"Extravagant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... regarding the Turkish Convention, that, possibly it was necessary to sustain the credit of the country, but whether that credit should be sustained at such a price remained for the people to determine at the polls. He rejoiced that these most unwise, extravagant, unwarrantable, unconstitutional and dangerous proceedings had not been the work of the Liberal party, but he was grieved to think that any party should be found in England ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... expect an affirmative reply to this question, I fear no censure in saying that the evening passed on Doctor Dastick's piazza made me feel there was a possibility of social intercourse resembling the extravagant spirituality of the mystics, when the soul bounds to the height of joyful knowledge, and without process or medium ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... merely literal possibilities of which have been so little developed as the full faith and credit clause. Congress has the power under the clause to decree the effect that the statutes of one State shall have in other States. This being so, it does not seem extravagant to argue that Congress may under the clause describe a certain type of divorce and say that it shall be granted recognition throughout the Union, and that no other kind shall. Or to speak in more general terms, ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... during the siege of Troy (this is generally considered spurious). According to Alcidamas, the highest aim of the orator was the power of speaking extempore on every conceivable subject. Aristotle (Rhet. iii. 3) criticizes his writings as characterized by pomposity of style and an extravagant use of poetical epithets and compounds and far-fetched metaphors. Of other works only fragments and the titles have survived: Messeniakos, advocating the freedom of the Messenians and containing the sentiment that "all are by nature free''; a Eulogy of Death, in consideration of the wide extent ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... her baby," said Aunt E.; "so plump, so rosy, and good-natured, and always clean as a lily. This baby is a sort of household shrine; nothing is too sacred or too good for it; and I believe the little thrifty woman feels only one temptation to be extravagant, and that is to get some ornaments ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... that may be, no other course is possible; for the history of Adam and Eve or the blessing of Jacob cannot be explained, unless one takes a stand for or against Christianity. It was not difficult to refute Christian doctrines; Rashi could easily dispose of the stupid or extravagant inventions of Christian exegesis. Sometimes he does not name the adversaries against whom he aimed; sometimes he openly says he has in view the Minim or "Sectaries," that is, the Christians. The Church, it is well ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... adequately to express the impression made upon my mind by my various conversations with Mr. Darwin. His extreme modesty led him to form the lowest estimate of his own labours, and a correspondingly extravagant idea of the value of the work done by others. His deference to the arguments and suggestions of men greatly his juniors, and his unaffected sympathy in their pursuits, was most marked and characteristic; indeed, he, the great master of ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... appeared in a morning-gown, still acting the madman, and carried it so far now, as to address himself to all the posts in the streets, as if they were saints, lifting up his hands and eyes in a fervent though distracted manner to heaven, and making use of so many extravagant gestures, that he astonished the whole city. Going through Castle-street, he met the Rev. Mr. B—-c, a minister of that place, whom he accosted with his arms thrown round him; and insisted, in a raving manner, he should tell ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... the law, it appears, are silently presupposed without being mentioned beforehand, it being of course assumed that the readers would know all about them from the old tradition. The outside of the ark, however, is furnished in the most extravagant style, and with a splendour which other descriptions of the chest of acacia-wood are far from suggesting. The ark in the Priestly Code differs indeed in every way from the appearance of it in 1Kings vii. 23 seq. We are reminded of the Haggada by the covering which Moses ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... But I am afraid there is more blood than brains." Yet he afterwards said, "When I heard you read it, I thought higher of its power of language: when I read it myself, I was more sensible of its pathetick effect;" and then he paid it a compliment which many will think very extravagant. "Sir, (said he,) if Otway had written this play, no other of his pieces would have been remembered." Dodsley himself, upon this being repeated to him, said, "It was too much:" it must be remembered, that ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... sophomore years. The latter part of my second year I didn't take him out enough to exercise him. So I ordered him sent home. He is a beauty. Jet black with a three-cornered white spot in the middle of his forehead. He's an Arabian, and Father paid an extravagant price for him. He shakes hands and does ever so many tricks that I taught him. When you go home with ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... was there any hope you would do so." His countenance fell. I requested your freedom. "Impossible," he said;—"your importance, as a friend and confidant of such and such personages, made my request altogether extravagant." I told him my own story and yours and asked him to judge what my feelings must be by his own. He has a heart, and a kind one, Colonel Talbot, you may say what you please. He took a sheet of paper, and wrote the pass with his own hand. "I will not-trust myself with my council," ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... he is damnably extravagant; I think the sly dog does it out of malice. How ever, it must be owned that he reflects credit on his loyal subjects, and makes a very pretty figure in his fine ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... good to you. You will never be vexed, you will never desire anything, you will never fear anything. What will Zeno say? He says that all these ideas are monstrous, and that it is totally impossible for any one to live on these principles; but that there is some extravagant, some immense difference between what is honourable and what is base; that between other things, indeed, there is no difference at all. He will also say—(listen to what follows, and do not laugh, if you can help it)—all those intermediate ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... land of magic and alluring mystery which spread out before them in such gorgeous panorama, they plunged into the glittering waters with waving swords and pennants, with shouts of praise and joy upon their lips, and inaugurated that series of prodigious enterprise, extravagant deeds of hardihood, and tremendous feats of prowess which still remain unsurpassed in the annals of history for brilliancy, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... what places to venture into, and what to escape." I waked with this thought, and was under such inexpressible impressions of joy at the prospect of my escape in my dream, that the disappointments which I felt upon coming to myself, and finding it was no more than a dream, were equally extravagant the other way, and threw me into a very ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... in jurisprudence at Heidelberg, and had recently become an officer, as during his year of military service he had lost all taste for legal science. He bore his academic honours with that dignity which often accompanies the unusual; he was considered extremely up-to-date, and at times rather extravagant in his opinions. Among his friends were two officers still very young, one of whom was always reading Prevost and Maupassant; and the other blushingly acknowledged himself to be the author of an ode, printed in a daily newspaper, welcoming ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... Browning was in the habit of using rather extravagant language herself: and she has certainly been the victim of language extravagant enough both in praise (the more damaging of the two) and blame from others. FitzGerald's unlucky exaggeration (see Introduction) in one way may be set off by such opposite assertions as that ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... some little defects in her personal appearance, but he was long past that now; what did such trifles matter, here or there? Then he remembered all that he had heard said about American women. Did those pretty clothes of hers mean that she would be extravagant and selfish to obtain them? Could a young man with no great fortune offer her the luxury that was necessary to her? and even so, what changes come with time! He had a full realization of what the boredom of family life can be, ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... or promote religious teachers because of their unbridled or steady lives; and that the religious have come to lose respect, by their deeds, for the alcaldes-mayor, and pay no attention to the royal jurisdiction and patronage—especially the Augustinians who are more extravagant than the others. They are entirely masters of the wills of the Indians, and give out that in them consists the quietness or disobedience of the Indians. Inasmuch as the alcalde-mayor of Bayaban tried to moderate the excesses that were being committed, the religious entered his house, attacked ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... French currency. An American correspondent in the paper attacked these attacks on the ground that they were inspired by British Imperialism! Chesterton felt it a little hard to be at this date confused with Kipling. He replied that his correspondent committed "the blunder of an extravagant and excessive admiration for England." He ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... northern lady, while visiting the orange groves of Florida, becomes enchanted with the Nonpareil in his wild state, and some shrewd and wily negro, hearing her expressions of delight, easily procures one, and disposes of it to her at an extravagant price. ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [January, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... begets a son who is as richly endowed as himself, and still more so if he has a son who is endowed yet more largely. But the law is evenhanded; it levies an equal succession-tax on the transmission of badness as of goodness. If it discourages the extravagant hopes of a gifted parent that his children on the average will inherit all his powers, it not less discountenances extravagant fears that they will inherit all ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... healthful and effective antidote for the evils of an extravagant passion is to call into action neutralizing or supplementary passions; to balance the excess of one power by stimulating weaker powers, and fixing attention on them; to assuage disappointments in one direction by ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... surely an authorial topic. The absurdly extravagant profusion in which thousands of pounds are now being continually flung away in advertising, is one which was never approved by me, and as long as my books remained in print, at my suggestion they all got sold without it. At ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... complaining when it borders upon murmuring. He used to say that those who thus complained sinned, because our self-love always magnifies unduly any wrongs done to ourselves, weighing them in the most deceitful of balances, and applying the most extravagant epithets to things which if done by us to others we should pass over as not worth ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... little danseuse with the whim to be romantically rustic for a week? or is she somebody else's pretty wife run away with somebody else's man? or is she some naughty little grisette with an extravagant lover? or is she just the usual lady landscape artist, with a more than ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... are a fool! Do you think I would take a stranger into my house, to have him always at my table, upsetting all my domestic arrangements, for nothing? You ought to know me better. Fortunately for you, with your pride and extravagant ideas, I am here to look after affairs, and hitherto, thank God, I have been quite capable of doing so! I only consulted you on the matter because I wanted to know what chance there was of your making yourself agreeable to the young man, as I cannot ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... For three whole days I found myself unable to raise my eyes to his, but blushed always to the point of weeping. The strangest and most confused of thoughts kept entering my brain. One of them— the most extravagant—was that I should dearly like to go to Pokrovski, and to explain to him the situation, and to make full confession, and to tell him everything without concealment, and to assure him that I had not acted foolishly as a minx, but honestly ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... perception that they have changed, simply because a new meaning has been gradually insinuated into the sacred formulae. Scientific habits of thought, I venture to suggest, would tend to free a man from the dominion of these abstract phrases, which sometimes make men push absolute dogmas to extravagant results, and sometimes blind them to the complete transformation which has taken place in their true meaning. The great test of statesmanship, it is said, is the knowledge how and when to make a compromise, and ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... My partner took everything easy, but I, having no indulgent parent behind me ever ready to draw a check, began to be uneasy over the financial situation. Strangely enough, however, it never occurred to me to cut down my personal expenses, and I continued living at the same extravagant rate as when money was plenty—dining and wining and being dined and wined. Just here an important character, one destined to have an influence for evil on my future life, came upon the scene, and I will ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... for the chorus, it is not saying any thing extravagant when I make the assertion, that it has never been excelled by that of any of the professional opera-troupes which ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... (IV) Conditions of Salary.—As regards conditions of Salary, the pay should be moderately high, but not extravagant, and settled once for all under some simple and well-defined rules. It is not only very humiliating but degrading to a true scholar to be scrambling for money. The difference between the pay of the higher and ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... frequent intervals to admire some forest giant dressed in vivid scarlet blossoms instead of leaves, or another thickly festooned with trailing creepers gorgeous with blooms of marvellous form and most extravagant hue, or a graceful clump of bamboo, soaring like gigantic plumes of feathers a hundred feet into the heat-palpitating air. Frequently, too, they halted to watch the motions of some tiny humming-bird hovering like a living gem over ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... it be clearly understood that she couldn't afford sherry. But when she gave a tea-party, as she did, perhaps, six or seven times a year, sherry was always handed round with cake before the people went away. There were matters in which she was extravagant. When she went out herself she never took one of the common street flies, but paid eighteen pence extra to get a brougham from the Dragon. And when Mary Lowther,—who had only fifty pounds a year of her own, with which she clothed herself and provided herself with pocket-money,—was going ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... the Place appointed; only, as had been stipulated, attended with a small Party of Horse. When they were met, the Earl first offer'd all he could to engage Mahoni to the Interest of King Charles; proposing some Things extravagant enough (as Mahoni himself some time after told me) to stagger the Faith of a Catholick; but all to little Purpose: Mahoni was inflexible, which oblig'd the Earl to ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... have come from afar to thee to ask a favour, for which thou wilt deserve the best guerdon I can make to thee; and I believe that thou wilt yet have need of my assistance." And he replies: "Tell me what it is you wish; and if I have it, you shall have it at once, provided it be not something extravagant." Then she says: "It is the head of the knight whom thou hast just defeated; in truth, thou hast never dealt with such a wicked and faithless man. Thou wilt be committing no sin or wrong, but rather doing a deed of charity, for he is the basest creature ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... And a little later: "It cannot be told how it thrills me with joy to hear you say you are far happier than you ever expected to be. I know you too well to suppose your expectations were not at least sometimes extravagant, and if the reality exceeds them all, I say, 'Enough, dear Lord.'" And here follows what might perhaps have been foreseen: "Your last letter gave me more pleasure than the total sum of all that I have ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... something like the implicit credulity of Anthonio; but the arts of the preceptors are quickly suspected by their subjects, and the charm is for ever reversed. When once a child detects you in falsehood, you lose his confidence; his incredulity will then be as extravagant as his former belief was gratuitous. It is in vain to expect, by the most eloquent manifestoes, or by the most secret leagues offensive and defensive, to conceal your real views, sentiments, and actions, from children. Their interest keeps their attention continually ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... better known in history as John of Leiden, was now supreme. Giving himself out as the successor of David, he claimed royal honours and absolute power in the new "Zion.'' He justified the most arbitrary and extravagant measures by the authority of visions from heaven, as others have done in similar circumstances. With this pretended sanction he legalized polygamy, and himself took four wives, one of whom he beheaded with his own hand in the market-place in a fit of frenzy. As a natural ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... used the statement: "England's claim for the domination of the sea, and therein for the domination of the world, remains a great danger to the peace of the world." To this view I adhere firmly. Let us take it for granted that the most extravagant hopes of our most reckless dreamers are fulfilled, that England is crowded out of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, and is involved in a long-lasting war with the native Indians. An impossibly large dose of political naivete is needed in order to make ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... no conqueror's flapping eagles! Government! Honour the instrument by which we rule ourselves; but worship not a mechanical device, and call not a means an end! Admirable means, but oh, the sorry end! Therefore we'll have no usurping Praetorian, no juggling sophist, no bailiff extravagant and unjust, no spendthrift squandering on idleness that which would pay just debts! A ruler! There's no halo about a ruler's head. The people—the people are the sacred thing, for they are the seed whence the future is to spring. He who betrays his trust, which is to guard the seed,—what ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... thoughtful. "I don't know, Stephen. We're short of money, you know, and the fund is dwindling every day. Don't you think it's a little extravagant to have a turkey for two people? And somehow I don't feel a bit Christmassy. I think I'd rather spend it just like any other day and try to forget that it is Christmas. Everything would ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the election of a president, and Mr. Wingfield was chosen. But, under frivolous pretexts, they excluded from his seat among them, John Smith, one of the most extraordinary men of his age, whose courage and talents had excited their envy. During the passage, he had been imprisoned on the extravagant charge of intending to murder the council, usurp the government, and ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... if he had told the truth or suffered it to be told. And twenty years afterwards, when the villain was dead, the hero still resolutely refused to clear his own character, lest the villain's widow should learn the truth about her wholly unlamented husband. This was an extravagant and childish case; but the superstition of heroic self-sacrifice still lingers in certain quarters, and cannot be too soon eradicated. I do not mean, of course, that self-sacrifice is never admirable, but only that it can no longer be accepted as a thing inherently noble, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... defence. The debate grew hotter when James made the first Declaration of Indulgence in April 1687. Payne was one of the chief controversialists in the war of words that followed. Another literary friend of these years, and an extravagant admirer of his devotion to the Stuarts, was Aphra Behn. She dedicated her Fair Jilt to Payne in 1688 in terms which suggest that he had favored ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... with de Coligny, which was an abandonment of her cold philosophy for a passionate attachment she thought would endure forever, Ninon cast aside all that element in love which is connected with passion and extravagant sentiment, and adhered to her philosophical understanding of it, and kept it in its proper place in the category of natural appetites. To illustrate her freedom from passionate attachments in the distribution of her favors, the case of her friend Scarron will give an insight ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... blond hair; by his secretively veiled eyes; by his large, somewhat fleshy nose, not particularly high in the bridge; by the weakness and looseness of his mouth, and the small and retreating contour of his chin, and by other important indications, that he was selfish by nature, grasping, extravagant, too hopeful, too optimistic, too fond of money, too self-indulgent; that he lacked conscientiousness; that he lacked caution; that he lacked foresight; that he lacked any very keen sense of distinction between ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... of body, talents, habits of business, in the consideration that you have time yet to retrieve everything, and a knowledge that the very activity necessary for this, is a state of greater happiness than the unoccupied one, to which you had a thought of retiring. I wish the bulk of my extravagant countrymen had as good prospects and resources as you. But with many of them, a feebleness of mind makes them afraid to probe the true state of their affairs, and procrastinate the reformation which alone can save something, to those who may yet be ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... triumph, is a very remarkable thing, when we consider how little of mind, or anything so worthy and quickening as mind, comes into the motives which alone, in general, impel great masses of men. In spite of the extravagant direction given to this enthusiasm, in spite of the crimes and follies in which it lost itself, the French Revolution derives from the force, truth, and universality of the ideas which it took for its law, and ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... middle-class", it is often said; "what shallowness and pretense among the women; how they shrink from the responsibility of motherhood; how they spend their days in idle gossip, in hollow amusements; how they waste their hours in frivolities; see what extravagant, unhallowed lives they lead". Sad and true enough! For there is no aristocracy so pernicious as a moneyed aristocracy—no woman so dangerous as she who has privileges and no corresponding duties. There is nothing so wasteful as wasted energies, nothing so harmful as powers ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... unsurpassed for rich humour and caustic wit, clothed in good old idiomatic English, has a chapter "on the strange names of these devils," in which he observes, (p. 46,) "It is not amiss that you be acquainted with these extravagant names of devils, least meeting them otherwise by chance you mistake them for the names of tapsters, or juglers." Certainly, some of the names he marshalls in array smell strongly of the tavern. These ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... "would be denounced as forced and extravagant. It would amuse the thoughtful and intelligent, but from a business point of view that portion of the public are never worth considering. But I have an idea," continued the manager. He glanced round the room to be sure they ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... course, like every doctrine worth anything, was pushed to extravagant lengths, and {241} thrust into inappropriate quarters, by foolish doctrinaires. As that the wise man is the only orator, critic, poet, physician, nay, cobbler if you please; that the wise man knows all that is to be known, and can do everything that is worth doing, ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... cup-bearer asked Philotas, who had been far from taking the gift seriously, to receive his property. Antyllus had intended to bestow the goblets; but he advised the youth to let him pay their value in money, for among them were several ancient pieces of most artistic workmanship, which Antony, the extravagant young fellow's father, might perhaps be unwilling ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... which, though of course purely accidental, will all be, somehow, to the Dominica's advantage, and not to yours. If you are in moderate circumstances, order eight or ten dollars' worth; if affluent, twenty or thirty dollars' worth; if rash and extravagant, you may rise even to sixty dollars; but you will find in such an outlay food for repentance. One word in your ear: do not buy the syrups, for they are made with very bad sugar, and have no savor of the fruits ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... that Minette should be present at every supper party or little fete among the students, always being placed in the seat of honor at the head of the table, and joining in all the fun of those merry reunions. For a time she treated all alike as comrades, and accepted no compliments save those so extravagant as to provoke general laughter. Gradually, however, it came to be understood among the students that Minette made an exception in the case of Arnold Dampierre, and that on occasions when they happened to break up in pairs he ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... it," returned Fenton, becoming more animated from the pleasure of defending an extravagant position. "What is the object of art but to perpetuate and idealize the emotions of the race; and how does it touch men, except by flattering their vanity with the assumption that they individually share the grand passions ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... expensive food. For instance, milk is very often served as a beverage in a meal in which the quantity of meat or other protein foods is not reduced. From an economical standpoint, as well as from the point of view of the needs of the body, this is really extravagant, for milk is itself largely a protein food. The serving of a glass of milk or of a dish that contains generous quantities of milk offers the housewife an opportunity to cut down considerably the allowance of meat and ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... was the influence of these rays; I know not. Nervous persons are especially subject to their vibrations, and when sitting before an open wood fire, highly productive of this subtle chemicalization, the victims become drowsy and fall easily into the mood of the most extravagant speaker. Minor operations, under which head we may include the extraction of a tooth or a bank balance, are then simple, if the operator be calm and skillful in the handling of his instruments—often mere words, but powerful ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... The extravagant vagaries in the fashions of dressing the hair formed a tempting point for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to come down upon, and the tax in the form of "hair-powder certificates," at the rate of ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... than ever pointed out his excellences to her sons, contrasting his sterling qualities with Harry's love of pleasure and George's listless musing over his books. George was not disposed to like Mr. Washington any better for his mother's extravagant praises. He coaxed the jealous demon within him until he must have become a perfect pest to himself and all his friends round about him. He uttered jokes so deep that his simple mother did not know their meaning, but sat ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... because I was called in about poor Mrs. Pendennis's will," Mr. Archer replied. "Pendennis's uncle, the major, seldom does any thing without me; and as he is likely to be extravagant we've tied up the property, so that he can't make ducks and drakes with it. How do you do, my Lord?—Do you know that gentleman, ladies? You have read his speeches in the ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of her eye hath distemperd the other sences: they may returne and settle againe to execute their preordaind faculties, but they are now in a most extravagant vagary. This you must doe: Confine her to a place, where the light may rather seeme to steale in, then be permitted; take vpon you (yong Sir, her friend) the name of Palamon; say you come to eate with her, and to commune of Love; this will catch her attention, for ...
— The Two Noble Kinsmen • William Shakespeare and John Fletcher [Apocrypha]
... preached the Gospel of Christ, and suffer wives and children to starve because the head of the household has a conscience. I see a king careless of the welfare of his people, and the honour and glory of his reign; affecting to be a patriot, and a man of business, on the strength of an extravagant fancy for shipbuilding; careless of everything save the empty pleasure of an idle hour. A king who lavishes thousands upon wantons and profligates, and who ever gives not to the most worthy, but ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... that the purest reason is but the effect of the blindest of all causes in such a subject as matter, which of itself is altogether incapable of knowledge! Certainly there is nothing a man of sense would not admit rather than so extravagant and absurd an opinion. ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... or Bill was circling around and around in ever-deepening gloom with one's elected for the night. Nancy had permanently impressed herself upon the imagination of discerning Woodbridge youth, and it was hardly extravagant that Tom should look forward ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... are so relaxed, the pressing peril of the hour so completely confounds all the faculties, that no future danger can be properly provided for, can be justly estimated, can be so much as fully seen. The eye of the mind is dazzled and vanquished. An abject distrust of ourselves, an extravagant admiration of the enemy, present us with no hope but in a compromise with his pride, by a submission to his will. This short plan of policy is the only counsel which will obtain a hearing. We plunge into a dark gulf ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... The federal party seemed to sigh for a war with France. Pretending that they apprehended a French invasion, a large standing army was raised. At the head of this army, second in command to General Washington, was placed General Alexander Hamilton. To support the army and other useless extravagant expenditures, a land tax and an eight per cent. loan was found necessary. To silence the murmurs of an oppressed people, a sedition law was enacted. Such were some of the fruits of the elder ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... eat off a puncheon when we first came to these parts," said Mr. Lincoln. "We had no beds, and we slept on a floor of pounded clay. My new wife brought all of this grand furniture to me. That beereau looks extravagant—now don't it?—for poor folks, too. I sometimes think that she ought to sell it. I am told that in a city place it would be worth as ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... story is not precise, generally, as to facts and dates. The exact time when this occurrence took place we know not; but it is more than probable that some dark transaction of this nature was here perpetrated. The prevailing tradition warrants our belief. However fanciful and extravagant the filling up of the picture, common rumour still preserves untouched the general outline. It is said that, sometime about the thirteenth or fourteenth century, a wicked uncle destroyed the lawful heirs ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... this kind, Jomini advanced rapidly to the rank of colonel and brigadier-general, and at the resumption of hostilities in 1813 was chief-of-staff to Marshal Ney. Seduced, however, by the extravagant promises made by the Russians, he deserted, in possession of much information about Napoleon's plans of campaign. It was fear that on hearing of this defection Napoleon would change these plans, that induced the allies to commence hostilities two days ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... South Sea Islanders, it is useless to go to Greenland; we might also confess a partiality for pate, and a tenderness for truffes, and acknowledge that, considering our single absence would not put down extravagant, pompous parties, we were not strong enough to let the morsels drop into unappreciating mouths; or we might say, that if a man invited us to see his new house, it would not be ungracious nor insulting ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... young men in Paris. He had experienced much difficulty in complying with his son's last request, and became painfully aware that it would not much longer be in his power to supply him at the same extravagant rate. As a natural consequence, he hailed the proposition to travel, which might break off any unfortunate connections, or liaisons, he might have formed in Paris, and without their aid, divert his troubled mind. Then, the present would be a favorable opportunity for Maurice to visit ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... preparations, being able to hold Johannesburg for a couple of days against any force the Boers could bring.[13] Nor in the light of what happened, during the war, both at Mafeking and Kimberley, can this expectation be thought extravagant. Here his responsibilities would have ended. The High Commissioner and the Imperial Government would have done the rest. To indulge in metaphor, the Imperial locomotive was to be set going, but the lines on which it was to run were those ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... The extravagant slaughter which he chronicles bears little comparison to the hunts in which others engaged. The cruel and wanton destruction of the bison takes its place in history with the more fierce and relentless persecution which ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... was the fellow burning a light at that hour? An unacknowledged uneasiness took possession of him and drove him forward. People seemed to do all manner of extravagant things in this fantastic country that they would never have dreamed of doing in homely old England. There must be something electric in the atmosphere that penetrated the veins. Even he had been aware of it now and then, a strange and potent ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... is not indiscreet, may I ask what you mean to do with me?" The insolence and irony of the tone stung through the words. The Duchess quite believed that she read extravagant love in Montriveau's speech. He had carried her off; was not that in itself ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... the life of Mme. de Lambert. She was born in 1647, and, in spite of the unfavorable surroundings of her youth and of a dissolute, extravagant, and unrefined mother, the observance of decorum and honor became the actuating principle of her life. Until her marriage (in 1666) to Henri de Lambert, Marquis de Bris en Auxerrois, she was in the midst of the grossest licentiousness and freedom of manners; when married, she entered ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... down, a little uneasy. The young fellow was such a good fellow; and yet he might have got into a scrape of some sort. Debt, perhaps, for he was a trifle extravagant; but then life had been all roses to him. He had never known a ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... not argue with the extravagant hypothesis of my friend. In the opinion even of Goethe, who was not troubled with credulity, the human race can never attain to anything higher than Christianity—if we mean by Christianity the religion which was revealed to the world in the teaching and the life of its Founder. But even ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... its terrors to gain its raptures? Ah, what raptures they were! The mere recollection thrills you. How delicious it was to tell her that you loved her, that you lived for her, that you would die for her! How you did rave, to be sure, what floods of extravagant nonsense you poured forth, and oh, how cruel it was of her to pretend not to believe you! In what awe you stood of her! How miserable you were when you had offended her! And yet, how pleasant to be bullied by her and to sue for pardon without having the slightest notion of what your ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... seclusion of the Y.M.C.A. Here I witnessed a checker contest of a low order between two unscrupulous brothers. They had a peculiar technique completely their own. It consisted of arts and dodges and an extravagant use of those adjectives one is commonly supposed ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... the teacher should feel delight in the music, the expression, the emotion, till he is eager to communicate his feelings to the pupils. This enthusiasm, however, should not have in it any insincerity, or extravagant commendation of the poem or the author. The teacher who has wide information and genuine interest in his work will seldom fail to arouse a real pleasure in the ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... be proven to the satisfaction of the Commission, that any due and proper measure of economy, to which the attention of the officers was called in writing has been wilfully neglected, or that any uncalled for and manifestly extravagant expenditures have been entered into during that time, then it shall be the duty of the Commission to lower the rates. If it shall be found that for one year the net earnings have been less than 31/2 per cent., and for two years less than 41/2 per ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... department of sorrow is very much alike. Some can hide their wounds better than others—that is the sole difference. There are amongst these headsmen cold impenetrable natures, hearts closed against the world, whom it is very difficult to get at. And then again there are devil-may-care, extravagant, passionate dispositions who fancy they can find oblivion in wine, excitement, and other external delights. And then, too, there are defiant, haughty souls, who mock and jeer at those things which ordinary people are afraid of—but ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... region was composed of Germans, attracted to this country from the Palatinate. Lured on by the highly colored stories of the commercial agents for promoting immigration—the "newlanders," who were thoroughly unscrupulous in their methods and extravagant in their representations—a migration from Germany began in the second decade of the eighteenth century and quickly assumed alarming proportions. Although certain of the emigrants were well-to-do, a very great number were "redemptioners" (indentured servants), who ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... these, perhaps, may be added the blowing a conch-shell, which produces a very loud sound. On hearing it, all his subjects are obliged to bring food of every sort to his royal residence, in proportion to their abilities. On some other occasions, they carry their veneration for his very name to an extravagant and very destructive pitch. For if, on his accession to the maro, any words in their language be found to have a resemblance to it in sound, they are changed for others; and if any man be bold enough not to comply, and continue to use those words, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... issue without serious blotches, he yet is free from pessimism. He has no nervous disorder, no "brain fag," he is no pagan, not even a nonbeliever, and has happily preserved his wholesomeness of thought; he is averse to exotic ideas, extravagant depiction, and inflammatory language. His novels and tales contain the essential qualities which attract and retain the reader. Some of his works in chronological order, omitting two or three novels, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... suburb of London. Here, he could walk by the very house in which Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe. But nothing could make up to Poe the loss of a mother and home training during those five critical years. The head master said that Poe was clever, but spoiled by "an extravagant amount of pocket money." The contrast between his school days and adult life should be noted. We shall never hear of his having too much money ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... America to Sir William Alexander was not long since brought before the public by the claims of his descendants. Large tracts of land were given away by Louis XIII., Louis XIV. and other French kings, by Oliver Cromwell and the Stuarts, and the same extravagant system of entailing unmanageable wealth on companies and individuals was continued ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... receive it, what hopes could he entertain of forcing the nation into that communion? Considering the state of the kingdom, full of veteran and zealous soldiers, bred during the civil wars, it is probable that he had not kept the crown two months after a declaration so wild and extravagant. This was probably the reason why the king of France and the French minister always dissuaded him from taking off the mask, till the successes of the Dutch war should render that measure ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... Louisiana, where he founded two more towns along the coast. But the colonists sent out by Louis were of the lowest. Many of them were little more than rogues and vagabonds. The mere off-scourings of the towns, they were idle and extravagant, and the colony ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... nor was this always accorded in the case of females, who remained at the disposal of their relatives. Good substantial wedded affection was not lacking, but romantic love was thought an unnecessary preliminary, and found a vent in extravagant adoration, not always in reputable quarters. Obedience first to the father, then to the husband, was the first requisite; love might shift for itself; and the fair widow of Adlerstein, telling her beads in sheer perplexity, knew not whether her strong repugnance to this marriage and warm sympathy ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... too, ran high, her words came tripping over one another, heedless and extravagant. But Howard suddenly glowed, and when she put her hands out to him he took them both and squeezed ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... women are, indeed, presented to all of us every day. It should, therefore, we might imagine, be one of the easiest of tasks to ascertain what they are. And yet there are few matters on which such contradictory and often extravagant opinions are maintained. For many people the question has not arisen; there are no mental differences, they seem to take for granted, between men and women. For others the mental superiority of man at every point is an ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... He always held that the dignity of the King could not be satisfied without vengeance on the murderers of his father, and that the security of the Crown rendered a severe example necessary. But if his caution led him to look askance on extravagant promises, his sense of honour taught him that whatever promises were given, must be fulfilled. The question was, To what did Charles's ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... could not have more effectually shown their dread of the Papal sentence, than by their endeavors to suppress it. They went so far as to publish in its place a forged document, as odious as it was extravagant, appended there to the signature of Pius IX., and exposed it to the jeers of the ignorant multitude. The bishops did their best in order to make known the truth; with what difficulty it will be easily understood, when it is remembered that an ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... deities of ancient nations. Why search through the East to account for its worship in Greece? More easy to suppose that the inhabitants of a land, whom the sun so especially favoured— saw and blessed it, for it was good, than, amid innumerable contradictions and extravagant assumptions, to decide upon that remoter shore, whence was transplanted a deity, whose effects were so benignant, whose worship was so natural, to the Greeks. And in the more plain belief we are also borne out by the more sound inductions of learning. For it is noticeable that neither the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that the solution of a mathematical problem no longer depends exclusively on the brain, but on another faculty, another spiritual power whose presence under various forms has been ascertained beyond a doubt in certain animals, it ceases to be wholly rash or extravagant to suggest that perhaps, in the horse, the same phenomenon is reproduced and developed in the same unknown, wherein moreover the mysteries of numbers and those of subconsciousness mingle in a like darkness. I ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Becoming extravagant in his habits, and thus involved in debt, he was disaffected because the mission could not accede to exorbitant demands, and relieve him from pecuniary embarrassments. So he went abroad to collect money for this purpose, and made his way to England, where he succeeded in interesting ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... which I have just quoted from chap. xxxi. of ECCLESIASTICUS, it is said, that 'wine, measurably taken, and in season,' is a proper thing. This, and other such passages of the Old Testament, have given a handle to drunkards, and to extravagant people, to insist, that God intended that wine should be commonly drunk. No doubt of that. But, then, he could intend this only in countries in which he had given wine, and to which he had given no cheaper drink except water. If it be said, as it truly may, that, by the ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... everything that you touch. The effect is like bedaubing a marble statue with paint. This giant, now! How can you have ventured to thrust his huge, disproportioned mass among the seemly outlines of Grecian fable, the tendency of which is to reduce even the extravagant within ...
— The Three Golden Apples - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... some biscuit which he had in his saddle cloth, which created much astonishment, and the first to whom he offered some, refused to eat it. One, rather bolder than the rest, put a small piece in his mouth, and pronounced it good, with such extravagant gestures, that the visitors all became clamorous. The major refused for a long time the man, who had been suspicious at first, to the great amusement of the rest, who seemed to relish the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... "'Most extravagant meal of vittles ever I got away with,' I says. 'Cost me and my partner two hundred and fifty apiece, that lunch did. We stayed in Boston two days, and on the afternoon of the second day we was on our way back totin' a ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... inscribed to Addison, then secretary to the Lords Justices. Whatever were the obligations which he had formerly received from Anne, the poet appears to aim at something of the same sort from George. Of the poem the intention seems to have been, to show that he had the same extravagant strain of praise for a king as for a queen. To discover, at the very onset of a foreigner's reign, that the gods bless his new subjects in such a king is something more than praise. Neither was this deemed one of his excusable pieces. We do ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... tendered, she dropped her eyes and a deep blush overspread her face. For some time no word passed between us; enough had been said. I knew that the look in my eyes had told more, a thousand times, than all the extravagant compliments with which I had, half banteringly, deluged her at ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... federal government, during the 1962 fiscal year, had not collected one penny in tax on personal incomes, the government would still have had more tax revenue from other sources than the total of what Harry Truman collected in his most extravagant peacetime spending year. Every American, who knows that, can readily understand the possibility and the necessity of repealing the federal tax on personal incomes. But how many Americans know those simple facts? ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... anticipation of them was at the time regarded as either a pretext made to cajole Congress or else merely an ebullition from his own sanguine nature not to be taken too seriously by sensible people. Senator Maclay of Pennsylvania regarded Hamilton's plans as wildly extravagant in their conception and iniquitous in their practical effect. In his opinion, Hamilton had "a very boyish, giddy manner, and Scotch-Irish people could well call him a 'skite.'" Jackson of Georgia exposed to the House the folly of Hamilton's proposals by pointing out that ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... of his age, he and his family would soon perish with hunger unless his genius continually displayed itself in some new forms. Hurled from the pinnacle of hope, oppressed by heavy debts,—which he had incurred by generosity and extravagant living, and by his becoming security for false friends,—he now surveyed the world through a gloomy medium. His domestic ties, when he no longer knew how to support his family, became an intolerable burden. He began to think that there was a ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... strong and distinctly marked that I turn away in anger from my own image! Why, I loved that Phantasm of a Poet in my dream as I must for ages have loved myself to my own utter undoing!—I admired his work with such extravagant fondness, that, thinking of it, I blush for shame at my own thus manifest conceit!—In truth there is only one thing in that pictured character of his, I can for the present judge myself free from,— ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... finding gold in all. Unlike most discoverers, Read made no attempt to keep his fortune to himself, but wrote frankly of it to Sir John Richardson, the superintendent of the province. For this he was ultimately paid the not extravagant reward of L1,000. The good Presbyterians of Dunedin hardly knew in what spirit to receive the tidings. But some of them did not hesitate to test the field. Very soberly, almost in sad solemnity, they set to work there, and the result ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... everybody is bound to sell on credit, and in which every creditor can take the benefit of the bankrupt law every Saturday night, and the constable pays the costs. In my judgment that community would be extravagant as long as the merchants lasted. We will take another community in which everybody has to pay cash, and in my judgment that community will be a very economical one. Now, then, let us apply this to morals. Christianity allows everybody to sin on a credit, and allows a man who has ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Mr H. told me. It appears that a dinner was to be given in the earlier days to some great official from England, and an English lady, who knew how such things should be done, was appointed manager. She determined that everything should be in good style, and ordered even such extravagant and unknown luxuries as napkins and finger-glasses. Among those who sat at the well-appointed table were miners, cattle-men, and so on, and one of them on sitting down took up his finger-bowl, and saying, "By golly, I'm thirsty," emptied it at a draught. Then, to add horror ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... to believe that Shuffles had talked about a mutiny, while he was in the steerage, but there was at least no present danger of an extravagant scheme being put into operation. He understood Shuffles perfectly; he knew that his high office and his ambition were his only incentives to fidelity in the discharge of his duty; but he had fairly won ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... scurrility and contempt towards everybody else; the Stoical pride was a refinement upon this, but was still a grateful sentiment of superiority, which helped to make up for the surrender of indulgences. It was usual to bestow the most extravagant laudation on the 'Wise Man,' and every Stoic could take this home to the extent that he considered himself ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... An extravagant, and, I am sorry to say, groundless, notion has obtained currency, among almost all writers upon the Indian character, that he is distinguished for his eloquence. But the same authors tell us, that his language, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... many another gay and gallant gentleman, was reckless and extravagant, and finding that he had not only come to the end of his fortune, but was also unable to pay his creditors, he went to Antonio ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... to procure than to dispossess Glengarry altogether by their doughty arms. They then left the kiln, and sent one of their own number for their chief, who, on arriving, was strongly abused for entertaining such an extravagant proposal and requested to leave the place at once. This he consented to do, and went to inform Grant that his friends would not hear of his giving such a large sum, and that he preferred to dispense with the claim against ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... harassed is exceedingly prone to receive dogmas without properly understanding their import, because it feels their truth through the consolations which they offer. In no age of Christianity has there arisen a serious discussion on this subject, though the extravagant pretensions of Rationalism have provoked some exaggerations which can never prevail over the ancient Christian system. That system by no means forbade the exercise of human intelligence in religious matters, though it employed ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... the latent fury of the animal. He precipitated himself at full length upon my body; but what was my astonishment, when, with a long and low whine, he commenced licking my face and hands with the greatest eagerness, and with the most extravagant demonstration of affection and joy! I was bewildered, utterly lost in amazement—but I could not forget the peculiar whine of my Newfoundland dog Tiger, and the odd manner of his caresses I well ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... hero of all Hellas, so natural that he could make the laws of Sparta yield to the weight of his authority, or relax in homage to his renown, that she indulged the belief that his influence would set aside the iron customs of his country. Was it too extravagant a reward to the conqueror of the Mede to suffer him to select at least the partner of his hearth? No, Hope was not dead in that young breast. Still might she be the bride of him whose glory had dazzled her noble and ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... extravagant. Forests, mines and soil fertility are wasted with wanton prodigality. We speak of our coal deposits and oil and gas wells as inexhaustible. We simply mean that it will be impossible for this and probably for the next generation to exhaust them. But coal mines ...
— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst
... argument occupied some time, and Mrs Rowland's absence was protracted. Mrs Enderby had been extremely terrified, the evening before, at the noises she had heard, and the light of the bonfire upon the sky. The children were permitted to carry to her all the extravagant reports that were afloat about Mr Hope being roasted in the fire, the ladies being in the hands of the mob, and so forth; and though her son-in-law had seen her before she settled for the night, and had ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau |
