"Extravagant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... theories, tired out his readers, and the work was discontinued after the ninth number. Of the unsaleable nature of this publication, he himself relates an amusing illustration. Happening one morning to rise at an earlier hour than usual, he observed his servant girl putting an extravagant quantity of paper into the grate in order to light the fire, and mildly checked her for her wastefulness: "La! sir," replied ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... Then, one evening, when lilacs perfumed the air and the call to quadrilles was most captivating, he crossed the threshold, and from that time Jean Francois observed a change, little by little, in his manners and his visage. He became more frivolous, more extravagant. He often borrowed from his friend his scanty savings, and he forgot to repay. Jean Francois, feeling that he was abandoned, jealous and forgiving at the same time, suffered and was silent. He felt that he had no right to reproach him, ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... Buckingham, the king's favourite, whose extravagant projects had ended in nothing but disaster, had rendered himself most unpopular, and one day in August his coach was stopped by a band of sailors, men who had served in the ill-fated expedition to Cadiz or in the ships which Buckingham had sent to assist the French king in suppressing ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... for when Clara comes and how in America all young people got extravagant ideas, we was just as well off without one in our three rooms ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... appearances were preserved: a lady, the intimate friend of her youth, was advised to visit, as if by accident, the unhappy Lady Lovat, in order to ascertain the truth of the reports which prevailed of Lord Lovat's cruelty. The visitor was received by Lovat with extravagant expressions of welcome, and many assurances of the pleasure which it would afford Lady Lovat to see her. His Lordship then retired, and hastening to his wife, who was secluded without even tolerable clothes, and almost in a state of starvation, placed a costly dress before her, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... evidence of the resurrection of Jesus, sufficient to support it, if there were no evidence to counterbalance it, such evidence is not capable of being counterbalanced.—You will perceive that our reasoning must issue in the truth of the resurrection, unless we assume the extravagant notion, that the people who lived in Jerusalem and its vicinity, at the time of the crucifiction of Jesus, were not brought over ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... sink back into the peaceful pursuits of laborious industry. For such men, the vague and the uncertain possess irresistible attractions. For them, emigration was like the hazard of the gaming-table; ruin was a possible consequence, but fortune might also crown the most extravagant hopes. The merchant regarded with favor a scheme which would furnish employment for his ships by the transportation of men and stores. Besides, the fisheries had always been productive; they might be largely extended, and a trade in furs and other products of the country opened with the ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... Paganini so much admired that he presented Berlioz with the very liberal, even princely douceur of 20,000 francs ($4,000). Meanwhile Berlioz was unable to secure recognition in Paris. His compositions were regarded as extravagant and fantastic, and Parisians were curiously surprised at the reception the composer met with in Germany, when he traveled there in 1842 and 1843, and again in 1852, bringing out his works. The Germans were by no means unanimous regarding his merits. Mendelssohn, who found Berlioz most interesting ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... one part of the maid's promise to Charles: the crowning of him at Rheims was the other: and she now vehemently insisted that he should forthwith set out on that enterprise. A few weeks before, such a proposal would have appeared the most extravagant in the world. Rheims lay in a distant quarter of the kingdom; was then in the hands of a victorious enemy; the whole road which led to it was occupied by their garrisons; and no man could be so sanguine as to imagine that such an attempt could so soon come within the bounds of possibility. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... was Autumn Time. She certainly was a wonderful creature, with red rosy cheeks, plump form, and riotous good spirits. Her robes were gorgeous and a little extravagant, for she wore a new one every day, and of all that she had, the one that she loved the best and wore the latest was of purple and gold. We can go out in October and see the purple and gold, and gather some scraps of the robe, for ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... great rejoicing, and every one came out to welcome the dead bear, addressing it as if Otso were some honoured guest come to see them. First Wainamoinen sang a song of praise to the dead Otso, and bade his people welcome him with all due honour. And then the people answered with the most extravagant expressions of pleasure and welcome and admiration for Otso, and offered him all the best things in the house, and when all this ceremony was over they took off the fur and cut the body up ready for ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... the mine. With an obstinacy, however, that amounted almost to a moral conviction, he refused to include the house and potato-patch in the property. When the company had yielded the point, he declined, with equal tenacity, to part with it to outside speculators on even the most extravagant offers. In vain Mrs. Mulrady protested; in vain she pointed out to him that the retention of the evidence of his former humble occupation was a green ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... HUSBAND,—I want one silver-mounted brier-wood pipe and a smoking set—a nice lava one—and I want a set of them fine overhauls like them that Mis Pope give Mr. Pope that time I said she was too extravagant, and if they's any money left over I want some nice tobacco, the best. I want all the price of the ice-set took up even to them affectionate words ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... circuit, narrating to Lord Norbury some extravagant feat in sporting, mentioned that he had lately shot thirty-three hares before breakfast. "Thirty-three hairs!" exclaimed Lord Norbury; "zounds, sir! then you must have been firing at ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... England, where they continued their business of usurers, they left to a young nephew, Alessandro by name, while, heedless alike of the teaching of experience and of marital and parental duty, they all three launched out at Florence into more extravagant expenditure than before, and contracted debts on all hands and to large amounts. This expenditure they were enabled for some years to support by the remittances made by Alessandro, who, to his great profit, had lent money to the barons ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... of which a number of spruce twigs protruded. They formed what has been designated as the ring of occultation, and while doing so they shouted and screamed and puffed the talismanic "thòhay" in a way that left no doubt of their intention to ridicule. Their extravagant motions added to the significance of their intonation. When the ring opened the boys sat on the ground and began to sing and beat a drum. The old man sat at a distance of about three paces west of the basket. Presently the nose of a little weasel (the image being ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... to the Masons a little later they were not only indignant but very genuinely worried. Walter declared that he would "catch that man and wring his neck before the day was up," which boast, though extremely extravagant, brought strange comfort to Nan, shocked as she had been by the events of ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... extravagant, dinner at Cray's Folly proved to be a veritable Roman banquet. To associate ideas of selfishness with Miss Beverley was hateful, but the more I learned of the luxurious life of this queer household hidden away in the Surrey Hills the less I wondered ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... sacrifices involved for his sake affected each one in countless ways. And for two years now these magic boxes had supplied all his suits and shirts and boots. The Scotch cousins luckily included a boy of his own size who had extravagant taste in clothes. A box sometimes held as many as four excellent suits. Daddy contented himself with one a year —ordered ready-made from the place they called Chasbakerinhighholborn.' Mother's clothes were 'wropp in mystery' ever. No one ever discovered where they came from or how she ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... Island. It was roughly divided into the home or hacienda ranch in Arizona, and La Partida, the cattle range portion, reaching far south into Sonora. Even the remnant of the grant, if intelligently managed, would earn an income satisfactory for a most extravagant princess royal such as its present chatelaine ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... or even suspected, the great German conspiracy which the Kaiser's hire lings were weaving over the United States is wholly improbable. Had he known of any plot he would have been the first to hunt it down and crush it. He knew in general of the extravagant vaporings of the Pan-Germans; but, like most of us, he supposed that there was still enough sanity, not to say common sense, left in Germany to laugh such follies away. Through his intimate friend, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... pass from the motive to the execution of the motive, from the purpose to the means of effecting it, we are compelled to say that Lord Auckland's government adopted for its primary means the most extravagant that could have been devised; viz. the making itself a party to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... after mentioning the "framed" or "joyned" table, name the "carpett of Turky werke" which covered it, and in many cases there was still another covering to protect the best one, and when Frederick, Duke of Wurtemburg, visited England in 1592 he noted a very extravagant "carpett" at Hampton Court, which was embroidered with ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... having been forced to reveal his own secret, he had succeeded, almost by chance, in wresting a secret from his friend! How much that strange confession explained to him! The painter's absurd fits of jealousy, his wild devotion, his extravagant panegyrics, his curious reticences—he understood them all now, and he felt sorry. There seemed to him to be something tragic in a ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... "Not extravagant compared with the demands often made upon domestic architects, for it involves no downright contradictions. I am not asked to show how a house worth ten thousand dollars can be built for five, or to break the Golden Rule, or to change the multiplication table and ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... with evergreens and class banners, while the class colors, red and gold, were everywhere in evidence. The sophomores had been recklessly extravagant in the matter of cut flowers, and bowls of red roses and carnations ornamented the various tables, loaned by fond mothers for the gratification of ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... examples of our own: but let us confess that their chivalry is only another garb of that beautiful tenderness and mercy which is now, as it was then, the twin sister of English valor; and even in their extravagant fondness for Continental manners and literature, let us recognize that old Anglo-Norman teachableness and wide-heartedness, which has enabled us to profit by the wisdom and civilization of all ages and of all lands, without prejudice to our own ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... again went out to hunt. This time I took only a 12-gauge shotgun. As we travelled through the forest I was impressed once more by the fascination of the grandly extravagant vegetation. ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... burning Turkish pastilles which she had bought at Rouen in an Algerian's shop. In order not to have at night this sleeping man stretched at her side, by dint of manoeuvering, she at least succeeded in banishing him to the second floor, while she read till morning extravagant books, full of pictures of orgies and thrilling situations. Often, seized with fear, she cried out, and ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... of George the Fourth, which took place in 1821. This grand old hall at Westminster was the theatre of Rufus's feasting and revelry; but, vast as the edifice then was, it did not equal the ideas of the extravagant monarch. An old chronicler states that one of the King's courtiers, having observed that the building was too large for the purposes of its construction, Rufus replied, "This halle is not begge enough by one ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... rather extravagant of me," returned Mrs. Herrick apologetically; "but you know how girls love pretty things. Anna did so long for one of these little watches, and you know it is her one-and-twentieth birthday. By the bye, Malcolm, what have you two arranged for to-morrow?" But when her son briefly sketched ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and of the simple piety of his character. Sometimes he ventures to give them good advice. Dame Elizabeth was somewhat uplifted by her elevation from the ranks of the mercantile bourgeoisie to a place among the country gentry, and was apt to be extravagant, nor was her husband entirely guiltless of running up bills. We hear of the ale brewer and the bread baker calling daily upon his agent for money, and on one occasion the Stonors owed over L12 to Betson's own brother, a vintner, for various pipes ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... that you have time yet to retrieve every thing, and a knowledge that the very activity necessary for this, is a state of greater happiness than the unoccupied one, to which you had a thought of retiring. I wish the bulk of my extravagant countrymen had as good prospects and resources as you. But with many of them, a feebleness of mind makes them afraid to probe the true state of their affairs, and procrastinate the reformation which alone can save something, to those who may yet ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... they doubted whether the citizens themselves generally approv'd of it. My allegation on the contrary, that it met with such approbation as to leave no doubt of our being able to raise two thousand pounds by voluntary donations, they considered as a most extravagant supposition, and utterly impossible. ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... times, for she bad also sorrowful, pitiably sorrowful hours and days, but as sunshine and shower alternate in an April day, despair and extravagant gayety ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... confounds all the faculties, that no future danger can be properly provided for, can be justly estimated, can be so much as fully seen. The eye of the mind is dazzled and vanquished. An abject distrust of ourselves, an extravagant admiration of the enemy, present us with no hope but in a compromise with his pride, by a submission to his will. This short plan of policy is the only counsel which will obtain a hearing. We plunge into a dark gulf with all the rash precipitation of fear. The nature of courage is, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... changeling, and how far nature had made him amends, in her best bodily gifts, for her denial of the sublimer intellectual ones; begin, at the same time, my assistance in procuring her this satisfaction." A want of complaisance was never my vice, and I was so far from opposing this extravagant frolic, that now, bit with the same maggot, and my curiosity conspiring with hers, I entered plump into ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... become the fashion. This paper from the inefficient means used to neutralise the bleach, carried the seeds of decay in itself, and when exposed to any damp soon became discoloured with brown stains. Dr. Dibdin's extravagant bibliographical works are mostly so injured; and although the Doctor's bibliography is very incorrect, and his spun-out inanities and wearisome affectations often annoy one, yet his books are so beautifully illustrated, ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... reckless and remorseless men for the benefit of others, who, though they would be deterred by their scruples of conscience or their moral sensibilities from perpetrating such deeds themselves, are ready to repay, with the most extravagant honors and rewards, those who are ferocious and unscrupulous enough to perpetrate them in their stead. Were it not for some very few and rare exceptions to the general rule, which have from time to time appeared, the history of mankind would ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... The extravagant word, reviving dear and imperishable memories, called up a quivering smile, more heart-piercing than a cry: and Desmond, putting a great restraint upon himself, enfolded her with one arm, and kissed her softly, lingeringly, as one might ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... by his respective helpmates in years gone by. When Waitstill's mother first asked her husband to buy her a new dress, and that was two years after marriage, he simply said: "You look well enough; what do you want to waste money on finery for, these hard times? If other folks are extravagant, that ain't any reason you should be. You ain't obliged to take your neighbors for an example:—take 'em for ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... fluency, and from his long service in the vessels of New York, was almost an American to behold, yet Captain Riga was in fact a Russian by birth, though this was a fact that he strove to conceal. And though extravagant in his personal expenses, and even indulging in luxurious habits, costly as Oriental dissipation, yet Captain Riga was a niggard to others; as, indeed, was evinced in the magnificent stipend of three dollars, with which he requited my own valuable services. Therefore, as it was agreed between ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... history, but by the imagined consequences of the position. The very same principles on which the pontifical polemics vindicate the Papal infallibility, Fuller 'et centum alii' apply to the (if possible) still more extravagant notion of the absolute truth and divinity of every syllable of the text of the books of the Old and New Testament as we ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... notes of exclamation; as for the bonnet itself, it swayed in menace on the old lady's tempestuous chignon. Surprise, indignation, protest and dismay were furthermore displayed by little Meg's mother in a sort of extravagant movement of offended virtue, half bound, half slide, that brought her right under the nose of M. Richard, who could not help ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... and walked up and down, wringing her hands. Her extravagant words and actions were so pregnant with genuine grief and despair, that they smote Elizabeth's heart with benumbing blows. Mary, John, her aunt, and now the best beloved of all—her father! She was bringing ruin upon ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... already my pen trembles, for there are gendarmes in abundance in the streets, and Messieurs Bruce and Co. in La Force, and I do not wish to join their party. In England I may abuse our Prince Regent and call him fat, dissipated, and extravagant, but in France I dare not say "BO to a goose!" So, Je vous salue, M. ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... was in 1876, when the Bayreuth apotheosis made Wagner's name familiar to us, especially in Philadelphia, where his empty, sonorous Centennial March was first played by Theodore Thomas at the Exposition. The reading of a magazine article by Moncure D. Conway caused me to buy a copy, at an extravagant price for my purse, of The Leaves of Grass, and so uncritical was I that I wrote a parallel between Wagner and Whitman; between the most consciously artistic of men and the wildest among improvisators. But then it seemed to me that both had thrown off the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... Madame Tancredi, and she was waiting alone in the anteroom—Elinor having left her for some necessary shopping until the lesson should be over—when the maid ushered in a girl in sumptuous street clothes, carrying a music roll of extravagant design. ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... seen driving about Plymouth, laden inside and out with seamen and their sweethearts, decked out in costumes of the most gaudy colours and extravagant fashion. Suppers and dancing closed the day. There was no great variety, perhaps, in the style of their amusements. The great object seemed to be to get rid of their money as rapidly ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... Cricket perceived how the case stood, and so hopped briskly off, without giving herself even time to be offended. "Poor extravagant little thing!" said she to herself, "it was hardly worth ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... without God's call, without respect to the rule, and against the scope of their own declarations, to take vengeance on them at their own hand; yea, even to that degree, of taking the lives of some of them in an extravagant manner;[27] for which, they were sadly rebuked of God, an occasion was given and taken to reproach and blaspheme the way of God upon that account. But to descend to our own time, we have it to bewail, that whatever alteration there is in the face of affairs since the yoke of tyranny was ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... conceded that much extravagant speculation has been wasted upon this question of the distribution of seeds. The ambition of each new writer has seemingly been to hit upon some new theory of distribution. The "bird theory" is a failure, ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... I think you might have considered me a little first. I've more right to your money than he has; and if you can afford to throw away eight hundred rupees on a careless, extravagant subaltern, you could quite well let me go to Simla; or at least add something to my dress allowance. It's not so very easy to manage on the little ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... the really disappointed people in the country. They had worked for the reformers, and their energies—and their violence—had been the driving force that had carried the Bill into law. If their expectations were extravagant and their hopes over-heated, the more bitter was their distress at the failure of the Reform Act to accomplish the social ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... and vividness of the narrative, its sustained passion, the flow of poetry, the touches of grandeur and tenderness, and the masterly touches by which he made the great actors stand out in their individuality." It seemed to many to be extravagant, exaggerated, at war with all the "feudalities of literature." Partisans of all kinds were offended. The style was startlingly broken, almost savage in strength, vivid and distinct as lightning. Doubtless the man himself had grown away from the quieter moods of his earlier essays. Froude ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... contempt proclaimed, rather than disguised, by Marcian's extravagant courtesy, Chorsoman had no inkling; but his barbaric mind resented the complexity of things with which it was confronted, and he felt a strong inclination to take this smooth-tongued Latin by the throat, so as to choke the plain truth ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... on extravagant poetry, and lit By such a dazzle of old fabulous tales That common things are lost, and all that's strange Is true because 't were pity if ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... Parliament, and became notorious for persecuting the Royalist clergy in the country round, whose lot in any case was a sorry one. John sold some of his estates and left a portion to his younger son, so that his eldest son (another John) and his wife, both of whom were extravagant, soon found themselves in difficulties. John Wichehalse made himself justly unpopular by the part he played after Sedgemoor. A Major Wade, in the Duke of Monmouth's army, had escaped from the battle-field and, with two other men, was hidden by a farmer at Farley. A search ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... admitted as volunteers in the files of some of the newspapers; or, at all events, they are sure of being received among the awkward squad of the Magazines. In general, they bear a close resemblance to each other; thirty of them contain extravagant compliments to the immortal Wellington and the indefatigable Whitbread; and, as the last- mentioned gentleman is said to dislike praise in the exact proportion in which he deserves it, these laudatory writers have probably been only ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... aestheticism and asceticism was one which she had never taken, though she had taken many steps, some of them, unfortunately, false ones. She had been a well-born girl, the daughter of aristocratic but impecunious and extravagant parents. Her father, Everard Page, a son of Lord Cheam, had been very much at home in the Bankruptcy Court. Her mother, too, was reckless about money, saying, whenever it was mentioned, "Money is given us to spend, not to hoard." ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... affords authentic evidence that some of the mysterious tales which heralded his coming were not without foundation. He could scarcely have been at this time thirty years old. "Talking of music, I have become acquainted with the most outre, most extravagant, and strangest character I ever beheld, or heard, in the musical line. He has just been emancipated from durance vile, where he has been for a long time incarcerated on suspicion of murder. His long figure, long neck, long face, and long forehead; his hollow and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... before any of the other women, and conversed with Jesus. Though the disciples, in visiting the tomb, saw nothing but cast-off clothes, yet Mary sees and talks with angels and with Jesus. As usual, the woman is always most ready to believe miracles and fables, however extravagant and though beyond all human comprehension. Several women purposed to be at the tomb at ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... much time in discussing the lullabye and the trouble it brought Mrs. Frisky. The concert began. A Warm Night was vigorously applauded, and the Fire-Fly Dance was the success of the evening. Miss K. T. Did had bought at a most extravagant price from Stingy one fourth of an inch of his best rainbow-hue cobweb. This made for her a beautiful scarf, which she waved over the light of the glow-worms that had been arranged in a wide circle ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... for parodies of the great drama of Athens. And here is testimony to the fact: all manner of comic masks, of grotesque visages; mouths distorted into impossible grins, eyes leering and goggling, noses extravagant. I sketched a caricature of Medusa, the anguished features and snaky locks travestied with satiric grimness. You remember a story which illustrates this scoffing habit: how the Roman Ambassador, whose Greek left something ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... deceased was entrusted to hired mourners. Temperance at meals was a leading feature in the character of the Romans during the early ages of the republic; but after the conquest of Asia, their luxuries were more extravagant than those of any nation recorded in history. But there was more extravagance than refinement in the Roman luxury; and though immense sums were lavished on entertainments, they were destitute of that taste and elegance more delightful than ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... we were ordered home, Captain Reud's mental aberrations became less frequent; but, when they supervened, they were more extravagant in their nature. He grew roguish, fretful, and cruel. Though he never spoke to me harshly, he addressed me more rarely. I had not dined with him for a long while: he had taken the mysterious destruction of my wardrobe as a valid excuse; and had gone so far, on one occasion, in a ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... vex me, and I will have one in my bed-chamber too. No, did not I tell you but just now, we have no high winds here? Have you forgot already?—Now you're at it again, silly Stella; why does your mother say my candles are scandalous? They are good sixes in the pound, and she said I was extravagant enough to burn them by daylight. I never burn fewer at a time than one. What would people have? The D—— burst Hawkshaw. He told me he had not the box; and the next day Sterne told me he had sent it a fortnight ago. Patrick could not find him t'other day, but he shall to-morrow. Dear life and ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... truth might come in a sinister shape. The two things that had taken him utterly by surprise in the matter of his feeling towards Mabel Manderson were the insane suddenness of its uprising in full strength and its extravagant hopelessness. Before it came, he had been much disposed to laugh at the permanence of unrequited passion as a generous boyish delusion. He knew now that he had been wrong, and he was living bitterly ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... to her, but he was never extravagant in his praise. He was quite unlike any other man of her acquaintance. His touch was always so sure. He never sought her out, though he was invariably quite pleased to see her. The dainty barrier of pride that fenced her round did not exist for him. She did not need to keep him ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... thought it would be wise in me to accept the offer. My father always maintained that he was one of the most sensible men in the world, and he at once consented in the kindest manner. I had been rather extravagant at Cambridge, and to console my father, said, "that I should be deuced clever to spend more than my allowance whilst on board the 'Beagle';" but he answered with a smile, "But they tell ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... money had never altered John Merrick's native simplicity. He had no extravagant tastes, dressed quietly and lived the life of the people. On this eventful morning the man of millions took a cross-town car to the elevated station and climbed the stairs to his train. Once seated and headed cityward he took out his memorandum book to see what engagements ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... however, the justice to his candour to add, that upon a newer acquaintance with me, which immediately followed, he never repeated his admonition; and when "Cecilia" came out, and he hastened to me with every species of extravagant encomium, he never hinted at any similar idea, and it seemed evident he concluded me, by that time, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... to prevail that the State was destined to become almost immediately the greatest in the nation. Corn fields were platted out into town sites, and additions to existing cities were arranged in every direction. For a time it appeared as though there was little exaggeration in the extravagant forecast of future greatness. Town lots sold in a most remarkable manner, many valuable corners increasing in value ten and twenty-fold in a single night. The era of railroad building was coincident with the town boom craze, and Eastern people were so anxious to obtain a share of ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... lying, whether a philosopher can do it or not I cannot tell: I am sure I cannot do it. But though these discourses may be uneasy and ungrateful to them, I do not see why they should seem foolish or extravagant; indeed, if I should either propose such things as Plato has contrived in his 'Commonwealth,' or as the Utopians practise in theirs, though they might seem better, as certainly they are, yet they are so different from our establishment, which is founded ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... Crawley, though he had many good qualities, was by no means perfect. He was rather spoiled by indulgence at home and popularity at school, and thought a good deal too much of himself for one thing, and for another he was inclined to be thoughtless and extravagant in money matters. It is excellent to be generous with money which is absolutely our own; but to seek to get the credit for generosity at other people's expense is quite another, and not at all an admirable ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... the very last people who can consistently criticise this tendency in Asia. It is the foreigner who has created it, and the American is the most prodigal of all foreigners. I never realized until I visited other lands how extravagant is the scale of American life, not only among the rich, but the so-called poor. My morning walk to my New York office takes me along Christopher Street, and I have often seen in the garbage cans of tenement houses pieces of bread and meat and half-eaten vegetables and fruit that would give the ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... the graces of the courtier, and seems to have charmed, when he so desired, those with whom he came in contact. His friends are most extravagant in his praises, and their letters refer to him as the model soldier, statesman ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... father found himself having trouble with his workmen. There were strikes. The family received threatening letters. Malvina's rosy cheeks grew pale. "I don't know what they want," she said forlornly. "They say we are all so extravagant. I don't know what difference that makes to them if we pay for what we buy. We never hurt them. I wish we were not rich at all. It would be much nicer to be poor. I should like to be a—what is it?—a commoner—or a communist or something. Then ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... waste is wicked even in the wealthy; you need wisdom as well as wealth," said Miss Melford to her one day. And indeed she did, for sometimes the articles she bought for others were singularly extravagant and inappropriate. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... the brief intoxication of joy was followed by bitter disenchantment. It had been a fatal error to believe a woman like Zalika Rojanow, who had grown up in the unrestrained freedom of a disorderly, extravagant Bojar family, could accommodate herself to the rules and restrictions of ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... had time to turn round among his new friends than he wrote a letter to the King announcing his flight—a letter which was such a monstrous production of insolence, of madness, of felony, and which was written in a style so extravagant and confused that it deserves to be thus specially alluded to. In this letter, as full of absurdities, impudence, and of madness, as of words, the Cardinal, while pretending much devotion for the King, and much submission to the Church, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... rhetoric, that of a powerful concentration. As to the critic who thinks her poetry owed anything to the great poet who was her husband, he can go and live in the same hotel with the man who can believe that George Eliot owed anything to the extravagant imagination of Mr. George Henry Lewes. So far from Browning inspiring or interfering, he did not in one sense interfere enough. Her real inferiority to him in literature is that he was consciously while she ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... he contrive to get into a scrape of this sort? I'm sure we never were extravagant; we didn't care a bit what we wore nor what we ate; and I know the grammar school at Nortonbury is cheap enough, and I really don't think Jane Macalister gets ten pounds a year. I'm sure she never has a new rag to her ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... has a real greatness of soul, he will not be apt to compare himself with others, and he will be inclined to an even over-generous estimate of the value of the work of others. In no respect was the greatness of D. G. Rossetti more exemplified than in his almost extravagant appreciation of the work of his friends; and it was to this royalty of temperament that he ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... been a gentle and amused boy and had reminded him of Sylvia Hope, lacking her beauty, but with a funny touch of her charm. Peter had loved the things he loved, too—the precious and admirable things he had collected round him through a recklessly extravagant life. Peter at fifteen, in the first hour of his first visit to Astleys, had been caught out of the incredible romance of being in Urquhart's home into a new marvel, and stood breathless before a Bow rose bowl of soft and mellow paste, ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... madness, the wars of Charlemagne, and the loves of Bradamant and Rogero. From this Rogero the family of Este claimed to be derived, and for this reason Ariosto made Rogero the real hero of the poem, and took occasion to lavish the most extravagant praises upon his patron and ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... everything that is frivolous, and unwise, and extravagant, but I have a good time, and the result is that I haven't a cent, and am in debt a dollar," laughed Ernestine, kicking out her pretty foot with its fancy little slipper, as if in defiance to ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... covetous of those things of which we have but few, extravagant with those of which we have an abundance. When the Western farmer burns corn in place of coal, be assured he sees his own account in it. We husband our white pine, and are free with our hemlock; ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... manners of other men, I found here, too, scarce any ground for settled conviction, and remarked hardly less contradiction among them than in the opinions of the philosophers. So that the greatest advantage I derived from the study consisted in this, that, observing many things which, however extravagant and ridiculous to our apprehension, are yet by common consent received and approved by other great nations, I learned to entertain too decided a belief in regard to nothing of the truth of which I had been persuaded ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... you not to follow in his track, if you wish to gain fortune and renown. That,' he continued, pointing to his own painting,'is true and conscientious art. Well, it leads to the alms-house. I see that you have the power to become a great artist. Change your place; be extravagant, capricious, unnatural, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... now no more. I hope it is no disrespect to his memory to say that he had his foibles. It was no secret among our contemporaries at Cambridge that he was like too many other men of genius, a little deficient in economy—shall I say it? a little extravagant. The difficulties into which he brought himself by his improvidence were, however, always to him matters of jest and raillery; and often, indeed, proved subjects of triumph, for he was sure to extricate himself, by some of his many talents, or by some ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... among the extravagant vagaries of genius; but the more we reflect upon the subject matter of this poem, the more the conviction fastens upon our minds, that it is by no means a trivial or undignified topic; that considered in what light it may, tobacco must be regarded as the most astonishing of the productions of ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... ft. high, squarely built, weight about 12 stone. Dark complexion, regular features. Eyes dark brown; nose straight. Called a handsome man; walks erect and rapidly. In society is considered a good fellow; rather a favorite, especially with ladies. Is liberal, not extravagant; reported to be worth about 5000 pounds per year, and appearances give color to this statement. Property consists of a small estate in Hertfordshire, and some funds, amount not known. Since writing this much, a correspondent sends the following in regard ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... shrieking ghostly voices from the sky overhead had melted into the fog. No longer did the howling devils of mid channel disturb him. No longer did he fear the raging golf. With his mascot goat at his side, no evil luck could touch him. Courage returned, and with it extravagant language. "Lily, no doggone ghos' better git uppity wid me. I'd bus' a ol' ghos' in de haid ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... it brings us no nearer to any but a floating and conjectural kind of solution. In the earliest form known to us of this play it should seem that we have traces of Shakespeare's handiwork, in the latest that we find evidence of Marlowe's. But it would be something too extravagant for the veriest wind-sucker among commentators to start a theory that a revision was made of his original work by Marlowe after additions had been made to it by Shakespeare; yet we have seen that the most ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in the Inca himself; for, being by nature of an unusually arrogant and domineering disposition, while the other members of the Council had been exceedingly pliant and easy-going, he had never experienced any difficulty in browbeating them into tolerably quick compliance with his wishes, however extravagant they might happen to have been. As for the people, they had rendered the same implicit, unquestioning obedience to the Council that they would have rendered to the Inca, had there been one on the throne. Having enjoyed this power, together with all the ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... however, is outrageously extravagant. He will admit that only two Greek authors and four Latin ones —Cicero, Pliny the Elder, (a big part of) Horace (the Satires and Epistles), and (a little bit of) Virgil (the Georgics), have come down to us, along with the sacred writings ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... Sunday without further comment. The recollection is weird and extravagant. I remember being surprised at finding certain stretches of pavement perpendicular, and of trying to climb them. Still we must have got a line in the paper on Saturday night, for on Monday the bell ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... his extravagant theories, Themison possessed skill in practice. He was the first physician to describe rheumatism, and he also is thought to have been the pioneer in the medicinal use of leeches. A book on elephantiasis ascribed to him ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... summoned were not members of the order, and had only hearsay evidence to give. They had heard this and that report, they suspected something else, they had been told that certain things had been said or done. Nothing definite could be obtained, and there was no proof whatever of any of the extravagant and incredible charges. Similar proceedings took place in Lincoln and York, and also in Scotland and Ireland; and in all places the results were the same, and the matter dragged on till ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... there was one thing he enjoyed more than another it was the adventures of the worthy Pantagruel and his resourceful esquire; but he had never been able to complete this record of extravagant exploits, partly because he could not read fast enough and partly because his master kept finding new hiding places ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... Amendment, now seemed indeed, to be reaching a climax. During the whole of June 14th, until midnight, speech after speech on the subject, followed each other in rapid succession. Among the opposition speeches, perhaps those of Fernando Wood and Holman were most notable for extravagant and unreasoning denunciation of the Administration and Party in power—whose every effort was put forth, and strained at this very time to the utmost, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... voice, and manners pleased her. Even when she was at work, the laughter of those she loved was a pleasure to her. She had much, very much, to suffer. Work sometimes came hard to her, so much being required,—for she was extravagant, and liked to have money to spend; but of all people I have known she was the most joyous, or, at any rate, ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... him. He and his children are living in a poor small cottage, on a wild corner of common near Cassiobury. How I thought of our old—no, our young days, driving along past "The Grove" and the Cassiobury Park paling. My brother's present home is certainly not an extravagant residence, and though, of course, sufficient for absolute necessary comfort (how much comfort is necessary?), is nothing more.... John has advertised in the Times for a pupil to prepare for ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... statute was framed prohibiting all sales to 'any apprentice, servant or negro,' without a special order from the master. In 1721 another law was enacted prohibiting sales on credit beyond the amount of ten shillings; and the reason assigned for it was, 'for that many persons are so extravagant in their expenses, at taverns and other houses of common entertainment, that it greatly hurts their families, and makes them less able to pay and discharge their honest, just debts.' In 1787 this rule was reenacted, and subsequently all sales on credit were prohibited. ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... it any wonder, if taught on every side distrust of man, the heart should by a violent reaction, and by an extravagant confidence in a priest, proclaim that its normal, natural state ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... when it can read words of two syllables, they require it to explain the circulation of the blood; when it reaches the head of the infant class they bully it with conundrums that cover the domain of universal knowledge. This sounds extravagant—and is; yet it goes no great ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... clerk belonging to Carlton House. At La Montee there were seventy Canadians and half-breeds and sixty women and children who consumed upwards of seven hundred pounds of buffalo meat daily, the allowance per diem for each man being eight pounds: a portion not so extravagant as may at first appear when allowance is made for bone and the entire want of farinaceous food ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... body. The people seemed inclined to select the most honorable place which could be found within the limits of the city. Some proposed a beautiful temple on the Capitoline Hill. Others wished to take it to the senate-house, where he had been slain. The Senate, and those who were less inclined to pay extravagant honors to the departed hero, were in favor of some more retired spot, under pretense that the buildings of the city would be endangered by the fire. This discussion was fast becoming a dispute, when it was suddenly ended by two men, with swords at their ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... river to be crossed, but the formidable slopes, which the Germans had beeen meticulously fortifying for two and a half years, to be surmounted. The results of the first day's onslaught fell lamentably short of the extravagant anticipations. The banks of the Aisne were cleared, some progress was made up the slopes, and from Troyon, where the original line was nearly on the ridge, an advance was made along it. But on the whole ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... proposed for adoption must be neither Utopian nor extravagant, but accordant throughout with ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... themselves to the meanest and most distasteful offices. Make them visit the prisoners, and teach them how to give comfort to the miserable. In fine, exercise your novices in all the practices of humility and mortification; but permit them not to appear in public in extravagant habits, which may cause them to be derided by the multitude;—suffer it not, I say, far from imposing it upon them. Engage not all the novices indifferently to those trials which their nature most abhors; but examine well the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... floating cloth, but did not steam and electricity wait for centuries? Since the new style was generally adopted, Englishwomen allow themselves the luxury of five or six habits, instead of the one or two formerly considered sufficient, but each one is worn for several years. When the extravagant wife, in Mrs. Alexander's "A Crooked Path," suggests that she may soon want a new habit, her husband asks indignantly, "Did I not give ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... interlopers. He had conceived a hatred of Mr. Drummond on the spot. Sir Harry took up his quarters at the same hotel where Dick and his father had spent that one dreary evening. He gave lavish orders and excited a great deal of attention and talk by his careless munificence. Without being positively extravagant he had a free-handed way of spending his money: as he often said, "he liked to see things comfortable about him." And, as his notions of comfort were somewhat expensive, his host soon conceived a great respect for him,—all the more that ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... timidly, as became so extravagant a suggestion, that a mountain man he had met in Independence told him he thought the buffalo would be eventually exterminated. The trappers looked at one another, and exchanged satiric smiles. Even the Canadian ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... of Kepler in the light of our modern knowledge we are often struck by the extent to which his perception of the sublimest truths in nature was associated with the most extravagant errors and absurdities. But, of course, it must be remembered that he wrote in an age in which even the rudiments of science, as we now understand it, ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... love, motherly love, too, and the extravagant pride my dear good old people had of me ("everybody's talking of you, my boy, and there's nothing else in the newspapers"); but not a word about my Mary—or only one, and that seemed ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... themselves richer, not poorer, because he indulged his taste. It is quite another thing to buy books as a speculator buys shares, meaning to sell again at a profit as soon as occasion offers. It is necessary also to warn the beginner against indulging extravagant hopes. He must buy experience with his books, and many of his first purchases are likely to disappoint him. He will pay dearly for the wrong "Caesar" of 1635, the one WITHOUT errors in pagination; and this is only a common example of the beginner's blunders. Collecting is like other forms of sport; ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... inferential comparison to exalt one player and proportionately disparage another; thus chess critics, with whom Staunton does not stand in the highest favour in the past, or Steinitz in the present, too often indulge in the most extravagant statements as to Morphy's immeasurable superiority, not based on conclusive grounds; when the games and evidence ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... in deliberate disproportion to achieve the one startling effect of height. It is a church on stilts. But this sort of sublime deformity is characteristic of the whole fancy and energy of these Flemish cities. Flanders has the flattest and most prosaic landscapes, but the most violent and extravagant of buildings. Here Nature is tame; it is civilisation that is untamable. Here the fields are as flat as a paved square; but, on the other hand, the streets and roofs are as uproarious as a forest in a great wind. The waters of wood and meadow slide as smoothly and meekly as if they ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... worry too much over this affair, Hal," urged Mr. Perry by way of response to his son's extravagant assurance. "If the person you got those messages from was your cousin, I don't believe the fellows who were after him had reason to do him any serious harm. But you may be sure that we will not leave a stone unturned in an effort ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... reassuring about the book. It reconciles one to life even at the moment it is piling up life's extravagant miseries. Its buoyant and resilient energy, full of the unconquerable irreverence and glorious shamelessness of youth, takes life fairly by the throat and mocks it and defies it to its face. It indicates courageous gaiety as the only victory, and ironical submission to what even gaiety ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... right feelings, they cannot but regard with fear and trembling the future possible fate of their wives and children. "The world," once said Mr. Cobden to the working men of Huddersfield, "has always been divided into two classes,—those who have saved, and those who have spent—the thrifty and the extravagant. The building of all the houses, the mills, the bridges, and the ships, and the accomplishment of all other great works which have rendered man civilized and happy, has been done by the savers, the thrifty; and those who have wasted their resources have always been their slaves. ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... has but one weakness that materially endangers his marital happiness. He is inclined to be too easy and extravagant, and not ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... see the house in which I was born, and I can watch the shadow of the church in the afternoon slowly crossing the churchyard. The townsfolk stand in the street and go up and down it just as they did forty years ago—not the same persons, but in a sense the same people. My brother will call me extravagant if I remain here. He buys a horse and does not consider it extravagant, and my money is not wasted if I spend it in the only way in which it is ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... a few minutes afterwards, Ned and Nellie came out again and walked off together, the group of gossipers unanimously endorsed Mrs. Macanany's extravagant praises, and agreed entirely with her declaration that if all the women in Sydney would only stand by Nellie, as Mrs. Macanany herself would, there would be such a doing and such an upsetting and such a righting ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... only have been of value as heirlooms to some private family. These were conspicuously displayed on the panelled walls, in partnership with other more or less modest busts and imaginary landscapes. His ceilings were frescoed and figured in most extravagant, but unappealing designs. It was plainly seen that the building had been erected more to satisfy the taste and please the eye of the architect, who had received an unrestricted contract, than for acceptance by the purchaser. The furnishings were very much in keeping with the fixtures and fittings, ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... indefinite, like the terror of a dream. It affected our horses as well as ourselves; they extended their necks and threw forward their ears. For some moments we sat in our saddles surveying the hideous and extravagant spectacle without a word, and our tongues were loosened only when it began rapidly to diminish and recede, and at last was resolved into a train of mules and wagons, barely visible on the horizon. They were miles away and outlined against the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... would thus accrue. What Melmotte was to be allowed to do with his shares, he never heard. As far as Montague could understand, Melmotte was in truth to be powerful over everything. All this made the young man unhappy, restless, and extravagant. He was living in London and had money at command, but he never could rid himself of the fear that the whole affair might tumble to pieces beneath his feet and that he might be stigmatised as one among a ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... several reasons," she said; "for one thing, I am an extravagant little hussy and haven't saved enough ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... carrying of letters, and law expenses; (4) journeys, and expenses whose items are forgotten, without counting the follies committed by the spenders; inasmuch as, according to the investigations of the committee, it had been proved that most of a man's extravagant expenditure profited the opera girls, rather than the married women. The conclusion arrived at from this pecuniary calculation was that, in one way or another, a passion costs nearly fifteen hundred francs a year, which were required to meet the expense borne more ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... State, from one particular ranch," explained Mrs. Gerard. "We order it by wire and get it only twenty hours after cutting. My husband sees to it that it is put on a special train. It stops at this ranch just to take on our asparagus. Extravagant, isn't it, but I simply cannot eat asparagus that has been cut more ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... They have little emotion and even in their love-making they show their emotion mostly for the sake of the reader's amusement. His negro characters are exceptions to his general treatment and are true to life. He inveigles the reader into believing the most extravagant incidents by having ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... the canon is, or what impression it makes, from descriptions or pictures, however good. Naturally it is untellable even to those who have seen something perhaps a little like it on a small scale in this same plateau region. One's most extravagant expectations are indefinitely surpassed, though one expect much from what is said of it as "the biggest chasm on earth"—"so big is it that all other big things,—Yosemite, the Yellowstone, the Pyramids, Chicago,—all would be lost ...
— The Grand Canon of the Colorado • John Muir
... continue to speak in French," she said, as she threw back her cloak and lifted her veil. "Monsieur has probably heard that the Princess Hildegarde is a creature of extravagant caprices; and ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... before. He ought to have told the surveyor at once that he owned the land. He ought to have said: "Why, that's my land. I bought it of that drunken 'Lige Curtis for a song and out of charity." Yes, that was the only real trouble, and that came from his own goodness, his own extravagant sense of justice and right,—his own cursed good-nature. Yet, on second thoughts, he didn't know why he was obliged to tell the surveyor. Time enough when the company wanted to buy the land. As soon as it was settled that 'Lige ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... son had grown tired of waiting in Samavia for his crown. He had gone out into the world, and visited other countries and their courts. When he returned and became king, he lived as no Samavian king had lived before. He was an extravagant, vicious man of furious temper and bitter jealousies. He was jealous of the larger courts and countries he had seen, and tried to introduce their customs and their ambitions. He ended by introducing their worst faults and vices. There arose political quarrels and savage ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions: these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion. But the gift is good in those ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... was interested, and the most extravagant stories were set afloat, not only concerning the trouseau of the bride, but the bride herself. What ailed her? What made her so cold, so white, so proudly reserved, so like a walking ghost? She, who had been so full of vigorous life, so merry, ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... wished that she really were his sister! But, then, the idea of that fair, golden-haired, blue-eyed, white-robed angel being the sister of such a robust, rugged, sunburned boy as himself! The thought was so absurd, extravagant, impossible, that the poor boy heaved ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... carrying fertility and beauty in its course, and altogether forming a rich and charming landscape." They then arrived at Wa-wa, a large city, through which the Houssa caravans pass, and which has a population of 15,000. The inhabitants are dissolute and extravagant, spending all their money in drinking and festivity. The ladies were very attentive to the English, especially a fat widow called Zuma, who even pressed marriage upon Clapperton, after she had exhibited to him all her wealth. She afterwards ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... "Very various and very extravagant notions have been formed of the population of ancient Egypt. That it was dense may well be inferred from the length of time through which it multiplied in a limited space, and from that evident parsimony of land which drove ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... and he was uncomfortably aware of the little start of surprise with which she burst upon each new arrival, In the old and rather staid surroundings of the club she looked out of place—oriental, extravagant, absurd. ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the extravagant excitability of his southern blood, beat his forehead and his breast, bemoaned himself as a betrayed and ruined man, and bewailed his wife and children. Rufinus, however, put an end to his ravings. He had consulted with the abbess, and he put it strongly to the unhappy man that ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... guilds of the learned, were persecuted by the registered livery-men as interlopers on their rights and privileges. All without distinction were branded as fanatics and phantasts; not only those, whose wild and exorbitant imaginations had actually engendered only extravagant and grotesque phantasms, and whose productions were, for the most part, poor copies and gross caricatures of genuine inspiration; but the truly inspired likewise, the originals themselves. And this for no other reason, but because they were the unlearned, men of humble and obscure occupations. ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... repeated her question. Peter shook his head in an extravagant denial, and helped her down from the rickshaw. They had stopped before the ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... we had a long journey before us, and needed it to kill game for ourselves.—"He too must obtain meat for himself and people, for they sometimes suffered from hunger." He then got sulky, and his people refused to sell food except at extravagant prices. Knowing that we had nothing to eat, they felt sure of starving us into compliance. But two of our young men, having gone off at sunrise, shot a fine waterbuck, and down came the provision market to the lower figure; ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... you joy, Sir Henry—of your bride—with all my heart. And a bonny bride she is, and well able to take her place in the world. Though you'll be rich and well to do, you'll not find her over-extravagant. And though her fortune's not much for a man like you, perhaps, she might have had less, mightn't she? ha! ha! ha! Little as it is, it will help—it will help. And you'll not find debts coming home after her; I'm sure ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... idleness, dissipation, and luxury, had made in the mind, the character, the happiness, of a man who, to every advantage of person and talents, united a disposition naturally open and honest, and a feeling, affectionate temper. The world had made him extravagant and vain—Extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish. Vanity, while seeking its own guilty triumph at the expense of another, had involved him in a real attachment, which extravagance, or at least its offspring, necessity, had ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... of Franklin. Among others, a Kentuckian wrote from Louisville to Georgia, bitterly complaining about the failure of the United States to open the Mississippi; denouncing the Federal Government in extravagant language, and threatening hostilities against the Spaniards, and a revolt against the Continental Congress. [Footnote: Do., Letter of Thomas Green to the Governor of Georgia, December 23, 1786.] This letter was intercepted, and, of course, increased still more the suspicion felt about Clark's ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... The other guests were the Countess Herberstein and an Austro-Hungarian General of Division, whose name I did not catch. Count Apponyi and I drove over together from Eberhard and after luncheon took the train from the neighboring station of Pozsony Ivanka. I was received with the most extravagant cordiality by the Hunyadis on account of services which I had been able to render to members of their family in the course of my work at ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... as they are familiarly known, and are distinguished for their fascinating beauty. The handsomest usually pays the highest price for her time. Many of these women are the favourites of persons who furnish them with the means of paying their owners, and not a few are dressed in the most extravagant manner. Reader, when you take into consideration the fact, that amongst the slave population no safeguard is thrown around virtue, and no inducement held out to slave women to be chaste, you will not be surprised ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... She stopped. Her fingers played nervously with the pearl necklace that rose and fell on her bosom. He found himself noting its details, wondering that she had developed such extravagant tastes. Then, awaking to her distress, he said quietly, "Then there is no ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... classified the occurrence historically he was satisfied, the more so as the maids always amused him the following morning by lowering their eyes in a most unusually modest fashion. Then he would make fantastically extravagant remarks, as though Gil Blas had been his favorite book. That was not the case, however. He read Walter Scott exclusively, for which I am grateful to him even to this day, since, even then, a few crumbs ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... that I know,—that so many men love me! But, after all, what sort of love is it? It is just as when you and I, when we see something nice in a shop, call it a dear duck of a thing, and tell somebody to go and buy it, let the price be ever so extravagant. I know my own position, Laura. I'm a dear duck of ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... You do not marry your heart, but your hand. Truly such a marriage-ceremony is a protecting talisman, that may be held up to other women as an iron shield upon which, all their egotistical wishes, all their extravagant demands must rebound. Moreover, a married man is entirely sans consequence for all unmarried women, and if they should love such a one, the happy mortal may be convinced that his love is really a caprice of the heart, and not a selfish calculation ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... too," she told herself, "and be real comfortable and extravagant for once, and have a cup of tea ready when they come," for the good lady had no intention of going to bed, assuring herself she would not sleep if she did. So, moving about, she refilled the lamp, and drawing the machine nearer the stove, began to sew where Mary had left ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... rage of the mob turned in an instant into the most extravagant adulation and delight. They crowded round us, patting our riding-boots, pulling at the skirts of our dress, pressing our hands and calling down blessings upon our heads, until their pastor succeeded at last in rescuing us from their attentions and in persuading them to resume their journey. ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... passed, and, ere our work is done, we must entreat our readers to visit with us, once again, the old Isle of Shepey. The thoughtless, good-tempered, dissipated, extravagant, ungrateful, unprincipled Charles, had been called by the sedate, thinking, and moral people of England to reign over them. But with English whim, or English wisdom, we have at present nought to do; we leave abler and stronger heads to determine, when reviewing the page of history, whether ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... increased. I stated that, if the currency was not greatly and promptly reduced, the existing scale of inflated prices would not only continue, but, by the very fact of the large amounts thus made requisite in the conduct of the war, these prices would reach rates still more extravagant, and the whole system would fall under its own weight, rendering the redemption of the debt impossible, and destroying its value in the hands of the holder. If, on the contrary, a funded debt, with interest secured by adequate taxation, could be ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... behind her, saw at almost the same moment the spectacle which had arrested her flight. Before them stood two little donkeys munching eagerly at a crop of rosy-headed thistles. They—the human beings—looked at each other; Tarrant burst into extravagant laughter, and Nancy joined him. Neither's mirth was spontaneous; Nancy's had a note of nervous tension, a ring of ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... bearings. In doing so she found herself for the first time contemplating his personal appearance as such; and that not altogether with disapproval. Though it was not in the least what she would have expected, he showed to advantage in the open air. She began to perceive the secret of his extravagant and preposterous charm. There was something about him—something that he had no right to have about him, being born a dweller in cities, which none the less he undeniably and inevitably had, something that made him ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... elegant in the assembly, completed this costume. Next him was the King of Wurtemberg with his enormous stomach, which forced him to sit some distance from the table; and the King of Naples, in so magnificent a costume that it might almost be considered extravagant, covered with crosses and stars, who played with his fork, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant |
