"Opulence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... muddy," retorted Joey with dogged pessimism. They trooped off after him, each one lighter hearted in spite of a dull reluctance, simply because Colonel Grand had brought not only the sunshine but a life-saving opulence. ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... consoled her: "Be easy, My daughter, My sufferings have atoned for your sins;" and as she reproached herself for having lived in opulence and having delighted in clothes and jewels, He addressed her, smiling: "To buy you riches, I have wanted for everything; you required a great number of clothes, and I had but one garment of which the soldiers stripped Me, for which they drew lots; My nakedness was the expiation of your vanity ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... were, being on a parallel, are rivals."—xiv. 8. See also the historian Josephus, Hist. vi. 1. Procopius of Caeserea, who lived in the sixth century, says that Chosroes, king of Persia, had a great desire to make himself master of Palestine, on account of its extraordinary fertility, its opulence, and the great number of its inhabitants. The Saracens thought the same, and were afraid that Omar. when he went to Jerusalem, charmed with the fertility of the soil and the purity of the air, would never return ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... they were mistaken. It is claimed that mines, richer than those of Hispaniola, have been found in Cuba and at the present writing it is asserted that gold to the value of one hundred and eighty thousand castellanos has been obtained there and converted into ingots; certainly a positive proof of opulence. ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... this age in beauty or in art; Nothing is wrought to-day that shall endure For earth's adornment, through long centuries; Not ours the fervid worship of a God That wastes its splendid opulence on glass, Leaving but hate for hungry human hearts. Yet great this age; its mighty work is man Knowing himself the universal life. And great our faith, which shows itself in works For human freedom and for racial good. The true religion ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... barbarism, and require things that are strange, odd, dazzling, and peculiar to captivate their jaded senses. Such we take to be the condition of Parisian society now. The tone of it is given by women who are essentially impudent and vulgar, who override and overrule, by the mere brute force of opulence and luxury, women of finer natures and moral tone. The court of France is a court of adventurers, of parvenus; and the palaces, the toilets, the equipage, the entertainments, of the mistresses ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... master of visible things, this so ardent lover, will be a lover of the invisible, with—Yes! there it is constantly, in the Platonic dialogues, not to be explained away—with a certain asceticism, amid all the varied opulence, of sense, of speech and fancy, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... dress of these southern women, will come home to him unexpectedly, and awaken in him that satisfaction with which we tell ourselves that we are the richer by one more beautiful experience. Or it may be something even slighter: as when the opulence of the sunshine, which somehow gets lost and fails to produce its effect on the large scale, is suddenly revealed to him by the chance isolation—as he changes the position of his sunshade—of a yard or two of roadway with its stones and weeds. And then, there is no end to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Redburn struggled on, often with feeble hands and fainting heart, to earn a subsistence for herself and Katy. She had been bred in opulence, and her wants were not so few and simple as the wants of those who have never enjoyed the luxury of a soft couch and a well-supplied table. She had never learned that calculating economy which provides a great deal with very ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... land, with less labour, yields a greater usufruct than other land; they get more money for their industry; they jingle more coin in their pockets than other peoples. But it is a grievous error to mistake that superior opulence for a sign of money-hunger, for they actually hold money very lightly, and spend a great deal more of it than any other race of men and with far less thought of values. The normal French family, it is often said, could ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... anti-Christian, and the glorification of pauperism. Dickens was born in a debtor's prison—constructively—and he leaped from squalor into fussy opulence. He wrote for the rabble, and he who writes for the rabble has a ticket to Limbus one way. The Rossettis made their appeal to the Elect Few. Dickens was sired by Wilkins Micawber and dammed by Mrs. Nickleby. He wallowed in the cheap and tawdry, and the gospel of sterling ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... culprits first met at the very spot, and the very hour, on which George Colwan was slain; and she had no doubt that they were incendiaries set on by his mother, to forward her own and her darling son's way to opulence. Mrs. Logan was wrong, as will appear in the sequel; but her antipathy to Mrs. Colwan made her watch the event with all care. She never quitted Peebles as long as Bell Calvert remained there, and, when she was removed to Edinburgh, the other followed. ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... and their oppressors, who required no evidence, would listen to no defence. It had been at first proposed, that one-eighth of their respective estates should be allowed for the future support of the directors; but it was especially urged that, in the various shades of opulence and guilt, such a proportion would be too light for many, and for some might possibly be too heavy. The character and conduct of each man were separately weighed; but, instead of the calm solemnity of a judicial inquiry, the fortune and honour of ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... had been transformed since Ralph's last visit. Paint, varnish and brass railings gave an air of opulence to the outer precincts, and the inner room, with its mahogany bookcases containing morocco-bound "sets" and its wide blue leather arm-chairs, lacked only a palm or two to resemble the lounge of a fashionable hotel. Moffatt himself, ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... just then, were to her really important. She was about to appear on the stage of family life, and she had formed a perfectly consistent conception of her part. Gloves were an integral part of her costume—they were the final proof of a sort of opulence and refinement; therefore, though she could not get them just then, it was perfectly natural and proper of her to mention them. It must not be thought that Gertie was insincere: she was not; she was dramatic. And it is a fact that within five minutes of her arrival she was down ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... consideration of the scene—the marble-topped tables, the range of leather-upholstered wall seats, the gay company, the ladies dressed in demi-state toilets, speaking in an exquisite visible chorus of taste, economy, opulence or art; the sedulous and largess-loving garcons, the music wisely catering to all with its raids upon the composers; the melange of talk and laughter—and, if you will, the Wuerzburger in the ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... give any other reason why an Empire like that of Britain should so long have wanted an ornament so suitable to its greatness than that slow progression of things which naturally makes elegance and refinement the last effect of opulence and power. ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... more perfectly ridiculous and absurd than the manner in which M. Crapelet flies out at the above expression! He taunts us, poor English, with always drawing comparisons against other nations, in favour of the splendour and opulence of our own Hospitals and Charitable Foundations—a thought, that never possessed me while writing the above, and which would require the peculiar obliquity, or perversity of talents, of my translator ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom which foresees and intends the opulence to which it gives rise; it is rather the gradual result of the propensity, in human nature, to barter and exchange one thing for another. The power of exchanging their respective produce makes it possible ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... fear, that these terrible enemies would be strong enough to override the truth, and to carry with them both a judge and a jury. As the summer months ran on, they all became aware that for any purpose of removing the witnesses the money had been paid in vain. Crinkett was living in all opulence at a hotel at Brighton; and the woman, calling herself Mrs. Caldigate, had taken furnished apartments in London. Rumour came that she was frequently seen at the theatres, and that she had appeared more than once in an open carriage in the parks. There was no doubt ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... and therefore to be avoided. That the inhabitants are become wealthy, there is indisputable evidence, but to whom they are indebted for their opulence, different opinions prevail. ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... "And"—he put the money and the diamond pendant coolly in his pocket—"it would be too bad if I didn't play it up, wouldn't it? It doesn't often come as easy as this. Amazing carelessness to leave that outside door unlocked! But, as I was saying, with such a lavish display of opulence on the table, one is almost led to hope that there might be more where ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the condition of receiving fifty copies. The booksellers of New York could not, he said, undertake them, for they were dead of the fever. It is interesting to find Dennie writing in his introduction, "Literary industry, usefully employed, has a sort of draught upon the bank of opulence, and has the right of entry into the mansion of every Maecenas.... Authors far elevated above the mire of low avarice have thought it debasement to make literature common ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... count de Tendilla redeemed his promises like a loyal knight; and this miracle, as it appeared in the eyes of Fray Antonio Agapida, is the first instance on record of paper money, which has since inundated the civilized world with unbounded opulence. ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... with a brooch which consisted of a single flaming beryl. Boots which extended halfway up his calves, and which were trimmed at the tops with rich brown fur, completed the impression of barbaric opulence which was suggested by his whole appearance. He carried a broad-brimmed hat in his hand, while he wore across the upper part of his face, extending down past the cheekbones, a black vizard mask, which he had apparently adjusted that very moment, for his hand was still raised to it as he entered. ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... government embroiled, and who, by their treacheries, hope to obtain the dignity of British knighthood, without calling for a party accused, without asking a proof, without attempting a distinction between the guilty and the innocent, the whole of that ancient and wealthy town, is in a moment reduced from opulence to beggary. Men who had spent their lives in extending the British commerce, who had invested in that place, the wealth their honest endeavors had merited, found themselves and their families, thrown at once on the world, for subsistence by its charities. Not the hundredth part of ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... and growing stronger daily, now that you realize the fact that God made only health, wealth, and love, and that he intended all his children to share his opulence. ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... avers that, in 1763, the secrets of his birth and the source of his opulence were known in Holland. The authority is the Memoirs of Grosley (1813). Grosley was an archaeologist of Troyes; he had traveled in Italy, and written an account of his travels; he also visited Holland and England, and later, from a Dutchman, he picked up his information ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... of Ahmed I, at Constantinople, its Gallic decorations have made it essentially French in spirit. The ornamentation of this palace is the most florid of any building in the Exposition proper. Yet this opulence is not inappropriate. In size and form, no less than in theme, the structure is well adapted to carry such rich decoration. This is the palace of the bounty of nature; its adornment symbolizes the rich yield of ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... intellectual culture, and so much to animate the spirit heroically to meet all the ills of this eventful life. Notwithstanding her experience of the heaviest temporal calamities, she found, in the opulence of her own intellectual treasures, an unfailing resource. These inward joys peopled her solitude with society, and dispelled even from the dungeon its gloom. I know not where to look for a career more full of ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... years, but they were years of copious achievement. In that comparatively short space of time, by the exercise of that art, to his natural gifts for which he had now added the wholesome tonic of experience, Peace passed from a poor and obscure lodging in a slum in Lambeth to the state and opulence of a comfortable suburban residence in Peckham. These were the halcyon days of Peace's enterprise in life. From No. 25 Stangate Street, Lambeth, the dealer in musical instruments, as Peace now described himself, sallied forth night after night, and in Camberwell and other parts of South London ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... believed that, by favor of La Pompadour, Bigot's heavy sentence was commuted, and he retained a sufficiency of his ill-gotten wealth to enable him, under a change of name, to live in ease and opulence at Bordeaux, where ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... absorbed its most potent authority, religion, yet even that was not efficacious to the annihilating that 'twas born within; and one can but excuse the caprice and wantonness of a coquette, when 'tis an inheritance. She adhered pertinaciously to the requirements of a lady of title, and loved opulence and luxury and admiration. She foresaw—young as she was and reared as she had been with all simpleness—an opportunity, being a noblewoman and the ward of a wealthy titled gentleman, to become a favourite at Court. This idea, however, was ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... my beast wants water?" Blue Jeans was deeply offended. Such opulence in anyone at such a moment would have seemed a needless taunt; that chance had selected the superintendent to flaunt it was surplusage of insult. Yet he could not even resent the superintendent's gesture, wide-flung and arrogant to all beholders. Again the superintendent ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... an immense reward to anybody who shall be instrumental in restoring them. In the old times, in my vanishing cracksman days, I once planned to get that reward by stealing the gems, and if I had lived that life another month—if the eyes of a woman had not dimmed the splendid opulence of these cold eyes of a god——" His voice sank and dropped off into silence, and Narkom had the good sense and the good taste to look out of the window ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... grave colors, the long unbroken lines of the nave, give the interior a remarkable solemnity, and create an impression and emotion as different as possible from those excited by churches of a later construction, with their florid architecture, their opulence of sculpture and carving, their statues and ornate monuments, their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... conversation of so motley an assemblage lack a certain pictorial quality, a somewhat fantastic opulence of reference and allusion. Of what might its members speak while they waited for the drawing aside of the piece of baize which hung between them and an Oriental camp? There was the staple of their wealth, a broad-leafed plant, the smoke of whose ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... The city of Odessa was founded on the ceded territory. The merchants who raised it to its sudden prosperity were not Russians but Greeks; and in the course of a single generation many a Greek trading-house, which had hitherto deemed the sum of L3,000 to be a large capital, rose to an opulence little behind that of the great London firms. Profiting by the neutrality of Turkey or its alliance with England during a great part of the revolutionary war, the Greeks succeeded to much of the Mediterranean trade that was lost by France and its dependencies. The increasing intelligence of the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... express pleading for these unhappy victims of circumstance: "what can be more shocking," he cries, "than to see an industrious poor Creature, who is able and willing to labour forced by mere want into Dishonesty, and that in a Nation of such Trade and Opulence." So justly could Fielding apportion the contributary negligence of society towards the criminals bred by ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... the extent of private fortunes must also regulate the increase of families. If children multiply beyond the means of supporting them, the intention of the law will be frustrated and families will be suddenly reduced from opulence to beggary, a revolution always dangerous to public tranquillity."[896] At the same time Aristophanes showed in his comedy "Ecclesiazusae" that the community of goods would necessarily lead to the ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... speak of the kings palace as being covered over with gold as our churches are with lead, and that the windows and floors are likewise of gold. It abounds in pearls, and is amazingly rich. Hearing of the vast opulence of this island, Kublai Khan sent two of his barons, Abasa and Vensaasin[3], with a fleet and a great army, to attempt the conquest. Sailing from Zaitum and Quinsai[4], they arrived safely on the island, but falling out between themselves, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... visits. From the time of his settling in Alencon he had nobly admitted his poverty, saying that his whole fortune consisted in an annuity of six hundred francs a year, the sole remains of his former opulence,—a property which obliged him to see his man of business (who held the annuity papers) quarterly. In truth, one of the Alencon bankers paid him every three months one hundred and fifty francs, sent down by Monsieur Bordin of Paris, the last ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... commit ourselves irrecoverably to the sentiments they express; but we will say this much for certain, namely, that the rich man is the true hundred-handed Gyges of the poets. He alone possesses the full complement of limbs who stands at the summit of opulence, and we may assert with strictly scientific accuracy that the Rothschilds are the most astonishing organisms that the world has ever yet seen. For to the nerves or tissues, or whatever it be that answers to the helm of a rich man's desires, there is a whole army of ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... Driver and the Trapper. A symbolic figure, "The Call of Fortune," accompanies them. Some of the characters are actual portraits, as are also the Artist, Writer, Scholar, Architect and Sculptor in the opposite panel, "The Arrival in the West." In this the lavishness and opulence of California welcome the pioneers. Mr. Du Mond is a member of the International Jury of Awards in the Fine Arts ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... always been an early riser. The popular legend that "Early to bed and early to rise," invariably and rhythmically resulted in healthfulness, opulence, and wisdom, I beg here to solemnly protest against. As an "unhealthy" man, as an "unwealthy" man, and doubtless by virtue of this protest an "unwise" man, I am, I think, a glaring example of the untruth ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... has said, that true liberty smothers the voice of kings, dispels the mists of superstition, and by its magic touch kindles the rays of genius, the enthusiasm of poetry, the flame of eloquence, pours into our laps opulence and art, and embellishes life with innumerable institutions and improvements which make it one grand theatre of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... place so dingy and so rough as this. At the end of one room was a marble mantelpiece above which there was a defaced, gilt-frame mirror. The chandeliers, the chairs, the wall-paper, all suggested the same note of one-time opulence worn ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... sweet-smelling harvests of clover and hay in the background and weeds and wild grass in the foreground, the area of vegetation in the opulence of midsummer was demarked from the area of shell-craters, trenches and explosions. You had the majesty of battle and the desolation of war; nature's eternal seeding and fruiting alongside the most ruthless forms of destruction. In ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... His gentle and beneficent doctrines and the conduct of the Christians, their enemies. What a scandal is it for them to see the faith preached by fifteen or twenty monks who are poor, despised, miserably clad, and reduced to begging their bread, while the crowd of so-called Christians living in opulence, arrayed in silks, mounted on their horses, inspires respect, submission, and fear everywhere, and acts in defiance of the law of God and the ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... dealer, who nodded, then slid them forward till they rested on the king. He placed a "copper" on the pile. A great sigh of indrawn breaths swept through the crowd. The North had never known a bet like this—it meant a fortune. Here was a tale for one's grandchildren—that a man should win opulence in an evening, then lose it in one deal. This final bet represented more than many of them had ever seen a one time before. Its fate lay ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... it you, the object of grief, the daughter of opulence, of wisdom and philosophy, that thus complaineth? It cannot be you are the child of misfortune, speaking of the monuments of former ages, which were allotted not for the reflection of the distressed, but ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... of the opulence of milliners, was not received with any great demonstration of feeling, inasmuch as Kate hung down her head while it was relating, and Ralph manifested very intelligible symptoms of ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... and went. It was positive opulence. The super with the goose couldn't approach it for patness. My editor had brought me the apple sauce as well, without even giving me the ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... were made. Henry Adams, the grandson of John Quincy Adams, related that his grandfather on his mother's side, Peter Brooks, on his death in 1849, left a fortune of two million dollars, "supposed to be the largest estate in Boston," then one of the few centers of great riches. Compared with the opulence that sprang out of the Union Pacific, the Northern Pacific, the Southern Pacific, with their subsidiary and component lines, the estate of Peter Brooks was a poor ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... attached herself to him as a dog to its master, sharing the discomforts of the military life, which indeed she comforted, as content under the roof of a garret as beneath the silken hangings of opulence. Italian and Spanish both, she fulfilled very scrupulously the duties of religion, and more than once ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... The General's palace is more spacious than convenient; the dining room designed for stately banquets, but the furniture of the table was not after the manner of feasts, though the best the country afforded, and the supply of meat improved daily, while the fruit told of the kindly opulence of ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... ancient city, whose life had withdrawn itself from century to century, was gradually shrinking all around it, the Grand'Place itself remained an immovable, gigantic, magnificent witness to the might and opulence of old, when Ypres was, with Ghent and Bruges, one of the three queens of the western world, one of the most strenuous centres of human industry and activity and the cradle of our great liberties. Such as it was yesterday—alas, that I cannot say, ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... are you going to get married?" cried Mrs. Nancy, forgetting alike her perplexities and her dreams of opulence. ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... naturally presumed, that the injuries which they had suffered, and the dangers which they still apprehended from his most inveterate enemy, would secure the fidelity of a party already considerable by their numbers and opulence. Even the conduct of Maxentius towards the bishops of Rome and Carthage may be considered as the proof of his toleration, since it is probable that the most orthodox princes would adopt the same measures with regard ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... he drifted a speck on the bosom of the flood that poured into the waiting race train. He was tossed into a seat by the swirling tide, and as the train moved he looked at his fellow-passengers. There was a pleasant air of opulence all about him. Gold chains of fair prominence, diamonds of lustrous hue, decorated the always rotund figures. He fell to wondering why the men were all of a gross physique; why did the ladies wear dresses of such interminable variety of color; from whence came the money ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... subserve its commercial interests. The citizens copy after the State, and regard wealth, pomp, and luxury as the great goods of life. Such a nation creates wealth rapidly, and distributes it badly. Thence the two extremes, of monstrous opulence and monstrous misery; all the enjoyment to a few, all the privations to the rest, that is to say, to the people; Privilege, Exception, Monopoly, Feudality, springing up from Labor itself: a false and dangerous situation, which, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... pulsating through the outlets and inlets at ferries and railway-stations and crossings, and through the great buildings that were already beginning to tower in the business sections. It hummed in the chief centres. And through it all and beyond it all shone opulence, opulence gilded and gleaming and dazzling in its glitter: in the big hotels; in the rich shops; in the gaudy theatres; along the fine avenues: a display of wealth to make the eyes ache; an exhibition of riches never seen before. It ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... Shelley, instead of culling Nature, crossed with its pollen the blossoms of his own soul, that Babylonian garden is his marvellous and best apology. For astounding figurative opulence he yields only to Shakespeare, and even to Shakespeare not in absolute fecundity but in images. The sources of his figurative wealth are specialised, sources of Shakespeare's are universal. It would have been as conscious an effort for him to speak without figure as it is for most men to ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... feeling for colour. Zanetti, who was one of Tiepolo's dearest friends, writes: "No painter of our time could so well recall the bright and happy creations of Veronese." The difference between them is more one of period than of temperament. Paolo Veronese represented the opulence of a rich, strong society, full of noble life, while Tiepolo's lot was cast among effeminate men and frivolous women, and full of the modern spirit himself, he adapts his genius to his time and devotes himself to satisfy the theatrical, ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... they spoke of military glory, and the formation of a vast slave empire, to include Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies. The merchants were assured that Charleston would be a free port, rivaling New York in its trade and opulence. ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... Commons had little trade or industry by which they could accumulate riches, these two ranks of men, even though they were not separated by positive laws, might remain long distinct, and the noble families continue many ages in opulence and splendour. There were no middle ranks of men that could gradually mix with their superiors, and insensibly procure to themselves honour and distinction. If by any extraordinary accident a mean person acquired riches, ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... never got farther with it, but by the time we reached Boston we were rolling in wealth so deep that we could hardly walk home in the frugal fashion by which we still thought it best to spare car fare; carriage fare we did not dream of even in that opulence. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and opulence of beauty in the forms and motions of the cataract! It is comparatively narrow at the top of the precipice, although, as we said, the tide that pours over is thirty-five feet broad. But it widens as it descends, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... paper on the subject), the means by which Britain may now, on the most distant voyages, preserve numbers of her intrepid sons, her mariners; who, braving every danger, have so liberally contributed to the fame, to the opulence, and to the maritime empire, of their country?"—An acknowledgement so judicious finds a response in every breast that knows how to estimate the value of human life and happiness, and will not fail to secure to the name of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... day at my house; he has become soft, yielding, humble, decorous to a fault. He was a constant witness of my husband's kindness, wit, and gaiety, and made me remark for the first time, by his admiration for wealth, the opulence with which I am surrounded, and which up to this moment had only produced a disagreeable impression upon me." Considering the very different points of view of the writers, these letters are remarkably in unison. The solid fact of the daily ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... Kings—some of which were scrawled with graffiti, laboured perhaps by some idle Nabathaean boy in the time of Christ. They found remains of furnaces, picked up some coins, and saw undoubted evidences of ancient opulence. That was all. Thence they made for Makna, passing on their way a catacombed hill called "the Praying Place of Jethro," and a shallow basin of clay known as Moses' Well. From Makna, where they found their gunboat waiting for them, they then cruised ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... is horribly rich and an 'honourable,' and all that sort of thing, she isn't in the least grand. She never impresses one with her opulence as, for instance, Mrs. Duff-Whalley does. Her clothes are beautiful, but so much a part of her personality that you never think of them. Her pearls don't hit you in the face as most other people's do. Because she is so unconscious of them, I suppose. I think she is lovely. Jock ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... panels of carriages, on the very coats of the horses, and on the broad back of Mr Verloc's overcoat, where they produced a dull effect of rustiness. But Mr Verloc was not in the least conscious of having got rusty. He surveyed through the park railings the evidences of the town's opulence and luxury with an approving eye. All these people had to be protected. Protection is the first necessity of opulence and luxury. They had to be protected; and their horses, carriages, houses, servants had to be protected; and the source of their wealth had to be protected in the ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... been settled by six hens. But he particularly fretted over other news his spies had brought, which was the information that Perion had wedded Dame Melusine, and had begotten two lusty children—Bertram and a daughter called Blaniferte—and now enjoyed the opulence and sovereignty of Brunbelois. ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... guilty with rigour and despatch, the populace dispersed beyond all hope of return, no rage vented in fire and ruins upon the unoffending houses and walls. Together also with advantage, a reputation for clemency was obtained among the allies, by the preservation of a city of the greatest celebrity and opulence, the demolition of which, all Campania, and all the people dwelling in the neighbourhood of Campania, would have bewailed, while their enemies were compelled to admit the ability of the Romans to punish their faithless allies, ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... he faced a future so alluring as by its beauty to intimidate him. Youth, love, long years of happiness, and (by this capricious turn) now even opulence, were the ingredients of a captivating vista. And yet he needs must pause a while to think of the dear comrade he had lost—of that loved boy, his pattern in the time of their common youthfulness which gleamed in memory as bright and misty ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... yet standing. All these facts were true in the days of Rome, however, when Christ appeared. The Roman Kingdom possessed all the distinguishing marks and characteristics of the preceding empires. This is true not only of their territorial possession but of their distinctive characteristics. The opulence of the Babylonians, the splendor of the Persians, the strength and discipline of the Greeks, were all merged into the Roman Empire. And more than this, these kingdoms were all idolatrous, and the religion of the Babylonians ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... bright, cheerful, smokeless industry of the wonderful country which produces, above all, the agreeable things of life, and turns even its defeats and revolutions into gold. The whole town has an air of almost depressing opulence, an appearance which culminates in the great place which surrounds the Grand-Theatre—an establishment of the highest style, encircled with columns, arcades, lamps, gilded cafes. One feels it to be a monument to the virtue of the well-selected ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... discovered in the tropical forests, were apparently unknown to the Aztecs. The conquest of Mexico, like our conquest of California, was in itself a small affair; but both being immediately followed by extensive discoveries of the precious metals, Mexico rose as rapidly into opulence as San Francisco has in ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... they left the ship, and sack the sea-coast city of Bombasharna and take from it provisions for several years, while he himself would marry the Queen of the South. And again the pirates cheered, for often they had seen seacoast Bombasharna, and had always envied its opulence ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... therefore fain to dispose of his goods at a very cheap rate, insomuch that he might almost as well have thrown them away, and was brought to the verge of ruin. Mortified beyond measure to find himself thus reduced in a short space of time from opulence to something like poverty, he was at his wits' end, and rather than go home poor, having left home rich, he was minded to retrieve his losses by piracy or die in the attempt. So he sold his great ship, and with the price and the proceeds ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... opulence grew out of the only merchantable article a Hebrew is never known to seek profit from, thought she could be made presentable in the first circles if taken in hand in good season. So it came about that, before many weeks had passed over her as a scholar in the great educational establishment, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the Pharaohs—pleasures reserved for the Red Sea; a commercial traveller, who arranged theatricals, and cast himself for all the principal parts; a humorous and naive person who industriously hinted at the opulence of his estates in Ireland; two stately English ladies of title; a cheerful array of colonial knights and judges off to Europe for a holiday; and many others, who made little worlds unto themselves, called cliques by ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the Founders' Tea was set for the following Saturday. Kit evolved the invitations herself and wrote them on blank cards, as she remembered doing back at the Cove in the days of opulence and entertainment. ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... in the first literary circles, and was welcomed at the tables of persons of opulence. From the commencement of his residence in London, he had known John Kemble, and his accomplished sister, Mrs Siddons. He became intimate with Lord Byron and Thomas Moore; and had the honour of frequent invitations to the residence of the Princess of Wales, at Blackheath. In 1814, he visited ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... weak and depended for its very existence upon the solidarity of its people, so long as the intendant was there to guide the system with a praetorian hand and to prevent abuses, so long as strength was more to be desired than opulence, the seigneurial system served New France better than any other scheme of landholding would have done. It was only when the administration of the country came into new and alien hands that Canadian seigneurialism became a barrier to economic progress and an obsolete system ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... village than this. If you doubt my word, come and see it. Yonder we discern a portion of the Basin of Minas; around us are the rich meadows of Nova Scotia. Intellect has here placed a crowning college upon a hill; opulence has surrounded it with picturesque villas. A ride into the country, a visit to a bachelor's lodge, studded with horns of moose and cariboo, with woodland scenes and Landseer's pictures, and then—over ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... stucco, and looks at first sight a little gloomy, with the patina of time upon it. But it is a restful change from the spick-and-spanness of the near-by millionaire colony, so eloquent of the paint-brush and the lawn-valet's shears, so smug and new and strident in its paraded opulence. Peter's gardens, in fact, are a rather careless riot of color and line, a sort of achieved genteel roughness, like certain phases of his house, as though the wave of refinement driven too high had broken ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... afterwards wither, and cause to drop from the bough. Bernardo was possessed by this desire; and as he never dreamed that any pencil in Arezzo, but his own, could reproduce upon canvass the lovely countenance of Beatrice, he spent, as from his opulence he could now afford to do, a considerable portion of his time in painting her portrait. The girl, however, who was not greatly addicted to meditation and could not read, for books had not then come into fashion, grew melancholy during these long sittings, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 399, Supplementary Number • Various
... in more modern times, Palmyra owed its splendor to the opulence and public spirit of its merchants; but its chief fame and historical interest it owes to the genius and heroism of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... Great War in Europe, freights were low and the schooner skippers earned scanty incomes. Then came a world shortage of tonnage and immediately coastwise freights soared skyward. The big schooners of the Palmer fleet began to reap fabulous dividends and their masters shared in the unexpected opulence. Besides their primage they owned shares in their vessels, a thirty-second or so, and presently their settlement at the end of a voyage coastwise amounted to an income of a thousand dollars a month. They earned this money, and the managing owners ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... Thessalian territories; and thence splitting into various hordes, descended as warriors and invaders upon the different states of Greece. They appear to have attached themselves to maritime situations, and the wealth of their early settlements is the theme of many a legend. The opulence of Orchomenus is compared by Homer to that of Egyptian Thebes. And in the time of the Trojan war, Corinth was already termed "the wealthy." By degrees the Aeolians became in a great measure blended and intermingled ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... though she was but a charwoman depending for professional engagements rather on the goodwill—for auld lang syne—of one or two families in Chiswick, of prodigious opulence in her eyes, yet was regarded by Sapps Court, when she visited her niece, Mrs. Rackstraw, or Ragstroar, Michael's mother, as distinctly superior. Aunt M'riar especially had been so much impressed with a grey shawl with fringes and a ready cule—spelt thus by repute—which she carried ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... think, among other agreeable impressions, a sense of gentle opulence. In the old time she had never known what it was to have more than enough of anything agreeable in ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... ready,' and I am obliged to go, in the midst, perhaps, of something I enjoy. Ferdinand would be furious if I did not obey the etiquette he prescribes for his wife; he frightens me. In the midst of this hateful opulence, I find myself regretting the past, and thinking that our mother was kind; she left us the nights when we could talk together; at any rate, I was living with a dear being who loved me and suffered with me; whereas here, in this sumptuous house, ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... the stairs is continued along the front of the portico, and the columns, which are wrought in the proportions of Palladio, support a large angular pediment, adorned with a very noble piece in bas-relief, representing the dignity and opulence of the City of London, by ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Rundle streets, indeed, would do no discredit to any secondary town in England. Every shop and store that is now built is of a substantial and ornamental character, and those general improvements are being made which are the best proofs of increasing prosperity and opulence. ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... who had nothing to lose and feared nothing, who believed implicitly in himself and his star; who could say to himself as did Croustillac, "In risking death during a moment—for death can be but a moment's agony—I may live in luxury and opulence"—such a man can perform miracles above all when he undertakes a project with such a grand object and as stimulating as that ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... we, of the easier classes, are in a state of surfeit and disgrace after meat. Plethora has filled us with indifference; and we are covered from head to foot with the callosities of habitual opulence. Born into what is called a certain rank, we live, as the saying is, up to our station. We squander without enjoyment, because our fathers squandered. We eat of the best, not from delicacy, but from brazen habit. We do not keenly enjoy or eagerly desire the presence of a luxury; we are unaccustomed ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pass his days in great joy, in the company of Duryodhana, O bull of Bharata's race! Once on a time, O monarch, many kings repaired to a self-choice at the capital of Chitrangada, the ruler of the country of the Kalingas. The city, O Bharata, full of opulence, was known by the name of Rajapura. Hundreds of rulers repaired thither for obtaining the hand of the maiden. Hearing that diverse kings had assembled there, Duryodhana also, on his golden car, proceeded thither, accompanied ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... territories previous to Ovando's mission. Before the discovery of the mines of Hayna it was certainly very inconsiderable. The size of some of the specimens of ore found there would suggest magnificent ideas of their opulence. One piece of gold is reported by the contemporary historians to have weighed three thousand two hundred castellanos, and to have been so large, that the Spaniards served up a roasted pig on it, boasting that no potentate ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... to earn sixpence had impressed me unfavorably as to the character of the master. "Here," thought I, "are all the signs of riches; and yet this poor old woman, living on the very threshold of opulence, is in want ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... They who opulence has made proud, and who luxury has corrupted, cannot relish the simple pleasures ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... drawing-room, not a tassel of an antimacassar touched! Yes, the fire-screen, the luscious bunch of roses on an expanse of mustard, which Constance had worked for her mother years ago, was gone! That her mother should have clung to just that one souvenir, out of all the heavy opulence of the drawing-room, touched Constance intimately. She perceived that if she could not talk to her husband she must write to her mother. And she sat down at the oval table and wrote, "Darling mother, ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... ground that their losses by bad debts, though their advances are always secured by mortgage on the growing crop, overbalance the profits; this assertion is scarcely borne out by the comparative opulence of the "merchant" and the pitiful poverty of the laborer. Some of the largest and wealthiest planters have sought to protect their tenants from the merciless clutches of the contrary merchant, who is more frequently than not an Israelite, by advancing supplies of necessary articles ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... the Duke d'Harcourt, with a smile, "in that case you are already paid; for I know all that you do in Paris, and especially in this neighborhood. I know that want meets here with a better reception than opulence, and that you look on all sufferers as having an equal claim on your attention. You must be aware, that knowing this I have already given you all ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... large. Though Burke expected that the Americans would suffer "some heavy blows," he did not believe that a war with them would be ended quickly; and Richmond thought it probable that America would be lost and "with it our trade and opulence".[100] In England every war gives an opportunity to some vain and foolish persons for condemning their own country and showing sympathy with its enemies. So it was in 1775. Wilkes, then lord mayor, and the livery of the city tried to force ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... his garrison had Saxons in it;—one day "180 of them in a lump threw down their arms, in the trenches, and went over to the Enemy." Owing to whatsoever, the place is gone. Such towers, such curtains, star-ramparts; such an opulence of cannons, stores, munitions, a 30,000 pounds of hard cash, one item. All is gone, after a fortnight's siege. What a piece of news, as heard by Friedrich, coming at his utmost towards the scene itself! ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... them! Where are they?", adding, "Here with them to me!" So he bade the eunuch bring them in; and, when she looked on them and saw that they were both of distinguished beauty, she wept for them and said, "By Allah, these are people of condition and show plain signs of former opulence." "O my lady," said the Syndic's wife, "we love the poor and the destitute, more especially as reward in Heaven will recompense our love; and, as for these persons, haply the oppressor hath dealt hardly with them and hath plundered their property and harried their houses." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... have suspicions? When she is gone, I shall have a wife of whom I may not be ashamed—yet, is she not a stranger in a foreign land? Has she not left her country, her relations, her friends, her gods, for me, whom she has raised to opulence? Cease, cease—I cannot stand these thoughts—there is a strife in this heart between the powers of hell and heaven—when will it terminate, and who ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... too deep for the possibility of any solace from such plasters as wealth and luxury; but her wretchedness was of an abnormal nature, and I can see no occasion for seizing upon the fact of her misery as an argument in favor of poverty and discomfort as opposed to opulence. The Benvenuto Cellini carvings and the Sevres porcelain could not give her happiness, because she had passed out of their region. She was no longer innocent; and the pleasure we take in art and loveliness being an innocent pleasure, had passed beyond her reach. Six or seven ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... many catastrophes are hatched, and from which issue so many young girls incapable of appreciating the painful sacrifices by which the honest man who does them the honor of marrying them, has obtained opulence; young girls eager for the enjoyments of luxury, ignorant of our laws, ignorant of our manners, claim with avidity the empire which their beauty yields them, and show themselves quite ready to turn away from the genuine utterances of the heart, while ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Wealth.— N. wealth, riches, fortune, handsome fortune, opulence, affluence; good circumstances, easy circumstances; independence; competence &c. (sufficiency) 639; solvency. provision, livelihood, maintenance; alimony, dowry; means, resources, substance; property &c. 780; command ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... treasure-house" of mineral wealth and agricultural possibility. The world's treasure is deposited in many houses, and Alaska has its share; its mineral wealth is very great, and "hidden doors of opulence" may open at any time, but its agricultural possibilities, in the ordinary sense in which the phrase is used, are confined to very small areas in proportion to the enormous whole, and ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... was appointed to the farm of the revenue, and inclusively of the government of Purneah, a province of very great extent, and then in a state of no inconsiderable opulence. In this office he exerted his talents with so much vigor and industry that in a very short time the province was half ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... I've seen him wince at the sound of her voice in the room. He'd say things to her; not often, but just enough to see how far he could go. He was afraid of going too far. He wasn't prepared to give up the comfort of Lena's house, the opulence and peace. There wasn't one of Lena's wines he could have turned his back on. After all, when she worried him he could keep himself locked up in the studio ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... way of not damping all neophytes equally: so much we may say about success before talking of the easy ways that lead to failure. And by success here is meant no glorious triumph; the laurels are not in our thoughts, nor the enormous opulence (about a fourth of a fortunate barrister's gains) which falls in the lap of a Dickens or a Trollope. Faint and fleeting praise, a crown with as many prickles as roses, a modest hardly-gained competence, a good deal of envy, a great deal ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... unemployment insurance, old age pensions, pensions for veterans, for widows and children, for the unfit, pensions and doles for this, that and the other, had doubled, and doubled again, until everyone had security for life. The Uppers, true enough, had opulence far beyond that known by the Middles and lived like Gods compared to the Lowers. But all had security. They had agreed, thus far, Joe and Nadine. But then ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... London City & Midland Bank on the Viaduct corner. Hatton Garden, as every Londoner knows, begins on the other side of this improving spectacle—a short broad street which disdains to indicate by external opulence the wealth hidden within its walls, though, to an eye practised in London ways, there is a comforting suggestion of prosperity in its wide flagged pavements, comfortable brick buildings, and Jewish names which appear in gilt lettering ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... can, and if you have the grace of felicitous expression or the power of energetic expression your style will be admirable and admired. At any rate see that it be your own, and not another's; on no other terms will the world listen to it. You cannot be eloquent by borrowing from the opulence of another; you cannot be humorous by mimicking the whims of another; what was a pleasant smile dimpling his features ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... centuries of complete neglect. When the Sassanians looked about for a foundation on which they might work, and out of which they might form a style suitable to their needs and worthy of their power and opulence, they found what they sought in the Hatra edifice, which was within the limits of their kingdom, and at no great distance from one of the cities ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... like a task. We are astonished at his learned opulence, his indefatigable labour, and his flood of rich and high-wrought conception; but we grow as weary of him, as if we walked through an Indian treasury, and rested the eye only on heaps of gold. With all our great historical writers, the mind feels a sense ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... except Lucretius and Statius, I know not of any Latin poet, ancient or modern, who has equalled Casimir in boldness of conception, opulence of fancy, or beauty of versification. The Odes of this illustrious Jesuit were translated into English about 150 years ago, by a Thomas Hill, I think, [—by G. H. [G. Hils.] London, 1646. 12mo. Ed. L. R. 1836. I never saw the translation. A few of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to the portrait of Heyst's father, that severe profile ignoring the vanities of this earth. His eyes gleamed sideways at the heavy silver candlesticks—signs of opulence. He prowled as a stray cat entering a strange place might have done, for if Ricardo had not Wang's miraculous gift of materializing and vanishing, rather than coming and going, he could be nearly as noiseless in his less ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... Wisdom, Learning, Arts, Improvements, and natural Advantages; and above all, the benevolent Temper, charitable and hospitable Disposition of its Inhabitants; it is true, we may find many of more popular Bustle and Eclat, more extensive Commerce, greater Opulence and Pomp; but none of more general, solid, and intrinsick Worth, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... old age. She scolded incessantly her husband for his indolence, when he had really become incapable of any longer taking an active part in public affairs. He confined himself to the enjoyment of his opulence and his high position. In May, 1716, he experienced a violent attack of paralysis, which for some time deprived him of speech and recollection. His health continued to decline more and more to the close of his life in June, 1722, though the notion of his imbecility ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... the result? You know only too well, both women and men, idle opulence for a few and uncertainty for the morrow and misery for the greater number; crisis and wars for the conquest of markets, and a lavish expenditure of public money to find openings for industrial speculators. All this is because in proclaiming liberty of contract an essential point was neglected ...
— The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution - An Address Delivered in Paris • Pierre Kropotkin
... to whom their posterity are so highly indebted." All the tradition is that Miss Adams was a wonderfully learned lady. She is best known by her "History of the Jews." She wrote pretty good English, of which this may be considered a specimen: "Exalted from a feeble state to opulence and independence, the Federal Americans are now recognized as a nation throughout the globe." To a sentence so admirably formed, possibly there is ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... smaller, all of which were three stories high. Many of these were built of stone, others of cedar wood, being elegantly constructed and richly furnished. The city was the emporium for the silver- and gold-mines of New Spain, and its merchants lived in great opulence, their houses rich in articles of gold and silver, adorned with beautiful paintings and other works of art, and full of the luxuries of the age. The churches were magnificent in their decorations, and richly embellished with ornaments in gold and silver. The city presented ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... the rye. Within the leafy coppice, lo, More wealth than miser's dreams could show, The blackbird's warm and woolly brood, Five golden beaks agape for food; The Gipsies, all the summer seen Native as poppies to the Green; The winter, with its frosts and thaws And opulence of hips and haws: The lovely marvel of the snow; The Tamar, with its altering show Of gay ships sailing up and down, Among the fields and by the Town; And, dearer far than anything, Came back the songs you used to sing. (Ah, might ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... materializes the mind and nips its native candour and tenderness, escaped unblighted, through the saving influence of his faith, approving himself in the sight of all [224] an ideal judge, even according to the highest conception; because John Howard, opulent and free to enjoy his opulence and repose, was drawn thereby throughout the whole continent of Europe in quest of the hidden miseries that torture those whom the law has shut out, in dungeons, from the light and sympathy of the world; because Thomas Clarkson, animated by the spirit of its teachings, consecrated wealth, ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... announcement, but as the days went by he only settled deeper into the snug corners of the Haney home, making no further mention of his triumphal eastward progress. On the contrary, he had the air of a regular boarder, and turned up promptly for meals, rotund and glowing in the opulence of his ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... frequent occasion since our frontier experiences began to ponder the untrammelled opulence of this Western word, outfit. From the Mississippi to the Pacific its expansive possibilities are momentarily being tested. There is nothing that lives, breathes or grows, nothing known to the arts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... apprenticeship as a shipwright, is among the sights of Holland, and we went the next day to look at it. This also is situated on a dyke, and is an extremely neat little village, but has not the same appearance of opulence in the dwellings. We were shown the chamber in which the Emperor of Russia lodged, and the hole in the wall where he slept, for in the old Dutch houses, as in the modern ones of the farmers, the ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... rendering, restoring to the story its classic setting, in The Poison Maid.[3] Thus, within the space of a hundred years, three master-craftsmen have found their inspiration in the slender anecdote which Aristotle, in the opulence of his genius, was content to hurry into a few sentences and bury beneath ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... varieties of toothsome and wholesome vegetables in profusion. The whole fruit and vegetable product of the temperate zone is at his door, and he has but to put forth his hand and take it. The skilled housewife makes wonderful provision against winter from the opulence of summer, and her storehouse is crowded with innumerable glass cells rich in the spoils of orchard and garden. There is scant use for the grocer and the butcher under such conditions. I am so well convinced that my estimate of $5 a month is ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... the fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... activities of nature. Their mores were full of youthful exuberance. Their life philosophy was egoistic and materialistic. They wanted to enjoy all which their powers could win, yet their notion of olbos was so elevated that our modern languages have no word for it. It meant opulence, with generous liberality of sentiment and public spirit. "I do not call him who lives in prosperity, and has great possessions, a man of olbos, but only a well-to-do treasure keeper."[130] Such were the mores of the age of advance in wealth, population, military art, knowledge, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... correspondence of the Revolution Society with the clubs of France, read Priestley's adherence to their opinions. 5th, What the French is with regard to religious toleration, and with regard to, 1. Religion,—2. Civil happiness,—3. Virtue, order, and real liberty,—4. Commercial opulence,—5. National defence. In proof of the fifth proposition, read the representation of the French minister of the Home Department, and the report ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... but intelligent eyes, clothed in a new suit, wearing an enormous black pearl in his necktie and a diamond ring on his finger; the very ideal of Mammon in every detail of his person and of his carefully advertised opulence. ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... elegance there may have been in the exterior of the imperial dwellings, it was amply compensated by the interior, in which all the opulence of the Peruvian princes was ostentatiously displayed. The sides of the apartments were thickly studded with gold and silver ornaments. Niches, prepared in the walls, were filled with images of animals and plants curiously wrought of the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... I. (Frederick Henry, grandfather of William III. being Stadtholder of Holland) the Dutch discovered this island. The enterprise of that people had raised them to the zenith of their power: unless by England, they were unrivalled in nautical science and commercial opulence. More for the purposes of trade than the acquisition of knowledge, they were anxious to discover unknown countries, and to conceal the information they possessed from the rest ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... and pomp without substance. A succession of bright images, clothed in simple, transparent language,—even when, as in Burke, they "crowd upon the aching sense" too dazzlingly,—should never be confounded with that mere verbal opulence of style, which mistakes the glare of words for the glitter of ideas, and, like the Helen of the sculptor Lysippus, makes finery supply the place of beauty. The figurative definition of eloquence in the Book of Proverbs—"Apples of gold in a net-work of silver"—is peculiarly applicable ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... an opulence which we must do Raleigh the credit to say was expended not on debauchery or display, but in the most enlightened efforts to extend the field of English commercial enterprise beyond the Atlantic. We need not suppose him to have been unselfish beyond the fashion of his age. In his action ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... The most considerable is that of the religious orders, Augustinians and Dominicans, who cultivate their respective lands on joint account, or let them out at a moderate ground-rent, which the planters pay in kind; but far from living in opulence, and accumulating the immense revenues some of the religious communities enjoy in America, they stand in need of all they earn and possess for their maintenance, and in order to be enabled to discharge the various duties and obligations annexed to ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... Feng, "my eldest uncle say that things were in such a state, and how couldn't I believe? but what surprises me is how it ever happened that this family attained such opulence and honour!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... resort a world-weary woman, young and beautiful but disillusioned, meets a girl who has learned the art of living—of tasting life in all its richness, opulence and joy. The story hinges upon the change wrought in the soul of the blase woman by this glimpse ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... effort—of the Temple of Fame, an immense cage, sixty miles long, and its inhabitants the great writers of classic times, and is chiefly valuable as showing the estimation in which the classic writers were held in that day. This is also in octosyllabic verses, and is further remarkable for the opulence of its imagery and its variety of description. The poet is carried in the claws of a great eagle into this house, and sees its distinguished occupants standing upon columns of different kinds of metal, according to their ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee |
