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More "Gimcrack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to-day. He's a kind of man I can't afford to trifle with; and you know the Caballero connection is of too much use to be jeopardised. So I've been thinking, Bess, that if you'd let me have that gimcrack locket my sister gave you, I could raise a tenner on it. Clary can afford to give you plenty of such things, even if it were lost, which ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... to the present time I have no complaint to make of Heaven. I am on the rise: here, mademoiselle, is a gimcrack they have given me;" and he unbuttoned his overcoat, and showed them a piece of tricolored ribbon and a clasp. "As for me, I look to 'the solid;' I care little for these things," said he, swelling visibly, "but the world is dazzled by them. However, I can show ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... still,—how long, O ye heavens, in the country of Dante? These, that fanaticized Europe, which now can forget them, release not This, their choicest of prey, this Italy; here you see them,— Here, with emasculate pupils and gimcrack churches of Gesu, Pseudo-learning and lies, confessional-boxes and postures,— Here, with metallic beliefs and regimental devotions,— Here, overcrusting with slime, perverting, defacing, debasing, Michael Angelo's Dome, that had hung the Pantheon in heaven, Raphael's Joys and ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... "In that gimcrack thing over there." Merrington pointed to a slight, elegant writing-table standing in a corner of the room. "Isn't it a typical female hiding-place? About as safe as burying your head in the sand. The drawer had been locked and the key taken away, but it ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... but two objects of interest (in Persian eyes)—the lighthouse (occasionally lit) and a palace of the Shah, built a few years since as a pied-a-terre for his Majesty on the occasion of his visits to Europe. It is a tawdry gimcrack edifice, painted bright blue, red, and green, in the worst possible taste. The Shah, on returning from Europe last time, is said to have remarked to his ministers on landing at Enzelli, "I have not seen a single building in all Europe to compare ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... you must be to give your gimcrack craft such a name as that! But you may take my word for it that as soon as ever you are caught in your slippery eel you will all either be hung or go to penal servitude for life—though perhaps you'll be let off, as you are ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... and sad, and distressed with hunger. They reminded me much of Indians, did these people. They had but little clothing, but such as they had was fanciful in character and fantastic in its arrangement. Any little absurd gewgaw or gimcrack they had they disposed in such a way as to make it attract attention most readily. They sat in silence, and with tireless patience watched our every motion with that vile, uncomplaining impoliteness which is so truly Indian, and which makes a white ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the allegory? I love to speak in such, and the above types have been presented to my mind while sitting opposite a gimcrack coat-of-arms and coronet that are painted in the Invalides Church, and assigned to one of ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... does not stop with the moneyed classes. It descends to those who have nothing but their salary to live upon. It descends to the wives of clerks and shopmen. They, too, dress for respectability. They live beyond their means. They must live in gimcrack suburban villas, and "give parties." They must see what is going on at the theatres. Every farthing is spent so soon as earned,—sometimes before. The husband does not insure his life, and the wife runs into debt. If the man died to-morrow, he would leave ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... number of pieces of apparatus of a generally useless kind which he had ordered on the strength of their much advertising, and he observed sententiously, "We armatures get badly imposed upon." Here were patent gimcrack printing devices, although he had scarce anything worth printing; all sorts of atrocious fancy borders with which he sought in vain to embellish out-of-focus under-exposures; orthochromatic filters and colour screens with which ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... brave tars have been pitched into with large pieces of salt beef, while the English commanders have been pelted with chops; but this is an error. The thing called junk is not the article of that name used in the Royal Navy, but a gimcrack attempt at a vessel, built principally of that sort of material, something between wood and paper, of which we in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... reckon, friend? 'Twas rather kind ov tryin'. The way he made the dollars fly, Such gimcrack things a-buyin'— He spent a big share ov a fortin' On pesky things that went ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... a vacuum being created in the tube on the other side of the piston by the working of a stationary engine. Great was the popularity of the atmospheric system; and still George Stephenson said "It won't do: it's but a gimcrack." Engineers of distinction said he was prejudiced, and that he looked upon the locomotive as a pet child of his own. "Wait a little," he replied, "and you will see that I am right." It was generally supposed that the locomotive system was about to be snuffed out. "Not so fast," said ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... unchecked or unnoticed; but it is the laughing at our weaknesses, or thwarting our humours, that is never to be forgotten. It is not the errors of others, but our own miscalculations, on which we wreak our lasting vengeance. It is ourselves that we cannot forgive. In the will of Nicholas Gimcrack the virtuoso, recorded in the Tatler, we learn, among other items, that his eldest son is cut off with a single cockleshell for his undutiful behaviour in laughing at his little sister whom his father kept preserved in spirits of wine. Another of his relations has a collection of grasshoppers ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Mayfair.' When any one praised his work, Maltby would lightly disparage it in comparison with Braxton's—'Ah, if I could write like THAT!' Maltby won golden opinions in this way. Braxton, on the other hand, would let slip no opportunity for sneering at Maltby's work—'gimcrack,' as he called it. This was not good for Maltby. Different men, ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... leading London newspapers were invited to witness its performances. Amongst them were Mr. Perry of the Morning chronicle, and Mr. Walter of The Times. Mr. Perry would have nothing to do with the machine; he would not even go to see it, for he regarded it as a gimcrack.[5] On the contrary, Mr. Walter, though he had five years before declined to enter into any arrangement with Bensley, now that he heard the machine was finished, and at work, decided to go and inspect it. It was thoroughly characteristic of the business spirit of the man. He had been ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... artist—was the first that got a ducking. They had forgot the middle bolt,—or rather this ingenious person had conceived that to be a clumsy-looking feature, which might safely be dispensed with, while he put some invisible gimcrack of his own to supply its place."[48] It is strange that Sir Walter did not see that this kind of criticism, so far as it applied at all to such an experiment as the Reform Bill, was even more in point as a rebuke to ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... happen 'pon the sea. We'd no food nor drink but a tin o' preserved pears; Lord knows how that got there; but 'twas soon done. Pete had a small compass, a gimcrack affair hangin' to his watch-chain, an' we pulled by it west-sou'-west towards the nighest land, which we made out must be some one or another o' the Leeward Islands; but 'twas more to keep ourselves busy than for aught else: the boat was so low in ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "thou wilt see him one day if thy creed is true. But to our graver matter. I will teach thee a spring, Tony, to catch a pewit. Yonder trap-door—yonder gimcrack of thine, will remain secure in appearance, will it not, though the supports are ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... his place, I reckon, friend? 'Twas rather kind ov tryin'. The way he made the dollars fly, Such gimcrack things a-buyin'— He spent a big share ov a fortin' On pesky things that went ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... other man would. You should have made her work, work with her 'ands, as I told you, 'stead of giving her her head, like you did, and lettin' her sit bone-idle in that gimcrack doll-house of yours from morning till night. Why, you should have taken a stick to her. There's many a man as would, before he'd 'a' let it come to that. Damn me if I know why ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... outspoken, but I hope they will be friends; I think she will have a good influence over Eva, because she is so very frank. I am sorry you don't like the furniture Eva has bought. Is it very gimcrack?' inquired Stella. ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... engines may have some rest. By-and-by we shall get into a calm; it will be your turn then. We seamen have the ship to ourselves at present. If we put into Simon's Bay, and there happens to be no rollers tumbling in, you will have time enough to put your gimcrack machinery to rights." ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... didn't say that, Miss Pollyanna. When he comes back he writes books—queer, odd books, they say, about some gimcrack he's found in them heathen countries. But he don't never seem ter want ter spend no money here—leastways, ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... stop with the moneyed classes. It descends to those who have nothing but their salary to live upon. It descends to the wives of clerks and shopmen. They, too, dress for respectability. They live beyond their means. They must live in gimcrack suburban villas, and "give parties." They must see what is going on at the theatres. Every farthing is spent so soon as earned,—sometimes before. The husband does not insure his life, and the wife runs into debt. If the man died to-morrow, he ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... 'twas but t'other day, one brought him an ill-carved crucifix. Says he, 'Is this how you present "Salvator Mundi?" who died for you in mortal agony; and you go and grudge him careful work. This slovenly gimcrack, a crucifix? But that it is a crucifix of some sort, and I am a holy man, I'd dust your jacket with your crucifix,' says he. Onesta heard every word ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... how can you think of risking yourself in such a gimcrack contrivance as that? I must absolutely send a couple of my men along with you to see ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
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