"Elaborate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was an only child and used to amusing himself. The room was filled with massive furniture, and on each of the sofas were three big cushions. There was a cushion too in each arm-chair. All these he had taken and, with the help of the gilt rout chairs, light and easy to move, had made an elaborate cave in which he could hide himself from the Red Indians who were lurking behind the curtains. He put his ear to the floor and listened to the herd of buffaloes that raced across the prairie. Presently, hearing the door open, he held his breath so that he might not be discovered; ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... trick of it, so as to be able to bring out that doctrine by its help, before we can be prepared to understand the real worth of this invention. It would be premature to undertake to set it forth fully, till that is accomplished. There must be a more elaborate exhibition of that science, before the art of its transmission can be fully treated; we cannot estimate it, till we see how it strikes to the root of the new doctrine, how it begins with its beginning, and reaches to its end: we cannot estimate it till we see its relation, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... as if playing a game. The chapel of San Tarasio in San Zaccaria contains an ancona of which the central panel was only inserted in 1839, and is identical with Lorenzo's other work. One of the finest and most elaborate of all the anconae is in San Giovanni in Bragora, and is also the work of Lorenzo. In this, as well as in that of San Tarasio, the Mother offers the Child the apple, signifying the fruit of the Tree of Jesse and symbolical of the Incarnation. This incident, which is found thus ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... hall. In one were two ghostly figures of shrouded statues and shrouded candelabra; by the walls were ranged dark stained oak pieces of furniture with brass decorations and inlaid work; there were huge Chinese vases, a clock representing Bacchus with a barrel, and great oval mirrors in elaborate gilded frames. In the bedroom stood an enormous bed, like a magnificent bier, with a brocade cover. Boris could not imagine how any human being could sleep in such a catafalque. Under the baldachin ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... passion, fury, and ambition, these Are primal things in our elaborate age. Ill can we ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... and looked around. It was a large house and the patio was the most elaborate Billie had ever seen. He had thought that Pedro's home in Mexico City was fine, ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... with his nearest approach to a smile. But the young man was in no mood for an elaborate exchange of exhilarations. Without preface he inquired the amount of his deposit subject to check in the Commercial Bank. Fifty thousand dollars! A most delightful sum. He needed it every cent within an hour. Also he wanted from his safe-deposit box enough ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... although he lacked nothing of the courage and determination (frequently of a merciless order) of the average conquistador, was undoubtedly endowed with certain attributes which were possessed by very few of these hardy pioneers. For one thing he was scholarly; he had been given an elaborate education, and knew well how to put it to the best purposes. Quesada led an expedition up the Magdalena River. He had for companion Benalcazar. They approached the country from the south, occupied Popagan and Pasto, and founded Guayaquil. They also penetrated the Valley of Curacua and ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... of all sports, and sketched its progress from its wild state of infancy when the unhappy sportsmen had to range the fields and forests for their uncertain game, to the present state of luxurious ease and elaborate refinement, when they not only brought their deer to the meet, but by selecting the proper animal, could insure a finish at the place they most wished to dine at—all of which was most enthusiastically applauded; and ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... the learned elaborate metres, Vain the deeply pondered line; All the rest are dust and ashes But that little song ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... curious proof of the want in vulgar historians of the slightest sense of the vital interest of anything they tell, that neither in Gibbon, nor in Messrs. Bussey and Gaspey, nor in the elaborate 'Histoire des Villes de France,' can I find, with the best research my winter's morning allows, what city was at this time the capital of Burgundy, or at least in which of its four nominal capitals,—Dijon, Besancon, Geneva, and ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... slandered him in his grave. Under his reign, Henryson, the greatest of the Chaucerian school in Scotland, produced his admirable poems. Many other poets whose works are lost were flourishing; and The Wallace, that elaborate plagiarism from Barbour's 'The Brus,' was composed, and attributed to Blind Harry, a paid minstrel ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... for when I can do this, she forbears both rudeness and imperiousness. She then, I have reason to believe, says to the queen, as I know She does to some others, "The Bernan bin reely agribble"; and the queen, not knowing the incitement that forces my elaborate and painful efforts, may suppose I am lively at heart, when she hears I am so in discourse. And there is no developing this without giving the queen the severest embarrassment as well as ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... that all manners are less formal, that etiquette is less elaborate, now than a hundred years ago. Our grandfathers and grandmothers—some, indeed, of our fathers and mothers—did not sit at breakfast with their fathers and mothers, but stood through the meal, and never ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... not here trying to elaborate a whole curriculum. I am only trying to indicate that higher education for the man is one thing, for the woman another. Nor do I deny the fact that women have got to earn their living. Their higher education must enable them to do that. ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... my short note of January 18, is nothing to me. I have the original draft which I sent through Grant's hands, with his indorsement back to me. At the time this note must have been given to the reporter, the President had an elaborate letter from me, in which I discussed the whole case, and advised against the very course he has pursued, but I don't want that letter or any other to be drawn out to complicate ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... colonies, but that it was popular and profitable to many of the wealthy and influential people of England, who were engaged in trade, or owned and cultivated plantations in the colonies. No one can read his elaborate views, and not be struck with the great difference between England and her colonies, and the free and slave States of this Union. While slavery in the colonies of England is subject to the power of the mother country, our States, especially in regard to slavery, are independent, resting upon ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... to believe such a thing?" stormed the old man. "And if the key and perhaps even the lock have been stolen, and if I have done all that beautiful and elaborate ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of marble palaces in Genoa is really surprising, but they are built in streets so narrow that their elaborate fronts lose architectural effect. These were not all occupied by the class termed the nobility, but were often the homes of merchant princes. Many of these structures are now vacant or occupied for business purposes. Splendid marble corridors and mosaic floors, with halls opening ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... apparently so ill that neither he nor his friends would have been much surprised had death been the order of the day, but as the programme was life, not death, he was forced to plan accordingly. His plans were not elaborate; he would go back to the clearing; he would take his aunt back from Turrifs to be with him; he would live ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... the Bouches-du-Rhone, and one of the four Vice-Presidents of a body now controlled by the Government, and therefore virtually by the majority of the Chamber of Deputies. He is more than this. An elaborate speech of his, delivered in the Assembly on September 4, 1874, in which he denied the 'right to teach' as threatening the 'moral unity of France,' was the signal of the deliberate war against all religion afterwards proclaimed by M. Gambetta, and since ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... mean the whole Irish nation, or an intermediate homogeneous group of fines having for wider purposes a flaith or ri-tuatha king of one tuath, elected by the flaiths and flaithfines, subject to elaborate qualifications as to person, character, and training, which limited their choice, and provided with a larger portion of free land. This was the lowest chief to whom the title ri, righ (both pr. ree) rex, or "king", was ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... shall drive 'em into the sea after a battle or two, even if they land, which I don't believe they will. We've got ninety sail of the line, and though it is rather unfortunate that we should have declared war against Spain at this ticklish time, there's enough for all.' And Bob went into elaborate statistics of the navy, army, militia, and volunteers, to prolong the time of holding her. When he had done speaking he ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... was well expressed in 1946 by George S. Pettee, a noted author on national security. He wrote in The Future of American Secret Intelligence (Infantry Journal Press, 1946, page 46) that world leadership in peace requires even more elaborate intelligence than war. "The conduct of peace involves all countries, all human activities—not just the enemy ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... our tent, which I could not enjoy, having headache and heartburn, a nasty combination. The 16th was the hottest day of the season—a hard one on the trackers, who now pulled along walls of solid limestone, perpendicular or stepped, or wrought into elaborate cornices, as if by the art of some giant stonecutter. At one place we came to a lovely little rideau, and on the opposite shore were two curious caves, scooped out of the rock, and supported by Egyptian-like columns wrought by the ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... RACE AND ITS ORIGIN.—Under the title of Histoire Generale des Races Humaines, M. Eusebe-Francois de Salles has just published at Paris an elaborate work on Ethnography, for which he had prepared himself by long and careful personal observation of most of the races on the globe, his travels having extended into nearly all climes and regions. He takes the ground of the descent of the entire human family from a single ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... the hanging folds of a rich crimson silk curtain, and exquisitely fitted with white enamelled furniture ornamented with hand-wrought silver. The bed had no resemblance whatever to a ship's berth, but was an elaborate full-sized affair, canopied in white silk embroidered with roses; the carpet was of a thick softness into which my feet sank as though it were moss, and a tall silver and crystal vase, full of gorgeous roses, was placed at the foot of a standing mirror framed in silver, ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... and veracious History of the Doings and Misdoings of the members of the Elephant Club. With the minute and particular narrative of what they did. To which is added a complex and elaborate description of what they didn't. Containing also the exultant record of their memorable success in eventually obtaining, each and every one, a sight of the entire and unadulterated animal, from the primitive hair ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... see the crimes of new democracy posted as in a ledger against the crimes of old despotism, and the book-keepers of politics finding democracy still in debt, but by no means unable or unwilling to pay the balance. In the theatre, the first intuitive glance, without any elaborate process of reasoning, would show that this method of political computation would justify every extent of crime. They would see, that, on these principles, even where the very worst acts were not perpetrated, it was owing rather to the fortune of the conspirators than to their parsimony ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... lit our candles, and with elaborate care avoided the home-made burglar-alarm (a complicated arrangement of strings and tinpans on the staircase, which Miss Carpenter insists on maintaining ever since Roland Barnette missed a dollar ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... see that look?" gritted the old Britisher between his teeth, as the fellow sauntered away with elaborate indifference. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... only the ground work," said Joe. "I'm going to elaborate this fire act and make it the sensation of the season. I've only begun on it. I got from a chemist the materials I want with which to protect myself, and I have shown, to my own and your satisfaction, that I can eat fire without getting harmed. So far all is well. Now I'm ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... Azara, it desired all the world to admire its work. The annual destruction of adult birds is very great—more than double that, I believe, which takes place in other passerine families. Their eggs and young are, however, practically safe in their great elaborate nests or deep burrows, and, as a rule, they lay more eggs than other kinds, the full complement being seldom less than five in the species I am acquainted with, while some lay as many as nine. Their nests are also ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... in the establishment—owing to a root and branch reform carried out in the short reign of Harold Smith—to whom could young Robarts talk, if not to Buggins? "No; I suppose not," said Robarts, as he completed on his blotting-paper an elaborate picture of a Turk seated on ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... are uneasy in the sleep, there are many signs. For in their sleep dreams come of another world, of which their five senses tell them nought. Then do some fly to mediaeval superstitions, which give them at least elaborate and agreeable substitutes for a living God. Some fly to impostors, who pretend by juggling tricks to put them in communication with that unseen world which they have so long denied. Some, again, play with unfulfilled prophecy; and fancy that it is for them, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... Tassoni had preceded him. Willmot says, "Dryden is wanting in the graceful humour of Tassoni, and exquisite power of Boileau. His wit has more weight than edge—it beat in armour, but could not cut gause." The greater part of Dryden's satire could not cut anything, nor be distinguished from elaborate vituperation. He wrote an essay on Satire, in which he shows a much better knowledge of history than of humour. His best passages are in the "Spanish Friars," but they are weak and mainly directed against the profligacy of the Church. The servant says ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... and elaborate compliments alternated curiously with gentle horseplay. But soon they put up their legs on a pair of chairs ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... against themselves for their tenants. Based too as it professed to be on Henry's Charter it was far from being a mere copy of what had gone before. The vague expressions of the old Charter were now exchanged for precise and elaborate provisions. The bonds of unwritten custom which the older grant did little more than recognize had proved too weak to hold the Angevins; and the baronage set them aside for the restraints of written and defined law. It ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... notable gathering. Henry Clay, in the absence of Bushrod Washington, presided, setting forth in glowing terms the object and aspirations of the meeting. Finley's brother-in-law, Elias B. Caldwell was Secretary, and supplied the leading argument, an elaborate plea, setting forth the expediency of the project and its practicability in regard to territory, expense, and the abundance of willing colonists. The wide benevolent objects to be attained were emphasized. John Randolph of Roanoke, and Robert Wright of Maryland, ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson
... comparative wealth and ease, to interpret. His father, the boy observed, was liberal to a fault in large matters, but scrupulously and needlessly particular about small expenses. He would take the children on a foreign tour, and then practise an elaborate species of discomfort, in an earnest endeavour to save some minute disbursements. He would give his son a magnificent book, and chide him because he cut instead of untying the string of the parcel. Long after, the boy, disentangling his father's early life in diaries and letters, would wish, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... wanted him to dine at the club, but he had explained to Mrs. Braiding that he would be busy upon hospital work, and that another member of the committee would be coming to help him—the friend, of course. Even when he had contrived this elaborate and perfect plot he had still hesitated about the bold step of inviting Christine to the flat. The plan was extremely attractive, but it held dangers. Well, he had invited her. If she had not been at home, or if she had been unwilling to come, he would not have felt desolated; ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... were in effect being pushed back, and folding doors opened which disclosed another room prepared for this relaxation. Miss Filkin began to oblige vigorously on the piano, Miss Dora granted Mr Winter's request, which he made with elaborate humour as an impudent old bachelor whom "the boys" would presently take outside and kill. Lorne watched him make it, envying him his assurance; and Miss Milburn was aware that he watched and aware that he envied. The room filled with gaiety and movement: Mr Milburn, ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... sky; they were born in a railway world, and they expect to die in one. But if only they will strip from their eyes the most blinding of all influences, acquiescence in the familiar, they will see clearly enough that this vast and elaborate railway system of ours, by which the whole world is linked together, is really only a vast system of trains of horse-waggons and coaches drawn along rails by pumping-engines upon wheels. Is that, in spite of its present vast extension, likely to remain the predominant method of land locomotion—even ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... to a halt. All the elaborate instructions in case the Bottle ended up pointing between two girls had been, Forrester saw, totally unnecessary. Symes's head was pointing at one girl, and one ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the second battle of Anzac. Elaborate preparations were made by General Liman von Sanders, the German commander in chief of the Ottoman forces. Fully 30,000 troops are said to have been gathered for the attack upon the Colonial troops. The latter were fully prepared, warned ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... collapse in Madras as elsewhere. Nearly the first thing I heard after reaching London (1884) was of that collapse. Mr. and Mrs. Coulomb, the former a skilled mechanic, had confessed at Madras that they had all along been assisting Madame Blavatsky in frauds; elaborate contrivances were discovered behind the shrine, and compromising letters written by the high priestess were produced. Madame Blavatsky declared that the contrivances were put in the shrine to ruin her; but Coulomb could have done that by a small ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... courtly company ascended in well-arranged file, or in a little friendly disorder. It was fortunate that there were more doors and halls and staircases than one, for it goes without saying that nobody could have had time and attention to spare for the wonderfully elaborate staircase, the representation in chiaroscuro of horses and warlike weapons, the frieze with heads of unicorns and masks of lions. It must have been on another day that young heads looked up in jest or earnest at Hercules, Diana, Apollo, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... religious town. The interests of one were the interests of both, and, being the same in constituency and territorial boundaries, there seemed no occasion for friction or fear. From this religious beginning the civil school and the civil school-town and school-township, with all their elaborate school ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... in the speech of their own period. Stevenson rejects his own style as not good enough for him, not direct enough, not unconscious enough; he will have theirs. And so he goes out in quest of purity and truth, and brings home an elaborate archaism. ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... the contrast, elaborate, strongly drawn and telling, between Madam Loisel after ten years and her friend, who represents in flesh and blood what she might have been. Then at the end comes the short, sharp contrast of paste ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... conception was thus at length realized, and the interest with which it had inspired him intensely revived. One of the fatal pieces was found. He would now fain have overthrown the structure of probabilities which he had labored so painfully to elaborate. He reviewed step by step all the details of his former study; but no argument availed in the face of the extraordinary corroboration now offered. The piece was "stamped with a mark in shape like a cross," and the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... persons in the costume of the times, done with great skill; also foliage, intricate puzzles of intersecting lines, sacred devices, anagrams, and, among others, the device of a bar across a tun, indicating the name of Barton. Most of the carving, however, is less elaborate and intricate than these specimens, being in a perpendicular style, and on one pattern. Before the wood grew so very dark, the beauty of the work must have been much more easily seen than now, as to particulars, though I hardly think that the general effect could ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Will rose from his chair with the evidence of deep emotion on his face, advanced to Tom, took his hand and grasped and dropped it without a word. Jessie saluted both guests alike, with drooping eyelids and an elaborate curtsy. The old mother alone was perfectly self-possessed and ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... we trifle with her; if we fall in love with pretentious imitations and elaborate ornamentations which have no beauty in them, but are simply gotten up to sell; then the true and real beauty will never again suffer us to see her face. She will leave us to our idols: and our power to appreciate and admire true beauty will ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... difficult to find modern equivalents for various words and phrases used therein—especially for some which designate the duties of accountants, and for others which are no longer in actual use. The whole accounting and auditing system was very elaborate and characteristically suspicious. There were, in every case, two men working together; and, if one of them was absent, some different work must be assigned to the other for that day, by the bureau of accounts. There were three classes of employees in this work, in the Spanish ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... of their own accord when wanted, and retired again when dismissed. On hearing the request of Thetis, Vulcan immediately laid aside his work and hastened to comply with her wishes. He fabricated a splendid suit of armor for Achilles, first a shield adorned with elaborate devices, then a helmet crested with gold, then a corselet and greaves of impenetrable temper, all perfectly adapted to his form, and of consummate workmanship. It was all done in one night, and Thetis, receiving it, descended with it to earth, and laid it down at Achilles' feet at the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... typical plebeian Genoese, bearing all the characteristic traits of his century and people—the spirit of adventure, the love of gold and of power, a spirit of mysticism, and more than a touch of crafty and elaborate dissimulation, ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... the "Biglow Papers" were published in book form. Not only was Lowell's name not yet connected publicly with the Yankee humor, but the poems were provided with an elaborate introduction, notes and comments, by the learned pastor of the church at Jaalam, Homer Wilbur. His notes and introduction are filled with Latin quotations, and he appears as much a scholar as Hosea Biglow does a natural. He says he tried to teach Hosea better ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... is playing at dinner parties! You can have a very plain dinner or a very elaborate one, just as you like. You can manage it with nothing at all. Only you have to pretend a ...
— Child Life In Town And Country - 1909 • Anatole France
... straight to the mark, and penetrates like an arrow. The Americans, Arnold wrote, "think straight and see clear." Greek life was adapted to meditation. American quickness and habit of taking the short cut to the goal make us averse to the patient and elaborate method of the ancients. In manner of expression, however, we have improved. The Fourth of July spread-eagle oration, not uncommon even in New England in former days, would now be listened to hardly anywhere without merriment. In a Lowell Institute lecture in 1855 Lowell ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... was entrusted with, was the ending of the old scandal brought upon the Church by the elaborate lengths to which contrapuntal composers had gone in using popular melodies, and often even street songs of an obscene nature, as a foundation melody or cantus firmus for their vocal gymnastics. The churchmen of that day did in a more elaborate fashion what Wesley did in his day and ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... was the elaborate answer of Kant, which has profoundly affected the course of Metaphysics since its publication. Reverting in principle to the platonic method, Kant again sought the enduring elements, the fundamentals ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... a great day at Westmore. The Emergency Hospital, planned in the first months of his marriage, and abandoned in the general reduction of expenditure at the mills, had now been completed on a larger and more elaborate scale, as a memorial to Bessy. The strict retrenchment of all personal expenses, and the leasing of Lynbrook and the town house, had enabled Amherst, in eighteen months, to lay by enough income to carry out this ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... authorities. I found archaeology represented in a division where all the titles were Latin or Italian. I opened several cabinets that contained sketches and drawings, all in careful order; and in another I found an elaborate card catalogue, evidently the work of a practised hand. The minute examination was too much for me; I threw myself into a great chair that might have been spoil from a cathedral, satisfied to enjoy the general effect. To find an apartment so handsome and so marked by good taste in the midst of ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... at the most, was naturally very bashful. When she found herself in this vast hall, between a double row of persons of importance, whose fixed gaze never left her, she forgot all the bows, all the elaborate courtesies,—in fine, all the difficult procedure of a formal presentation, that her sister-in-law and dancing-masters had been making her ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Red Kerry sought the limelight—at the right time. That every hour lost in getting on the track of the mysterious Kazmah was a point gained by the equally mysterious man from Whitehall he felt assured, and although the elaborate but hidden mechanism of New Scotland Yard was at work seeking out the patrons of the Bond Street drug-shop, Kerry was ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... papers were completed, a huge gang of workmen, consisting of as many artisans as could be crowded on the job without standing on one another's feet, began to construct the elaborate bridge which was to connect the two stores, and Mr. Trimmer's publicity department was already securing column after column of space in the local papers, some of it paid matter and some gratis, wherein it appeared that the son of old John Burnit had ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... think best, Tonal'," replied MacSweenie, with a sigh, as he rose and re-entered his house, where he busied himself by planning and making elaborate designs for the new "fort," or outpost, which he had been instructed to establish on the Ukon River. Afterwards he solaced himself with another pipe and another dip into the well-worn ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... you won't need a very elaborate one. Isn't there a false-face in the house with whiskers or a ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... that want of feeling for the exquisite, that dulness of edge, that bluntness of stroke, which is the common note of all German literature, save a little of the very highest. In conversation we do not insist on constant precision of phrase, nor on elaborate sustension of argument. Apostrophe is made natural by the semi-dramatic quality of the situation. Even vehement hyperbole, which is nearly always a disfigurement in written prose, may become impressive or delightful, when it harmonises with the voice, the glance, the gesture of a fervid and exuberant ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... mentioned, Wright's letters were collected and printed after his death by the subscription of his friends. In these his philosophic views are from time to time brought out in a light, easy way, much more charming than the style of his elaborate discussions. It was in one of his letters that I first found the apothegm, "Men are born either Platonists or Aristotelians," a happy drawing of the line which separates the hard-headed scientific thinker of to-day from the thinkers of ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... of odd names to garnish one brief document. And now, I bethink me, it is far from impossible that some Dr. Dickkopf may even apply to Strauss's Leben Jesu, and Dr. Whately's 'Historic Doubts' similar reasoning, to prove that the first was elaborate irony, and the second a sincere ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... interleavings shall be so delicate, the partitions perfectly invisible.' The correspondents were already accustomed to this 'heavenly mingle.' Few of the letters, those works of nature, and almost more wonderful than works of art, are to be taken on oath. Those elaborate lies, which ramify through them into patterns of sober-seeming truth, are in anticipation, and were of the nature of a preliminary practice for the innocent and avowed fiction of the essays. What began ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... apparatus have been repeatedly compared with those of more elaborate ones, and no practical difference observed. Evidently the same apparatus, differently graduated, might be employed to determine the carbonate present in such a substance as crude soda ash or other similar mixture. In such a case the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... less elaborate in his description of the masters of Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcantara and their valiant knights, armed at all points and decorated with the badges of their orders. These, he affirms, were the flower of Christian chivalry: being constantly in service, ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... imitated. There is fire and eloquence in Philip Sidney's Apologie for Poetrie (1581); but his ideas about poetry were floating, loose, and ill defined, and he had not much to point to as of first-rate excellence in recent writers. Webbe's Discourse of English Poetrie (1586), and the more elaborate work ascribed to George Puttenham (1589), works of tame and artificial learning without Sidney's fire, reveal equally the poverty, as a whole, of what had been as yet produced in England as poetry, in spite of the widespread passion for poetry. ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... therefore I was anxious to push on at once. The night before our departure Mr. Barretto gave a grand dinner-party in my honour, long speeches being read out by him and his assistant, when we sat down on rough wooden benches and packing-cases to a most elaborate meal of fried fish, grilled fish, boiled fish, tortoise eggs—quantities of them—stewed pork and roast pork. A whole sucking-pig adorned the table. The greatest happiness reigned that night at table, and I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Mr. Barretto for ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... through succeeding lives and theories, that just in proportion as these principles have been followed—the principles of careful observation, hypothesis, and experiment—have men made discoveries that have been helpful to their fellow-men; while, on the other hand, the most elaborate theories of the most popular physicians, which have owed their birth to premature generalization and invention, have passed away, like the crackling of thorns under a pot. Belonging to the latter class of men, we have Stahl, Hoffman, Boerhaave, ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... Miss Strongi'th'arm with an elaborate courtesy. "Thank you very much for enduring me ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... New Zealanders, but among them was a certain "Shaki" who was recognized as a chief by his tall stature, his elaborate tattooing, and the respectful manner in which he was addressed by his fellow-islanders. Seeing a canoe manned by not more than seven or eight men approaching the corvette, this "Shaki" and the rest came to entreat ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... such as the numerous imitations of green or withered leaves, which are brought about in the most diverse ways, sometimes by mere variations in the form of the insect and in its colour, sometimes by an elaborate marking, like that which occurs in the Indian leaf-butterflies, Kallima inachis. In the single butterfly-genus Anaea, in the woods of South America, there are about a hundred species which are all gaily coloured on the upper surface, and on the reverse side exhibit the ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... window as he went. She thought he looked very well through a window, and ought by rights always to be seen in that way—as it were, under glass. She felt quite proud of him, of his smart appearance. In his way, he was an elaborate dandy, and spent years at his tailor's, slowly choosing the right thing. She remembered she had married him chiefly because of his fine presence and mysterious silence. She had thought at the time there must be so much at the back of it all, so much in him. He was in love with her and seemed difficult ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... from the tail of his eye, he saw his hostess come in from the far entrance. Again, the sight of her, that was a picture, gave him the little catch-breath of gasp. She was clad entirely in white, and looked very young and quite tall in the sweeping folds of a holoku of elaborate simplicity and apparent shapelessness. He knew the holoku in the home of its origin, where, on the lanais of Hawaii, it gave charm to a plain woman and double-folded the charm of a ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... my stick and gloves on a glass-topped table and looked about me. Never before had I seen so many baths gathered together. Large and small, deep and shallow, normal and abnormal, they stood orderly in long lines. The more elaborate ones, fitted with screens and showers, douches, etc., stood a little apart upon a baize-covered dais, bright with their glistening pipes and rows of taps. And in an alcove, all glorious, electric light burning above its gold-lacquered fittings, reposed the bath ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... work of the class. These lists have been made somewhat extensive and varied, in order that they may fit the tastes and opportunities of many teachers and pupils. In some cases, the collateral work may be presented by the teacher, to elaborate a subject in which the class has become interested; or individual pupils may prepare themselves and speak to the class about what they have read; or all the pupils may read for pleasure alone, merely reporting the extent of their reading, for the teacher's ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... depending upon their extraordinary rapidity of study, kept them learning the last scenes of the last act, which he was still writing, while the beginning of the piece was being performed. By the by, I do not know what became of the theories about the dramatic art, and the careful and elaborate study necessary for its perfection. In this particular instance John Kemble's Rolla and Mrs. Siddons's Elvira must have been what may be called extemporaneous acting. Not impossibly, however, these performances may have gained in vivid power and effect what they lost in ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... has been interrupted by separation; it preserves one's presence in absence. It cannot be too simple, too commonplace, too colloquial. Its familiarity is not its weakness, but its supreme virtue. If it attempts to be orderly and stately and elaborate, it may be a good essay, but it will certainly ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... two she could never be. Like that poor Elena, she might have mistaken Wander's meanings. He was a man of too elaborate gestures; something grandiose, inherently his, made him enact the drama of life with too much fervor. It was easy, Honora had insinuated, for a ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... Anglo-Saxon poems we have, that of Caedmon, and there are many specimens to be found in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They could, however, have been of little service to the people, so few of whom could read, or could have procured manuscripts if they had been able to use them. A long and elaborate composition of the latter class was written in the reign of Edward II. by William de Shoreham, vicar of Chart-Sutton in Kent. He probably taught his own verses to the people at his catechisings. The intention was, no doubt, by the aid of measure and rhyme to facilitate the remembrance of the ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... explains the character of each actor as he comes upon the stage; and, not content with making general remarks, he plunges with extraordinary relish into the minutest personal details. In particular, we know just how much money everybody has got, and how he has got it. Balzac absolutely revels in elaborate financial statements. And constantly, just as we hope that the action is about to begin, he catches us, as it were, by the button-hole, and begs us to wait a minute to listen to a few more preparatory remarks. ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... like one of the head-crushing devices Billie had seen. Thumb-screws and all, this appeared to be only a very elaborate "persuader," for use upon those who must be ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... painted walls, and furniture of the most curious and antique description. The chairs, the tables, the cabinets, and the beds of these rooms were all of the strangest forms; and though they were of very elaborate and splendid workmanship, being richly carved and inlaid with mosaic work, and often ornamented with mountings of silver, they all wore a very antique and venerable air, which was extremely imposing. The rooms were of all shapes and sizes, and were ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... drainage for all roads subject to the effects of storm or underground water has always been recognized by road builders, but during recent years constantly increasing attention has been given to this phase of road construction. It is unfortunate that there has in the past been some tendency to consider elaborate drainage provisions less necessary where rigid types of surfaces were employed. It has become apparent, from the nature of the defects observed in all sorts of road surfaces, that to neglect or minimize the importance of drainage in connection with either earth roads ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... ten years after the date of the St. Andrews' lectures, Dr. Chalmers produced his more elaborate scheme of reconciliation between the Divine and the Geologic Records, in a "Review of Cuvier's Theory of the Earth;" and that scheme, perfectly adequate to bring the Mosaic narrative into harmony with what was known ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... the chief industries of Dieppe. There were cases full, windows full, counters full, of the most exquisite combs and brushes, some with elaborate monograms in silver and colors, others plain; there were boxes and caskets of every size and shape, ornaments, fans, parasol handles, looking-glasses, frames for pictures large ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... the voluminous lace draperies were almost overpowering. Satin lambrequins were festooned with colossal cord and tassels of bullion. A plate-glass mirror as wide as the mantel reflected the Florentine gilt carving of its own elaborate frame. There were bronzes on the mantel, and tall vases of Sevres, and statuettes of bisque brilliantly tinted. At the two sides of the mantel stood pedestals of Italian marble surmounted by urns of the most graceful and elegant proportions, and profusely ornamented ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... of Nazareth?" was the regular inquiry. That section of the press formerly beholden to Hand and Schryhart stood out as bitterly as ever; and most of the other newspapers, being under no obligation to Eastern capital, felt it the part of wisdom to support the rank and file. The most searching and elaborate mathematical examinations were conducted with a view to showing the fabulous profits of the streetcar trust in future years. The fine hand of Eastern banking-houses was detected and their sinister motives noised abroad. "Millions for everybody ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... the lady answered, an elaborate Queen Elizabeth. 'Not at present. She found out nobody understood, but Miss Kennedy does, so now she holds it over Miss Kennedy's head that she will tell. That is the way she got her before ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... walls was an elaborate sketch by a member, showing the arrangement of the cellars beneath the premises of the Young ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... of place here to show the dangers of naval warfare, which are discussed at length by Mr. Hodge, in a very elaborate paper in the eighteenth volume of the Statistical Society's journal. From one of his tables, containing a condensed statistical history of the English navy, through the wars with France, 1792-1815, the following facts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... in November. The result of the elections left the government in as hopeless a minority as before. An elaborate system of finance brought forward by Disraeli was rudely handled by Gladstone. The debate was one of the fiercest ever heard in Parliament. The excitement on both sides was intense. Disraeli, animated by the power of desperation, was in a mood neither to give nor to take quarter. He assailed ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... being eager to know God's Laws in this Universe, and wholesomely certain of damnation if he should not follow them. Fond of the profane Sciences too, especially of Astronomy: Erasmus Reinhold and his Tabulae Prutenicae were once very celebrated; Erasmus Reinhold proclaims gratefully how these his elaborate Tables (done according to the latest discoveries, 1551 and onwards) were executed upon Duke Albert's high bounty; for which reason they are dedicated to Duke Albert, and called "PRUTENICAE," meaning PRUSSIAN. [Rentsch, p. 855.] The University of Konigsberg was already ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... possible combinations of a set of logical terms with their negatives, and, further, the way in which these combinations are affected by the addition of attributes or other limiting words, i.e. to simplify mechanically the solution of logical problems. These instruments are all more or less elaborate developments of the "logical slate,'' on which were written in vertical columns all the combinations of symbols or letters which could be made logically out of a definite number of terms. These were compared with any given ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to say "Just as good as Archie Johnson's," Archie being one of the older boys who played in the park and who sailed elaborate kites. But Sunny had not tied the knots in his string tightly enough, and a strong puff of wind coming by, the cord parted and away sailed the kite, over the brook ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White
... simple and so wise that Leonard was more struck with it than he might have been by the most elaborate sermon by Parson Dale. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... With an elaborate bow Mr. Lewis agreed, and in a moment the two were carrying on an absurd conversation, to which Jonah and I contributed by laughing unfeignedly whenever a remark justified an expression of mirth. Jill and Agatha were on the edge of hysteria, and Berry sat sunk in a condition of ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... military glory, our laws, our liberty, and our religion. In this edition, also, will be found numerous specimens of Saxon poetry, never before printed, which might form the ground-work of an introductory volume to Warton's elaborate annals of English Poetry. Philosophically considered, this ancient record is the second great phenomenon in the history of mankind. For, if we except the sacred annals of the Jews, contained in the several books of the Old Testament, ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown |
