"Costliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... smiling face, and the expression of a daring, vivacious and happy spirit—and acknowledged to be the best dancer and most popular girl in Middleville. Her dress, while not to be compared with her friends' costumes in costliness, yet was ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... many—descriptions of a Roman dinner, but the tendency, especially with the novelist, is to exaggerate grossly the average costliness and gluttony of such banquets. Undoubtedly there were such things as "freak" dinners almost as absurd as those of the inferior order of American plutocrat. Undoubtedly also there was often a detestable ostentation of reckless expenditure. ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... and forms a red precipitate. Sugar, gum, the decoctions of cochineal, gamboge, fustic, turmeric, sumach, catechu, and Brazil wood, all afford red pulverulent colours. Boiled with sugar, gold solution gives first a light and then a dark red. Whatever their merits, the excessive costliness of these preparations renders them inadmissible as pigments. At one time, indeed, a gold compound known as purple of Cassius was so employed, but this soon became obsolete on the ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... wedding presents was natural. It might perhaps have been better had not the value of the whole been stated in one of the newspapers of the day. Who was responsible for the valuation was never known, but it seemed to indicate that the costliness of the gifts was more thought of than the affection of the givers; and it was undoubtedly true that, in high circles and among the clubs, the cost of the collection was much discussed. The diamonds were known to a stone, and Hampstead's rubies ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... the service secretary. Finally it would have set up a system for purging existing records and removing photographs from promotion board selection folders.[22-64] The services strongly objected to a purge of existing records on the grounds of costliness, and they were particularly opposed to the removal of photographs. Photographs were traditional and remained desirable, Deputy Under Secretary of the Army Roy K. Davenport explained, because they were useful in portraying ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... Persia for three years, he gave a feast for all his officials, officers, and servants. The commanders of the armies of Persia and Media, the nobles and governors were before him; while for one hundred and eighty days he showed them the wonderful riches of his kingdom and the costliness ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... and leading principle of the measure which I introduce, is designed to cut off the very source of all costliness, insecurity, litigation, by abolishing altogether the system of retrospective titles and ordaining that as often as the fee simple is transferred, the existing title must be surrendered to the Crown, and a fresh grant from the Crown issued ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... delicately, decorated in white and gold, and furnished with a sort of extravagant good taste; there was nothing to object to in the satin furniture, the pale, soft, rich carpet, the pictures, and the bronze and china bric-a-brac, except that their costliness was too evident; everything in the room meant money too plainly, and too much of it. The Marches recognized this in the hoarse whispers which people cannot get their voices above when they try to talk ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... not reply. She, too, wanted new dresses; she could hardly endure the grace and costliness of Connie's garments, when she compared them with her own; but there was something in her sad little soul also that would not let her be beholden to Connie. ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sleeve and coupling heads can always be made sufficient to accommodate a considerable want of alinement, far beyond anything which is likely to occur in actual practice. Perhaps the only feature against it is its lack of simplicity of construction and corresponding costliness. ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins
... students and actors to, 1; costliness of modern production, 2; the simple method and the public, 8; Charles Kean's spectacular method, 9; Irving's method, 10; plays produced by Phelps, 11; reliance on the actor, 13; in Vienna, 17; advantage ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... therefore the Romans were sorely afflicted by both these circumstances, they set fire to the cloisters, which were works to be admired, both on account of their magnitude and costliness. Whereupon those that were above them were presently encompassed with the flame, and many of them perished therein; as many of them also were destroyed by the enemy, who came suddenly upon them; some of them also threw themselves down from the ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... his train. As for the splendor of adornment of those who followed him, there seems to have been almost nothing worn but silks, velvets, cloth of gold and silver, jewels and precious stones, such being the costliness of the display that a writer who saw it humorously says, "Many of the nobles carried their castles, woods, and farms upon ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... vain, and frivolous airs; where he wears his best clothes and his best manners; where he loves to be seen, and observed, and saluted—the tradesmen of the capital have installed establishments the costliness and elaborateness of which it is hardly possible to exaggerate. The gilding and the mirrors, the marbles and the bronze, the myriad lamps of every fantastic form, the quaint and daring designs for shop fronts, the infinite arts employed ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... from whom it draws its lineage, of a body and a soul. They are not always proportionate to each other. Nay, even the different members of the book-body do not sing, but clash, when bindings of a profuse costliness are imposed, as too often happens in the case of Bibles and books of devotion, upon letter-press which is respectable journeyman's work and nothing more. The men of the Renascence had a truer sense of adaptation; ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone
... conception of Wisdom as a prize. The middle strophe and antistrophe describe the richness of this prize; the opening strophe makes 'chastening' the cost at which it is obtained by the individual from the Lord; and the corresponding antistrophe (at the end) explains the reason for this costliness—wisdom was the instrument by which ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... journalism. A large majority of the newspapers even of London—certainly those which reach a large majority of the readers—prefer sensationalism. Even those which are anxious in such cases to be fair and temperate are sadly hampered both by the limitations of space in their own columns and by the costliness of telegraphic correspondence. It is inevitable that the most conservative and judicial of correspondents should transmit to his papers whatever are the most striking items—revelations—accusations in an indictment ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... character of the building materials, and the methods of construction used by the more prosperous among the people, were easily imitated in kind, if not in costliness, by the less prosperous. Take, for example, the structure of the room; it is always of certain fixed proportions, that the uniform mats may be easily fitted to it. The mats themselves are always made of a straw "toko," "bed," and an "omote," "surface," of woven straw; they vary greatly in value, ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... the value of L200 "shall wear any gold or silver lace, or gold or silver buttons, or any bone-lace above 2s. per yard or silk hoods or scarfs"; and moreover, the selectmen of the town are required to fine anybody whom "they shall judge to exceed their rank and ability in the costliness or fashion of their apparel, in any respect"! And finally, a law passed in 1662 forbids "children and servants" to wear any apparel "exceeding the quality and condition of their persons or estate," ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... human form of strangely mingled materials, of giant size no doubt, and of majestic aspect. Barbarous enough it would have looked beside the marble lovelinesses of Greece, but it was quite like the coarser art which sought for impressiveness through size and costliness. Other people than Babylonian sculptors think that bigness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... intercourse among the less wealthy classes—when we find that many who most need to be disciplined by mixing with the refined are driven away by it, and led into dangerous and often fatal courses—when we count up the many minor evils it inflicts, the extra work which its costliness entails on all professional and mercantile men, the damage to public taste in dress and decoration by the setting up of its absurdities as standards for imitation, the injury to health indicated in the faces ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... handsome offer at the first glance, and it may be well meant. But the fact is, my dear Mr. Wylder, six hundred pounds would leave little more than a hundred remaining after Burlington and Smith have had their costs. You have no idea of the expense and trouble of title, and the inevitable costliness, my dear Sir, of all conveyancing operations. The deeds, I have little doubt, in consequence of the letter you directed me to write, have been prepared—that is, in draft, of course—and then, my dear Sir, I need not remind you, that there remain ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... last of these five years had certainly been the best period of his life, for he had really worked very hard, like a man, giving up all pleasure that took time from him,—and giving up also most pleasures which were dangerous on account of their costliness. He went to no races, played no billiards, and spoke of Cremorne as a childish thing, which he had abandoned now that he was no longer a child. It was during these two years that he had had his love passages with his cousin; and it must be presumed ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... no inconsiderable similarity to that of the artisan in more respects than one. To each a tool is valuable, be that tool a book or a chisel, only for its usefulness, and the facility and rapidity with which it will aid the possessor to accomplish his ends, and not for its beauty of form, or costliness of material ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... such a brilliant, and on my finger; and from Amelia! Death itself should not have plucked it hence. It is not the costliness of the diamond, not the cunning of the pattern—it is love which constitutes its value. Is it not so, Amelia? Dearest child, you are weeping. Woe be to him who causes such precious drops to flow from those heavenly eyes; ah, and if you knew all, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Pullman car as he traveled from Brighton to his office in London. He removed his big cigar from his fat red lips, and became absorbed in thought. The train rushed past Hassocks and Three Bridges and East Croydon. Mr. Jarvice never once looked at his newspaper again. The big cigar of which the costliness was proclaimed by the gold band about its middle had long since gone out, and for him the train came quite unexpectedly to a stop at the ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... of medicine at Rome. As might be expected from what we know of the relations of the rest of the family to the nobility of the time, it is easy to understand, especially in connection with hints in Alexander's favorite modes of therapeutics, that costliness of remedies made no difference to his patients, that he must have had the treatment of some of the wealthiest ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... on Court Masques in the early pages of the present volume for notices of the elaborate splendour and costliness ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... off for a time, and he recovered in consequence health and spirits. He has now taken to it again. Of this indeed I was too sure before I heard from you—that his looks bore testimony to it. Perhaps you are not aware of the costliness of this drug. In the quantity which C. takes, it would consume more than the whole which you propose to raise. A frightful consumption of spirits is added. In this way bodily ailments are produced; and the wonder is that ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... Blackwell and her Literature Committee and Miss Gordon urged that clergymen of all denominations should be circularized with it. She said: "I believe the association should not be dissuaded from this undertaking because of the amount of work and its costliness. The burden of responsibility rests upon us to prove with such evidence that the worst enemy of the church and the most active enemy of woman suffrage is a mutual foe, the 'organized liquor and vice power.' If in the face of such direct evidence representatives ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... and bookbinder are concerned. I am truly grieved for the mischance of the John Fraser, and will duly lecture the sinning bookseller. I noticed the misnomer in a letter of his New York correspondent, and, I believe, mentioned to you in a letter my fear of such a mischance. I am more sorry for the costliness of this adventure to you, though in a gracious note to me you cut down the fine one half. The new books, tardily printed, were tardily bound and tardily put to sea on the packet ship "Ontario," which left New York for London on the 1st of August. At least this was the promise of Munroe ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Jew, helped by Delecresse, repacked his wares with such care as their delicacy and costliness required, and the Countess desired Levina to summon the varlets to bear the heavy burden down ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... the costliness of his furniture, he observes, "they encompass me with an air of respectability, and they give me the illusion of not having fallen into the lowest circumstances. I must also declare that I will die like a gentleman, ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... embalmed in the trite maxim that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Perhaps not actually fonder, but at any rate more tolerant, more curious, more eager. Two difficulties, however, stand in the way of the widespread adoption of the remedy. One lies in its costliness: the average couple cannot afford a double establishment, even temporarily. The other lies in the fact that it inevitably arouses the envy and ill-nature of those who cannot adopt it, and so causes a gabbling of scandal. The world invariably ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... night following the opening of the retreat, Roc-Amadour is illuminated, and the spectacle is one that renders the grandest illuminations in Paris mean and vulgar by comparison. It is not in the costliness of the display that its splendour lies; it is in what may almost be termed the zeal with which Nature works with art towards the same end. Without the rocks and precipices the spectacle would be commonplace; but the site ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... shall I say of their spectacles produced with the most magnificent decorations,—a degree of costliness never indulged ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... the case was sufficiently capacious for the instrument. Not so with those in common use at the present time, opening as a box. To these may be laid the charge of causing an immense amount of irreparable injury to numbers of violins of any standard of excellence or costliness. This in the way mostly of depressions—"wells" as they are termed by repairers—where the feet of the bridge rest. These are caused by the lid of the case coming down on to the hard wood of the bridge and pressing its ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... articles of usual demand it does not exceed one-third of the value of the gold; but, in matters of fancy, it is generally equal to it. The manufacture is not now (1780) held in very high estimation in England, where costliness is not so much the object of luxury as variety; but, in the revolution of taste, it may probably be again sought after ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... time forward, as peace is established or extended in Europe, the arts decline. They reach an unparalleled pitch of costliness, but lose their life, enlist themselves at last on the side of luxury and various corruption, and, among wholly tranquil nations, wither utterly away; remaining only in partial practice among races who, like the French and ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Baldrick, who is reputed to have invented and christened the sword-belt that bears his name, lawyers have been conspicuous amongst the best dressed men of their times. For many generations clerical discipline restrained the members of the bar from garments of lavish costliness and various colors, unless high rank and personal influence placed them above the fear of censure and punishment; but as soon as the law became a lay-profession, its members—especially those who were still young—eagerly seized the newest ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... of our state coach did not enable us to visit that suburb, where the reader may imagine villas standing in grounds with lawns and gardens about them. The English have prevailed nothing against the local civilization in most things, while they have infected it with the costliness of the whole Anglo-Saxon life. We should not think seven hundred dollars in New York dear for even a quite small house, but it has come to that in Gibraltar, and there they think it dear, with ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... practised than is usual in laboratories. Regarded as a means of preserving brass, copper, or steel, it is not appreciably more "time robbing" than lacquering, and gives infinitely better results. Moreover, it is not much more expensive. Strange as it may seem, the costliness of gilding seldom lies in the value of the gold deposited; the chief cost is in the chemicals employed to clean the work, and in interest on the not inconsiderable outlay ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... within the power of public opinion to relieve the world from the weariness of this burthen of expensive living; it has actually been done to a great extent with regard to the costliness of funerals, a matter in which public opinion has always been very authoritative. If it will now permit a man to be buried simply when he is dead, why cannot it allow him to exist ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... did—that was equivalent to sight, and enough for him. Men did not understand him. He would not die so easily—they must be undeceived. Miserable Allcraft! He speedily removed from his small cottage—took a mansion, furnished it magnificently, and made it a palace in costliness and hospitality. Ah! was he poor? The trick answered. The world was not surprised, but satisfied. There was but one opinion. He deserved it all, and more. The only wonder was, that he had hitherto lived so quietly, rich as he was, in virtue of his wife's inheritance, and from his own hard-earned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... beginnings have grown up the present religious organizations of Cleveland, numbering about seventy churches, many of them of great beauty and costliness, with flourishing Sunday schools and wealthy congregations. The leading denominations have each several churches graded, from stately buildings for the older and wealthier congregations to the modest mission chapels. Nearly ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... materials for it shall cost, say, a penny, and the charge for it to a patient with 100 pounds a year be half-a-crown. And, on the other hand, a hygienic measure has only to be one of such refinement, difficulty, precision and costliness as to be quite beyond the resources of private practice, to be ignored or ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... to a friend, mentions the splendor and costliness of some of the religious offerings, one of which cost three thousand tickals, or twelve hundred dollars. After a description of the pagoda and its worshippers, she says: "The ground on which the pagoda is situated, commands a view of the surrounding country, which presents one of the most beautiful ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... as their romantic favourites and prototypes. The detailed descriptions in the book gave them sufficient inspiration. She wore floating gauzes, bracelets, "a small coronet of jewels" and "a rose-coloured, bridal veil." His dress was "simple, yet not without marks of costliness," with a "high Tartarian cap.... Here and there, too, over his vest, which was confined by a flowered girdle of Kaskan, hung strings of fine pearls, disposed with an ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... eastern expedition, the reduction of Palmyra, and the introduction from abroad of the vast flood of foreign luxuries which has inundated Rome and Italy itself the principles and the habits of the Emperor have undergone a mighty revolution. Now, the richness and costliness of his dress, the splendor of his equipage, the gorgeousness of his furniture, cannot be made to come up to the height of his extravagant desires. The silk which he once denied to the former Empress for a dress, now, variously embroidered, and of every dye, either hangs in ample folds ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... wooing of the New Jersey girl of excellent family and social position but of comparatively modest means. The shopkeepers gave interviews on the trousseau. The decorators and caterers detailed the splendors and the costliness of the preparations of which they had charge. From morning until dark a crowd hung round the house at Hanging Rock, and on the wedding day the streets leading to it were blocked—chiefly with people come from a distance, many of them ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... everywhere, with easy access everywhere, with no dread of difficulties about language, coinage, custom, or law, why should everyone continue to go to just a few special places? Such congestions are merely the measure of the general inaccessibility and insecurity and costliness of contemporary life, an awkward transitory phase in the first beginnings of the ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... courtiers and favorites; and the commons, where the poor man once had his right of pasture, were taken away, and, under forms of law, enclosed distributively within the domains of the adjacent landholders. Although no law forbade any inhabitant from purchasing land, the costliness of the transfer constituted a prohibition; so that it was the rule of the country that the plough should not be in the hands of its owner. The church was rested on a contradiction; claiming to be an embodiment of absolute truth, it was a creature of ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... wealthy to great expense in their construction. Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans built them with upper apartments, more or less spacious. These chambers were adorned with vases, sculptures, and paintings on the walls, varying in costliness and style according to the means or taste of the builder. The tomb of Cestius in Rome contained a chamber much ornamented with paintings. Ancient Egyptian tombs abound with sculptures and paintings, probably representative of the character of the deceased. Thus, on the walls ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... it is the aim of the Mikado's government to provide for constructing ships for the public defence up to 20,000 tons burden, and making the country independent of foreign yards through being able to produce advantageously commercial vessels for any requirement. Japan is blind neither to the costliness of American-built ships nor to the remoteness of European yards. The war with Russia was not half over when it was apparent that Japan would not longer be dependent upon the outer world for vessels of war or of commerce. In the closing weeks ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... picture to dispose of he had only to take it to Lord Timon and pretend to consult his taste as to the merits of it; nothing more was wanting to persuade the liberal- hearted lord to buy it. If a jeweler had a stone of price, or a mercer rich, costly stuffs, which for their costliness lay upon his hands, Lord Timon's house was a ready mart always open, where they might get off their wares or their jewelry at any price, and the good-natured lord would thank them into the bargain, as if they had done him a piece of courtesy in letting him ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... society is unexacting in the matter of refreshments, it runs to waste in regard to dress. The toilettes worn at all entertainments of any extent and formality far surpass in costliness and beauty any festal garbs which feminine humanity can contrive to don in America. In this birthplace of dress, dress is a pre-eminent and all-important feature. Two great points are de rigueur in a Frenchwoman's toilette: it must always ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... of thinking with a loose indolence of reading which relaxes the muscular fiber of the mind. When men had few books, they mastered those few; but now the multitude of books lord it over the man. The costliness of books was a great refiner of literature. Men disposed of single volumes by will with as many provisions and precautions as if they had been great landed estates. A mitre would hardly have overjoyed Petrarch as much as did the finding of a copy of Virgil. The problem ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... so quiet and yet so profound a sumptuosity. But you must not imagine any extravagance of outline or any beauty or richness of color. The predominant colors were black and fur browns, and the effect of richness was due entirely to the extreme costliness of the materials employed. She affected silk brocades with rich and elaborate patterns, priceless black lace over creamy or purple satin, intricate trimmings through which threads and bands of velvet wriggled, and in the winter rare furs. Her gloves fitted exquisitely, and ostentatiously simple ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... oriental MSS. in the Bibliotheque Royale, which was to be completed in ten folio volumes, the first of which, just out, he was showing me. He complained of the extreme slowness of the Government presses in getting on with the work. This he attributed to the absurd costliness, as he considered it, of the style in which the work was brought out. The cost of producing that first volume he told me had been over 1,600l. sterling. It was to be sold at a little less than a hundred francs. Something was said (by me, I think) of the possibility ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... and pay for certain products, a society is needed which corresponds in size with the rarity of talents, the costliness of the products, and the variety of the arts and sciences. If, for example, a society of fifty farmers can support a schoolmaster, it requires one hundred for a shoemaker, one hundred and fifty for a blacksmith, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... which had come days before. There were presents for every one; nobody, guest or member of the family, was forgotten, and whether costly, or homely but useful, the gifts seemed to give equal joy. It was the season of good-will, in which the kindly thought, not the costliness of the gift, was alone considered, and when all tokens of kindliness were accepted in the same spirit of gratefulness ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... accustomed to sup in the Apollo at the cost of fifty thousand drachmas, and this being the cost of the entertainment on the present occasion, Pompeius and Cicero were surprised at the rapidity with which the banquet had been got ready and the costliness of the entertainment. In this way, then, Lucullus used his wealth, capriciously, just as if it were a captive slave and ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... operates. For so we shall be the better prepared for a generous appreciation of those far Southern gardens whose beauty has singled them out for our admiration. We know, of course, that the "formal garden," by reason of its initial and continuing costliness, is, and must remain, the garden of the wealthy few, and that the gardening for the great democracy of our land, the kind that will make the country at large a gardened land, is "informal," freehand, ungeometrical ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... face of the earth; and they gloried in seeing its white marble pinnacles and golden roof glittering in the sunshine. For nine years he had constantly employed 18,000 men in its re-erection, and for upwards of thirty years more he had kept adding to its embellishments, till for grandeur and costliness it stood unrivalled. But when it was completed he set up over its chief gate the golden eagle of the Romans, and at the sight of that abhorred ensign all their gratitude fled, giving place ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... the rope for the priest.' The neatness of the illustration took with the House, and the speaker was interrupted by 'much laughter.' And then he went on to say that, 'as with those well-known ointments or medicines whose specific virtues lay in the enormous costliness of some of the constituents, so it must give unspeakable value to the efficacy of those healing measures for Ireland, to know that the whole British Constitution was boiled down to make one of them, and every right and liberty brayed in ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... mother's sorry little history. Her husband was employed in the clothing department of the Army and Navy Stores—yes, nine years now. He was considered very lucky to keep his place when the staff was reduced. But the costliness of raising the children! It was well that three were dead. If she had it all to do ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... temperate and frugal[34] in their habits, and little addicted to ostentation and display. Even after their victories had brought them into contact with Oriental luxury and extravagance, and their wealth enabled them to rival, in costliness and splendor, the nations they had conquered, they still maintained a republican simplicity. The private dwellings of the principal citizens were small, and usually built of clay; their interior embellishments also were insignificant—the house of Polytion alone formed an exception.[35] All their ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... and did not suspect the costliness of those which during the entire voyage they drank at ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... Instantly she opened it; inside, all the things were so nicely packed and arranged that she did not venture to take them out; she scarcely even ventured to lift them. There were muslin, cambric, silk, shawls and lace, all rivalling one another in delicacy, beauty, and costliness—nor were ornaments forgotten. The intention had been, as she saw well, to furnish her with more than one complete suit of clothes but it was all so costly, so little like what she had been accustomed to, that she scarcely dared, even ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... tall, venerable-looking Arab, with a long white beard reaching down to the middle of his breast. His costume, by its neatness and the general costliness of the articles of which it was composed, bespoke him a man of the better class, and his bearing was nowise inferior to ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... being quoted in Edwin Drood,] hardly ever wrote a novel without attacking an abuse. The procedure of the Court of Chancery and of the Ecclesiastical Courts, the delays of the Public Offices, the costliness of divorce, the state of the dwellings of the poor, and the condition of the cheap schools in the North of England, furnished him with what he seemed to consider, in all sincerity, the true moral of ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... by the magnificence of the chapel. Was it all new,—the frescoes, the altar with its marble and its gold, the white figure of the Virgin, which gleamed above the small side-altar to the left? It had the air of newness and of costliness, an air which struck the eye all the more sharply because of the contrast between it and the penury, the starvation, of the great house that held ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... by thinking of my being a stranger in the land; nothing daunted by the architectural superiority and costliness of any Liverpool church; or by the streams of silk dresses and fine broadcloth coats flowing into the aisles, I used humbly to present myself before the sexton, as a candidate for admission. He would stare a little, perhaps (one of them once hesitated), ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... subject, that I intended to ask you to take this evening; only it is impossible to set any part of the matter in its true light, until we go to the root of it. But the point which it is our special business to consider is, not whether costliness of dress is contrary to charity; but whether it is not contrary to mere worldly wisdom: whether, even supposing we knew that splendour of dress did not cost suffering or hunger, we might not put the splendour better in other things than ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... worshippers are depicted to be by Lowell and many another American writer since, depends upon what the special person's innate taste is. The thrones and altars have become more and more magnificent in beauty, costliness, and splendor, with the progress of civilization; but not so the mob, the rabble, the "underworld," whose stirrings have rent the walls. Christ's taste, it would seem, was not primarily aesthetic. But then not every one ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... brilliant joy. Wreaths of flowers hung from the windows; rich tapestries decked the Dome Kirk, and the relics were displayed in shrines of wonderful costliness of material and beauty of workmanship; little birds, with thin cakes fastened to their feet, were let loose to fly about the church, in strange allusion to the event of the day; the clergy wore their most gorgeous robes; and the exulting music of the mass echoed from the vaults of the long-drawn ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... keep up an interest in the conversation at table, and not to betray the slightest anxiety as to the success of the affair. Host or hostess should never make disparaging remarks as to the quality of dishes; and still less should they refer to their costliness, and should know beforehand as to the edge of the carving-knife, as the use of ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... treasure to be found in many country houses is indeed enormous. In Holinshed's Chronicle of Englande, Scotlande and Irelande, published in 1577, there is a chapter on the "maner of buylding and furniture of our Houses," wherein is recorded the costliness of the stores of plate and tapestry that were found in the dwellings of nobility and gentry and also in farm-houses, and even in the homes of "inferior artificers." Verily the spoils of the monasteries and churches must have been fairly evenly ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... that wealth is not, in England, the loftiest object of ambition as constituting a nobility; and secondly, that there, the true nobility of blood, confining itself within the strict limits of legitimate taste, rather avoids than affects that mere costliness in which a parvenu rivalry may at any time ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to," was his next reflection; and with the remaining three and sixpence, he crossed the threshold of a tobacconist's shop and bought cigars, to save himself from excesses in charity. After gravely reproaching the tobacconist for the growing costliness of cigars, he came into the air, feeling extraordinarily empty. Of this he soon understood the cause, and it amused him. Accustomed to the smell of tobacco always when he came from his dinner, it seemed, as the fumes of the shop took his nostril, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... affecting an independence which could not exist an hour but by the protection of England, and the burlesque of a parliament into which no man entered but in expectation of a job; the scandal of an Irish slave-market, and the costliness of purchasing representatives, only to be sold by them in turn, became so palpable to the national eye, that the nation contemptuously cashiered the legislature. The gamblers who had made their fortunes off the people, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... old portable box-desk at the time of the Reformation, and had maintained itself in undiminished honour through all the subsequent changes. In rich London parishes much rare workmanship was often expended upon it. If not by its costliness, at all events by its dimensions, it was apt to throw all other church furniture into the shade. And 'in a few abnormal instances, particularly in watering-places, the rostra would even overhang the altar, or occupy a sort of gallery behind it.'[902] During ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... indulged in every kind of luxury and delicacy; they were prevented, however, by this very business of lawmaking. For Hortensius, one of the men fondest of expensive living, by reviewing the great size of the city and adverting with commendation to the costliness of their homes and their magnanimity toward others, persuaded them to give up their intention, for he could use their mode of life to champion his words. They respected his contention, and furthermore, because they ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... they are the emblems of the most intense bitterness and of the richest and most costly fragrance. In the Bible Aloes are mentioned five times, and always with reference to their excellence and costliness.[13:1] Juvenal speaks of it only ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... say, that when the present you left came to be examined, the costliness and beauty of it inspired some concern. Ellen thinks you are too kind, as I also think every morning, for I am now ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... after day, night after night! There were certainly at least four in the family who bought clothes at Shillitoe's, and everybody looked elaborately costly, except Hilda Lessways, who did not flatter the eye. But equally, they all seemed quite unconscious of their costliness. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... a contrast, in relation to price and extent of demand, to the lucifer match. But it is, at the same time, a parallel in principle. If a globe were not made upon a principle involving the scientific combination of skilled labor, it would be a mere article of luxury from its excessive costliness. It is now a most useful instrument in education. For educational purposes the most inexpensive globe is as valuable as that of the highest price. All that properly belongs to the excellence of the instrument is found in combination with the commonest stained wood frame, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... little else but a compilation; and that Victor had already abridged in the same merciless way the writings of the Fathers (Chrysostom chiefly) from whom he obtained his materials. We are to remember also, I suppose, the labour which transcription involved, and the costliness of the skins out of which ancient books were manufactured. But when all has been said, I must candidly admit that the extent of license which the ancients evidently allowed themselves quite perplexes me.(515) ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... specimens of the woods could be chosen, and a much richer and more decorative effect produced than would be possible when only solid timber was used. As a prominent instance of the extent to which the Romans carried the costliness of some special pieces of furniture, we have it recorded on good authority (Mr. Pollen) that the table made for Cicero cost a million sesterces, a sum equal to about L9,000, and that one belonging to King Juba was sold by auction for the ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... ornamental pottery. She felt now that if she slept once in the bed before her, she could never be content in her mother's house again. All that she had read and believed of the beauty of cheap and simple ornament, and the vulgarity of costliness, recurred to her as a hypocritical paraphrase of the "sour grapes" of the fox in the fable. She pictured to herself with a shudder the effect of a sixpenny Chinese umbrella in that fireplace, a cretonne valance to that bed, or chintz curtains to those windows. ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... City"; 19 and the great temple of the Sun, to which pilgrims resorted from the furthest borders of the empire, was the most magnificent structure in the New World, and unsurpassed, probably, in the costliness of its decorations by any building ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... by the borrower as temporary expedients; the habitual conduct of business on borrowed capital was unknown. But, just as the new output of the German mines was increasing the supply of precious metals, the greater costliness of war, due to the substitution of mercenaries and fire-arms for feudal levies equipped with bows and pikes, made the governments of Europe need money more than ever before. They made great loans at home and abroad, and it was the interest on these that expanded ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith |
