"Sumptuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The sumptuous abode of Licinius Crassus echoes with his sighs and groans. His children and slaves respect his profound sorrow, and leave him with intelligent affection to solitude,—that friend of great grief, so grateful to the afflicted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... towns, that of tulip-notary usurping its place. In the smaller towns, where there was no exchange, the principal tavern was usually selected as the "show-place," where high and low traded in tulips, and confirmed their bargains over sumptuous entertainments. These dinners were sometimes attended by two or three hundred persons, and large vases of tulips, in full bloom, were placed at regular intervals upon the tables and sideboards for their ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... together, and Patty discovered that the rest of the house was as sumptuous as her first view ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... dining room, the service, the waiting at table, the wine, and the food, were not simply in keeping with the general tone of modern luxury throughout all the house, but seemed even more sumptuous and modern. Darya Alexandrovna watched this luxury which was novel to her, and as a good housekeeper used to managing a household—although she never dreamed of adapting anything she saw to her own household, as it was ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... to the hall of his ancestors, exchanging the gloomy cockpit for the gay saloon, the ship's allowance for sumptuous fare, the tyranny of his messmates and the harshness of his superiors for adulation and respect. Was he happier? No. In this world, whether in boyhood or riper years, the happiest state of existence is when under control. Although contrary to received opinion, this is a fact; but I cannot now ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... masterly fashion; as he threw the ball, he put himself into amazingly heroic postures, with artistic play of the muscles, with artistic flourish and shake of the leg. In his own way he was an athlete—and was superbly built! His hands, too, were so white and handsome, and he wiped them on such a sumptuous, ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... year of practice in the Rue de Courcelles had not yielded him enough to pay his servant's wages. For he had a servant, of course. He had a valet for the same reason as he had a suite of rooms of a superficially sumptuous aspect. Faithful to his system, or, rather, to his master's system, he had sacrificed everything to show. The display of gilding in his apartments was such as to make a man of taste shut his eyes to escape the sight of it. There were gorgeous ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... Virgin with the dead Christ on her knees, one of the few works which the volcanic genius of Michel Angelo could bring itself to finish in marble. In this chapel, directly in front of this marvellous group, the body of the dead Pope, embalmed and clad in Pontifical robes, is laid on a sumptuous bier, amid a blaze of tapers, with sentinels from the Swiss guard at his feet, leaning on their long halberds, and officers of the household in official costume, and all that imposing mixture of sacred and profane which Rome knows so well how to use ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... including Lord-Treasurer, the new-created Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, were installed; and a few days afterwards his grace was appointed Ambassador-Extraordinary to France, and his equipages, plate, and liveries commanded, of the most sumptuous kind, not only for his excellency the ambassador, but for her excellency the ambassadress, who was to accompany him. Her arms were already quartered on the coach panels, and her brother was to hasten over on the appointed ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... organized government, about the year 1695, made it a great rendezvous of pirates, where they might dispose of their booty and concert new depredations. As they brought home with them wealthy lading of all kinds, the luxuries of the tropics, and the sumptuous spoils of the Spanish provinces, and disposed of them with the proverbial carelessness of freebooters, they were welcome visitors to the thrifty traders of New-York. Crews of these desperadoes, therefore, the runagates ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... wedding-garment was not very sumptuous, nor was his bride's; but they did the best that they could, and looked forward with hope. Jasmin took his wife home to the pleasant house on the Gravier; and joy and happiness sat down with them at their own fireside. ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... is sealed, or you should hear them tell The tale of their dim life and all Its compost of experience: how the Sun Spreads them their daily feast, Sumptuous, of light, firing them as with wine; Of the old Moon's fitful solicitude And those mild messages the Stars Descend in silver silences and dews; Or what the buxom West, Wanton with wading in the swirl of the wheat, Said, and their leafage laughed; And how the wet-winged Angel of the Rain ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... In the sumptuous living-room of his apartment he spread the handkerchief on the floor under the center electrolier and laid the ring upon it. Dismissing the astonished and only half-awake butler with a growl, he sat down in an easy-chair facing the ring, and in a few minutes more ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... as two years after the Restoration, Sir Balthazar Gerbier, a restless architectural quack and adventurer of those days, wrote a pamphlet proposing a sumptuous gate at Temple Bar, and the levelling of the Fleet Valley. After the Great Fire Charles II. himself hurried the erection of the Bar, and promised money to carry out the work. During the Great Fire, Temple Bar was one of the stations for constables, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... be a Queen of no less charge, in most likelihood outlandish and a Papist, besides a Queen-Mother, such already, together with both their Courts and numerous Train: then a Royal issue, and ere long severally their sumptuous Courts, to the multiplying of a servile crew, not of servants only, but of nobility and gentry, bred up then to the hopes not of public, but of court offices, to be Stewards, Chamberlains, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... spectacles were executed with pomp and splendor, so the king's table was royally sumptuous. Regardless of season and climate, it was always laden with the delicacies of all parts of the globe. Game and poultry, even of such varieties as were unknown in Palestine, were not lacking, and daily there came a gorgeous bird from Barbary and settled down ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... courtiers are deficient either in honesty, good sense, judgment, wit, or sincerity; that is to say, if any of them by chance possess some one of these qualities, you may depend upon it he is defective in the rest: sumptuous in their equipages, deep play, a great opinion of their own merit, and contempt of that of ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... less than ever; on the contrary, I believe you are a good, honest little creature. Let us forget Gerald Chandos,—he is not worth remembering. And go on with Tod's pinafores and dresses, my dear, and don't be discouraged if they are a failure at first,—though to my eyes that dress is a most sumptuous affair. And as to being like Aimee, you cannot be like any one better and wiser and sweeter than that same little maiden. There! I mean every ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the admiration of the Oldest Inhabitant, who was smoking a thoughtful pipe in his front garden. Mrs Oldest Inhabitant came out of the cottage at the sound of voices, and Charteris broached the subject of tea. The menu was sumptuous and varied, and even the Babe, in spite of his devotion to strict training, could scarce forbear to smile happily at the ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... were still used by a knot of antiquated spinsters worthy of the good old days of Sacheverel and High Church. Quadrille-cards will not do for whist, for all the eights, nines, and tens are thrown out. Formerly, Lord Trimmerstone used to be proud of giving some of his acquaintance a sumptuous dinner; but now he had changed all that, and he only kept one female cook, who could just manage to make a comfortable and snug little dish or two for his lordship's own self, occasionally assisted by the Rev. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... not destroy their principle of utility;—for ornament ceases to be ornament when it negatives the purpose of the object to which it is applied—it becomes in such a case a mere excrescence: they might be edged and lined with any, the most sumptuous or the plainest materials: they might be attached round the neck by rich cords of gold and jewelled clasps; or they might be fastened with simple ribands. Thus, in spring time, a young and high-born damsel might wear her ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... proposed an early dinner, but the idea was scouted at by the girls. What would the expedition be worth if they did not carry their dinners with them in baskets? Anything out of a basket, and eaten in the open air, was worth twenty times as much as the most sumptuous meal in the house. So the baskets were packed up, while Mrs Bradshaw wailed over probable colds to be caught from sitting on the damp ground. Ruth and Leonard were to go; they four. Jemima had refused all invitations to make one of the party; and yet ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... consequence. Our heroine had imagined before she came to town, that Lady Stock moved in the highest circle of fashion; but she soon perceived that many of the people of rank who visited her ladyship, and who partook of her sumptuous entertainments, thought they condescended extremely whilst they paid this ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... forefront of the palace, a sort of hall formed of tall marble columns, between which hang heavy purple draperies, supported by golden ropes and concealing all the background. The architecture suggests the most sensual and sumptuous moments of the Venetian or Flemish Renascence, as seen in the pictures of Veronese or Rubens, with garlands, horns of plenty, fringes, vases, statues, gildings, lavishly distributed on every side. In the middle stands a massive and ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... provided a sumptuous feast of Desert fare,—roast quails and plovers, cous-cous-sou, figs, dates, and bananas, with the addition of champagne; and we ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... sumptuous tea with eggs to it, cream and jam, and thin, fresh cakes touched with saffron, Garton descanted on the Celts. It was about the period of the Celtic awakening, and the discovery that there was Celtic blood about this family had excited one who believed that he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of living of the Duchess of St. Leu is sumptuous, without that freezing etiquette so commonly met with in the great. Her household still call her Queen, and her son Prince Napoleon or Prince Louis. The suite is composed of two ladies of honor, an equerry, and the tutor of her younger son. She has a numerous ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... My father was the younger son of one of our oldest earls; my mother the dowerless daughter of a Scotch peer. Mr. Pelham was a moderate whig, and gave sumptuous dinners; Lady Frances was a woman of taste, and particularly fond of diamonds and ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... arabesques like gold lace. And from above hang thousands of gold chains supporting the vigil lamps for the evening prayers. Here and there are people on their knees, little groups in robe and turban, scattered fortuitously upon the red of the carpets, and almost lost in the midst of the sumptuous solitude. ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... them in their hand. This costume, soiled by long usage, blackened with sweat and dust, and less original than that of the other men, had the historic merit of serving as a transition between the goatskins and the brilliant, almost sumptuous, dress of a few individuals dispersed here and there among the groups, where they shone like flowers. In fact, the blue linen trousers of these last, and their red or yellow waistcoats, adorned with ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... had strolled through several sumptuous apartments, we were taken out into the adjoining square, where there were large barracks as white as lime and brushes could make them, and making a pretty picture among the trees. Inside, the walls were white as on the outside, ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... greeting less complaisant and patronizing than is usually given to debutantes. Zelma's youthful charms, heightened by her sumptuous dress, took her audience by surprise, and, while voice and action delayed, made for her friends and favor, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... hotel for that in which Charles Strickland was living. It was called the Hotel des Belges. But the concierge, somewhat to my surprise, had never heard of it. I had understood from Mrs. Strickland that it was a large and sumptuous place at the back of the Rue de Rivoli. We looked it out in the directory. The only hotel of that name was in the Rue des Moines. The quarter was not fashionable; it was not even respectable. I shook ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... a shriek of joy, took off her hat and settling herself, began to read. At first she read a scene in which a footman and a house maid, tidying up a sumptuous drawing-room, talked at length about their young lady, Anna Sergyevna, who was building a school and a hospital in the village. When the footman had left the room, the maidservant pronounced a monologue to the effect that education is light and ignorance is darkness; then Mme. ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... upon the citizen, Lady Fareham was whispering to De Malfort under cover of the fiddles, which were playing an Italian pazzemano, an air beloved by Henrietta of Orleans, who danced to that music with her royal brother-in-law, in one of the sumptuous ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... would be—the petted, pampered mistress of Willard Brockton, wealthy member of the New York Stock Exchange, or the wife of John Madison, an interesting but impecunious newspaper reporter. If she married this man, it meant that she must relinquish immediately everything she loved—her sumptuous apartment on Riverside Drive, her automobile, her beautiful gowns, and gay little midnight champagne suppers in good company. Her life henceforth would be dreadfully prosaic and commonplace. She would be comparatively poor, ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... exhibition for which he was presented with two-thousand-five-hundred francs by his host and his agent received five-hundred francs. The evening after the exhibition, Monsieur Blanc escorted the voyager through the sumptuous gambling palace. Thinking to please Monsieur, who had been so generous with him, Paul thought he would wager a few francs at one of the numerous rouge et noir tables and was proceeding to put down a Napoleon, when he was ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... it is that you must repair, if you would drink freshly of that well-spring of associations which hallows the footsteps of England's immortal dramatist. In like manner, one might say, that it is not in the sumptuous galleries of Holland House, neighbored by the crowds and tumult of the parks, that the admirer of Addison would find it most easy to call up the image of the sage; but in that quiet meadow which he used to frequent on the banks of the Cheswell, when evening is gathering on the tops ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... influenced by their lavish entertainment's that they lost their heads. The Chamber of Commerce of Tokyo greeted our Chamber of Commerce representatives at an elaborate theatre party. An especially staged Japanese drama, followed by a comedy, with a sumptuous dinner between the acts, was only a part of the entertainment. A. I. Esberg and Byron Mauzy answered the banzis, of the oldest merchant in Japan, Baron Okura, with three rousing cheers for the Japanese, after the formal addresses ...
— The Log of the Empire State • Geneve L.A. Shaffer
... thrushes in the gardens and heard a note which the cathedrals did not include: something free and careless and joyous. He crossed a field that was all yellow with dandelions, on his way to work, and the bath of yellow glowing was something at once so sumptuous and so fresh, that he was glad he was away ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... the peacock see:— Mark what a sumptuous pharisee is he! Meridian sun-beams tempt him to unfold His radiant glories, azure, green, and gold: He treads as if, some solemn music near, His measured step were governed by his ear: And seems to say—'Ye meaner fowl, give place, I am all splendour, dignity, and grace!' Not so the pheasant ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... into a sumptuous apartment hung with violet-coloured velvet, relieved with gold. A bronze lamp stood in a corner, its brightness toned down by a globe of ground crystal; thick carpets, soft as the turf on the hills, ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... weaken the constitution of the woman and sap away her strength. Starvation? Sexual continence in wedlock? It is strange, indeed, to hear rich men, well-fed clergymen, pious zealots and reformers, leaning back in their comfortable chairs after a sumptuous meal and smoking an expensive Havana cigar, discuss this burning question and bewail the ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... that the Cabildo, throughout Honduras, is the stranger's refuge. Its door is never locked, and every traveller, high or low, rich or poor, has a right to enter it unquestioned, and "make it his hotel" for the time being. Its accommodations, it is true, are seldom extensive and never sumptuous. They rarely consist of more than one or two hide-covered chairs, a rickety table, and two or three long benches placed against the wall, with a tinaja or jar for water in the corner, and possibly a clay ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... if his practical mystic had already had a vision of their meeting? Had some native carried Millicent's plans to meet him to the Valley? Had the birds of the air brought the news to Freddy's ears? Was Margaret now tortured by a vision of this sumptuous desert picnic? Could she see him sitting alone with Millicent in her tent? He knew how mysteriously news travels in the desert, how quickly it journeys. A wave of anger flushed his face as he pictured to himself what Freddy would think ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... and the army arose. Breakfast was a sumptuous thing, delicately flavoured with compliments upon the taste, range, and abundance of the Federal commissariat. Roll call followed, with the moment's full pause after names that were not answered to. A general ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... Keepum is seen seated before a table in his drawing-room, finishing a sumptuous supper, and asking himself: "Who dares to question me, the opulent Keepum?" Mr. Snivel enters, joins him over a glass of wine, and says, "this little matter must be settled tonight, Keepum, old fellow-been minced long enough." ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... dyes, none of which I ever saw lifted while I was there; and I felt somehow that it would be presumptuous in me to venture to look within them. But the use of the other books seemed free; and day after day I came to the library, threw myself on one of the many sumptuous eastern carpets, which lay here and there on the floor, and read, and read, until weary; if that can be designated as weariness, which was rather the faintness of rapturous delight; or until, sometimes, the failing of the light invited ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... banishment from those palaces of Pall Mall or St. James's-street was as bitter as the pain of a fallen angel. It was the dullest, deadest time of the year, and there were not many loungers in those sumptuous reading-rooms, where the shaded lamps shed their subdued light on the chaste splendour of the sanctuary; so Captain Paget could haunt the scene of his departed youth without much fear of recognition: but his wanderings in the ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... gone. She saw the cleft through which ran the western road, and she thought with pleasure of the days before her. She loved the journeys to Richmond, and this one would be more beautiful, and new. They would be gone ten days, perhaps,—ten days of slow, bright travel through sumptuous woods, of talk close and dear. She was exquisitely happy as she sat there with her eyes upon the Blue Ridge. The last fortnight of her stay at Fontenoy had been almost a blissful time. Her uncles changed, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... the air cooler and very refreshing. Walked down to the shore, saw the Philadelphia packet off. Immense quantity of wood put under the boiler. Bathed in the floating bath, not very tidy. Just in time for a most sumptuous breakfast. Sailed to Staten Island; had a most delightful walk to Factoryville; a pleasant breeze. Very large cherry trees. Found Ward in humble circumstances, a shoemaker; built a house costing 650 dollars, let the upper part for 100 dollars and occupied the base himself ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... building a sumptuous palace and his well-known mosque, which still stands in his new royal suburb of Katai; he encouraged the small farmers and reduced the taxation, yet he left five millions in the treasury when he died ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the principal actions of the French army, from the departure of the troops from Boulogne to the battle of Austerlitz. The figures are near three feet high, and their number said to be two thousand. This sumptuous monument stands on a plinth of polished granite, surmounted by an iron railing; and, from its size and position, has an imposing appearance when seen from any ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... that no one, though with but a meager knowledge of literature, can read these sketches without a desire to know more of the men and women who are the glory of England and America? Here is but a taste of a more sumptuous feast. ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... the keyhole and cautiously applying my eye, I saw to my delight that the Crinoline had been elevated on a series of steel rods about six feet high, and that the five Wenuses who had descended in it were partaking of a light but sumptuous repast beneath its iridescent canopy. They were seated round a tripod imbibing a brown beverage from small vessels resembling the half of a hollow sphere, and eating with incredible velocity a quantity ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... as we have already observed, his favourite meal, as indeed it was her's; and, in a most pleasant and delightful manner, they generally passed their time at this season, though their fare was very seldom of the sumptuous kind. ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... letters, etc., had been landed from the ship, and we were able to read our home letters, which we had only time to glance at in the ship in February. Archer provided a sumptuous dinner that night, and we sailed into it in a way that made Debenham hold his breath. A bath and change of clothes completed ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... His beautiful wife Terentia tormented him by her temper and her infidelities; he put her away repeatedly, as often received her back. It was said of him that he had been married a hundred times, though only to a single wife: "What is the latest conjugal news?" men asked as his sumptuous litter passed by, "is it a marriage or a divorce?" And he was haunted by terror of death. "Prolong my life," was his prayer, in words which Seneca has ridiculed and La Fontaine translated finely, yet missing the terseness ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... upon some earnest gourmand who might dash down the vase of which we speak, in wrath that his eye and his palate had been so nobly cheated. The two vases, one of flowers, the other of fruits, are certainly the most sumptuous specimens of wax composition ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey
... her still, and then begun to be deeply interested in her studies, and so on, through the whole syllogism which ends in Nature's supreme quod erat demonstrandum. What was there to distract him or disturb him? He did not know,—but there was something. This sumptuous creature, this Eve just within the gate of an untried Paradise, untutored in the ways of the world, but on tiptoe to reach the fruit of the tree of knowledge,—alive to the moist vitality of that warm atmosphere palpitating ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... Bull was a great stumbling-block to many churchmen. Louis XIV. forced it upon the French bishops, who were entertained at a sumptuous banquet given by the Archbishop of Strasbourg and by a large majority decided against the Quesnelites. It is unnecessary to follow the history of this controversy further. France was long agitated by it, and the Church of Holland was ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... was at the height of his fame, he had no lack of friends; for whether he was in Germany, or Spain, or England, he was everywhere given ovations that were fit for a king, and was everywhere entertained by the best people in the most sumptuous manner. At one time he stayed for five weeks with Charles Dickens in his home at Gad's Hill, and the two were ever afterward firm friends. All of these people loved Andersen, not because of his fame, but because of the stories which had brought him fame, and because he was distinctly ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... revelation of his poverty with great coolness, and Jack admired the grim resolution with which he had cut down expenses while relaxing in no whit his hold on the nonchalant beauty. Poverty would, to a certain extent, bar him out from Rose's sumptuous world, and Rose did not seem to take him very seriously as a suitor; but it was evident that Eddy did not intend to remain poor any longer than he could possibly help it and evident, too, that his assurance in regard to sentimental ambitions had its ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... English MSS. These parchments, stained purple or violet, and inscribed with characters of gold; are too often beyond the reach of the amateur for whom we write. The MSS. which he can hope to acquire are neither very early nor very sumptuous, and, as a rule, MSS. of secular books are apt to be out ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... Row, though not sumptuous, was exceedingly comfortable. The habits of its occupant were such as to demand but little from the sole domestic, but Phileas Fogg required him to be almost superhumanly prompt and regular. On this very 2nd ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... hour or so we came to the solitary farm of a Mr Green, who regaled us with a sumptuous breakfast, and lent me a spur. I had the liberal offer of two spurs, but as, in hunting with the rifle, it is sometimes advisable to sit on one's right heel, and memory during the excitement of the chase is apt to prove ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... heard me. I returned to my home. Home! As if one alone can build a nest. How often as I have ascended the stairs that lead to my lonely, sumptuous rooms, have I paused to listen to the hilarity of the servants below. That morning I could not rest: I wandered from chamber to chamber, followed by my great dog, and all were alike empty and desolate. I had ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... darkness and coldness were about her, but she felt surrounded by the warmth and brightness of her dreams. She saw the brilliant streets of a big city, the carriages and motor-cars coming and going, the idle, lovely women in their sumptuous gowns and hats. These things ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... not a sumptuous repast to which they sat down, but Geoffrey asked nothing better. He was sitting opposite to her,—a position evidently decreed him by Fate from the beginning of time. He could look at her, and now and then, ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... travestying of Hector,—"Sweet chucks, beat not the bones of the dead, for when he breathed he was a man,"—even while through the instant the tide of romance will be setting quite otherwhither, with their condonation. For in all the best approved romances the more sumptuous persons of antiquity are very guilty of twaddle on at least one printed page in ten, and nobody remonstrates; and here is John Bulmer, too, lugged from ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... the two worlds!—And for these humble soldiers of the cross, who have nothing but their faith and their intrepidity, there is never reserved on their return (and they seldom do return) the rich and sumptuous dignities of the church. Never does the purple or the mitre conceal their scarred brows and mutilated limbs; like the great majority of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Dutch Gap. The mansion long ago disappeared, and nothing now marks its site but negro huts. Many of those exquisite spots on the James and Appomattox, which we have seen men pause to admire while the shells were bursting overhead, were occupied sixty years ago by the sumptuous abodes of the Randolphs and families related to them. Mattoax, the house in which John Randolph passed much of his childhood, was on a bluff of the Appomattox, two miles above Petersburg; and Bizarre, the ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... she had for the worthy disposition of her wealth, and the more she thought of them and planned their details, the less inclined she felt to leave for an hour or two her spacious and sumptuous apartments in the new building and go back to her little former home where she might think of old times and relieve her mind from the weight of the novelty and the richness of her new dining-room and ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... what he would he could not close his ears to what was public talk in Rome. The fabulous extravagances of Nero, the public and unbounded profligacy of himself and his court, the open defiance of decency, the stupendous waste of public money on the new and most sumptuous palace into which he had now removed, were matters that scandalized even the population of Rome. Senators, patricians, grave councillors, noble matrons were alike willingly or unwillingly obliged to join in the saturnalia that prevailed. The provinces were ruined to minister to the ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... heard a sound of quarreling in the neighborhood of his house. "I am certain," said he, "that this noise does not proceed from my home." On another occasion Hillel sent his wife a message to prepare a sumptuous meal for an honored guest. At the appointed hour Hillel and his guest arrived. But the meal was not ready. "Why so late?" asked Hillel. "I prepared a banquet," the wife replied, "according to your desire. But I learned that a couple ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... I keep my person fresh, and new; My presence like a robe pontifical, Ne'er seen but wondered at: and so my state Seldom, but sumptuous shewed, like a feast And won by ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... Netteville's drawing-room he found a small number of people assembled. M. de Querouelle, a middle-sized, round-headed old gentleman of a familiar French type; Lady Aubrey, thinner, more lath-like than ever, clad in some sumptuous mingling of dark red and silver; Lord Rupert, beaming under the recent introduction of a Land Purchase Bill for Ireland, by which he saw his way at last to wash his hands of 'a beastly set of tenants'; Mr. Wharncliffe, a young private ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and doughnuts and cheese vanished in such quantities that Tilly feared no one would have an appetite for her sumptuous dinner. The boys assured her they would be starving by five o'clock, and Sol mourned bitterly over the little pig that was not to ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... afraid to decline to sit down to the meal which was prepared for him. He did mutter something about having already eaten, but Trevelyan put this aside with a wave of his hand as he led the way into a spacious room, in which had been set out a table with almost a sumptuous banquet. The room was very bare and comfortless, having neither curtains nor matting, and containing not above half a dozen chairs. But an effort had been made to give it an air of Italian luxury. The windows were thrown open, down to the ground, and the table was decorated ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... spent in settling down to our new quarters in what was, especially after the camp at Valcartier, a luxurious home. Dinner at night became the regimental mess, and the saloon with its sumptuous furnishings made a fine setting for the nightly gathering of officers. We lay stationary all that night and on the next evening, Sept. the 29th, at six o'clock we weighed anchor and went at slow speed down the stream. Several other vessels had preceded us, the orders to move ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... may be, they require a command of feeling and temper: but remember, as you journey on, inclination must be continually sacrificed; and recollect also, that the true spirit of hospitality lies (as an old writer remarks), not in giving great dinners and sumptuous entertainments, but in receiving with kindness and cheerfulness those who come to you, and those who want ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... those magnificent velvet robes!" cried Count Schwarzenberg, with a sigh, "and how much your Spanish costume makes me long for the sumptuous life of the imperial court! Ah! my dear count, here among us you find hardly a trace of this costly, splendid living, and an imperial valet or house servant has more pleasure and enjoyment than an Electoral Stadtholder ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... shining is the log That feeds the sumptuous weed, Nor stone is found nor bedded log Where foot ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... upon some farm premises, at no great distance from the town of Cottonborough. His age might be sixty, or, allowing for the rough life he had led, something less. He looked jaded and unwell. The day had been very warm, and the man was eating, with no great appetite, a sumptuous supper of German sausage and bread. The sausage had been wrapped in a piece of newspaper, which spread out upon his knees, was now doing duty as a tablecloth. Having finished his meal, the man lazily glanced at the paper; but finding its contents, ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... place on the Duke of Gandia's left hand. The duke attracted all eyes by his personal beauty, set off as it was by all the luxury he thought fit to display at this festival. He had a retinue of pages and servants, clad in sumptuous liveries, incomparable for richness with anything heretofore seen in Rome, that city of religious pomp. All these pages and servants rode magnificent horses, caparisoned in velvet trimmed with silver fringe, and bells of silver hanging down every here and there. He himself was in a ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that dinner was the most important event since the landing from the Mayflower. Heliogabalus, who did not resemble a Pilgrim Father at all, but who had prepared for himself in his day some very sumptuous banquets in Rome, and ate a great deal of the best he could get (and liked peacocks stuffed with asafetida, for one thing), never had anything like a Thanksgiving dinner; for do you suppose that he, or Sardanapalus ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... was almost chestnut black, except in certain lights, when it gave out gleams as of dark gold. Her features were full, her figure large, but not too large. She wore a dark red tailored gown; and sumptuous sable furs shaded with dusky softness and shot, in the sun, with prismatic gleams, set off her handsome, not exactly smiling, but serenely beaming face. Two great black ostrich plumes and one red one curled down toward the soft spikes of the fur. Between, the two great blue eyes, ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of beautiful, sweet-scented flowers. The garden was protected all round by a breast-high parapet, and commanded a magnificent view, not only of the entire island, but also of the lake and the encircling hills. The Elder who installed the newcomers in this sumptuous suite of apartments having enquired whether their lodging was to their liking, and received a reply in the affirmative, informed them that, that being the case, the belongings which they had brought with them to the island would at once be placed in their new lodging. ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... are figures that require adornment there are none that require expensive clothes. Extravagance in dress is the folly of the class rather than the individual, it is merely conventional. Genuine coquetry is sometimes carefully thought out, but never sumptuous, and Juno dressed herself more magnificently than Venus. "As you cannot make her beautiful you are making her fine," said Apelles to an unskilful artist who was painting Helen loaded with jewellery. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... positions in the flower garden we have choice of many really sumptuous subjects, such as Stocks, Asters, Balsams, Drummond's Phlox, Lobelias, the lovely new varieties of Antirrhinums, Dianthus, Portulacas, Zinnias, tall Stock-flowered Larkspurs, Nemesias, and many other flowers equally beautiful and ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... the bodies of their friends.* And when they burnt not their dead bodies, yet sometimes used great burnings near and about them, deducible from the expressions concerning Jehoram, Zedechias, and the sumptuous pyre of Asa. And were so little averse from Pagan burning, that the Jews lamenting the death of Caesar their friend, and revenger on Pompey, frequented the place where his body was burnt for many nights together. And as they raised noble monuments and mausoleums for their own nation, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... men, was not without its enjoyments. They carried their provisions in a large, round, wooden box over which closed a round, wooden cover. They also carried provender for their teams and the only necessary cash expense was a sixpence each night for lodging. The more sumptuous and less economical might, if they chose, diminish their exchequer to the amount of an extra sixpence by indulging in a glass of "flip." Nearly every farm-house of any pretension on the high road ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... and how in such cases fortune was harsh to helpless people and became a traitress, when he met the poor French knight, who appeared far worse off that he, who had good weapons, a fine horse, and a mansion where servants were then preparing a sumptuous supper. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... originality; who among other fantastic dandyisms adopted the habit of going to the opera, with his hair powdered in gold; he used to light up his park for his own solitary delectation and on one occasion ordered a sumptuous entertainment there, in which he alone took part. This rustic Sardanapalus returned from Italy so passionately charmed with the scenery of that beautiful country that, by a sudden freak of enthusiasm, he spent four or five ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... been admitted to hospital. This one is more sumptuous but less satisfying than the casualty clearing station at Gezaincourt, whence the card was posted. There, in a small chateau converted into an R.A.M.C. half-way house, one was not over-anxious to be up and about, for that would have meant a ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... the bride's blanket. This takes place in the kivas, where usually all the weaving is done by the men, and with jollity and many a story the task is soon finished. The spun cotton is handed over to the bridegroom as a contribution from the village, to be paid for like everything else Hopi, by a sumptuous feast, which has been prepared by the women for the spinners. Perhaps ten sage-brush-fed sheep and goats, tough beyond reason, are being softened in a stew, consisting mainly of corn; stacks of paper ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... spirit of ancient Norwich, the mellowest and most historic of all English cities, breathes in these sumptuous and aromatic pages. After Lamb and Pater, both of whom loved him well, Browne is the subtlest adept in the recondite mysteries of rhythmic prose who can be enjoyed in our language. Not to catch the ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... had no idea there was anything so touching in Shakespeare. Positively melting! And then Mrs Palmer looked so well! She wore that rich plum-coloured silk, you know, with handsome lace, and a row of most beautiful lockets. I thought to myself, as she stood up to read in that sumptuous drawing-room, that the effect was regal. 'Regal,' I said afterwards, is the only word to express Mrs ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... an hour from the close of the ceremony, the guests were invited to partake of a sumptuous dinner, prepared expressly for the occasion. It was placed on rough tables made of large slabs, supported by small, round legs, set in auger holes; and though there was a scantiness of dishes—and these in the main consisting of a few pewter-plates, several wooden trenchers, ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... Each day we had a fresh horse. As I have said already, I could see nothing of the country. I only know that it was level, and that several times we had to cross large rivers in ferry-boats. The inns were clean and comfortable. In one or two of the larger towns they were quite sumptuous, and the food was good and well cooked. The same wonderful health and grace and ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... the winter, so the rugs and chairs, tables and couch, of the little flat had been all that was necessary to make it habitable and pleasant. A brisk fire burned on the wide hearth, of itself a furnishing without which many a sumptuous room may seem cheerless and in-hospitable. The walls were covered with a quaint old paper of white, with gold stripes about which green ivy leaves wound conventionally. This might have given the room a cold aspect, but Sally had hung curtains ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... of the Emperor,) and the younger members of the Imperial family, take part in it, the latter evidently impatient for the succeeding quadrilles and waltzes. When this is finished, all palpable, obtrusive ceremony is at an end. Dancing, conversation, cards, strolls through the sumptuous halls, fill the hours. The Emperor wanders freely through the crowd, saluting here and there a friend, exchanging badinage with the wittiest ladies, (which they all seem at liberty to give back, without the least embarrassment,) or seeking out the scarred and gray-haired officers who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... After this sumptuous repast I was let out for exercise. This time the three "condemned" blasphemers were not taken to a separate court. We paraded the common yard with the other prisoners. They were few in number, but they showed many ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... Serena, of a delicate bluish tint, very charming to work in, according to Cellini, though without the durability needed for statues placed out of doors.[53] It has been enriched with a most lavish hand and there is no part of the work without sumptuous decoration. The base, with the central wreath, is flanked by the Cavalcanti arms: above them rise two rectangular shafts enclosing the relief on either side. These columns are carved with a fretwork of leaves, ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... consent to live over a shop?' he had asked himself in considering the possibilities of his palace, and he had replied, 'Yes, if the shop is large enough and the rents are high enough.' He was right. His flats were the most sumptuous and the most preposterously expensive in London; and they were never tenantless. One man paid two thousand a year for a furnished suite. But what a furnished suite! The flats had a separate and spectacular entrance on the eastern facade of the building, with a foyer that ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... A sumptuous man was the Farmer-General. Thirty horses stood in his stables, twenty-four male domestics sat in his halls, six body-women waited on his wife. As one who pretended to do nothing but plunder and forage where he could, the Farmer-General—howsoever ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... was a sumptuous affair. I opened it by dancing a quadrille with Flavia: then I waltzed with her. Curious eyes and eager whispers attended us. We went in to supper; and, half way through, I, half mad by then, for her ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... playing his dextrous game at Paris; harrowing-up the souls of the curious and gullible of all ranks in that capital, by various thaumaturgic feats; raising the dead from their graves; and, what was more to the purpose, raising himself from the station of a poor Sicilian lacquey to that of a sumptuous and extravagant count. The noise of his exploits appears to have given rise to this work of Schiller's. It is an attempt to exemplify the process of hoodwinking an acute but too sensitive man; of working on the latent germ of superstition, which exists beneath his outward scepticism; ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... not at the time realize exactly what chilled and disturbed me, but I think now that it was what I might call the inhumanity of Sylvia's religion. I dipped into one of her sumptuous little books at some time during the day, and I ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... to this sumptuous automobile which was such as to attract attention in modest Bridgeboro. For one thing it was of a rich shade of blue, whereas, the inhabitants of Bridgeboro being for the most part dead, their favorite color ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... supplied our camp with fish; so making a good fire, we broiled them before it, baking bread in our Dutch oven; and finishing our sumptuous repast with some hot coffee, we turned a deaf ear to the whistling wind that blew steadily from the north-east. A little schooner of four tons was riding out the gale near the landing. She was bound for Apalachicola and St. Marks, Florida. Her passengers were crowded into a cabin, the confined ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... sumptuous marriage feast, but when they returned from church, Petruchio, taking hold of Katharine, declared his intention of carrying his wife home instantly, and no remonstrance of his father-in-law, or angry words of the enraged Katharine, could make him change his purpose. He claimed a husband's right ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... real pleasure to her to tread upon soft carpets, breathe a pure air, only sweetened by the breath of flowers, and to rest her eyes with delicate combinations of colour and the treasures of art to be found in the lawyer's sumptuous house. Never had she more strikingly betrayed her special gift, of which Abel Graham had spoken on his death-bed, 'ability to adapt herself to any surroundings;' she seemed, indeed, as Mina Fordyce had ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... sign that, so far as Khoda Dad Khan's personal influence went, the Khusru Kheyl would be good boys,—till the next time; especially if Khoda Dad Khan happened to like the new Deputy Commissioner. In Yardley- Orde's consulship his visit concluded with a sumptuous dinner and perhaps forbidden liquors; certainly with some wonderful tales and great good-fellowship. Then Khoda Dad Khan would swagger back to his hold, vowing that Orde Sahib was one prince and Tallantire ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... particularly did it recur to her, when, some months afterward, Mrs. Colonel Raynor, though she sometimes stopped to exchange a few kindly words with Mr. Smith at his place of business, evaded every invitation to his dwelling, while she went the rounds of sumptuous feting among the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the accursed let and hinderance to well disposed wittes, the mortal enemy to good Architecturie, and the execrable Idol of this present world, so vnworthily worshipped, and damnably adored. Thou deadly poison to him that is infected with thee, what sumptuous workes are ouerthrowne, and ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... a large number of colored ladies and gentlemen, and the accursed spirit of caste was completely exorcised by the exercises of the evening. The halls were grandly decorated with blackberry and gooseberry bushes, and other rare plants; sumptuous fountains squirted high great streams of XX ale and gin-and-milk; enormous piles of panned oysters, lobster salad, Charlotte Russe, and rice-pudding blocked up half the doorways, while within the dancing hall the merriment ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... bushes cautiously, and watched, and listened to the shouts, cries, laughter, and talk of those who were near enough to be heard. So bit by bit he had heard the story of the passing throng. The great Emperor Augustus, who, to the common herd seemed some strange omnipotent in his remote and sumptuous paradise of Rome, had issued a decree that all the world of his subjects should be enrolled, and every man, woman, and child must enroll himself in his own city. And to the little town of Bethlehem all these travelers were ...
— The Little Hunchback Zia • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in Adrianople, under the Crescent, the Infidel Turk, to whom she had come in the power of the very same Message for which she had suffered in Christian countries, was receiving her with kindness and respect, offering to clothe her body in sumptuous apparel, instead ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... spreads my blankets in the Colorado hills, flakes of snow a-fallin' as soft an' big an' white as a woman's hand, an' never heeds 'em a little bit. But them days is gone. Thar's no roof needed in my destinies then. An' as for bed, a slicker an' a pair of hobbles is sumptuous. ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... putting in motion the machinery of the confessional,—by the threat of purgatory in this case, and the lure of paradise in that,—she will speedily add to her former ample domain. And what will our country then become? We shall have Mother Church for landlord; and while she feasts daily at her sumptuous board, we shall have what the Romans now have,—the crumbs. We shall have monks and nuns for our farmers; and under their management, farewell to the smiling fields, the golden harvests, and the opulent cities, of Scotland ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... where I have been a week. The house is in building, and three sides of the quadrangle finished. The park is very fine, the woods glorious, and the plantations of evergreens sumptuous; but upon the whole, it is rather -what I admire than like-I fear that is what I am a little apt to do at the finest places in the world where there is not a navigable river. You would be charmed, as I was, with an old gallery, that is not yet ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole |
