"Homely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the homely affectionate face of the little speaker. 'You are her good friend, I am sure,' ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... and handed over the lead-rope with a bit of homely advice. "You no lak' you git find, dat better you don' talk mooch. You ain' got to sing no mor', neider, or ba Goss! A'm tak' you down an' stick you mout' full of rags, lak' I done down to Chinook dat tam'. Dat hooch she mak' noise 'nough ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... only these representations of Satyrs who carried canisters and cornucopias full of several fruits in their hands, and danced with them at their public feasts, and afterwards reading Horace, who makes mention of his homely Romans jesting at one another in the same kind of solemnities, might suppose those wanton Satyrs did the same; and especially because Horace possibly might seem to him to have shown the original of all poetry in general (including the Grecians as well as Romans), though it is plainly ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... —a doggerel in homely Spanish metre, unwritten mouth-to-mouth wisdom, stable as a proverb, enduring through generations of unrecorded wanderers, that repeated it for a few years, and ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... slope of a hill, and all the width of ocean lies below the rustic windows. The roses and fuchsias of the cottage gardens seem all the brighter by contrast with that broad expanse of blue. The fresh breath of the salt sea blends with the perfume of new-mown hay and all the homely odours of the farmyard. The lark sings high in the blue vault of heaven above the church, and over the blue of the sea the gull skims white in the sunshine. The fisherman and the farm labourer have their cottages side by side, nestling cosily to leeward ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... forefathers, but not so wise. We are now a "fast people;" but we miss the true goal of life—that is, sober happiness. Fast to smattering; fast to outward, isolated show; fast to bankruptcy; fast to suicide; fast to some finale of enormous and dreadful infamy. Bah! rather the plain, honest, homely life of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... best, where most with ravine I may meet; Which here, though plenteous, all too little seems To stuff this maw, this vast unhide-bound corps. To whom the incestuous mother thus replied. Thou therefore on these herbs, and fruits, and flowers, Feed first; on each beast next, and fish, and fowl; No homely morsels! and, whatever thing The sithe of Time mows down, devour unspared; Till I, in Man residing, through the race, His thoughts, his looks, words, actions, all infect; And season him thy last and ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... the dog immediately, and Mr. Gilroy smiled. "Well, what do you think of him, scouts? Is he homely enough to win your pity? You know it is said, ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... their humble friends trusted with confidence. Such characters and families are to be found in almost every rural district of this country; for, "though grace gangs no' by generation, yet there is sic a thing as a hawk o' a guid nest." I believe in the homely proverb, though some metaphysicians may dispute it, but whether debatable or not in the abstract, William Douglas had the good fortune, as he deemed it, to grow up in the bosom of a family in which the characteristic of worth was cherished ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... Proconsuls, Empire Builders, Pillars of the State."—Naturally you hesitated to intrude on the time and attention of such a distinguished person—that in point of fact was her main reason for disposing of the matter of the carriage horses herself. How could she trouble Sir Charles with such a homely detail?—But Damaris' case, needless to remark, was very different. At her age it was invidious to be too exclusive. Miss Felicia Verity felt—so she, Theresa, was certain—that it was a pity Damaris did not make more ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... admirer of many songs which the more critical and fastidious regarded as rude and homely. "Todlin Hame" he called an unequalled composition for wit and humour, and "Andro wi' his cutty Gun," the work of a master. In the same letter, where he records these sentiments, he writes his own ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... many eminent artists have made the painting of animals a specialty, and among them are such world-renowned names as Landseer and Rosa Bonheur. Moreover, in the numerous pictures of the Nativity we often find the homely details of the stable introduced. One of Rubens' paintings of this sacred and favorite subject, which hangs in the gallery of the Louvre, represents two oxen feeding at ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... respecting the stone of Ensisheim on the Rhine, at which philosophy once smiled incredulously, regarding it as one of the romances of the middle ages, may now be admitted to sober attention as a piece of authentic history. A homely narrative of its fall was drawn up at the time by order of the Emperor Maximilian, and deposited with the stone in the church. It may thus be rendered: "In the year of the Lord 1492, on Wednesday, which was Martinmas ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... that long for sleep; Men that wake and revel;— If an old song leap To your senses' level At such moments, may it be Sometimes, though a moment only, Some forgotten, quaint and homely ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... humor, old-fashioned, homely sentiment, the kind that people who see the play will recall and chuckle over tomorrow and the ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey
... loved to sit In the low hut or garnished cottage, And praise the farmer's homely wit, And share the widow's homelier pottage: At his approach complaint grew mild, And when his hand unbarred the shutter, The clammy lips of Fever smiled The welcome which they could ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... occurring, having completed the most urgent of my duties at the capital of Mississippi, I had gone to my home, Brierfield, in Warren County, and had begun, in the homely but expressive language of Mr. Clay, "to repair my fences." While thus engaged, notice was received of my election to the Presidency of the Confederate States, with an urgent request to proceed immediately to ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... rapidity of Gracchus [a], or the more solemn manner of Crassus [b], with all their imperfections, rather than the effeminate delicacy of [c] Maecenas, or the tinkling cymbal [d] of Gallio. The most homely dress is preferable to gawdy colours and meretricious ornaments. The style in vogue at present, is an innovation, against every thing just and natural; it is not even manly. The luxuriant phrase, the inanity of tuneful periods, ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... a sphere could produce no adventures worth your notice. However, I married a woman I liked, and who proved a very tolerable wife. My days were passed in hard labor, but this procured me health, and I enjoyed a homely supper at night with my wife with more pleasure than I apprehend greater persons find at their luxurious meals. My life had scarce any variety in it, and at my death I advanced to Minos with great confidence of entering ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... songs and psalms, stopping suddenly, mingling the Psalms of David, and the diviner words of his Son and Lord, with homely odds and ends ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... courtyard, and shut the gate after her, while Julien turned to examine the room into which they had been shown, and felt a certain serenity creep over him at the clean and cheerful aspect of this homely but comfortable interior. The room served as both kitchen and dining-room. On the right of the flaring chimney, one of the cast-iron arrangements called a cooking-stove was gently humming; the saucepans, resting on the bars, exhaled various appetizing odors. In the centre, ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... landscape, and seldom treated inanimate nature except as a background for human action and emotion, or it may be in the guise of mythological allegory. Nevertheless, it is hard to believe that Theocritus, so tenderly concerned with the homely aspects of human life, was not likewise sensitive to the beauties of nature. At least it is impossible to doubt his attachment to the land of his childhood, and it is at worst a welcome dream when we imagine him, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... part of the xviiith and the first half of the xixth centuries, when men disdaining the grammar of their own tongue, learned it from Latin and Greek; when not a few styled Shakespeare "silly-billy," and when Lamb the essayist, wrote, "I can read, and I say it seriously, the homely old version of the Psalms for an hour or two together sometimes, without sense of weariness." But the reviewer will have none of my palliative process, he is surprised at my "posing as a judge of prose style," being "acquainted with my quaint perversions of the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... cylinders, crucibles, and other apparatus of chemical research. An electrical machine stood ready for immediate use. The atmosphere felt oppressively close, and was tainted with gaseous odors which had been tormented forth by the processes of science. The severe and homely simplicity of the apartment, with its naked walls and brick pavement, looked strange, accustomed as Georgiana had become to the fantastic elegance of her boudoir. But what chiefly, indeed almost solely, drew her attention, was the ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... disciples," said the countess, "are small, blond, sickly, and homely; all as like one to another as a pair of old boots. You have seen them. X. Z.—you know him—had a very pretty talent for verses; but he has ruined it and his mind, and made himself quite an idiot, by following ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... surely no great point in this; the only point is life, the glimpse of the little snatch of poetry in prose. It is a matter of a few broad strokes of the crayon; yet the pleasant laziness of the man, the idleness of the day, the fragment of homely, familiar dialogue, the stretch of the field with a couple of trees merely ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... But his legs were flat and corded like a racer's, his neck long and thin as a thoroughbred's, his nostrils large, his ears sharply pointed and lively, while the white rings around his eyes hinted at a cross, somewhere in his pedigree, with Arabian blood. A huge, bony, homely-looking horse he was as he drew the deacon and Miranda into the village on market days and Sundays, with a loose, shambling gait, making altogether an appearance so homely and peculiar that the smart village chaps, riding along in their jaunty turn-outs, used to ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... time, as in the reign of the first George, we have now also a few shops fitted up in a style of extraordinary and startling elegance, and thus forming that contrast with the general appearance of shops for the last forty years, which makes old people, and many others, talk of all the past as homely and moderate, and all the present as ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... little observation will show that physical defects, when backed up by mental worth, transform themselves into "beauty-spots." To be sure, no one was ever so bold as to speak of Girard's blemishes as beauty-spots, but the fact is that his homely face and ungraceful body were strong factors in making him a favorite of fortune. Handsome is that handsome does. Disadvantages are often advantages—they serve as stimulus and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... was greater the more that she contemplated the fact that she knew nothing of it. This couple, with their emotions, awed her and made her humbly wish that she might be destined to be of some service to them. She was very homely. ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... wealth came in to do away with the resemblance. True, she was tall and angular, but she made up superbly, so that on looking at her one would exclaim: 'What a stylish woman!' True, her features were homely, and her complexion without freshness, but over these were spread the magic atmosphere of fashion and assured position. She had a consciousness which repelled any idea that she could be otherwise than handsome, fascinating, intelligent, and everything else desirable, and this consciousness actually ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... and the things which please seem less tedious. A pleasant and smooth road, tho it be longer, fatigues less than a rugged and disagreeable short cut. I am not so fond of conciseness as not to make room for brightening a narration with proper embellishments. If quite homely and curtailed on all sides, it will be not so much a narration as a poor ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... stole into the parlor Anson Kirkpatrick, Marshall Field's man, was at the piano, playing airs from a musical comedy then running in Chicago. He was a dapper little Irishman, very vain, homely as a monkey, with friends everywhere, and a sweetheart in every port, like a sailor. I did not know all the men who were sitting about, but I recognized a furniture salesman from Kansas City, a drug man, and Willy O'Reilly, who traveled for a jewelry house and ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... "It is an inn. It is a very plain and homely place, but a lady can stay there very well ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... men, and the welcome they had was warm. In their gratitude they said, "France to us is dead; this in future is our home;" and, though clinging to their language, they cast aside their fine patrician names, making them English and homely like those of the dwellers near. There was something almost grotesque at times in the changes that they made, but they were not noticed here. The D'aubignes became Daubeneys, or homely Dobbs; Chapuis, Shoppee; Jean Boileau, the ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... grim region of his delirium and his deathlike unconsciousness George Lester struggled slowly back to life. His reawakening was like a new birth. He seemed born again, this time an American—a Western American. In the measure of a good old homely phrase, some sense (a sense of the fundamental oneness of humanity) had been beaten ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... Adelaide"—"My dear daughter," the commencements varying as the letters had been addressed to the child, the young girl, and, later on, to the young wife. They were all full of foolish, loving phrases, and news about a thousand insignificant, homely events, which, to a stranger, would have seemed too trivial to mention: "Father has an influenza; Hortense has burnt her finger; Croquerat, the cat, is dead; the fir tree which stood on the right-hand side of the gate has been cut down; mother lost her ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... he had the misfortune of being unpopular. Other men, thoughtless, and headlong, and irritable as he, have lived and had friends; but there was something about O'Grady that was felt, perhaps, more than it could be defined, which made him unpleasing—perhaps the homely phrase "cross-grained" may best express it, and O'Grady was essentially a cross-grained man. The estate, when he got it, was pretty heavily saddled, and the "galled jade" did not "wince" the less for ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... the commonplace rash of the New York streets. The Berliners are plain and ill dressed, both men and women, and even the little children are plain. Every one is ill dressed, but no one is ragged, and among the undersized homely folk of the lower classes there is no such poverty-stricken shabbiness as shocks and insults the sight in New York. That which distinctly recalls our metropolis is the lofty passage of the elevated trains intersecting the prospectives of many streets; but in Berlin the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... which we are best acquainted was the result of study and imitation of Greek literature. But the old vernacular Latin was a homely and simple speech, much more like any modern language in its ways and movements than would be supposed by those who only know classical Latin. The old Latin poetry was rhythmical, and fond of alliteration. Such was ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... is as warm in fustian as a king in velvet, and a truth is as comfortable in homely language as in fine speech. As to the way of dishing up the meat, hungry men leave that to the cook, only let the meat be sweet ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... You are, let us pretend, walking in the park. You come upon two benches arranged as shown in the above diagram. Would you know which bench it would be proper to sit on if you are (1) a young man just out of college—(2) a rather homely young woman? To avoid embarrassment look this up ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... politicians known by the name of Opportunists. They are a kind of public men that, we are thankful to say, are not known in Protestant and Evangelical England, but they may be pictured out and described to you in this homely way: An Opportunist stands well out of the sparks of the fire, and well in behind the stone wall, till the fanatics for liberty, equality, and fraternity have snatched the chestnuts out of the fire, and then the Opportunist steps out from his safe place and blandly divides the well-roasted ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... a confession to make which ill accords with my luxurious surroundings of the moment. It is that I am accustomed to press my trousers myself by the homely and ignoble expedient of sleeping on them. My only excuse is that I am a heavy sleeper. So automatic is the process, that I was wrapped in sheets and darkness before it occurred to me that I had placed the trousers I had just doffed under the mattress ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... where the keeper of the poor-house kept his garden-seeds, with the withered remains of three seed cucumbers ornamenting the top. Nothing beautiful could be discovered, nothing interesting, but there was something usable and homely about the place. It was the favorite and untroubled bower of the bean-pickers, to which they might retreat unmolested from the public ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... soldiers have gone on, but the members of our own immediate group are scattered about the valley, engaged chiefly in agricultural or other homely pursuits, while they await your recovery, and incidentally earn their bread. Sergeant Whitley, Captain St. Clair and Captain Mason are putting a new roof on the barn, and, as I inspected it myself, I can certify that they are performing the task in a most ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... also be indebted for Cicero's charming essay "On Friendship." The later life of Matius, then, we may think was spent in retirement, in the study of philosophy, and in the pursuit of literature. His literary pursuits give a homely and not unpleasant touch to his character. They were concerned with gastronomy, for Columella, in the first century of our era, tells us[147] that Matius composed three books, bearing the titles of "The Cook," ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... these considerations before you, if so homely a term may be pardoned, as a plain matter of business. There is nothing low or unworthy in this, as some lately have pretended, for all nature shows us that there is nothing more acceptable to God than an enlightened view of our own self-interest; ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... drew off the muddy shoes and set them in a dark corner near the fireplace before Harry fairly realized that he had let a woman do this humble office for him. The sight and smell of food aroused him from the torpor of intense fatigue, and he devoured the homely fare set before him with a relish that he had never before felt for victuals. As he ate his senses awakened so that he studied his hostess with interest. Hair which the advancing years, while bleaching to a snowy white had still been unable to rob of the ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... the type of woman that successful industrialism turns out by the gross. Sincere, well-meaning, narrow, homely, expensively but indifferently educated, her opinion on any given subject could be predicted; her childlessness accentuated her want of mental breadth. She read the novels of Mrs Humphry Ward; she was vexed ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... pleasant to lie there in that warm, comfortable room with the familiar sights all around, the pennants, the pictures, the wild arrangements of photographs and trophies, and hear the fellows talking of homely things; to be fed with food that made him begin to feel like himself again; to have their kindly fellowship all about him like ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... she was ready to marry him, he was still waiting. He wrote of his handsome farm he had cleared with his own hands, and the beautiful wild country he lived in, telling her he hoped her future life would be free from all care. All this, and even more, dear reader, he told her—in plain, homely words, it is true; but love's language is always sweet, be it in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... most unwillingly, a cause of annoyance to Victoria, and a pretext for her repression. Importance flowed in on me unasked, unearned. To speak in homely fashion, she was always "a bad second," and none save herself attributed to her the normal status of privileges of an elder sister. Her wrath was not visited on me, but on those who exalted me so unduly; even ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... homely strength of "The Village Blacksmith" have made it deservedly popular. One questions whether the last stanza might not have been omitted with advantage both to the unity ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... best New England stories ever written. It is full of homely human interest * * * there is a wealth of New England village character, scenes and incidents * * * forcibly, vividly and truthfully drawn. Few books have enjoyed a greater sale and popularity. Dramatized, it made the greatest rural play ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... hope I have not actually grown homely," conceded Dorothy, "for Aunt Winnie is so fond of a ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... seldom heard the wild birds, or set her foot in the woods. He could also see the soft draperies about the window, the climbing ivy and growing ferns, and the much-used books and work-table, and from all these homely but precious belongings came uppermost the sweet smile of affection, the placid face which, in spite of age and sorrow and suffering, had always so tender a beauty for him. Quickly he turned back to his desk, and wrote a long letter to his mother. She would ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... be," he admitted, frankly, "'kase thar war sech a many o' them mealy-mouthed cusses a-waitin' on 'Genie. The kentry 'peared ter me ter bristle with Luke Todd; he 'minded me o' brumsaidge—everywhar ye seen his yaller head, ez homely ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... was rushing by. Little villas, with back-gardens running down to the rail, would give way for a mile or two to fields, and then start afresh. The fog was thin there, and England looked extraordinarily homely and pleasant. It was the known; he was conscious of rushing at fifty miles an hour into the unknown. He turned over the scrappy conversation of the last few minutes, and found it savoured of the unknown. It was curious the difference uniform made. He felt that these men ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... touched; I need no other." He paused a moment, as if concentrating all his thoughts, and then said, with musing accents: "Yes, I accept your illustration; I will even strengthen the force of the truth implied in it by a more homely illustration of my own. There are small skeleton abridgments of history which we give to children. In such a year a king was crowned—a battle was fought; there was some great disaster, or some great triumph. Of the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his eager freshness of view, his purity of motive, his perfect simplicity; and it is all this which I have attempted to depict, rather than to trace his theories, or to present a philosophy which was always concrete rather than abstract, and passionate rather than deliberate. To use a homely proverb, Father Payne was a man who filled ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Bird we came in sight of the old well-remembered land marks—Mount Discovery and the Western Mountains—seen dimly through a hazy atmosphere. It was good to see them again, and perhaps after all we are better this side of the Island. It gives one a homely feeling to see ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... colour and the scannel voice of it issuing forth, as in mockery, from its painted throat, must, like my landlady's butterflies at Great Missenden, have been invented by some skilful fabulist for the consolation and support of homely virtue: or rather, perhaps, by a fabulist not quite so skilful, who made points for the moment without having a studious enough eye to the complete effect; for I thought these melting greens and blues so beautiful that afternoon, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thinking of emotion as a thing purely psychical,—purely of the mind, despite the fact that all the great descriptions and all the homely sayings portray it as bodily. "My heart thumped like a steam engine," or "I could not catch my breath"; "a cold chill played up and down my back"; "I swallowed hard, because my mouth was so dry I could not speak." And the Bible repeatedly says of the man stricken ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... triumphant and loving joy in his religion enables him often to attain the poetic beauty and eloquence of his original; but both by instinct and of set purpose he rendered his own style even more simple and direct, partly by the use of homely vernacular expressions. What he had said in 'Grace Abounding' is equally true here: 'I could have stepped into a style much higher ... but I dare not. God did not play in convincing of me ... wherefore ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... our Saviour. But in the small decorative pictures painted for the rich ecclesiastics, and for private oratories, and in the cheap prints which were prepared for distribution among the people, and became especially popular during the religious reaction of the seventeenth century, we find this homely version of the subject perpetually, and often most pleasingly, exhibited. The greatest and wisest Being who ever trod the earth was thus represented, in the eyes of the poor artificer, as ennobling and sanctifying labour and toil; and the quiet domestic duties and affections were ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... Coalition implies some power of coalescing. But among the four Powers there was far more of disunion than union. In fact, England was the sole link between these wrangling confederates, and that, too, solely by means of what Carlyle called the cash nexus. Grenville, using a more homely metaphor, averred that the German princes turned towards England as an inexhaustible milch-cow. The animal in this case could dictate her terms; and thus the relations of the three Powers resembled those of a rich but somewhat exigent ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... which had belonged to the last abbe—an act consequently of pure embezzlement. The Duchess afterwards transmitted to Philip an inventory of the plundered property, including the furniture of nine houses, and begged him to command Viglius to make instant restitution. If there be truth in the homely proverb, that in case of certain quarrels honest men recover their rights, it is perhaps equally certain that when distinguished public personages attack each other, historians may arrive at the truth. Here certainly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... for it by education; Mrs. Evelyn by character; Mrs. Thorn by natural constitution. Of them all, though by far the least winning and agreeable in personal qualifications, Fleda would soonest have relied on Mrs. Thorn, could soonest have loved her. Her homely sympathy and kindness made their way to the child's heart; Fleda felt them and trusted them. But there were too few points of contact. Fleda thanked her, and did not wish to see her again. With Mrs. Carleton Fleda had almost nothing at all ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... the stuffing was showing through holes in the sofa, the strips of carpet were worn threadbare. A couple of photographs and a few books were ranged in line on the bureau—that was all that had been done towards giving the place a homely air. It was like a room that had never ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... gorgeous palace, and a beautiful lady on whose lap he used to recline; but when he tried to think closely and recall the past, his mind became confused, and painted chiefs, shady wigwams, and the homely face of the chieftain's squaw, obtruded themselves, and blurred the glorious scenes amid which he faintly ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... tremulous harp and had it pictured with grace and vested with charm. And since the power of the national faith was all-permeating, its reconstruction was far-reaching in effect. Egypt was swept into a tremendous and beautiful heresy by a homely king, whose ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... dimity ruffle, a square blue bow to fasten it, and a brown gingham apron. Her sandy hair was parted rigorously in the middle, brought over her temples in two smooth streaky scallops, and braided behind in two tight tails, fastened by a green bow. Young Lucretia was a homely little girl, although her face was always radiantly good-humored. She was a good scholar, too, and could spell and add sums as fast as anybody in ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... happily unaware of his savageness and unnatural spirit, drooped his homely, ungainly head in a dejected manner. To him, Mary was only one more burden, one more wriggling, gasping infliction, to be jogged slowly about for her first ride. He snorted in disdain. Mary jumped. Why didn't she use her own feet? "Dolly" didn't want to be bothered. Finally he rolled ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various
... about 30 years old, with a plump and cheerful face, but twisted into a tightness that made it comical. Her gait was very homely, her limbs seemed all odd ones; her shoes were so self-willed that they never wanted to go where her feet went. She wore blue stockings, a printed gown of hideous pattern and many colors, and a white apron. Her sleeves were short, her elbows always grazed, her cap anywhere ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... stubble with their hands, preparatory to another crop. Switzerland could not afford to be a Kingdom,—the expense of a Court and Royal Family would famish half her people. Yet everywhere are the signs of frugal thrift and homely content. I met only two beggars in that long day's ride through sterile Switzerland, while in a similar ride through the fertile plains of Italy I should have encountered hundreds, though there each day's labor produces as much as three days' do here. If the ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... this homely object, in the midst of the savage prairies, was as ludicrous as unexpected; and we might have hailed it with roars of laughter, had prudence permitted such an indecorous exhibition. As it was, my companion chuckled so loudly, that I was compelled ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... ideas of virtue and intellectual excellence has been long acknowledged.—A set of features, however regular, inspire but little admiration or enthusiasm, unless they be irradiated by that sunshine of the soul which creates beauty. The expression of intelligent benevolence renders even homely features and cheeks of sorry grain[1] agreeable; and it has been observed, that the most lasting attachments have not always been excited by the most beautiful of the sex. As men have become more cultivated, they have attended more to the expression of amiable and estimable qualities in the female ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... Ossian is not a translation. In the publications of the Irish Ossianic poetry we see what that poetry really was—rude, homely, plain-spoken, leagues removed from the nebulous sublimity ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... bread, the whole fabric of social order to be established under new conditions. They came from the sunny skies of France to the capricious climate where the summers were fierce and the winters terrible with winds and snows. They left the polished amenities of an old civilization, for the homely ways of rude settlers of another race and language. Their lips, which had shaped themselves to the harmonies of a refined language, which had been used to speaking such names as Rochefort and Beauvoir ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... If blond, he praises her dainty beauty; brunette, her constancy; pale, her sweetness. In cold weather his preferences go toward the buxom, in summer, svelte. Even old ladies serve to swell his list. Rich or poor, homely or beautiful, all's one to him so long as the being is inside a petticoat. "But why go on? Lady, you know his ways." The air, "Madamina," is a marvel of malicious humor and musical delineation. "E la grande maestoso"—the music rises and inflates itself most pompously; "la piccina"—it ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the cosy dining-room, and sitting down, he hammered the floor with his crutch. The homely sound of dishes being washed ceased suddenly in the adjoining room, and Mrs. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... others loud and clear; and occasionally, when uttering them, he suddenly takes wing and flies directly away from the female to a distance of fifty yards, and performs a wide circuit about her in the air, singing all the time. The homely object of his passion always appears utterly indifferent to this curious and pretty performance; yet she must be even more impressionable than most female birds, since she continues scattering about her parasitical and often wasted ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... changeful light, Is dimmed and darkened in a dread eclipse; The withering scowl, the smile so sunny bright, Alike have faded from his voiceless lips. The words of power, the mirthful, merry quips, The mighty onslaught, and the quick reply, The biting taunts that cut like stinging whips, The homely truth, the lessons grave and high, All, all are with the past, but ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... of this soon after tying up at the landing. A tall, lank, ungainly officer, with a face so distinctively homely as to instantly attract my attention, led his company of men up the river bank, and ordered them to transport the pile of commissary stores from where they had been promiscuously thrown to a drier spot farther back. The officer ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... Standing on my seat, I saw an immense lane of people, silent as a wood; a contagious shiver stirred them, like a gust of wind amongst the leaves; I saw the distant glitter of helmets and cuirasses, and the pageant swept along with that one tired, kindly, homely face for its centre of attraction, luring loyalty even from a heart so republican as mine by its air of patient weariness. I thought, and I believed the thought sincere, that I would not have exchanged places with her who was the mistress of so many peoples, the Empress of such indeterminable ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... bad luck," O'Malley said. "I can stand a Nissen hut jest to be flyin' one o' them babies. We'll meet up with plenty o' Jerries." O'Malley grinned eagerly, his homely face lighting up. "Remember how we used to mix it with them Jerry bandits tryin' ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... and was said to have earned L30,000 by her writings, amongst them a religious tract bearing the title of "The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain." We found he was not a mythical being, for David Saunders, the shepherd referred to, was a real character, noted for his homely wisdom and practical piety, and, as Mrs. More described him, was quite a Christian Hero. He resided at Great Cherwell, near Lavington, where his house was still pointed out to visitors. A typical shepherd of Salisbury Plain was afterwards pictured ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... trifle. Their real tyranny was the tyranny of aggressive reason over the cowed and demoralised human spirit. Their brooding and raving can be forgiven, can in truth be loved and reverenced, for it is humanity on fire; hatred can be genial, madness can be homely. The Puritans fell, not because they were fanatics, but because ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... very homeliness excludes them from certain places where their very power of suggestion is a disturbance of the general effect. The selective instinct of the artist tells him when his language should be homely, and when it should be more elevated; and it is precisely in the imperceptible blending of the plain with the ornate that a great writer is distinguished. He uses the simplest phrases without triviality, and the grandest without ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... (Book V, chap. 2) as in a very simple and rude state, subsisting almost entirely on the produce of the land, but as being 'a people of much integrity and sincerity, far from the craft and knavery of men among us, contented with plain and homely fare, and strangers to the luxuries and excesses of the rich'. In India we find strict veracity most prevalent among the wildest and half-savage tribes of the hills and jungles in Central India, or the chain of the Himalaya mountains; and among those where we find it prevail most, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... spent the twopence on bread and meat at his inn, and he durst not refuse it; then, with light purse and heavy heart, I set out to reach London that night. It mattered little to me that the way was beset with robbers and bullies. I had neither horse nor cloak; my homely apparel was rent and dirty; my boots were in holes, and my belt was empty. I was not worth robbing, and the few who set on me in mistake, did not stay long when they found the temper I was in. So late that night—it must have been towards midnight—I brought my journey to an end, ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... girls; that Pete Noyes should "bank" to buy a wheeled chair for his rheumatic father; that the villain was "layin' by" for his parents to come from the Fatherland, and that the company should all chip in to send the property woman's sick child to the seashore. But to Colette the homely little stories were vignettes ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... elevation of Ward affords not only a singular instance of the mutability of human affairs, but of the tendency of the Anglo-Saxon race, when transplanted to foreign countries, to emerge to eminence, and surpass others by the homely but rare qualities of common-sense and unfaltering energy. Ward was a Yorkshire groom. The Duke of Lucca, when on a visit to this country, perceiving the lad's merit, took him into his service, and promoted him, through the several degrees of command in his stable, to be head-groom of the ducal ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... man in Hatton to carry it on." As she was talking Mrs. Hatton had put her basket of herbs on a little table, and with glowing cheeks she now bent her head and inhaled their refreshing odors. John was silent for a few moments, and profoundly touched by the old homely ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... which is of feature merely catches the careless, wandering eye. The beauty which is the reflex of character holds the eye, and eventually wins the heart. Those who knew Mrs. Arnot best declared that, instead of growing old and homely, she was growing more lovely every year. Her dark hair had turned gray early, and was fast becoming snowy white. For some years after her marriage she had grown old very fast. She had dwelt, as it were, on the northern side of an iceberg, and in her vain attempt to melt and ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... Yet homely as were her attire and surroundings, it seemed as inappropriate for any one to call the stately Susannah Grandiere "Sukey," as it is for some writers to refer to England's magnificent Elizabeth as ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... the producing capacity of machinery gives organized capital a better hold on labor, because capital owns the machinery, and, in homely phrase, labor "is the under dog in the fight" all of the time. It makes no practical difference to it whether the laborer becomes capitalist or no, for the moment he becomes so he is engaged in the same crusade. He is no better nor worse than the one whom ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... cousin, was standing in person upon the steps of his house, for he had seen us in the distance, and guessed that it was I. His appearance was very homely and benevolent, short and stout, forty-five years old, perhaps, with a round, good-humoured face, burned brown with the tropical sun, and shot with a thousand wrinkles. He wore white linen clothes, in true planter style, with a cigar between ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of this, one of the most pathetic of histories, was at hand; the end was not the less pathetic because it came in so homely a fashion. On a cold day in March he stopped his coach in the snow on his way to Highgate, to try the effect of cold in arresting putrefaction. He bought a hen from a woman by the way, and stuffed it with snow. He was taken with a bad chill, which forced him to stop at ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... considerable of which flows by Horton. The abounding watercourses are veiled with willows, but the tree does not seem to have attracted Milton's attention. It was reserved for the poet-painter of the Liber Studiorum to show what depths of homely pathos, and what exquisite picturesqueness of gnarled and knotted line, could be found in a pollard willow, and for Tennyson to reveal the poetic expressiveness of the tree as denoting a solemn and pensive ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... puttin on my most sweetest look and speakin in a winnin voice, "that so fair a made as thow never got hitched to some likely feller." [N.B.—She was upards of 40 and homely as a stump fence, but ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... set and there was no colour in the west, but over all the homely, wind-swept landscape a solemn and unearthly light shone and slowly passed, shone ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... get anything like a proper supply. I heard nothing but wails from distracted housekeepers about the price and scarcity of food that week. However, the luncheon showed no sign of scarcity, and I was much amused at the substantial and homely character of the menu, which included cold baked sucking pig among its delicacies. A favorite specimen of the confectioner's art that day consisted of a sort of solid brick of plum pudding, with, for legend, "The First Sod" tastefully picked out ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... handed on its errors as faithfully as its perfections. But, such as it is, it is a fine specimen of fourteenth-century English. He translated not for scholars or for nobles, but for the plain people, and his style was such as suited those for whom he wrote—plain, vigorous, homely, and yet with all its homeliness full of a solemn grace and dignity, which made men feel that they were reading no ordinary book. He uses many striking expressions, such as (II Tim. ii. 4): "No man holding knighthood to God, wlappith himself with worldli nedes;" and many of the best-known phrases ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... first meeting again, spoke of Margarita, that marvellously beautiful child, asking if I had not thought it strange so fair a flower as that should have sprung from the homely stalk of a sweet potato? I answered that I had been surprised at first, but had ceased to believe that she was a child of Batata's, or of any of his kin. He then offered to tell me Margarita's history; and I was not surprised to hear that he ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... very remarkable, that he retained in his memory very slight and trivial, as well as important things[49]. As an instance of this, it seems that an inferiour domestick of the Duke of Leeds had attempted to celebrate his Grace's marriage in such homely rhimes as he could make; and this curious composition having been sung to Dr. Johnson he got it by heart, and used to repeat it in a very pleasant manner. Two of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... other writings (altho with no lack of affection for those also) partly because these have the most of the flavor of the soil about them. After veracity and the sense of the universal, what I best relish in literature is this native aroma, pungent, homely, and abiding. Yet I feel sure that I should not rate him so high if he were the author of these three books only. They are the best of him, but the others are good also, and good in a different way. Other writers have given us this local ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... Dalton had never, in the long, long course of his years, had a sensation like that which took him, as the queer voice melted away, blending imperceptibly with the homely rustlings and lowings of the farm night. The ache he had carried in his heart for those last weeks seemed suddenly to bulge and burst, like a bubble. The old moon, the hills and trees and trail of his long travel; the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... in the quiet hall, fighting down a host of surmises, of unwelcome doubts which sprang, it would seem, out of the twilight, brought to birth by an old woman's homely words; and in those illuminating seconds Owen allowed himself to wonder whether, after all, he had committed an action which he ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... striking a blow through her at the man she professed to love still, even with a greater passion now that he was the victim of combined and unrelenting hostility. Hortense, it would appear, refused at first to have any dealings with Alexander, but this sovereign's personal charms, winning manners, and homely ways soon fascinated and captured her. She may be excused, but her mother did not act the part of a nobleminded woman, and her memory must bear ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... who came to consult the seer on affairs of the heart, therefore, received only the scantiest mention from his biographer, and never were the languishing and sighing of Mr. Campbell's devotees described with any romantic glamor. On the contrary, Defoe portrayed in terse and homely phrases the follies and affectations of the dumb man's fair clients. The young blooming beauty who found little Duncan "wallowing in the dust" and bribed him with a sugarplum to reveal the name of her future husband; the "sempstress with an itching desire for a parson"; housekeepers ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... maiden begonia and is, in fact, a foreign species," Chia Cheng observed. "There's a homely tradition that it is because it emanates from the maiden kingdom that its flowers are most prolific; but this is likewise erratic talk and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... God's animals, and having nothing to do with the shows of life. And yet to the simply honourable, to such of gentle breeding as despised mere show, the ways of life in their house would have seemed altogether admirable: the homely, yet not unfastidious modes and conditions of the unassuming homestead, would have appeared to them not a little attractive. But James took no interest in any of them, and, if possible, yet less in the ways of the tradesmen and craftsmen ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... peculiar inward slope of the land, all within, as the loch reaches the line of the valley, becomes tame and low, and a black dreary moor stretches from the flat terminal basin into the interior. The opening of Loch Portree is a palace gateway, erected in front of some homely suburb, that occupies the place which the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... own fruit." Emerson remarked on this, that Thoreau was sufficiently original in his own way; and he always spoke of Lowell in a friendly and appreciative manner. The whole poem is filled with such homely comparisons, which hit the nail exactly on the head. The most subtle piece of analysis, however, is Lowell's ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... the scene. Yet even then his wonderful skill of hand and sense of the picturesque never forsook him. His intimacy with low life only dictated his theme—the coarseness of the man and the folly of his company never touched the execution of his pieces. All is indeed homely—nay, mean—but native taste and elegance redeemed every detail. To a full command over every implement of his art, he united a facility of composition and a free readiness of hand perhaps ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... he added, "it is well that it is so, else should I have had for rivals Louis and Henry and Charles, and perchance you also. The flower o' the peach suits her well; she is but a homely little bloom o' the kitchen garden beside her statelier rose and lily sisters. But, look you, what use have I for such useless ornaments as your waxy-pale lilies, your flaunting and fragile roses? What fruit bear they, I ask? Why, ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... homely coxcombs as proud as if they had persons to be proud of; at the same time that it was apparent, that the pains they took about themselves but the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... front of the fire, his hat between his knees, stared at the gilt chandeliers, the clock, and the curiosities with which the chimney-shelf was covered, the velvet and trimmings of the curtains, and all the costly and elegant nothings that a woman of fashion collects about her. He was roused from his homely meditations by Madame d'Espard, who addressed him in a ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... the bed and Karen knelt before her with her head in her lap. The old woman's passed quietly over her hair while she wept, and the homely gentleness, like the simplicity of milk to famished lips, flowed into ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... "Her little homely dress!" he said. "And see here—these shoes—how worn they are! You see where her feet went bare upon the ground. They told me afterward that the stones had cut and bruised them. She never told me that. No, no, God bless her! And I have remembered since how she walked behind me, that I might ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives |
