"Opulence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that the courier introduced him. He is evidently immensely charmed with Miss Miller. If she thinks him the finest gentleman in the world, he, on his side, has never found himself in personal contact with such splendor, such opulence, such expensiveness as this young lady's. And then she must seem to him wonderfully pretty and interesting. I rather doubt that he dreams of marrying her. That must appear to him too impossible a piece of luck. ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... been an extraordinary community, and to understand it we must remember the conditions prevailing. Bryan Edwards, in his History of the British West Indies, published in 1793, called them "the principal source of the national opulence and maritime power of England"; and without the stream of wealth pouring into Great Britain from Barbados and Jamaica, the long struggle with ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... our labor but to those who, taking advantage of our folly, ship for us, buy for us, sell to us, and, after turning our own capital to their profitable account, return laden with our money to enjoy their easily earned opulence at home." ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... partially true, but if they had said 'would not' they would have hit the mark, and come to full truth. The reason for His death becomes clear, and each of the contrasted facts is enhanced, when we set side by side the opulence and ease of His manifold miracles and the apparent impotence and resourcelessness of the passive Victim on ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... observer, even vice as well as virtue; drawing a lesson from his own frailties, and making a study of his own follies. He dissipated his fortune in premeditated prodigality, and terminated a studious opulence in excessive poverty; living on the miserable salary of a copyist, when in idea he was governing the world. In the estimation of some, a sage—of others, a madman; at one time sanguine to enthusiasm, at another discouraged to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... forecasting mind is always detecting "possibeelities." So he contents himself by creeping cautiously from point to point, ignoring big, reckless schemes and using the safe and small, till he arrives at a florid opulence. He has expressed his love of festina lente in business in a score of proverbs—"Bit-by-bit's the better horse, though big-by-big's the baulder;" "Ca' canny, or ye'll cowp;" "Many a little makes a mickle;" and "Creep before ye gang." This mingling ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... to as [v]vicar was in a little neighborhood consisting of farmers who tilled their own grounds and were equal strangers to [v]opulence and poverty. As they had almost all the conveniences of life within themselves, they seldom visited towns or cities in search of [v]superfluity. Remote from the polite, they still retained the [v]primeval simplicity of manners; and, frugal ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... instead of wasting their time about their vain disputes, they had applied themselves to really useful science, and investigated the true principles of philosophy, government, and morals! Who would dare to reproach a body with its opulence or influence, if the members dedicating themselves to the public good, employed their leisure in study, and exercised their authority in enlightening the minds both of ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... the shops are shut and the churches and theatres open, and everybody amuses himself as well as his tastes and his means allow. Nowhere are processions so splendid, festivals so magnificent, the whole body of the population accustomed, either as actors or as spectators, to such daily displays of opulence ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... good-looking lad of seventeen. He addressed me in his native language, and, finding that I understood him, he commenced talking with astonishing volubility. In the space of five minutes he informed me that, having a desire to see the world, he had run away from his friends, who were people of opulence at Madrid, and that he did not intend to return until he had travelled through various countries. I told him that if what he said was true, he had done a very wicked and foolish action; wicked, because he must have overwhelmed ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... development. They are of unequal excellence. Some are mere versions and adaptations. The plots and stories are generally borrowed. Some of the worst are unspeakably bad, but the best, with their subtle and imperious command of language, stately and splendid imagery, careless opulence of incident, learning, and illustration, wit, wisdom, humor, and philosophy, insight into the complex abysses of human passion, familiarity with the secret motives of human conduct, and profound meditation upon the most sombre problems of human destiny, mark the highest ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... Over all that extensive and enchanting region, trampled and torn and laid waste by hostile armies in 1864 and 1865, John Randolph rode and hunted from the time he could sit a pony and handle a gun. Not a vestige remains of the opulence and splendor of his early days. Not one of the mansions inhabited or visited by him in his youth furnished a target for our cannoneers or plunder for our camps. A country better adapted to all good purposes of man, nor one more pleasing to the eye, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Byzantine in its architecture, suggesting the Mosque of Ahmed I, at Constantinople, its Gallic decorations have made it essentially French in spirit. The ornamentation of this palace is the most florid of any building in the Exposition proper. Yet this opulence is not inappropriate. In size and form, no less than in theme, the structure is well adapted to carry such rich decoration. This is the palace of the bounty of nature; its adornment symbolizes the rich ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... to dream that she lives in fairy like opulence, denotes that she will be deceived, and will live for a time in luxurious ease and splendor, to find later that she is mated with shame and poverty. When young women dream that they are enjoying solid and real wealth and ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... like a task. We are astonished at his learned opulence, his indefatigable labour, and his flood of rich and high-wrought conception; but we grow as weary of him, as if we walked through an Indian treasury, and rested the eye only on heaps of gold. With all our great ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... were economic, not romantic. Freddy had no money and no occupation. His mother's jointure, a last relic of the opulence of Largelady Park, had enabled her to struggle along in Earlscourt with an air of gentility, but not to procure any serious secondary education for her children, much less give the boy a profession. A clerkship at thirty shillings a week was beneath Freddy's dignity, and extremely distasteful ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... was, to all outward appearances, as thriving as ever, with its busy population, its crowded and excellent shops, and its general evidences of opulence, which appeared to overbalance—or, in any case, wish to conceal—any existing poverty or distress. Among many friends we met was a French lady, formerly the Marquise d'Herve, but who had married, as her second husband, Comte Jacque de Waru. ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... the present, or the future. Cast, in her poverty, into the hands of some poor gambling officer, she attached herself to him as a dog to its master, sharing the discomforts of the military life, which indeed she comforted, as content under the roof of a garret as beneath the silken hangings of opulence. Italian and Spanish both, she fulfilled very scrupulously the duties of religion, and more than once ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... pronounced the last words with an expression so heart-breaking—there was something so moving in the comparison which this unfortunate creature, obscure and disdained, infirm and miserable, made of herself with Adrienne de Cardoville, the very type of resplendent youth, beauty, and opulence—that Agricola was moved even to tears; and, holding out one of his hands to the speaker, he said to her, tenderly, "How very good you are; how full of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... and the increase of our opulence, might form, says Johnson, a curious subject of research. In the reign of Edward the Sixth, Latimer mentions it as a proof of his father's prosperity, that though but a yeoman, he gave his daughters ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... seen her. She was tastefully dressed, as she had always been, a certain style of languorous silken deshabille which she was wont to affect in better health now became her paler cheek and feverishly brilliant eyes. There was the same opulence of lace and ornament, and, whether by accident or design, clasped around the slight wrist of her extended hand was a bracelet which he remembered had swept away the last ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... determined, who had nothing to lose and feared nothing, who believed implicitly in himself and his star; who could say to himself as did Croustillac, "In risking death during a moment—for death can be but a moment's agony—I may live in luxury and opulence"—such a man can perform miracles above all when he undertakes a project with such a grand object and as stimulating ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... empty, we walked up the broad stone steps and stood within the doorway. I was certainly much surprised at what I saw. There was a rude magnificence about this house such as I had never expected to find in the South Sea Islands. Nay, though I am not unacquainted with the abodes of opulence at home, and have been a favoured guest of some of our merchant princes (including Messrs. Bunton, the eminent haberdashers, whose light is so generously bestowed on our Connection), I admit that I had never looked on a more spacious ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... his promises like a loyal knight; and this miracle, as it appeared in the eyes of Fray Antonio Agapida, is the first instance on record of paper money, which has since inundated the civilized world with unbounded opulence. ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... realize Longfellow's opulence by walking through his library adjacent to the eastern piazza, and gazing at the magnificent editions of foreign authors which had been presented to him by his friends and admirers; especially the fine set of Chateaubriand's works, in all respects worthy of a royal ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... goes north, sunburnt Provence, its olive groves and its oil and garlic-seasoned viands are left behind, until little by little one draws upon the Burgundian opulence of the Cote d'Or, a land where the native's manner of eating and drinking makes a full life and ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... refused to beneficial though costly improvements. They remained, therefore, competent to that expensive establishment which his reputation, added to a hospitable temper, had, in some measure, imposed upon him, and to those donations which real distress has a right to claim from opulence. ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... with statues and pictures, and extended a generous patronage to the painters. He was a collector of books, and, as Crabbe and less conspicuous men discovered, a helpful friend to their writers. Guests were ever welcome at his board; the opulence of his mind and the fervid copiousness of his talk naturally made the guests of such a man very numerous. Non invideo equidem, miror magis, was Johnson's good-natured remark, when he was taken over his friend's fine house and pleasant gardens. Johnson was of a very different type. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... unjust claims legal; laws have convenient syllogisms to quiet consciences. My visit was a drama. To be Providence itself; actually to fulfil that futile wish, 'If heaven were to send us twenty thousand francs a year,'—that silly wish we all make, laughing; to bring opulence to a family sitting by the light of one miserable lamp over a poor turf fire!—no, words cannot describe it. My extreme justice seemed to them unjust. Well! if there is a Paradise my father is happy in it now. As for me, I am ...
— Madame Firmiani • Honore de Balzac
... at the neck with a brooch which consisted of a single flaming beryl. Boots which extended halfway up his calves, and which were trimmed at the tops with rich brown fur, completed the impression of barbaric opulence which was suggested by his whole appearance. He carried a broad-brimmed hat in his hand, while he wore across the upper part of his face, extending down past the cheek-bones, a black visard mask, which he had apparently adjusted that very moment, for his hand was still raised to it as he entered. ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... years later, Mexico and Peru had been overrun and plundered by Cortes and Pizarro, and the treasures of millions of people, accumulated through many centuries, became a possession of the Spanish people; raising them to a degree of opulence unknown since the time of the most illustrious of the Roman emperors. In consequence of this wealth, commerce expanded, large cities grew up along the courses of the navigable rivers, and all branches of industry were aroused to a state ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... Jimmie Dale again. "And"—he put the money and the diamond pendant coolly in his pocket—"it would be too bad if I didn't play it up, wouldn't it? It doesn't often come as easy as this. Amazing carelessness to leave that outside door unlocked! But, as I was saying, with such a lavish display of opulence on the table, one is almost led to hope that there might be more where ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the name of Magna Graecia. The most ancient, and, at the same time, the most northerly Greek city in Italy, was Cumae in Campania. Most of the other Greek colonies were situated farther to the south, where many of them attained to great power and opulence. Of these, some of the most distinguished were Tarentum, Sybaris, ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... Growers' Association celebrates its one hundredth anniversary, it is safe to predict that the descendants of the present generation of nut growers who have followed the example of their forebears, will be living in opulence and will be regarded as the saviors of their country, while the great abattoirs and meat packing establishments will have ceased to exist, and the merry click of the nut cracker will be ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various
... of Fame, an immense cage, sixty miles long, and its inhabitants the great writers of classic times, and is chiefly valuable as showing the estimation in which the classic writers were held in that day. This is also in octosyllabic verses, and is further remarkable for the opulence of its imagery and its variety of description. The poet is carried in the claws of a great eagle into this house, and sees its distinguished occupants standing upon columns of different kinds of metal, according to their merits. The poem ends with the third book, very abruptly, as Chaucer awakes ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... dilated upon, is one of the healthiest and strongest on the face of the earth. We are not demoralized or effeminated by the luxury and abundance which are ours, but elevated rather, and strengthened by the very magnificence and opulence of our circumstances, and by the perfect freedom, under healthful restraint, which we enjoy through the community's strong, vigorous, moral and ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... though they carried it with them all the way. They had begun their married life in this locality before it had become a definite district. Twelve years ago the neighbourhood had shown no signs of mushrooming into its present opulence. Twelve years ago Raymond, twenty-eight, and Cora, twenty-four, had taken a six-room flat at Racine and Sunnyside. Six rooms. Modern. ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... sources of an opulence which we must do Raleigh the credit to say was expended not on debauchery or display, but in the most enlightened efforts to extend the field of English commercial enterprise beyond the Atlantic. We need not suppose him to have been unselfish beyond the fashion of his age. In his action there was, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... is claimed that mines, richer than those of Hispaniola, have been found in Cuba and at the present writing it is asserted that gold to the value of one hundred and eighty thousand castellanos has been obtained there and converted into ingots; certainly a positive proof of opulence. ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... this virtue unostentatiously will always be protected from the caprices of fortune; if he is poor, common sense will indicate to him the way to cease to be poor, and, if chance has given him birth in opulence, the counsels of experience will demonstrate to him the frailty of possessions that one has not acquired by ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... well. His employees in the store had been with him for years. They were worked very hard and their pay was not great, but their money was sure, and their employment was all the year round. So many billets upon the prairie depended upon the seasons—opulence one month and idleness the next. On the ranches it was often worse. There is but little labor needed in the winter. And those who have the good fortune to be employed all the year round generally experience a reduction in wages at the end of the fall round-up, ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... the way he jerked his head to right and left, as though a vision drew him now to the door, now to the window, bespoke his horrible discomfort under the stare of so many eyes. He was scrupulously well dressed, and a pearl in the center of his tie seemed to give him a touch of aristocratic opulence. But the rather prominent eyes and the impulsive stammering manner, which seemed to indicate a torrent of ideas intermittently pressing for utterance and always checked in their course by a clutch of nervousness, drew no pity, as in the case of a more imposing personage, but a desire to laugh, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... wealth of color and a suggestion of architectural and monumental remains, and a strange, almost unearthly beauty, such as no mountain-view could ever have afforded him. Three features of the canon strike one at once: its unparalleled magnitude, its architectural forms and suggestions, and its opulence of color effects—a chasm nearly a mile deep and from ten to twenty miles wide, in which Niagara would be only as a picture upon your walls, in which the Pyramids, seen from the rim, would appear only like ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... without the impressiveness of great size; that they are almost devoid of shapely windows or stained glass, of notable carvings or richness of decorative detail. Their art is a simple art, a sober art, and in its nearest approach to opulence—the sculptured portals of Saint-Trophime of Arles or Saint-Gilles-de-Languedoc—there is still a reserved rather than an exuberant and ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... trailed a long streamer of dust that tasted of the road. When this was penetrated they entered upon a stretch of pleasant travel for eyes and wheels, on a long, long channel through a fruitful prairie, a very allegory of placid opulence. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... dispersed beyond all hope of return, no rage vented in fire and ruins upon the unoffending houses and walls. Together also with advantage, a reputation for clemency was obtained among the allies, by the preservation of a city of the greatest celebrity and opulence, the demolition of which, all Campania, and all the people dwelling in the neighbourhood of Campania, would have bewailed, while their enemies were compelled to admit the ability of the Romans to punish ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... those which are created by wealth, and where obscurity has no other foe to contend with than the demon of poverty. His children were indulged in luxuries that his death was to dissipate, and enjoyed an opulence that was only co-existent with the life of their parent. Accordingly, the music party that assembled on the following evening at the house of Mr. Osgood, was brilliant, large, and fashionable. Seven grown-up daughters was a melancholy sight for the contemplation of the parents, ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... opulence of beauty in the forms and motions of the cataract! It is comparatively narrow at the top of the precipice, although, as we said, the tide that pours over is thirty-five feet broad. But it widens as it descends, and curves ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... intimate that I was rather in the abode of a decayed gentleman, who clung to a few of the forms and observances of former rank, than in that of a common peasant, raised above his fellows by comparative opulence. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... extent of private fortunes must also regulate the increase of families. If children multiply beyond the means of supporting them, the intention of the law will be frustrated and families will be suddenly reduced from opulence to beggary, a revolution always dangerous to public tranquillity."[896] At the same time Aristophanes showed in his comedy "Ecclesiazusae" that the community of goods would necessarily lead to the ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... them with difficulty. Some of the culinary uses to which they are subjected render them more digestible; but they should always be eaten sparingly. Their chief use is in seasoning and garnitures. In short, a professor has said, "Meats with truffles are the most distinguished dishes that opulence can offer to the epicure." The Truffle grows in clusters, some inches below the surface of the soil, and is of an irregular globular form. Those which grow wild in England are about the size of a hen's egg, and have no roots. As ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... all sorts hurried to the new centre of opulence. Already an obsequious personage from Paris had taken up his abode in a room of one of the new houses, and a painted board hanging from his window informed the passers-by that he was permitted to style himself Coiffeur to her Excellency the ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... (alluding to Captain Cook's paper on the subject), the means by which Britain may now, on the most distant voyages, preserve numbers of her intrepid sons, her mariners; who, braving every danger, have so liberally contributed to the fame, to the opulence, and to the maritime empire, of their country?"—An acknowledgement so judicious finds a response in every breast that knows how to estimate the value of human life and happiness, and will not fail to secure to the name of Cook, the grateful ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... gloomy tale is illustrated by music of extraordinary power and beauty. Although Franck only avails himself of guiding themes to a limited extent, in mastery of the polyphonic style his work will compare with Wagner's most elaborate scores. In fact, the opulence of orchestral resource and the virility of inspiration displayed in 'Hulda' strikingly recall the beauties of 'Tristan und Isolde.' 'Ghiselle,' a work left unfinished by the composer and completed by several of his pupils, was produced in 1896 at Monte Carlo. Although by no means upon the same ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... calm and reserved opulence about the Weightman mansion that spoke not of money squandered, but of wealth prudently applied. Standing on a corner of the Avenue no longer fashionable for residence, it looked upon the swelling tide of business with an expression of complacency ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... wars of Edward III. and Philip, many a soldier of fortune amassed considerable opulence by the ransoming of his prisoners. Croquart, a famous leader of these companies, is related to have become extremely rich by the money he received from the ransoms of castles and towns. In the fourteenth century several ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... "this poor young man, coming from opulence, no doubt, a dear English home, to die here for no end, one of the first-fruits of a bloody war,—so much privately sacrificed. But let him rest, Septimius. I am sorry that he fell by your hand, though it involves no shadow of a crime. But death is a ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... pagan, anti-Christian, and the glorification of pauperism. Dickens was born in a debtor's prison—constructively—and he leaped from squalor into fussy opulence. He wrote for the rabble, and he who writes for the rabble has a ticket to Limbus one way. The Rossettis made their appeal to the Elect Few. Dickens was sired by Wilkins Micawber and dammed by Mrs. Nickleby. He wallowed in the cheap and tawdry, and the gospel of sterling simplicity was absolutely ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... as the "approaches" and proposed "dry arches" to the New London Bridge are now becoming matters of speculative interest, we hope this entrance to our metropolis will ultimately present a similar display of architectural elegance. LONDON, with all her opulence, ought not to yield in comparison with any city in the world; and it is high time that the march of taste be quickened ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... misfortunes will be obliterated, it is highly gratifying to find, that even in this place of their ancient sufferings, they are beginning to feel the benefit of British protection. Hitherto, through their indefatigable industry, having acquired opulence in Arabia as elsewhere, they were afraid either to display or to enjoy it; but now, under the protection of the British flag, they not merely enjoy their wealth, but they publicly practise the rights of their religion. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... to recount portions of my dear old friend's history which must needs be told, and over which the writer does not like to dwell. If Thomas Newcome's opulence was unpleasant to describe, and to contrast with the bright goodness and simplicity I remembered in former days, how much more painful is that part of his story to which we are now come perforce, and which the acute reader of novels has, no doubt, long foreseen? Yes, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... democratic communities, then, will always contain a considerable number of people enjoying opulence or competency. The wealthy will not be so closely linked to each other as the members of the former aristocratic class of society: their propensities will be different, and they will scarcely ever enjoy leisure as secure ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... that gala day was a glorious evening. Rich and warm and beautiful, self-indulgent nature had swaddled herself about in barbaric bands of colour, a drowsy opulence of green and scarlet, soft-toned amber and pale, veiled azure. It was an hour when the senses riot in carnival, when colour sings and sound seems pink and gold, when light is fragrant and flowers ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... Madonna di Crevacore, and Gattinara; there is also the Mount Calvary of Domo d'Ossola, on the road towards Switzerland, and Montrigone below Borgosesia. These, indeed, are but chapels in imitation of our own Holy Sepulchre, and cannot compare with it neither in opulence nor in importance; still those of Varese and Oropa are of some note and wealth. Moreover, the neighbourhood of this our own Jerusalem is the exact counterpart of that which is in the Holy Land, having the Mastallone on the one side for the brook ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... table, and thinks it is for the honour of his character to wink at the knavery of his servants, who are in a confederacy with the market-people; and, of consequence, pay whatever they demand. Here is now a mushroom of opulence, who pays a cook seventy guineas a week for furnishing him with one meal a day. This portentous frenzy is become so contagious, that the very rabble and refuse of mankind are infected. I have known a negro-driver, from Jamaica, pay over-night, to ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... this picture is the Avenue of Opulence on the side of the river which boasts of the Esplanade. Here is a line of fifty palatial residences; the homes of the owners of a hundred mines and factories and the task-masters of fifty thousand men, their wives ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... lost,—for the Government have too many things to call their attention. But when the matter is once set on foot, an address from the Legislature can at any time procure assistance from His Majesty's Ministry. Yet six thousand pounds per annum appears to me a trifle, considering the increased opulence of the country. It is not probable that the Roman Catholics will object to such an arrangement,—they have already three Seminaries said to be well endowed,—but if any of them be poor the Legislature ought to grant them ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... the power of interest or indigence, at any period of my life, to expand or contract my heart. In the course of a painful life, memorable for its vicissitudes, frequently destitute of an asylum, and without bread, I have contemplated, with equal indifference, both opulence and misery. In want I might have begged or stolen, as others have done, but never could feel distress at being reduced to such necessities. Few men have grieved more than myself, few have shed so many tears; yet never did poverty, or the fear of falling into it, make ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... misunderstood, and seldom valued as it ought to be. The presumptuous weak who mistake the wish of distinction for the workings of talent, admire the eccentricities of the gifted youth who is reared in opulence, and, mistaking the prodigality which is only the effect of his fortune, for the attributes of his talents, imitate his errors, and imagine that, by copying the blemishes of his conduct, they possess ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... do not apply directly to the grievance, but which may be taken up as experiments to ascertain theories of the operation of councils formed of greater or lesser numbers, or such as shall be composed of men of more or less opulence, or of interests of newer or longer standing, or concerning the distribution of power to various descriptions or professions of men, or of the election to office by one authority rather ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... such effect, in the way of leisurely manners and carriage, etc., follows from simple persistent abstention from work, even where the subject does not take thought of the matter and studiously acquire an air of leisurely opulence and mastery. Especially does it seem to be true that a life of leisure in this way persisted in through several generations will leave a persistent, ascertainable effect in the conformation of the person, and still more in his habitual bearing and demeanour. But all the ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... Durbar Hall as she spoke—a long room overloaded with gilt furniture, gilt-framed mirrors, and the inevitable chandeliers and musical boxes that are the insignia of semi-civilised opulence throughout India. No self-respecting Maharajah, or Rana, or Nawab would dream of living in ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... unexpected, so magical, so dream-like almost, in its disproportion to the rest of the town. While the ancient city, whose life had withdrawn itself from century to century, was gradually shrinking all around it, the Grand'Place itself remained an immovable, gigantic, magnificent witness to the might and opulence of old, when Ypres was, with Ghent and Bruges, one of the three queens of the western world, one of the most strenuous centres of human industry and activity and the cradle of our great liberties. Such as it was yesterday—alas, that I cannot say, such as it is to-day!—this square, ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... man, breathing of opulence in air and attire, came briskly forward and held up his hand to receive both sticks, with a harlequin bow from the dark-eyed Oriental, who wore a spruce black broadcloth suit, in honour of America, and a red fez, in loyalty, doubtless, to the land of the Sultan; ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... repeated instances in France where there are quays without trade. This is not, however, the case with Nantes: it has still a brisk interior commerce, and the number of new houses are sufficient proofs that its inhabitants increase in opulence. ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... the feelings excited by the conclusion of the last, by a warm wish that England may for ages retain her present elevated rank. This leads to the consideration of her NAVAL OPULENCE, which carries us back to the subject we ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... on whom the distinction of preparing this system has devolved; a security that it will be both well and faithfully executed, and which, in the same proportion that it reflects credit on the editor, will embalm with additional honours, the memory of SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE; a genius, who in the opulence of his imagination, and his rich and inexhaustible capabilities, as a poet, a logician, and a metaphysician, has not perhaps been surpassed since the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... is this:—The founder was a Monsieur PICHON; who, on being taken prisoner by the English, at the capture of Louisburg in 1758, resided a long time in England under the name of TYRREL, and lived in circumstances of respectability and even of opulence. There—whether on the dispersion of the libraries of our Meads, Foulkes', and Rawlinsons, I know not—he made his collection; took his books over with him to Jersey, where he died in 1780: and bequeathed them, about 3000 in number, to his native town of Vire. M. du Mortueux, who ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... weather-stained stucco, and looks at first sight a little gloomy, with the patina of time upon it. But it is a restful change from the spick-and-spanness of the near-by millionaire colony, so eloquent of the paint-brush and the lawn-valet's shears, so smug and new and strident in its paraded opulence. Peter's gardens, in fact, are a rather careless riot of color and line, a sort of achieved genteel roughness, like certain phases of his house, as though the wave of refinement driven too high had broken ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... His heart, fully satisfied as to riches, was not long insensible to ambition. The Court has strong attractions for the rich; they are received so graciously, they are praised in so delicate and so insinuating a manner, that they are generally seduced by it. And Dakianos, who now joined to his opulence an immeasurable ambition, neglected nothing to introduce himself at the Court of the King of Persia; but made presents to the viziers to obtain their protection, and, by gaining it, rendered himself their slave. His magnificence and his ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... speechless by this great beaker of bounty that had rolled in upon the flat expanse of our afternoon. Mr. Pegg, in his shiny top hat and neat Prince Albert moved away in the ruddy November sunlight as in a halo of opulence. Never before had we appreciated the princely turn of his toes beneath their drab spats, the flash of his twirled walking-stick. We resolved to keep him in mind. He was a neighbour worth having. Angel even suggested certain time-honoured ditties of boyhood, which, ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... that in his presence settled on Papa. Once he had got over the first shock of his appearance, it soothed Mr. Gunning to see Prothero sitting there, smoking, his long legs stretched out, his head thrown back, his eyes half closed. It established him in the illusion of continued opulence, for Mr. Gunning was not aware of the things that had happened to him four years ago. But there had been lapses and vanishings, unaccountable disturbances of the illusion. In the days of opulence people had come to see him; now they only came to see Laura. ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... I have indicated, a Mrs. Rushton, the widow of a gentleman of commercial opulence, resided in Upper Harley Street, Cavendish Square. She was a woman of "family," and by her marriage had greatly lowered herself, in her relatives' opinion, by a union with a person who, however wealthy ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... and hundreds of sweepers were employed in cleaning away the snow from the streets. The clear blue sky was just beginning to be illumined by its first stars, when Madame de la Motte, elegantly dressed, and presenting every appearance of opulence, arrived in a coach, which Clotilde had carefully chosen as the best looking at the Place Vendome, and stopped before ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... prosperity, received him with open arms. To have been the choice of T. Tembarom as a mere representative of the EARTH would have been a great thing for Bennett, but to be the choice of the hero of a romance of wildest opulence was a tremendous send- off. He was accepted at once, and when Tembarom actually "stood for" a big farewell supper of his own in "The Hall," and nearly had his hand shaken off by congratulating acquaintances, the fact that he kept the new aspirant by his ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of romantic taste—'a man of feeling'—will be better pleased with the poverty but intelligent minds of the peasantry of Ayrshire (peasantry they all are, below the Justice of Peace), than the opulence of a club of Merse farmers, when he at the same time considers the Vandalism of their plough-folks." The deteriorating effect of the large-farm system, remarked by the poet, is inevitable. It is impossible that ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... like to think that he had denuded this man who had been his partner of everything in order that he himself might be unnecessarily rich. It was not pleasant to him to think that the fatness of his opulence had been extracted from Jack Adamson and from—Euphemia Smith. When the application for return of the money had been first made to him from Australia, he hadn't known what he knew now. There had been no eloquence then,—no expostulation. Now he thoroughly wished ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... species, and want of feeling for every individual with whom the professors come in contact, form the character of the new philosophy. Setting up for an unsocial independence, this their hero of vanity refuses the just price of common labor, as well as the tribute which opulence owes to genius, and which, when paid, honors the giver and the receiver, and then pleads his beggary as an excuse for his crimes. He melts with tenderness for those only who touch him by the remotest relation, and then, without one natural pang, casts away, as a sort of offal and excrement, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... change of government was seen in Megara, a neighboring State, situated on the isthmus, between Corinth and Attica, and which attained great commercial distinction. As a result of commercial opulence, the people succeeded in overthrowing the government, an oligarchy of Dorian conquerors, and elevating a demagogue, Theagenes, to the supreme power, B.C. 630. He ruled tyrannically, in the name of the people, for thirty years, but was expelled by the oligarchy, which regained power. During ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... is no harm here, but the harm comes, and the odium also, and justly, when an aristocratic government degenerates into an oligarchy of privilege without responsibility, and when socially it is not "superiority in character or quality" but political cunning, opulence and sycophancy that are the touchstones to recognition and acceptance. The latter are the antithesis of Christianity and common sense, the former is consonant with both and, paradoxical as it may seem, it is also the fulfilling of the ideals of a real democracy, ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... had a passion for the genteel. Like many warm-hearted, honest, clever, and otherwise sensible persons, Clara was a snob, but a charming little snob. She ordered him to forget that he belonged to the people. She refused to listen when he talked in the dialect. She made him dress with opulence, and even with tidiness; she made him buy a fashionable house and fill it with fine furniture; she made him buy a brougham in which her gentility could pay calls and do shopping (she shopped in Oldcastle, where a decrepit aristocracy of tradesmen sneered at Hanbridge's lack of style); ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... greater than the common interest of all the citizens. Depart from these principles and you fall into the abuses of representative government. You would have extreme poverty in the electorate and extreme opulence in the legislature. You would see soon in France what yon see now in England, the purchase of voters in the boroughs not with money even, but with pots of beer. Thus incontestably are elected many of their parliamentary members. Good representation ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... through the wiles of a woman. The strangers had not been long in the city when they, like the Danes before them, were absorbed, and became more Irish than the Irish themselves. As their island city grew in opulence, they began to assert an independence similar to the free cities of the Continent. A historical writer of repute points out that they were practically independent of external authority. Their edicts had nearly the force of laws. They levied taxes, and regulated commerce. They judged, ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... desire for the acquisition of knowledge, and after studying under Leucippus, travelled to Egypt, Persia, and Babylon. He almost seemed a compound of two different characters, uniting the intellectual energy of the sage with the social feelings of a man of the world. Living in ease and opulence, he was not inclined to be censorious or morose; having mingled much in society, he was not very emotional or sympathetic; not tempted to think life a melancholy scene of suffering, but callous enough to find amusement in the ills he could not ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... originally his fault. The process of becoming a gentleman had pained and irked him, but he had a masterful son who could not afford that his father should wear a shaggy bark, and that masterful son had been suffocating him with opulence until his powers of resistance ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... my spirit, For that was thine before; I ceded all of dust I knew, — What opulence the more Had I, a humble maiden, Whose farthest of degree Was that she might, Some distant ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... sit in the front row of the dress-circle! To feel the opulence of one's enviable position, as well as the artistic delight of being properly placed where one could miss nothing, while the brass band outside the opera-house played its third and last quick, jubilant invitation to ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... merely arriving in a taxi, to put a sensible man into such a paroxysm of satisfaction as you put me into a while ago. It's not right. It's not fair. Then you try to depress me with bluggy stories of your son's horrible opulence, and when you discover you can't depress me you burst into tears and accuse me of being funny. What did you expect me to be? Did you expect me to groan because you aren't lying dead in a mortuary? If I'm funny, you are at liberty to ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... his mind that he could never speak of it but with impatience and disgust. And, lastly, the bailiff's hotel contained many born gentlemen who had been left here to rot out the rest of their dreary lives by friends who were still in power and opulence. More than once when I climbed to our garret I found the captain seated on the three-legged chair, with his head between his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... people of sufficient opulence to contract for so vast a fishery, the Company might undertake it themselves; three or four gun-boats would be necessary to protect the fishermen; and a small fort should be erected at Tambisan or Tawi Tawi. But it is necessary to ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... such credit on Liverpool, and are giving such an impulse to the public mind, have mostly been originated, and have all been effectively promoted, by Mr. Roscoe; and when we consider the rapidly increasing opulence and magnitude of that town, which promises to vie in commercial importance with the metropolis, it will be perceived that in awakening an ambition of mental improvement among its inhabitants, he has effected a great benefit to the cause of ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... precisely what I should have said. As I am not an inventive liar, I could only smile feebly. I am never at my ease with Aunt Jessica. I am not the kind of person to afford her entertainment. I do not belong to her world of opulence, and if even I desired it, which the gods forbid, my means would not enable me to make the necessary display. My uncle, thinking to retrieve the fallen fortunes of the title, amassed enormous wealth as a company promoter, while I, on whom the title has descended, ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... legislator to do his best to make up to mankind for the loss of that equality which was one of the comforts that men surrendered when they gave up the state of nature. Hence the legislator ought to take care that no one shall reach a position of extreme opulence otherwise than by an industry that enriches the state. "He must take care that the charges of society shall fall upon the rich, who enjoy the advantages of society." Even those who agree with Diderot, and are ready to vote for a graduated income-tax, will admit that he comes to his conclusion without ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... head, and she lived in the intoxication of passions, ideas, and pleasures. Connected at first with the great innovators of '89, she had passed from their arms into those of rich voluptuaries, who purchased her charms dearly. Courtezan of opulence, she became the voluntary prostitute of the people; and like her celebrated prototypes of Egypt or of Rome, she lavished upon liberty the wealth she ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... of two Roman knights; he had them arrested and confiscated their property. Then returning to the gaming table, he exultingly exclaimed that he had never made a better throw!(31) On another occasion, after having condemned to death several Gauls of great opulence, he immediately went back to his gambling companions and said:—'I pity you when I see you lose a few sestertii, whilst, with a stroke of the pen, I have ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... and the disagreeable fact that the Marrs had lived within a few doors of this very house, which again argued that the murderer also lived at no great distance. These were matters of general alarm. But there were others peculiar to this house; in particular, the notoriety of Williamson's opulence; the belief, whether well or ill founded, that he accumulated, in desks and drawers, the money continually flowing into his hands; and lastly, the danger so ostentatiously courted by that habit of leaving the house-door ajar through one entire hour—and that hour loaded with extra danger, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... they? Delinquents by nature, such as are to be found in most of our large cities; people born with savage instincts; men who would rather pass their days in the midst of vice and open corruption than live a life of honour and opulence. ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... their looks, the stop of trade which gives them leisure, and the laws which prevent them employing their spare time. God's justice is requiting, and will yet further requite those who have blown up this country into a state of unsubstantial opulence, at the expense of the health and morals of the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... our old age, which they would have us believe is a sort of premature senescence and decay. The New World is pitied for her failure to know without illusion the futility of the hurried pursuit of wealth, of the passion for extravagant opulence and inordinate display, of all the hostages youth in America eternally gives to old age. "America has produced great artists," admits Mr. Gilbert Chesterton. Yet he maintains that "that fact most certainly proves that she is full of a fine futility and the end of all things. Whatever ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... those glacier-sculptured walls! How often you shall see in fancy as you once did in reality, the wonderful opulence of colors! How often, too, you shall behold those glorious curtains that seem to have fallen from the sky ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... that the vicarship of heaven had been settled by six hens. But he particularly fretted over other news his spies had brought, which was the information that Perion had wedded Dame Melusine, and had begotten two lusty children—Bertram and a daughter called Blaniferte—and now enjoyed the opulence ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... retorted Joey with dogged pessimism. They trooped off after him, each one lighter hearted in spite of a dull reluctance, simply because Colonel Grand had brought not only the sunshine but a life-saving opulence. ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... You know only too well, both women and men, idle opulence for a few and uncertainty for the morrow and misery for the greater number; crisis and wars for the conquest of markets, and a lavish expenditure of public money to find openings for industrial speculators. All this is because in proclaiming ...
— The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution - An Address Delivered in Paris • Pierre Kropotkin
... prettier village than this. If you doubt my word, come and see it. Yonder we discern a portion of the Basin of Minas; around us are the rich meadows of Nova Scotia. Intellect has here placed a crowning college upon a hill; opulence has surrounded it with picturesque villas. A ride into the country, a visit to a bachelor's lodge, studded with horns of moose and cariboo, with woodland scenes and Landseer's pictures, and then—over the bridge, and over the Avon, towards ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... celestial benevolence of motive, it will cherish his memory. Why should I go into the particulars of that noble life? You will remember that he was the son of the king of Kapilavastu—a mighty sovereign whose opulence enabled him to give the heir of his house every luxury that a voluptuous imagination could desire: and that the future Buddha was not allowed even to know, much less observe, the miseries of ordinary existence. How beautifully Edwin Arnold has painted for us in The Light of Asia ...
— The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons • H.S. Olcott
... city which shook with the tumult of the popular welcome. Wherever he went he drew the swarms in the streets as the moon draws the tide. Republican simplicity need not fear comparison with any royal pageant when the President was received at the Metropolitan, and, in a scene of beauty and opulence that might be the flowering of a thousand years instead of a century, stood upon the steps of the "dais" to greet the devoted Centennial Quadrille, which passed before him with the courageous five, 'Imperator, morituri te salutamus'. We had done it—we, the people; that was our ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... noted for their love of horses; a manly passion which, in those days of opulence, they indulged without regard to expense. The rich planters vied with each other in their studs, importing the best English stocks. Mention is made of one of the Randolphs of Tuckahoe, who built a stable for his favorite dapple-gray horse, Shakespeare, with a ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... against her for her contemptuous allusions to HIS father, and her evident hopeless inability to comprehend his position. His mother, he feared, was indeed low!—but HE was his father's son! Nevertheless, he gave her a funeral at Atherly, long remembered for its barbaric opulence and display. Thirty carriages, procured from Sacramento at great expense, were freely offered to his friends to join in the astounding pageant. A wonderful casket of iron and silver, brought from San Francisco, held the remains of the ex-washerwoman ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... considerable, he was prohibited from trying such experiments with me. On the centre of the lawn stood my eldest surviving sister, Mary, and my brother William. Round him, attracted (as ever) by his inexhaustible opulence of thought and fun, stood, laughing and dancing, my youngest sister, a second Jane, and my youngest brother Henry, a posthumous child, feeble, and in his nurse's arms, but on this morning showing signs of unusual animation and of sympathy with the glorious promise of the young June day. Whirling ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... is this an exaggeration. Deep as science and research have explored, extensive as is the field which genius and art have occupied, they have an Herculean labor yet to perform before India will have yielded up all her opulence of learning. The literature of the world in all ages has been richly furnished, if not actually inspired, from that fountain. The Wisdom of the Ancients, so much lauded in the earlier writings of Hebrews, Greeks, and Phoenicians, was abundantly represented ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... multiplying, but monks and friars are looked upon with a more jealous eye; and I have not heard that any such communities have been allowed to re-assemble within the limits of the duchy, once so distinguished for their opulence, and, perhaps, for ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... clustered columns, of flowering capitals and window-traceries, of many-carven breadths and heights, wherein all Nature breathes and blossoms again! There is neither Greek perfection, nor winning Byzantine languor, nor insolent Renaissance opulence, which may compare with this loveliness of yours! Alas that the interior of this Gothic temple of Genoa should abound in the abomination of rococo restoration! They say that the dust of St. John the Baptist lies there within a costly shrine; and I wonder that it can sleep in peace amid all that ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... usual, in one of the shades of American Beauty, which she so much affected, and which were admirably suited to her, giving depth and opulence, the rich restfulness of color to her too sharply defined and restless beauty. Upon her breast was her silver butterfly and the enameled ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... kept up a whispered conversation. Laure had resumed her seat and once more settled herself down with all the majesty of an old image of Vice, whose face has been worn and polished by the kisses of the faithful. Above the range of loaded plates she sat enthroned in all the opulence which a hotelkeeper enjoys after forty years of activity, and as she sat there she swayed her bloated following of large women, in comparison with the biggest of whom ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... my attachment to literature, I sacrificed for the pleasure of pursuing it very fair chances of opulence and professional honours, at a time of life when I fully knew their value; and I am not ashamed to say, that in deriving advantages in compensation from the partial favour of the public, I have added some comforts and elegancies to a bare independence. I am sure your Lordship's good sense ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... business. To be sure, one could not say, as the horse-dealer Marx did, that the surroundings reminded one of a count's estate; on the other hand, in whatever direction one looked there was an atmosphere of peasant prosperity and opulence which could not but call out to the hungriest stranger: Here you can eat your fill; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... briskness of manner, inspired by necessity, had come to him in these days of opulence. His position in life made its demands, and one of the most exacting of these denied him the privileges of familiarity. He would have liked nothing better than an hour or two a day of general conversation with Mrs. Bingle and Melissa—say while the latter was tidying up the library—but that ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... As for the music, we may be certain that in the beginning it followed the lines laid down in the "Orfeo." It rested first on the basis of the frottola, but when the elegant and gracious madrigal provided an art form better suited to the opulence of the decorative features of the embryonic lyric drama, the madrigal became the dominating element in the music. Together with it we find in time the dance slowly assuming that shape which eventually became the ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... rapacities had led the old, burnt-faced woman from the big Peruvian ranch, through all the world, to West Oakland and Barry Higgins Old Barry was not the sort who would fling away his share of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, much less ever attain to such opulence. Besides, she had mentioned the names of other ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... Hacienda del Venado. The proprietor, Don Augustin Pena, was a man of great opulence. In addition to a rich gold mine which he worked, at no great distance off, he was the owner of countless herds of horses, mules, and cattle, that in a half-wild state roamed over the vast savannahs and forests that constituted the twenty leagues of land belonging to the hacienda. ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... blazed and roared in the wide chimney. Warmth, opulence, hospitality, were all expressed in the brilliantly lighted room, where luxurious fauteuils, after the new French fashion, stood about, ready to receive ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... or any modification of the one by the other. That Shakespeare has in one instance, that of Iago, approached to this, and that he has done it successfully, is perhaps the most astonishing proof of his genius, and the opulence of its resources. But in the present tragedy, in which he was compelled to present a Goneril and a Regan, it was most carefully to be avoided;—and therefore the only one conceivable addition to the inauspicious influences on ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... propose to describe in detail the rapid descent from opulence and station to poverty and insignificance, which now transpired to mark this era in the singular fortunes of Elwood and his family. Their history, for the next three months, was but the usual painful one which awaits the failed merchant ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... On account of his shortness and high color he was often referred to as the Billberry shortcake. His fat cheeks had a color as definite as that of the blossoms on his shirt, now rather soiled. His prominent nose shared their glow of ruddy opulence. His gray eyes wore a look of apology. He walked rather stiffly as if his ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... to get married?" cried Mrs. Nancy, forgetting alike her perplexities and her dreams of opulence. ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... Mediterranean have been, at least, useless, that they have sailed from point to point, and from one coast to another, only to display the bulk of our ships, and to show the opulence of our nation, can require no proof: I wish, my lords, there was less reason for suspecting that they acted in concert with our enemies, that they retired from before their ports only to give them an opportunity ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... rest, he showed public spirit in his expenditure. By arguments, by his influence, by his example, he fanned the rising flame of national enterprise. From the first he devoted a large part of his sudden opulence to the promotion of the maritime prosperity of the nation. Among his earliest subjects of outlay was the construction in 1583 of the Ark Ralegh. It was, according to a probable account, of two hundred tons burden, and cost L2000. Mr. Payne Collier gives its burden ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... things, to every rich, luxurious state? While the inhabitants of it are sunk in voluptuousness—while all is smiling around them, and they imagine that no evil, no danger is nigh—the latent seeds of destruction are fermenting within; till, breaking out on a sudden, they lay waste all their opulence, all their boasted delights, and leave them a sad monument of the fatal effects of internal ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... above and below Twenty-third Street, and for the rest it was still a street of homes, where people moved in a more leisurely fashion than in the crowded thoroughfares downtown. The very air was charged with a healthier life, and here amid the opulence one could forget the near presence of the squalid alley. So it had become a habit of mine always to begin my day with a walk uptown, as a gentle tonic for my body and to give my mind a brief but more cheerful outlook than through the smutted office windows. ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... this city is its focus. Genoa, in fact, has never been reconciled to the decree which arbitrarily merged her political existence in that of the present Kingdom. She fondly cherishes the recollection of her ancient opulence, power and glory, and remembers that in her day of greatness she was the center and soul of a Republic. Hence her Revolutionary struggle in 1848; hence the activity and boldness of her Republican propaganda now. To see Italy a Federal Republic, whereof Piedmont, Savoy, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... tenth wave, that offers to the shore Accumulated opulence and force, So does my heart, which thought it loved of yore, Carry increasing passion down the course Of time to proffer thee. Oh! not the faint First ripple of the sea should be its pride, But the great climax of its ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... fair tales, so therewith we may cut short the waking hours of this our night;" and quoth Shahrazad:—It hath reached me, O King of the Age, that Zayn al-Asnam seeing himself in this high honour and opulence[FN13] and he young in years and void of experience, straightway inclined unto lavish expenditure and commerce with the younglings, who were like him and fell to wasting immense wealth upon his pleasures; and neglected his government, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... the length of this street and the wonderful quantity and richness of the goods displayed in the shops. Along this street I see a more lavish display of rich silks, furs, tiger-skins, and other evidences of opulence than was shown me at Canton. The pressure of the crowds reduces me at once to the necessity of drifting helplessly along, whithersoever the seething human tide may lead. Sometimes I fancy the few officiously interested persons about me, whom I endeavor to question ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... sound of her voice in the room. He'd say things to her; not often, but just enough to see how far he could go. He was afraid of going too far. He wasn't prepared to give up the comfort of Lena's house, the opulence and peace. There wasn't one of Lena's wines he could have turned his back on. After all, when she worried him he could keep himself locked up in ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... "Opulence is a disgrace; for every thousand livres expenditure of this kind a smaller number of natural or adopted children can be ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... had ever entered its gates, although, in a measure, she was entitled to look upon it as her own home. Perhaps never so much as now she realized what a deep gulf lay between her husband's family and herself. This was a world she had never known—a world of opulence and luxury. She did not know how she had summoned up courage enough to come. Yet there was no time to be lost. Immediate action was necessary. Howard must have the best lawyers that money could procure. Judge Brewster had been deaf to her entreaties. He had declined to take ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... sumptuous cafeteria he knew of, one patronized only in his first careless days of opulence, he ate for a long time. Roast beef and potatoes he ordered twice, nor did he forget to drink the milk prescribed by his benefactress. Plenty of milk would make him more than ever resemble Harold Parmalee. And he commanded an abundance of dessert: ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... unknown to the Aztecs. The conquest of Mexico, like our conquest of California, was in itself a small affair; but both being immediately followed by extensive discoveries of the precious metals, Mexico rose as rapidly into opulence as San Francisco has ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... is, no doubt, a fine country,—finer than ever under the present reign. The more magnificent the Court is, the more uneasy do I become. Wealth and opulence are needed there; and to your family I never figured as a Croesus. By dint of order and thrift, we shall ere long have satisfactorily settled our affairs; and I promise you that our stay in the Provinces shall last ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... easy, My daughter, My sufferings have atoned for your sins;" and as she reproached herself for having lived in opulence and having delighted in clothes and jewels, He addressed her, smiling: "To buy you riches, I have wanted for everything; you required a great number of clothes, and I had but one garment of which the soldiers stripped Me, ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... cheerful, smokeless industry of the wonderful country which produces, above all, the agreeable things of life, and turns even its defeats and revolutions into gold. The whole town has an air of almost depressing opulence, an appearance which culminates in the great place which surrounds the Grand-Theatre—an establishment of the highest style, encircled with columns, arcades, lamps, gilded cafes. One feels it to be a monument to the virtue of the well-selected ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James |
