Despenser family are to be found on some of the bosses in the south aisle, and it is to the munificence of that powerful family that the execution of the work is due. The Norman roof ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse

... Daughter of a world's greatest swordsman, she knew well the finest points of the art. She saw the clumsy attack of the kaldane and the quick, sure return of the panthan. As she looked down from above upon his almost naked body, trapped only in the simplest of unadorned harness, and saw the play of the lithe muscles beneath the red-bronze skin, and witnessed the quick and delicate play of his sword point, to her sense of obligation was added a spontaneous admission of admiration that was ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the door, which he held open for her. It was now Mary Lyster's turn to flush—the rebuff had been so naked and unadorned. Ashe rose as Kitty ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... motionless calm which the old Egyptians gave to their sphinxes. She was dressed for coolness in a loose white dress, tied round her waist with a crimson scarf of Indian silk; and her beautifully modelled arms, bare to the elbow, and unadorned by any trinkets, were folded idly in front of her as she looked out at the landscape, which was mellowed and full of warmth under the bright yellow glare ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... ribbon, and from her ears great gold ear-rings hung nearly to her shoulders, giving the usual barbaric touch to her stateliness. Ellen, in contrast, wore iris-tinted gowns that displayed nacreous arms and shoulders, and her hair passed in great dark shining licks over her little unadorned ears. ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... occasion by the elchi was characteristic of the people he represented—that is, unadorned, unpolished, neither more nor less than the truth, such as a camel-driver might use to a muleteer; and had it not been for the ingenuity of the interpreter our Shah would neither have been addressed by his title of King of Kings, or of the Kebleh of ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... impartial judge, were to visit the Madelaine of Paris, and then pass rapidly over to Algeria, (a journey of a few days), and there enter the simple mosque, and compare its prostrate worshippers, in the plain unadorned temple of Islamism, with the bowing and crossing, going on before the pretty saints and images of the Catholic temple of the Parisians, he could not fail to be struck with the immeasurable space which separates the two cultes, whilst the contrast, so far as the eternal records ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... in that simple gown of white, unadorned by any jewels save the little crown of sparkling white ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath

... truth, and sell it not." About two o'clock the people were again assembled to hear the Rev. James Richardson (formerly a lieutenant in the British Navy) from the words, "Be ye reconciled to God." His style was plain but unadorned, his reasoning clear, and his arguments forcible. The services concluded with the celebration of the Lord's Supper. About three hundred communicated, sixty-two professed to have obtained the pardon of their sins, and forty-two gave their names as desirous of becoming members of ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... the first few chapters of "Miss Angel," by Anna Thackeray. But a sketch by a trained and poetical observer is one thing; a sketch by a less gifted person is quite another. My pupil must be content with the simplest, most honest, unadorned record of things seen. Her training must look to ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell

... wiser generation. But much that is noble and heroic in the feelings of the nineteenth century has its hidden roots in the thirteenth. Gothic architecture and Gothic poetry are the children of the same mother; and if the true but unadorned language of the heart, the aspirations of a real faith, the sorrow and joy of a true love, are still listened to by the nations of Europe; and if what is called the Romantic school is strong enough to hold its ground against ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... don't you realize that mere statements unadorned and uncorroborated won't get you ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... floating round all things, Meadow and hill and leafy coverture, Steeping all Nature in most sweet delight, Till upward from the bosom of the earth, Before so cold and blank and unadorned, Spring fairest flowers to gladden and adore— That fillest the blue vault of heaven with smiles As of a mother smiling on her child, Pure, holy, without guile or artifice, Melting the spirit of each ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... saying, "What's the matter with the boy?" And to-day I cannot enter a theatre, even at the prosaic hour of ten in the morning, when the chairs are covered with cloths and maids are dusting, when the house looks very small and the unlit and unadorned stage very like a barn, without a thrill of imaginative pleasure. I have even mounted the stage of an empty theatre and addressed with impassioned, soundless words the deeply stirred, invisible, great audience, rising row on row to the roof. At ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... pleasure of introducing you to my wife, Mrs. Mortimer, better known to fame, perhaps, as Miss Arabella St. Maur. You see her, Mr. Bossom, as my helpmeet under circumstances which (though temporarily unfavourable) call forth the true woman—naked, in a figurative sense, and unadorned. But her Ophelia, sir, has been favourably, nay enthusiastically, approved by some of the best ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... life, breathing witnesses of the power of the Spirit in renewing and sanctifying the heart. And then it was that art and wealth and genius poured out their treasures to raise fitting tabernacles for the dwelling of so divine a soul. Alike in the village and the city, amongst the unadorned walls and lowly roofs which closed in the humble dwellings of the laity, the majestic houses of the Father of mankind and of his especial servants rose up in sovereign beauty. And ever at the sacred gates sat Mercy, pouring out relief from ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... Huck's night among the towheads; the Grangerford-Shepherdson battle; the killing of Boggs—to name a few of the many vivid presentations—these are of no time or literary fashion and will never lose their flavor nor their freshness so long as humanity itself does not change. The terse, unadorned Grangerford-Shepherdson episode—built out of the Darnell—Watson feuds—[See Life on the Mississippi, chap. xxvi. Mark Twain himself, as a cub pilot, came near witnessing the battle he describes.]—is simply classic in its vivid casualness, and the same may be said of almost every incident on ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... passed into the pleasant valleys of Arcadia, encircled with verdant hills. Here nature reigned in simple beauty, unadorned by the magnificence of art. The rustic temples were generally composed of intertwined trees, in the recesses of which were placed wooden images of Pan, "the simple shepherd's awe-inspiring god." Here and there an aged man reposed in the shadow of some venerable oak; and the ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... the floor was sorely fretted by the foot: its original colours of blue and red had passed into a dingy gray, chequered with the variously-tinted light which flowed in through the stained windows. The white walls and unadorned pillars looked cold and naked. Beggars were extending their caps towards you for an alms. On the floor rose a stack of rush-bottomed chairs, as high as a two-storey house,—as if the priests, dreading an emeute, had made preparations by throwing up a barricade. ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... theology consisted not of abstract dogmas, but merely of simple prescriptions for the ensuring of material welfare. Even at the present day, in the districts not completely Russified, their prayers are plain, unadorned requests for a good harvest, plenty of cattle, and the like, and are expressed in a tone of childlike familiarity that sounds strange in our ears. They make no attempt to veil their desires with mystic solemnity, but ask, in simple, straightforward fashion, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... dressed in their robes of state, and ornamented with the insignia of their office. The white elephant, richly adorned with gold and jewels, was one of the most beautiful objects in the procession. The king and queen alone were unadorned, dressed in the simple garb of the country; they, hand in hand, entered the garden in which we had taken our seats, and where a banquet was prepared for their refreshment. All the riches and glory of ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... find here is a concise, unadorned account of the wourali poison. It may be of service to thee some time or other shouldst thou ever travel through the wilds where it is used. Neither attribute to cruelty, nor to a want of feeling for the ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... men, in various stages of deshabille, all sunk in the sleep which the bamboo-pipe and the little black pellets of opium ensure. The room is not a large one, for the habitual smoker prefers a small apartment, in which the fumes of the drug hang about easily; and its reeking walls are unadorned save with a chromo plan of the chief buildings at Mecca, a crude portrait of a Hindu goddess, and oleographs of British royalty. It were all the same if these were absent; for the opium-smoker comes not hither to see pictures, save those which the drugged brain fashions, and ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.

... in many other of his instincts, Alberti was before his age. To care for the beauties of landscape unadorned by art, and to sympathise with sublime or rugged scenery, was not in the spirit of the Renaissance. Humanity occupied the attention of poets and painters; and the age was yet far distant when the pantheistic feeling ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... shimmering satins, soft radiating plushes, rich velvets, embroidery studded with real gems, pieces of costly old lace, priceless scents, and articles of bijouterie; she loved also to dazzle the eyes and bewilder the brains of young girls, whose finest toilet was a garb of simplest white stuff unadorned save by a cluster of natural blossoms, and to send them away sick at heart, pining for they knew not what, dissatisfied with everything, and grumbling at fate for not permitting them to deck themselves in such marvelous "arrangements" of costume as ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... the greatest known to any traveler, but the temples built to the god, Mazda, and his son, Ihua'Mazda, were empty and unadorned—the people had forgotten God. ...
— The Sun King • Gaston Derreaux

... with it by vitrification in the heat of the kiln. The process was known from an early date in Egypt, but was rarely employed there in the decoration of buildings, while in Chaldaea the use of such enamelled plaques was common. The substructures of palaces and the exterior walls of temples were left unadorned, but the shrines which crowned the "ziggurat," the reception-halls, and the headings of doors were covered with these many-coloured tiles. Fragments of them are found to-day in the ruins of the cities, and the analysis of these pieces ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... spot it is scarcely possible to imagine any place more completely wretched. It was a swamp, containing a small space of firm ground at one end, and almost wholly unadorned with trees of any sort or description. There were, indeed, a few stinted [sic] firs upon the very edge of the water, but these were so diminutive in size as hardly to deserve a higher classification than among the meanest of shrubs. The interior was the resort of wild ducks and other ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... fire beneath him to drive him from his bed and across the turfy roller of the hill to the Wythans', in the front of an autumnal sunrise—grand where the country is shorn of surface decoration, as here and there we find some unadorned human creature, whose bosom ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... in classic lore, No vales where fabled heroes moved of yore, No hills where Poesy enraptured stood, No mythic fountains, no enchanted wood; But unadorned, rough, cold, and often stern, The careless eye to other lands might turn, And seek, where Nature's bloom is more intense, Softer delights to charm the eye ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)

... a series of plays that set a new mark for English production, that put stimulus behind the so-called "unappreciated" play, and gave the English-speaking drama something to talk about—and to remember. The mere unadorned list of the plays produced is impressive. They were "Justice," by John Galsworthy; "Misalliance," by Bernard Shaw; "Old Friends" and the "The Twelve-Pound Look," by James M. Barrie; "The Sentimentalists," by George Meredith; "Madras House," by ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... Uthwart's journal, side by side with those ugly patches, very precise and unadorned records of their common gallantry, the more effective indeed for their simplicity; [232] and not of gallantry only, but of the long-sustained patience also, the essential monotony of military life, even on a campaign. Peril, good-luck, ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... Rome!" was shouted, but less loud than the cry of "Live the King!" And the vulgar almost thought the revolution was incomplete, because the loftier title was not assumed. To a degenerate and embruted people, liberty seems too plain a thing, if unadorned by the pomp of the very despotism they would dethrone. Revenge is their desire, rather than Release; and the greater the new power they create, the greater seems their revenge against the old. Still all that was most respected, intelligent, and powerful amongst the assembly, were delighted ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... could sweep the pavement, or lie in rich folds at the bottom of a carriage, unadorned by an imposing flounce that almost covered the robe; a little later, the one sober flounce was driven into obscurity by twenty coquettish small ones; and these were displaced by primly puffed bands; which gave way to fanciful "keys" running up the sides of the dress (where they seemed to have ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... her, smiling. "What for, O fortunate one, hath thy father bestowed thee on a person who is verging on death? Surely, O timid girl, thou shinest in this wood like lightning. Not in the regions of the celestials themselves, O girl, have our eyes lighted on thy like. O damsel, unadorned and without gay robes as thou art, thou beautifiest this wood exceedingly. Still, O thou of faultless limbs, thou canst not look so beautiful, when (as at present) thou art soiled with mud and dirt, as thou couldst, ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... of actual life—namely, the superiority of high over low principles, and of greatness over littleness of mind. These writings are like photographs, in which no feature is softened; no ideal expression is introduced, all is the unadorned reflection of the natural object; and the value of such a faithful likeness must increase as time gradually works more and more changes in the face of society itself. A remarkable instance of this is to be found in her portraiture of the clergy. She was the daughter and the sister of clergymen, ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh



Words linked to "Unadorned" :   unembellished, adorned, undecorated, unornamented, bare, unclothed, spare, untufted, plain



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