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Extravagant   Listen
noun
Extravagant  n.  
1.
One who is confined to no general rule.
2.
pl. (Eccl. Hist.) Certain constitutions or decretal epistles, not at first included with others, but subsequently made a part of the canon law.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Extravagant" Quotes from Famous Books



... apprehend he first told his daughter what he had done, and then the son became a part of the family, residing in the house you are acquainted with. As the son grew a young man, he turned out riotous, extravagant, undutiful,—altogether bad. At last his father disinherited him; but he softened when he was dying, and left him well off, though not nearly so well off as Miss Havisham.—Take another glass of wine, and excuse my mentioning ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... true freedom, true independence of opinion in Church or State where Calvinism is not the foundation." Calvinists must be very forgetful of their history, or they must suppose that all others are ignorant or forgetful of it. But it is not my intention, at present, to reply to this extravagant pretension. ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson

... her cousin. Stephanotie and she were having a wild time. Molly, to cover Nora's gloom, was going on in a more extravagant way than usual. She constantly asked Jehoshaphat to come to her aid; she talked of Holy Moses more than once; in short, she exceeded herself in her wildness. Linda was so shocked that she took the Armitage girls to a distant corner, and there discoursed ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... was quite inflexible in his opposition to it. No deviation or improvement that we could suggest had any effect in conciliating him. He was opposed to railways generally, and to this in particular. 'Your scheme,' said he, 'is preposterous in the extreme. It is of so extravagant a character as to be positively absurd. Then look at the recklessness of your proceedings! You are proposing to cut up our estates in all directions for the purpose of making an unnecessary road. Do you think, for one moment, ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... years or so ago," I continued, "when he brought his wife to it. This barn was new then. But he was a ne'er-do-well, with nothing to be said in his favor, unless you admit his fame as a practical joker. Strange how the ne'er-do-well is often equipped with an extravagant sense of humor! Turner had a considerable retinue among the riffraff boys of the neighborhood, who made this barn a noisy rendezvous and followed his hints in much whimsical mischief. But he committed most of his practical jokes when drunk, and in his sober moments he abused his family ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... Shin's shop, and something utterly horrible about his assistant. Hartley wished he had not seen him, he wished that he had remained in ignorance of his personality. He thought of him in the sweating darkness he had left, and as he thought he remembered Mhtoon Pah's wild, extravagant fancies, and they grew real to ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie

... very long thread, or you will have to be continually taking fresh. This work is sometimes done with crewel wool, and in rather a different way, see Fig. 4; but it is not so neat and pretty, in my opinion, as that done with cotton, and is more extravagant, since the wool must be used double and ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... frenzy, to get a sight of the convicted murderer, to be present at the condemned sermon, to see his last agonies on the scaffold, to examine the scenes of his crime, even to obtain a lock of his hair or a piece of his garments, is another proof of the disordered and often extravagant desires which the longing for strong and tragic excitement will produce in a large portion of society. Rely upon it, deep emotion, if rightly managed and properly directed, is more attractive than either amusement or licentiousness. Suffering exacts a far deeper sympathy than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... you will come into habitual contact with men of every grade, make special associates only of those whose influence on your character is felt to be good. Some men love to tell extravagant stories, to indulge in vulgar wit, to exult in a swaggering carriage, to pride themselves on their coarse manners, to boast of their heroism, and to give utterance to feelings of revenge against the enemy. All this is injurious to young and impressible ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy

... promise of beauty had been all that he could desire. Now she evoked a sudden flame of passion, and his mind, which leaped to conclusions, was already engaged in plans for consummating their union at once. He sought to break down her reserve by paying her extravagant compliments, and to excite her admiration by accounts of battles in which he would not have posed as hero so plainly had he not been flushed with wine. There was an ominous fire in her eyes scarcely in ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... good opinion, but to confess that she could never be brought to favour his addresses. She therefore entreated him to desist from all further application. This remonstrance on her part would have become more intelligible, had it not been for his boisterous manners and extravagant cheerfulness, which indisposed him to silence, and made him suppose that at half a word he had sufficient intimation of another's meaning. Mr. Tyrrel, in the mean time, was too impatient not to interrupt the scene before they could have time to proceed far in explanation; and he was studious in ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... inevitably Gothicize everything that you touch. The effect is like bedaubing a marble statue with paint. This giant, now! How can you have ventured to thrust his huge, disproportioned mass among the seemly outlines of Grecian fable, the tendency of which is to reduce even the extravagant within ...
— The Three Golden Apples - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Yarmouth, you know, in the autumn." Then the Captain's visage became somewhat bright again. "And perhaps, if you are not extravagant, we could manage a month or so in London during the winter, just to see the plays and do a little shopping." Then the Captain's face became very bright. "That will be delightful," said he. "And as for being dull," said the widow, "when people ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... second as too improbable. There can arise a third conjecture—Taste for intellectual achievements, and appreciation of literary merit, had vanished for awhile from the earth, to return after an absence of forty generations of mankind. Again, this supposed probability is too preposterously extravagant to be for an instant credited because it cannot for a moment be comprehended. In short, how marvellous it is! how utterly unaccountable! ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... in French," she said, as she threw back her cloak and lifted her veil. "Monsieur has probably heard that the Princess Hildegarde is a creature of extravagant caprices; and ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath

... sarvant; therefore, I wish you would cast about for some creditable body to be with me in her room — If she can spin, and is mistress of plain-work, so much the better — but she must not expect extravagant wages — having a family of my own, I must be more occumenical than ever. No ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... that his debts also were ample; allowed that he lived in magnificent style, had even heard "of one of his banquets, where all the table-cloths, plates, and every thing else, were made of sugar," but thought he might be even a little too extravagant; concluding, after a good deal of skimble-skamble of this nature, with "protesting before God, the world, and all pious Christians, that he was not responsible for the marriage, but only the Elector Augustus and others, who therefore would one ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Arthur Coga, who had studied at Cambridge, and was said to be a bachelor of divinity. He was indigent, and "looked upon as a very freakish and extravagant man." Dr. King, in a letter to the Hon. Robert Boyle, remarks "that Mr. Coga was about thirty-two years of age; that he spoke Latin well, when he was in company, which he liked, but that his brain was sometimes a little too warm." The experiment was performed ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... compositions ever put together; it has neither beginning, middle, nor end; and, except a short historical part, and a few sketches of history in the first two or three chapters, is one continued incoherent, bombastical rant, full of extravagant metaphor, without application, and destitute of meaning; a school-boy would scarcely have been excusable for writing such stuff; it is (at least in translation) that kind of composition and false taste that is properly called ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... as I knew Mrs. Jervis was far from being easy in her circumstances, thinking herself obliged to pay old debts for two extravagant children, who are both dead, and maintaining in schooling and clothes three of their children, which always keeps her bare, I said to her one day, as she and I sat together, at our needles (for we are always running ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... was on ill terms with him: I believe not without sufficient reason, for he was extravagant and dissipated. My father never mentioned his name, but my mother would sometimes tell me that he had ruined the family. That he spent much I know; but I am inclined to think that his undutiful conduct occasioned my great-grandfather to bequeath ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... Eads has been called as potent as a great general in clearing the upper Mississippi. He did not, to be sure, build the entire gunboat fleet, but he did build, as Captain Mahan says, the backbone of it; and that the praises for that fleet, which I have quoted, are not altogether extravagant, is further shown by the comments of Mr. John Fiske. He says, "While it was seldom that they ["these formidable gunboats"] could capture fortified places without the aid of a land force, at the same time this combination of strength with ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How

... disappearance had plunged him, Ellis' big heart thumped in glad relief, but true to the traditions of his lifetime environment he strove to repress it, to appear as casual as though they had been in daily association. Pumping Terry's hand spasmodically, he measured the ecstatic lad with extravagant care, studied him from crown ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... St. Anthony? How I trembled and feared for you, I'—she laughed again—'I even wanted to help you! How absurd it all seemed to you, didn't it? I remember you were very cool and quiet, and I suppose you thought it very foolish—one of those unnecessary, extravagant emotions in which we inferior races are apt ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard

... variety, and temperance, have been brought into comparison with these men, but for those fortunate isles laden with golden fruit, which alone could tempt any one to embark in the misty ocean of his dark and extravagant fiction. ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... thus far swimmingly, except that a few of the words I had previously selected seemed, when I came to pronounce them, as extravagant, and so I had substituted others in their place, not so liable to be censured for that fault; beside, a lapse of memory had once or twice occasioned temporary delay and embarrassment; but I had got along thus far, I say, as I presumed, exceedingly well, when, oh, thunder! Donna Clara disengaged her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... pride to know how concerned Godfrey would be to find how poor they had become. She would not have minded this if he had been poor himself. But she hated the thought of a rich Godfrey, who flung money about over foolish, extravagant presents, discovering, suddenly, how altered were their circumstances since the day when he had rushed out of the house throwing the big cheque kind John Tosswill had shamefacedly handed to him, on to ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes

... girls went on wildly planning Dan's future for him. It was all in a strain of extravagant burlesque. But he could not take his part in it with his usual zest. He laughed and joked too, but at the bottom of his heart was an uneasy remembrance of the different future he had talked over with Mrs. Pasmer so confidently. But he said to himself buoyantly at last that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... pity feign; She hates the vulgar, she admires to look On woods and groves, and dotes upon a book; Let her once see thee on her features dwell, And hear one sigh, then liberty farewell. "But, John, remember we cannot maintain A poor, proud girl, extravagant and vain. "Doubt much of friendship: shouldst thou find a friend Pleased to advise thee, anxious to commend; Should he the praises he has heard report, And confidence (in thee confiding) court; Much of neglected Patrons should he say, ...
— Tales • George Crabbe

... you know you have. I heard of it over and over again, because I would not agree to some extravagant folly proposed by you or poor old Dunton for the ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn

... stereo-miniatures, and picture books—all the visual aids which Ann Howard would have used to teach the natives the cultural philosophy of the Galactic Federation. But the rows of seats were empty, and the gleaming machines still stood in their cases. For no one had come to Ann's school, in spite of her extravagant offers ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox

... Uncle dislikes him. I don't think Harriet cares a bit more for this young man than she does for half a dozen others. But if Uncle doesn't look out Harriet will marry him for spite. Harriet hates being poor. She is not poor, really. But I am afraid she is terribly extravagant. Promise not to laugh when you see Charlie Meyers. He looks a little like a pig, he ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane

... much this law excludes! All that is fondly magnificent, insolently ambitious, or vainly difficult. There is, indeed, such a thing as Magnanimity in design, but never unless it be joined also with modesty, and Equanimity. Nothing extravagant, monstrous, strained, or singular, can be structurally beautiful. No towers of Babel envious of the skies; no pyramids in mimicry of the mountains of the earth; no streets that are a weariness to traverse, nor temples that make pigmies of ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... all, for you are really much nicer when you are cuddling so, than when you are running about the world pretending to be pigs and snakes and fireworks, and murdering people with your extravagant sorceries." ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... which in one way gratifies, and in another way pains. He likes his mother and the world to know that Violet has a rank of her own, since money confers that, and in the future nothing she chooses will be considered extravagant in her. But he hates to be suspected of any mercenary considerations. He always ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... united and happy; and now you see what I said from the first, that a little misfortune has done you both good. YOU, Giglio, had you been bred in prosperity, would scarcely have learned to read or write—you would have been idle and extravagant, and could not have been a good King as now you will be. You, Rosalba, would have been so flattered, that your little head might have been turned like Angelica's, who thought ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Amid great discouragement John W. MacKay led this apparently forlorn hope to at last be crowned with the success he so richly deserved. He now is estimated to be worth in the vicinity of $55,000,000, and although it may seem a somewhat extravagant reward, it cannot be denied that this vast sum could have been placed in ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... recently bestowed a number of valuable shares in the Grand Company upon the brother of Angelique, making the fortune of that extravagant young nobleman. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... pleasing, more often it hurt the ears with a shrieking discordance; but even at its best it fell far short, to my mind—and I suppose I may say I'm as sensitive to beauty as anybody—of meriting Joe's extravagant rhapsodies. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... happiness is more than being free of guilt. And as this has been granted you, it is clear that you have made full atonement—if you'll pardon the use of such a preposterously extravagant term. ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler

... Alexander the Great, declined to accept his plan; though, amused at his extravagant notion, he gave him a permanent place ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various

... his power was at its height, the courtiers wearied him by their fulsome flatteries. Disgusted with their extravagant adulations he determined to teach them a lesson. They had spoken of him as a ruler before whom all the powers of nature must bend in obedience, and one day he caused his golden throne to be set on the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris

... as wicked and extravagant as in the days of the Regency. Madame Viardot in the "Orphee," most splendid. An opera of "Faust," a very sad and noble rendering of that sad and noble story. Stage management remarkable for some admirable, and really poetical, effects of light. In the more striking situations, Mephistopheles ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... Tulle, one who stands very high in the regard of the king, and who is one of the most extravagant and dissipated, even of the courtiers here. For some time, it has been reported that he had nigh ruined himself by his lavish expenditure, and doubtless he thought to reestablish his finances by ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty

... course, have militated against every rule of common prudence. To the influence of this lady, particularly, we are indebted for one or two of Hamilton's agreeable novels: she had taste enough to laugh at the extravagant stories then so much in fashion, "plus arabes qu'en Arabie," as Hamilton says; and he, in compliance with her taste, and his own, soon put the fashionable tales to flight, by the publication of the 'Quatre Facardins', and, more ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... was wounded in its core. If the mother who bore her was vile, then she was vile also. All object in life seemed gone. She tried to live from day to day without interest, without hope. From her dark thoughts she found refuge only in extravagant gayety, which brought physical weariness, but no repose of mind. She, who had been on the whole a docile, manageable child, became so riotous, unreasonable, and insupportable, that the only alternative of utter waste of character seemed to be the discipline and seclusion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... his secret. "Come and see," he cried. He led them to the porch. "That is mine, John." A thorough-bred horse stood at the door, saddled and bridled. Ann thought the gift extravagant, but held her tongue. ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... more congenial and helpful. But she had little society, less and less as she grew older that was congenial to her, and her mind preyed upon itself; and the mystery of her birth at once chagrined her and raised in her the most extravagant expectations. She was proud and she felt the sting of poverty. She could not but be conscious of her beauty also, and she was vain of that, and came to take a sort of delight in the exercise of her fascinations upon the rather loutish young men who came ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... laborious article in favour of the re-establishment of the lash and slavery, had created in my mind a dislike for the man, and I almost regretted that we were in the same Omnibus. In some things, Mr. Carlyle is right: but in many, he is entirely wrong. As a writer, Mr. Carlyle is often monotonous and extravagant. He does not exhibit a new view of nature, or raise insignificant objects into importance, but generally takes commonplace thoughts and events, and tries to express them in stronger and statelier ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown

... appeared in several popular histories, that, during the eight years of the Revolutionary War, the thirteen colonies sent two hundred and thirty-two thousand men to the Continental army. He traced the origin of this extravagant statement. In 1790, General Knox, then Secretary of War, presented to President Washington a report on the number of troops furnished during the war. He showed the number credited to the several States, making no distinction ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... Frank McClean; at Potsdam, at Meudon, at Paris, at Alleghany, engines for light-concentration have been, or shortly will be, erected of dimensions which, two generations back, would have seemed extravagant and impossible. ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... For as we went we encountered Mistress Barbara on Lord Carford's arm. The quarrel between them seemed past and they were talking merrily together. On the sight of her the Duke left me and ran forward. By an adroit movement he thrust Carford aside and began to ply the lady with most extravagant and high-flown compliments, displaying an excess of devotion which witnessed more admiration than respect. She had treated me as a boy, but she did not tell him that he was a boy, although he was younger than I; she listened ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope

... he tells a good story. No extravagant praise is due him for this; it is his business, his trade. He ought to do it, and therefore he does it. The 'first morality' of a novelist is to be able to tell a story, as the first morality of ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... the city, where there is no place for love-making, for discovering and testing each other's hidden beings, ran off together in the scanted parties of the ambitious poor. Walter was extravagant financially as he was mentally, but he had many debts, some conscience, and a smallness of salary. She was pleased by the smallest diversions, however, and found luxury in a bowl of chop-suey. He took her to an Italian ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... she used to feel when, in the back garden at her mother's, she took from him the highest push of a swing—high, high, high—that he had had put there for her pleasure and that had finally broken down under the weight and the extravagant patronage of the cook. "Well, that's beautiful. But to see me, you ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James

... months. Martin and Barney were much annoyed at this; for the former was impatient to penetrate further into the interior, and the latter had firmly made up his mind to visit the diamond mines, about which he entertained the most extravagant notions. He did not, indeed, know in the least how to get to these mines, nor even in which direction they lay; but he had a strong impression that as long as he continued travelling he was approaching gradually ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... miles northwest of Bering Strait, many hailed the discovery as that of the edge of a supposed continent extending from Asia across the Pole to Greenland, for the natives around Bering Strait had long excited explorers by their traditions of an icebound big land beyond the horizon. Such extravagant claims were made for the new land that Commander De Long, U. S. N., determined to explore it and use it as a base for gaining the Pole. But his ship, the Jeannette, was caught in the ice (September, 1879) and carried right ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary

... [Footnote 35: The extravagant American farmer has not yet learned to feed the leaves of trees, but in older and more economical civilizations the ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... with his habit of underrating his own talents, he never aspired to equal the gay Frenchwoman; (the English lady's correspondence was as yet unknown). There is evident sincerity in his reproof of one of his correspondents who had expressed a most flattering opinion: "You say such extravagant things of my letters, which are nothing but gossiping gazettes, that I cannot bear it; you have undone yourself with me, for you compare them to Madame de Sevigne's. Absolute treason! Do you know there is scarcely a book in the world I love so much ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... phlegmatic and good natured citizen, who stood: behind the mahogany, had a face as broad and placid as a town-clock seen by moonlight. His figure, too, was tightly driven into a suit of extravagant cloth, and altogether presented the appearance of having quite recently escaped from the hands of James, his tailor. It was not in the power of man to analyze his character from what he said, for what he said meant nothing, when judged by ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... where the welfare of their children comes in to override their desire to separate, and now we have to consider what may or may not be for the welfare of the children. Mr. Shaw, following the late Samuel Butler, meets this difficulty by the most extravagant abuse of parents. He would have us believe that the worst enemies a child can have are its mother and father, and that the only civilised path to citizenship is by the incubator, the creche, and the mixed ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... religious enthusiast, and as a religious enthusiast he must be judged. To us who read his story from a distance, who breathe an atmosphere totally different from his, and whose lives are governed by quite other passions and ideals, he may often appear one-sided, extravagant, deficient in tact and forethought, and, in the excess of his zeal, too ready to sacrifice everything to the purposes he never for an instant allowed to drop out of his sight. We may even, with some of his critics, ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson

... the two or three greatest friends of my life I find it hard to give the reader a mental picture of Birdie Bowers which will not appear extravagant. There were times when his optimism appeared forced and formal though I believe it was not really so: there were times when I have almost hated him for his infernal cheerfulness. To those accustomed to judge men by the standards of their ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... magnificence lies as if thrown down in confusion—silks, velvets, laces and embroideries, collars and chains set with precious stones, orders and decorations blazing with diamonds—a piled-up profusion indeed of all the luxurious and costly appointments of a favorite at the most gorgeous and extravagant court ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... I found here, too, scarce any ground for settled conviction, and remarked hardly less contradiction among them than in the opinions of the philosophers. So that the greatest advantage I derived from the study consisted in this, that, observing many things which, however extravagant and ridiculous to our apprehension, are yet by common consent received and approved by other great nations, I learned to entertain too decided a belief in regard to nothing of the truth of which I had been persuaded merely by example and custom; ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes

... one exception. Eunice found it intolerable to be cramped and pinched for small amounts of ready cash, when her husband was a rich man. Nor was Embury mean, or even economical of nature. He was more than willing that his wife should have all the extravagant luxuries she desired. He was entirely ready to pay any and all bills that she might contract. Never had he chided her for buying expensive or unnecessary finery—even more, he had always admired her taste and shown pleasure at her purchases. ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells

... by bandoline, her garibaldis by an arrangement which failed when applied to those of the widow, and her opinions by the simple process of looking at everything from one point of view. Her forte was dress and general ornamentation; not that Miss Letitia was extravagant—far from it. If one may use the expression, she utilized for ornament a hundred bits and scraps that most people would have wasted. But, like other artists, she saw everything through the medium of her ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... Last, and greatest luxury of all, Ruth actually ordered a tea-basket to be handed into the carriage at a half-way station; one basket to do duty for two, but still a deliberate extravagance, when refreshments had been provided from home; and oh, dear me, how delicious it was to be extravagant ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... that the members of the House of Representatives will permit me to express the opinion that it will be impossible to deal in any but a very wasteful and extravagant fashion with the enormous appropriations of the public moneys which must continue to be made, if the war is to be properly sustained, unless the House will consent to return to its former practice of initiating and preparing all appropriation bills through a single committee, in order that responsibility ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson

... domestic relations, these people are not better than in their public. The men are thriftless, proud, extravagant, and very much given to gaming; and the women have but little education, and a good deal of beauty, and their morality, of course, is none of the best; yet the instances of infidelity are much less frequent than one would at first suppose. In fact, one vice is set over ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... Jerry's wet-blanket and extravagant prediction that the trunks would probably be delivered "around midnight," they arrived shortly before eleven o'clock, and an industrious season of unpacking set in. Determined to finish arranging their effects before four o'clock, they labored at the task with commendable energy ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... which they cultivated they displayed surprising subtlety and great refinement of thought, but the fame of their compositions rests, in some degree, on their bold metaphors, their extravagant allegories, and their excessive hyperboles. The Arabs despised the poetry of the Greeks, which appeared to them timid, cold, and constrained, and among all the books, which, with almost superstitious veneration, they borrowed from them, there is scarcely ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... quoting a mid-Victorian writer, was a place where held forth a "species of musical performance, a singular compound of poor foreign music, but indifferently executed, and interspersed with comic songs of a most extravagant kind, to which is added or interpolated what the performers please to term 'nigger' dances, athletic and rope-dancing feats, the whole accompanied by much drinking and smoking." Which will pass as a good enough description to apply to certain establishments of this class to-day, but which, ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... Madame. Jes' let 'er yowl. It'll do her good. I done' tol' er to save her breaf, but she is extravagant. Wait ontil Marse Shepard swings dat whip. She'll ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball

... My maternal grandfather was born wealthy, and in the opening years of the nineteenth century, immediately after his marriage, he bought a little estate in North Wales, on the slopes of Snowdon. Here he seems to have lived in a pretentious way, keeping a pack of hounds and entertaining on an extravagant scale. He had a wife who encouraged him in this vivid life, and three children, my Mother and her two brothers. His best trait was his devotion to the education of his children, in which he proclaimed himself a disciple ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... Francesco. For the acute Father Johannes, casting about for various means to empty the Superior's chair at Sorrento, for his own benefit, and despairing of any occasion of slanderous accusation, had taken the other tack of writing to Rome extravagant laudations of such feats of penance and saintship in his Superior as in the view of all the brothers required that such a light should no more be hidden in an obscure province, but be set on a Roman candlestick, where it might give light ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... and Sloane Street. His lordship had a reputation for parsimony, and he fancied it a bargain if he could sell to my father those squalid fields for L2000,—so he offered them to him at that price. When my mother heard of this, she was dead against so extravagant an outlay for that desolate region; so much dreaded by her whenever her aunt's black horses in the old family coach ploughed their way through the slush (MacAdam had not then arisen to give us granite roads) to call on an ancient relative, Mr. Hall, who possessed a priceless ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... of action is proposed for adoption must be neither Utopian nor extravagant, but accordant throughout ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... a cup of coffee; and, as a matter of course, the coffeepot, whatever metal it may have been when he took it up, was gold when he set it down. He thought to himself that it was rather an extravagant style of splendor, in a king of his simple habits, to breakfast off a service of gold, and began to be puzzled with the difficulty of keeping his treasures safe. The cupboard and the kitchen would no longer be a secure place of deposit ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... resumed. "My precautions seem extravagant to you now, but in a few months you will remember this conversation, and it will lead to business." The rest of the evening he talked of anything, everything, except banking. He was not the man ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... Time. She certainly was a wonderful creature, with red rosy cheeks, plump form, and riotous good spirits. Her robes were gorgeous and a little extravagant, for she wore a new one every day, and of all that she had, the one that she loved the best and wore the latest was of purple and gold. We can go out in October and see the purple and gold, and gather some scraps of the ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... Testament as allegorical, and held that narrative or descriptive phrases veiled Divine oracles. When he applies the term "oracle" to any of these it is not to the narrative, but to the Divine utterance which he believes to be mystically contained in it, and which he extracts and expounds in the usual extravagant manner of Alexandrian typologists. Dr. Lightfoot does not refer to the expression of 1 Pet. iv. 11, "Let him speak as the oracles of God" ([Greek: hos logia Theou]), which shows the use of the word in the ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels

... atheistical manuscripts found in his possession, containing several novel doctrines, such as "God is not the creator of man; but man is the creator of a God gathered together from nothing." His writings contain many other extravagant notions of ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... Kopt brought in a yearly income of four million gold dinars ($10,120,000), and yet these people felt themselves better off than formerly on account of the greater order and peace that existed under his energetic government. It cannot be denied that Ahmed in the course of years became much more extravagant and luxurious, but he used his large means in some measure for the betterment of the country. He gave large sums not only for the erection of palaces and barracks, but also for hospitals and educational advancement. To this day is to be seen the mosque of Ibn Tulun, built by him in the ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... monarch, thou protectest first thyself from thy domestic and public servants, then from those servants of thy relatives and from one another. Do thy servants, O king, ever speak to thee in the forenoon regarding thy extravagant expenditure in respect of thy drinks, sports, and women? Is thy expenditure always covered by a fourth, a third or a half of thy income? Cherishest thou always, with food and wealth, relatives, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... largely contributed to them. They are fed with rice and Liebig, but the great difficulty has been to find fat to add to this mess. The beasts that are killed are so lean that it is almost impossible to obtain it except at an extravagant price. Tallow candles have been seriously suggested, but they too are scarce. The English, as foreigners, cannot claim rations, and were it not for the kindness of Mr. Herbert and Mr. Wallace, they would, ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... merry and reckless cousin," she said, turning to the prince, "are there again some sins to be confessed, some neglects of discipline to be hushed up, some tears to be dried, and the mercy of the king to be implored for the extravagant freaks of our genius? And is it for that reason that you have brought along so eloquent an ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... stipulated that England should next summer invade that kingdom with forty thousand men; and he betrothed to Charles the princess Mary, the king's only child, who had now some prospect of inheriting the crown. This extravagant alliance, which was prejudicial to the interests, and might have proved fatal to the liberty and independence, of the kingdom, was the result of the humors and prejudices of the king, and the private views and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... Such talk and your extravagant expenses will be the cause that some day thieves will come and cut my throat, in the belief that ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere

... The fact was that Malvey had been only too sincere in his boorishness toward Boca; Flores equally sincere in his indifference, and Boca herself actually frightened by the turn Malvey's drink had taken. That old Flores had knocked Pete out with a bottle was the one and extravagant act that even Malvey himself could hardly have anticipated had the whole miserable affair been prearranged. In his drunken stupidity Flores blindly imagined that the young stranger was the ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... is sinfully extravagant. Forests, mines and soil fertility are wasted with wanton prodigality. We speak of our coal deposits and oil and gas wells as inexhaustible. We simply mean that it will be impossible for this and probably for the next generation to exhaust them. But coal mines are not inexhaustible. Oil ...
— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst

... point of her chin to the edge of her desolate corsage and had the effrontery to express disapproval in all but words. Then he turned to me. His gaze became admiring. He was evidently delighted with his discoveries and, true despot that he is, turned his back on the Queen, while paying extravagant court to ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer

... completely, which must explain why he went into his drawing-room, shut the door, and looked out of the window when the second cab arrived. She opened the door, put her arms inside, and next moment emerged again with Tipsipoozie on the end of the chain, making extravagant exhibitions of delight. Then to Georgie's horror, the drawing-room door opened, and in came Tipsipoozie without any chain at all. Rapidly sending a message of love in all directions like a S. O. S. call, Georgie put a small chair in front of him, to shield his legs. Tipsipoozie ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... critical moment, when every man of the expedition felt the fatal truth, my wife confided her secret, that she had hitherto concealed, lest the knowledge of a hidden store should have made the men extravagant. She now informed them that in past days of plenty, when flour had been abundant, she had, from time to time, secreted a quantity, and she had now SIX LARGE IRON BOXES FULL (about twelve bushels). This private store she had laid by in the event ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... impelled me otherwise. Now you know why I became an actress! But even there I fail! THEY are allowed reasoning power off the stage—I have none at any time! I laugh in the wrong place—I do the unnecessary, extravagant thing. Endowed by some strange power with extraordinary attributes, I am supposed to make everybody love me, but I don't—I satisfy nobody; I convince none! I have no idea what will happen to me next. I am ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte

... was, no doubt, a good feature in his religious system, though, like that of the Iconoclasts[2], it was carried to an extravagant extent, and this agreement, with their undue fears and prejudices on this head, seems to have been a sufficient inducement to many unstable Christians to deny the Lord, for Whose Honour they professed such deep concern, and to give themselves up to an impostor ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt

... should know better," he replied; "no, depend upon it, (with a gallant bow,) that in addressing Mrs. Weston I should understand whom I might praise without any danger of being thought extravagant ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... taverns. It was 'at his suggestion that the little club to which he belonged discarded the tavern they had been used to meeting in and went to the Star and Garter for their dinner. "The other dog," Swift wrote in one of his little letters to Stella, "was so extravagant in his bills that for four dishes, and four, first and second course, without wine or dessert, he charged twenty-one pounds, six shillings and eightpence." That the bill at the Star and Garter was more reasonable is a safe inference from the absence of any complaint on ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... deep reverie upon my past life, and the prospects which I now felt were opening before me. Nothing seemed extravagant to hopes so well founded—to expectations so brilliant—and, in my mind's eye, I beheld myself at one moment leading my young and beautiful bride through the crowded salons of Devonshire House; and, at the next, I was contemplating the excellence and perfection of my stud ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever

... expressions, from the movements, and from the voice of a man whether he is nervous or phlegmatic, active or passive, healthy or lacking in vigor and strength. A skillful size-up will determine that he is either eccentric or well balanced mentally, that he is thrifty or extravagant, that he is disposed to take comprehensive views or is inclined to give undue attention to trifles and details. He will indicate to a keen observer real intellect or mere intelligence. His emotions also may be read. He reveals himself as generous or selfish; ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins

... it matter, my dear Madame de Meysenbug? Perhaps I shall be more fortunate another day. But pray don't put yourself out for an extravagant rascal like myself. I am always spending money—can't live without it, can one?—and sometimes, though you might not believe it, on quite worthy objects. There is a poor family I would like to take you to see one ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... ascent which he had mastered, and all the distinctions which it conferred; in short, that 'Time, which gave, did his own gifts confound ;' [Footnote 10] but with this mighty difference—that Time co-operated in the one case with extravagant folly in the individual, and in the other with ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... he was unacquainted or which perchance he had forgotten, to assign it to its true or even its probable author. But when you hear that so learned a man as Dr. Grosart considered these writings worthy of Vaughan, you may be the less apt to think me extravagant in holding that man to have been Vaughan's peer ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... laugh as we may at the sage advice of our fathers, it is too plain that our present expensive habits are productive of much domestic unhappiness, and injurious to public prosperity. Our wealthy people copy all the foolish and extravagant caprice of European fashion, without considering that we have not their laws of inheritance among us; and that our frequent changes of policy render property far more precarious here than in the old world. However, it is not to the rich I would speak. They have an undoubted right ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child

... the French, that they "have a book upon every subject." But Dr. Johnson was not only capricious as regards temper and variable humors, but as regards the inequality of his knowledge. Incoherent and unsystematic was Dr. Johnson's information in most cases. Hence his extravagant misappraisement of Knolles, the Turkish historian, which is exposed so severely by Spittler, the German, who, again, is himself miserably superficial in his analysis of English history. Hence the feeble credulity which Dr. Johnson showed with respect to the forgery of De Foe (under ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... gems, the fine muslins and rustling silks, the pungent spices and healing drugs of the Morning Land, found their way to the merchant princes of the Mediterranean. These were not all. The enterprising traversers of the Desert brought with them, also, those tales of extravagant fiction which seem to have ever had their birthplace in the prolific East. Long after the time that doubt—in not a few instances the parent of knowledge—had, by throwing cold water on it, extinguished the last funeral pyre of the ultimate Phoenix, and laughed to scorn the gigantic, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various

... foolish, extravagant wives, who will run them in debt; and when once in debt, it is no easy matter in this country to get out of it. They must insure their lives for the money which they borrow; and as the house of agency will be gainers by their demise, of course ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... would not be useless. Lady Lufton, with all her high-flown ideas, was not an imprudent woman. She knew that her son had been extravagant, though she did not believe that he had been reckless; and she was well content to think that some balsam from the old bishop's coffers should be made to cure the slight wounds which his early imprudence might have inflicted on the carcass of the family property. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... bore it with a great deal more patience than was consistent with a man of my spirit, for I did not seem to take the least notice of it, but was as gracious to the Cardinal as ever. But I was not so wary in another case which happened some time after, for honest Morangis telling me I was too extravagant, which was but too true, I answered him rashly, "I have made a calculation that Caesar, when at my age, owed six times as much." This remark was carried, unluckily, by a doctor then present, to M. Servien, who told it maliciously to the Cardinal, who made a jest of it, as he had ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

... erect a monument to his memory. Now, that is absolutely true, and if you don't believe it you can come to my room and I will show you some dried rose leaves which came from one of the wreathes used at the obsequies." And a general laugh went up over this extravagant statement. ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield

... thirty horses, and two hundred and forty-seven waggons; and that of the conquerors there fell one thousand four hundred and eighty-four. Though we may not entirely credit this writer with respect to the numbers, as in such exaggeration no writer is more extravagant, yet it is certain that the victory on this occasion was very complete; because the enemy's camp was taken, while, immediately after the battle, the Boians surrendered themselves; and because a supplication was decreed by the senate on account of it, and victims of the ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... be caught; at the right moment he fled from the coming tempest to his parents and claimed their protection. Then the whole matter had to be inquired into, and the big boy was told that he was not to thrash his little brother, that he himself was to blame for everything on account of the extravagant language he had used, which the poor little fellow had taken quite seriously. If he actually believed The Tin Box article was going to have that disastrous effect on him, who could blame him ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... plays a year,—a challenge fortunately declined by the managers of the day. Thus, if the Laureate stipend were not punctually paid, as was often the case, seeing the necessitous state of the royal finances and the bevy of fair ladies, whose demands, extravagant as they were, took precedence of all others, his revenues were adequate to the maintenance of a family, the matron of which was a Howard, educated, as a daughter of nobility, to the enjoyment of every indulgence. These were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... vicious character; and all this with such certainty that they are prepared to visit all the rigors of the law, and all the ruinous penalties of social ostracism on people, however harmless their actions maybe who venture to laugh at their monstrous conceit or to pay their assumptions the extravagant compliment of criticizing them. As to children, who shall say what canings and birchings and terrifyings and threats of hell fire and impositions and humiliations and petty imprisonings and sendings to bed and ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... of the American people, the extravagant praises which were bestowed upon him, nor the inveterate opposition and malignant calumnies which he encountered, had any visible influence upon his conduct. The cause is to be looked for in the texture of his mind. To him, that innate and unassuming modesty which adulation would have offended, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... 1791, when, through Herder's efforts, he made the acquaintance of Kalidasa's dramatic masterpiece Sakuntala, which inspired the well known epigram "Willst du die Bluete des fruehen," etc., an extravagant eulogy rather than an appreciative criticism. That the impression was not merely momentary is proved by the fact that five years later the poet took the inspiration for his Faust prologue from Kalidasa's work.[87] Otherwise it ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy

... loyalists, or Tories as they were popularly known, extravagant claims were made. Joseph Galloway, who had been a member of the first Continental Congress and had fled to England when he saw its temper, testified before a committee of Parliament in 1779 that not one-fifth of ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... ascertained that he was quite right in his conjecture, than he launched into the most extravagant encomiums of the divine original; and in the warmth of his enthusiasm kissed the picture a thousand times, while Mr Pluck pressed Mrs Nickleby's hand to his heart, and congratulated her on the possession of such a daughter, with so much earnestness and affection, that the tears stood, or seemed ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... not wait for David's return. He went back to his own lodging, and, taking the note out of his pocket-book, spread it before him. His first thought was that he had wared L89 on his enemy's fine clothes, and James loved gold and hated foppish, extravagant dress; his next that he had saved Andrew Starkie L89, and he knew the old usurer was quietly laughing at his folly. But worse than all was the alternative he saw as the result of his sinful purchase: if he used ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... in William's class at college named Horace Pendleton, who entered the ministry with him, and joined the North Georgia Conference at the same time. William had that devotion for him one often sees in a good man for just a smart one. He placed an extravagant value upon his gifts, and he was one of the heroes of our younger married years, about whom he talked ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris

... follows: they are first tied between two trees, and are rubbed down by a number of men with long bamboos, to an accompaniment of the most extravagant eulogies of the animal, sung and shouted at it at the top of their voices. The animal of course lashes out furiously at first; but in a few days it ceases to act on the offensive, or, as the native say, 'shurum lugta hai'—'it becomes ashamed of itself,' and it then stands ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... servants into the connection, when I married St. Clare, and I am legally entitled to manage them my own way. St. Clare had his fortune and his servants, and I'm well enough content he should manage them his way; but St. Clare will be interfering. He has wild, extravagant notions about things, particularly about the treatment of servants. He really does act as if he set his servants before me, and before himself, too; for he lets them make him all sorts of trouble, and never lifts a finger. Now, about some things, St. ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... different parts of the same town varies considerably—that from the poorest quarters frequently proving of greater calorific value than that from those parts occupied by the rich and middle classes. This has been attributed to the more extravagant habits of the working classes in neglecting to sift the ashes from their fires before disposing of them in the ash-bin. In Bermondsey, for example, the refuse has been found to possess an unusually high calorific value, and this experience is ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... came out from England with the ex-emperor, was full of his praises: "I saw the General often," said the old fellow; "he had an eye in his head like an eagle!" He described the visit of the French pilgrims to this spot—their Kibla—as most affecting. Some are extravagant beyond measure in their grief, falling on their faces round the railing (which they never enter, as foreigners do), praying, weeping, and even tearing their hair. Whilst we were there, my friend of yesterday came towards the spot; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various

... remarkable, because fifteen years before the appearance of his first volume, Comte, with whom Buckle had some affinity, and for whom he expressed great admiration, had been placing those ages on a pinnacle of extravagant eulogy. His doctrine that there is no real progress in moral ideas and no real history of morals, I have always believed to be profoundly untrue, and to have vitiated a large part of his conclusions; and although he rendered valuable ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... Burton and the rest will merely await future opportunities to plunder the British public. In short, little constructive legislation, even of that mild and tentative character one might expect from a Liberal party, made up of capitalistic units can be expected after the ten years of corrupt and extravagant rule of this band ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various

... insult you, but you will be remembered; and though we are not very extravagant in the way of dress, and don't look like very wealthy men, yet I can promise you you shall be well recompensed, and, what is more, we can carry out the promise, too, in a way ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis

... while Flint stared in amazed disgust. "Here, take a blank check." He took his fountain pen and scrawled his name on one. "The amount? That's up to you. Now, let us out," he bade, as Herzog stood there regarding the check with entire uncomprehension. "Out, I say, before I get extravagant!" ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... exceedingly. In the first place it was so truly delightful that her son should turn good and proper, and careful and decorous, just at the right time of life; so exactly the thing that ought to happen. Of course young noblemen were extravagant, and wicked, and lascivious, habitual breakers of the commandments, and self-idolators; it was their nature. In Lady Cashel's thoughts on the education of young men, these evils were ranked with the measles and hooping cough; it was well ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... long grey beard, a shirt of birch-bark, and a coat of pine-bark, and he thanked the woodcutter for sparing his children, and gave him a golden rod, which would fulfil all wishes that were not so extravagant as to ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... wild and extravagant? What were the political ups and downs of the Hebrews,—what were the squabbles of the tribes with each other, or with their neighbors, compared to the birth of that poet to whom we owe the Psalms,—the sweet singer whose voice ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... breast, (what could we more?) propounded terms Of composition, straight they changed their minds, Flew off, and into strange vagaries fell, As they would dance; yet for a dance they seemed Somewhat extravagant and wild; perhaps For joy of offered peace: But I suppose, If our proposals once again were heard, We should compel them to a quick result. To whom thus Belial, in like gamesome mood. Leader! the ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... There had been a rather frequent correspondence with Mr. Morton, who had once or twice submitted a total of the money paid on behalf of his correspondent. Lord Silverbridge, who imagined himself to be anything but extravagant, had wondered how the figures could mount up so rapidly. But the money needed was always forthcoming, and the raising of objections never seemed to be carried back beyond Mr. Morton. His promise to his father about the money-lenders had been scrupulously kept. As long as ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... extravagant," said Uncle Job. "I've always heerd that the Astor House is a fashionable hotel where they charge big prices. Ben ought to have gone to a cheap ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger

... the other day giving me a fearful scorching because of a speech I made in which I said that we women have Mr. Hoover looking into our refrigerators, examining our bread to see what kind of materials we are using, telling us what extravagant creatures we are, that we waste millions of money every year, waste food and all that sort of thing, and yet while we are asked to have meatless days and wheatless days, I have never yet seen a demand for a smokeless day! They are asking through the newspapers that we women shall dance, play bridge, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... piece of experience to a youth in his twenty-third year, young of his age, who had seen little or nothing of the world, who resigned himself to politics, but whose desire had been for the ministry of God. The remains of this desire operated unfortunately. They made me tend to glorify in an extravagant manner and degree not only the religious character of the state, which in reality stood low, but also the religious mission of the conservative party. There was in my eyes a certain element of Antichrist in the Reform Act, and that act was cordially hated, though the leaders soon perceived ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... the princess would have said or done some extravagant thing, and was not a little disappointed when he heard her talk so calmly and rationally; for he then concluded that her disease was nothing but a violent and deep-rooted passion. He therefore threw himself at his majesty's feet, and said, "After what I have heard and observed, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... muscular exertion—a point so perfectly consonant with the present prevailing desire for cheap and rapid communication—that we say we hope to be able not only to bring the higher classes to look upon it no longer as a vulgar and extravagant mode of expression, but actually to introduce and cherish it among them as the most polite and useful of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various

... will be speedily submitted to you for carrying out the admirable plans of my Secretary of State for the Colonial Department, and the brilliant author of "Don Carlos," for the prevention of apoplexy among paupers, and the reduction of the present extravagant dietary of the Unions. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... ever seen. The looks of the company are past my power to describe, being such as to make me feel as if I had broke into Bedlam. Their faces were all red and blotched with drink, and their heads covered with extravagant ringlets, which might never have seen a comb, while their dress was disordered to indecency, and the whole table was covered with a confusion of tankards and bottles and tobacco-pipes, not to mention playing-cards and dice. The huge man at their head ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward

... Henry Dunbar was a very handsome young man in those days—very handsome, very aristocratic-looking, rather haughty in his manners to strangers, but affable and free-spoken to those who happened to take his fancy. He was very extravagant in all his ways; generous and open-handed with money; but passionate and self-willed. It's scarcely strange he should have been so, for he was an only child; he had neither brother nor sister to interfere ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... acquiesce in their opinions, than to seek better for themselves. The chief question among their disciples, however, was as to whether we ought to doubt of all things or hold some as certain,—a dispute which led them on both sides into extravagant errors; for a part of those who were for doubt, extended it even to the actions of life, to the neglect of the most ordinary rules required for its conduct; those, on the other hand, who maintained the doctrine of certainty, supposing that it must depend upon the senses, trusted entirely to them. ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes

... don't think I'm done? I did not let him have the mare till I went to the hotel,—found he was cutting a great dash there, a groom, a pheaton, and a fine horse, and as extravagant ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... descended. There was just time for Marsham to notice an extravagant hat, smothered in ostrich feathers, a large-featured, rather handsome face, framed in a tangled mass of black hair, a pair of sharp eyes that seemed to take in hungrily all they saw—the old hall, the butler, and himself, as he stood in the shadow. He heard the new guest speak to the ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... with gross exaggeration in another passage. "A great miracle to-day," he writes (Sec. 30), "is the extinction of that generation, so quickly wrought, especially for those who knew their pride and power." It is an extravagant hyperbole to say that either the O'Neills, or the great tribe of the Oirgialla, represented to this day by the Maguires, the O'Hanlons and the MacMahons, was blotted out when the Life of St. Malachy was written. So argued some in ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor

... sometimes wild and extravagant, sometimes quieter in tone, were designed to refresh the severely taxed brain after extreme labors; and in the mysterious ways of genius they bore fruit in later days. But unfortunately he was so bent on enjoying to the full every moment of pleasure ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... New England parentage, had a righteous horror of debt bred in her bone. Uncle Jap adored her. If he set an extravagant value upon his other possessions, what price above rubies did he place upon the meek, silent, angular woman, who had been his partner, companion, and friend for more than a quarter of a century. Sun and wind had burnt ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... expensive undertaking," remarked Maud, with a sigh. "Perhaps it will be better to let me go alone, as I originally expected to do. But, if we take along the hospital ship, do not be extravagant, Mr. Merrick, in equipping it. I feel that I have been the innocent cause of drawing you all into this venture and I do not want it to prove a hardship to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne

... which was written in fifteen days, and left a fragment, is a piece of beautiful, though somewhat extravagant fancy. His 'Nosce Teipsum,' if it casts little new light, and rears no demonstrative argument on the grand and difficult problem of immortality, is full of ingenuity, and has many apt and memorable similes. Feeling he happily ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... cruel words, ma'am, forbade her having it. She ordered a new frock for Miss Isabel, and you countermanded it. You have told her that master worked like a dog to support her extravagances, when you know that she never was extravagant; that none were less inclined to go beyond proper limits than she. I have seen her, ma'am, come away from your reproaches with the tears in her eyes, and her hands meekly clasped upon her bosom, as though life was heavy to bear. A gentle-spirited, high-born lady, as I know she ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... the 1962 fiscal year, had not collected one penny in tax on personal incomes, the government would still have had more tax revenue from other sources than the total of what Harry Truman collected in his most extravagant peacetime spending year. Every American, who knows that, can readily understand the possibility and the necessity of repealing the federal tax on personal incomes. But how many Americans know those simple facts? The job of everyone who ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot

... Henry mingled grovelling piety with debauchery, and made of the court at Paris a veritable Alsatia, where paid assassins who stabbed from behind and mignons who struck to the face, were part of the train of every prince. The king's minions with their insolent bearing, their extravagant and effeminate dress, their hair powdered and curled, their neck-ruffles so broad that their heads resembled the head of John the Baptist on a charger,—gambling, blaspheming swashbucklers—were hateful ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... "'Most extravagant meal of vittles ever I got away with,' I says. 'Cost me and my partner two hundred and fifty apiece, that lunch did. We stayed in Boston two days, and on the afternoon of the second day we was on our way back totin' a couple of neat but expensive slips of ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... tissue of lies, equivocations, and perjuries in which his lovers hide their passion; without ever seeming to guess at the pathos and nobility of the man and the woman who are the mere trumpery obstacles or trumpery aids to their amours. He heaps upon Tristram and Yseult the most extravagant praises: he is the flower of all knighthood, and she, the kindest, gentlest, purest, and noblest of women; he insists upon the wickedness of the world which is for ever waging war upon their passion, and holds up to execration all those who seek to spy out ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee

... her between £200 and £300; the house was an inn-of-call for all Methodists travelling through the district (which could not be without incurring much expense); the farm and kilns swallowed increasingly large sums of money, and Taylor was an extravagant manager. ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen

... these were common in every Christian country, and all of them based upon the belief that an intellectual conviction is a crime. No wonder the church hated and traduced the author of the "Age of Reason." England was filled with Puritan gloom and Episcopal ceremony. The ideas of crazy fanatics and extravagant poets were taken as sober facts. Milton had clothed Christianity in the soiled and faded finery of the gods—had added to the story of Christ the fables of mythology. He gave to the Protestant church the most outrageously material ideas ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... she is dreadfully unselfish and kind, but she WILL think—they all do—that they know what Peter needs better than I do, and whenever they see me alone it's to hint that I ought to keep him from smoking too much and being extravagant, and that I should make him wear his overcoat and go to bed early and take medicine when he has a cold. And through everything else they hark back to that everlasting, "If you'd only exert your influence, Lorraine dear, to make Charles Edward take more interest in the business—his ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... of the American ladies when they take their morning walk from twelve to three in Broadway. The stranger will at once see that they have rejected the extravagant superfluities which appear in the London and Parisian fashions, and have only retained as much of those costumes as is becoming to the female form. This, joined to their own just notions of dress, is ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... illuminations which accompanied their advent. "A popular belief at this moment," continues Mr. Sumner, "makes slavery a national institution, and, of course, renders its support a national duty. The extravagance of this error can hardly be surpassed." In truth, it is so exceedingly extravagant, that we doubt if it really exists. It is certain, that we have no acquaintance, either historically or personally, with those who have fallen into so wild ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... mantle, translucent and rigid. They create a prodigious stir, brush the sentry aside, overturn the cleaners, and collide with the foragers as these return laden with their humble spoil. They have the busy air, the extravagant, contemptuous gait, of indispensable gods who should be simultaneously venturing towards some destiny unknown to the vulgar. One by one they sail off into space, irresistible, glorious, and tranquilly make for ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck

... the weather and prevented from over-tiring themselves. Many of them come from poor cramped homes, and to spend the whole summer in the forest more at play than at work makes them most happy. I met Germans who did not approve of the Waldschule who considered it a fantastic extravagant experiment, too heavy for the rate-payers to bear. This is a side of the question that the rate-payers must settle for themselves; but there is no doubt about the results of the venture on the children sent to school in the ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... heard a proposition that Jane should accompany them abroad, he went so far as to look upon it as something very like manoeuvring {sic}. HE was not a man to be led by others, in the choice of a wife. Jane might be a beauty—no doubt she was—but he had no such extravagant admiration for mere beauty. There was Elinor, for instance; she was a very different girl, though without any beauty; she was just the kind of person he liked. She was so warm-hearted and generous in her feelings—without a bit of nonsense; ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... whenever anything turned up, involving any receipts or payments, she extorted an unusual percentage, the moment the money passed through her clutches, giving out as a pretence: 'Well Chia She is so extravagant that I have to interfere and effect sufficient economies to enable us to make up our deficits.' And that she would not trust any one, whether son, daughter or servant, nor lend an ear to a single word of remonstrance. When she therefore now heard Madame Hsing speak as she did, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... to relate, but truth is mighty—that within a fortnight the good Deacon repented of his generous action at least fifty times. He would die in the poor-house if he were so extravagant again. Three hundred dollars was more than the cow-shed—lumber, shingles, nails, labor and all—would cost. Suppose Hay should take the money and go West? Suppose he should take to drinking, and spend it all for liquor! ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... getting out at Lescaut's, I had a new difficulty with the coachman, which was attended with the most unfortunate results. I repented of having promised the fellow a louis d'or, not only because it was extravagant folly, but for another stronger reason, that it was at the moment out of my power to pay him. I called for Lescaut, and he came down to the door. I whispered to him the cause of my present embarrassment. Being naturally ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost

... regarded as either a pretext made to cajole Congress or else merely an ebullition from his own sanguine nature not to be taken too seriously by sensible people. Senator Maclay of Pennsylvania regarded Hamilton's plans as wildly extravagant in their conception and iniquitous in their practical effect. In his opinion, Hamilton had "a very boyish, giddy manner, and Scotch-Irish people could well call him a 'skite.'" Jackson of Georgia exposed to the House the folly of Hamilton's ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford

... myself on a settee in the corner, upon the Prince's invitation, and very glad I was to remain quiet and unnoticed, listening to the talk of these men. It was all in the same extravagant vein, garnished with many senseless oaths; but I observed this difference, that, whereas my uncle and Sheridan had something of humour in their exaggeration, Francis tended always to ill-nature, and the Prince to self-glorification. Finally, the conversation turned to music—I ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... say, Fear not! life still Leaves human effort scope. But, since life teems with ill, Nurse no extravagant hope. Because thou must not dream, thou ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... he could not find him. He guessed right when he told himself that they must have belonged to foreign vessels in port when President Lincoln's proclamation was issued, and that Beardsley's agent had induced them to join the Confederacy by offering higher wages than they were receiving, and making extravagant promises of a wild, free, easy life aboard the privateer, and unlimited dollars to spend in the way of prize money. But as far as Marcy could see they were good sailors, and Captain Beardsley and his mates enforced discipline ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon



Words linked to "Extravagant" :   exuberant, profligate, extravagance, wasteful, overweening, unrestrained



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