"High life" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it would make you feel like. With two fingers of it inside you you would bury your face in your hands and cry because there wasn't anything more worth while around for you to lick than little Jim Jeffries. Yes, sir, the stuff in that second barrel was distilled elixir of battle, money and high life. It was the color of gold and as clear as glass, and it shone after dark like the sunshine was still in it. A thousand years from now you'll get a drink like that across ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... marriage that we are about to witness, is a "marriage in high life" among the Dahcotahs, and the bride is regularly bought, ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... Sewell,—later on Chief Justice, by persuasion, succeeded in pouring oil on the troubled waters. Nesbitt confessed, and Quebec was minus of a very handsome but beardless youngster, and the English Court journals soon made mention of a fashionable marriage in high life. ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... here the other day,' said Mrs. Smirk to Mrs. Smooth, in the well-known 'great-deal-more-meant-than-said' style. 'Oh such a charming man! Such ease! such manners! such knowledge of high life!' Puff had been at his old tricks. He had resuscitated Lord Legbail, now Earl of Loosefish; imported Sir Harry Blueun from somewhere near Geneva, whither he had retired on marrying his mistress; and resuscitated ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... lookin' for a place like that," said Brevoort, suddenly loquacious. "We sure aim to see this town. We just been paid off—we was workin' for the Bar-Cross—and we figured on seein' a little high life a-fore we went to punchin' again. Is that hotel you was speakin' about ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... reduced to this material expression, how dull and beggarly does not life become,—mere atomic integration and disintegration, the poor human pneumatic-machine purring along the dusty road of matter, bound and helpless and soulless as a clanking engine! No high life, in individuals or nations, is to be hoped for, unless it is enrooted in the infinite spiritual reality,—in God. It is forever indubitable that the highest is not material, and no argument is therefore needed to show that when spiritual ideals lose their power ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... adorably beautiful, with her long white veil floating about her, and the Baron de Sigognac radiant with happiness. The Marquis de Bruyeres was one of his witnesses, and a most brilliant and aristocratic assemblage "assisted" at this notable wedding in high life. No one, who had not been previously informed of it, could ever have suspected that the lovely bride—at once so noble and modest, so dignified and graceful, so gentle and refined, yet with as lofty a bearing as a princess of the blood royal—had only a short time before been one ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... resisted sturdily all the earthquake shocks which are apt to visit a kindergarten table during the building hour. The bricks on the other hand have to be humored and treated with deference. The moment one is placed upon another, end to end, the struggle begins, and in any of the high Life forms, the utmost delicacy of touch is necessary as well as sure aim ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... morning calls, drives, visits and shopping; how fast one crowded upon the other, leaving scarcely an hour of leisure to the devotee of fashion who attended to them all. How astonished Helen was to find what high life in New York implied, ceasing to wonder that so many of the young girls grew haggard and old before their time, or that the dowagers grew selfish and hard and scheming. She would die outright, she thought, and she pitied poor little Katy, who, having once ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... foll.) may refer to the year 1594. Note that Chaucer in the 'Knight's Tale' speaks of the tempest at Hippolyta's home-coming. Many critics have believed that the play was written on the occasion of some marriage in high life, but they do not agree as to ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... ten thousand varying shades and degrees of this pretension, from the truly fashionable people who hanker after the exclusives, or seventh heaven of high life, down to the courier out of place, who, in a pot-house, retails Debrett by heart, and talks of lords, and dukes, and earls, as of his particular acquaintance, and how and where he met them when on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... more days and we'd ought to be through. I'm not going to grieve any when we are. This high life don't suit me too durned ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... leaf. A church tower rose appropriately in a corner of the park, and on the other side of the deer-fence beyond the lake a herd of red deer were feeding. Doris could not help feeling as though the whole scene had been lately painted for a new "high life" play at the St. James's Theatre, and she half expected to see Sir George Alexander walk out of ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... Clinton, and as 't will be some years still ere the country is entirely subdued, out of the question 't will be that ye go to Greenwood. I will resign my post, being now rich enough, and we'll all go to London, where I'll take a big house, and ye shall be my guests. Once let the girl taste of high life, with its frocks and jewels and carriages, and all that tempts the sex, and she'll quickly see their provider ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... she became acquainted with a young sprig of the medical profession, who was captivated by her beauty. The fellow was loquacious, prepossessing, and bold, with an air of high life and fashion about him to which Sabrina had not been accustomed. But though unsteady, insincere, and wholly unworthy of her, yet the glitter of his style and manner won her heart, and an engagement of marriage took place between them, which he, for some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... facts which disturbed her even during the ceremony. A quiet time throughout; and after a sober feast, a tearful farewell, Mrs. Gamaliel Bliss departed, leaving a great void behind and carrying joy to the heart of her spouse, comfort to the souls of the excited nine, destruction to the "High Life Below Stairs," and order, peace, and plenty to the realm over which she was to know ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... not different. The collection of printed matter which appears under the title of "High Life in New York" is accompanied by a note, signed by the publishers, who are naturally supposed to know something of the real value of the works they issue, in which "editors are forewarned that it is a volume which, for downright drollery and hearty humor, has never had its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... Russian poets take anything but a gloomy view of matters in general. Griboyedoff, as an unprejudiced man, endowed with great poetical gifts, and remarkable powers of observation, was able to give a faithful and wonderfully complete picture of high life in Moscow of that day, in his famous comedy "Woe from Wit" ("Gore ot Uma"), and introduce to the stage types which had never, hitherto, appeared in Russian comedy, because no one had looked deep enough into Russian hearts, or been capable of limning, impartially and with fidelity to nature, ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... goddesses, big and little, old and young, fat and thin, pretty and ugly—and it seemed to him the fatter and older and uglier they were, the more intently they gazed into the little hand-mirrors. He watched them with hungry eyes, for he knew that here he was in the midst of high life, the real thing, the utmost glory to which man could ever hope to attain, and he wanted to know all there was to know about it. He strolled on, innocent and unsuspecting, and the two hundred and twenty-four white boy angels in the ceiling smiled ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... postilion; 'all I was going to say was, that you agreed to run away together, you from college, and she from boarding-school. Well, there's nothing to be ashamed of in a matter like that, such things are done every day by young folks in high life.' ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... more about "the bright lights" than other types. The Alimentive likes what he calls "a good time"—with fun and plenty of "refreshments"—but the Thoracic's idea of a good time usually includes a touch of "high life." ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... little girls won to her by her frankness and kindness, and dazzled by her goodness and greatness. How she awoke Fiddy's laugh with the Chit-Chat Club and the Silence Stakes. What harmless, diverting stories she told them of high life—how she had danced at Ranelagh, sailed upon the Thames, eaten her bun at Chelsea, mounted one of the eight hundred favours which cost a guinea a piece when Lady Die became a countess, and called upon Lady Petersham, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... armies have their millions; railroads and canals have their millions; colleges and schools have their millions; silks, carpets and mirrors, have their millions; parties of pleasure and licentiousness in high life and in low life have their millions; and what has the treasury of God and the Lamb, to redeem a world of souls from the pains of eternal damnation, and to fill them with joys unspeakable? The sum is so small in comparison that ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... the management of his affairs, and sent his faithful servants to prison. In the end, the lady gained the victory, and the nobleman went free. Violent quarrels of this kind were very frequent between these high life lovers, and they always ended in the triumph of Lady Castlemaine. She used to threaten, as a last resort, that if the king came to an open rupture with her, she would print the letters that he had written to her, and this always ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... favor of his own dignity, saying, "How are you, Charley? How's things with you?" He was proud enough of his connection with a prosperous man like Millard, and among his comrades in the shop he often affected to settle points in dispute regarding finance or the ways of people in high life by gravely reminding the others that he had superior opportunities for knowing, since his nephew was a banker and "knew all the rich men in Wall street." But face to face with Charley Millard his pride was rendered uneasy, and he generally managed to have ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... company which was seated in the dining room a short while later. As it was assembled in Helen's honor, Aunt Polly had taken care to bring those who would please the girl, and represent high life and luxury at its best; all of the guests were young, and therefore perfect. The members of the "smart set," when they have passed the third decade, are apt to show signs of weariness; a little of their ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... presented to the chief lords and ladies, and then comes supper and a bank at faro, where he loses or wins a thousand pieces by daylight. If it is a German Court, you may add not a little drunkenness to this picture of high life; but German, or French, or Spanish, if you can see out of your palace-windows beyond the trim-cut forest vistas, misery is lying outside; hunger is stalking about the bare villages, listlessly following ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I fear the quiet measured life into which I am about again to enter—conventionalities, forms, social life, all this cramps my soul together, and makes it inclined to excesses. Instead of sitting in select society, and drinking tea in 'high life,' would I rather roam about the world in Viking expeditions—rather eat locusts with John the Baptist in the wilderness, and go hither and thither in a garment of camel's hair; and after all, such apparel as this ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... Gladstone invited me to meet the hero at a reception in Carlton Gardens, where I took note of Garibaldi, with his hostess on his arm, as he walked in his simple red shirt, through a bowing lane of feathered fashionables, whom he greeted right and left as if he had been always used to such London high life. On that occasion I had the honour of standing between Palmerston and Lord John Russell, who kindly conversed with me, as also did the chief guest, specially thanking me ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... developing industry, becoming a financial power. Diard was placed by public opinion on the bench of infamy where many an able man was already seated. On that bench is the aristocracy of evil. It is the upper Chamber of scoundrels of high life. Diard was, therefore, not a mere commonplace gambler who is seen to be a blackguard, and ends by begging. That style of gambler is no longer seen in society of a certain topographical height. In these days bold scoundrels ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... watched the curious defile of Jenkins's guests which had not yet come to an end at midnight; all the clients of the fashionable physician; the fine flower of society; a strong political and financial element, bankers, deputies, a few artists, all the jaded people of Parisian "high life," wan-faced, with glittering eyes, saturated with arsenic like greedy mice, but with appetite insatiable for poison and for life. The drawing-room being thrown open, the vast antechamber of which the doors had been removed to be seen, laden with flowers at the sides, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... it was the rule of modern high life not to drink to any body; but, that I might have the satisfaction for once to look the duchess in the face, with a glass in my hand, I with a respectful air addressed her, 'My Lady Duchess, I have the honour to drink your grace's good health.' I repeated ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... door. Mary Ellen was alone, her work done, her nose buried in a novel of such fine print that it necessitated the lamp's being perilously near the fringe of frowsy hair that covered her forehead. We were inside the kitchen before she was recalled from the high life in which she revelled. ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... Anna Sforza to Alfonso of Este in the castle of Milan. It is still possible that the ceremony may have taken place in the chapel of the castle. Private families of distinction no doubt also employed such wedding orators as one of the luxuries of high life. At Ferrara, Guarino was requested on these occasions to send some one or other of his pupils. The clergy performed only the purely religious ceremonies at ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... they have it in the play-bills. Truly admirable, and excelling the rest, are "Boz's" sketches—actually "living pictures"—of the fashionable footmen at Bath, beside which the strokes in that diverting piece "High Life below Stairs" seem almost flat. The simperings of these gentry, their airs and conceit, we may be sure, obtain now. Once coming out of a Theatre, at some fashionable performance, through a long lane of tall menials, ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... an Inn, yet I never taste beer, I never smoke, chew, or use snuff; I am seen in high life, yet I'm true to my wife, And now I ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... is, that when an author waits in a great man's hall, or stands at his door, he will be pretty sure of being paid for it; which, in the case of your dangling garreteers, has never hitherto happened. Crabbe's story of "The Patron" will become obsolete. High Life ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... lady, the transaction of which she becomes the subject, and her consequent suicide, are taken from an episode in English high life, which occurred ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... inferior and struggling rank in all the manlier provinces of the mind, in science, poetry, and philosophy; he was the prince of scorners. The splenetic pleasantry which stimulates the wearied tastes of high life; the grossness which half concealed captivates the loose, without offence to their feeble decorum; and the easy brilliancy which throws what colours it will on the darker features of its purpose; made Voltaire, the ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... they should have been. Horses with elaborate high saddles and embroidered trappings rather the worse for wear were being led up and down the walk. As we neared the door there was a strong smell of rosewater and native perfumes and hookah tobacco—the indescribable odour of Eastern high life. There was also a general air of wasteful and tawdry dowdiness, if I may coin such a word, which one constantly sees in the retinues of native princes and rich native merchants, ill contrasting with the ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... Mr. Lovell, "most indubitably, though the price is blebian, it is by no means adapted to the plebian taste. It requires a certain acquaintance with high life, and-and-and something of-of-something d'un vrai gout, to be really sensible of its merit. Those whose-whose connections, and so forth, are not among les gens comme il faut, can feel nothing but ennui at such a place ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... announced one morning that the famous Fanny Clairet, the celebrated horizontal, whose caprices had caused a revolution in high life, that queen of frail beauties for whom three men had committed suicide, and so many others had ruined themselves, that incomparable living statue, who had attracted all Paris to the theater where she impersonated Venus in her transparent skin tights, made of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... said little, in a shy, faltering little way. She was very fond of her dashing, high-born, impulsive lover, and very well content not to come into the full blaze and dazzle of high life just yet. If any other romance had ever figured in her simple life, the story was finished and done with, the book read ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... her, but she learned again the invaluable lesson that rich men are unfit companions for nice girls. Kedzie resolved to prove this for herself. She prayed for a chance to be tempted so that she might rebuke some swell villain. But she intended to postpone the rebuke until she had seen a lot of high life. This would serve a double purpose: Kedzie would get to see more millionairishness, and the rebuke would be more—more "scatting." It is hard even to think ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... is not tied up to the same rules or observations as are necessary to the serious and half serious stiles. He is not so much obliged to study what may be called nature in high life. The rural sports, and exercises; the gestures of various mechanics or artificers will supply him with ideas for the execution of charracters in this branch. The more his motions, steps, and attitudes are taken from nature, the more they ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... nothing but high life, and high-lived company, with other fashionable topics, such as pictures, taste, Shakespeare, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... Springs, it would at lest be supposed that they had gone some where into the country, and thus they hoped to escape the terrible penalty of losing caste for not conforming to an indispensable rule of high life. ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... the great reporters of his day, with an eye that took in unconsciously every detail of face, costume or scene and reproduced it with perfect accuracy. The reader of his novels is entertained by a series of pen pictures of men and women and scenes in high life and life below stairs that are photographic in their clearness and fidelity. Dickens always failed when he came to depict British aristocratic life; but Thackeray moved in drawing-rooms and brilliant assemblages with the ease of a man familiar from youth with good society, and hence free ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... in "high life" can smoke and chew, drink and swear, in woman's presence, and she turns not away in disgust nor rebukes them with a cut of their acquaintance. There are a large class of young women who only ask that the young men shall behave tolerably well in their presence, ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... think otherwise, and are of a lazy, or a benevolent, or a sarcastic mood, may perhaps like to step in for half an hour, and look at the performances. There are scenes of all sorts; some dreadful combats, some grand and lofty horse-riding, some scenes of high life, and some of very middling indeed; some love-making for the sentimental, and some light comic business; the whole accompanied by appropriate scenery, and brilliantly illuminated ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... if we go deeper still in his rich and strangely mixed nature, we come upon stubborn foundations of conscience. Among contemporary comments on the occasion of his death, there was one which gave perfect expression to his political position. "His knowledge of men, especially those in high life (with whom he was formerly very conversant) had weakened his attachment to any political party; but, in the main, he was in the interest of civil and religious liberty, in behalf of which he appeared on several remarkable occasions." The men of the time with whom Defoe was brought into ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... all things, one would discourage such a proud and ambitious spirit in any of them, as should want to raise itself by favour instead of merit; and this the rather, for, undoubtedly, there are many more happy persons in low than in high life, take number for number all the world over. I am sure, although four or five years of different life had passed with me, I had so much pride and pleasure in the thought of working for my living with you, if I could but get honest to you, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... lamentable which has ever occurred in this town—is really, and without exaggeration, a tragedy in high life. The lady who was strangled by a brute's clutch, was a woman of the highest culture and most estimable character. Her sister, who is supposed to have been the unconscious cause of the crime, is a young girl of blameless record. Of the man who was seen ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... able to understand, he has a very important case on hand—a sort of romance in high life; and I think he wants your assistance to unravel it; it seems to be ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... to enable her accurately to depict in her romances the strained artificiality and silken softness of aristocratic existence. Her style also possesses the needful lightness and grace, and she accordingly succeeds admirably in her sketches of high life, with all its elegant nullities and spiritless pomp. One of her best works is the romance of Cousinerna, (The Cousins,) which, as well as the other works of Knorring, Bremer, and Flygare, has been placed before the German public by our ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... High Life.—On Thursday last, at Wendover Castle, the Earl of Erpingham, to Constance, only daughter of the celebrated Mr. Vernon. The bride was dressed, &c., ——" And then followed the trite, yet pompous pageantry of ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Behold! you may still go with me as half a good man; we will all strive to mend the other bad half.—Have pity on yourself and me; you stand, upon my word, on the spot where the road divides,—the bad people in there, and here your old father. They hold out to you good and high life; I offer you peace and happiness.—For God's ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland
... inherited great wealth, and the antiquity of his family gave him high social rank. On his Potomac farms he had hundreds of slaves, and at his Mount Vernon home he was like the prince of a wide domain, free from dependence or restraint. He was fond of equipage and the appurtenances of high life, and although he always rode on horseback, his family had a "chariot and four," with "black postilions in scarlet and white livery." This generous style of living, added perhaps to his native reserve, exposed him to the charge of aristocratic feeling. While at his home, he spent ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... thocht I would tak the liberty o' ca'in upon yer leddyship, as weel for the sake o' being better acquainted wi' a leddy o' yer station and presence, as for the sake o' gettin' the little I require on my first introduction to high life." ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... as we have already said was tall and genteel. There was a diffidence in his manner, that seemed to prove that he had not possessed the most extensive acquaintance with high life; but he had a natural politeness that amply compensated for the polish and forms of society. His air was serious and somewhat melancholy; but there was a fire and animation in his eye that was ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... Henry, Duke of Kent. It is thus seen that the subject of this sketch belonged to two of the two most aristocratic, noble families in England, having for grandfathers the Dukes of Kent and Devonshire. This man, who became one of the most distinguished chemists and physicists of the age, born in high life, of exalted position and wealth, passed through the period of his boyhood and early manhood in utter obscurity, and a dense cloud rests upon his early life. Indeed, the place of his birth has been in dispute; some of his biographers asserting that he ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... meaning is: 'Courtesy which is derived from court, and which is still nominally most common in high life, is nevertheless most readily found amongst those of humble station.' This sentiment is becoming in the mouth of Lady Alice when addressed to a humble shepherd. 'Courtesy' (or, as Milton elsewhere writes, courtship) has, like civility, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... was primarily a satirist, secondarily a poet. Such being his powers and his aims, helpful to him, nay, needful, was a present Parisian actuality of story and agents. A poetic comedy ought to be, and will necessarily be, a chapter of very high life. Moliere's comedies, dealing unctuously with vice and folly, are, philosophically speaking, low life. His are comedies not of character and sentiment, but of manners and morals, and therefore cannot be highly poetical; ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... of late years. His drawing was often very incorrect, and his execution slovenly. His colour was hectic and gaudy; and in composition he possessed little skill. He was a master of expression, however. His heads are wonderfully animated, and he invested his sitters with an air of high life peculiar to himself. Conscious and a little affected they might be, but certainly, through his art, they proclaimed themselves people of quality and distinction. His attempts in another line of art were few and not successful. His 'Homer reciting his Poems' was ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... the most useful of schools— He can study high life in the King's Bench community; Aristotle could scarce keep him more within rules, And of place he at least must ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... some—(the word will he out) beauty, and some good nature; and I hold that the gentleman has good taste for the female outside, and do not expect he should comprehend my sentiments further. So he rallies, hands, and hobbles (for the dear creature has got the gout too), and tells old stories of high life of which he has seen a great deal; and I listen, and smile, and look as pretty, as pleasant, and as simple as I can, and we do very well. But, alas! my dearest Matilda, how would time pass away, even in this paradise of romance, tenanted as it is by a pair ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... will presently understand that they were people of real fashion; and the eldest lady spoke of persons and things which denoted that high life was familiar to her. This gave Clarke a new opportunity of wondering how he, a poor carpenter, came into such company: which he directly expressed to me, with the simplicity and undisguise that ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... it was no trifle, but a most important thing, to abandon wealth, and honour, and the brilliance of high life, and be despised by every one for such abundant folly. Moreover, that I should appear a knave for taking advantage of her youth, and boundless generosity, and ruining (as men would say) a noble maid by my selfishness. And I told her outright, having worked myself up by my own conversation, that ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... be wanting in that species of consideration for them which consists in a certain mildness and amenity of manner, would ruffle and deform that smooth surface of things which it is agreeable to the taste of people in high life to see around them. Nor do they, perhaps, interfere with the comfort of their dependents, by any undue or onerous exactions of service; for their establishments, being for the most part calculated for show, are more numerous ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... "Precaution" was a compromise between the purely fashionable novel and that collection of moral disquisitions of which Hannah More's Coelebs was the great exemplar, and still remained the most popular representative. As in most tales of high life, nobody of low condition plays a prominent part in the story, save for the purpose of setting off the dukes, earls, baronets, generals, and colonels that throng its pages. A novelist in his first production never limits his creative activity ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... high life high characters drawn; A saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn. 108 POPE: Moral ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... between the two towers, there was another large room behind it, which also belonged to her. Darnley's apartments were very similar to the queen's, only they were in the story below. It was the custom in those days, as it is now, indeed, in high life, for the husband and wife to have separate ranges of apartments, with a private passage connecting them. In this case the private passage leading from Darnley's apartments to Mary's was in the wall. It was a narrow stairway, leading up to Mary's bedroom, ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott
... taking pains to assure us that in less than a month the Villerville beaches would be crowded; only the artists of the brushes were here now; the artists of high life would scarcely be found deserting the Avenue des Acacias ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... speculating at my window on the different personages who were passing before me. At that time I occupied apartments in the Brompton Road. Perhaps, there is no thoroughfare in London where the ordinary passengers are of so varied a description or high life and low life mingle in so perpetual a medley. South-Kensington carriages there jostle costermongers' carts; the clerk in the public office, returning to his suburban dwelling, brushes the laborer coming ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... humbler natures,—country girls like Pamela,—Richardson is happiest: in his descriptions of high life he has failed from ignorance. He was not acquainted with the best society, and all his grandees are stilted, artificial, and affected; but even in this fault he is of value, for he shows us how men of his class ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... THE BEAUTIFUL SPY. An exciting story of Army and high life in New York, in 1776, presenting facts and historic names, and showing the mutual attachment between Aaron Burr and Margaret Moncrieffe, as well as the influence of the latter upon the former in the more important events of his life. By CHARLES ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... going," she cried. "Father, mother and Sabina. It seems father has had an excellent offer to let the house furnished till the end of September, and he says that, as he likes high life, he will put in the time on the top of the Catskills. He abandons me, and says that if he can borrow a shilling he is going to cut me off with it in his will. He regrets the departure of the British Fleet, because he thinks he might have been able to raise a real English shilling aboard. Dad only ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... So far as we know, the monks lived in great harmony, and were obedient to the commands of their superiors. They had a common object to live for, and had few differences in opinion on any subject. They did not enjoy a high life, but it was free from distracting pleasures. They affected great humility, with which spiritual pride was mingled,—not the arrogant pride of the dialectician, but the self-satisfied pride of the devotee. There ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... An old lady asked the porter a dozen times what time the "kyars would get to N'Yawlns." Two florid gentlemen leaned together in one seat and discussed cotton, cotton, cotton. In yet another berth two young farmers were having their first experience in high life, and were eager to try the experience of actually going to sleep upon the cars while the same continued their forward progress—a thing which had seemed impossible to them. Not removing their clothing, they venturesomely pulled off their shoes, and thereafter, in some fashion, managed to squeeze ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... especial sympathy, and on which experienced masculine observers, on the other hand, look with some awe. The correspondents of the daily papers, whose pleasure and privilege it is to be able to instruct us in all the secrets of high life, have given us recently to understand that, for some time back, Her Majesty has been hard at work on the Emperor's soul. Every thoughtful woman likes to be at work on her husband's soul. Young ladies enjoy the prospect before they are ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... this remark, I need only advert to the intrigues of married women, particularly in high life, and in countries where women are suitably married, according to their respective ranks by their parents. If an innocent girl become a prey to love, she is degraded forever, though her mind was not polluted by the arts which married women, under the ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... himself, young, handsome, languid, good-natured to a fault, with plenty of muscle if he chose to exert it, and plenty of brain if he chose to make use of it—a man who had become weary of the monotony of high life, and, like many of his order, was fond of seeking relief from the ennui of prosperity amid the excitements of the sea. Next to him was Dr. Congreve, a middle-aged man, with iron-gray hair, short beard and mustache, short nose, gray eyes, with spectacles, and stoutish ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... Paulina, Eustochium, and Rufina. She shone a bright pattern of virtue in the married state, and both she and her husband edified Rome by their good example; but her virtue was not without its alloy; a certain degree of the love of the world being almost inseparable from honors and high life. She did not discern the secret attachments of her heart, nor feel the weight of her own chains: she had neither courage to break them, nor light whereby to take a clear and distinct view of her spiritual poverty and misery. God, compassionating her weakness, was ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... excuse for their careful lubricities, the team could always conjure up an enticing special feature from an imaginary foreign correspondent, aimed direct at the family circle and warning against the "Moral Pitfalls of Paris," or the "Vampires of High Life in Vienna." The invariable rule was that all sex-stuff must have a moral and virtuous slant. Thus was afforded to the appreciative reader a double satisfaction, physical and ethical, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... why it is that a little greased flour rubbed in among the hair on a footman's head,—just one dab here and another there,—gives such a tone of high life to the family? And seeing that the thing is so easily done, why do not more people attempt it? The tax on hair-powder is but thirteen shillings a year. It may, indeed, be that the slightest dab in the world justifies the wearer in demanding hot meat three times a day, and wine at any rate on Sundays. ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... centuries of our era, the old gods disappeared, the rise of monotheistic belief was accompanied by a transformation of the conception of the future of the soul; it was to be no longer the inert earthly thing of the old theories but instinct with a high life that fitted it to be the companion of divine beings and the sharer of their knowledge and their ideals.[1697] This conception led to the belief in the possibility of a nonmagical friendly intercourse with the departed, who, it ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... the characters are not the drawling bores that we find in fashionable novels, though their affected freaks are occasionally introduced to contrast with unsophisticated humility, and thus exhibit the deformities of high life. The whole work is, however, light as gossamer: we had almost said that a fly might read it through the meshes, without ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... The papers the next day were full of the elopement in high life. They told how the Scrappe divorce had been granted at five o'clock in the afternoon the day before, how Colonel Scrappe and Mrs. Van Raffles had sped to New York in the automobile and been quietly married at the Little Church Around the Corner, and were now sailing down the bay on the Hydrostatic, ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... was Fitzhugh, but he is an old hand, and can pay her in her own coin, and that sober-faced young Mervyn—it is a bad case with him. In fact, there is a fresh one whenever she goes out—a Jenny Dennison in high life—but the most bitten of all, I take it, is ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lucky stars, Annabelle, that I am such an easy-going fellow as I am known to be, or else high life in London would be aroused by gossip of another divorce. I'll forgive you; but don't ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... been Ralph who had given her permission to interview Molly Tooney, and she regarded her with great interest. La Fleur's long years of service had given her many opportunities of studying the characters of mistresses, in high life as well as middle life, but never had she seen a mistress like this school-girl, with her hair hanging ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... with a victorious French army in England, followed by the rule of the conquerors, who made French the language of high life. It closes with the ascendancy of English government and speech at home and with the mid-fourteenth century victories of English armies on French soil, resulting in the rapture of Calais, which remained for more than two hundred years ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... society in after years, I was absolutely astonished at the change which seemed to me to have taken place in the beauty of high life. I shall not hazard my reputation for gallantry, by tracing the contrast more closely. But evil times had singularly acted upon the physiognomy even of the nobles. The age of the roturier had been the climacteric of France. Generals from the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... but vague aspirations and self-conceits must be bound together by some practical necessity—perhaps a very homely and a very vulgar one—or they scatter and evaporate. One would think that rich people in high life ought to do more than poor folks in humble life. More pains are taken with their education; they have more leisure for following the bent of their genius: yet it is the poor folks, often half self-educated, and with pinched ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... forty-five years of age, a dark mulatto, stature medium, manners modest and graceful; she had served only in high life; thus she had acquired a great deal of information. She stated that she was born a slave, under John Bower, of Rockbridge, Virginia, and that he was the owner of a large plantation, with a great number of slaves. He was considered to be a good man to his servants, and was ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... is traditional in many countries. Women of fashion scarcely ever appear at a soiree or ball without wearing a camellia or an exotic orchid on their breast or in their head-dress, and so, too, gentlemen of "high life" do not go out without a boutonniere of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... by continual dissipation, had annihilated the few ideas nature had given them, and yet were celebrated for wonderful pretty gentlemen; young ladies extolled for their wit, because they were handsome; illiterate empty women as well as men, in high life, admired for their knowledge, from their being resolutely positive; and women of real understanding so far from pleasing the polite million, that they frightened them away, and were left solitary. When we quitted ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... making a home for her son and daughter, from the moment she took her pen in her hand she became a creature of passion. She thought the English novel deplorably wanting in that element, and the task she had cut out for herself was to supply the deficiency. Passion in high life was the general formula of this work, for her imagination was at home only in the most exalted circles. She adored, in truth, the aristocracy, and they constituted for her the romance of the world or, what is more to the point, the prime material of fiction. Their ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... the shooting season, and that London is the only place of residence during the winter for the man who aspires to govern his life on principles of reason. Through his influence and that of his aunt, Rose and Agnes—Mrs. Leyburn never went out—were being carried into all the high life that London can supply in November and January. Wealthy, high-born, and popular, he was gradually devoting his advantages in the freest way to Rose's service. He was an excellent musical amateur, and he was always proud to play with her; he had a fine country house, and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wholesome woman, and of a long period of uninterrupted conjugal devotion. About the year 8 B.C., not long before Ovid wrote those poems in which married life was assumed to be hardly worth living, a husband in high life at Rome lost the wife who had for forty-one years been his faithful companion in prosperity, his wise and courageous counsellor in adversity. He recorded her praises and the story of her devotion to him in a long inscription, placed, ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... veils, as Nan Drury did, and the words "Herbert Dodd"—save that she had sounded them at him there two or three times more like a Meg Merrilies or the bold bad woman in one of the melodramas of high life given during the fine season in the pavilion at the end of Properley Pier—were dreadfully, were permanently, seated on her lips. ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... you simple country people can know about that! You should see what devils of indigestions we get in high life—eating 'normous great dinners and suppers that require clever physicians to carry 'em off, or else they'd carry us off with gout next day; and waking in the morning with such a splitting headache, and dry ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... a magnificent gold snuff-box, in acknowledgment of the services he should have rendered to his distinguished guest and client. Titmouse was in the highest possible spirits. This, his first glimpse into high life, equalled all his expectations. Round and round went the bottles—crack went joke after joke. Slang sang song upon song, of, however, so very coarse and broad a character as infinitely disgusted Gammon, and apparently shocked ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... he had met with at the Court of Vienna, and having till then seen nothing of high life, the Abbe de Vermond admired no other customs than those of the imperial family; he ridiculed the etiquette of the House of Bourbon incessantly; the young Dauphiness was constantly incited by his sarcasms to ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... his life. That this has not been the case with Clare may, perhaps, be imputed to the absolute depression of his fortune. When we hear the consciousness of possessing talent, and the natural irritability of the poetic temperament, pleaded in extenuation of the follies and vices of men in high life, let it be accounted no mean praise to such a man as Clare that with all the excitements of their sensibility to his station he has preserved a fair character amid dangers which presumption did not create and difficulties which discretion could not avoid. In the real troubles of life, when they ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... have gathered, I should think the story might be something like this: that, some time previous to the murder, this Herriot had come to Albany, got into company above his true place, dashed away a while in high life, gambled deeply, and, losing all his own money, and running up a large debt to this, and other friends of Brush, gave them his obligations and absconded. But coming there again, for some purpose, a year or two after, with a large sum of money, it was thought, which had been left ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... will remind us of something we know in real life. The types of Shakespeare which have been found substantial enough to survive the loss of their originals must have had an interest for the first audiences, both in nature and in intensity, very different from their interest to us. The high life depicted by Shakespeare has disappeared. No one of us has ever known a Mercutio. Fortunately, the types of society seem to change less in the lower orders than in the upper classes. England swarms with old women like Juliet's ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... many years by writing novels, at the rate of five pounds a volume; but that branch of business is now engrossed by female authors, who publish merely for the propagation of virtue, with so much ease and spirit, and delicacy, and knowledge of the human heart, and all in the serene tranquillity of high life, that the reader is not only inchanted by their genius, but reformed ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... tourist, and of a scandal in the Scottish Kirk, the writer proceeded to the narrative of a case of interest, relating to a marriage in the sphere known (in the language of footmen) as the sphere of "high life." ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... the necessary preparations. I desired him to go down immediately to Eagle Park, attend to the funeral of my uncle, and the poor little boy who had paid so dearly for his intended advancement, and take charge from my uncle's legal adviser, who remained in the house. The "dreadful accident in high life" found its way into the papers of the day, and before dinner time a pile of visiting cards was poured in, which covered the table. The next day a letter arrived from the First Lord, announcing that he had made out my commission as post-captain, and trusted that I would allow him ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... was not surely for marriage alone that God fashioned this associate and moral equal of man. Neither was it for high life, or low life, or middling stations, for east, west, north, or south, that she was made in the sacred image of her Creator. For all these circumstances, if Providence so appoint, should she be prepared. In one word, her whole nature, physical, intellectual and spiritual, should be fully developed; ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... narrative ever so closely it gives us no hint of Divinely intended subordination of woman. Jacob had to buy his wives with service which indicates that a high value was placed upon them. Now-a-days in high life men demand instead of give. The degradation of woman involved in being sold to a husband, to put it in the most humiliating way, is not comparable to the degradation of having to buy a husband. Euripides ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... lack of restraint, smiled and said: "Oh, I felt that way—for a minute. You see, I used to lead a high life of ease. I was a nobleman—an ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... from a few entertainments thus bestowed upon his sponging acquaintances,—who, as he really supposed, were reversing the order of the obligation, by the light and flashy touches they gave him of high life in Europe,—relating, with great particularity, their adventures in France,—dining with the Dukes of Chartres and Angouleme, and attending the opera with the Duke of Berry and the Countess de Chausel,—visiting ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... "high life" engagement such as that of Norman and Miss Burroughs, collapses on the eve of the wedding, the gossip and the scandal, however great, are but a small part of the mess. Doubtless many a marriage—and not in high life alone, either—has been put through, although the one party or the other or both ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... courtesy of a man accustomed to high life; and I entered on the purport of my visit at once. He was perfectly astonished at my tidings. He had known that strong resolutions had been adopted by the party opposed to the Cabinet; but was startled by the distinct avowal of its intention to overthrow the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... in it her favourite character of a hoyden, and, after "interviewing" a number of suitors chosen by her father, finally ran away with Thomas the footman—a course in those days not without its parallel in high life, above stairs as well as below. It appears to have succeeded, though Bookish, one of the characters, was entirely withdrawn in deference to some disapprobation on the part of the audience; while the part of Wormwood, a lawyer, which ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson |
