"Sybarite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his hand, he simply took hold of rouge, powder and a few hair-pins, with which he began to play. Mr. Cheng experienced at once displeasure, as he maintained that this youth would, by and bye, grow up into a sybarite, devoted to wine and women, and for this reason it is, that he soon began to feel not much attachment for him. But his grandmother is the one who, in spite of everything, prizes him like the breath of her own life. The very mention of what happened ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... have sobered the Muromachi profligate. The costly edifices were pushed on and the people's resources continued to be squandered. Even the Emperor, Go-Hanazono, was sufficiently shocked to compose a couplet indirectly censuring Yoshimasa, and a momentary sense of shame visited the sybarite. But only momentary. We find him presently constructing in the mansion of his favourite retainer, Ise Sadachika, a bath-house which was the wonder of the time, a bath-house where the bathers were expected to come robed in the most magnificent costumes. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... congenial to his taste. He sometimes steals into the lower valleys, where these are but sparsely cultivated; and gathers a meal of young maize, or potatoes, where such are grown. Of truffles he is as fond as a Parisian sybarite,—scenting them with a keenness far excelling that of the regular truffle dog, and "rooting" them out from under the shade of the great oak trees, where these rare ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... "I do declare that there is no sybarite upon the face of the globe who can for a moment be compared to you. Oh, Planchet, it is very clear that we have never yet eaten a ton of ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... were brought from Paris, London, and Havana. The finest women along the coast were lured to his settlement. Billiard tables and gambling halls spread their wiles, or afforded distraction for detained navigators. In fine, the mongrel Sybarite surrounded himself with all that could corrupt virtue, gratify passion, tempt avarice, betray weakness, satisfy sensuality, and complete a picture of incarnate slavery ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... through that long and exciting sitting of the Chamber in the dust of the gallery, his legs ached as if he had spent two nights in a railway carriage; and as his resolve to die blended with his longing for a good bath, it occurred to the old sybarite to go to sleep in a bath-tub like What's-his-name—Thingamy—ps—ps—ps—and other famous characters of antiquity. It is doing him no more than justice to say that not one of those Stoics went forth to meet ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... be denied, is one of the great perennial tendencies of ethical thought. In the course of many centuries it has passed through a number of phases, varying its conception of pleasure from the tranquillity of the wise man to the sensuous titillations of the sybarite, and from the individualism of the latter to the universalism of the humanitarian. But in every case it shows a respect for the natural man, praising morality for its disciplinary and instrumental value in the service ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... manicure-tables and chairs, amber lights glowing with soft incandescence in deep bowers of fireproof tissue flowers. There was a delightful warmth about the place, and the seductive scents and delicate odours betokened the haunt of the twentieth- century Sybarite. ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... little gateways with roses, white enamel with cute little diamond panes of glass for windows, inviting bowers of artificial flowers and dim yellow lights. It makes you feel like a sybarite just to see it. It's a cosmetic Arcadia for that ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... was another of very modest dimensions containing three beds, where the men of the party were to sleep, in such comfort as they might. But Brotteaux, who was a Sybarite, betook himself to the barn to sleep among the hay. As for Jean Blaise, he had disappeared. Dubois and Gamelin were soon asleep. Desmahis went to bed; but no sooner had the silence of night, like a stagnant pool, ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... second time the Master asked the people what they went forth into the wilderness to behold; and by his question implied that John was no Sybarite clothed in soft raiment, and feasting in luxury, but a strong, pure soul, that had learnt the secret of self-denial and self-control. Too many of us are inclined to put on the soft raiment of self-indulgence ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... the tale to write Of garments begged from door to door, Of needles plying in the night, And money gathered from the store Alike of screw and Sybarite, ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... bell, I peered through the trellis-work, and saw the great Cuff's favourite flower everywhere; blooming in his garden, clustering over his door, looking in at his windows. Far from the crimes and the mysteries of the great city, the illustrious thief-taker was placidly living out the last Sybarite years of ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.' And this is but one of many similar passages. Now all this is a monstrous fable to me. The idea of any such experiences awaiting my light-hearted little Sybarite here!" ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... is not exclusive or solitary with the Viennese. He is not ashamed of his frolics and hilarities. He does not take his pleasures hypocritically after the manner of the Occidental moralist. He is a gay bird, a sybarite, a modern Lucullus, ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... saint may chide, The sinner may scoff outright, The Bacchanal steep'd in the flagon's tide, Or the sensual Sybarite; But NOLAN'S name will flourish in fame, When our galloping days are past, When we go to the place from whence we came, Perchance to find rest ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... Gordon, in a voice that rang with the pressure of clean, healthy lungs. "I want to do something. I'm infernally weary of this booby trap, playing hospital, and climbing trees to go to bed, and laying around like a pampered Sybarite. I'm coming out with you when you ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... luxurious life indoors, the changing and generally agreeable company, all the thousand easements and pleasures that wealth brings with it, the skilled service, the motors, the costly cigars, the wines—there was a Sybarite in Meadows which revelled in them all. He had done without them; he would do without them again; but there they were exceedingly good creatures of God, while they lasted; and only the hypocrites pretended otherwise. His sympathy, in the old poverty-stricken ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... injured, should be sitting up, with his shoulder in a frame and his arm in a sling, but he was mending only slowly, and had not a little fever. Harris, accustomed to self-denial, seemed to require no physical comforts. Willett, something of a Sybarite, craved iced drinks and cooling applications that gave more trouble, said Strong, than twenty Harrises. Willett had even gone so far as to suggest that the ladies must be tired of reading aloud, possibly Miss Lilian might relieve one or other, and possibly, hope whispered, both. Harris, who ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... courageous bearing in a man of Bower's physical characteristics. Hitherto she had regarded him as somewhat self indulgent, a Sybarite, the product of modernity in its London aspects. His demeanor in the train, in the hotel, bespoke one accustomed to gratify the flesh, who found all the world ready to pander to his desires. Again she was ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... fitted up for himself was whitewashed and barely furnished; it made one's bones ache to look at the iron bedstead and chairs. Holmes's natural taste was more glowing, however smothered, than that of any saffron-robed Sybarite. It needed correction, he knew; here was discipline. Besides, he had set apart the coming three or four years of his life to make money in, enough for the time to come. He would devote his whole strength to that work, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... Aunt Mary. "But you can't get those because he made 'em himself an' sealed 'em with a lick. Oh!" she sighed, with the accent of a starving Sybarite, "I do wish I could see him do it again! Do you know," she added suddenly, "he wrote me a letter and ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... his grace, Is sitting before us, and washing his face With his little fat paws overlapping; Where does he hail from? Where? Why, there, Underground, From a nook just as cosey, And tranquil, and dozy, As e'er wooed to Sybarite napping (But none ever caught him a-napping). Don't you see his burrow so ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... Brodrick, "whatever Miss Collett thinks me. If it pleases her to think I'm a Sybarite I've ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... his cost, that a good conscience and a good bed are not enough to insure a good sleep. He was bedded like a sybarite, innocent as an Arcadian shepherd, and, moreover, tired as a soldier after a forced march; nevertheless a dull sleeplessness weighed upon him until morning. In vain he tossed into every possible position, as if ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... thirty-five years of age, was a widower, with two children,—respected wherever known, prosperous in pecuniary affairs,—rich enough to return home, and spend the remainder of his days in that state so much desired by the Sybarite ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... silk screened off the rays of the sun; the appointments of the small boat—the polished wood of rare texture, morocco leather cushions, and elaborate fittings—bespoke the taste or at least the income of a Sybarite. A grizzly brown sailor and his curly-pated son were the oarsmen; in the stern sat a couple of Keith's attendants, whom Mr. Heard might have mistaken for two Green genii but for the fact that between them lay an enormous and ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... It might still, however, be said to be covered by a deposit of eminent respectability. The building was stern and hard, and massive in its external appearance, but the interior was luxury itself, for the old merchant, in spite of his ascetic appearance, was inclined to be a sybarite at heart, and had a due appreciation of the good things of this world. Indeed, there was an oriental and almost barbarous splendour about the great rooms, where the richest of furniture was interspersed with skins from ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for Mr. Bertie Tremaine combined the Sybarite with the Utilitarian sage, and it secretly delighted him to astonish or embarrass an austere brother republican by the splendour of his family plate or the polished appointments of his household. To-day the individual to be influenced was Endymion, and the host, acting up to his ideal of a ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... in his Bavarian home, where he says, "Under the seat by the table are my bottles"—ah! quite Rabelaisian this!—"with the mordants, and my dishes for the plates." Isn't this rare! "I should add, there is a stove near the door." O Sybarite! Doesn't this suggest the notion of a delightful little dinner a deux! With "the mordants,"—which is, of course, a generic name for sauces of varied piquancy,—and with his "dishes" artistically prepared and set before "the plates," as in due order they should be, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 20, 1892 • Various
... a Sybarite," Dennison said, "and you will be a disappointed one before long. All we do here in the summer is to give our relations strawberries and cream and ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... got the cheese; but he extracted his supper as daintily as a cat, and not a thing was upset! Oddly enough, when we are with him, he never thinks of getting into cushions and chairs like that blessed old sybarite the Bull-dogue. But if we leave him tied up, he plays old gooseberry with the furniture. I had been fearing it would be rather a practical difficulty in the way of his adoption, the question of ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... he had ached during many nights of misery. He looked round and his heart sank. He seemed to come face to face with the ineffectual, effeminate creature who had brought upon him the disgrace of his man's life. But for the creator and sybarite enjoyer of this sickening boudoir, he would now be in honoured command of men. He conceived a sudden violent hatred of the room. The only thing in the place worth a man's consideration, save a few water-colours, was the honest grand piano, which, because ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... himself at the repulse. He would not have regarded or hardly noticed it once, but, his mind had become morbidly sensitive. A word, a look, a tone had now power to inflict a wound. He was like the Sybarite whose repose was disturbed by a wrinkled rose-leaf; with this difference, that they were spiritual, not material hurts he felt. Did the forecast of Holden penetrate the future? Did he, as in a vision, behold the spectres of misfortune that dogged Armstrong's steps? Was he afraid ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... transforming bare rooms into comfortable wards, arranging for supplies of food and stores, and fitting a large staff into a cubic space totally inadequate to hold them. But wonderful things can be accomplished when everyone is anxious to do their share, and the most hopeless sybarite will welcome shelter however humble, and roll himself up in a blanket in any corner, when he is dead tired. For the first few days the rush of wounded had been so tremendous that all we could do was to try to keep our heads above water and not ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... be no doubt that the early inhabitants of this city were Grecians and a maritime and commercial people; they have been supposed to belong to the Sybarite race, and the roses producing flowers twice a year in the spring and autumn in ancient times here, might sanction the idea that this balmy spot was chosen by a colony who carried luxury and refinement ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... no Sybarite. There was a vein of strong scorn of all self- indulgence in him, which was very different. He was, of course, very much of a recluse, with a vein of misanthropy towards men in the abstract, joined to a tender-hearted sympathy for the actual men ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... peace, the very stones will cry out. However gladly one would lie on a bed of roses and glide silken-sailed down the stream of life, how exquisitely painful soever it may be to say what you fear and feel may give pain, it is only a Sybarite who sets ease above righteousness, only a coward who misses victory through dread ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... that Old Hurricane, well wrapped up in his quilted flannel dressing-gown, sat in his well-padded easy-chair before a warm and bright fire, taking his comfort in his own most comfortable bedroom. This was the hour of the coziest enjoyment to the self-indulgent old Sybarite, who dearly loved his own ease. And, indeed, every means and appliance of bodily comfort was at hand. Strong oaken shutters and thick, heavy curtains at the windows kept out every draft of air, and so deadened the sound of the wind that its subdued moaning ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... allusion to a literal fact when they talked of sleeping upon beds of roses. Cicero in his third oration against Verres, when charging the proconsul with luxurious habits, stated that he had made the tour of Sicily seated upon roses. And Seneca says, of course jestingly, that a Sybarite of the name of Smyrndiride was unable to sleep if one of the rose-petals on his bed happened to be curled! At a feast which Cleopatra gave to Marc Antony the floor of the hall was covered with fresh roses to the depth of ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... in the everlasting sombre stress of the westward winter passage round Cape Horn." This is to make the profession of literature a branch of the heroic life. And that, for all his smiling disparagement of himself as a Sybarite, is ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... with his narrow pair of hind pincers. Like man, too, the robber-crab knows the value of the outer husk as well as of the eatable nut itself, for he collects the fibre in surprising quantities to line his burrow, and lies upon it, the clumsy sybarite, for a luxurious couch. Alas, however, for the helplessness of crabs, and the rapacity and cunning of all-appropriating man! The spoil-sport Malay digs up the nest for the sake of the fibre it contains, which spares him the trouble of picking junk ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... these discomforts Sir Andrew Ffoulkes cared not one jot. In England, in his magnificent Suffolk home, he was a confirmed sybarite, in whose service every description of comfort and luxury had to be enrolled. Here tonight in the rough and tattered clothes of a coal-heaver, drenched to the skin, and crouching under the body of a cart that hardly sheltered him from the rain, he was as happy as a schoolboy ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... expected from the young Sybarite, a great contest arose between him and other poets and prose writers of the time. They spoke to each other with great volubility and animation a language incomprehensible to any one who should suddenly have come among them without being initiated, eagerly pressing each ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... which to the ignorant outsider seems incredible, is another evil of perhaps as great magnitude. Of that Bilse's book gives a faithful impression. For these excessive drinking habits, and in an equal degree for the luxurious habits of life, more particularly the indulgence in sybarite banquets, the Kaiser himself must be held largely to blame, since, by force of example at the many "love feasts" (Liebesmaehler) and anniversary celebrations of every kind which he not only attends at the ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... were startling, especially to a Sybarite who had just been longing for the kitchen of the Cafe-Anglais, and the Duc de Hardimont looked at his companion in almost terrified amazement. The soldier smiled sadly, showing his hungry, wolf-like teeth, as white as his sickly face, and, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... life—evenings yielded up to cheerfulness, to content and harmony. Between music, and poetry, and painting, my heart was subdued to the sweetest refinements of love. Without the immorality, we had the very atmosphere of a Sybarite indulgence. I was enfeebled by the excess of sweets; and the happiness which I felt expressed itself in signs. These denoted my presentiments. My apprehensions were my sole cause of doubt and sorrow. How could such enjoyments last? Was it ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... settlement, but were speedily expelled by the Crotoniates. It was now that they applied to Sparta and Athens for assistance. The former state had neither population to spare, nor commerce to strengthen, nor ambition to gratify, and rejected the overtures of the Sybarite envoys. But a different success awaited the exiles at Athens. Their proposition, timed in a period when it was acceptable to the Athenian policy (B. C. 443), was enforced by Pericles. Adventurers from all parts of Greece, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a more simple ingenuity as regards her defensive machinery, she is incomparably ahead of the Mygale in the matter of domestic comfort. Let us open her cabin. What luxury! We are taught how a Sybarite of old was unable to rest, owing to the presence of a crumpled rose-leaf in his bed. The Clotho is quite as fastidious. Her couch is more delicate than swan's-down and whiter than the fleece of the clouds where brood the summer storms. It is the ideal ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... "Please call me at——" for "Please call me at 8.00 (or 9.00 or 9.30)." There was something calculatedly dissolute about the invention (which cost L17.10 and had struck work four times in three weeks). After a long night of work or frolic, the sybarite moved the hand on for twelve hours—his last conscious act before collapsing into bed; if, again, he had retired early or were so much debauched that he could not sleep, he wearily set the hand for "Please call ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... neither a premature nor an over-tardy arrival at his own house. The two malefactors who were, he felt absolutely certain, using his roof for their lustful assignation, had the night before them. They would avail themselves of it with that sybarite deliberateness which had characterized their epicurean guile and deceit from ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... ears? I looked at him to see if he were in earnest. He meant it. In a moment more I was leaning over the counter giving directions for a second supply. Thinking it would make no difference to such a gorgeous young sybarite as Marden, I took the liberty of ordering ninepenny ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... pillars of the ancient Posidonia. There, in the midst of his blackened and sterile realms, rose the dismal Mount of Fire; while on the other hand, winding through variegated plains, to which distance lent all its magic, glittered many and many a stream by which Etruscan and Sybarite, Roman and Saracen and Norman had, at intervals of ages, pitched the invading tent. All the visions of the past—the stormy and dazzling histories of Southern Italy—rushed over the artist's mind as he gazed below. And then, slowly turning to look behind, he saw the grey and mouldering walls ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... please, to the turbid libation which some rose-lipped Paris, some silk-locked Sybarite poured out last night, after leaving the theatre. Under the pretence of adding a leaf to the chaplets, won by what he is pleased to tern 'diving dramatic genius,' this 'Jules Duval'—let me see, I would not libel an honourable name; yes, so it is signed—this Jules Duval, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... almost exhausted, rallied to attack the Antwerpians afresh. The voice of Joyeuse was heard in the midst of the melee crying, "Hold firm, M. de St. Aignan. France! France!" and, like a reaper cutting a field of corn, his sword flew round, and cut down its harvest of men; the delicate favorite—the Sybarite—seemed to have put on with his cuirass the strength of a Hercules; and the infantry, hearing his voice above all the noise, and seeing his sword flashing, took fresh courage, and, like the cavalry, made a new effort, and returned to ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... brow o'er Hansard frown, Confused by lore statistic? Or will those lips e'er stir the town From pulpit ritualistic? Will e'er that tiny Sybarite Become an author noted? That little brain the world's delight, Its works ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... proportion, are willing to fast from day to day; who no longer lust after the flesh-pots, and whose appetites are governable—but ours were not. The accustomed fish of a Friday was welcome, but Saturday was out of the question. "Something too much of this," said Croesus the Sybarite. "Amen!" cried the affable Alf. There was an unwonted fire in the eye of Bartholomew when he asked for a dispensation at the hands of ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Estella look at him. She had never seen him as his enemies had seen him, and even they confessed that he was always visible enough in action. Perhaps there was another man behind the personality of this deprecating, pleasant-spoken little sybarite—a man who only appeared (oh rara avis!) when he ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... And Philoinus, the Sybarite, raising his deep voice, but not allowing himself for a moment to be disturbed in his repose, remarked: "Mirth is a good thing, and if you bring that with you, be ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... religion that he shall provide for his family, when he has one, must he, therefore, cut away all the bonds of humanity that bind him to his race, forswear charity, crush down every prompting of benevolence, and if he can have the palace and equipage of the prince, and the table of a sybarite, become a blind man, and a deaf man, and a dumb man, when he walks the streets where hunger moans and ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... Ruthven, an idle and dissolute sybarite, who under the circumstances promised to push his devotion so far as to wear a cuirass; then, sure of this important accomplice, he busied himself ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... quitted; and boasted the second of the windows which might, were help too long delayed, prove the undoing of the little garrison. It was, however, roughly furnished, though it was evident that the Frenchman, for all his reputed wealth, had been no Sybarite by inclination. The bed was of a common pattern, and the few other things scattered about on the scantily matted floor were of ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... Dorieos also and died with him Philip the son of Butakides, a man of Croton, who having betrothed himself to the daughter of Telys the Sybarite, became an exile from Croton; and then being disappointed of this marriage he sailed away to Kyrene, whence he set forth and accompanied Dorieos with a trireme of his own, himself supplying the expenses of the crew. Now this ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... she replied. "If you saw my tiny bandbox of a room on the fourth floor you'd realise what a sybarite you are." ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... natural scenery with picturesqueness and genial glow; or, the intellectual endowments being mediocre, we shall have merely a man of superficial taste; or, the moral regents being ineffective, an intellectual sybarite, or a refined voluptuary. Like the sun, the beautiful shines on healthful field and poisonous fen; and her warmth will even make flowers to bloom in the fen, but it is not in her to make them bear refreshing ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... a sort of barbaric splendour to the place. Malay John was something of a sybarite! It was a single room, whose floor was covered with rich Turkish rugs, whose walls were covered with Oriental hangings, and in one corner was a great, wide divan, canopied, also with Oriental hangings ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... had gone out. No matter; he would write in the cold. It was mere amanuensis work, penning at the dictation of his sarcastic demon. Was he a sybarite? Many a poor scribbler has earned bed and breakfast with numb fingers. The fire in his body would serve him for an ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... remains open for the murderer of seven men! You shrink from death. Yet let me assure you that the guillotine, with the certain prospect of it before you day after day through a long trial, is no pleasant outlet from the world for a sybarite. Be a philosopher. Go and die as you have lived. Write your confession, summon your dearest friend by telephone, give a little supper—you'll have plenty of time—but see that the affair is over before ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had been cut off by the breaking of the canal bridge the previous evening, so the Battalion had to retire to the east, and not to the west. As the Subaltern marched along he reflected with grim amusement on the ease with which the most confirmed Sybarite can get accustomed to hardships. At home, if he did anything early on an empty stomach, he very soon felt faint and tired. Now, this was taken as a matter of course; one was only too glad to restore the circulation to the limbs, cramped ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... commander succeeded in communicating with Gaul he suggested a permanent occupation, being secretly influenced by tales of mineral wealth to which he had lent an ear. Disillusioned and recalled, he was followed by a sybarite, whose palate was tickled by banquets of fish of which he wrote in raptures to his friends at Capri and Brindisi. This excellent man, dying of apoplexy in his bath, was replaced by a rough soldier, who lost no time in procuring the evacuation of a post where he saw with a glance ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... very heart-blood of a guajiro, and out of the sphere of which he can see but death, or, what is worse to him, the feverish agitation of our Northern society. Go and talk of the funds, of the landed interest, of stock-jobbing, to this Sybarite lord of the wilderness, who can live all the year round on luscious bananas and delicious cocoa-nuts which he is not even at the trouble of planting; who has the best tobacco in the world to smoke; who replaces today the horse he had yesterday by a better one, chosen from ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... was captured and totally obliterated by the rival colonists of Crotona; at the height of its prosperity the luxury and voluptuousness of the inhabitants was such as to become a byword throughout the ancient world, and henceforth a Sybaris city is a city of luxurious indulgence, and Sybarite ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... 'Sybarite,' commented Evdoksya, and she laughed. (When she laughed the gum showed above her upper teeth.) 'Isn't it true, Bazarov; he's ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... Sybarite for howling about those eighteen hours of running to leeward, when the residents of Kauai, if they have to go to Honolulu in the intervals between the quarterly trips of the Kilauea, have to spend from three to nine days in beating to windward. These inter-island voyages ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... fork. Shepler, the man of mighty millions! The undisputed monarch of finance! The cold-blooded, calculating sybarite in his lighter moments, but a man whose values as a son-in-law were so ideally superb that the Milbrey ambition had never vaulted high enough even to overlook them for one daring moment! Shepler, whom he had known ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... thirty-five miles a day, and when we had attended to the needs of the animals and had something to eat and drink ourselves, we were too tired to do anything but roll into the blankets and sleep until a disgruntled picket roused us for another day. Occasionally some sybarite would be seen using the remains of his evening tea as shaving-water and laboriously scraping a three days' growth of hair from his face; but he was the exception. We were a ragged, unwashed, unshaven crew—yet ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... Antigonus wondered and upbraided him with his change, made no secret of the reason, and said, "Sir, you are the cause of my cowardice, by freeing me from those miseries which made me care little for life." With the same feeling, the Sybarite seems to have said of the Spartans, that it was no commendable thing in them to be so ready to die in the wars, since by that they were freed from such hard labor, and miserable living. In truth, the Sybarites, a soft ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... as at Southampton. Neither there nor at adjoining Southsea could we find a sign of the Variety Star, Ras Fendihook, and still less of the obscure Liosha. We dined at a Southsea hotel. We dined very well. On that I insisted—without much expenditure of nervous force. Jaffery rails at me for a Sybarite and what not, but I have never seen him refuse viands on account of succulency or wine on account of flavour. We had a quart of excellent champagne, a pint of decent port and a good cigar, and we felt ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... a superfluity of furniture in the room; and Mr. Smalls having conveyed away the luxurious part of it, that which was left had more of the useful than the ornamental character; but as Mr. Verdant Green was no Sybarite, this point was but of little consequence. The window looked with a sunny aspect down upon the quad, and over the opposite buildings were seen the spires of churches, the dome of the Radcliffe, and the gables, pinnacles, and turrets of other colleges. This was ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... the inheritors of wealth. How many of them inherit the valiant genius and hard frugality which built up their fortunes; how many acknowledge the stern and heavy responsibility of their opportunities; how many refuse to dream their lives away in a Sybarite luxury; how many are smitten with the lofty ambition of achieving an enduring name by works of a permanent value; how many do not dwindle into dainty dilettanti, and dilute their manhood with factitious sentimentality instead of a hearty human sympathy; how ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... of the Income Tax strikes indiscriminately at the just and the unjust; it is just as likely to cripple the man who is supporting and educating a large family sybarite." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... can gladden the sense and the sight, Fresh fruitage as cool and as crimson as even; Where the richness and rankness of Nature unite To build the frail walls of the Sybarite's heaven. But, ah! should the heart feel the desolate dearth Of some purer enjoyment to speed the bright hours, In vain through the leafy luxuriance of earth Looks the languid-lit eye ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... a goodly hollow sound With double echoes doth again rebound; But not a dog doth bark to welcome thee, Nor churlish porter canst thou chafing see; All dumb and silent like the dead of night, Or dwelling of some sleepy Sybarite! The marble pavement hid with desert weed, With houseleek, thistle, dock, and hemlock-seed.— Look to the towered chimneys, which should be The windpipes of good hospitality:— Lo there the unthankful swallow takes her rest, And fills the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... the sounder elements in Dehmel, he was largely responsible for destroying such sanity as the amazing genius of Gabriele D'Annunzio had ever possessed. In D'Annunzio the sensuality of a Sybarite and the eroticism of a Faun go along with a Roman tenacity and hardness of nerve. The author of novels which, with all their luxurious splendour, can only be called hothouses of morbid sentiment, has become ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... these advantages for a life of peril and anxiety. At the same time do not let us anticipate too suddenly, and let the reader patiently peruse a few more pages about Manilla, and various events wherein I figured, either as actor or witness, before taking leave of a sybarite ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... in itself might successfully have tempted the taste of a Sybarite) was further enhanced by several wines and cordials which, filling the room with the aroma of the sunlit grapes from which they had been expressed, stimulated the appetite, which without them needed no such spur. The lady, who ate but sparingly ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... have become accustomed to my Sybarite's couch of which you used to tell me. Would you be willing to give up all you have striven for and won—your life—the honors you have ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... freedom's cause, And handed scathless down from sire to sire— Nor yet, our grand religion, and our Christ, Undecked by upstart creeds and vulgar charms, (Though these had sure sufficed To urge the feeblest Sybarite to arms)— But more than all, because embracing all, Insuring all, SELF-GOVERNMENT, the boon Our patriot statesmen strove to win and keep, From prescient Pinckney and the wise Calhoun To him, that gallant Knight, The youngest ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... their city, have been most liable to revolutions; as when the Achaeans joined with the Traezenians in founding Sybaris; for soon after, growing more powerful than the Traezenians, they expelled them from the city; from whence came the proverb of Sybarite wickedness: and again, disputes from a like cause happened at Thurium between the Sybarites and those who had joined with them in building the city; for they assuming upon these, on account of the country ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... by his side, and they passed out of Waterloo station. The journey to Bond Street remained in Milburgh's memory like a horrible dream. He was not used to travelling on omnibuses, being something of a sybarite who spared nothing to ensure his own comfort. Ling Chu on the contrary had a penchant for buses and seemed ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... if you please, my dear young lady," said Rodin, with a playful smile. "I am a true Sybarite; I require absolutely warm clothes, a good stove, a soft mattress, a good piece of bread, a fresh radish, flavored with good cheap salt, and some good, clear water; and, notwithstanding this complication ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... then I will tell you. It is because these gentlemen, chivalrous and honorable as they consider themselves, think that you, the beauty and the Sybarite, committed with your own white hand the deed of blood which has brought you freedom and fortune. Yes, yes, this man"—turning and pointing at me—"friend as he has made himself out to be, kindly and honorable as you have doubtless believed him, but who in every look he has bestowed upon you, every ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... this matter of service there was one thing above all others that stirred Myles Falworth's ill-liking. The winter before he had come to Devlen, Walter Blunt, who was somewhat of a Sybarite in his way, and who had a repugnance to bathing in the general tank in the open armory court in frosty weather, had had Dick Carpenter build a trough in the corner of the dormitory for the use of the bachelors, and every morning it was the duty of two of the younger squires to bring three ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... doth the pander of the Sybarite within the dusty halls of learning?" ejaculated a scholar of Lemoine. "What doth the jealous-pated slayer of his wife and unborn child within the reach of free-spoken voices, and mayhap of well-directed blades? Methinks it were more prudent to tarry within the bowers of his harem, than ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... provinces, as distinguished from the metropolis, would be found in many instances, perhaps in most, to be the home which a wise lover of himself, and a sincere lover of his kind, would do well to fix in;—not indeed as the scene of a brilliant or sybarite existence, but as the post of that salutary influence which sinks deepest; and of that usefulness and happiness which last the longest; as most visibly incorporated with, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... walls was but a luxury to set off the admirable collection of original sketches and clever caricatures that adorned them. One end of the room was curtained off to serve as a dining-room on necessity. No sybarite could have complained of the comfort of the chairs or the arrangement of the light. The great table at which Peter Masters sat, was not only of the most solid mahogany, but it was put together by an artist ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... was of polished oak, with here and there a brilliantly colored Persian praying-mat. The furniture was also of oak, and cushioned in red Morocco leather. Altogether the library gave evidence of a refined taste, and was a cross between a monkish cell and a sybarite's bower. ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... 954a. Sensualist — N. Sybarite, voluptuary, Sardanaphalus, man of pleasure, carpet knight; epicure, epicurean, gourmet, gourmand; pig, hog; votary of Epicurus, swine of Epicurus; sensualist; Heliogabalus; free liver, hard liver; libertine &c 962; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... deplorable street, a luxurious couch of a street in which the afternoon lolls like a gaudy sybarite. Overhead the sky stretches itself like a holiday awning. The sun lays harlequin stripes across the building faces. The smoke plumes from the I. C. engines scribble gray, white and lavender fantasies ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... plates, and cups and saucers, and the other absurd conventionalities of everyday life. They only had three little tin pannikins for their tea, which they passed round in turn, and a basket for their dish, using a leaf when the luxury of a plate was desired by any sybarite of the party—those nice broad ones of the dock ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... what it is, Captain," sounded the confident voice of the Prince. "This vessel is a beauty. You have done yourself fine. I had no idea you were such a sybarite. Why, I've been aboard the Czar's yacht, and I tell you it's nothing— Great heavens! Katherine!" he shouted, in a voice that made the ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... so as to hide the coffee-stains as much as possible, and then proceeded to set their tea for them, after which she went back to building the fire again. In the work of waiting she was at uncertain intervals assisted by Joe, a shock-headed, black-haired Celt, who, when a Sybarite asked at breakfast for toast, repeated "Toast!" in a tone that set the table in a roar. It was not said impudently or rudely. Far from it. Joe's tone simply expressed honest amazement, as if one had asked for a broiled crocodile or any ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... unmitigated anguish, bodily discomfort was not felt. There is a kind of magnetism in extreme woe, by which the body itself seems laid asleep, and knows no distinction between the bed of Damiens and the rose-couch of the Sybarite. He left his carriage and servants at a post-house some miles distant. He came to this dreary abode alone; and in that wintry season, and that most disconsolate scene, his gloomy soul found something congenial, something ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and whistled; but the fat sybarite, if within earshot, paid no attention; and she was left to swing her dog-whip ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... the eve of his thirty-second birthday and likewise the tenth anniversary of his servitude, the appearance of P. Sybarite was elaborately normal—varying, as it did, but slightly from one ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... the sybarite hard, and he cast a bitter glance of hatred at his brother-in-law, and fell into a ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... a creditable member of the aristocracy, since his vices greatly exceeded his virtues. With a weak nature, and the tastes of a sybarite, he required a great deal of money to render him happy. Like the immortal Becky Sharp, he could have been fairly honest if possessed of a large income; but not having it he stopped short of nothing save actual criminality in order to indulge his luxurious tastes to the full. Candidly speaking, ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... as the highest duty of life to give pleasure to others; his art in his own idea thus became in an unostentatious way consecrated, and while he would not have claimed to be a seer, any more than he would have claimed to be a saint, as he would have held in contempt a mere sybarite, most certainly a vein of unblamable hedonism pervaded his whole philosophy of life. Suffering constantly, he still was always kindly. He encouraged, as Mr Gosse has said, this philosophy by every resource ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... the main characteristics of Adrian, surnamed van Goorl; Adrian the superstitious but unspiritual dreamer, the vain Sybarite, the dull poet, the chopper of false logic, the weak and passionate self-seeker, whose best and deepest cravings, such as his love for his mother and another love that shall be told of, were really little more ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... from slavery and barbarism, and restored to a people illustrious for genius, civilization, and a spirit of liberty. Perdita rested on his restored society, on his love, his hopes and fame, even as a Sybarite on a luxurious couch; every thought was transport, each emotion bathed as it were in ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... two of the most popular of Sir Frederic's pictures, Wedded and Day Dreams. In the latter, a fair Sybarite is pressing her cheek against her hands, as she stands near a tapestry, with eyes gazing far away, the images of love-dreams in them; her purple mantle, embroidered with silver, produces a charming effect of colour. Still more famous is Wedded,—"one ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... were you, I'd be jealous of this model curate," said the fine gentleman, with a slight civil yawn. "I don't approve of model curates upon family livings. People are apt to make comparisons," said Jack, and then he raised his head with a little energy—"Ah, there it is," said the Sybarite, "the first moth. Don't be precipitate, my dear fellow. Aunt Dora, pray sit quietly where you are, and don't disturb our operations. It is only a moth, to be sure; but don't let us cut short the ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... riches of a museum in a living-room—such a moment in the Marmousets we had tested again and again with delectable results. At twilight, also, when the garden was submerged in dew, this old seigneurial chamber was a retreat fit for a sybarite or a modern aesthete. The stillness, the soft luxurious cushions, the rich dusk thickening in the corners, the complete isolation of the old room from the noise and tumult of the inn life, its curious, its delightful unmodernness, made this Marmouset ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... aghast. How childish not to perceive that its causes, as distinguished from its occasions, were common to our whole civilization. How perverse not to confess that beneath all our modern life, as its dominating motive, has lain that ruthless and pagan philosophy, which creates alike the sybarite, the tyrant and the anarch; the philosophy in which lust goes hand in hand with cruelty and unrestrained will to power is accompanied ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... blood-curdling ditty in the choice society of ruffians only less ruffianly than himself. Perhaps, too, this other spacious building adjacent to the great hall, and connected with it by a ruinous covered way, had been the sybarite's "harem"; for "Blackbeard"—like that other famous gentleman whose beard was blue—collected from his unfortunate captive ships treasure other than doubloons and pieces of eight, and prided himself on ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... degrees of independence. Foreigners have very little conception of the extent and the power of the native government. We have an indefinable impression that the rajah is a sensuous, indolent, extravagant sybarite, given to polo, diamonds and dancing girls, and amputates the heads of his subjects at pleasure; but that is very far from the truth. Many of the princes in the list just given, are men of high character, culture and integrity, who exercise ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... fonts, a watch-case with an Agnes Dei, a Palm Sunday palm-branch, and not a few odorless artificial flowers. A number of oaken bookshelves contain a rich and choice library, in which Horace, the Epicurean and Sybarite, stands side by side with the tender Virgil, in whose verses we see the heart of the enamored Dido throbbing and melting; Ovid the large-nosed, as sublime as he is obscene and sycophantic, side by side with Martial, the eloquent and witty vagabond; Tibullus the impassioned, ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... horseback, was never seen but in his uniform, never wore silk, never entered a palanquin, and was content with the plainest fare. But when he was no longer at the head of an army, he laid aside this Spartan temperance for the ostentatious luxury of a Sybarite. Though his person was ungraceful, and though his harsh features were redeemed from vulgar ugliness only by their stern, dauntless, and commanding expression, he was fond of rich and gay clothing, and replenished his wardrobe with absurd profusion. Sir John Malcolm gives us a letter ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a hundred dishes; Lamb and pistachio nuts—in short, all meats, And saffron soups, and sweetbreads; and the fishes Were of the finest that e'er flounced in nets, Drest to a Sybarite's most pamper'd wishes; The beverage was various sherbets Of raisin, orange, and pomegranate juice, Squeezed through the rind, which makes it best ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... icehouse inside that. He turns himself into an icehouse and warms himself against the cold until he is warm enough to eat ices. But the point is that the same coat of fur which in England would indicate the sybarite life may here very well indicate the strenuous life; just as the same walking stick which would here suggest a lounger would in England suggest a ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... delicacy, but he listened to their gossip. From time to time he went to the Tuileries to get his cue. And he always waited for the minister's return from the Chamber, if in session, to hear from him what intrigue or manoeuvre he was to set about. This official sybarite dressed, dined, and visited a dozen or fifteen salons between eight at night and three in the morning. At the opera he talked with journalists, for he stood high in their favor; a perpetual exchange of little services went on between them; he poured into their ears his misleading ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... one of the troubles of the wealthy, and as the Sybarite complained of the folded rose-leaf inconveniencing his bed, the rich Roman was fatigued with his rings. Hence came the custom of wearing light or heavy rings, or as they termed them, summer or winter rings, according to the season. That there really was some ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... of Aggie Lynch, secretly reinforced from the funds of Joe Garson, Mary found herself living in luxurious idleness, while her every wish could be gratified by the merest mention of it. She was fed on the daintiest of fare, for Aggie was a sybarite in all sensuous pleasures that were apart from sex. She was clothed with the most delicate richness for the first time as to those more mysterious garments which women love, and she soon had a variety of frocks as charming as her graceful form demanded. In addition, there were as ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... own cowardice, your own weak worship of expediency, have been your real obstacles. For your sake I was willing to brave poverty, debt, expatriation. It was you who preferred the dross of gold, and the indulgence of your own luxury and that of the sybarite, your father, to the passionate affection I bore you. It is too late now for regret or recrimination. Go, I command you! accomplish your destiny; continue to beguile Miriam with the tale of your affection, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... transformed; and now, as they neared the curtain, a wild—a loud—an exulting melody burst from behind its concealment. With that sound the veil was rent in twain—it parted—it seemed to vanish into air: and a scene, which no Sybarite ever more than rivalled, broke upon the dazzled gaze of the youthful priest. A vast banquet-room stretched beyond, blazing with countless lights, which filled the warm air with the scents of frankincense, of jasmine, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... our parliaments on a bench outside, a couple of deck-chairs were mysteriously imported; and, as the authorities remained unshocked, a small table also appeared and was squeezed into a gap beside the stove. Some sybarite even goaded us into getting up a fund for a strip of linoleum to be laid in the aisle between the beds. This was done—I do not know why, for personally I have no objection to bare boards. I suppose linoleum is easier to keep clean than wood; ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... day or two, expressed some fear lest they might not rest well; but both girls averred they never in their lives had known so luxurious a bed,—and never should again, unless their good fortune brought them back another year to enjoy this sybarite couch at Dr. Morani's. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... them happy. The syndic was radiant, he was pleased at having given me a present entirely to my taste; and I fancied that the entertainment was not displeasing to the three Graces, who were kept low by the Sybarite, as his powers were almost limited to desires. The girls lavished their thanks on me, while I endeavoured to assure them of my gratitude; but they leapt for joy when they heard the syndic asking me to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and a softened smile Seemed to illume the coldness, void of guile, Of those phantasmal features. "When from the City's gloom shall flash to light This truth: The sleek and selfish sybarite Is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... manner tinged with seeming paternal interest; but, as through a mask, she discerned his face, cynical, libidinous, the countenance of a Sybarite, not a king. The air became stifling; the ribaldry of laughter enveloped her; instinctively she glanced around, and her restless, troubled ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... my mate is now prepared to admit, that a certain amount of piety and chastity is not incompatible with tenure of the highest dignities in the Anglican Church—that a youth need not necessarily be a savage Sybarite, because he happens to be heir to a dukedom—that matronly virtue may, with a struggle, be retained even by a Countess—and that a man may possibly be a kindly landlord, and even an honest farmer himself (that was the crowning triumph), ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... a shade of frank annoyance on his face and a vision of the fat sybarite before his eyes. He turned again to his fishing, but his shrug was more of a shudder than appeared to ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... time of their youthful engagement—that real sensuous discrimination, which has comparatively little to do with taste for beauty, that power of weighing amorous values, given only to the authentic Sybarite. ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson |
