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Costliness   Listen
noun
Costliness  n.  The quality of being costy; expensiveness; sumptuousness.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Costliness" Quotes from Famous Books



... operates. For so we shall be the better prepared for a generous appreciation of those far Southern gardens whose beauty has singled them out for our admiration. We know, of course, that the "formal garden," by reason of its initial and continuing costliness, is, and must remain, the garden of the wealthy few, and that the gardening for the great democracy of our land, the kind that will make the country at large a gardened land, is "informal," freehand, ungeometrical gardening. In this sort, on whatever scale, whether of the capitalist ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable

... wife, and a tall military-looking man accompanied by two ladies. The two ladies belonged to the height of fashion—of that Lucy was certain, as she stole an intimidated glance at the cut of their tailor-made gowns and the costliness of the fur cloak which one of them carried. As for the other lady, could she also be on her way to Benet's Park—with this uncouth figure, this mannish height and breadth, this complete lack of waist, these large arms and hands, and the over-ample garments and hat, of green ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... these advantages, for many, if not most of them, are expensive to get and either difficult or expensive to keep in good condition. Clearly, then, our ignorance is due not to lack of appreciation of the scientific value of primate research but instead to its difficultness and costliness. ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... residents than the latter. They occupy a magnificent iron building at the corner of Broadway and Twentieth street. It is one of the finest and most picturesque edifices in the city, and is filled with a stock of goods equal in costliness and superior in taste to anything that can be bought at Stewart's. On "opening days," or days when the merchants set out their finest goods for the inspection of the public, Lord & Taylor generally carry off the palm, for the handsomest and most tasteful display. The show windows ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... view the "sweet martyr's" body, for which the priests had prepared a costly catafalque, and for her a grand mass was celebrated in St. Peter's where she was laid at rest in a tomb, the like of which for costliness was never ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards

... this time forward, as peace is established or extended in Europe, the arts decline. They reach an unparalleled pitch of costliness, but lose their life, enlist themselves at last on the side of luxury and various corruption, and, among wholly tranquil nations, wither utterly away; remaining only in partial practice among races who, like the French and us, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... to be found in many country houses is indeed enormous. In Holinshed's Chronicle of Englande, Scotlande and Irelande, published in 1577, there is a chapter on the "maner of buylding and furniture of our Houses," wherein is recorded the costliness of the stores of plate and tapestry that were found in the dwellings of nobility and gentry and also in farm-houses, and even in the homes of "inferior artificers." Verily the spoils of the monasteries and churches must have been fairly evenly ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... to be completed in ten folio volumes, the first of which, just out, he was showing me. He complained of the extreme slowness of the Government presses in getting on with the work. This he attributed to the absurd costliness, as he considered it, of the style in which the work was brought out. The cost of producing that first volume he told me had been over 1,600l. sterling. It was to be sold at a little less than a hundred francs. Something was said (by me, ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... her Literature Committee and Miss Gordon urged that clergymen of all denominations should be circularized with it. She said: "I believe the association should not be dissuaded from this undertaking because of the amount of work and its costliness. The burden of responsibility rests upon us to prove with such evidence that the worst enemy of the church and the most active enemy of woman suffrage is a mutual foe, the 'organized liquor and vice power.' If in the face of such direct evidence representatives of the church still ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... due to this unregulated production, and the costliness of the struggles, led to the formation of joint-stock companies. Competition was giving way before a stronger force, the force of co-operation. There was still competition, but it was more and more between giants. To adopt a very homely ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo

... among the less wealthy classes—when we find that many who most need to be disciplined by mixing with the refined are driven away by it, and led into dangerous and often fatal courses—when we count up the many minor evils it inflicts, the extra work which its costliness entails on all professional and mercantile men, the damage to public taste in dress and decoration by the setting up of its absurdities as standards for imitation, the injury to health indicated in the faces of its devotees at the close of the London season, the mortality of milliners and the like, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... limit—where the Frenchman deploys all his seductive, and vain, and frivolous airs; where he wears his best clothes and his best manners; where he loves to be seen, and observed, and saluted—the tradesmen of the capital have installed establishments the costliness and elaborateness of which it is hardly possible to exaggerate. The gilding and the mirrors, the marbles and the bronze, the myriad lamps of every fantastic form, the quaint and daring designs for shop fronts, the infinite ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold

... greeting. She was a bright-eyed girl, with freckles on her smiling face, and the expression of a daring, vivacious and happy spirit—and acknowledged to be the best dancer and most popular girl in Middleville. Her dress, while not to be compared with her friends' costumes in costliness, yet was ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... statues, i.e., statues of gold and ivory, must, from the costliness of the materials, have been always comparatively rare. Most of them, though not all, were temple-images, and the most famous ones were of colossal size. We are very imperfectly informed as to how these figures were made. The colossal ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... received. So I admired it cordially both for form and colour, telling them, and very truly, that it was as beautiful as gold. They were not surprised. The things were plainly the boast of the countryside. And the children expatiated on the costliness of these amphorae, which sell sometimes as high as thirty francs apiece; told me how they were carried on donkeys, one on either side of the saddle, a brave caparison in themselves; and how they were to be seen all over the district, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... numerous and so valuable. Not only does one see them here and there in various directions, but one room of considerable dimensions is set apart altogether for them, and a day could be profitably spent in their inspection. It is not only their costliness and their beauty, but the associations which make them of so much interest. This one was presented by the King of this place; this one by Prince So-and-so; this by such a town, and this by such an order or society, until the vision is quite dazzled ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... young Earl of Lincoln and several other noblemen in the suite of Lord Granville.... Some twenty servants in the imperial livery served the table which was furnished with truly royal profusion and costliness. The rarest dishes and the costliest wines in every variety were put before us. I need not say that in such a party everything was conducted with the highest decorum. No noise, no boisterous mirth, no loud talking, but ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... second objection—costliness—the reply is, first, that the rate and the Parliamentary grant together ought to be enough, considering that science and art teaching is already provided for; and, secondly, that if they are not, it may be well ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... several volumes; and the entire work, containing a collection of such articles, can be regarded in no other light than as an attempted exhibition of the sum of human knowledge, commending itself, of course, to professional and highly educated minds, but far transcending, in extent and costliness, the requirements and the means of the great class of general readers. For the wants of this latter class a different sort of work is desirable, which shall be cheaper in price, less exhaustive in its method, and more diversified in its range. In these particulars the Germans seem to have hit upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... affecting an independence which could not exist an hour but by the protection of England, and the burlesque of a parliament into which no man entered but in expectation of a job; the scandal of an Irish slave-market, and the costliness of purchasing representatives, only to be sold by them in turn, became so palpable to the national eye, that the nation contemptuously cashiered the legislature. The gamblers who had made their fortunes off the people, and had amused themselves with building a house of cards, saw their paper fabric ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... the newspapers even of London—certainly those which reach a large majority of the readers—prefer sensationalism. Even those which are anxious in such cases to be fair and temperate are sadly hampered both by the limitations of space in their own columns and by the costliness of telegraphic correspondence. It is inevitable that the most conservative and judicial of correspondents should transmit to his papers whatever are the most striking items—revelations—accusations in an indictment ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... felt scientific aspiration of his life—an aspiration which he hardly dared to expect or to see realized." A little later, however, Sir William, always cautious and canny, began to discover the inherent defects of the primitive battery, as to disintegration, inefficiency, costliness, etc., and though offered tempting inducements, declined to lend his name to its financial introduction. Nevertheless, he accepted the principle as valuable, and put the battery ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... the large-paper edition. It was always an anomaly; but our fathers did not stop to reason that, if a page has the right proportions at the start, mere increase of margin cannot enhance its beauty or dignity. At most it can only lend it a somewhat deceptive appearance of costliness, with which was usually coupled whatever attraction there might be in the restriction of this special edition to a very few copies. So they paid many dollars a pound for mere blank paper and fancied that they were getting their money's worth. ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman

... company of consequence. It was very noble—very grand—very charming!—was all that Catherine had to say, for her indiscriminating eye scarcely discerned the colour of the satin; and all minuteness of praise, all praise that had much meaning, was supplied by the general: the costliness or elegance of any room's fitting-up could be nothing to her; she cared for no furniture of a more modern date than the fifteenth century. When the general had satisfied his own curiosity, in a close examination ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... of disbelief, with their athletic agility of dialectics, have made terrible havoc among the troops of poetic arguments from resemblance, drawn up to sustain the doctrine of immortality. They have exposed the feebleness of the argument for our immortality from the wonderful workmanship and costliness of human nature, on the ground that what requires the most pains and displays the most skill and genius in its production is the most lovingly preserved. For God organizes the mind of a man just as easily as he constructs the geometry of a diamond. His omnipotent attributes ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... mysterious meat was that of a newly-born calf whose dam was yet lying helpless in a corner of the cabin. The man was quite unconscious that there was anything objectionable in the dreadful food, and offered it to "the masthers" with perfect grace, and without the slightest pang at the costliness of the banquet. He had given the best and only meat he had to his guests. Like the Italian gentleman with his falcon, or rather the Arab sheik with his horse, who, my friend Mr. Browning tells me, is the original of Boccaccio's mamby-pamby story, the Kerry mountaineer had fulfilled ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... before them was really little else but a compilation; and that Victor had already abridged in the same merciless way the writings of the Fathers (Chrysostom chiefly) from whom he obtained his materials. We are to remember also, I suppose, the labour which transcription involved, and the costliness of the skins out of which ancient books were manufactured. But when all has been said, I must candidly admit that the extent of license which the ancients evidently allowed themselves quite perplexes me.(515) Why, for example, remodel the structure of a ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon

... strophe and antistrophe describe the richness of this prize; the opening strophe makes 'chastening' the cost at which it is obtained by the individual from the Lord; and the corresponding antistrophe (at the end) explains the reason for this costliness—wisdom was the instrument by which ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various

... without any assistance, and that the materials for it shall cost, say, a penny, and the charge for it to a patient with 100 pounds a year be half-a-crown. And, on the other hand, a hygienic measure has only to be one of such refinement, difficulty, precision and costliness as to be quite beyond the resources of private practice, to be ignored or ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw

... rapidly in number under Louis XV., and became the favorite resort of distinguished individuals. At present, they abound in every quarter, and justly rank among the most remarkable features of the city, being very generally decorated with unrivaled costliness and splendor. Besides coffee, wine, beer and other refreshments, they frequently provide breakfast, and many of them also dinners and suppers. In 1874, there were over 6,000 cafes in Paris, doing business to the amount of ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner

... That he afterwards, by a life of abandoned profligacy, disgraced the religion which he professed, is, unhappily, put beyond conjecture or vague rumour. Though we cannot infer from any expenses about her funeral and her memory, that Blanche was the sole object of his affections, (the most lavish costliness at the tomb of the departed too often being only in proportion to the unkindness shown to the living,) yet it may be worth observing, that in 1372 we find an entry in the account, of 20l. paid to two chaplains (together ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... neighborhood of Hamadan on his visit to that place in 1818. [PLATE I., Fig. 1.] But to judge from the description of Polybius, an older and ruder style of architecture prevailed in the main building, which depended for its effect not on the beauty of architectural forms, but on the richness and costliness of the material. A pillar architecture, so far as appears, began in this part of Asia with the Medes, who, however, were content to use the more readily obtained and more easily worked material of wood; while the Persians afterwards conceived the idea of substituting for these ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson

... girl, and yet for which surely her toilette was in some way also responsible. Her white satin dress was cut and fashioned in a style which he was beginning to appreciate as evidence of skill and costliness. A string of pearls around her throat gleamed softly in the firelight. A chain of fine gold studded with opals and diamonds reached almost to her knees. She wore few rings indeed, but they were such rings as he had never seen before he ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... remember in the choice of jewellery that mere costliness is not always the test of value; and that an exquisite work of art, such as a fine cameo, or a natural rarity, such as a black pearl, is a more distingue possession than a large brilliant which any rich and ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge

... from a visit to his brother in the United States, a country at that time on the rage for social clubs with classic names. The "Manchester Athenaeum," owing partly to defective management and architectural costliness, partly to some years of bad trade and deficient employment, and partly to an unfortunate sectarian conflict, had fallen into debt and difficulty; and a few of the younger members, who had profited by the existence of the institution, came ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... profound a sumptuosity. But you must not imagine any extravagance of outline or any beauty or richness of color. The predominant colors were black and fur browns, and the effect of richness was due entirely to the extreme costliness of the materials employed. She affected silk brocades with rich and elaborate patterns, priceless black lace over creamy or purple satin, intricate trimmings through which threads and bands of velvet wriggled, and ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... which had come days before. There were presents for every one; nobody, guest or member of the family, was forgotten, and whether costly, or homely but useful, the gifts seemed to give equal joy. It was the season of good-will, in which the kindly thought, not the costliness of the gift, was alone considered, and when all tokens of kindliness were accepted in the same ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... which poured—or trickled rather—the mother's sorry little history. Her husband was employed in the clothing department of the Army and Navy Stores—yes, nine years now. He was considered very lucky to keep his place when the staff was reduced. But the costliness of raising the children! It was well that three were dead. If she had it all to do over ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... now the only cause for divorce allowed, complete separation be also granted for desertion for three years, incurable insanity, and incurable habitual drunkenness. The majority, nine commissioners, found that the present stringent restrictions and costliness of divorce are productive of immorality and illicit relations, particularly among the poorer classes. The majority report was opposed by the three minority members, the Archbishop of York, Sir William Anson, and Sir Lewis Dibdin, representing the Established Church of England ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker

... goldsmiths, and all gave each other as presents works of art executed by their favourite artists. In the British Museum there is a splendid gold and enamel cup that John, Duke of Berry, caused to be made for his brother King Charles V.; to see it would give you a good idea of the costliness and elaboration of the finest work of that day. The courts of these four brothers were centres of artistic production in all kinds—sculpture, metal-work, tapestries, illuminated manuscripts and pictures, and there was a strong spirit of rivalry among the artists to see who could make the ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway

... member of the corporation gave two annual entertainments in his official character. And such was the rivalship which prevailed, that often one quarter of the year's income was spent upon these galas. Nor was any ridicule thus incurred; for the costliness of the entertainment was understood to be an expression of OFFICIAL pride, done in honor of the city, not as an effort of personal display. It followed, from the spirit in which these half-yearly dances originated, that, being given ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... white marble pinnacles and golden roof glittering in the sunshine. For nine years he had constantly employed 18,000 men in its re-erection, and for upwards of thirty years more he had kept adding to its embellishments, till for grandeur and costliness it stood unrivalled. But when it was completed he set up over its chief gate the golden eagle of the Romans, and at the sight of that abhorred ensign all their gratitude fled, ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... proprietor:—this for the reason, first, that wealth is not, in England, the loftiest object of ambition as constituting a nobility; and secondly, that there, the true nobility of blood, confining itself within the strict limits of legitimate taste, rather avoids than affects that mere costliness in which a parvenu rivalry may at any time ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... upon the desire of riches for the sake of luxury? What inducement, for instance, would there be to make money, even for the sake of wearing apparel, in a state where personal adornment is held to lie not in the costliness of the clothes they wear, but in the healthy condition of the body to be clothed? Nor again could there be much inducement to amass wealth, in order to be able to expend it on the members of a common mess, where the legislator had made it seem far more glorious ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon

... wealth, affluence; abundance, profusion; luxuriance, sumptuousness, costliness, elegance, fertility, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... were little inferior to the aqueducts and Cloa'cae in utility and costliness; the chief was the Appian road from Rome to Brundu'sium; it extended three hundred and fifty miles, and was paved with huge squares through its entire length. After the lapse of nineteen centuries many parts of it are still as perfect as when it ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... higher activity, the abstraction of the required materials implies a diminished reserve of materials for race-maintenance. And we have seen reason to believe that this antagonism between Individuation and Genesis becomes unusually marked where the nervous system is concerned, because of the costliness of nervous structure and function. In Section 346 was pointed out the apparent connection between high cerebral development and prolonged delay of sexual maturity; and in Sections 366, 367, the evidence went to show that where exceptional ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... The costliness, discomforts, and miserable ill-success of this expedition, while they occasioned clamor in the camp, sharpened the discontents existing at the capital. Suspicions prevailed of treachery on the Governor's part, for he was well known to be without the excuse ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... me, what should I have done? . . . It never was a home to me—to any of us. And as I look back now, all the troubles began when we moved into it. I can only think of it as a huge prison, all the more sinister for its costliness." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... natural movement of progress) is cleansing itself and ennobling itself constantly and inevitably, were it only through its connection with science ever more and more exquisite, and through its augmented costliness,—all this may have its use in offering some restraint upon the levity of action or of declamation in Peace Societies. But all this is below the occasion. I feel that far grander interests are at stake in this contest. The ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... slaves. And one thing is clear, that when all the causes of war, involving manifest injustice, are banished by the force of European opinion, focally converged upon the subject, the range of war will be prodigiously circumscribed. The costliness of war, which, for various reasons has been continually increasing since the feudal period, will operate as another limitation upon its field, concurring powerfully with the public declaration from a council ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... more credit as it applied itself to the mind by every argument suited to it. The oppressed looked thither for an indemnification, and entertained the consoling hope of vengeance; the oppressor expected by the costliness of his offerings to secure to himself impunity, and at the same time employed this principle to inspire the vulgar with timidity; kings and priests, the heads of the people, saw in it a new source of power, as they reserved to themselves the privilege of awarding the favors ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... conception than we commonly attain to, that a book consists, like a man, from whom it draws its lineage, of a body and a soul. They are not always proportionate to each other. Nay, even the different members of the book-body do not sing, but clash, when bindings of a profuse costliness are imposed, as too often happens in the case of Bibles and books of devotion, upon letter-press which is respectable journeyman's work and nothing more. The men of the Renascence had a truer sense of adaptation; the age of jewelled bindings ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone

... villas, each upon its little hill, are the cities before mentioned, five of which are within sight of the young ladies who attend the liberally conducted seminary of Mount Auburn. The stranger is continually astonished at the magnitude and costliness of these residences. Our impression was, that they are not inferior, either in number or in elegance, to those of Staten Island or Jamaica Plain; while a few of them, we presume, are unequalled in America. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... medicine at Rome. As might be expected from what we know of the relations of the rest of the family to the nobility of the time, it is easy to understand, especially in connection with hints in Alexander's favorite modes of therapeutics, that costliness of remedies made no difference to his patients, that he must have had the treatment of some of ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... only to take it to lord Timon, and pretend to consult his taste as to the merits of it; nothing more was wanting to persuade the liberal-hearted lord to buy it. If a jeweller had a stone of price, or a mercer rich costly stuffs, which for their costliness lay upon his hands, lord Timon's house was a ready mart always open, where they might get off their wares or their jewellery at any price, and the good natured lord would thank them into the bargain, as if they had done ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... And this program was carried out with the result that as Gideon said, "Is Miss Sackville here?" Miss Sackville appeared before his widening, wondering, admiring eyes. He was dressed in the extreme of fashion and costliness in good taste; while it would have been impossible for him to look distinguished, he did look what he was—a prosperous business man with prospects. He came perfumed and rustling. But he felt completely ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... your power. Deign to give us from your abundance, not that we may live comfortably when serving the Lord, but live in luxury like you, and compete with you in the sumptuousness of our banquets and in the costliness of our furniture and our works of art, and be your companions and equals in social distinctions, and be enrolled with you as leaders of society." On the contrary they said, "We ask nothing from you. We do not wish to be rich. We prefer poverty. We would ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord

... It is the most powerful of the forces for democracy. An aristocracy can hardly be maintained except by distinction in dress, and distinction in dress can only be maintained by sumptuary laws or costliness. Sumptuary laws are unconstitutional in this country, hence the stress laid upon costliness. But machinery tends to bring styles and fabrics within the reach of all. The shopgirl is almost as well dressed on the street ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... keep up an interest in the conversation at table, and not to betray the slightest anxiety as to the success of the affair. Host or hostess should never make disparaging remarks as to the quality of dishes; and still less should they refer to their costliness, and should know beforehand as to the edge of the carving-knife, as the use of a steel is ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... are depicted to be by Lowell and many another American writer since, depends upon what the special person's innate taste is. The thrones and altars have become more and more magnificent in beauty, costliness, and splendor, with the progress of civilization; but not so the mob, the rabble, the "underworld," whose stirrings have rent the walls. Christ's taste, it would seem, was not primarily aesthetic. But then not every one is a son of Mary, and not ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit

... in the sober after-light of discrimination, where he saw her definitely divided from him by the crudeness of a choice which seemed to deny the very differences he felt in her. It was before him again in its completeness—the choice in which she was content to rest: in the stupid costliness of the food and the showy dulness of the talk, in the freedom of speech which never arrived at wit and the freedom of act which never made for romance. The strident setting of the restaurant, in which their table ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... been king of Persia for three years, he gave a feast for all his officials, officers, and servants. The commanders of the armies of Persia and Media, the nobles and governors were before him; while for one hundred and eighty days he showed them the wonderful riches of his kingdom and the costliness ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman

... extent of demand, to the lucifer match. But it is, at the same time, a parallel in principle. If a globe were not made upon a principle involving the scientific combination of skilled labor, it would be a mere article of luxury from its excessive costliness. It is now a most useful instrument in education. For educational purposes the most inexpensive globe is as valuable as that of the highest price. All that properly belongs to the excellence of the instrument is found ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... their homes away in a single night, leaving only ashes to mark the spot. There is no foundation or cellar to a Japanese dwelling. The temples in this vicinity are isolated from the dwellings, a river running between, and are wonderful in architecture, size, and costliness. They are many hundred years of age, and contain, among other curious ornaments, statues of grotesque shapes in bronze, of priceless value, mammoth bronze figures of birds of the stork species, etc., life-like in character, and of exquisite finish. There are also many emblems ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... ... shall cry when they see the smoke of her burning, saying: 'What city is like unto this great city?' And they shall cast dust on their heads, and weeping and wailing, cry: 'Alas, alas that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness!' ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... described, was probably less a re-edification of the first, than a new design. While based on the scheme of the first temple, it appears to have followed more closely the pattern described in the vision of Ezekiel (chapters xl.-xlii.). It was far inferior to its predecessor in splendor and costliness. No ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... neatness of the illustration took with the House, and the speaker was interrupted by 'much laughter.' And then he went on to say that, 'as with those well-known ointments or medicines whose specific virtues lay in the enormous costliness of some of the constituents, so it must give unspeakable value to the efficacy of those healing measures for Ireland, to know that the whole British Constitution was boiled down to make one of them, and every right and liberty brayed in the mortar to furnish even one dose of this precious ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... self-centred, and so lacking in sympathy. He took his revenge by teasing her about the wedding presents which were still flowing in. Her father's business friends were still striving to outdo one another in the costliness of the jewelry they were giving her. The great houses of the Faubourg Saint-Germain were still refraining firmly from anything that savoured of extravagance or ostentation. While he was with her ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson

... accommodation, salaries to be paid for management and service; and in addition to all this, there must further be expended in the construction of the line itself sums far greater in amount than those spent in the formation and repair of roads and highways. All this is true; but in estimating the comparative costliness of the old and new methods of land-locomotion, regard must be had to the amount of their produce as well as of their outlay; and an opinion regarding their respective merits, in an economical point of view, must be formed by striking ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various

... success of the ballet with which a run of success began for the Gaudissart Company that the management presented Pons with a piece of plate—a group of figures attributed to Benvenuto Cellini. The alarming costliness of the gift caused talk in the green-room. It was a matter of twelve hundred francs! Pons, poor honest soul, was for returning the present, and Gaudissart had a world of trouble to persuade him to ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... accommodate a considerable want of alinement, far beyond anything which is likely to occur in actual practice. Perhaps the only feature against it is its lack of simplicity of construction and corresponding costliness. ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins

... sit down while he went on this errand, was delicately, decorated in white and gold, and furnished with a sort of extravagant good taste; there was nothing to object to in the satin furniture, the pale, soft, rich carpet, the pictures, and the bronze and china bric-a-brac, except that their costliness was too evident; everything in the room meant money too plainly, and too much of it. The Marches recognized this in the hoarse whispers which people cannot get their voices above when they try to talk away the interval of waiting in such circumstances; they conjectured from what ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... went to Beteddeen, and witnessed the sad spectacle of the Ameer Besheer's luxurious palace in a process of daily destruction by the Turkish soldiery, who occupied it as a barrack. Accounts had been read by me in Europe {405} of its size and costliness, but the description ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... brilliant joy. Wreaths of flowers hung from the windows; rich tapestries decked the Dome Kirk, and the relics were displayed in shrines of wonderful costliness of material and beauty of workmanship; little birds, with thin cakes fastened to their feet, were let loose to fly about the church, in strange allusion to the event of the day; the clergy wore their most gorgeous robes; ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... whole family seemed eager to show their hospitality-the old man discovered, not so much by the costliness of his garments as by the noble mien and gentle manners of the stranger, that he was some chieftain from the castle. "Your honor," said he, "must pardon the uncourtliness of our ways; but we give you the best we have: and the worthy Lord Loch-awe ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... as curios on account of their curious forms; others have been regarded as such because their uses have become obsolete, and some because of their great beauty and the costliness of the materials of which they ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess

... reply. She, too, wanted new dresses; she could hardly endure the grace and costliness of Connie's garments, when she compared them with her own; but there was something in her sad little soul also that would not let her be beholden to Connie. Not without a ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... therefore the Romans were sorely afflicted by both these circumstances, they set fire to the cloisters, which were works to be admired, both on account of their magnitude and costliness. Whereupon those that were above them were presently encompassed with the flame, and many of them perished therein; as many of them also were destroyed by the enemy, who came suddenly upon them; some of them ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... principle of the measure which I introduce, is designed to cut off the very source of all costliness, insecurity, litigation, by abolishing altogether the system of retrospective titles and ordaining that as often as the fee simple is transferred, the existing title must be surrendered to the Crown, and a fresh grant from the Crown issued ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... absence of original development. Where the Greek master lightly sketches, the Etruscan disciple lavishes a scholar's diligence; instead of the light material and moderate proportions of the Greek works, there appears in the Etruscan an ostentatious stress laid upon the size and costliness, or even the mere singularity, of the work. Etruscan art cannot imitate without exaggerating; the chaste in its hands becomes harsh, the graceful effeminate, the terrible hideous, and the voluptuous ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... another, cut, on either side the path-way, in the porous tufa, through which all the moisture filters downwards, leaving the parts above dry and wholesome. All alike were carefully closed, and with all the delicate costliness at command; some with simple tiles of baked clay, many with slabs of marble, enriched by fair inscriptions: marble taken, in some cases, from older pagan tombs—the inscription sometimes a palimpsest, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater

... among the politicians of 1832, trained in Bentham's school, [Bentham, by the bye, being quoted in Edwin Drood,] hardly ever wrote a novel without attacking an abuse. The procedure of the Court of Chancery and of the Ecclesiastical Courts, the delays of the Public Offices, the costliness of divorce, the state of the dwellings of the poor, and the condition of the cheap schools in the North of England, furnished him with what he seemed to consider, in all sincerity, the true moral ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... with burnished gold, and glowed with pictures; its walls were a quarry of precious stones, so valuable were the marbles out of which they were wrought; its columns and pillars were of inconceivable costliness; its pavement was a mosaic of wonderful beauty, and there were four twisted pillars made out of stalactites. Perhaps the best way to form some dim conception of it is to fancy a little casket, inlaid ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... fifty-two army corps which faced us on the western front, Germany has only been able to take four and one-half corps for the eastern front. On the other hand, climatic conditions—the rain, mud, and mist—were such as to diminish the effectiveness of offensive operations and to add to the costliness of any undertaken, which was another reason for postponing them. Still another reason lies in the fact that from now on the allied forces can count upon a steadily expanding growth, equally in point of numbers and units as of material, while ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... vast array, the corps which stood at the head, in respect to their rank and the costliness and elegance of their equipment, was a Persian squadron of ten thousand men, called the Immortals. They had received this designation from the fact that the body was kept always exactly full, as, whenever any one of the number died, another soldier was instantly ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... on Court Masques in the early pages of the present volume for notices of the elaborate splendour and costliness of these ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... wealthy, and the richness of the wedding presents was natural. It might perhaps have been better had not the value of the whole been stated in one of the newspapers of the day. Who was responsible for the valuation was never known, but it seemed to indicate that the costliness of the gifts was more thought of than the affection of the givers; and it was undoubtedly true that, in high circles and among the clubs, the cost of the collection was much discussed. The diamonds were known to a stone, and Hampstead's rubies were spoken of almost as freely as though they were ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope

... capacious for the instrument. Not so with those in common use at the present time, opening as a box. To these may be laid the charge of causing an immense amount of irreparable injury to numbers of violins of any standard of excellence or costliness. This in the way mostly of depressions—"wells" as they are termed by repairers—where the feet of the bridge rest. These are caused by the lid of the case coming down on to the hard wood of the bridge and pressing its feet like dies, into the comparatively softer pine (diagram 5). It is ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick

... opening of the retreat, Roc-Amadour is illuminated, and the spectacle is one that renders the grandest illuminations in Paris mean and vulgar by comparison. It is not in the costliness of the display that its splendour lies; it is in what may almost be termed the zeal with which Nature works with art towards the same end. Without the rocks and precipices the spectacle would be commonplace; but the site being what it ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... doubt. The Presbyters and the Asceticks, I believe, changed the Palluim for the Toga in the infancy of the christian world; but all other christians were left undistinguished by their dress. These were generally clad in the sober manner of their own times. They observed a medium between costliness and sordidness. That they had no particular form for their dress beyond that of other grave people, we team from Justin Martyr. "They affected nothing fantastic, says he, but, living among Greeks and barbarians, they followed the customs of ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... The costliness of writing materials gave rise to a peculiar usage. From the leaves of an ancient work the original writing was erased, more or less perfectly. They were then employed as the material for another work, the latter being written over ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... three inches in height, had an oval face of remarkable beauty and liveliness, jet black hair, and eyes in which merriment dwelt as in its home. He was dressed as became a noble of the time, and in apparel of unusual splendor and costliness; plumed bonnet, slashed velvet doublet, tight silken hose, ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.

... the women of the court and the ministers and other high officials were of corresponding splendor and beauty. There is nothing on our side of the world or in Europe to compare with them in beauty of design, costliness of material and lavishness of decoration. The grandest palaces of the European capitals are coarse and clumsy beside them, and the new library at Washington, which we consider a model of architectural perfection, can be compared to these ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... water; inside these are some loops made of pearls fastened with wax, and inside all this a lighted lamp. They come in regular order one before the other, in all perhaps sixty women fair and young, from sixteen to twenty years of age. Who is he that could tell of the costliness and the value of what each of these women carries on her person? So great is the weight of the bracelets and gold and jewels carried by them that many of them cannot support them, and women accompany ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell

... of New Intentions.*—All the outer and inner determinations which impede or hold at a distance the attainment of the normal sexual aim, such as impotence, costliness of the sexual object, and dangers of the sexual act, will conceivably strengthen the inclination to linger at the preparatory acts and to form them into new sexual aims which may take the place of the normal. On closer ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud

... of ordinary labourers, but designed for some favoured dependant or aged servant. They are expensive toys, but still they are not without their use. They diffuse a taste among the peasantry—they present them with models, which, though they cannot imitate in costliness of material or finish, they can copy in arrangement, and in that sort of decoration, which flowers, and vines, and culture, and care can give. Let us seek one which is peculiarly the poor man's cottage, and let us go in and see who and what they are, how they live, and above all, ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... opiates is almost past belief. I have seen a mere girl of seventeen years take at one dose thirty grains of morphia, and I know of a woman who took for years ninety grains a day, and ruined a weak husband, a man of small means, by the costliness of her habit. ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell

... by thinking of my being a stranger in the land; nothing daunted by the architectural superiority and costliness of any Liverpool church; or by the streams of silk dresses and fine broadcloth coats flowing into the aisles, I used humbly to present myself before the sexton, as a candidate for admission. He would stare a little, perhaps (one of them once hesitated), but in the end, what could he do but show ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... worked with a variety of materials. Wood was in common use during primitive times. Terra cotta was employed at all periods for statuettes a few inches in height. Productions in gold and ivory, from the costliness of these objects, were extremely rare. Bronze was the favorite material of some of the most eminent artists. The Greek sculptor especially relied on the beautiful marbles ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... Delecresse, repacked his wares with such care as their delicacy and costliness required, and the Countess desired Levina to summon the varlets to bear the heavy ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... absolute disregard for appearance. The first arose from a feeling that every dollar spent in the interest of art (!) should be so gewgawed to the outer world that all who passed might note the costliness and wonder. The second extreme had its birth in an elementary practicality that believes anything artistic must be ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... much more widely practised than is usual in laboratories. Regarded as a means of preserving brass, copper, or steel, it is not appreciably more "time robbing" than lacquering, and gives infinitely better results. Moreover, it is not much more expensive. Strange as it may seem, the costliness of gilding seldom lies in the value of the gold deposited; the chief cost is in the chemicals employed to clean the work, and in interest on the not inconsiderable outlay ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... good wishes. There were speeches from delegations of various local bodies, and from local notables of various degrees; and there were wedding presents, out-vying each other, as it seemed, in kindly personal significance rather than in costliness. Among them all, and arranged by Mrs. Betty at the very center, the Vestry's gift to the bride stood easily first: a ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott

... Ha! such a brilliant, and on my finger; and from Amelia! Death itself should not have plucked it hence. It is not the costliness of the diamond, not the cunning of the pattern—it is love which constitutes its value. Is it not so, Amelia? Dearest child, you are weeping. Woe be to him who causes such precious drops to flow from those heavenly eyes; ah, and if you knew all, if you could but see him yourself, see ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... led the wealthy to great expense in their construction. Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans built them with upper apartments, more or less spacious. These chambers were adorned with vases, sculptures, and paintings on the walls, varying in costliness and style according to the means or taste of the builder. The tomb of Cestius in Rome contained a chamber much ornamented with paintings. Ancient Egyptian tombs abound with sculptures and paintings, probably representative of the character of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... forego the chase. For your solicitude regarding my marriage, I tender my thanks; and the assurance, that no magnet can draw, not all the charms of Circe lure me across the Atlantic, until I have accomplished my purpose. The tardiness of your proposal is unerring appraiser of its costliness; and I were a monster of cruelty to debar you the sight of your idol, though I bring him with the grim garniture of chains and handcuffs. When I consign Miss Dent to her relatives in New York, I go to a miners' ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... crushing influence of the feudal system, which gave the nobles almost absolute power over their serfs or dependants, thus encouraging lawlessness on the one hand, and causing degradation on the other. The scarcity and costliness of books before the invention of printing was another {116} formidable obstacle to any universal spread of education, all which causes tended to bring learning into contempt amongst the restless barons and their followers, restricting it ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt

... penalty of ten shillings for every such offence." The select men of every town were required to take notice of the apparel of any of the inhabitants, and to assess such persons as "they shall judge to exceed their ranks and abilities, in the costliness or fashion of their apparel in any respect, especially in wearing of ribbands and great boots," at L200 estates, according to the proportion which some men used to pay to whom such apparel is suitable and allowed. An exception, however, is made in favour ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... without a spot upon his integrity. He has no children pensioned at the public charge. He will leave behind him no wealth gained directly or indirectly from his public opportunities. He will go back to a humble and simple dwelling not exceeding in costliness that of many a Massachusetts merchant or farmer. But honor, good fame, the affection of his fellow citizens, the friendship of his fellow Senators will enter its portals with him, and there they will dwell with him until he leaves it for ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... solemnity, which was almost awe, stole over Margie as she turned the handle of the door, and stepped inside the parlor. It was shrouded in the gloom of almost utter darkness. The heavy silken curtains fell drooping with their costliness to the velvet carpet, and a faint, sickening odor of withering water lilies pervaded the close atmosphere. Water lilies!—they were ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask

... position and life of the house-owner and his family. This is the true mission of the decorator, although it is not always so understood. What is called business talent may lead him to invent schemes of costliness which relate far more to his own profit than to the wishes or character ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler

... kind of decoration and arrangement. Now, Lucullus was accustomed to sup in the Apollo at the cost of fifty thousand drachmas, and this being the cost of the entertainment on the present occasion, Pompeius and Cicero were surprised at the rapidity with which the banquet had been got ready and the costliness of the entertainment. In this way, then, Lucullus used his wealth, capriciously, just as if it were a ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... is equalled by the costliness of the furniture, which is almost universally of mahogany; a wood which is here in such common use, that in some of the most elegant houses the very stair-banisters are constructed of it. Even the pilots have ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer

... extremes of people in the world, one as distasteful as the other. One is represented by the man who boasts of the costliness of every possession, and invites the whole world to behold his opulence ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... amount was sent to cover the period during which the solemn covenant had not been kept, with the promise of further gifts in redemption of the same promise to the Lord. This instance conveys more than one lesson. It reminds us of the costliness of much of our self-indulgence. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, in submitting the Budget for 1897, remarked that what is annually wasted in the unsmoked remnants of cigars and cigarettes in Britain is estimated at a million and ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... feeble beginnings have grown up the present religious organizations of Cleveland, numbering about seventy churches, many of them of great beauty and costliness, with flourishing Sunday schools and wealthy congregations. The leading denominations have each several churches graded, from stately buildings for the older and wealthier congregations to the modest mission chapels. Nearly all the religious ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... at the first glance, and it may be well meant. But the fact is, my dear Mr. Wylder, six hundred pounds would leave little more than a hundred remaining after Burlington and Smith have had their costs. You have no idea of the expense and trouble of title, and the inevitable costliness, my dear Sir, of all conveyancing operations. The deeds, I have little doubt, in consequence of the letter you directed me to write, have been prepared—that is, in draft, of course—and then, my dear Sir, I need not remind you, that there remain the costs to me—those, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... enjoyable expeditions was that to the ruins of the great amphitheatre. It is constructed of red marble from the Veronese quarries, upon basements of Roman brickwork. No other amphitheatre can be compared with this for costliness of material; nor I believe, for size, it having contained some fifty to sixty thousand spectators at a time. It is somewhat oval in form, being 546 feet by 436 feet across; the circumference is 1476 feet. The outer circuit once consisted of seventy-two arches, but only four now remain. ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... lords of the Albans, returned to Rome in triumph, their advent to the city being marked by the first of those pompous processions which in after-years became known as Roman Triumphs, and were celebrated with the utmost splendor and costliness ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... their religion. For Cuzco was the "Holy City"; 19 and the great temple of the Sun, to which pilgrims resorted from the furthest borders of the empire, was the most magnificent structure in the New World, and unsurpassed, probably, in the costliness of its decorations by any building in ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... about these places, to visit which it is necessary to procure a written permission from the captain-general of Ferrol. They filled me with astonishment. I have seen the royal dockyards of Russia and England, but for grandeur of design and costliness of execution, they cannot for a moment compare with these wonderful monuments of the bygone naval pomp of Spain. I shall not attempt to describe them, but content myself with observing, that the oblong basin, which is surrounded with ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... astonishment of the inhabitants as I wheel leisurely through, whistling the solemn strains of "Roll, Jordan, roll," is really quite amusing. Every village of any size boasts a church that, for fineness of architecture and apparent costliness of construction, looks out of all proportion to the straggling street of shapeless structures that it overtops. Everything here seems built as though intended to last forever, it being no unusual sight to see a ridiculously small piece of ground surrounded by a stone ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... like it in all the "region round about;" and it is grander still at the present day, because the cunning hand of art has beautified almost every foot of land in view, and reared structures of varied form and costliness on every hand. In the magnificent panorama appear a score of little villages nestling among the distant trees, while as many larger ones stand forth in more imposing grandeur, and several cities spread out their wealth of stores and palaces, and lift their church spires and ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer

... gamboge, fustic, turmeric, sumach, catechu, and Brazil wood, all afford red pulverulent colours. Boiled with sugar, gold solution gives first a light and then a dark red. Whatever their merits, the excessive costliness of these preparations renders them inadmissible as pigments. At one time, indeed, a gold compound known as purple of Cassius was so employed, but this soon became obsolete on the introduction ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... days the tubular bridge had not yet been thought of; but the beautiful suspension bridge at Menai was already in existence, and was the most remarkable bridge then existing in the world. I was more struck by the beauty of the structure than by its costliness or size; the journal says, "It is indeed wonderfully beautiful." On one of our excursions we saw what in rainy weather is a good waterfall, and I find a reference to this that I quote for the curious bit of Welsh-English that is included in it,—"We came to a little village, which has ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... This is really a magnificent ancient building; but what most surprised me, was the vast number of beautiful monuments and figures with which the inside is adorned. Among such as were pointed out to me, as being remarkable either for their costliness or beauty, I remember were those of the Duke of Newcastle, a magnificent and expensive piece, Sir Isaac Newton, General Stanhope, the Earl of Chatham, General Wolf, and that exquisite statue of Shakepeare, which, I am told, ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown

... considerable number of commercial loans but these loans were always regarded by the borrower as temporary expedients; the habitual conduct of business on borrowed capital was unknown. But, just as the new output of the German mines was increasing the supply of precious metals, the greater costliness of war, due to the substitution of mercenaries and fire-arms for feudal levies equipped with bows and pikes, made the governments of Europe need money more than ever before. They made great loans at home and abroad, and it was the interest on these that expanded the banking business until ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... Hindoostanee name for esplanade,—a broad and finely macadamized roadway, extending along the river's bank by the fort and cricket grounds. It is the Indian Hyde Park, or Bengal Champs Elysees (the famous Parisian boulevard). The variety, elegance, and costliness of the equipages in grand livery are surprising. The whole scene is enlivened by the beautiful dresses of the ladies, the dashing costumes and gold lace of the nabobs, the quaint Oriental dress of their barefooted attendants, and the spirited music of the military band. The superb horses ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... to be observed in the costliness of the clothing of the different classes of society in Upper Canadian towns and cities, and much less difference in the taste with which these articles are selected, than might be expected. With the exception of the lower class of labourers, all persons are well and suitably clad, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... of difficulties about language, coinage, custom, or law, why should everyone continue to go to just a few special places? Such congestions are merely the measure of the general inaccessibility and insecurity and costliness of contemporary life, an awkward transitory phase in the first beginnings of the travel ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... ancestors, by whom the greatness of Rome was so widely extended, were not eminent for riches; but through a course of dreadful wars overpowered by their valour all who were opposed to them, though differing but little from the common soldiers either in riches, or in their mode of life, or in the costliness ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... Morgans, with great effort, succeeded in making him leave it off for a time, and he recovered in consequence health and spirits. He has now taken to it again. Of this indeed I was too sure before I heard from you—that his looks bore testimony to it. Perhaps you are not aware of the costliness of this drug. In the quantity which C. takes, it would consume more than the whole which you propose to raise. A frightful consumption of spirits is added. In this way bodily ailments are produced; and the wonder is that he ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... ceilings hang low. I don't wonder you object to a brick house in the country. Yet, if you propose to build a model, honest and permanent, a house that shall be worth what it costs and look as good as it is, I shall still recommend brick. The growing scarcity of wood, the usual costliness of stone, the abundance of clay, the rapidity with which brick can be made and used,—one season being sufficient to develop the most awkward hod-carrier into a four-dollars-a-day journeyman bricklayer,—the demand for more permanence in our domestic dwellings, ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner

... projecting portions of the zigzag, the letters, TIITEREOE which manifestly required to be joined with those of the counterpart to make sense. The corregidor admired the ingenuity of the contrivance, and judged from the costliness of the chain, that the pilgrim must have been a lady of great wealth. It was his intention to remove the lovely girl from the inn as soon as he had chosen a suitable convent for her abode; but for the present he contented himself with taking away the parchment only, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... cultivation in this downward course is the increase of people; while the counter-force, which checks the descent, is the improvement of agricultural science and practice, enabling the same soil to yield to the same labor more ample returns. The costliness of the most costly part of the produce of cultivation is an exact expression of the state, at any given moment, of the race which population and agricultural skill are ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... but when looked at closely, each and all of these articles of attire bore evidence of having seen better days. Beside the dust and stains of travel, there was a shininess or a fading of colour here and there which scarce accorded with the costliness of their material or the bearing of their wearer. His long riding-boots had a gaping seam in the side of one of them, whilst his toe was pushing its way through the end of the other. For the rest, he wore a handsome silver-hilted rapier at his side, and had a frilled cambric shirt somewhat ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... students and actors to, 1; costliness of modern production, 2; the simple method and the public, 8; Charles Kean's spectacular method, 9; Irving's method, 10; plays produced by Phelps, 11; reliance on the actor, 13; in Vienna, 17; advantage of its performance constantly and in variety, 23; ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... Florence in 1469 and afforded an excuse for lavish hospitality. The bride received her own guests in the garden of the villa where she was to reign as mistress. Young married women surrounded her, admiring the costliness of her clothing and preening themselves in the rich attire which they had assumed for this great occasion. In an upper {35} room of the villa the bridegroom's mother welcomed her own friends of mature years, ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... fall if her soul is lost! I remark how she is changed in her letters since her shameful, mercenary marriage. She writes of nothing but the arrangement of her house, and speaks as if the beauty and costliness of things were only to be thought of, and there is not even a confidential, heart-felt word for her old Trude. It would seem as if she had forgotten all former objects of interest. Oh, what trouble and sorrows the rich have! That good-for-nothing money hardens ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... of cloth-of-gold. This robe was imbued with a deadly {232} poison which penetrated to the flesh and bone of the wearer, and burned them as though with a consuming fire. Pleased with the beauty and costliness of the garment, the unsuspecting Glauce lost no time in donning it; but no sooner had she done so than the fell poison began to take effect. In vain she tried to tear the robe away; it defied all efforts to be removed, and after horrible and protracted ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... turning towards a stout, clumsy, short girl, her intensely red cheeks and huge black eyes staring out of her powder, while the extreme costliness of her crimson satin dress, and profusion of her rubies were ridiculous on the unformed person of a creature scarcely fifteen. If she had been any one else she would have been a hideous spectacle in the eyes of the exquisitely tasteful Lady Belamour, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... If you examine the plate more closely you will see that this silver-alloy differs from pure silver both in being of a lighter colour and in being less weighty. In short, we use the noble metals never because of, but now and then in spite of, their costliness. ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... met, it is certain that the entertainment in question was of a kind very different to the pantomime of our day—a production that is invariably very long, rarely laughable, and always of exceeding costliness. Leigh Hunt complained in 1831 that pantomimes were not what they had been, and that the opening, "which used to form merely a brief excuse for putting the harlequinade in motion," had come to be a considerable ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook



Words linked to "Costliness" :   expensiveness, costly, preciousness



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