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Old-world   /oʊld-wərld/   Listen
Old-world

adjective
1.
Characteristic of former times especially in Europe.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Old-world" Quotes from Famous Books



... very curious experience: it felt to him as if for a long time he had been ill—so ill as not even to have been aware of it—and that now he was beginning to be himself again; consciousness of things returning to him. This solidly furnished, long, oak-panelled room with its air of old-world dignity and repose—this sober, kindly room in which for more than half his life he had lived and worked—why had he forgotten it? It came forward greeting him with an amused smile, as of some old friend long parted from. The faded photos, in stiff, wooden frames ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome

... From this quaint, old-world enclosure he wandered at his leisure, through an open gate in the wall at the back, into the gardens behind the house. There was not much in the way of flowers to look at, but he moved about quite unconscious of any deprivation. A cluster of greenhouses, massed against the ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... the Royalists during the Civil War, at which time it was in the possession of the ancient Westmorland family of Phillipson. We did not walk alongside Windermere, but passed by the head of the lake to the old-world village of Hawkshead, and called at the quaint old-fashioned inn known by the familiar sign of the "Red Lion." While tea was being prepared we surveyed the village, and on a stone in the churchyard ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... again, thrilling the rough crowd as Dick had never thrilled them, choosing such old-world melodies as reach the hearts of all. Saltash watched her with keen appreciation on his ugly face. He was an accomplished musician himself. But Dick with his banjo, though he responded unerringly to every shade of feeling ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell

... you will excuse the freedom of my address, but I feel that as co- circum-wanderers and as fellow labourers (though myself a very weak one) we may throw aside some of the old-world formality...I have just finished a little volume on the volcanic islands which we visited. I do not know how far you care for dry simple geology, but I hope you will let me send you a copy. I suppose I can send it from ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... In old-world Guildford, the county town of Surrey, with its steep High Street containing many seventeenth-century houses, its old inns, and its balconied Guildhall—the scene of so many unseemly wrangles among the robed and cocked-hatted borough councillors who are, ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux

... sense of coolness and pervading peace; they prepare you as it were, and you begin to be filled with a spirit of devotion, and instinctively to speak low. In the narrow street outside there was the clamorous uproar of an Oriental crowd, cries of sellers, and the noise of humble old-world trading; men and beasts jostled you; there seemed a scarcity of air beneath those so numerous overhanging mushrabiyas. But here suddenly there is silence, broken only by the vague murmur of prayers and the ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... and girl were no East End waifs; they were clean; they looked respectable; and the doorstep which gave them a temporary resting-place belonged to no far-famed Stepney or Poplar. It stood in a little, old-fashioned, old-world court, back of Bloomsbury. They were a foreign-looking little pair—not in their dress, which was truly English in its clumsiness and want of picturesque coloring—but their faces were foreign. The contour was peculiar, the setting ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade

... to this day influenced her thoughts of mortality. Standing by her mother's grave, she often repeated to herself "seu potius exuviae," and wondered whether her father's faith in science excluded the hope of that old-world reasoning. She would not have dared to ask him, for all the frank tenderness of their companionship. On that subject Dr. Derwent had no word to say, no hint to let fall. She knew only that, in speaking ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... impossible to avoid being struck with the immense amount of general information possessed by some agriculturists, and the wide field over which their knowledge ranges. Yet with all this knowledge and power of reflection they still remain attached to the old-world system of politics, religion, ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies

... of Avoca. The walls are broken and highly fantastic, narrowing here, receding there, their strangely-arched recesses festooned with the feathery trichomanes, their clustering columns and broken buttresses suggesting some old-world minster, and their stately tiers of columnar basalt rising one above another in barren grey into the far-off blue sky. The river in carving out the gorge so grandly has most energetically removed all rubbish, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... had an old-world garden, and it was here they had their first duologue. Amber had quickly discovered that Walter was interested in the apiaries that lay at the foot of its slope, and so he found her standing in poetic ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... personality of the lady who has been his best friend, his tireless collaboratrice, and his constant companion during the last twenty-five years—have made their home on the top storey of a fine stately house in the Rue de Belle Chasse, a narrow old-world street running from the Boulevard Saint Germain up into ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... naturalness of its homely picture, the book is very superior to, say "The Mayor of Casterbridge," where we are conscious that the author has been at work arranging and rearranging his charming studies and impressions of the old-world people of Casterbridge into the pattern of an exciting plot. Now it is precisely in the artificed dramatic story of "The Mayor of Casterbridge"—and we cite this novel as characteristic, both in its strength and weakness, of its distinguished author,—that we are brought to feel that we have not ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... Had these old-world times returned by magic? had a crazed serving-man revived the vanished duties of his warlike predecessor? was the wraith of seneschal or man-at-arms conjuring up a ghostly beacon to stream into the soft air? was an evil ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... but little of his own political beliefs or feelings,—did not, probably, know whether he had any. His father was a fine old Tory of the ancient school, who thought that things were going from bad to worse, but was able to live happily in spite of his anticipations. The dean was one of those old-world politicians,—we meet them every day, and they are generally pleasant people,—who enjoy the politics of the side to which they belong without any special belief in them. If pressed hard they will almost own that their so-called convictions are prejudices. But ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... analysis of divine names is a task to which comparative philology may lawfully devote herself; but we cannot so readily explain by presumed borrowing from without the rude xoana of the ancient local temples, the wild myths of the local legends, the sacra which were the exclusive property of old-world families, Butadae or Eumolpidae. These are clearly survivals from a stage of Greek culture earlier than the city state, earlier than the heroic age of the roving Greek Vikings, and far earlier than the Greek colonies. They belong to that conservative and immobile period ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... lest her deity should plead in vain, loving the idea of success for him like a triumph of nature; anon, with returning loyalty to her own family and sex, she trembled for Kirstie and the credit of the Elliotts. And again she had a vision of herself, the day over for her old-world tales and local gossip, bidding farewell to her last link with life and brightness and love; and behind and beyond, she saw but the blank butt-end where she must crawl to die. Had she then come to the lees? she, so great, so ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... cankerous imperfection-saying, lo! the roads, the only plans of development, long and varied with all terrible balks and ebullitions. You said in your soul, I will be empire of empires, overshadowing all else, past and present, putting the history of Old-World dynasties, conquests behind me, as of no account—making a new history, a history of democracy, making old history a dwarf—I alone inaugurating largeness, culminating time. If these, O lands of America, are indeed the prizes, the determinations of your soul, be it so. But behold the cost, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... the incessant alarms and the Indian ferocities spread around the Fort during the frequent absences of her husband and her favourite brother, Eustache Bouille. The daintily-nurtured French lady must have found the quiet of the old-world convent a very haven of peace and rest. She died at Mieux, an Ursuline Nun, in the order which subsequently was to be so closely identified with the religious ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway

... straight over his forehead. His nose was distinguished in shape and his flexible mouth turned up at the corners. He talked slowly with a sort of twang like a farmer from the east coast and there was a kind of hidden humor under whatever he said. He had charming old-world manners, and an old-fashioned way of saying "I thank you," or "Permit me, ma'am," or "At your service, ma'am." He was really quite a delightful person, they unanimously decided; and so was his sister ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes

... bare and the garden looked somewhat forlorn for lack of greenery. But in spite of the lateness of the season, Lucy often brought a book to read under the glowing wall, and there ripened like a peach in the warm sunshine. On this occasion she brought Archie into the old-world garden, as he had hinted at confidences. And the time had come to speak plainly, as Hope began to think that he had not treated Lucy quite fairly in hiding from her his momentarily ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume

... Magazine, and happened, by good luck, to fall into the hands of an admirer of Dorothy, who, having had access to the original letters, had made faithful and loving copies of each one,—accurate even to the old-world spelling. These labours had been followed up by much patient research, the fruits of which were now to be generously offered to the present Editor on condition that he would prepare the letters for the press. The owner of the letters having courteously expressed his acquiescence, ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry

... now, chilled himself by the presence of this crisis, looking unseeingly out upon the plain, little old-world parlour, its tall window, its strip of matting, conscious chiefly of the dreary hopelessness of this human brother of his who had eyes but did not see, ears and was deaf. He wished he would say good-bye, and go. There was no ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... clerk, "I was a little boy myself when Martin's mother runned away with the soldier, yet mind well how it was in everybody's mouth. But folks in Cullerne like novelties; it's all old-world talk now, and there ain't one perhaps, beside me and Rector, could tell you that tale. Sophia Flannery her name was when Farmer Joliffe married her, and where he found her no one knew. He lived ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... group. It belongs, as I am informed by Mr. Waterhouse, to a division of the family of mice characteristic of America. At James Island, there is a rat sufficiently distinct from the common kind to have been named and described by Mr. Waterhouse; but as it belongs to the old-world division of the family, and as this island has been frequented by ships for the last hundred and fifty years, I can hardly doubt that this rat is merely a variety produced by the new and peculiar climate, food, and soil, to which ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... of Adam, and of the history of his family. They may fill museums, if they please, with their flint arrow-heads and axes, they may pile up pyramids of stone mortars, they may perhaps some day discover an old-world bronze railroad, and bronze-clad or copper-bottomed steamboats, they may produce pre-Adamic electric, aeronautic engines, and magnetic sewing machines, or bone needles, we care not which; and we will admire them, and confess that they are very curious, and perhaps very ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... earth clothed by nature and by the hand of man. By the Upper Thames, at the foot of the Cotswolds, the buildings of the past were still generally untouched; and beyond the orchards and gardens, with their old-world look, lay stretches of meadows, diversified by woods and low hills, haunted with the song of birds; and he could believe himself still to be in the England of Chaucer and Shakespeare. There he would always welcome the friends whom he loved and who loved him; but to the world at large ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... who loved him so fondly, and was so full of prayers and hopes for his future, could have seen him so utterly on the wrong road, what bitter shame and lamenting there would have been in the halls of Lyvedon that day—those deserted halls in which the lady sat alone among the sombre old-world grandeurs of oak and tapestry, and sighed for her ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... stood at the window, tasting the cool thickness of the evening, breathing the fragrance of ylang-ylang: leaf and frond, stirred by the monsoon, purred in gentle contact. In the starlight the old stone church outlined its old-world, old-time architecture in friendly shadows which veiled the pitiful scars and age-stains: the bamboo shacks across the square—wry, flimsy, smutted by a hotly jealous sun—had yielded to the magic of the night to become little golden houses in which the fairies ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... coming difficultly, and suddenly a gasp shook him—there was no footprint on the unfrozen earth where the vision had passed. Yet there before him, moving through the deep sunlit silence of the garden, was the familiar, sturdy little form in its old-world dress. Philip's eyes were open; he was awake, walking; he saw it. Across the neglected tangle it glided, and into the trim order of Shelby's rose garden; in the opening between the box walls it wheeled again, and the sun shone clear on the bronze hair and fresh face, ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... and rugged heights of Enslin. The crimson-tinted clouds that emblazoned the sky cast a ruddy radiance round his head and face, making him appear like one of those ancient martyrs one is apt to see on stained-glass windows in old-world churches in Rome or Venice. His feet were firmly planted close to the graves of the British soldiers and sailors who had fallen when we beat the Boers and drove them ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... so recently come under romantic circumstances. At the top of a low hill he paused and looked about him, recognizing the scenes from the descriptions which Avice had given him in her letters. There was Wraye itself—a big, old-world place, set amongst trees at the top of a long park-like expanse of falling ground; hills at the back, the sea in the far distance. The ruins of an ancient tower stood near the house; still nearer to Brereton, in an old-fashioned flower garden, formed ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher

... look faded from Ruth's eyes suddenly. A certain wild Berserker rage—a taint of the blood, inherited from heaven knows what Old-World ancestry, which had made the twin-brothers' Southwestern eccentricities respected in the settlement—glowed in its place. The barkeeper noted it, and augured a lively future for the day's festivities. But it faded again; and Ruth, as he rose, turned hesitatingly ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... Italy again. I should ease my heart among the masterworks of Girolamo dai Libri and Cavazzola, and, in the presence of the blue castellated mountains they loved to paint, my spirit would even be as theirs. In this old-world city, I fondly imagined, I should forget the Regent's Park, and attune my mind to the life that ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... well-founded reputation, not surpassed, if equaled, by that of any town or city in the land; for instance, there were the Lowells, who gave name, afterwards, to that wonderful city of spindles, which enjoys as world-wide a standing in the annals of manufacturing enterprise as the old-world Manchester of a long-anterior date, and one of whom, amid the desolate ruins of Luxor, struck by the hand of fatal disease, conceived the idea of establishing that noble Institute which bears his name, and ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous

... curious arts, obscure speculations, half-fabulous histories, voyages, and adventures, which still constitute the almost unique value of the Brockhurst library. He might claim to be a man of science, moreover—of that delectable old-world science which has no narrow-minded quarrel with miracle or prodigy, wherein angel and demon mingle freely, lending a hand unchallenged to complicate the operations both of nature and of grace—a science which, even yet, in perfect good faith, busied itself with the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... the main building, sloping lean-tos. It does not present so glowing an appearance as the stonecrop, which now and then flourishes on houses, and looks like a brilliant golden cushion against the red tiles. The houseleek, however, is a singular plant, worthy of examination; it has an old-world look, as if it had survived beyond its date into the nineteenth century. It hides in odd places and gables like a relic of witchcraft, and a black cat and an aged woman with a crutch-handled stick would be its ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... and wild to passionate, frightening her mother, and puzzling her easy-going father with her storms of waywardness, while at the same time she stirred his admiration by her violence. A pagan of the pagans she was besides, and with some haunting suggestion of old-world pagan beauty about her dark face and eyes. Altogether an odd and difficult character, but with a generosity and high courage that ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... the devil: and the devil (for the "superstitious" and "old-world" notion which attributes such frenzies to the devil has not yet been superseded by a better one) had entered into him, and concentrated all the evil habits and passions which he had indulged for years into one flaming ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... noted so many last survivors was herself the last of a company more venerable than eagles, or ravens, or old-world yeomen, or antique customs. She would not, in any case, be the first forgotten. As it is, her honored name will live for generations in the traditions of the valleys round. If she was studied as the poet's wife, she came out so well ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... on Toulouse and St. Peter Streets there are quaint little old-world places where one may be disguised effectually for a tiny consideration. Thither, guided by the shapely Mephisto and guarded by the team of jockeys and ballet girls, tripped Flo. Into one of the lowest-ceiled, dingiest, and most ancient-looking ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar

... piece it was, and how charming Mrs. O'Leary looked and sang it! and what a good fellow young Huxter was! liked by every body, an honor to his profession. He has not his father's manners, I grant you, or that old-world tone which is passing away from us, but a more excellent, sterling fellow never lived. "He ought to practice in the country whatever you do, sir," said Arthur, "he ought to marry—other people are going to do ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... they passed along the road, for there was something so strange about them that they seemed to have come down from a far-off distant age, and to have suddenly burst into a civilization which had long out-grown the type from which they were descended. But by-and-by their curious old-world appearance was forgotten in amazement at the articles they carried with them. These were carefully wrapped in several folds of cloth to keep them from being soiled, though the two priests were perfectly willing to unfold the wrappers, and exhibit them to anyone ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan

... small windows half-choked up with straw. Directly opposite the latter, behind a wooden railing, stood a cask resting on other barrels, above which smoked the red glare of a naphtha lamp. Over the room lay a dense darkness, only lightened now and then with flashes from an expiring fire in a large old-world fire-place, before which sat a pair of beggars. In a corner might be seen a number of persons huddled together whispering mysteriously. By the cask were two peasants, one clasping a bottle, the other holding out a glass; they often drank healths to one another and nodded sleepily. A fat red ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... one church:—such were some of the provisions. The colonies were availing themselves of the unique opportunity afforded by their emancipation, in the wilderness, from the tyranny and obstruction of old-world traditions ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... sort of little device which really made them think themselves in love, and gave the salt to the whole affair. Moreover, there was this ground for it, that had her lord once roused from the straw-yards of his prize cattle, there was a certain stubborn, irrational, old-world prejudice of pride and temper in him that would have made him throw expediency to the winds, then and there, with a blind and brutal disregard to slander and to the fact that none would ever adorn his diamonds as she did. So that ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... Spain, to become more anti-Papal, to sympathize with Huguenots and other heretics, and, like Francis I, to wonder why an immense new world should be nothing but New Spain. Besides, Englishmen knew what the rest of Europe knew, that the discovery of Potosi had put out of business nearly all the Old-World silver mines, and that the Burgundian Ass (as Spanish treasure-mules were called, from Charles's love of Burgundy) had enabled Spain to make conquests, impose her will on her neighbors, and keep paid ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... George, and suggested that we should seek out some retired and old-world spot, far from the madding crowd, and dream away a sunny week among its drowsy lanes - some half-forgotten nook, hidden away by the fairies, out of reach of the noisy world - some quaint-perched eyrie on the cliffs of Time, from whence the surging waves of the nineteenth century ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... belonged. She was, for that night at least, no longer an impoverished rancher's daughter, but a lady of station. With a twinkle in his eyes, he made her a little formal inclination, and she, knowing what he was thinking, answered with an old-world curtsey, after which a grinning ox-teamster of habitant extraction turned ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss

... what in my heart will beat and burn, 155 And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote: 160 For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw, And, choosing sweet clay from the breast Of the unexhausted West, With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 165 How beautiful to see Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, Who loved his charge, ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... Prophecy, Types, and Fulfilments. Though the present work belongs to one of the two classes which, for obvious reasons, we do not undertake to notice in our columns, there is so much of curious matter illustrative of Folk Lore, early remains, and old-world customs, in the third part of it, as to justify our directing the attention of our antiquarian readers to the archaeology of the volume. The Druidic Beltein or Midsummer Fire still burns brightly, it appears, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various

... queer, elusive, delightful absurdities, that La Fontaine has made the scene of the greater number of his stories. The stories themselves are for the most part exceedingly slight; what gives them immortality is the way they are told. Under the guise of an ingenuous, old-world manner, La Fontaine makes use of an immense range of technical powers. He was an absolute master of the resources of metre; and his rhythms, far looser and more varied than those of his contemporaries, are marvellously expressive, while yet they never depart from ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... maids. In the china cupboard there were still the old-fashioned Crown Derby services, the costly cut glass, the Leeds and Wedgewood dessert dishes that Cousin Mary Leicester had used for half a century. The caretaker produced the keys of the iron-lined plate cupboard, and showed its old-world contents, clean and ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Catholic states of the continent or find an asylum in those boundless lands claimed by England across the sea. The minds of men through all Europe were turning towards America, not only as a sphere for trade and a base for the fighting out of Old-World quarrels, [Footnote: Zuniga to the king of Spain, December 24, 1606, and September 22,1607, in Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 88-90, 116-118.] but as a place of settlement for men who could not conform to their ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... the poor, shabby lodging on the Surrey side of the river, which was her early and only recollection of the great city. At the end of a week they crossed from Dover to Ostend, and in the warm, golden light of a lovely autumn evening arrived in quaint, old-world, sleepy Bruges. Madame Bonnemain herself met them at the station, a bright-eyed, red-cheeked, happy-faced little woman, on whom the care and the worry of life appeared to have sat but lightly during all these hard years. She was visibly affected at ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... garden where bushes masqueraded as birds, a sundial questioned the smiling moon and a gathering of young frogs leapt hastily from the stone fountain at sound of Paul's footsteps. Monkish herbs and sweet-smelling old-world flowers grew modestly in this domain once sacred to the chatelaine of Hatton; and Paul kept ghostly tryst with a white-shouldered lady whose hair was dressed high upon her head, and powdered withal, and to whose ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer

... assisted him to settle himself in his unfamiliar seat, to teach him the duties of his high station. He was teachable, but independent, not shutting his eyes and opening his mouth to swallow all the old-world creeds they chose to put into it, but studying every branch of the science of landlordism in the light of his own intelligence and beliefs. When he had fairly mastered the situation, he married one ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... came here distressed in their poverty who now enjoy easy and plentiful fortunes." If Americans were not always aware that they were rich men individually, they were at all events well instructed, by old-world visitors who came to observe them with a certain air of condescension, that collectively at least their material prosperity was a thing to be envied even by more advanced and more civilized peoples. Therefore any man called upon to pay a penny tax and ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker

... responsible for the temporary confusion that threatened disaster, yet was bound to have a happy ending—the children. It was all a children's play set in the lovely scenery of mountain, forest, lake, and old-world garden. ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... because of the caves—Tilly Whim Caves. Did you ever hear of them, Parisienne mamma? Small blame to you, if not, because one can't know everything; but they are worth seeing; and the Swanage harbour is a little dream. The town is good, too. Old-world, and very, very respectable-looking, as if it were full of long-established lawyers and clergymen, yet not dull, like Wareham, which was important in Saxon days, long before Swanage was born or thought of. It's ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... railways were unborn, or in their infancy; those interminable old dusty drives, in diligence or private carriage, along miles and miles of roads running straight to the low horizon, through a line of tall poplars, across the plains of France! What an old-world memory it seems, and yet, as the years go, not so very long since after all. The party that rumbled from Boulogne to Marseilles in the old "devil of a coach" aforesaid, "and another conveyance for luggage," and I know not what other conveyances ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... man in the moon and we must part. Hitherto some may have supposed their thoughts occupied with a mere creature of imagination, or gratuitous creation of an old-world mythology. Perhaps the man in the moon is nothing more: perhaps he is very much more. Possibly we have information of every being in the universe; and possibly there are beings in every existing world of which we know nothing whatever. The latter possibility we deem ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... the President of the Association, under whose auspices this great undertaking has been successfully carried through, will be shared by all lovers of Art and all the friends of American civilization and culture. We cannot naturalize the Old-World cathedrals, for they were the architectural embodiment of a form of worship belonging to other ages and differently educated races. But the organ was only lent to human priesthoods for their masses and requiems; it belongs to Art, a religion of which God himself appoints the high-priests. At ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... of dance she wakes The lordly gallery's silent floor, And climbing up on tiptoe, makes The old-world ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)

... had lifted the heavy sadness that lay on her brow and eyes. When every one seemed so gay, could life be quite hopeless, after all? The tender pink in her cheeks that night was not due to her mother's rouge-box, with which she had often been threatened. She was smiling at some pretty old-world compliment from Monsieur des Barres. He, for his part, asked himself what the grief could be which lay behind that smile of hers, and found it easy enough to have his question answered. In a few minutes, in the intervals ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price

... not at all necessary," said Richardson, dropping with equal suddenness into his old-world obsequiousness. "I shall certainly do as you wish. It is not a bad investment, Mr. Mainwaring, and as you suggest, a very proper return for their kindness. And, being here, it will come quite naturally for me to take ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte

... ago, a higher price was asked than for those brought into the Colony direct from Kurrachi; and rightly, for there can be no doubt but that in size, strength, and endurance, the camel of Australian birth is far ahead of his old-world cousin. Not only are Indian camels smaller and less fitted for the heavy work of the interior, but their liability, until acclimatised, to mange and other diseases ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... coaxed into growing in the open air bloomed in perfection; the spick-and-span brightness of the windows; the elegant order that prevailed within, from cellar to garret; the old, carefully-chosen furniture, which had for the most part been collected from other old-world homesteads; the artistic colouring of draperies and carpets—all combined to make Miss Wendover's ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... have married his young kinswoman had he been more masterful and self-confident. Thackeray takes us to a larger and gayer scene than Scott's Edinburgh of narrow streets and gloomy jails and working people and old-world theology, but yet it may be after all Scott is stronger. No bit of history, for instance, in Esmond takes such a grip of the imagination as the story of the Porteous mob. After a single reading one carries that night scene etched for ever in his memory. The sullen, ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren

... and he sprang to his feet, scarcely knowing what he should see. The air was clear of dust now, and the moon shone brightly; and by its light he saw a few paces from him a prostrate form partly covered in sand. He bent over it: it was the body of a man, a man dressed in a strange old-world costume a dead man, dead hundreds of years, and mummified and wonderfully preserved by the sands that had covered him deep through the centuries, until the big gale of yesterday had lifted the heavy pall. Huddled near by lay two other indistinct forms; and Carfax, his dream ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell

... reason everywhere in Man's struggle with Nature and with his Fellow-man; (2) the special conditions which favoured or hindered unity of prehistoric culture in what has been called elsewhere the 'north-west quadrant' of the Old-World land-mass west of Ararat and the Median hills and north of Sahara, the cradle and nursery of the modern 'western world'; and (3) the convergent lines of advancement within that region, which can be traced ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various

... say, for his political existence, with an East End meeting, and incidentally with the whole public—exposing herself, in a time of agitation, to the rowdyism and the stone-throwing that wait on such things! The notion set the fastidious old-world temper of the man all on edge. But he would never have dreamed of arguing the matter so with her. A sort of high chivalry forbade it. In marrying her he had not made a single condition—would have suffered tortures rather ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... called up a Tuscan landscape that expressed him, and lines of cypresses that moved on majestic like hexameters. He saw the terrace of an ancient palace, and the grotesque animals carven on the balustrade; the green flicker of lizards on the drowsy garden-wall; the old-world sun-dial and the grotto and the marble fountain, and the cool green gloom of the cypress-grove with its delicious dapple of shadows. An invisible blackbird fluted overhead. He walked along the great walk under the stone eyes of sculptured gods, and looked ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... beautiful as dreamland. We stood and gazed, silent with rapture and admiration; threw conventionality to the winds, forgot that we had no right here, and wandered about, inhaling the scent of the flowers, luxuriating in their rich colours, feasting our eyes and senses on all the old-world beauty of architecture by which we were surrounded; carrying our sight upwards to the blue skies and wondering if we had not been transported to some paradise beyond the veiling. It ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... happen,—saw the hidden fire smouldering, and became conscious of an inexplicable dread, as though a note of alarm had sounded mystically in his brain. What would happen to Innocent, if she, with her romantic, old-world fancies, should allow a possible traitor to intrude within the crystal-pure sphere where her sweet soul dwelt unsullied and serene? He told Priscilla the strange story—and she in her shrewd, motherly way felt something of ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... indicated in their ships, which in all probability have not altered in any material regard for centuries. A Chinaman would be as slow to change the shape of his junk as his shoes, or the length of his pigtail. And a strange, old-world, semi-barbarous look a ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne

... first and fresher period of Mr. Browning's visits to Venice, he found a passing attraction in its society. It held an historical element which harmonized well with the decayed magnificence of the city, its old-world repose, and the comparatively simple modes of intercourse still prevailing there. Mrs. Bronson's 'salon' was hospitably open whenever her health allowed; but her natural refinement, and the conservatism which so strongly marks the higher class of Americans, preserved it from the ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... dark and chilly closet, I was mewed up at your age; with what severity I was treated; how I was fed and dressed!" Already his powers of observation, that were so to distinguish him, were quickened by his old-world milieu. ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... where the men were at haycart. The cart-horses wore glittering brazen ornaments, crescent-shaped, in front of the neck, and one upon the forehead. Have these ornaments a history?[2] The carters and ploughmen have an old-world vocabulary of their own, saying 'toward' for anything near or leaning towards you, and 'vrammards' for the reverse. 'Heeld' or 'yeeld,' again, is ploughman's language; when the newly sown corn does not 'heeld' or 'yeeld' it requires ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies

... declared that the old Italian won her heart and even awakened something akin to affection before she had known him half an hour. There was a fascination in his admixture of childish simplicity and varied knowledge. None, indeed, could resist his gracious humor and old-world courtesies. The old man could be simple and ingenuous, too; but only when it pleased him so to be; and it was not the second childishness of age, for his intellect remained keen and moved far more swiftly than any at Chadlands. But he was modest ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... our doors if the United States would only welcome it and join it, instead of preparing to invite the old-world barbarism of national warfare by planning military defenses and ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron

... they had knelt and listened to the holy office without mingling with their dependants below. This room, if we had the good fortune to obtain lodgings in the mansion, was to belong to the poetess, for it was full of inspiration and old-world memories. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... fix the imagination on some scene which suggests tranquility—smooth seas, autumnal landscapes, snow-clad heights, old-world gardens, deep, shady silent pools, childhood's lullabies, secluded backwaters, ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... Mysteries were perhaps survivals of an old-world ritual, based on a primitive kind of Nature-Mysticism. The "public Mysteries," of which the festival at Eleusis was the most important, were so called because the State admitted strangers by initiation to what was originally a national cult. (There were also private Mysteries, ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... closely, passionately. All but the prayer-book had been her gifts to the father she had worshipped. With a wrung heart she called to mind the occasion upon which each had been offered, his smile of kindly appreciation, the old-world courtliness of his thanks. With loving hands she laid them down one by one, lingering over each, seeing them through a blur of tears. She was no longer conscious of Grange, as reverently, even diffidently, she opened last of all the little shabby prayer-book that her father ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... trained and medicined, for months beforehand, with much careful tending, many strength-giving potions, and volumes of the old-world charms, which put valour and courage into a beast. They stand at each end of a piece of grassy lawn, with their knots of admirers around them, descanting on their various points, and with the proud trainer, who is at once keeper and medicine man, holding them by the ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... despair, to sit with the last, the only unredeemed, the Judas of his race, and be himself more blessed in the pains of hell, than in the glories of heaven? Who, in the midst of the golden harps and the white wings, knowing that one of his kind, one miserable brother in the old-world-time when men were taught to love their neighbour as themselves, was howling unheeded far below in the vaults of the creation, who, I say, would not feel that he must arise, that he had no choice, that, awful as it was, he must gird ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... friend is of a rather strange disposition," he observed- -"She has the indifference of an old-world philosopher to the saying of speeches that are merely socially agreeable. She is ardent in soul, but suspicious in mind! She imagines that a pleasant word may often be used to cover a treacherous action, and if a man is as rude and blunt as myself, for example, she prefers that he should ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... long, rambling stone house, the flagged roof and mullioned windows of which proclaimed it as belonging, equally with the Manor, to a period of the past. It was a delightful, roomy, almost medieval kind of a place, so picturesque, in its old-world fashion, that one could forgive the lowness of the rooms, the narrowness of the passages, the steepness of the stairs, and the inconvenience of the fact that the front door opened directly into the dining-room, ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... into the frame of any one of the received categories of literary composition, as is evident from the fact that authorised and unauthorised opinion on the subject has touched every extreme, and still continues oscillating to-day. Many commentators still treat it as a curious chapter of old-world history narrated with scrupulous fidelity by the hero or an eye-witness, others as a philosophical dialogue; several scholars regard it as a genuine drama, while not a few enthusiastically aver that it is the only ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... frail old clerical gentleman, lively as a boy, kind like a fairy godfather, and keeping perfect order in his class by the spell of that very kindness. I have heard him drift into reminiscences in class time, though not for long, and give us glimpses of old-world life in out-of-the-way English parishes when he was young; thus playing the same part as Lindsay—the part of the surviving memory, signalling out of the dark backward and abysm of time the images of perished things. But it was a part that scarce became him; he somehow lacked ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... doubtless as others will do again), bringing into unmerited disrepute those genuine and grand old mines of Cornwall which have yielded stores of tin and copper, to the enriching of the English nation, ever since those old-world days when the Phoenicians sailed their adventurous barks to the "Cassiterides" ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne

... Schuurr, I call to mind Dutch armoires, all incontestably old and of lovely designs, Dutch chests, inlaid high-backed chairs, costly Oriental rugs, and everywhere teak panelling—the whole producing a vision of perfect taste and old-world repose. It was then Mr. Rhodes's intention to have no electric light, or even lamps, and burn nothing but tallow candles, so as to keep up the illusion of antiquity; but whether he would have adhered to this determination it is impossible to say, as the house we saw was burnt to the ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... the children play and perform their costume dances. In the afternoon the fields are given up to athletic sports of older children, and in the evening young men and women, of all nationalities, many wearing their old-world peasant dresses, revive the plays and the dances of their native lands. Tens of thousands view the beautiful spectacle, which each year excites more interest and assumes an added importance in ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr

... wadding. Elaborate apparatus watched the atmosphere and rang a bell far away in the central office at the slightest departure from the optimum of temperature and moisture. A system of such creches had almost entirely replaced the hazardous adventures of the old-world nursing. The attendant presently called Graham's attention to the wet nurses, a vista of mechanical figures, with arms, shoulders, and breasts of astonishingly realistic modelling, articulation, and texture, but mere brass tripods below, and having in the place of features ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... coarsely-woven wool of the brightest blue, green or yellow, about twenty inches broad by thirty-three in length, across which, near the top and near the bottom, run two stripes, each about eight inches wide, of hand-worked embroidery of the strangest, old-world-looking patterns and the most brilliant colors. These things are manufactured by the peasantry of the hill-country in the neighborhood of San Germano, who grow, shear, spin, weave, dye and embroider the wool themselves. And being barbarously unsophisticated by any adulteration of cotton, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... fear of impinging on Mr. Young's copyright that prevents me reprinting the graphic ballad of The Wanderer and the prologue of The Strollers, which reads like a page from the prelude to some Old-World miracle play. The setting of these things is frequently antique, but the thought is the thought of today. I think there is a new generation of readers for such poetry as Mr. Young's. I venture the prophecy that it will not lack for them ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... No old-world temple subdues us with its stern magnificence; the low walls of a little snug room shut us off from the whole world. What am I saying? We are alone, alone in the whole world; except us two there is nothing ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... said, a third, or a fifth, or a fourth; but the whole movement leads nowhere; it is an unfinished sentence. Yet, in spite of all these drawbacks and of this childish immaturity, the amateur and enthusiast finds himself charmed and held as if in the clutch of some Old-World spell, and this at what others will call the dreary and monotonous intoning ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... articled-clerk system, and finally became his father's partner. An opportune legacy enabled his father to buy a large property outside 'muddy York,' on which, in accordance with hereditary landholding instinct, he endeavoured to establish his family, after the old-world fashion. A broad thoroughfare in Toronto preserves the name ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan

... civilization which is taking possession of what was once their territory, they have no share. The life about them looks towards the future. They point mutely to the past. A tender sentiment clings about them; in their hushed enclosures we breathe a drowsy old-world atmosphere of peace; to linger within their walls, to muse in their graveyards, is to step out of the noisy present into the silence of departed years. In a land where everything is of yesterday, and whose marvellous natural beauties are but rarely touched with the associations of history ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson

... pleasant to the taste, the Serpent denied Death, and thought of Good as separate from Evil. "Ye shall not surely die, but shall be as the gods, knowing good and evil." So far, in his aspiring day-dream, had the Serpent fared from his old familiar haunts—so far from his old-world wisdom! ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... annoyed. I had only half finished my drink, and it was certainly not alcohol that was affecting me. Rather it seemed to be that curious old-world perfume which each ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux

... of those sudden gales from the eastward that are still the terror of small craft in the Archipelago. A modern sailor would try to beat out to seaward and get as far as possible from the dangerous shore, but these old-world seamen dreaded the open sea. They tried to ride out the gale, but anchors dragged and hundreds of ships were piled in shattered masses on the shore. Some were stranded in positions where they could ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... Governor of the occupied parts of Dalmatia, saying that the people of the island longed for annexation. These telegrams he read aloud before the islanders, with all his carabinieri in attendance.... The old-world capital of the island, which is a smaller place than Starigrad, was occupied on the same day. The first serious encounter took place on December 4, when the Italians, who were quartered on the upper floor of the Sokol ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... his head in a stately, old-world fashion, and seated himself upon the bench. Seeing that he had no wish to speak I was silent also, but I could not help watching him out of the corners of my eyes, for he was such a wonderful survival of the early half of the century, ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle

... measure disastrous to civilization, is a trial also of our democracy. We may hope that it is an old-world war and an old-men's war, repugnant to the genius of our newer life. The statements of some of our public men and the contents of some of our newspapers can not be read without discouragement. But it is also true that there has perhaps not appeared a cartoon in any American newspaper tending ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... Moreover our pristine delight in the place is beginning to flag, as we gradually realise that the city, like the majority of great modern towns, is being practically rebuilt to the annihilation of its old-world features, which used to give to Naples its peculiar charm and its marked individuality amongst large sea-ports. Long ago has disappeared Santa Brigida, that picturesque high-coloured slum, on whose site stands the garish domed ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... outside is strange and old-world enough, but when we enter, the dim interior, haunted by weird shadows and ghostly echoes, has quite an unearthly effect after the bustling life of the city. As is usual in Greek and Russian churches, there are no seats of any kind, the whole interior ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... these children, so loved of Nature, and so gifted by her, are harshly dealt with by their stepmother Circumstance. No doubt there ought to be truth in the silly old picture, if there is none, and I would willingly make-believe to credit it, if I could. I am glad that they at least work in old-world, awkward, picturesque ways, and not in commonplace, handy, modern fashion. Neither the habits nor the implements of labor are changed since the progress of the Republic ceased, and her heart began to die within her. All sorts of mechanics' tools are clumsy and inconvenient: the turner's lathe moves ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... a little curtsey as she left the room. She was distinctly impressed by the stately presence and old-world courtesy of this bronzed, white-haired gentleman. He was so very different from the general run of visitors at No. 15; but she had half guessed his errand before she knocked at the door of the front room in which Miss Carol and her friend and house-mate, ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... Claudia. The bells are striking the hour. It must, it shall bring you to me. I am asking much when I ask you to marry me, to leave your home to make a home for me. Your infinite love for Elmwood is understood well. Its old-world air of dignity and charm, of gracious courtesy and fine friendships, of proud memories and gentle peace, could scarce find counterpart elsewhere on earth, and yet in the days to come would it content alone, Claudia? For my great need of you might there ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher

... be married early in September and then go abroad. Esterbrook mapped out the details of their bridal tour with careful thoughtfulness. They would visit all the old-world places that Marian wished to see. Afterwards they would come back home. He discussed certain changes he wished to make in the old Elliott mansion to fit it for a ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... artificialities of pseudo-Elizabethan? Children are not likely to say "darter" for "daughter," or to ejaculate "Lawkamercyme" because they come across these forms in their folk-tales. They recognise the unusual forms while enjoying the fun of them. I have accordingly retained the archaisms and the old-world formulae which go ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various

... enough from realizing it, his education and the Eastern environment had given him a touch of Old-World insularity. The through sleeper in which he had his allotment of space was well filled, and there were the usual opportunities for the making of passing acquaintanceships in the smoking-compartment. But it was not until the second day, after the dining-car ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... their kith and lineage." "A pretty fable, indeed," responded the scientific votary. "But we know now that all that kind of thing is sheer nonsense, and worse, for it is the basis of the effete old-world sentiment which forms the most formidable obstacle to Progress, and which Science even yet finds it hard to overthrow. But what is that strange singing I hear beneath your cloak?" It was the bird which the traveler had received from the Princess. He drew it forth, but did ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... she most despaired of excelling. It suddenly occurred to her that she might study it with Ulick Dean. She had met him at rehearsal, and had been much interested in him. He had sent her six melodies—strange, old-world rhythms, recalling in a way the Gregorian she used to read in childhood in the missals, yet modulated as unintermittently as Wagner; the same chromatic scale and yet a haunting of the antique rhythm in the melody. ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... be read the name "Guillaume," and to the left, "Successor to Master Chevrel." Sun and rain had worn away most of the gilding parsimoniously applied to the letters of this superscription, in which the Us and Vs had changed places in obedience to the laws of old-world orthography. ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac



Words linked to "Old-world" :   nonmodern



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