"Lapidary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... value have been extracted, the color being uniformly black. The garnets are large trapezohedral-faced crystals of an intense color, but penetrated with rifts and flaws. Many, no doubt, will afford serviceable gem material, but their resources have not yet been tested by the lapidary. ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... objects] roller, steam roller, lawn roller, rolling pin, rolling mill; sand paper, emery paper, emery cloth, sander; flat iron, sad iron; burnisher, turpentine and beeswax; polish, shoe polish. [art of cutting and polishing gemstones] lapidary. [person who polishes gemstones] lapidary, lapidarian. V. smooth, smoothen[obs3]; plane; file; mow, shave; level, roll; macadamize; polish, burnish, calender[obs3], glaze; iron, hot-press, mangle; lubricate &c. (oil) 332. Adj. smooth; polished &c. v.; leiodermatous[obs3], slick, velutinous[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... wish that you could see his jewels," cried Guido, growing fervent; and he lovingly catalogued a host of lapidary marvels. ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... wants concentration and continuity. It is not that he has no claims to be considered a philosopher or an artist, but rather that he is both imperfectly, for he thinks and writes marvelously, on a small scale. He is an entomologist, a lapidary, a jeweler, a coiner of sentences, of adages, of criticisms, of aphorisms, counsels, problems; and his book, extracted from the accumulations of his journal during fifty years of his life, is a collection of precious stones, of ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... way competible to Inanimate Agents, if to any Corporeal ones at all, yet as to what is affirm'd concerning the Turquois's changing Colour, I know not well how to reject the Affirmation of so Learned (and which in this case is much more considerable) so Judicious a Lapidary as Boetius de Boot[31], who upon his own particular and repeated Experience delivers so memorable a Narrative of the Turquois's changing Colour, that I cannot but think it worth your Perusal, especially ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... fathoms may be found. As I walked upon the edge I could see far and wide over the sandy bottom of the bay; the sun shone clear and green and steady in the deeps; the bay seemed rather like a great transparent crystal, as one sees them in a lapidary's shop; there was naught to show that it was water but an internal trembling, a hovering within of sun-glints and netted shadows, and now and then a faint lap and a dying bubble round the edge. The shadows of the rocks lay out for ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lapidary, or science of glyptics, is a most interesting study, and it would be a mistake not to consider it for a few moments on its technical side. It is very ancient as an art. In Ecclesiasticus the wise Son of Sirach alludes to craftsmen "that cut and grave ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... at first by the personal advice of a trained impresario, don Emilio Mario. Second, the drama is above all the genre of condensation, and Galds, even as a novelist, never condensed. His art was not that of the lapidary, nor even that of the short story writer. He has few novelas cortas to his credit, and he required pages and pages to develop ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... In vain the delving antiquary tries To find the tomb where generous Harvard lies Here, here, his lasting monument is found, Where every spot is consecrated ground! O'er Stoughton's dust the crumbling stone decays, Fast fade its lines of lapidary praise; There the wild bramble weaves its ragged nets, There the dry lichen spreads its gray rosettes; Still in yon walls his memory lives unspent, Nor asks a braver, nobler monument. Thus Hollis lives, and Holden, honored, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... The surprised lapidary rose and opened the door. Two men entered the garret. One of them was tall and thin, with a face mean and pimpled, surrounded by thick, grayish whiskers; he held in his hand a stout loaded cane, and wore a shapeless ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... side of a hill or even a thicket was to find perfect comfort. The sea off Manomet was no longer chaotic and menacing, but was stippled with dancing light on a soft, rich blue that was as soothing to the sense as the other had been disquieting. Along the south of White Horse Beach the lapidary surf had strewn quartz pebbles that gleamed in the clear sun like precious stones. It took little effort of the imagination to find pocketfuls of rubies, pearls, sapphires, and amethysts among ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... carnelian and an hundred thousand dinars and a present, which I took, and with which I betook myself to the land of Babel. Then I sought out the Shaykh and when he was shown to me I delivered to him the money and the present, which he accepted and sending for a lapidary, bade him fashion the carnelian into this amulet. Then he abode seven months in observation of the stars, till he chose out an auspicious time for engraving it, when he graved upon it these talismanic characters which thou seest, and I took it and returned with it to the King.'"—And ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... efficient in her knowledge of what poetry is, as she was certainly proficient as workman. She was lapidary more than painter or sculptor. It was a beautiful cutting away, and a sweeping aside of the rifts and flaws. That is to say, she wanted that. She wanted the white light of the perfect gem, and she could not have been content with just matrix, with here and ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... the main phonetic (Quintilian, I. 7. 11). The language was pronounced as it was spelled. But as is always the case, changes in orthography lagged a little behind changes in the pronunciation. Hence even the blunders made by an ignorant lapidary in cutting an inscription are often a source of information ...
— Latin Pronunciation - A Short Exposition of the Roman Method • Harry Thurston Peck
... bank, riparian hard, arduous wound, vulnerable written, graphic spotless, immaculate sell, mercenary son, filial salt, saline meal, farinaceous wood, ligneous wood, sylvan cloud, nebulous glass, vitreous milk, lacteal water, aquatic stone, lapidary gold, aureous silver, argent iron, ferric honey, mellifluous loving, amatory loving, erotic loving, amiable wedded, hymeneal plow, arable priestly, sacerdotal arrow, sagittal wholesome, salubrious warlike, bellicose timely, temporary fiery, igneous ring, annular soap, saponaceous nestling, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the colossal statue by Chantrey which bears the following inscription, pronounced to be beyond comparison "the finest lapidary inscription in the English language." It is from the pen ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... poems is called Odin's Song of Runes. Runes were the Scandinavian alphabet, used for lapidary inscriptions, a thousand of which have been discovered in Sweden, and three or four hundred in Denmark and Norway, mostly on tombstones. This alphabet consists of sixteen letters, with the powers of F, U, TH, O, R, K, H, N, I, A, S, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... revealed by the concussion of misfortune, as the splendor of the precious jewel of the mine is developed by the blows of the lapidary.—F.A. DURIVAGE. ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... but the portion of the inhabitants who escaped built or occupied suburbs at Nola in Campania and at Naples. In the latter city, the Regio Herculanensium, or Quarter of the Herculaneans, an inscription marked on several lapidary monuments, indicates the part devoted to the population driven from the ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... corresponds to a species of malady, and also to a class of sins; and he affirms that when we have chemically got possession of the active principle of gems we shall have not only antidotes but preventatives. While waiting for this chimerical dream to be realized and for our medicine to become the mock of lapidary chemists, he uses precious stones to formulate diagnoses ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... or reach of thought, has come down the stream of time, and will float upon it for ever. No doubt Dr. Johnson was right in calling it a waste of time to carve cherrystones, but precious stones are the more valued and admired for the art of the lapidary. Whitman did not cultivate versification. He almost despised it. He sneered at "dulcet rhymes." Yet this may hinder his access to posterity. Mr. Meredith hints as much in his sonnet entitled "An Orson ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... compromise the affair, at the price of almost my whole fortune. Yet this accommodation was not made so secretly, but that my character was blasted, and my credit overthrown; so that I was fain to relinquish my occasional equipage, and hire myself as journeyman to a lapidary, an employment which I had exercised in my youth. In this obscure station, I laboured with great assiduity, until I made myself perfect in the knowledge of stones, as well as in the different methods of setting them off to the best advantage; ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... preacher"; even he must cultivate his gifts in order to realise his highest possibilities. We speak sometimes of "diamonds in the rough"; the value of these precious stones increases as the art of the lapidary is carefully exercised upon them. If it be only to prevent the formation of false methods and bad habits of thought and utterance, a preacher should give attention to the study of Homiletics. He may, as the end of all his studies, feel led deliberately to reject much of what he has ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... realize that large and good stones possessing these qualities are so rare; that thousands of natives are toiling in the river beds of India, Burma and Ceylon washing out from the gravel or the sand the little blue and red pebbles which are to be converted by the lapidary's art into brilliant jewels of sapphire and ruby. Even in that wonderful pit at Kimberley, where half the diamonds of the world seem to have been crowded together for the use of man, although, perhaps, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... mixture of respect and familiarity. Their talk was full of mysterious names and expressions, and Taffy thought at first they must be Freemasons. "The Moor point-to-point was a walk-over for the Milkman; Lapidary was scratched, which left it a soft thing, unless Sir Harry fancied a fox-catcher like Nursery Governess, in which case Billy behind the bar would do as much business as he liked at six-to-one." After a while Taffy discovered they were talking about horses, ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Abbey which could be better spared than that. Too many that were placed there as luminaries have become conspicuous by their obscurity in the midst of that illustrious company. On the whole, the Abbey produces a distinct sense of being overcrowded. It appears too much like a lapidary's store-room. Look up at the lofty roof, which we willingly pardon for shutting out the heaven above us,—at least in an average London day; look down at the floor and think of what precious relics it covers; but do not look around you with ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... You will see there, also, specimens of beryl, topaz, emerald, tourmaline, heavy spar, fluor-spar, Iceland spar—possibly a full-formed diamond, as it quitted the hand of Nature, not yet having got into the hands of the lapidary. ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... one of the finest sets of matched pearls in the world. You Holidays are so hanged smart. I wonder it didn't occur to you to bring 'em to us anyway. We're the boys that can tell you who's who in the lapidary world. Pearls have pedigrees, my dear fellow, quite as faithfully recorded as those ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... to find that in the genealogy given by our ancient chronicles of the predecessors of Hengist and Horsa, whilst Vetta is recorded as their grandfather, Victi or Wecta is, with equal constancy, represented as their great-grandfather. The old lapidary writing on the Cat-stane describes the Vetta for whom that monument was raised as the son of Vecta; and the old parchment and paper writings of our earliest chroniclers invariably describe the same relationship between the Vetta and Victa of the forefathers of Hengist and Horsa. Thus Bede, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... gone geologising together, I'll tell you how I got on at St Albans, where, I suppose you know, I saw cousin William.[14] You know the conglomerates. They are generally hard little stones in a casing of sandstone, lime, or other soft matter. I have known for thirty years, in a lapidary's window in Perth, a large piece of conglomerate, where all is hard and flinty, taking a beautiful polish. After much inquiry I found that this was got in Hertfordshire, where St Albans is. I could get no account of any rock of it, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... like to know the virtues of the diamond, (as men may find in THE LAPIDARY that many men know not), I shall tell you, as they beyond the sea say and affirm, of whom all science and all philosophy cometh from. He that beareth the diamond upon him, it giveth him hardiness and manhood, and it keepeth the limbs of his body whole. It giveth him victory of his enemies in ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... that burrowed among the stones; the sea anemones, the jelly-fish, so innocent to regard, so deadly to encounter. They were all there, with tiny little pink-lined shells, and pebbles of marvellous transparency which must surely, surely, be worth taking to a lapidary to examine! What cries of delight followed the landing, what hasty summoning of the whole party to witness some fresh discovery; what trippings on slippery stones, and splashing of fresh white dresses! Then, ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... quails? for they were waistcoated with bacon,—and I had the charity to hope they had not stolen them! Anyhow, I never called there again. And, while I am in Seven Dials, let me record another useful small experience. There was a lapidary handy, who had at times cut my beach-found choanites for me. One day I found him making scarabaei out of bits of agate and lapis lazuli. "Who gave you an order for these," said I. "Well, sir, I don't rightly know his name; but he ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... "lapidary" in a sentence. MODEL: "When Queen Victoria wanted the Koh-i-noor to be recut, she sent it to a famous lapidary ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... few more, had spent half the morning in the vain search, ending by the King sending his chamberlain, Lord Fitzhugh, to carry to Paris a seal already bearing his shield, but lacking the small private mark that authenticated it as his signet. Fitzhugh would stand over the lapidary and see this added, and bring it back. Ralf Percy had meantime been sent to bring a report of the diggers, but he was long in returning; and when Henry became uneasy, James had volunteered to go himself, and Henry had consented, not because the air was full ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... countrymen to this noble production[557]. M. Mustoxidi has not been left without a reply; but, as yet, he has received no answer. It should seem that the horses are irrevocably Chian, and were transferred to Constantinople by Theodosius. Lapidary writing is a favourite play of the Italians, and has conferred reputation on more than one of their literary characters. One of the best specimens of Bodoni's typography is a respectable volume of inscriptions, all written by his friend Pacciaudi. Several were prepared for the recovered ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... upon oath, so that rascals and Dr. Johnsons cannot pick holes in it. "Died through the visitation of intense stupidity, by impinging on a moonlight night against the off hind wheel of the Glasgow mail! Deodand upon the said wheel—two-pence." What a simple lapidary inscription! Nobody much in the wrong but an off-wheel; and with few acquaintances; and if it were but rendered into choice Latin, though there would be a little bother in finding a Ciceronian word for "off-wheel," Marcellus ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... fruits which I have entrusted to thee." The treasurer, on receiving the royal command, immediately brought them, and having split them, there was found in each one a ruby, one and all equally perfect in size and water. Raja Vikram beholding such treasures was excessively pleased. Having sent for a lapidary, he ordered him to examine the rubies, saying, "We cannot take anything with us out of this world. Virtue is a noble quality to possess here below—so tell justly what is the value ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... any particular effort in that direction; as may be supposed, therefore, he was often disconnected and irregular, but he knew nothing about it, and nobody else cared; people liked him as he was. His sentences were not like beautiful stones turned and polished by the hand of a lapidary, but they were rough lumps, in all shapes, broken from the great rock of Gospel truth, having their sharp points and jagged edges on them; the consequence being that when slung from the hand of this humble ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... was an eminent instance of the truth of that rule, poeta non fit, sed nascitur; one is not made, but born a poet. Indeed his learning was but very little; so that as Cornish diamonds are not polished by any lapidary, but are pointed and smooth, even as they are taken out of the earth, so Nature itself was all the art which was ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... were, and the cause of their dispute. "We were disputing," said they, "concerning the superiority of our professions; for each of us possesses complete skill in his own." "What are your professions?" replied the sultan. "I am," said one, "O sovereign, a lapidary of wonderful skill." "I fear thou art an astonishing ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... it, is the proposed Inscription for the Pillar at Naseby. You need not scruple a moment to make any change that strikes you; I am well aware it is good for nothing except its practical object, and that I have no skill in lapidary literature. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... children and of great trouble to his parents. One day his mother dreamt she was in possession of a casket, containing portraits of herself and her lord, and on one side were set nine precious stones of lustrous beauty encircling one rough unpolished pebble. In her dream she carried the casket to a lapidary, and asked him to take out the rough stone as unworthy of such goodly company; but he advised her to allow it to remain, and subsequently it shone forth more brilliantly than the precious gems with which it was surrounded. The after superiority of Bertrand ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... them. You can buy gems in the rough or in blanks, then cut and polish them to make your own jewelry or decorations. This takes practice, plus a cutting and polishing outfit, wood vise, maybe a diamond wheel. (Or you can join a lapidary club that might already have ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company
... this expression it may be inferred, that besides his mercantile speculations in jewels, Cesar Frederick was a lapidary.—E.] ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... he, "as of all stones the diamond is most clearest, and yet most hard for the lapidary to cut: as of all flowers the rose is the fairest, and yet guarded with the sharpest prickles: so of all our country lasses Phoebe is the brightest, but the most coy of all to stoop unto desire. ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... chief, it aims rather to give expression to the ideas and abilities of the author, than to do justice to its subject. But it is in Warren's Lily and the Bee, that the school appears in full bloom. This is said to consist mostly of exclamation points, and is written in a sort of lapidary style, that deals in riddles, pathos without object, sentimentality with irony, world-pain, and allusions to all the kingdoms of heaven and earth, without any explanation as to what relation these allusions ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... all the saints: Hilaire of Poitiers, defender of the Nicean faith, the Athanasius of the Occident, as he has been called; Ambrosius, author of the indigestible homelies, the wearisome Christian Cicero; Damasus, maker of lapidary epigrams; Jerome, translator of the Vulgate, and his adversary Vigilantius, who attacks the cult of saints and the abuse of miracles and fastings, and already preaches, with arguments which future ages were to repeat, against the monastic vows and ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... that is possible; but go slow. Trace down that ring; find out everything that you can. Go and see Bertha Holcomb. Perhaps she can give you some data. Watson said no; but perhaps you may uncover it. Take the ring to a lapidary; but don't let him cut it. Last of all, and most important, buy the house of the Blind Spot. Draw on me. Let me pay ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... obtain a more compact stick or thread, as the fusion of the silica would hold the carbon particles together. He finally abandoned this and all the rest in favor of the hard deposit of carbon which lines the inside of gas-retorts, some specimens of which we found to be so hard that we required a lapidary's wheel to cut them ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... annexe. The sergeant had now got his section well in hand. I turned up the long winding road towards my quarters. It was a cold moonlight night, and every twig of broom and beech was sharply defined as in a black-and-white drawing. Overhead each star was hard and bright, as though a lapidary had been at work in the heavens, and never had the Great Bear seemed so brilliant. But none so bright and legible—or so it seemed to me—as Mars in ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... cabin. Our churches and our school houses, the bulwarks of our nation's strength and greatness, began to shoot out their branches of education from the 'little old log cabin.' The magnitude of this great country is like the rough gem in the hands of the lapidary. He takes no credit for its possession, but he does take credit for what skill he may exercise in making it beautiful and more valuable. So with the American people, it is left to them to so exercise their skill, mentally and physically, ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson |
