"Arabesque" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... piano there are "Three Bagatelles:" an "Etude Melodique," which is rather harmonic than melodic; an "Albumblatt," a graceful movement woven like a Schumann arabesque; and a "Pastoral," in which the gracefulness of the music given to the right hand is annulled by the inexplicable harshness of that ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... in union with priest and people. So instinctive in the Christian mind is the principle of decoration, as it may be called, that even in times of suffering, and places of banishment, we see it brought into exercise. Not only is the arch which overspans the altar ornamented with an arabesque pattern, but the roof or vault is coloured with paintings. Our Lord is in the centre, with two figures of Moses on each side, on the right unloosing his sandals, on the left striking the rock. Between the centre figure and the altar may be ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... hesitating, often repeated, like the words of peasants or children. They were rarely beautiful in themselves, rarely even significant, but they suggested a singular kind of beauty and significance, through their adjustment in a pattern or arabesque. Atmosphere, the suggestion of what was not said, was everything; and in an essay in "Le Tresor des Humbles" Maeterlinck told us that in drama, as he conceived it, it was only the words that were not said ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... guiding taste which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm—much of what has been since seen in "Hernani". There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe
... arabesque this, don't you think? ... And now this movement; isn't it reckless and capricious, like a woman who hesitates and then takes the leap? Yet there's a certain nobility there, a feeling for ideals. You see it, of course.... And all the ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... search. I will recount the memoranda that I made, lest memory should be unfaithful. When the third cover is unclosed, in the lowest part of the recess on the right hand, beneath a sliding panel, is a spring, on touching which the whole flies back, and discovers a rare device, beautifully wrought in arabesque relief. So far, in all likelihood, you being his confidential ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Their ceilings for the most part are semicircular vaults, richly painted, and the more valuable because few ceilings have been found in existence. We should attempt in vain to describe the complicated subjects, the intricate and varied patterns with which the fertile fancy of the arabesque painter has clothed the walls and ceilings, without the aid of drawings, which we are unable to give; and, indeed, colored plates would be requisite to convey an adequate notion of their effect. In the splendid work which Mr. Donaldson has published ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Louis XIV. chairs that had really come from France. There were some square, heavy pieces of furniture that we should call Eastlake now. And the extravagant thing was a Brussels carpet with a scroll centerpiece and a border in arabesque. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... tower is very pleasing, and overlooks the whole of the town. Fee, fr. Opposite the tower is the Chapel of the Dukes of Savoy, 14th cent. Fee, fr. The three tall windows are filled with beautiful old glass. The roof is covered with stone groining, with cleverly-executed arabesque painting between the nervures. The roof of the cathedral is similarly painted, but on a blue ground. It is situated near the Rue de Boigne, and was built in the 14th, 15th, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... love's converse now seems So tender to my dreams As he, discursive at our mutual desk, Most fervid and most ripe, When dreaming at his pipe, He made the opiate nights grow Arabesque. ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... introduces characters half Persepolitan, half Egyptian, into the shafts and capitals: in his intense love of excitement he points the arch and writhes it into extravagant foliations; he banishes the animal imagery, and invents an ornamentation of his own (called Arabesque) to replace it: this not being adapted for covering large surfaces, he concentrates it on features of interest, and bars his surfaces with horizontal lines of color, the expression of the level of the Desert. He retains the dome, and adds the minaret. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... issued from the mouths of the four lions; and as it fell, formed diamonds and pearls, resembling a jet d'eau, which springing from the middle of the fountain, rose nearly to the top of a cupola painted in Arabesque. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... cousin Virginia Clemm, a very young girl, who continued devotedly attached to him notwithstanding his many aberrations, until her death in 1847. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym appeared in 1838, and in 1839 P. became ed. of the Gentleman's Magazine, in which appeared as Tales of the Arabesque and Grotesque many of his best stories. In 1845 his famous poem, The Raven, came out, and in 1848 Eureka, a Prose Poem, a pseudo-scientific lucubration. The death of his wife gave a severe shock to his constitution, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... straw; and that, if such were her wish, he would forever be as silent as the grave, and last no scandal would besmear her virtue. And the lewd fellow, perceiving that the lady did not stop her ears, commenced to describe to her, after the fashion of arabesque pictures, which at that time were much esteemed, the wanton inventions of debauchery. Then did his eyes shoot flame, his words burn, and his voice ring, and he himself took great pleasure in calling to mind the various ways of his ladies, naming them to Madame d'Hocquetonville, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... the carved figure of a saint. The new brasses of the choir are wonderfully elaborate. The bronze scroll and vine work of the gates and lamps, for grace and Oriental luxuriance of fancy, for their arabesque and flower designs, might fitly have belonged to King Solomon's Temple of old. The modern woodwork of the choir compares also well with the ancient woodwork carving. Gold stars on azure ground, and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... Sultana and her six beautiful children in a room which, though not imposing in size, glittered with decoration. The ceiling and walls were rich with tessellated and arabesque work. The floor was covered with a carpet of cut velvet, with a pattern of the richest and most brightly-coloured flowers; and this carpet was strewn with costly jewels, which shone in the variegated light of the stained-glass windows above like glowing fire-flies. Around the walls were ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... Irving to write something that should illustrate those peculiarities, "something in the Haroun Alrasched style" that should have a dash of that Arabian spice which pervades every thing in Spain. The author set to work, con amore, and has produced two goodly volumes, with a few "Arabesque" sketches and tales founded on popular traditions. His study was THE ALHAMBRA, which must have inspired him for his task. To quote his own words: "how many legends and traditions, true and fabulous; how many songs and romances, Spanish and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... vicinity is a monastery containing a most beautiful cathedral, around which cluster many interesting historical associations, and whereof we propose to give a brief description.[41] It is of the Byzantine order, but the architect has employed in its decoration a large amount of Moorish or arabesque ornament, and the whole building resembles a beautiful large mausoleum. The stone with which the cathedral is faced has usually been called marble, but it is a whitish grey limestone somewhat resembling lithographic stone,[42] which is very easily workable with the chisel, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... have been brought about without effort by some ingenious and lucky accident, and the colours are of such clear transparency that we think the whole of the variegated fabric may be blown away with a breath. The fairy world here described resembles those elegant pieces of arabesque, where little genii with butterfly wings rise, half embodied, above the flower-cups. Twilight, moonshine, dew, and spring perfumes, are the element of these tender spirits; they assist nature in embroidering her carpet with green leaves, many-coloured flowers, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... de cette enfant l'herbe est splendide et semble Pleine de vrais rubis et de diamants fins; Un jet de saphirs sort des bouches des dauphins. Elle se tient au bord de l'eau; sa fleur l'occupe. Sa basquine est en point de Genes; sur sa jupe Une arabesque, errant dans les plis du satin, Suit les mille detours d'un fil d'or florentin. La rose epanouie et toute grande ouverte, Sortant du frais bouton comme d'une urne ouverte, Charge la petitesse exquise de sa main; Quand l'enfant, allongeant ses levres de carmin, Fronce, ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... by Raphael's classic figures and arabesques, but the column of design is naively broken by the far perspective of a formal garden. The Italian cartoonist would have built his border, figure and arabesque, one above another like a fantastic column (vide Mr. Blumenthal's Mercury border). The Fleming saw the intricacy, the multiplied detail, but missed the intellectual harmony. But, such trifles apart, the Flemish examples of this ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... soldier is very likely to say something like, 'Oh, you'll be wanting to get home to your old woman before that, and asking for a kipper with your tea.' And it is quite likely that the American will be offended in his turn at having his arabesque of abstract beauty answered in so personal a fashion. Being an American, he will probably have a fine and chivalrous respect for his wife; and may object to her being called an old woman. Possibly he in turn may be under the extraordinary delusion ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... matters, too full of the last two hours he had passed in Hetty's presence, for him to amuse himself with a book till school was over; so he sat down in a corner and looked on with an absent mind. It was a sort of scene which Adam had beheld almost weekly for years; he knew by heart every arabesque flourish in the framed specimen of Bartle Massey's handwriting which hung over the schoolmaster's head, by way of keeping a lofty ideal before the minds of his pupils; he knew the backs of all the books on the shelf running along the whitewashed wall above the pegs ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... designed by giants, made by dwarfs, which gives to this wonderful facade the effect of a dream. The baluster of this staircase forms a spiral connecting itself by a square landing to five of the six sides of the tower, requiring at each landing transversal corbels which are decorated with arabesque carvings without and within. This bewildering creation of ingenious and delicate details, of marvels which give speech to stones, can be compared only to the deeply worked and crowded carving of the Chinese ivories. Stone is made to look like lace-work. The flowers, the figures ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... is charged with colour so that it can receive no more; and instead of looking rugged, or cold, or stern, or anything that a rock is held to be at heart, it seems to be clothed with a soft dark leopard's skin, embroidered with arabesque ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... of the dining room she paused to look back at the veranda. She wanted to remember every arabesque that the vines were tracing in silhouette against the moonlit sea; but she could not see anything distinctly. As she left the restaurant some one presented her with a little ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... scimetars were richly labored and enamelled, the blades were of Damascus bearing texts from the Koran or martial and amorous mottoes; the belts were of golden filigree studded with gems; their poniards of Fez were wrought in the arabesque fashion; their lances bore gay bandaroles; their horses were sumptuously caparisoned with housings of green and crimson velvet, wrought with silk and enamelled with gold and silver. All this warlike luxury of the youthful chivalry was encouraged ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... stone, whose magnificence challenges all description. It might be said that there was a quantity of fairy flower and kitchen gardens in the sea, full of gigantic flowers, blossoms, and leaves, varied by fungi and pulse of every description, like open arabesque work, the whole interspersed with pretty groups of rocks of every hue. The most lovely shell-fish were clinging to these rocks, or lying scattered on the ground, while endless shoals of variegated fish darted in and out between them, like so many butterflies and humming-birds. These delicate ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... different-colored worsteds on white cloth, now brown with age. The attempts to represent the human figure are very rude, and it is merely given in outline. Matilda evidently had very few colors at her disposal, as the horses are depicted of any hue,—blue, green, or yellow; the arabesque patterns introduced are rich ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... portions of the glass surface from contact with the flux, with the use of a template of any ornamental or other desired form, these portions will retain their ordinary appearance, and will show the form of the design very strongly outlined beside the crackled surface. In this manner, letters, arabesque, and other patterns in white or colored glass can be produced with great ease and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... palaces, all with an elusive family resemblance to one another, we paused for consultation. This was Vicenza, the birthplace and beloved town of Palladio; these palaces with fronts crusted with bas relief; these Corinthian pillars, these Arabesque balconies, these porticoes that might have been stolen from Greek temples, all had been designed by Palladio the Great. And the beautiful buildings seemed to say pensively, like lovely court ladies whose day is past, "We are not what we were. Time has changed and broken us, it is true; ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... let me say instead; or, more accurately still, hierographics. St. Francis, in what he wrote and said, taught much that was false. But Giotto, his true disciple, nothing but what was true. And where he uses an arabesque of foliage, depend upon it it will be to purpose—not redundant. I return for the time to our soft and luxuriant John ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... to the stories, poems, essays and critiques which the indefatigable Dreamer was putting out, he found time to publish a collection of his "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque," in book form. He was also (unfortunately for him) induced to prepare a work on sea-shells for the use of schools—"The Conchologist's First Book," it was called. This was unmistakably a mere "pot-boiler" and confessedly a compilation, but it set the little authors whose namby-pamby works ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... top, of green glazed tiles, having four windows, one in each side; in the centre of the square is the palace, surrounded by a colonnade one or two stories high. The pavement is either tessellated or of chequered marble; some of the walls of the rooms are also tessellated with arabesque, borders, the ceilings are painted with gay colours, viz. scarlet, sky-blue, green, yellow, and orange, in arabesque, and some of them are very elegant. The houses of the opulent are diminutive imitations of the palaces. The house of (the Talb Caduse) ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... side-door, which grated on its hinges after the padre had turned the huge key in the rusty lock and opened it. They entered a wide stone vestibule, and found themselves opposite another arched door set in arabesque stone carvings: the flags echoed under their feet as they turned to the right and traversed a low, vaulted passage that ended in an open cloister. An arched gallery ran round the four sides, held up by slender, dark stone pillars, above which was a row of small arched cell windows. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... the work-women. Those who make only the ground, are called Drocheleuses. The design or pattern, which adorns this ground, is distinguished by the general term "the Flowers;" though it would be difficult to guess what flowers are intended to be portrayed by the fantastic arabesque of these lace-patterns. In Brussels the ornaments or flowers are made separately, and afterward worked into the lace-ground; in other places the ground and the patterns are worked conjointly. The Platteuses are those who work the flowers separately; and the Faiseuses de point a l'aiguille ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... world swings at the top of its beauty; and those hills where we shall live, what robes of color fold them! Tawny filemot gilding the valleys, each seam and rut a scroll or arabesque, and all the year pouring out her heart's blood to flush the maples, the great impurpled granites warm with the sunshine they have drunk all summer! So I am to be married to-day, at noon. I like it best so; it is my hour. There is my veil, that regal Venice point. Fling it round you. No, you would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... on about his wedding and the graces of Constance, and their future prospects, calling my attention to his captain's shoulder-straps, and the triple gold arabesque on his sleeve and fatigue cap. I believe I listened as much to the music of his spurs and sabre as I did to his boyish babble, and at last we stood under the elms on the Fourth Street corner of the square opposite the Lethal Chamber. ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... these strange designs are not only the manifestation of coquetry or vanity but that they are also made to frighten away the Evil Spirit you may well imagine how they each try to arabesque their skin in a more horrible way than the other, in order to look ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... knocking the ashes off his cigar on to the arabesque-patterned tapestry carpet—'why, no, not exactly; but these things, you know, are a good deal matter of course; just describe what you saw, you know, and butter Puff well, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... spectacle, les causes son les coulisses et les machines, et les principes c'est l'auteur." When this great palace is at last completed, he will write the science of it in "L'Essai sur les Forces Humaines"; and on the base, he, a child and a laugher, will trace the immense arabesque of the "Contes Drolatiques," those Rabelaisian stories in old French tracing the progress of the language, which he often declared would be his principal claim to fame. In 1842 the name "La Comedie Humaine" ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... while he shot out a long squirt of brown saliva against the milestone, with his knee raised his instrument, whose hard straps tired his shoulder; and now, doleful and drawling, or gay and hurried, the music escaped from the box, droning through a curtain of pink taffeta under a brass claw in arabesque. They were airs played in other places at the theatres, sung in drawing rooms, danced to at night under lighted lustres, echoes of the world that reached even to Emma. Endless sarabands ran through her head, and, like an Indian dancing girl on the flowers of a carpet, her thoughts leapt with the ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... which is taught to a beginner is "stem stitch" (wrongly called also, "crewel stitch," as it has no claim to being used exclusively in crewel embroidery). It is most useful in work done in the hand, and especially in outlines of flowers, unshaded leaves, and arabesque, ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin
... you appreciate more than their fresh joy of existence. But, little by little one herb and flower after the other becomes individualized—they are artists living themselves out into hues and lines and parts of a tableau; the vine draws itself in an arabesque which is perfect because self-forming; and the whole harmonize with the sway of sunlight and shadow, with rustling breeze and hurrying ant on the footpath, and chirping birds, so exquisitely that you may feel, as you never have in studying human art or in poetry, that tones, ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... feature as one of the most prominent, and to see, in the multitude of trunks darkened above by clouds of foliage, that rise upon him in the prospect, the slim columns of an elder Alhambra, roughened with arabesque tracery ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... the book-covers almost always follow certain styles. These are either heraldic, scriptural, symbolical, floral, or arabesque. ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... Everington's drawing-room, where Barrington had already heard fair ladies praising the gifts and graces of the young diplomat. He heard him play the piano; and he also heard the appreciation of discerning judgment. He heard him talking with arabesque agility. It was Geoffrey's turn to feel on the wrong side of a vast superiority, and in his turn he repaid the old debt of admiration; generosity filled the gulf and the two became firm friends. Reggie's intelligence flicked the inertia of Geoffrey's mind, ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... pearl-iridescent colombettes! (I wonder what they may be?) and sent to vie with the variegated carpet of the Turk, and glow upon the arabesque towers of Barbary![2] Was not this a phase of provincial Picard life which an intelligent English traveller might do well to inquire into? Why should this fountain of rainbows leap up suddenly here by Somme; and a little Frankish maid write herself the sister of Venice, ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... at the side, and is Gothic, with a dash of Saracenic in the ornamental mouldings above it. The large window at the extremity of the nave is remarkable for having round arches, which circumstance, together with the traces of arabesque painted ornaments on the columns, led me to think it might have been a mosque; but Dr. Robinson, who is now here, considers it a Christian church, of the time of the Crusaders. The village of Aboo 'l Ghosh is said to be the ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... unfitting. When we are on the mount of Transfiguration, we do not care much for Peter, James or John. And so, dear, I recommend you to do as I do—if the minister must give us a doctrinal disquisition, or a learned argument, or an elaborate arabesque of fancy work, or an impassioned appeal, let him go his way and do not heed him. I want silence that I may commune with the Real Presence. If the minister does not give it me, I ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... behind the other. Major Russell established himself in the chief's palace, which was exactly like the other houses except that the alcoves were very lofty, and their roofs supported by pillars. These, with their red paint, their arabesque adornments, and their quaint character, gave the courtyard the precise appearance ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... Marcelo realized the de-personalizing horrors of war as when he saw entering his home this convalescent whom he had known months before—elegant and slender, with a delicate and somewhat feminine beauty. His face was now furrowed by a network of scars that had transformed it into a purplish arabesque. Within his body were hidden many such. His left hand had disappeared with a part of the forearm, the empty sleeve hanging over the remainder. The other hand was supported on a cane, a necessary aid in order to be able to move a leg that would never ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... he was making very extensive and costly improvements in the buildings and grounds. I have seen nothing yet in England to compare, for ornate carving, with the new gate-way he is making to the park. It is of the finest kind of arabesque work done in stone that much resembles the Caen. This prevention barred me from even a distant view of the once famous residence of Lord Byron, as it could not be seen ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... above all things startled, and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its arabesque expression with any ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... husks,—large, flat, and disposed evenly along the lee-side of each swaying stalk, so as to present only their edges to the wind. But, if you approach, those pale husks all break open to display strange splendors of scarlet and seal-brown, with arabesque mottlings in white and black: they change into wondrous living blossoms, which detach themselves before your eyes and rise in air, and flutter away by thousands to settle down farther off, and turn into wheat-colored husks once more ... a ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... according to custom, begins to read the end of his letters first finds an arabesque of this style at the bottom of a lady's letter, he ought to arm himself with patience and resignation before ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... by that unchanging race, Are themes for minstrelsy more high than thine; Of strange tradition many a mystic trace, Legend and vision, prophecy and sign; Where wonders wild of Arabesque combine With Gothic imagery of darker shade, Forming a model meet for minstrel line. Go, seek such theme!"—the Mountain Spirit said. With filial awe I heard—I heard, ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... of a warm spring day flashed through the open window, and made golden arabesque tracery on the walls, and portraits of the parlour at Huntingdon Hill. The costly crimson damask curtains had long since been cut into shirts for the soldiers, and transported to the army of Tennessee, and air and sunshine entered ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... have grown the agitation of the feasters; so much the more wild must have been the scene to any European who could have beheld them there, in the strong sun and the strong shadow of the banyan, rubbed with saffron to throw in a more high relief the arabesque of the tattoo; the women bleached by days of confinement to a complexion almost European; the chiefs crowned with silver plumes of old men's beards and girt with kirtles of the hair of dead women. All manner of island food was meanwhile spread for the women and the ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... snug and happy family did this of Mariam's appear to be. If you could judge by all the laughter and giggling, by the splendour of the women's attire, by the neatness of the little house, prettily decorated with arabesque paintings, neat mats, and gay carpets, they were a family well to do in the Beyrout world, and lived with as much comfort as any Europeans. They had one book; and, on the wall of the principal apartment, a black ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... throughout. The great parlour was panelled in wood, white and gold. The other chief rooms were wainscoted in oak; and as to their upper walls, some were bright with French paper, while some shone white with smooth plaster; their ceilings and borders were decorated with arabesque woodwork. There were tiled fireplaces, with carved mantels, white, like the rectangular window-frames and panelled doors. Well, well, 'twas but a house like countless others, and why should I so closely describe it?—save that I love the memory ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... effort in that line quite into the shade. The Alhambra was nothing to it! The floor was yellow ochre; the ceiling was sky-blue; the cornices were scarlet, with flutings of blue and yellow, and, underneath, a broad belt of fruit and foliage, executed in an extremely arabesque style. The walls were light green, with narrow bands of red down the sides of each plank. The table was yellow, the chairs blue, and their bottoms red, by way of harmonious variety. But the grand point—the great masterpiece in the ornamentation of this apartment—was the ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... quality. Among them is a group of four and eight-hand works for two pianos, as well as duets for a single instrument. Among her most important solo works are a sonata, an Etude Symphonique, a Valse Caprice, a Guitarre, an Arabesque, six Etudes de Concert, five Airs de Ballet, containing the well-known Scarf Dance, six Romances Sans Paroles, and six humourous pieces. She has also written a few ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... Now the scarf was trimmed down to be as narrow as your neckcloth, and hung loose and straight over the back; the ephod was cut straight and as close and short as might be,—I believe there was a little trimming of lace to the narrow sleeves, and a slight arabesque of tape, or other substance, round the edge of the surplice. As for the curl on the forehead, it was no more visible than the Maypole in the Strand, or the Cross at Charing. Honeyman's hair was parted ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in a mysterious way his wonders to perform." If the greatest of all his wonders be the human individual, the richness with which the specimens thereof are diversified, the limitless variety of outline, from gothic to classic or flowing arabesque, the contradictory nature of the filling, composed of little and great, of comic, heroic, and pathetic elements blended inextricably, in personalities all of whom can go, and go successfully, must surely be reckoned the supreme miracle of creative ingenuity. ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... have entirely disappeared to make way for streets of commercial buildings, while the new districts of Kasr-el-Dubara and Ghezireh have arisen to house the well-to-do. Our interest in Cairo, therefore, is centred in the native quarters, where miles of streets and alleys, rich in Arabesque buildings, are untouched except by the ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... Melky stood at his elbow, watching. The mysterious volume was certainly worthy of close inspection— a small quarto, wonderfully bound in old dark crimson morocco leather, and ornamented on sides and back with curious gold arabesque work: a heavy clasp, also intricately wrought, held the boards together. Lauriston, something of a book lover, whose natural inclination was to spend his last shilling on a book rather than on beef and bread, looked ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... intermixture. He has been censured for an occasional play on language in the expression of feeling. But is it just to exact the severity of the tragical cothurnus in light works of this description? Why should not Poetry also be allowed her arabesque? No person can be more an enemy to mannerism than I am; but to censure it aright, we ought first to understand the degree of nature and truth which we have a right to expect from each species, and what is alone compatible with it. The verses of Quinault have no other navet and simplicity ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... obliged to put the child down. The pages, gentlemen, and ladies in waiting, stared in astonishment as her majesty went by, holding the refractory little peasant by the hand, his rosy cheeks covered with many an arabesque, the joint production of tears and dirt. Little cared Jacob for the splendor around him; still less for the caresses of ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... sometimes I cannot but suppose my Brownies have been aping Bunyan, and yet in no case with what would possibly be called a moral in a tract; never with the ethical narrowness; conveying hints instead of life's larger limitations and that sort of sense which we seem to perceive in the arabesque of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exclamation as he turned his face towards her. Round his eyes were traced two yellow circles, and his mouth was enclosed by a parenthesis of vermilion; an arabesque pattern adorned ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... we passed through the handsome dining room, the ancient salle des gardes of Queen Catherine, where our new cicerone pointed out to us in the painted ceiling her own personal cipher interwoven with an arabesque. From the great dining room a door, on which are carved the arms of the Bohiers, leads directly, one might say abruptly, into a chapel, "as if," said Monsieur Crapaud, "to remind those who sit at meat here that the things of the spirit are near ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... running down to a very fine point. It was not polished and clear like European steel, but dull, rough, and dead, full of a curious-looking grain, as if two or three different kinds of metal had been welded together, while up near the hilt there was a beautiful arabesque pattern in gold. ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... on the AEsquiline; and nothing remains of them but piles of brickwork, and a few subterranean chambers almost choked with rubbish. Some fragments of exquisite arabesque painting are visible on the ceilings and walls; and the gilding and colours are still fresh and bright. The brickwork is perfectly solid and firm, and appeared as if finished yesterday. On the whole the impression on my mind was, that not the slow and gentle hand of time, but sudden rapine and violence ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... no novice at the business of selling a girl, neither was he a stranger to the house to which he had taken me. For, after breakfast, he showed me into a little room with one quaint, Arabesque window. In this room there was a bath, and every toilette requisite, while, from a tin box that he brought in, he took out a number of most exquisite outer and under garments. Telling me to make myself as beautiful-looking as I knew ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... fully a third was curtained off by a calico curtain, with a gorgeous Cretonne pattern upon it. I was delighted to see a four-post bed, with mosquito bars, and a clean pulu mattrass, with a linen sheet over it, covered with a beautiful quilt with a quaint arabesque pattern on a white ground running round it, and a wreath of green leaves in the centre. The native women exercise the utmost ingenuity in the patterns and colours of these quilts. Some of them are quite works of art. The materials, which are plain and printed cottons, cost ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... that form known as pietra-dura—polished bits of marble, agates, pebbles and lapis lazuli. Ivory was carved and used as bas-reliefs and ivory and tortoise shell, brass and mother-of-pearl used as inlay. Elaborate Arabesque designs inlaid were souvenirs of the Orient, and where the cabinetmaker's saw left a line, the cuts were filled in with black wood or stained glue, which brought out the design and so gave an added decorative effect. Skilled artisans had other designs ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... promontory; but his humour had in the meantime changed. The sun now shone more fairly on the pool; and over its brown, welling surface, the blue of heaven and the golden green of the spring foliage danced in fleeting arabesque. The eddies laughed and brightened with essential colour. And the beauty of the dell began to rankle in the Prince's mind; it was so near to his own borders, yet without. He had never had much of the joy of possessorship ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her through the folding doors into a retiring apartment, set with arabesque designs, and adorned with inlaid tables bearing statues of alabaster and enamel. Purposely he waited before he replied, and was gratified to see how curiously she regarded him when again his glance ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... comfort. The boudoir was lined with some red stuff, over which an Indian muslin was stretched, fluted after the fashion of Corinthian columns, in plaits going in and out, and bound at the top and bottom by bands of poppy-colored stuff, on which were designs in black arabesque. ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... made." To them, as first leaders of ornamental design, belongs, of right, the praise of glistenings in gold, piercings in ivory, stainings in purple, burnishings in dark blue steel; of the fantasy of the Arabian roof,—quartering of the Christian shield,—rubric and arabesque of Christian scripture; in fine, all enlargement, and all diminution of adorning thought, from the temple to the toy, and from the mountainous pillars of Agrigentum to the last fineness of fretwork in the Pisan Chapel ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... southern influences, enhances the warm, sunny atmosphere of the court. The repeated figure of the flower-decked and garlanded "Flower Girl" is by A. Stirling Calder. A conventionalized frieze in delicately colored arabesque runs between the balcony and the columns, the prevailing motif of which is the griffin. The colonnade is broken by three portals, opening respectively into the Palace of Manufactures on the west, the Palace of Varied Industries on the east and the Court of Ages on the north. ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... far achieved have isolated woman and have robbed her of the fountain springs of that happiness which is so essential to her. Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being who reminds one of the products of French arboriculture with its arabesque trees and shrubs—pyramids, wheels and wreaths; anything except the forms which would be reached by the expression of their own inner qualities. Such artificially grown plants of the female sex are to be found in ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... Titus stood on the Esquiline Hill, on part of the ground which had been the gardens of Mecaenas. Considerable remains of them are still found among the vineyards; vaulted chambers of vast dimensions, some of which were decorated with arabesque paintings, still in good preservation. Titus appears to have erected a palace for himself adjoining; for the Laocoon, which is mentioned by Pliny as standing in this palace, was found in the ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... place of refuge. It was a huge dismal cavern with branching tunnels around that disappeared in thick obscurity, and heights above that lost themselves in gloom; holes in the sides and floor that were of invisible depth, and curious irregular ledges, that formed a sort of arabesque fringe to the ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... river, lonely as the sky, seemed to drift oily and sluggish down to plunge beneath the city at the lower end of the Tappan Zee. Allan Dane came over New York, gazed down at the ruin of its soaring towers, at the leaping arabesque of its street bridges. He peered into vast rifts of tumbled, chaotic concrete and steel. Nothing moved in all that spreading wonder that had ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... and taking it home with him as a gift. "Or else," he said, "order one with the garden-view of Brazenface, and then they'll have more satisfaction in looking at that than at one of those offensive cockatoos, in an arabesque landscape, under a bronze sky, which usually sprawls over every thing that is papier mache. But you won't see that sort of thing here; so you can't well go wrong, whatever you buy." Finally, Mr. Verdant Green (N.B. Mr. Green, senior, would have eventually to pay the bill) ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... distance. The Mahdi's white, cone-shaped tomb, its dome girt with rings, and ornamented with brazen finials, globe and crescent, shone not six miles away in the midst of miles of mud and straw huts. Four arabesque finials rose, one from each corner of the supporting wall. Before the town was a wall of white tents, the original camping ground of the Khalifa's levies and reinforcements drawn from distant garrisons. ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... astronomy lessons, without feeling. She saw Siegmund and Sieglinde entwined in that wondrous Song of Spring, and would have laughed in your face if you hinted that all this was anything but many-colored arabesque. It was her daily bread and butter, and like one of those pudic creatures of the Eleusinian mysteries she lived in the very tropics of passion, yet without one pulse-throb of its feverishness. It was the ritual of Wagner she worshipped; the nerves of his score had never been laid bare to ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... Platonic sonneteers; and a good dose of the ironical, scurrilous, moralizing immoral anecdote gossiping of Boccaccio and Sacchetti. Such is the stuff. The conception, though rarely comic, and sometimes bond fide serious, is never earnest. All this is a purely artistic world, a world of decorative arabesque incident, intended to please, scarcely ever to move, or to move, at most, like some Decameronian tale of Isabella and the Basil Plant, or Constance and Martuccio. On the other hand, there is none of the grotesque ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... springs of that happiness which is so essential to her. Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being, who reminds one of the products of French arboriculture with its arabesque trees and shrubs, pyramids, wheels, and wreaths; anything, except the forms which would be reached by the expression of her own inner qualities. Such artificially grown plants of the female sex are to be found in large numbers, especially in the so-called intellectual ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... the high-road dips down to the dingle, A coppice in arabesque gleams Whose traceries melt and commingle, Like ghost trees in moon-fretted streams, As the tremulous glamour sweeps o'er it And skirts the inscrutable sky; Then, Fairyland flitting before ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... donkey to a mosque in the bazaar, of what we call Arabesque style, like the Alhambra, very handsome. The Kibleh was very beautiful, and as I was admiring it Omar pulled a lemon out of his breast and smeared it on the porphyry pillar on one side of the arch, and then entreated me to lick it. It cures all diseases. The old man who showed the ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... that, although necessary, was to be kept out of sight. The only mistake in the arrangements was a very large and gorgeous open-brass-work Egyptian lantern, with glass of various colours and outlandish patterns in Arabesque. In the evening we formed an irregular light-house, as two ordinary carriage-lamps were fixed above and on either side the entrance door, while the gorgeous many-coloured lantern swung from the roof inside, and flashed ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... called the Terema. It is complete as a residence in itself, but the halls and sleeping-rooms are remarkably small compared to those of the huge modern edifice by its side. The walls from top to bottom are covered with the most strange arabesque devices which imagination could design—birds, beasts, and fish, interwoven with leaves and sea-weed of every description. In each room a different tint predominates, although the same style of ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... hung specimens of Oriental armor—Turcoman cimeters, Damascus swords, Bedouin lances, and a crimson silk flag, with heavy gold fringe, surmounted by a crescent. The cornice of the lofty arched ceiling was elaborately arabesque, and as Edna looked up she saw through the glass roof the flickering of stars in the summer sky. In the centre of the room, immediately under the dome, stretched a billiard-table, and near it was a circular one of black marble, inlaid with red onyx and ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... books in the bookcase, which my consciousness made no account of, and I speak only of those I remember. Fiction there was none at all that I can recall, except Poe's 'Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque' (I long afflicted myself as to what those words meant, when I might easily have asked and found out) and Bulwer's Last Days of Pompeii, all in the same kind of binding. History is known, to my young remembrance of that library, by a History of the United States, whose ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... distinct varieties of cut work, for instance, that known as renaissance embroidery, which is usually composed of an arabesque design from which the background is cut away, leaving the pattern in the linen; the cut edges are outlined and protected by an overcast stitch. The pattern has to be specially planned with the idea of holding strongly ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... diversified with moss and lichen, it stood with one wall to the street in the angle of the Doctor's property. It was roomy, draughty, and inconvenient. The large rafters were here and there engraven with rude marks and patterns; the hand-rail of the stair was carved in countrified arabesque; a stout timber pillar, which did duty to support the dining-room roof, bore mysterious characters on its darker side, runes, according to the Doctor; nor did he fail, when he ran over the legendary history of the house and its ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gold and color—a central portion with Italian roof, and two colonnade side-sections flanked by castellated towers. Five forms of arches span the doors and windows, and the artist has contrived to associate all forms of ornament, running from an approach to the Greek fret down through the Arabesque to the Brussels carpet. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... fix that when we all get back to New York. And now you just sit down at that piano and play me Debussy's 'Arabesque.'... I know you love it just as much as I do. ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... and of aqua-marine, were ranged along the walls, the delicate beauty of their material and workmanship coming out well against the rich coloring of the hangings behind. The roof, a lofty dome, displayed the light Arabesque workmanship, peculiar to Moorish architecture, as did the form and ornaments of the windows. This apartment opened into another, much smaller, each side of which, apparently formed of silver plate, reflected as mirrors every object; and the pillars supporting the ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... of increasing splendors in the richer decorations of the walls and the more elaborate mosaic of the floor. We next entered the audience chamber, in which the court-marshal receives the guests. The ceiling is of arabesque sculpture profusely painted ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... beneath its ample and sable covering was prepared a banquet after the most gorgeous fashion of the East, extended upon carpets of the richest stuffs, with cushions laid for the guests. But we cannot stop to describe the cloth of gold and silver—the superb embroidery in arabesque—the shawls of Kashmere and the muslins of India, which were here unfolded in all their splendour; far less to tell the different sweetmeats, ragouts edged with rice coloured in various manners, with all ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... once more their cloaks vanished or were discarded, so their silver-bright figures advanced, retreated, weaving a way from one arabesque to another. First about the outer rim and then in, by spirals and circles. No light except the crimson glowing rivulets on the floor, the silver bodies of the Foanna moving back ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... What a beautiful arabesque border might be conceived from a perusal of the late Lord Castlereagh's speeches! We should here have Parliamentary eloquence under a most fantastic yet captivating phase. Who, for instance, but the artist to PUNCH could paint CASTLEREAGH'S figure of a smug, contented, selfish traitor, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... puissant master among our contemporary American writers. Of wit, we see next to none. Mark Twain, while lacking the subtilty and pathos of the other, has more breadth, variety, and ease. His sketches of life are arabesque in their strange combinations. Bits of bright, serious description, both of landscape and society, carry us along till suddenly we stumble on some master-stroke of grotesque and irresistible fun. He understands the value of repose in art. One tires ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... well-brewed, and it seemed to me almost worth while to sup the soup for the sake of sipping the punch. The rest of the dinner was catalogued in a bill-of-fare printed on delicate white paper within an arabesque border of green and gold. It looked very good, not only in the English and French names of the numerous dishes, but also in the positive reality of the dishes themselves, which were all set on the table to be carved and distributed by the guests. This ancient and honest ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... adopted for morning walking dresses, redingote form, open down the front, and embroidered in arabesque pattern, in silk braid and other trimming; the sleeves are worked at bottom, and open, to admit underneath cambric or muslin sleeves tight at the wrist; the body is embroidered to match the skirts. With this redingote is worn a pardessus of the same ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... recluses—half hermit, half soldier—who, in the earlier crusades, fixed their wild homes amidst the sands and caves of Palestine. The stranger supported his steps by a long staff. His hair and beard hung long and matted over his broad shoulders. A rusted mail, once splendid with arabesque enrichments, protected his breast; but the loose gown—a sort of tartan, which descended below the cuirass—was rent and tattered, and his feet bare; in his girdle was a short curved cimiter, a knife or dagger, and a parchment roll, clasped ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of Art from its birthplace in Italy to France, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, and England, and by explanation and description, assisted by illustrations, have endeavoured to shew how the Gothic of the latter part of the Middle Ages gave way before the revival of classic forms and arabesque ornament, with the many details and peculiarities characteristic of each different nationality which had adopted the general change. During this period the bahut or chest has become a cabinet with all its varieties; the simple prie dieu chair, ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... would pat the arabesque of shining hair that lay coiled so submissively against either glowing cheek. "Oh, my, no! I just thought I'd dress up in case Angie Hatton drove past in her auto and picked me up for a little ride. So's ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... shrine. Upon the facade are mingled, in the true Renaissance spirit of genial acceptance, motives Christian and Pagan with supreme impartiality. Medallions of emperors and gods alternate with virtues, angels, and cupids in a maze of loveliest arabesque; and round the base of the building are told two stories—the one of Adam from his creation to his fall, the other of Hercules and his labors. Italian craftsmen of the quattrocento were not averse to setting thus together, in one frame-work, the myths of our first parents and Alemena's son; ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds |
