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Adornment   /ədˈɔrnmənt/   Listen
Adornment

noun
1.
A decoration of color or interest that is added to relieve plainness.
2.
The action of decorating yourself with something colorful and interesting.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Adornment" Quotes from Famous Books



... were informed of the important event which had taken place! Then, when this horn-shaped knot had been covered by a high hat of gauze tied tightly on with ribbons, the Korean arose transformed into a being of dignity and consequence. It was the abolishment of this sacred adornment which brought about a rebellion. Those who did not obey the order were hiding from the officials, while those who did were mobbed and in danger of ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele

... Spaniards; and we are also pressed hard and threatened by enemies, as your Majesty will learn by a separate letter. As to the general quiet and tranquillity of this state and kingdom, it has never been better; for great progress is being made in the strengthening and adornment of public ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair

... Bunyan was applied to for advice, which he plainly gives. He was a stern advocate for scriptural authority in all things pertaining to divine worship; and one who, in regarding the invaluable virtues of women, most admired retiring modesty as the loveliest adornment of the female character. The terms he uses, and the spirit in which he writes, intimate plainly that his own wife, who was remarkable for her devotion to God and her affectionate attachment to her husband, was also the most obedient of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... which it involves, but in Saugor, and also in the north of India, many of them have now taken to it, and some plough with their own hands. Mr. Marten notes [288] that the Jains are beginning to put their wealth to a more practical purpose than the lavish erection and adornment of temples. Schools and boarding-houses for boys and girls of their religion are being opened, and they subscribe liberally for the building of medical institutions. It may be hoped that this movement will continue and gather strength, both for the advantage ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... the cheeks, which is suggestive of cabalistic import. It could not be ascertained, however, whether such is the case. The lines drawn on the chin were exactly like the ones I have seen on Moorish women in Morocco. Another outlandish attempt at adornment was witnessed at Cape Blossom in a woman who wore a bunch of colored beads suspended from the septum of her nose. These habits, however, hardly seem so revolting as the use of the labret by the "Mazinka" men on the American ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse

... following:—From one such single Tressure, as No. 136, all the alternate heads and stalks of the fleurs de lys that point internally are cut away and removed; then a second similar Tressure, of rather smaller size, is denuded of all its external adornment, and in that condition it is placed within the former Tressure, leaving a narrow interval between the two. Each component half of this "double Tressure flory counterflory," accordingly, has its own independent series ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell

... had been brutal. She must have spent hours over her adornment. Yet I could not have taken her out into the street. She looked like Jezebel, who without her paint must have been, like ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... rubble around us before it has ceased to be still green in our memory. Quite ordinary wardrobes in unseemly attitudes gape out from bedrooms whose front walls are gone, in houses whose most inner design shows unconcealed to the cold gaze of the street. The rooms have neither mystery nor adornment. Burst mattresses loll down from bedraggled beds. No one has come to tidy them up for years. And roofs have slanted down as low as ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany

... Macintosh world, a style of window with much less adornment (smaller or missing title bar, zoom box, etc, etc) than ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... about more and seen the homes of wealthy folk—to a professional decorator, say, or an expert in furnishing values—the drawing-room into which Judge Priest presently was being ushered might have seemed overdone, overly cluttered up with drapery and adornment. But to Judge Priest's eye the room was all that a rich man's best room should be. The thick stucco walls cut out the heat of the night; an electric fan whirred upon him as he sat in a deep chair of puffed red damask. A mulatto girl in neat uniform—this ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... picture of General Washington in the act of crossing a dark, green river Delaware in a court dress of red and breeches of yellow, surrounded on all sides by ice and officers in rainbow uniforms, and, as this was the only adornment of a rather bare room, it is no wonder it ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... served as a background for her bare neck and shoulders. In another picture she had her sleeves rolled up; a white apron covered her from her breast to her feet, on her forehead was a little wrinkle of care and weariness, and in her whole mien the carelessness of one who has no time to attend to the adornment of her person. This last was the portrait of the bitter days, the image of the courageous housekeeper, without servants, working with her delicate hands in a wretched attic, striving that the artist might lack nothing, that the petty annoyances of life might ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... Somehow he could not "see" his cattleman as one who would set aside the barrier of race and take a squaw for his wife. He could not see Annie-Many-Ponies as anything save what she was—a beautiful young savage with an odd adornment of civilized speech and some of the civilized customs, it is true, but a savage for all that. He did not want to spoil her by portraying her as a half-caste ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... long period hath passed they bring it to completion. Yet all the beauty of paintings, all the grace of statues, all the grandeur of cathedrals are as nothing compared to the painting of that inner picture, the chiseling of that inner manhood, the adornment of that inner temple, that is scarcely begun when the physical life ends. How majestic the full disclosure of an ideal manhood! With what patience must man wait for its completion! Here lies the hope of immortality; it does not yet appear what ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... that far-off image of Solomon and his spirits building their palace for the Queen of Sheba which exalts the whole conception and enlarges the reader's imagination through all the legends of the great King—and then it makes, for fresh adornment, the splendid piling up of the sounds into walls of gold, pinnacles, splendours and meteor moons; and lastly, with upward sweeping of its wings, bids the sky to fall in love with the glory of the palace, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... gaze down upon him as if she hardly heard; beneath the bright adornment of tints, the lovely face—it was a very proud face—had become icy cold; the violet eyes were hard as shining crystal. To Mr. Heatherbloom that slender figure, tensely poised, seemed at once overwhelmingly near and inexpressibly remote. He started to lean ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham

... richly adorned, as being the only places in which the desire of offering a portion of all precious things to God could be legitimately expressed. But I left wholly untouched the question: whether the church, as such, stood in need of adornment, or would be better fitted for its purposes by possessing it. This question I would now ask the reader to ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... sky, became Fierce, and burnt up him who beheld it. Time had been so long a husbandman of her fair demesne, had reaped so many crops of smiles and tears from that comely visage, that it were a baseness to infer that no traces of his husbandry appeared on her once smooth and silken flesh, for the adornment of which she had ever disdained the use of essences and unguents. Yet I am told that her wrinkles and creases, although manifold, were not harsh nor rugged; and that her face might be likened rather to ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... shoeless, and godless children, whom they will hale into the Sunday-school; they will shine with unsurpassed skill in the manufacture of slippers for the rector; they will exhibit a fiery enthusiasm in the decoration and adornment of the church at Christmas and Easter festivals. Far be the thought that would deny praise to the mild raptures and delicate aspirations of gentle natures such as Cooper drew. But in novels, at least, one longs for ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... and from within the church there appeared before the astonished bridegroom the stately form of King Edward, leading in his hand the dark-tressed, dark-haired maiden, dressed in spotless white, the only adornment she wore a circlet of diamonds round her flowing dark hair—the Queen indeed of the Dew- drops. And behind her walked with calm dignity the beautiful Princess Eleanor, now nearly a woman, holding with a warning hand the ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... we are conducted from that beginning, downward, stage by stage, from those periods of remote antiquity prior to the formation of water, the upheaval of the mountains, the alluvial deposits, the subsidence of the existing sea basins, and the adornment of the habitable parts of the earth, to that comparatively recent event, the existence of the sons of men. Our ideas of the eternity of the love of Christ are thus enhanced, by the vastness of the ages which stretch ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... far addressed to thee are instructions for the adornment of thy mind; listen now to those which tend to that of ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... and red arabesques, inspected their thickness, viewed the ponderous porcelain stores, tasted, perhaps, the bountiful cheer of the owner, he realizes their palpable comforts, and begins to suspect that all the external adornment is merely an attempt to restore to Nature that coloring of which she is stripped by the cold sky of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... spring. We saw the immeasurable earth covered with towns and villages, which at that distance appeared only so many isolated mansions surrounded with gardens. The rivers which wound about in all directions seemed no more than rills for the adornment of these mansions; the largest forests looked mere clumps or groves, and the meadows and broad fields seemed no more than garden plots. These marvellous tableaux, which no painter could render, reminded us of the fairy metamorphoses; only with this difference, ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion

... the horses feel proud, and their owners tell me how they turn their heads to see their adornment. And well they may, for a true Barbareno loves his horse as does the Arab, and delights in his decoration. Easily first in this matter is Mr. W. D. Thompson, who came to Santa Barbara from Maine more than forty years ago, ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn

... by anything like taste, must become, in a very few years, one of the places one might reasonably make a pilgrimage to look upon; so lavish has Nature been in its adornment, and so admirably are its accessories fitted to ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... in, and entered. There was the whole collection, abandoned to my eager gaze and eager hands! How long I stood, taking down weapon after weapon, examining each like an old book, speculating upon modes of use, and intention of varieties in form, poring over adornment and mounting, I cannot tell. Historically the whole was a sealed book; individually I made a thorough acquaintance with not a few, noting the differences and resemblances between them and my own, and instead of losing conceit of the latter, finding more and more reasons for holding ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... against the fences, and the white folds in the rifts of distant hillsides lingered to tell what had been. Then came a day of warm rain, that washed away the last fragment of earth's cast-off vesture, and bathed her pure for the new adornment that was to be laid upon her. At night, the weather cooled, and the rain changed to a fine, slow mist, ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... taste. On her breast just above the spot where the cruel dart had entered, a fresh and blooming nosegay still exhaled its perfume—a tragic detail accentuating the pathos of a death so sudden that the joy with which she had pinned on this simple adornment seemed ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... taste in the arrangement of their dress, particularly for that of the head, which consists of a turban made of skin, and profusely ornamented with beads, of which adornment both men and women are very fond. A mantle of skin, variously bedecked with these and other showy trinkets, is worn; and the only distinction between the dress of the chieftains' wives and those of a lower rank consists in a greater profusion of ornaments possessed by the ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... one thing they lack creative energy. They wear ready-made clothing, for example, without taking the trouble to improve upon it. The same goes for their homes. Mere uninspired adornment won't do, let me add. That's simply the mark of the nouveau upper middle class. One doesn't receive such persons ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley

... of the Legion of Honour, the fact that it arrived late does not derogate from its glory; if it could not serve Jacek as an adornment, let it serve as a memorial of him: I hang it on his grave. For three days it will hang there, then it will be deposited in the chapel, as a ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... afraid to trust myself to your care," Evelyn said in a lively tone; and putting an arm affectionately round Lulu's waist, "Come, Lu, let us go out on the lawn; I saw some lovely flowers there that I want to gather for Aunt Elsie's adornment this evening." ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley

... sunshine in the frontispiece placed, A crack just below—merely a matter of taste; A flap on each side hiding holes of resounding, For conveyance within of noises surrounding; And a nozzle before, All befitted to snore, Was a part of the ware For adornment and air. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... at two o'clock. Shortly afterward she saw the ladies emerge from the French Church of Notre Dame, and cross the square to meet him. Miss Cuthbert was delighted with the church. Although a Protestant, she admired it as an architectural art-work, the elaborate adornment, too, of the interior pleased her, and accorded with her womanly tastes. Mrs. Clarkson had seen both inside and outside so often that neither had now any more effect on her; indeed, not only was her heart steeled to the refining influences of the building, but also to the doctrines ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer

... explain how or when I have acted in a manner that was not straightforward," she asked with laborious politeness. "Or do I understand that a monopoly of cutting up chintz curtains for personal adornment has been bestowed on you by ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... hair, and was dressed plainly in dark velvet. The little princesses wore ruffles and silk mantillas, of all the colors of the rainbow; but the queen-mother had far more important business to attend to than the adornment of her person, and in her self-devotion to her commonwealth had long ago, of her own free will, laid aside flounces and furbelows. What a good motherly body she was! and how devoted her subjects were to her! Every-where ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning

... little detail of her toilette, deriving therefrom a faint, mysterious comfort, trying to make herself feel beautiful. From sheer dread of going back before he came, she let her hair fall, though it was quite smooth and tidy, and began brushing it. Suddenly she thought with horror of her efforts at adornment—by specially preparing for him, she must seem presumptuous to Fate. At any little sound she stopped and stood listening—save for her hair and eyes, as white from head to foot as a double narcissus flower in the dusk, bending towards some faint tune played to it somewhere ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... important factor in the growth and development of the village, was organized about twenty years ago. The chief object of the society has been the improvement and adornment of the streets and the fine shade trees which emborder the village thoroughfares everywhere attest the fidelity of its members to the object in view. In addition to the work of this character the society has aided in various ...
— A Virginia Village • Charles A. Stewart

... verses about her, of course—ghastly, fustian stuff, at the recollection of which the Solitary shuddered, and then laughed. But from that day forward Paul had spasmodic rages of personal cleanliness and adornment. ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... as bare and cheerless as so many piano boxes. He avoided all the little vices and dissipations which make human existence bearable: good eating, good drinking, dancing, tobacco, poker, poetry, the theatre, personal adornment, philandering, adultery. He was insanely suspicious of everything that threatened to interfere with his work. Even when that work halted him by the sheer agony of its monotony, and it became necessary for him to find recreation, he sought out some recreation ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken

... the elder lived in some style, and his door was opened by a servant whose blatant adornment filled Andrew with friendly pity: no man would submit to be dressed like that, he judged, except from necessity. The reflection sprung from no foolish and degrading contempt for household service. It is true ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald

... And again: "We rely upon your zeal and prudence to see that the required blocks of marble are forwarded from Faenza to Ravenna without any extortion from private persons; so that, on the one hand, our desire for the adornment of that city may be gratified, and, on the other, there may be no cause for complaint on ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... a virtuous and fruitful woman, (ch. xii. 5;) and the apostate church is symbolized by a fruitful but profligate woman, (ch. xvii. 5.) Then both are also represented by two cities, which are equally contrasted. As the women differ in their outward adornment, (chs. xix. 8, xvii. 4,) so do the cities in the quality of population, commerce and employment, (ch. xviii. 4; xxii. 14.)—The nuptials being consummated between the Lamb and his bride, and she being now "made perfect in holiness;" ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele

... Perfect. Built by that only Law, that Use be suggester of Beauty; Nothing concealed that is, done, but all things done to adornment; Meanest utilities seized as ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... an airing, however, without some discussion with Miss Granger. That young lady was established in the drawing-room—the vast foreign chamber, which never looked like a home—illuminating a new set of Gothic texts for the adornment of her school. She sorely missed the occupation and importance afforded her by the model village. In Paris there was no one afraid of her; no humble matrons to quail as her severe eyes surveyed wall and ceiling, floor and surbase. And being of a temperament which required perpetual employment, she ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... the chin, swept upward to loop over the ears. The nose was straight and thin; there was a predatory cast to it, perhaps suggested by the bold, black, almost fierce eyes. He was clothed with the full, rich, swaggering adornment of a Rajput; the splendid deep torso enclosed in a shirt-of-mail, its steel mesh so fine that it rippled like silver cloth; a red velvet vestment, negligently open, showed in the folds of a silk sash a jewel-hilted knife; a tulwar hung from his left shoulder. As he moved ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... and Nineveh, both of them somewhat earlier in date than Babylon, possessed similar features. These towns, or at least Babylon, seem to have been known to Greek travellers, and probably suggested to them the adornment of their Hellenic homes with similar streets. The germ of Greek town-planning came from ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield

... failed to make allowance in the underclothing for the gauziness of the outer sheathing. As for the sashes with which the victims are finally bound, they fret the little swelled stomachs, and the baby goes about tugging at his undesirable adornment, and wearing the frown of one harassed past endurance. Sometimes it ends in flat mutiny, and baby is shorn of his grandeur, and prances innocently back into the heart of society, clad in a combination of waist and drawers which is associated ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... upon which the officials have decided. It includes a set of coins, some specimens of weights and measures, some children's toys, a London directory, a bundle of newspapers, the photographs of the twelve most beautiful women of the period, a box of hairpins and other articles of feminine adornment, a razor, a parchment containing a translation of the hieroglyphics on the obelisk itself—the hieroglyphics that so puzzled Moses and me—and last, but not least, a text! Yes, a text; and a text, not in one language, but in every language known! The men who tear ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham

... still-born boy—that she died, despite the old family amulet originally imported from Metz and made by Rabbi Eibeschuetz. When, after her death, it was opened by a suspicious partisan of Emden, sure enough it contained a heretical inscription: "In the name of the God of Israel, who dwelleth in the adornment of His might, and in the name of His anointed Sabbatai Zevi, through whose wounds healing is come to us, I adjure all spirits and demons not to injure this woman." I need not say how this contributed to the heat of the controversy in our own little village; and I think, indeed, it destroyed ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... even at the forfeit of his life. Reaching his appointed place, he ceases even to eat, and begins to spin those delicate fibres which, woven into fabrics of beauty and utility, contribute to the comfort and adornment of a superior race. His work done, he lies down to the sleep from which he never wakes in the old form. But that silent, motionless body is not dead; an astonishing metamorphosis is taking place. The gross digestive ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... she nor her model would have been finally content with an adornment so delicately fanciful and minute. Both Kitty and the goddess of the Fronde knew that they must hold their own in a crowd. For this there must be diamonds. The sleeves, therefore, on the white arms fell back from diamond clasps; the ivory spear in her right hand was topped by a small genius with ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Elysees is judiciously chosen by her bankers. Marie Berard, with her useful allies, aids in the selection of the exquisite adornment. Her own ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... deep breath of the salt air when there came to me a new and delicious odor. It seemed to steal from a secret garden under the sea, and I thought of mermaids plucking the blossoms of their coral arbors for the perfuming and adornment of their golden hair. But sweeter and heavier it floated upon the slight breeze, and I knew it for the famed zephyr that carries to the voyager to Tahiti the scents of the flowers of that idyllic land. It was ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... for that is a luxury of the grave even now unknown to the Italians of old Antonio's degree. The body was clad in the holiday vestments of a fisherman, the hands and feet being naked. A cross lay on the breast; the grey hairs were blowing about in the air, and, in frightful adornment of the ghastliness of death, a bouquet of flowers was placed upon the mouth. The bier was rich in gilding and carving, another melancholy evidence of the lingering wishes and false direction ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... your room in superior style. That big Matilda, who pesters you with comparisons and her real India shawls imported by the suite of the Russian ambassador, and her silver plate and her Russian prince,—who to my mind is nothing but a humbug,—won't have a word to say then. I consecrate to the adornment of your room all the 'Children' I shall get ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac

... shallow roots, and grow up tall, narrow, and shapeless. It necessarily is so with all timber that is not thinned in its growth. When fine forest trees are found, and are left standing alone by any cultivator who may have taste enough to wish for such adornment, they almost invariably die. They are robbed of the sickly shelter by which they have been surrounded; the hot sun strikes the uncovered fibers of the roots, and the poor, solitary invalid languishes, and at ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... incredibly picturesque, but it had somehow the look of a fortress rather than of a house. It did not exist only to be beautiful, but had a well-worn beauty of age and use. There was no domestic adornment of flower-bed or garden-border, merely four squares of grass, looking like faded carpets laid on the rather uncompromising pebbles which floored the pathways. The golden hands of the clock pointed to a quarter to ten, ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson

... man's duty as a member of a commonwealth, is to assist in the maintenance, in the advance, in the defence of the state. The woman's duty, as a member of the commonwealth, is to assist in the ordering, in the comforting, and in the beautiful adornment ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin

... Work digs to the very foundations of life, and all human associations, and reveals the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, in the building of character, and the adornment of the Temple of ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... made her more seriously discontented with herself than ever,—and after closely studying the picturesque make of the violet velvet riding-dress which the fair one of Charles the Second's day had worn, and deciding that she would have one 'created' for her own adornment exactly like it, she turned towards the other end of the gallery. There hung that preciously guarded mysterious portrait of her dead mother, which she herself had never gazed upon, covered close with its dark green baize curtain,—a curtain no ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... gold," he persisted, staggered at the idea of being able to buy such an adornment for the trivial sum ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... stock which both women did not finger speculatively that morning; there was not a piece of pinchbeck jewelry in the small showcase which they did not study carefully. Especially Madge dwelt on combs, for Layson, once, had mentioned combs as parts of the adornment of the women whom he knew. There in the mountains young girls did not wear them, save of the "circular" variety, designed to hold back "shingled" tresses. But from underneath a box of faded gum-drops and the store's one carton of cigars, came some of imitation tortoise-shell, ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... awoke, it being doubtful whether the poor lady had so much as closed her eyes during the brief night of midsummer—but, at all events, arose from her solitary pillow, and began what it would be mockery to term the adornment of her person. Far from us be the indecorum of assisting, even in imagination, at a maiden lady's toilet! Our story must therefore await Miss Hepzibah at the threshold of her chamber; only presuming, meanwhile, to note some of the heavy sighs that labored from her bosom, with little restraint ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... tend to divide him from the thing he studies. It is as difficult, for example, for a man to examine a fish without developing a certain vanity in possessing a pair of legs, as if they were the latest article of personal adornment. But if a fish is to be approximately understood, this physiological dandyism must be overcome. The earnest student of fish morality will, spiritually speaking, chop off his legs. And similarly the student of ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton

... was beautifully furnished. Walls of polished wood had their adornment of excellent seascapes, many of them bought at the Paris salon. A bureau with delightful curves and a clock set at the apex above the writing-shelf pleased Alban immensely—he thought that he had seen nothing more graceful even at "Five ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... was very much depressed, and he came to Birmingham, hoping to obtain employment in a trade which, owing to a caprice of fashion, was just then in an inflated condition. This was the business of making steel buckles, and other articles of polished steel for personal adornment. In this he was very successful, and soon after his arrival in the town, he took a small house in Bread Street, a little way down on the right from Newhall Street, and here he started business for himself. He had no capital, but he had great skill. Mr. S.A. Goddard, who used to buy from ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... both, and articles of luxury and adornment were occasionally added to the better rooms. The garden next fell under Katharine's care. "In sweet neglect," it no longer flaunted its beauties. Roses and stocks and tiger-lilies learned what boundaries of box meant; ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr

... therefore does not trouble them: and they fulfil their duties to civilisation and the arts by sometimes going to see the beautiful places, and gathering together a few matters to remind them of these for the adornment of the ugly dwellings in which their homes are enshrined: for the rest they have no doubt that it is natural and not wrong that while all ancient towns, I mean towns whose houses are largely ancient, should be beautiful ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris

... who own the existing cash registers on the swing and then hold them to ransom. We shall set our small trapeze oscillating right across their airy path and decline to remove it unless they agree to part with some of the very shiniest of their spangles and hand them over to us for our adornment. I wondered how Ascher, who is so deeply moved by the perils of his own flights, would like the idea of destroying other people's confidence and upsetting ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... force carries the subjugation of women. In the degree to which professional militarism prevails in any society, women are forced into hard industrial activities, despised because fulfilled by women. On the other hand, a group of carefully protected women is held apart as a fine adornment of life. Both ways militarism accentuates the property idea in reference to women: the one type, useful, the other, adorning, property. The one shows in marriage by purchase, the other in the dowry system. It is hard to say which is more dishonoring to women. It would, perhaps, ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs

... entered behind him. He arose and turned. Before him was the most welcome picture his bereaved eyes could have looked upon. His visitor was all in shimmering white and wore no ornament except a collar of golden rings. What need of further adornment when she was mantled and crowned with a glory of golden hair? Except that the face was marble white and the eyes dark and large with quiet sorrow, it was the same divinely ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... clean austerity: that is your force. Wear a linen ephod, splendidly candid. Arrange its folds, but do not fasten it with any brooch. I swear to you, in your talking robes, there should be no patch of adornment; and where the subject forces, let it force you no further than it must; and be ready with a twinkle of your pleasantry. Yours is a fine tool, and I see so well how to hold it; I wonder if you see how to hold mine? But then ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of rats, also contained an odd-looking desk, with a shabby arm-chair, which was ragged, green, and torn in the seat,—from which the horse-hair protruded, like the wig of its master, in half a hundred libertine curls. The chief adornment of this room, which had evidently been the salon of the appartement before it was converted into a banking-office, was a round table covered with a green cloth, round which stood a few old chairs of black leather with tarnished gilt nails. The fireplace, somewhat elegant, showed none of the sooty ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... be considered, namely, the elasticity of the want itself to which the article caters, and the extent to which an article catering to a particular want may be substituted for other articles designed to satisfy the same one. The desire for jewels and other articles of personal adornment is very expansive, and a fall in the price of any one article of this kind causes a relatively large increase in the consumption of it. Since the want to which a costly ornament caters is thus elastic, the cheapening of all articles that cater to this want ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... barrel-stave and hold on to that and slide down. It goes like a scared rabbit, but that isn't so much the point as that it slews around and spills you into a drift. Sleds are lower and narrower than they used to be, and they also lack the artistic adornment of a pink, or a blue, or a black horse, painted with the same stencil but in different colors, and named "Dexter," or "Rarus," or "Goldsmith Maid." These are good names, but nobody ever called his sled by a name. Boggs's hill, back of the lady's house that taught the infant-class ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... There are artizans of every kind ([Greek: pantodapous tais exgasias]); the best are those who weave cloth of a singular fineness and softness. The houses are worthy of admiration for their superb adornment with eaves and brilliant white-washing ([Greek: oikias axiologous kai kateskeuasmenas philotimos geissois kai koniamasi pezittotezon])."— Lib. v. c. 12. Mela (ii. c. 7.) and Pliny (iii. 14.) simply mark ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... upright fringe from its forehead down the back of its neck to its body. Its skin is striped from the tip of its nose to the end of its tail, and down its legs to the hoof. The natives hunt it vigorously, as they prize its beautiful skin for personal adornment, and its meat is favorite food. They kill it with spears, or by pit-falls, in which the poor creatures get entangled, ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... Echeveria needed no adornment to emphasize the attractions of her gorgeous self. She was one of those rare women who are rendered more attractive by the absence of all ornament and her dark eyes were more luminous and brilliant than any jewel she might have worn. Her gown, though rich, ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman

... virtue shine forth, to which a congenial mind may attach and unite itself—when this happens, affection must necessarily arise. For what is so unmeaning as to take delight in many vain things, such as preferments, glory, magnificent buildings, clothing and adornment of the body, and not to take an extreme delight in a soul endued with virtue, in such a soul as can either love or (so to speak) love in return? for there is nothing more delightful than the repayment of kindness and the interchange of devotedness and good offices. Now if we add this, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various

... and they sought him there and found him not. Meanwhile, news was brought that Khorasan had been conquered;[FN309] whereupon Al-Rashid rejoiced and bade decorate Baghdad and release all in the gaol, giving each of them a ducat and a dress. So Ja'afar applied himself to the adornment of the city and bade his brother Al-Fazl ride to the prison and robe and set free the prisoners. Al-Fazl did as his brother commanded and released all save the young Damascene, who abode still in the Prison of Blood, saying, "There is no Majesty, and there is no Might save in Allah, the Glorious, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... manufacture of royal jelly been revealed. But is it not the common belief that the spacious compartment and the special food work the transformation of what otherwise would have been a brief-lifed toiler to an insect of majestic proportions, regal adornment and imperial instinct, whose wants are anticipated and who has no duty to perform save that of increasing and multiplying her faithful subjects? Man controls the development of an insect. May not those who complain of the disparity between the births of females ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... dwellers of cities remembered their youth; younger men bethought themselves of Cinderella and the Prince! There was a thrill and a hush as this last guest—a beautiful girl, radiant with youth and adornment—put a dainty glass to her sparkling eye and advanced familiarly, with outstretched hand, to Dick Spindler. Mrs. Price gave a single gasp, and drew ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... the Old Lawn under the shade of the great cedars, which made its greatest adornment; and when everybody had had what he or she wanted, and the men had lit their cigarettes—and the Professors, by special permission, their pipes—Nitocris looked across a couple of tables at Oscarovitch, whom she had so far managed most adroitly to ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... the yellow light relaxed in sleep. The arm which Thamar had raised still rested upon the mantle of striped wool, showing whiter by contrast with the dark stuff; the wrist was circled with a bracelet of sandal wood, the commonplace adornment of the coquetry of poverty; but if the ornament was rude and roughly chased, the flesh it covered seemed to have been washed in the perfumed bath of riches. Then Ra'hel saw how beautiful was Tahoser, but the discovery ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... of Crawford, toasted DeWitt Clinton, the leader of the opposing Republican faction. At Baltimore there was a dinner, and the city council asked the visitor to sit for a picture by Peale for the adornment of the council room. Here the General was handed a copy of the Senate committee's report, abounding in strictures on his Seminole campaign. Hastening back to Washington, he filled the air with threats, ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... are thus outside the pale of the four principal or pure orders, children are begotten upon women belonging to the class called Sairindhri by men of the class called Magadha. The occupation of such offspring is the adornment of the bodies of kinds and others. They are well-acquainted with the preparation of unguents, the making of wreaths, and the manufacture of articles used for the decoration of the person. Though free by the status ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... be Poverty, felt at all times and under all creeds as one adornment of a saintly life. Since the instinct of ownership is fundamental in man's nature, this is one more example of the ascetic paradox. Yet it appears no paradox at all, but perfectly reasonable, the moment one recollects how ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... approach the presence, and partake of the memorials, of the Saviour, it was necessary to bring vessels of silver or gold. In their circumstances, gathered in their humble rustic edifice for worship, they did not feel that, in the sight of the Lord, costly furniture would add to the adornment of his table. ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... whose water, under the still lingering rays, glistened with the sheen of silver, added to the deception. Withal, it was a wilderness—a beautiful wilderness. Human hands had never planted those groves—human agency had nought to do with the formation or adornment of that lovely landscape. ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... are ever toward the Lord. That is the view we want. We gaze contemptuously on the little one-story lodge just inside the park gates, and fail to get a glimpse of the magnificent mansion, with its wealth of adornment and treasure, that lies a mile among the trees. No wonder that men grow discontented or contemptuous when they mistake the porch for the house. If a man would understand himself and discover his resources and put his hand on all life's highest uses, he must look out and up unto his God. ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth

... to engage in the business of exporting the fruits and the fibres, as well as the ores and the dyes from the island. From the white women the native women learned the new art of dressing, and of adornment. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay

... 3: Every virtue derives from its species a certain luster or adornment which is proper to each virtue: but further adornment results from the very greatness of a virtuous deed, through magnanimity which makes all virtues greater as stated ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... the noblest adornment of a young girl is the flower of a pure and saintly and irreproachable life. Are you alone in the world? If you are, there is no need to say more. But if you have a family, a father or a mother, think of all ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... Mr. Sheridan's answer, "that stone is now part of a brooch which was this afternoon returned to my cousin's, the Earl of Eiran's, hunting-lodge near Melrose. He intends the gem which you are vainly seeking among my haberdashery to be the adornment of his promised bride in the ensuing June. I confess to no overwhelming admiration as concerns this raucous if meritorious young person; and will even concede that the thought of her becoming my kinswoman rouses in me an inevitable distaste, no less attributable to ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... from the enclosure wherein stood what once had been the House of the Lord, one or more of the disciples called His attention to the magnificent structures, the massive stones, the colossal columns, and the lavish and costly adornment of the several buildings. The Lord's answering comment was an unqualified prophecy of the utter destruction of the temple and everything pertaining to it. "Verily I say unto you, There shall not ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... he saw already the light playing on her neck and in her hair; the shadow of laurel-trees falling on her eyes. For him the land and the sky of Florence had nothing more to do than to serve as an adornment to this ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... Battiscomb, that mild-mannered Dorchester gentleman, who, like Wade, was by vocation a lawyer, was ushered into the Duke's presence. He was dressed in black, and, like Ferguson, was almost smothered in a great periwig, which he may have adopted for purposes of disguise rather than adornment. Certainly he had none of that air of the soldier of fortune which distinguished his brother of the robe. He advanced, hat in hand, towards the table, greeting the company about it, and Wilding observed that he wore silk stockings and shoes, upon which ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini

... off at the accustomed hour to the school. All the girls had their eyes on her. None so keen as these young misses to know an inward movement by an outward sign of adornment: if they have not as many signals as the ships that sail the great seas, there is not an end of ribbon or a turn of a ringlet which is not a hieroglyphic with a hidden meaning to these little cruisers over the ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... which has never been expressed nor ever will be. For although I give Myself to be felt by men in their inmost hearts, yet no tongue can ever declare or explain in words what I am. For verily all the beauty, grace, and adornment which can be conceived by thee or by others, exists in me far more excellently, more pleasantly, more copiously, than any one could say in words. I am the most loving Word of the Father, begotten from the pure substance of the Father, and wondrously pleasing am I to ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge

... So burn'd the peaceful oriflame, and slack'd On every side the living flame decay'd. And in that midst their sportive pennons wav'd Thousands of angels; in resplendence each Distinct, and quaint adornment. At their glee And carol, smil'd the Lovely One of heav'n, That joy was in the eyes ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri



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