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Extravagance   /ɛkstrˈævəgəns/   Listen
Extravagance

noun
1.
The quality of exceeding the appropriate limits of decorum or probability or truth.  Synonym: extravagancy.
2.
The trait of spending extravagantly.  Synonyms: prodigality, profligacy.
3.
Excessive spending.  Synonyms: high life, highlife, lavishness, prodigality.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Extravagance" Quotes from Famous Books



... tribes whose ordinary food consists of vegetables, the slaughter of cattle was at once a household feast and an act of worship: a pig was the most acceptable offering to the gods, just because it was the usual roast for a feast. But all extravagance of expense as well as all excess of rejoicing was inconsistent with the solid character of the Romans. Frugality in relation to the gods was one of the most prominent traits of the primitive Latin worship; and the free play of imagination was repressed with iron severity by the moral self-discipline ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... detected no extravagance in his homage, she was none the more pleased with it. It made her feel awkward and self-conscious. She set him down in her own mind as "too finicking," while his good looks did not happen to be of a type that appealed ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... thing composed of three rosebuds, a bit of velvet, and a pair of strings, could possibly be a bonnet, and cost six dollars. That night he looked as if he would like the fun of quizzing her figures and pretending to be horrified at her extravagance, as he often did, being particularly proud of ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... been told to us by some writer of romance, as the product of his own imagination, there is not a man among us who would not have condemned it as unnatural, improbable, a mere extravagance entirely out of keeping with the human character. And yet the thing has actually taken place; the work has been done, and well ...
— Celebration in Baltimore of the Triumph of Liberty in France • William Wirt

... and I wanted him to start with every advantage, to have a gentleman's education. At home he's seen nothing of extravagance and self-indulgence." ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... of life? Such was the fate of the late celebrated Duke of Wharton, Wilmot, earl of Rochester, and Villers, duke of Buckingham, three noblemen, as eminently distinguished by their wit, taste, and knowledge, as for their extravagance, revelry, and lawless passions. In such cases, the most charming elocution, the finest fancy, the brightest blaze of genius, and the noblest burst of thoughts, call for louder vengeance, and damn them to lasting ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... hang about the people's neck; another attacked the consistency of the man who would to-day scatter like a prodigal what he had scrimped yesterday to save; while a third pertinently inquired whether such a spendthrift were fit timber to put in Washington as a check upon the waxing extravagance of Congress? By dint of repetition these things ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... Council. Necker, more cautious and conservative, could keep his place no better. The jealousy of Louis was excited, and he feared the domination of a man of whom the general opinion of posterity has been that he was wanting in decision. Calonne was sent away as soon as he tried to turn from extravagance to economy. Vergennes alone, of the good servants, retained his office; perhaps because he had little to do with financial matters; perhaps, also, because he knew how to keep himself decidedly subordinate to whatever power was in the ascendant. The lasting ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... from Mr. Fullerton, asking some remuneration beyond his salary for past services. He has a claim if we were rich. I think he should have 10,000 dollars. I dare say he thinks 20,000. Thoughtless extravagance is the destruction of ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)

... hired her. If I had had my way she would have been a permanent fixture in the household, but Hephzy scoffed at the idea. "Pity if I can't do housework for two folks," she declared. "I don't care if you can afford it. Keepin' hired help in a family no bigger than this, is a sinful extravagance." As Susanna's services had been already engaged for the weekend she could not discharge her, but she insisted on doing all the ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... half of gold florins, and there was lamentation and distress of mind, and the level of the Arno rose by reason of the flood of tears that fell "from tired eyelids upon tired eyes." All that made no difference to the swash-bucklers, and up and down England there was wild extravagance, and money seemed to burn in people's pockets. Feasting and merriment, and all that appertains thereto, were the order of the day, and all went ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... heard of. In order to bring the point to a speedy decision, they have always recourse to the loudest clamour, and sometimes to the most shocking violence and outrage. They are desperate, and act with the extravagance and folly of desperate men, who must either starve, or frighten their masters into an immediate compliance with their demands. The masters upon these occasions are just as clamorous upon the other side, and never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo

... protected his infancy, the master to whom he had later been apprenticed; that was all he knew of his childhood. In his simple way he had been greatly impressed by the strange value placed by his companions upon the family influence, and he had received their extravagance with perfect credulity. In his absolute ignorance and his lack of humor he had detected no false quality in their sentiment. And a vague sense of his responsibility, as one who had been the luckiest, and who was building the first "house" in the camp, troubled him. He lay staringly ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... steamboats! Millions med! I know th' kind well!" Bean felt his own indignation rise with Cassidy's. He was seeing why they had feared to have him on the board of directors. Apparently they were bent on wrecking the company by a campaign of extravagance. The substance of what he gleaned from Cassidy's newspaper was that those directors had declared a stock dividend of 200 per cent. and a cash ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... co-workers twenty times a day that, owing to the generosity of our president, the endowment has been exactly doubled, and that I have vast sums besides from Mrs. Pendleton for necessary purposes like ice cream. But they simply CAN'T get over the feeling that it is a wicked extravagance to ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... it! It gets on my nerves, my brother's extravagance does. I often quarrel with him because ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev

... interested and charmed, he would gladly have come back next day to see her; but he restrained that extravagance, and ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... in the Jubbulpore District. This is put forcibly in the saying that 'A Lodhi's temper is as crooked as the stream of a bullock's urine.' They are generally cultivators, but the bulk of them are not very prosperous as they are inclined to extravagance and display at weddings and on other ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... as registrar of births and marriages. But his merits were soon eclipsed by the evils produced by his custom of extolling liberal patrons and satirising those who gave inadequately. The desire of the Rajputs to be handed down to fame in the Bhat's songs was such that no extravagance was spared to satisfy him. Chand, the great Rajput bard, sang of the marriage of Prithwi Raj, king of Delhi, that the bride's father emptied his coffers in gifts, but he filled them with the praises of mankind. A lakh of rupees ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... feeling of propriety in Miss Bacon, and a New-England orderliness in her character, and, in spite of her bewilderment, a sturdy common-sense, which I trusted would begin to operate at the right time, and keep her from any actual extravagance. And as regarded this matter of the tombstone, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... he put out his lamp, and once more set forth. The night air freshened his spirits; he sang to himself as he went along. It was long since he had been to a theatre, and just now he 'vas so hopelessly poor that he could really afford a little extravagance. So he was soon sitting before the well-known drop of a favourite play-house, as full of light-hearted expectancy as a boy who is enjoying a holiday. The evening was delightful, ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing

... disapproval and endure severity; pitied for a misguided be-fooled clod I would not be; and the best way to avoid such a fate seemed to lie in showing myself as reckless a gallant and as fine a roisterer as any at Whitehall. So I dipped freely and deep into my purse, till Jonah groaned as woefully for my extravagance as for my frivolity. All day he was in great fear lest I should take him with me to Court to the extreme peril of his soul; but prudence at last stepped in and bade me spare myself the cost of a rich livery by leaving ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope

... essentially peaceful and law-abiding class that furnished a large and excellent contingent to the Native Army. The wretched landowner who found himself deprived of his land by legal process held our methods rather than his own extravagance responsible for his ruin, and on the other hand, the pleaders and their clients, the moneylenders, who were generally Hindus, resented equally our legislative attempts to hamper a process so beneficial ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... deep sigh of relief, and, almost crying in his joy, began to thank me, with all the extravagance of phrase and gesture to which men of his mean spirit are prone. Through all I heard him silently, and with secret amusement, knowing that the end was not yet. At length he asked me what explanation I ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman

... white hands which occur so often in Flemish portraits of young women. Some people thought her a trifle heavy, too mature and positive to be called pretty, even though they admired her rich, tulip-like complexion. Gladys never seemed aware that her looks and her poverty and her extravagance were the subject of perpetual argument, but went to and from school every day with the air of one whose position is assured. Her musicianship gave her a kind ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... affirmed," said he, "without extravagance that the free institutions we enjoy have developed the powers and improved the condition of our whole people beyond any example in the world. Of this we now have a striking and an impressive illustration. So large an army ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... black flour at 9 dollars a-hundred, and salt salmon, four for 1 dollar." What lively visions of scurvy these provisions conjure up! The acme of extravagance was not arrived at, however, until the poor miner came to purchase auxiliaries to his rocker. At Sailor's Bar "rocker irons were at an ounce of gold each (16 dollars), and at Hill's Bar, 30 dollars each." This "iron" is simply a plate of thin sheet-iron, ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne

... liberal in criticism. But the value of what he said was largely impaired, if not wholly destroyed by the one-sidedness of view and tendency to over-statement into which his ardor of feeling now habitually hurried him. In nothing is this extravagance more strikingly seen than in the comments in this work upon the press. There was a great deal of truth in what he said; but the justice of some of his views was deprived of any effect by the exaggeration ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... so pleased that she yielded to the pressure and conceded a sum which her judgment told her was a foolish extravagance —a thousand dollars. Sally kissed her half a dozen times and even in that way could not express all his joy and thankfulness. This new access of gratitude and affection carried Aleck quite beyond the bounds of prudence, and before she could restrain herself she had made her darling another grant—a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... was hoped a better era had opened, but it was only exchanging one form of misrule for another. The kings existed for their own benefit and pleasure; the people existed to minister to them and find funds for their extravagance. Each succeeding monarch was ruled by some upstart favourite, until the climax was reached when Godoy, the disgraceful Minister of Charles IV., and the open lover of his Queen, sold the country to Napoleon. ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... were always being drained by relations other than those of his own immediate household, and on behalf of whom it is generally admitted that he worked himself to death, rode and hunted, as he said, not from extravagance, but in order that he might be fit and able to do his work. And his riding, which was a necessity to himself, was not less indispensable to Punch, for a very considerable amount of the Paper's support in the Country depends upon his "horsey sketches." ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... beauty. He might, however, with a little judicious management, be led to look with interest on her daughter, and would prove, no doubt, an excellent husband, as he had means of his own, the prospect of inheriting the Manor, and was exceedingly amiable, and free from habits of extravagance. Gladly, therefore, did she avail herself of the present opportunity to engage Amos in conversation before dinner was announced, expressing, at the same time, her regret that she had so seldom the pleasure ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson

... over daily; the cry is heard that he has become hysterical, sentimental, out of his mind, but the next one knows, he is robustness itself, and enduring beyond belief, despite great need, enmity, sorrow. One hour one is angry over some extravagance which he has allowed himself, the next captivated by one of his plays, stirred, melted, strengthened and uplifted by his ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg

... Californians, but Adelle, perceiving the distinction to be had from free spending, ordered with a splendid indifference to price or amount. She won the admiration of her friends by the ease with which she gave her name and address. Adelle was in fact a little frightened by her own extravagance, but persisted with a child's curiosity to find out the limit of her magic lamp. She did not reach it, however. Mr. Crane at her request had opened an account for her at the trust company's correspondent on upper Fifth Avenue, and apparently it was of a size that produced respect ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... France's beautiful romance, both produced in 1894, will not be likely to add much to Massenet's reputation. 'La Navarraise,' produced during the same year in London, was apparently an attempt to imitate the melodramatic extravagance of Mascagni. The action takes place under the walls of Bilbao during the Carlist war. Anita loves Araquil, a Spanish soldier, but his father will not permit the marriage because of her poverty. Seeing that a reward is offered for the head of the Carlist general, Anita goes forth like ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... boots, or, at least, soon learned that the power of getting them as she pleased had devolved upon her from her uncle's gift; so that she talked even of buying the squirrel's cage; but I am not aware that her extravagance led her ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... made many additions to the work, but nothing to the price, and that he had therefore given it up. I quite approve, by Hercules, of your making the additions you had determined upon; although the villa as it stands seems to have the air of a philosopher, meant to rebuke the extravagance of other villas. Yet, after all, that addition will be pleasing. I praised your landscape gardener: he has so covered everything with ivy, both the foundation-wall of the villa and the spaces between the columns of the walk, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... stayed on—and lived her life with a nun-like simplicity and economy—spending her money on others rather than herself, and helping those in need,—and never even in her dress, which was always exquisite, running into vagaries of extravagance and follies of fashion. She had discovered a little French dressmaker, whose husband had deserted her, leaving her with two small children to feed and educate, and to this humble, un-famous plier of the needle she entrusted ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... engaged in the most expensive parties of pleasure, believing that, before his present finances should be exhausted, his fortune would be effectually made, by the personal accomplishments he should have occasion to display to the beau monde in the course of his extravagance. In a word, vanity and pride were the ruling foibles of our adventurer, who imagined himself sufficiently qualified to retrieve his fortune in various shapes, long before he could have any idea of want or difficulty. He ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... It was no matter to her that she herself scarcely knew what she meant, and that the good Rector had not the faintest understanding of it. She was so glad, that it was almost necessary to be guilty of some extravagance by way of relieving her mind. "After all Mr Proctor's care in fitting the furniture, you would not, of course, think of removing it," said Mrs Morgan; "Mr Wentworth will take it as we did; and as for ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... jest like the phrase 'common gold' or 'daily diamonds.' These are the simple and self-evident cases; but there are many more subtle cases of the same thing; of the tendency to see that the nation fills up its own gap with its own substitute; or corrects its own extravagance with its own precaution. The national antidote generally grows wild in the woods side by side with the national poison. If it did not, all the natives would be dead. For it is so, as I have said, that nations necessarily die of ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... free from that extravagance of expression and recklessness of all established codes of taste which have diverted attention from her purpose, and led to a false estimate of the character and tendency of her writings. It has none of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... liveries bespangled with golden roses, inspire a like rhapsody! By one writer on Ralegh it has been characterized, so various are tastes, as 'tawdry and fulsome.' To most it will seem a delightful extravagance. To contemporaries the extravagance itself would appear not very glaring. Elizabeth aroused both fascination and awe in her own period which justified high flights. After her goodness and wrath were become alike unavailing ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... her with "proving herself, in obedience, fidelity, care, and accuracy, the inferior of every kind of servant known to modern society." Of course, there is hardly a family in the country which has not had, in its own experience, illustrations of the extravagance of these charges. There is probably nobody who has long kept servants, who has not had Irish servants who were obedient, faithful, careful, and even accurate in a remarkable degree. But then it must be admitted that this indictment is a tolerably ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... leaving the fourth open to the attendants. The prodigality of the Romans in matters of eating is well known, and it extended to all matters connected with the pleasures of the table. In their rooms, their couches, and all the furniture of their entertainments, magnificence and extravagance were carried to their highest point. The rich had several of these apartments, to be used at different seasons, or on various occasions. Lucullus, celebrated for his wealth and profuse expenditure, had ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... heart—and as he saw himself in the true point of ridicule, he would say he could not be angry with others for seeing him in a light, in which he so strongly saw himself: So that to his friends, who knew his foible was not the love of money, and who therefore made the less scruple in bantering the extravagance of his humour,—instead of giving the true cause,—he chose rather to join in the laugh against himself; and as he never carried one single ounce of flesh upon his own bones, being altogether as spare a figure as his beast,—he would sometimes insist upon it, that the horse was as good ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... smudged and spotted bill of fare propped up, in its wooden frame, against an armour-plate-china sugar-bowl. She was deeply intrigued by the mystery of human frailty as exemplified by her reckless extravagance in ordering that superfluous bit of pastry. Miss Manvers's purse contained a single coin of silver, the quarter of a dollar; being precisely the sum of her entire fortune. Her ham and beans would cost fifteen cents, the coffee and the napoleon five cents each. In other ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... Drink up is synonymous with drink off, drink to the dregs. A child, taking medicine, is urged to "drink it up." The idea of the passage appears to be that each of the acts should go beyond the last preceding in extravagance:— ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various

... no doubt that things are not as well managed as they might be, and that there is a great deal of distress and misery. In some parts of France the taxation has been very heavy, and the extravagance of the court has excited an immense deal of anger. It is not the fault of the present king, who is a quiet fellow, and does not care for show or pageants; but it is rather the fault of the kings who preceded him, especially of Louis the Fourteenth—who ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty

... of wealth, more extravagance, more carelessness, more reckless morals than ever before, and—horrible to contemplate—springing up in the new world, the narrow social standards which war had ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown

... received an education well worth the largest dowry, by favour of the Lady of Stahrenberg, the strictness of whose household is famous throughout the province. Her person and manners are suitable to mine—no pride, no extravagance. She can bear to work; she has a tolerable knowledge how to manage a family; middle-aged, and of a disposition and capability to acquire what she still wants. Her I shall marry, by favour of the noble Baron of Stahrenberg, at 12 o'clock on the 30th ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

... as we moved towards the city, our master-carrier, who was naturally well-disposed, and had been very kind to us all the way upon the road, advised me, very seriously, not to think of remaining in St Jago, where he said there was nothing but extravagance, vice, and folly, but to proceed on with them as mule-driver, which, he said, I should soon be very expert at; and that they led an innocent and happy life, far preferable to any enjoyment such a great city as that before us could afford. I thanked him, and told him I was very much obliged to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... see why she should want six hundred a year for herself; I don't indeed. I am afraid it will only lead to extravagance!" Barry assumed a look of despair. "Of course, as I have said so, I will not go back from my word. She shall have two-thirds. But about the ponies my mind is quite made up. There shall be no ponies at Buston. I hope you understand ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... the debtor to the creditor, disdain the chain, preserve your freedom, and maintain your independency. Be industrious and free; be frugal and free. At present, perhaps, you may think yourself in thriving circumstances, and that you can bear a little extravagance ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus

... other hand, the accusation may be brought that he proposes an impossibly high aim. No doubt, in such a pitch of devotion as is suggested, e.g., in ch. viii. of The Form of Perfect Living, some may think they find extravagance: but no doubt it was this same spirit which inspired SS. Peter and Paul, and the other Apostles; which built up the Early Church; which made Saints, Martyrs and Confessors; which suggested such apparently ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole

... prs'—the sarcasm of a Roman emperor applies, that to miss under such conditions implied an original genius for stupidity, and to hit was no trial of the case. After all, the sentimentalist had youth to plead in apology for this extravagance. He was hypochondriacal; he was in solitude; and he was possessed by gloomy imaginations from the works of a society in the highest public credit. But most readers will be aware of similar appeals to the mysteries ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... in our language, such as "over-master," "over-do." More forcibly we might say, "In all these things we over-overcome." Coverdale gives the sense of it well in his translation, "We conquer far." Observe some of the ways in which this excess and extravagance of victory may take place, for it is as if one should win a victory over a foe in such a way as to prevent him from ever troubling us again. Our conquest over special sin is to be of this character. We are not to be content with winning the field while the foe retires to some more secure ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris

... the true knowledge of the Most High, and by murder, a violation of the truth respecting God and His eternal existence. [374:3] It is easy to see how Scripture, by such a system of interpretation, might be tortured into a witness for any extravagance. ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... not made their purchases at the houses of the marchandes de modes considered the most recherche at Paris, have no idea of the extravagance of the charges. Prices are demanded that really make a prudent person start; nevertheless, she who wishes to attain the distinction so generally sought, of being perfectly well dressed, which means being in the newest fashion, must submit to pay ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... better at last, on either side, treat it as a wild extravagance of hazard, that the situation was made elastic by the amount of explanation called into play. Why indeed—apart from oddity—the situation should have been really stiff was a question naturally not practical ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... Richard; "but it was to preserve you from extravagance to-night that I volunteered advice, which, from my knowledge of your character, I might as well have withheld. But let me caution you on another point. Dance with Dame Tetlow, or any other dame you please—dance with the fair Isole de Heton, if you can prevail upon her to descend from her frame ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... were young men of birth, who (their means not answering to their extravagance) had been put in prison by creditors, and redeemed thence by lord Timon; these young prodigals thenceforward fastened upon his lordship, as if by common sympathy he were necessarily endeared to all such spendthrifts and loose livers, who, not ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... her father groaned afresh at the price of the bonbons displayed so daintily in their satin boxes; but though they agreed that it was impossible to indulge any more in such extravagance, they invariably succumbed to temptation, the colonel ejaculating, "It's a poor heart that never rejoices. We shall be young only once in our lives, Peg, so we might as well enjoy ourselves while we can," and Peggy explaining to her scandalised mother that the expenditure was really ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... have heard that she does lead poor John Stevens a miserable life. What with her extravagance, her temper, and the way she does hate his old mother whom he loves, his life must be a burden?" ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... from Bracciolini indulging his fancy in a latitude which is denied the historian, and allowed only to the poet; hence he sometimes carries circumstances to bounds that border upon extravagance. Tacitus, on the other hand, always maintains his dignity; holding command over his fancy he carries circumstances to their due length, and only to their ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... have their certain periods of time prefixed, which may be collected and foreknown from the position of the stars at their first foundation. But these and the like relations may perhaps not so much take and delight the reader with their novelty and curiosity as offend him by their extravagance. ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... John Lefolle dreamed of throwing everything to the winds. His literary reputation had opened out a new career. The Winifred lyrics alone had brought in a tidy sum, and though he had expended that and more on despatches of flowers and trifles to her, yet he felt this extravagance would become extinguished under daily companionship, and the poems provoked by her charms would go far towards their daily maintenance. Yes, he could throw up the University. He would rescue her from this bully, this gentleman bruiser. They would live openly and nobly in ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... Alfred Tennyson says that Alexander Smith's poems show fancy, but not imagination; and on my repeating this to Mrs. Browning, she said it was exactly her impression. For my part I am struck by the extravagance and the total want of finish and of constructive power, and I am in hopes that ultimately good will come out of evil, for Mr. Kingsley has written, he tells me, a paper called "Alexander Pope and Alexander ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... out a careless hand to Dick, who looked at it an instant and then turned sulkily away. "Young cub!" Raven thought. He should have kissed it, even gone on his knees to do it, and placated her with a laughing extravagance. He recalled the words he had caught from her lips when he was coming in and flushed to his forehead over the ringing warmth of them. He bent to the fine hand about relaxing to withdrawal, after Dick's flouting, drew it to his own lips and kissed it: not as he ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... idea of sleeping alone, and asked if he might keep the electric light on in his room all night. Tremendous extravagance, but under the circumstances excusable. I confess I ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... Pippin was a recognized item of the family budget; at one time Charles Norton had carried his pipe with him, but Dolly, noticing the doubtful fragrance given by said pipe to the clothes of Charles-Norton, had insisted upon the extravagance of the daily Pippin). Having bought the Pippin, Charles-Norton did not light it right away. Oh, no. He ambled first to the square. He selected his bench carefully—one upon which the sun shone, but shone with a ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper

... the public store was occasioned by the unbounded extravagance of the labouring people, who had, in consequence of the last unproductive season, reduced those who supported themselves to very great distress; and several persons, who some time since would gladly have sent their ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins

... improvidence is a virtue of such lustre, that itself or its likeness is essential to the very existence of respectability; and, by carrying out this proposition, that in order to make the least amount of extravagance produce the utmost admiration and envy, it is desirable to be improvident as publicly as possible; the means for such expenditure being gleaned from retrenchments in the home department. Thus, by a system of domestic alchemy, the education of the children is resolved ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... this, the earliest of the five great romances, there should be so little of that extravagance that latterly we have come almost to identify with the author's manner. Yet even here we are distressed by words, thoughts, and incidents that defy belief and alienate the sympathies. The scene of the in pace, for example, in spite of its strength, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... existing architecture all over the world. (Compare "Seven Lamps," chap. ii.) All the Gothics in existence, southern or northern, were corrupted at once: the German and French lost themselves in every species of extravagance; the English Gothic was confined, in its insanity, by a strait-waistcoat of perpendicular lines; the Italian effloresced on the mainland into the meaningless ornamentation of the Certosa of Pavia and the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... he deliberately set himself to raise the people to open resistance against their oppressors, while he disarmed the suspicions of the nobles by intentional buffoonery and extravagance of conduct. On May 20, 1347, the first blow was struck. Rienzi, with a chosen band of conspirators, and accompanied by the papal vicar, who had every interest in weakening the baronage, proceeded to the Capitol, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... an Irish country squire, who used, with hardly any means, to give entertainments to the militia, &c., in his neighborhood; and when a friend expostulated with him, on the extravagance of giving claret to these fellows, when whiskey punch would do just as well, he answered, "You are very right, my dear friend; but I have the claret on tick, and where the devil would I get credit for the lemons?" Douglas mentioned the story ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... of the coming of Christ in glory and majesty, it will doubtless appear an extravagance to name the Jews, or to take them into consideration; for, according to those ideas, they should hardly have the least ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... I am. I should not degrade science in the highways, for the crowd is not worthy of the doctrine, the crowd being nothing better than a confused mixture of all sorts of ages, sexes, humours, and conditions, that wise men of all periods have not hesitated to despise, and whose extravagance and passion the most moderate men in their justice detest. Oh, I am weary of existence! After all, one does not live long! The human life is soon done with. But no—it is long. At intervals, that we should not become too discouraged, that we may have the stupidity to consent to bear ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... serve its purpose of impressing a great idea of our revolutionary orators on the popular mind—to reach which mind a certain extravagance of statement and description is now considered necessary. The glowing mode of writing history and biography is, doubtless, better than the dry and dead mode, but a medium between the two, combining life and movement with accuracy and discrimination, is better still. However, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various

... disparage your family?' — Then, snatching the bank note out of the stranger's hand, she went on — 'How now, twenty pounds! — here is temptation with a witness! — Good-woman, go about your business — Brother, brother, I know not which most to admire; your concupissins, or your extravagance!' — 'Good God (exclaimed the poor woman) shall a worthy gentleman's character suffer for an action that does honour to humanity?' By this time, uncle's indignation was effectually roused. His face grew pale, his teeth chattered, and his eyes flashed — 'Sister (cried he, in a voice like ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... duke of Wharton having consumed his fortune in riot and extravagance, repaired to the court of Vienna, from whence he proceeded to Rome, and offered his service to the pretender. There he received the order of the garter, and the title of duke of Northumberland. He was sent by the chevalier ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... they are made in, of any that have ever been imported; it is indeed a fortunate circumstance, that out of near forty thousand suits so few have been intercepted. As Mr A. Lee, in his letters, has insinuated that the contracts for these clothes were made entirely by me, and has charged me with great extravagance in them, I beg leave to inform Congress, that these suits complete, and delivered on board, do not cost, on an average, thirtysix livres, or thirtyone shillings and sixpence sterling the suit. I labored hard ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various

... is politeness; dissipation, life; and levity, spirit. The miserable and contemptible drudge of every tawdry innovation in dress or ceremony, she incessantly mistakes extravagance for taste, and ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... ministre d'etat to the commis, who did not think of making himself amends for the fatigues of the morning by a petit souper: these petits soupers, however, were, in latter times, carried to an excessive pitch of luxurious extravagance. But for refinements attempted in luxury, though, I confess, of a somewhat dissolute nature, our countryman eclipsed all the French bons vivans in ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... weak, trustful, and a little vain. He loved to throw dust in people's eyes, and easily confounded "seeming" and "being." He spent recklessly, though his extravagance, moderated by fits of remorse as the result of the age-old habit of economy—(he would fling away pounds, and haggle over a farthing)—never seriously impaired his capital. He was not very cautious in business either. He never refused to lend money to his friends: and it was not difficult ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... above all words of praise; all extravagance of expression is silenced before her simplicity. Hers is the beauty of symmetrically developed womanhood; the perfect poise of her figure is not more marked than the perfect poise of her character. Not one false note, not one exaggerated ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll

... the impetuous spirits will have none of this cradling. Never any swaying or aimlessly lolling for them. Never any making believe, or lying cosily, or genially supposing that one is much like another, fire warm, wine pleasant, extravagance ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... above L40,000, and it is said his creditors will not get above three shillings in the pound. All the world allows him to have been diligent and industrious; but his misfortunes are ascribed to the extravagance of his wife, a very ordinary case in this city.' J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 64. He must soon have recovered his position, for Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 434) met Millar at Harrogate in 1763. In the inn were ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... ruined, and have fled to these places to hide their shame from their friends; some have adopted the life in order to avoid poverty, their means having been suddenly swept away; some have entered from motives of extravagance and vanity; some are married women, who have been unfaithful to their husbands, and who have been deserted in consequence; some have been ruined by the cruelty and neglect of their husbands; some, horrible as it may seem, have been forced into such a life by their parents; and, others, who constitute ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... piece of extravagance, and asked why he didn't buy a frail of dates, a cask of raisins, and a bag of almonds, and be done with it? Whereat Mr. Bhaer confiscated her purse, produced his own, and finished the marketing by buying several pounds of grapes, a pot of rosy daisies, and a pretty jar of honey, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... his family—a remark which has passed about ribaldly in town for a dozen years, though Mortimer Conklin never knew that he was the subject of a town joke. Once he rebuked a man in the barber shop for speaking of feminine extravagance, and told the shop that he did not stint his wife, that when she asked him for money he always gave it to her without question, and that if she wanted a dress he told her to buy it and send the bill to him. And we are such a polite people that no one in the ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... Billingsgate lexicon. He wound up by a reference to the ancestry of his opponent, and a suggestion that "this renegade Jew is descended from the impenitent thief, whose name was doubtless Disraeli." It was a home-thrust—a picture so exaggerated and overdrawn that all England laughed. The very extravagance of the simile should have saved the allusion from resentment; but it touched Disraeli in his most sensitive spot—his pride ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... in human life, there is none greater than that of extravagance, or profuseness; it being constant labour, without the least ease or relaxation. It bears, indeed, the colour of that which is commendable, and would fain be thought to take its rise from laudable motives, searching indefatigably after true felicity; now as there can be ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... will appear so wild and fantastic, as to leave anything but a pleasing impression. Those at the beginning, addressed to his friend Behrisch, were written at the age of eighteen, and most of the remainder were composed while he was still quite young. Despite, however, the extravagance of some of them, such as the Winter Journey over the Hartz Mountains, and the Wanderer's Storm-Song, nothing can be finer than the noble one entitled Mahomet's Song, and others, such as the Spirit Song' over ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... queen's or king's Good word, gives price to common things: That can your ruddy fingers hold Hangs lovelier there than purest gold; And, as the poor, grown rich by chance, Run raptured in extravagance, My fancy riots in the fields' Increasing wealth its charter yields: And at your lintel, by the bower Of vine leaves screening noonday heat; The grapes, that hang there small and sour, Are soft in bloom ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner

... which is more cruelly abused than the word 'luck.' To all the faults and failures of men, their positive sins and their less culpable shortcomings, it is made to stand a godfather and sponsor. Go talk with the bankrupt man of business, who has swamped his fortune by wild speculation, extravagance of living, or lack of energy, and you will find that he vindicates his wonderful self-love by confounding the steps which he took indiscreetly with those to which he was forced by 'circumstances,' and complacently regarding himself as the victim of ill-luck. Go visit the incarcerated ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... at once a labor of love and an extravagance of money cost, but it is believed that the reader will find in that feature ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... neighbors saw this general renovation, of the estate, which could not have been accomplished without considerable expenditure of time, money, and labor, they shook their heads in strong disapprobation, and predicted that that woman's extravagance would bring Herman Brudenell to ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... Apollo, inventors of Pasturage, Smithing, and Music. The Dragon which kept the golden apples was the serpent that beguiled Eve. Nimrod's tower was the attempt of the Giants against Heaven. There are doubtless many curious coincidences like these, but the theory cannot without extravagance be pushed so far as to account for any great proportion of ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... to the people. They are too great to be staged; and he quotes, mistaking the gigantic for the heroic, a story of Cuculain reeling round Ireland on his fairy steed the Liath Macha. This may be phantasy or extravagance, but it is not heroism. Cuculain is often heroic, but it is a quality of the soul and not of the body; it is shown by his tears over Ferdiad, in his gentleness to women. A more grandiose and heroic figure than Cuculain was seen on the Athenian stage; and no one will ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell

... changing moods of passion and tenderness, he must have been ready for any extravagance of conduct. Knowing the profound silence each night brought to that nook of the country, I could imagine them having the feeling of being the only two people on the wide earth. A row of six or seven lofty elms just across the road opposite the cottage made the night more ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... of Stavoren were well-to-do, and as their wealth increased they became luxurious and dissipated, each striving to outdo the others in the magnificence of their homes and the extravagance of ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... the West was evidently foreordained to play a part in the destinies of Blithelygo and myself, for during two years of travel he continuously crossed our path. His only becoming quality was his ample extravagance. Perhaps it was the bountiful impetus he gave to the commerce of Honolulu, and the fact that he talked of buying up a portion of one of the Islands for sugar-planting, that induced the King to be gracious to him. However that might be, when Blithelygo ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... gravity of a philosopher, in his "Essays," gives a "brief model of a princely palace;" and in our times Napoleon is known to have expended many thousands in restoring the gilding of the palace at Versailles—although the extravagance of its founders paved the way for the events in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 278, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various

... grown up together? Sometimes I think I am partly to blame for your extravagance. But a friend is a friend, or he ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... accused here of running to extravagance. It is not stated that all human brains are of equal power or can be developed to equal power. It is stated that all human brains of unusual power are brains that are well-nourished by the testicular secretions, and it is implied, with full understanding of what this statement ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower

... of religious extravagance, we next come upon excesses of Tenderness and Charity. Here saintliness has to face the charge of preserving the unfit, and breeding parasites and beggars. "Resist not evil," "Love your enemies," these are saintly maxims of which men of this world find ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... premises, regarding the necessity of the times—to devise a system of national currency which it proved to be impossible to keep on a par with the recognized currency of the civilized world. This begot a spirit of speculation involving an extravagance and luxury not required for the happiness or prosperity of a people, and involving, both directly and indirectly, foreign indebtedness. The currency, being of fluctuating value, and therefore unsafe to hold for legitimate transactions requiring money, became ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... seems to me to lean towards German idealism, which is no less fatal heresy. If men of imagination and good sense, like you, desert one camp only to join the other; if they cannot keep to the happy medium between two forms of extravagance, we shall always be exposed to the satire of the sophists, who deny all progress, who compare the genius of man to this tablecloth, which, being too short to cover the whole of Signor Giardini's table, decks one end at ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac

... be too much for you," said the elder sister, while Chatty dried her eyes. Minnie's eyes had no need of drying. She had cried at the right time, but it was little more than levity to be always crying. It was nearly as bad as enjoying anything. She did not like extravagance of ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... expressed high delight, but he soon became dissatisfied with the clean plain clothing in which he was dressed; boys of any rank at that time being absurdly decorated with ruffles and lace, and such like trumpery; and as if human folly had wished to caricature its own ridiculous extravagance, some of the children were even introduced into company ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous

... inwardly smiled more or less at my enthusiasm and extravagance, but his comments were all serious and kindly. He conceded the justice of much that I said, particularly as to the admirable resolution, tenacity, and breadth of character the Dutch had displayed always in ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... barren, extravagant, antinomian. It is the love which is incompatible with marriage, for the chevalier who never comes, of the serf for the chatelaine, of the rose for the nightingale, of Rudel for the Lady of Tripoli. Another element of extravagance came in with the feudal spirit: Provencal love is full of the very forms of vassalage. To be the servant of love, to have offended, to taste the subtle luxury of chastisement, of reconciliation—the religious spirit, too, knows that, and meets just there, as in Rousseau, ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... made me more than willing to accept Eveena's wish as a sufficient cause for forbearance. When we assembled at the morning meal Eunane appeared to be conscious of error; at all events, her manner and temper were changed. Watching her closely, I thought that neither shame for an outbreak of unwonted extravagance nor fear of my displeasure would account for her languor and depression. But illness is so rare among a race educated for countless generations on principles scientifically sound and sanitary, inheriting ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... a doctor. Extravagance in wartime! I won't. It's no good trying to make me. I'll come down if you like; I ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... took the trouble to interview them, would make it impossible for any decent person to believe the lies that have been told about our "not publishing accounts," our "extravagance," etc. They know how carefully even the smallest Corps book or collecting-card is examined, and with what precise and skilful method every ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

... artist tells her because he is an artist, not because he is a man of sense; and she encourages him to be more of an artist than a man of sense. She encourages him to be extravagantly aesthetic, and enjoys all his extravagance as a diversion from the sound masculinity of her own mankind. There is room in her prosperous, easy world for these diversions from business, just as there is room for charity or, perhaps, religion. ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock

... and never rose from it until the drop-scene fell, he had been able to sit through Nickleby and to see a kind of merit in some of the actors. Mr. Yates had a sufficiently humorous meaning in his wildest extravagance, and Mr. O. Smith could put into his queer angular oddities enough of a hard dry pathos, to conjure up shadows at least of Mantalini and Newman Noggs; of Ralph Nickleby there was indeed nothing visible save ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... Inouye, protested publicly and privately against the violent ways and rascalities of the new Japanese immigrants pouring into Korea. He denounced their lack of cooeperation, arrogance and extravagance. "If the Japanese continue in their arrogance and rudeness," he declared, "all respect and love due to them will be lost and there will remain hatred and enmity ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie

... describe which proclaimed him to be a gentlemen. All this the Doctor noted as he took the soft slim hand, and answered as briefly as he could the voluble speech of thanks which the young man tendered him, speaking in English less correct than Alexia's and with a certain extravagance of expression and manner which discomfited George Brudenell, and which he ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford

... is argued that it is not Avarice which is a vice, but extravagance, its opposite. Extravagance springs from a brutish limitation to the present moment, in comparison with which the future, existing as it does only in thought, is as nothing. It rests upon the illusion that sensual pleasures possess ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... the minds of our fellow-men as well as our own. Between people who exaggerate, good understanding ceases. Ruffled tempers, violent and useless disputes, hasty judgments devoid of all moderation, the utmost extravagance in education and social life—these things are the result ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... to be criminal in the present straitened condition of the country. His ordinary dinner consists of a head of cabbage, boiled in salt water, and a pone of corn bread. In this connection rather a comic story is told. Having invited a number of gentlemen to dine with him, Gen. Lee, in a fit of extravagance, ordered a sumptuous repast of cabbage and middling. The dinner was served: and, behold, a great pile of cabbage and a bit of middling about four inches long and two inches across! The guests, with commendable politeness, unanimously declined middling, and it ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... who was close to the door and heard the call, required no further bidding, but walked in with a perfectly unconcerned and cheerful air. It was this peculiar insouciance which angered Dr Stanhope, even more than his son's extravagance. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... maintained by them, and of their conduct, respecting the subject matter of difference with their quondam brethren, they refer to said vindication, for a more particular discovery of the error of their principle, and extravagance of their conduct in this matter. And particularly, they testify against the more avowed apostasy of some of these brethren, who are not ashamed to declare their backslidings in the streets, and publish them upon ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery

... and talking of national and even international affairs, as familiarly as neighbors at home talk of poor crops and the extravagance of their ministers, was likely at first to impose upon Philip as to the importance of the people ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... comes the audacious giver!" cried Modeste, as Canalis rode up. "It is only a poet who knows where to find such choice things. Monsieur," she said to Melchior, "my father will scold you, and say that you justify those who accuse you of extravagance." ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... Fanny's sofa when she returned from her rambles through the city, and gave a sufficiently strict account of what had happened. This was done light-heartedly and with touches of burlesque and extravagance at first; but the reports grew presently to have a more serious tone, and latterly Kitty had been so absent at times that she would fall into a puzzled silence in the midst of her narration; or ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... green sea that surrounds Rome, the Campagna Mystica. On one day Mr. Browning met "Hatty" Hosmer on the Spanish Steps, and said to her: "Next Saturday Ba and I are going to Albano on a picnic till Monday, and you and Leighton are to go with us." "Why this extravagance?" laughingly questioned Miss Hosmer. "On account of a cheque, a buona grazia, that Ticknor and Fields of Boston have sent—one they were not in the least obliged ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... by butchers and cooks in the meanest employments; we do not immediately conceive that any crime of importance is to be committed with a knife." In the third place, although to wish to elude the eye of Providence is "the utmost extravagance of determined wickedness," yet even this great conception is debased by two unfortunate words when the avengers of guilt are made to peep through ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... of a Chinaman was there the trait of commercial fraud that assailed our American cities in 1879. It got into our food finally—the very bread we ate was proven to be an adulteration of impure stuff. What an extravagance of imagination had crept into our daily life! We pretended even to eat what we knew we were not eating. Except for the reminder which old books written in byegone simpler days gave us, we should have insisted that the ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... been seldom disappointed by the want of money or credit; my pride was never insulted by the visit of an importunate tradesman; and my transient anxiety for the past or future has been dispelled by the studious or social occupation of the present hour. My conscience does not accuse me of any act of extravagance or injustice, and the remnant of my estate affords an ample and honourable provision for my declining age. I shall not expatiate on my oeconomical affairs, which cannot be instructive or amusing to the reader. It is a rule of prudence, as well as of politeness, ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon

... reader, thou hast already discovered Paul; and now we have to delight thee with a piece of unexampled morality in the excellent MacGrawler. That worthy Mentor, perceiving that there was an inherent turn for dissipation and extravagance in our hero, resolved magnanimously rather to bring upon himself the sins of treachery and malappropriation than suffer his friend and former pupil to incur those of wastefulness and profusion. Contrary therefore to the agreement made with Paul, instead of giving that youth ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... as the leader of an efficient machine endeavoring to readjust the State debt by compelling its creditors to share in the loss caused by the expensive internal improvement policy, the misfortunes of the Civil War and the extravagance of the Reconstruction period. It was in line with the general effort to readjust the economic and social policies of the entire country. It appealed to the people for the reason that unlike radicalism it was not obstructive of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... that I would worship him as the Indians do the Devil, for fear-he should hurt you: tempt you I find he will not. He is so avaricious, that I believe, if you asked for a fish, he would think it even extravagance to give you a stone: in these bad times, stones may come to be dear, and if he loses his place and his lawsuit, who knows but he may be reduced to turn paviour? Oh! the brute! and how shocking, that, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... it for him, but would have secured him from it. Those who made him a zemindar entailed upon him the consequences of so mean and depraved a tenure. Aliverdy Khan and Cossim Ali fined all their zemindars on the necessities of war, and on every pretence either of court necessity or court extravagance." ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... pink-globed lamp on her table and the mellow light fell over merry faces as the girls chatted about their gifts. On the table was a big white box heaped with roses that betokened a bit of Christmas extravagance on somebody's part. Jean's brother had sent them to her from Montreal, and all the girls were enjoying ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... was very particular not to encourage untidyness or extravagance among the Court ladies. On one occasion she told me to open a parcel which was lying in her room. I was about to cut the string when Her Majesty stopped me and told me to untie it. This I managed to do after a lot of trouble, and ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling

... self-command, and spoke certain words for which he never quite forgave himself. No doubt the blow was a heavy one, and he realized immediately all that it implied. But he did not foresee the effect of the harsh and bitter words which he flung at his father and sister, charging them with reckless extravagance, and declaring that their selfishness had ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... little too tall nor a little too short but exactly six feet high. We in Ireland thought as do the plays and ballads, not understanding that, from the first moment wherein nature foresaw the birth of Bastien-Lepage, she has only granted great creative power to men whose faces are contorted with extravagance or curiosity or ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats

... mulberry into France, and so rigid was his justice that poultry ran about the open fields without risk of pillage from his soldiers. It was the accrued wealth of his reign, and the love inspired by "Louis, father of his people,"[101] that supported the magnificence, the luxury and the extravagance of Francis I. The architectural creations of the new style were first seen in Touraine, in the royal palaces of Blois and Chambord, and other princely and noble chateaux along the luscious and sunny valleys of the Loire. Italian architecture ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey



Words linked to "Extravagance" :   extravagant, dissipation, wastefulness, shortsightedness, waste, excess, extravagancy, excessiveness, improvidence, inordinateness



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