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Adorn   /ədˈɔrn/   Listen
Adorn

verb
(past & past part. adorned; pres. part. adorning)
1.
Make more attractive by adding ornament, colour, etc..  Synonyms: beautify, decorate, embellish, grace, ornament.  "Beautify yourself for the special day"
2.
Be beautiful to look at.  Synonyms: beautify, deck, decorate, embellish, grace.
3.
Furnish with power or authority; of kings or emperors.  Synonyms: clothe, invest.



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"Adorn" Quotes from Famous Books



... I live for self they are able to assist me in all my selfish enterprises. They can provide a winter palace in the city and a summer palace in the mountains or down by the sea. They can adorn my walls with the choicest of paintings. They can put the finest of carpets upon my floors. They can make possible tours abroad and private boxes at the theatre. They can search the treasure houses of the world and bring to me their rarest jewels. They can give ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell

... when a boy of twelve years of age, he had met "Glorious John", though the succession could be passed on otherwise through Congreve, one of the most polished of English satirical writers, whom Dryden complimented as "one whom every muse and grace adorn", while to him also Pope dedicated his translation of the Iliad.[14] Bolingbroke, furthermore, was the friend and patron of Pope, while the witty St. John, in turn, was bound by ties of friendship to Mallet, who passed on the succession to Goldsmith, ...
— English Satires • Various

... to receive the rudiments of their education. The cardinal of Lorraine imitated this example, by erecting a like seminary in his diocese of Rheims; and though Rome was somewhat distant, the pope would not neglect to adorn, by a foundation of the same nature, that capital of orthodoxy. These seminaries, founded with so hostile an intention, sent over, every year, a colony of priests, who maintained the Catholic superstition in its full height of bigotry; and being educated with a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... They executed bas-reliefs to adorn the walls of a temple, its facade or its pediment. Of this style of work is the famous frieze of the Panathenaic procession which was carved around the Parthenon, representing young Athenian women on the day of the great ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... wide galleries, and an ample court, Chambers adorn'd by pictures' soothing charm, I found together blended; noble sculpture In marble, polish'd by no chisel vile; A noble garden, where a lasting April All-various flowers and fruits and verdure showers; Soft shades, and waters tempering the hot air; And undulating paths in equal beauty! ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... many glaciers, a hundred or more, that adorn the walls of the great Stickeen River Canyon, this is the largest. It draws its sources from snowy mountains within fifteen or twenty miles of the coast, pours through a comparatively narrow canyon about two miles in width in a magnificent cascade, and expands in a broad ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... the national cause, left their homes daily and toiled steadily and patiently through the long years of the war, in summer's heat and winter's cold, voluntarily secluding themselves from the society and social position they were so well fitted to adorn, and in which they had been the bright particular stars, these too, for the great love they bore to their country should receive its honors and ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... gave ere charity began. Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride, And ev'n his failings lean'd to virtue's side; But in his duty prompt, at every call, He watch'd and wept, he pray'd and felt for all; At church, with meek and unaffected grace, His looks adorn'd the venerable place; Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway, And fools, who came to scoff, remain'd to pray. The service past, around the pious man, With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran; Ev'n children followed with endearing wile, And pluck'd his ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... Wonota does not need that. Chief Totantora may be lost to me forever. I should not adorn myself, or think of self-adornment. No! I will save my money until I can go to that Europe where the great chief ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson

... fellowship who were to be lodged in the Schopperhof; nay, the old house was to be decked outside with a festal dress, in obedience to the behest of the town-council that every citizen should do his utmost so to cleanse and adorn his house, that it should please the eyes ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... an oriental town is always more or less ruinous; and here the eye is fatigued with bricks and crumbling edifices, and the ear with prayer-bells. The bright meadows and green trees which adorn the European Resident's dwelling, some four miles back from the river, alone relieve the monotony of the scene. The streets are so narrow that it is difficult to ride a horse through them; and the houses are often six stories high, with galleries crossing ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... and passionate heart;—and yet, to this submissive infinitude of souls, and evermore succeeding and succeeding multitude, hungry for bread of life, they do but play upon sweetly modulated pipes; with pompous nomenclature adorn the councils of hell; touch a troubadour's guitar to the courses of the suns; and fill the openings of eternity, before which prophets have veiled their faces, and which angels desire to look into, with idle puppets of their scholastic imagination, and melancholy ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin

... who had seen it so lately adorn her, And he knew the great C with the Crown in the corner, The instant he spied it, smoked something amiss, And said, with some energy, "D—— it! what's this?" He went home in a fume, And bounced into her room, Crying, "So, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... fiction that the coronation of poets was a prerogative of the old Roman emperors, and consequently was no less his own, he crowned, May 15, 1355, the Florentine scholar Zanobi della Strada at Pisa, to the annoyance of Petrarch, who complained that the barbarian laurel had dared adorn the man loved by the Ausonian muses, and to the great disgust of Boccaccio, who declined to recognize this laurea Pisana as legitimate. Indeed, it might be fairly asked with what right this stranger, half Slavonic by birth, came to sit in judgment on the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... beastly robin's nest, crowded into a corner by those squawking things, and domineered over by her! I wasn't made for that! I'm superior to it. Domestic life doesn't suit me. I was made for society. I adorn it. She never appreciated me. She couldn't soar to it. When I think of the way she treated me," he exclaimed, suddenly getting into a rage, "I've a great mind to turn back into a robin and peck her ...
— Little Saint Elizabeth and Other Stories • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... furnace will he wrestle with his work; the noise of the hammer will be ever in his ear, and his eyes are upon the pattern of the vessel; he will set his heart upon perfecting his works, and he will be wakeful to adorn them perfectly. So is the potter sitting at his work, and turning the wheel about with his feet, who is alway anxiously set at his work, and all his handywork is by number; he will fashion the clay with ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various

... best show the stuff one is made of. There is no essay, nothing strictly didactic. Facts are given: inferences are left entirely with the reader. Few books are more wearisome than those which are thoroughly exhaustive, which point a moral and adorn a tale on every page. Imagination and thought must sit supine, despairing of new conquests. Their work has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... breezes bright of orient morn With rosy hues the heavens adorn, They cheer with hope of gladdening light The hearts that spend in ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius

... principally of importance in connection with the ancient Babylonian state of Lagas, the home of an old and important line of kings and viceroys, among the latter being the celebrated Gudea, whose statues and inscribed cylinders now adorn the Babylonian galleries of the Louvre at Paris. His name means "Lord of Girsu," which was probably one of the suburbs, and the oldest part, of Lagas. This deity was son of En-lila or Bel, and was identified with Nirig or Enu-restu. ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches

... the Bollandists discovered during their Roman journey, we have both the Greek original and a Latin translation. Appended to the lives are annotations, explaining any difficulties therein; while no less than five or six indexes adorn each volume: the first an alphabetical list of Saints discussed; the second chronological; the third historical; the fourth topographical; the fifth an onomasticon, or glossary; the sixth moral or dialectic, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... which they were; two were nearest to the bear's claws, Thaddeus and the Count; to them the skin belongs. Thaddeus will yield, I am sure, as the younger, and as the kinsman of our host; hence Your Honour the Count will receive the spolia opima.94 Let this trophy adorn your hunting chamber, let it be a reminder of to-day's sport, a symbol of fortune in the chase, a spur to ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... from his death, to you, 'Twere policy, and honour too, To do as you resolv'd to do: But, Sir, 'twou'd wrong your valour much, To say it needs or fears a crutch. 1065 Great conquerors greater glory gain By foes in triumph led, than slain: The laurels that adorn their brows Are pull'd from living not dead boughs, And living foes: the greatest fame 1070 Of cripple slain can be but lame. One half of him's already slain, The other is not worth your pain; Th' honour can but on ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... Has robb'd the neighboring fields of half their growth; His seat, where solitary sports are seen, Indignant spurns the cottage from the green; Around the world each needful product flies, For all the luxuries the world supplies: While thus the land adorn'd for pleasure—all In barren splendor feebly waits ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... Vatican by the addition of the Sistine Chapel. For the decoration of this he procured the best Tuscan talent of his day—and of many days—and brought Alessandro Filipeppi (Botticelli), Pietro Vannuccio (Il Perugino), and Domenico Bigordi (IL Ghirlandajo) from Florence to adorn its walls with ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... handsome plunder, are comparable for an instant to the robber of Peters and Bradshaw. They kept their fist fiercely upon the gold of others, and cared not by what artifice it was extorted. Hind never took a sovereign meanly; he approached no enterprise which he did not adorn. Living in a true Augustan age, he was a classic among highwaymen, the very ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... roar of distant ocean waves. With dancers all engaged in their vocation, and with the voice of singers, the (Kuru) city then resembled the mansion of Vaisravana himself.[186] Bards and eulogists, O king, accompanied by beautiful women were seen to adorn diverse retired spots in the city. The pennons were caused by the wind to float gaily on every part of the city, as if bent upon showing the Kurus the southern and the northern points of the compass. All the officers also of the government ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... indeed, it is possible, for the teacher to quicken imagination in her pupils unless she herself is endowed with this animating quality. Dr. Henry van Dyke puts the case thus: "I care not whether a man is called a tutor, an instructor, or a full professor; nor whether any academic degrees adorn his name; nor how many facts or symbols of facts he has stored away in his brain. If he has these four powers—clear sight, quick imagination, sound reason, strong will—I call him an educated man and fit to ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... words a minute. But when they have got the job apparently done, they simmer away to nothing. They perform mysterious rites with ink-eraser. They scratch feebly with knives. They hold up to the light, they tittivate, they muse and they adorn. It is not the slightest use intimating that you do not care twopence whether there are typographic errors or not—the expert typist treats you with the scorn that the expert always does treat the layman with. At such junctures ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... of this utterly dead school are, first the wilful closing of its eyes to natural facts;—for, however ignorant a person may be, he need only look at a human being to see that it has a mouth as well as eyes; and secondly, the endeavour to adorn or idealize natural fact according to its own notions: it puts red spots in the middle of the hands, and sharpens the thumbs, thinking to improve them. Here you have the most pure type possible of the principles of idealism in all ages: whenever people don't look at Nature, they always ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... and blessed, were in each other's arms, and they forgot all but the delicious present. Vows of love and constancy were exchanged, and rings were given, in remembrance of the blissful hour. But strange to say, as Bolko was about to adorn the hand of Emma with the pledge of his affection, a fearful gust of wind burst the window open, and blew into the room a little glistening object that rolled to Bolko's feet and settled there. Emma raised it from the ground, and discovered in her ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... was ablaze with light. From shop windows, from illuminated signs, from office buildings, street-cars, and motors, the carnival of theatre-hour was lit with glaring brilliancy. Women, in all the semi-barbaric costliness with which their sex loves to adorn itself of a night, stepped from limousines with their tiny silvery feet twinkling beneath the load of gorgeous furs and vivid opera-cloaks; while well-groomed men, in the smart insignificance of their evening clothes, guided the ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... you so adorn Would lose its prestige, visibly grown slack, And all its lofty pledges be forsworn Were you to deviate from your boots of black; Were you to shed that coat of sombre dye, That ebon brain-box (imitation beaver) Whose torrid aspect strikes the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various

... compositions were historic tales; and they were not composed for mere amusement, but possessed in the eyes of learned men a real authority in point of fact. If fancy was permitted to adorn them, the facts themselves were to remain unaltered with their chief circumstances. Hence the writers of the various annals of Ireland do not scruple to quote many poems or other tales as authority for the facts of history which ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... let the good old crop adorn The hills our fathers trod; Still let us, for his golden corn, Send up our thanks to God! From ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... tears profuse, As dews refresh the flower, She is well worth three purses full, And will adorn the bower— For vain her vow to pine and die Thus torn from her dear valley: She reigns, and we still row along The dreaded ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... came upon him with a shock, as though he had just opened a telegram which said so, that May, and not the other girl, was his destined mate. And he thought of her fortune, tiny but nevertheless useful, and how clever she was, and how inexplicably different from the rest of her sex, and how she would adorn his house, and set him off, and help him in his career. He heard himself saying negligently to friends: 'My wife speaks French like a native. Of course, my wife has travelled a great deal. My wife has thoroughly studied the management of children. ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... the things around. To the right and left of where he stood the screen of laurels curved and embraced a sort of arena in which, among yews that had once been clipped into cones, lay capitals, columns, broken pieces of arches and vaults, obviously placed there to adorn the formal garden that had been laid out on the ruins of the ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... they pushed forward in the direction of Stryj and Lemberg, but never reached their destination. Barely through the passes, the Germans struck upon Lysa Gora, over 3,300 feet high. This mountain range is barren of all vegetation—no sheltering trees or shrubs adorn its slopes. The route of the Germans crossed Lysa Gora south and in front of the ridge of Koziowa, where the Russian lines, under General Ivanoff, lay in waiting. Passing down the bald slopes of Lysa Gora toward the valley ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... the sum and substance of their tale. O how I cursed the censoriousness of this plaguy triumvirate! A parson, a milliner, and a mantua-maker! The two latter, not more by business led to adorn the persons, than generally by scandal to destroy the reputations, of those they have a mind to exercise their ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... blamelessness of natural life and in its perfectibility; or they cling at least to a noble ambition to perfect it and a glorious ability to enjoy it. Instead of renouncing the flesh, they feed, refine, and adorn it; their arts glorify its beauty and its passions. And far from renouncing the devil—if we understand by the devil the proud assertion on the part of the finite of its autonomy, autonomy of the intellect in science, autonomy of the ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... which such hideous parodies are now making themselves common in England—but was not contented with the usual ornament of the double tuft. The cap was small, and jaunty; trimmed with silk velvet—as is common here with men careful to adorn their persons; but this man's cap was finished off with a jewelled button and golden filigree work. He was dressed in a short jacket with a stand up collar; and that also was covered with golden buttons and with golden button-holes. It was all gilt down the front, and all lace down the back. ...
— John Bull on the Guadalquivir from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope

... and exported to France for the magnificent Palace of Versailles; which, though regarded by the French nation, says Voltaire, as "a favorite without merit," Louis the Fourteenth persisted at the time in lavishly beautifying, and looked as for abroad as Portsoy for materials with which to adorn it. I have, however, seen it stated that the greater part of a ship's cargo, brought afterwards to Paris on speculation, was suffered to lie unwrought for years in the stone-dealer's yard, and was ultimately disposed ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... this water-spouting instrument was erected, it was found here too that no water was to be had—no natural and gratuitous supply. And now when the stranger wonders at this tall disfigurement, and inquires into its meaning, he is told how the spirited efforts of the Brightonians to adorn their town have been rendered fruitless by the parsimony of water-companies. Once a week, however, his cicerone will advertise him—once every week and for two hours together—the fountain is let off to the sound of music, and the people ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... Spartacus, and who not unreasonably resented the pretensions of Pompeius, fell miserably in Parthia, after having led the Romans to the most fatal of their fields except Cannae. Wanting the nerve to die sword in hand in the midst of his foes, like Spartacus, he consented to adorn the triumph of those foes, and perished as ignominiously as the great ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... he quickly presented himself with the assurance that now he thought he knew where a serpent might be lodged. The Indian servants all devoutly believed in his skill; but it is impossible not to be ashamed of Europeans, who adorn their books with marks of similar gullibility.—Abridged ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various

... which your attention is to be given. It will be more consistent with those circumstances, and far more congenial with the feelings which actuate me to substitute in place of a recommendation of particular measures, the tribute that is due to the talents, the rectitude, and the patriotism which adorn the characters selected to devise and adopt them. In these honorable qualifications, I behold the surest pledges that as on one side no local prejudices or attachments, no separate views, no party animosities will misdirect the comprehensive and equal eye which ought ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various

... love at random and at any rate in the drama passed from Paris to London about 1660, with our ribbons and our perruques. The ladies who adorn the theatrical circle there, in like manner as in this city, will suffer love only to be the theme of every conversation. The judicious Mr. Addison had the effeminate complaisance to soften the severity of his dramatic ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire

... of Finance, he exclaimed, "C-o! Todos van robando menos yo!" ("Everybody is robbing here except I.") It is public news that President Celman carried away to his private residence in the country a most beautiful and expensive bronze fountain presented by the inhabitants of the city to adorn the principal plaza. [Footnote: Public square.] The president is elected by the people for a term of three years, and invariably retires a rich man, however poor he may have been when entering on his office. The laws of the ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... of brightest color. They crowd the streams, wave on the hills, shine in the woodland vistas, and color the snow-edge. Daisies, orchids, tiger lilies, fringed gentians, wild red roses, mariposas, Rocky Mountain columbines, harebells, and forget-me-nots adorn every space and nook. ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... those matters of the King, his master, which he had in hand, without being angered by the unfavourable reply which she was resolved to make to him, though she delayed it until his return. However, she found herself greatly perplexed with regard to the diamond, for she had never been wont to adorn herself at the expense of any but her husband. For this reason, being a woman of excellent understanding, she determined to draw from the ring some profit to the Captain's conscience. She therefore despatched one of her servants to the Captain's wife with ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... their family reputation, or, if their family have none, identify themselves with some well-known statesman, use his opinions, and lend him their patronage on all occasions. This is a dangerous plan, and serves oftener, I am afraid, to point a difference than to adorn a speech. ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... bronze monument is none other than the votive offering to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, presented by the confederated states of Greece, to celebrate the victory of Plataea. The golden tripod was melted down at the time of Philip of Macedon, but the twisted serpents, brought by Constantine to adorn and hallow his new capital by the Bosphorus, bore and still bear the names, written in archaic characters, of all the Hellenic states which took part in that ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... recurrent barbarism. Under the Roman rule it changed its name to Paestum, and was prosperous. The Saracens destroyed it in the ninth century of our era; and Robert Guiscard carried some of the materials of its buildings to adorn his new town of Salerno. Since then the ancient site has been abandoned to malaria and solitude. The very existence of Paestum was unknown, except to wandering herdsmen and fishers coasting near its ruined colonnades, until the end of the last century. Yet, strange to relate, after all these ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... longer fringes thee here. It has long since fallen before the planter's axe; and the golden sugar-cane, the silvery rice, and the snowy cotton-plant, flourish in its stead. Forest enough has been left to adorn the picture. I behold vegetable forms of tropic aspect, with broad shining foliage—the Sabal palm, the anona, the water-loving tupelo, the catalpa with its large trumpet flowers, the melting liquidambar, and the wax-leaved mangolia. Blending their foliage with these ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... good, however, to dwell for a considerable time in the valley of the shadow of death, even to adorn a tale or point a moral, so the journey was continued toward fairer fields ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... gentleman—rather exorbitantly. That's the way a gentleman always pays. So now suppose you return to your own sort and coyly reappear amid certain circles recently neglected, and which, at one period of your career, you permitted yourself to embellish and adorn ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... pealing of the thunder. To her the musician and the poet listen, and imitate the great teacher. It is nature who, in the structure of the leaf or in the avenue of the lofty limes, teaches the architect how to adorn his designs with the most graceful of embellishments, to rear the lofty column or display the lengthening vista of the cathedral aisle. It is nature who is teaching us all to be tender, loving, and true, and to love and worship God, and to admire all His works. Let us then in ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... by Apelles hand. Of perfect beauty did the pattern stand! But then bright nymphs from every part of Greece Did all contribute to adorn the piece. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... folly will not do; Where folly joins with roguery, There's little harm, it seems to me. The pope, the king, the youthful squire, Each one the fool's cap doth attire; He who the bauble will not wear, The worst of fools doth soon appear. Thee may the motley still adorn, When, an old man, the laurel crown Thy head doth deck, while gifts less vain, Thine age to bless will still remain. When fair grandchildren thee delight, Mayst then recall this Christmas night. When ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... are sporting with his weapons. He stretches out his arm towards the Goddess, who looks upon him with fond glances. Cupids are spreading out a draping." That is Pesne's luxurious performance in the ceiling.—"Weapon-festoons, in basso-relievo, gilt, adorn the walls of this room; and two Pictures, also by Pesne, which represent, in life size, the late King and Queen [our good friends Friedrich Wilhelm and his Sophie], are worthy of attention. Over each of the doors, you find in low-relief the Profiles ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle

... river, but which is now a sewery looking stream that tries to atone for its shallowness and narrowness by its thickness. They have likewise told us about the old lords of Bermingham—whose monuments still adorn the parish church—who have died out leaving no successors to bear for their proud title the name of the "best governed city ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton

... story of Grendel's mother was originally a separate lay from the first seems to be suggested by the fact that the monsters are described over again, and many new details added, such as would be inserted by a new singer who wished to enhance and adorn the ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.

... go away and serve strangers. It happened that Jofrid had expended much hard work in procuring a kind of dower for herself. With skilful hands she had woven bright colored fabrics, such as are used to adorn a room, and she wanted to put them up in her own home, when she got one. Now she wondered how those cloths would look here. She wished she could try them in the ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... on the mock Christmas tree for her. A Jack-in-the-box! She's always springing him on an unsuspecting public, and just about as unexpectedly as those little mannikins bob up. She has used him so often to 'point her morals and adorn her tales' that every girl in school ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... 37. They adorn many astronomical manuscripts, particularly the Vaticanus gr. 1291, the archetype of which dates back to the third century of our era; cf. Boll, Sitzungsb. Akad. Muenchen, 1899, pp. ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... on a broad non-denominational basis, in which all these colleges should be component parts. He brought in a bill to found the University of Toronto, a measure on which time has set its approving seal. The many stately buildings which adorn {90} Queen's Park, the long distinguished roll of graduates, the noble group of affiliated colleges, Knox, St Michael's, Trinity, Wycliffe, Victoria, attest the wisdom of Baldwin's far-seeing measure. Bishop Strachan, the doughty Aberdonian champion of Anglican rights and ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan

... of it; but it will break his heart. So long as three or four years ago he used to adorn and adore his little idol, whom he will some day fall in love with in right earnest if he remains here. The parents of little La Valliere have for a long time perceived and been amused at it; now they ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... adorn your souls In robes prepar'd by God, Wrought by the labours of his Son, And ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts

... jewels-worn by denizens from whose faded brows the laurel wreath hath fallen. How shrunken with the sorrow of their wretched lives, and yet how sportive they seem! The pale gaslight throws a spectre-like hue over their paler features; the artificial crimson with which they would adorn the withered cheek refuses to lend a charm to features wan and ghastly. The very air is sickly with the odor of their cosmetics. And with flaunting cambrics they bend over carriage sides, salute each and every pedestrian, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... picture for you. Mark for a softnosed bullet. Old lardyface standing up to the business end of a gun. Gob, he'd adorn a sweepingbrush, so he would, if he only had a nurse's apron on him. And then he collapses all of a sudden, twisting around all the opposite, as limp as a ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... One, whom with thee friendship had early prized; She came, no more a phantom to adorn A moment, but an inmate of the heart; And yet a spirit, there for me enshrined, To penetrate the lofty and the low; Even as one essence of pervading light Shines in the brightness of ten thousand stars, And the meek worm ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... most to be feared is death by hunger. Come, therefore, let us sacrifice to the gods in heaven the best of the oxen of the Sun. And we will vow to build to the Sun, when we shall reach the land of Ithaca, a great temple which we will adorn with gifts many and precious. But if he be minded to sink our ship, being wroth for his oxen's sake, verily I would rather drown than waste slowly to death ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church

... of lavish Nature over a landscape of respectable extent, uniting that sublimity which a wide expanse always conveys to the mind, with that distinctness so desired by the eye; which cultivation alone can offer and fertility bestow. Every town that should adorn these lovely plains, however, exhibits, upon a nearer approach, misery; the more mortifying, as it is less expected by a spectator, who requires at least some days experience to convince him that the squallid scenes of wretchedness and dirt in which he is obliged to pass ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... give the fatal wound, Or hostile millions press him to the ground? His fall was destined to a barren strand, A petty fortress, and a dubious hand; 220 He left the name at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a tale. ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... the Tuileries, or Luxembourg, or the Boboli, or the Villa Reale, or fifty more grounds and gardens, of a similar nature, that might be mentioned; but, seen in the spring and early summer, they adorn the building they surround, and lend to the whole neighborhood a character of high civilization, that no other place in America can show, in precisely the same form, or ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... blood,' 'a cat and dog life,' 'a day of reckoning,' 'a queen of fashion, 'to give a free hand,' 'to be at a deadlock,' and so forth; and in what particular circumstances he himself might make use of them in conversation. Failing these, he would adorn it with puns and other 'plays upon words' which he had learned by rote. As for the names of strangers which were uttered in his hearing, he used merely to repeat them to himself in a questioning tone, which, he thought, would suffice to furnish him with explanations ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... themselves recklessly upon the English language, and extort from it its highest expression in color and lyrical beauty, the novelists whose mission it is, in the newspaper campaign against realism, to adorn and dramatize the commonest events of life, creating in place of the old-fashioned "news" the highly spiced "story," which is the ideal ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... used to hold revels here; and stubborn James II. resided here now and then, till he was driven by a roused people from throne, palace, and country. William III. was very partial to Hampton Court, and did much to improve and adorn it. His queen here performed prodigious labors in the embroidery line, and kept her maids of honor as hard at work on chair covers and bed curtains as though they were poor seamstresses, ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood

... yet so artful and sly, is the expression of their dark orbs; her mouth is fine and almost delicate, and there is not a queen on the proudest throne between Madrid and Moscow who might not and would not envy the white and even rows of teeth which adorn it, which seem not of pearl but of the purest elephant's bone of Multan. She comes not alone; a swarthy two-year-old bantling clasps her neck with one arm, its naked body half extant from the coarse blanket which, drawn round her shoulders, is secured at her bosom by a skewer. Though tender of age, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... A year later the Mitre was destroyed in the Great Fire of London and Pepys met its much-tried owner shortly after "looking over his ruins." But the tavern was rebuilt on a more spacious scale, and Isaac Fuller was commissioned to adorn its walls with paintings. This was the artist whose fondness of tavern life prevented him from becoming a great painter. The commission at the Mitre was no doubt much to his liking, and Walpole describes in detail ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... first glimpse of a woodchuck always reminds me of an old story which needs to be retold that it may point my moral even though it does not adorn my tale. ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... pedlar, paid her a visit in the very height of her malady, and without permission, given or asked, took the liberty, in her father's absence, of completely removing her raven hair, with the exception, as in Mave's case, of those locks which adorn the face and forehead, and, to his shame and dishonesty be it told, without ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... Lights of the Jews in the Middle Ages. Ibn Ezra was born at Toledo in Spain, about 1092 or 1093 A.D., or in 1088 according to Graetz, 'Geschichte der Juden', vi. 198. He was poor, but studied hard, composed poems wherewith to 'Adorn my own, my Hebrew nation', married, had a son Isaac (a poet too), travelled to Africa, the Holy Land, Rome in 1140, Persia, India, Italy, France, England. He wrote many treatises on Hebrew Grammar, astronomy, mathematics, &c., commentaries on the books of the Bible, &c.—many of them in Rome—and ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... with no appreciation of that unlimited range of power which belongs to De Quincey, but not at all to Rousseau. All but one of the trophies which we have hypothetically transferred to the Frenchman adorn a single volume out of twenty-two, in the Boston edition. Nor is this one imperial column adorned by these alone: there are, besides,—alas for Rousseau!—two other spolia opima by which the French master is, in his own field, proved not the first, nor even the second,—proximus, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... request, will be found in the Appendix. It is some what remarkable, that female poets have hitherto been the chief celebrators of Captain Cook in this country. Perhaps a subject which would furnish materials for as rich a production as Camoen's Lusiad, and which would adorn the pen of a Hayley or a Cowper, may hereafter call forth the genius of some poet of the ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis

... alliance with Christianity. This influence again was predominantly Jewish. Philo and Aristobulus, the leading Jewish philosophers of Alexandria, "wholly attached to the ancient religion of their fathers, both resolved to adorn it with the spoils of other systems and to open to Judaism the way to immense conquests."[105] This method of borrowing from other races and religions those ideas useful for their purpose has always been the custom of the Jews. The Cabala, as we have seen, was made up of these heterogeneous ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... active as a boy, and before her marriage had taken keen delight in climbing rocks and trees. The apple-trees in the orchard were in full bloom, and taking a fancy to adorn herself with their blossoms, she climbed up among the branches of one of the tallest, in order, as she said, to "take her pick and choice," Rosie, Lulu, Gracie and Walter standing near and watching her ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley

... like the snow. Here in the wind I dream her unbound hair Is blowing round me, that desire's sweet glow Has touched her pale keen face, and willful mien. And though she steps as one in manner born To tread the forests of fair Paradise, Dark memory's wood she chooses to adorn. Here with bowed head, bashful with half-desire She glides into my yesterday's deep dream, All glowing by the misty ferny cliff Beside the far forbidden thundering stream. Within my dream I shake with the old flood. I fear its going, ere the ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay

... incloses, I have the honour to inform Museum Collectors, Librarians, Builders, Shopkeepers, and business persons in general, that the fixed prices will hardly be the real value of the Glasses which adorn them.'' ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley

... that when a painter desires to become famous in his art he endeavours to copy the originals of the rarest painters that he knows; and the same rule holds good for all the most important crafts and callings that serve to adorn a state; thus must he who would be esteemed prudent and patient imitate Ulysses, in whose person and labours Homer presents to us a lively picture of prudence and patience; as Virgil, too, shows us in the person of AEneas the virtue of a pious son and the sagacity of a ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... of this argument lies, not only in the short distance from that island to this archipelago, for it is only distant about sixty leguas from the point of Samboanga; but also because in Macasar, as is reported, there are Indians who adorn and tattoo the body as do the Visayans (who are called Pintados on that account). But it is not known with certainty where one and the other originated. We only know of a relation written by the chief pilot, Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, of his voyage to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... Had not Mr. Boyle said her captain was a lucky man? Elsie laughed aloud in her joy, for the queer notion occurred to her that her grumpy friend would surely have some remarkable story of the one-legged skipper of the Flower of the Ocean brig, wherewith to point the moral and adorn the tale of the Kansas ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... brush and chips, half hidden by snow. Now—presto! there is a mansion in the midst of fields, and a garden neatly made, and"—turning with a bow to Daisy—"a fair mistress for them all, who would adorn any palace or park in Europe, and whom I remember as a frightened little baby, with stockings either one of which would ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... gratefull to all Lovers of Learning; for whose benefit I have Englished, and to whom I addresse this Essay, which contains a Method, by the Rules whereof we may Shape our better part, Rectifie our Reason, Form our Manners and Square our Actions, Adorn our Mindes, and making a diligent Enquiry into Nature, wee may attain to the Knowledge of the Truth, which is the most desirable ...
— A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason - and the Discovery of Truth in the Sciences • Rene Descartes

... productions of judgment and fancy is an ill return for the possession of those endowments. Continue to deceive yourself in the idea that you are known only to be eminently admired and regarded for the valuable qualities that attach private friendships, and the graceful talents that adorn conversation. Enough of what you have written has stolen into full public notice to answer my purpose; and you will, perhaps, be the only person, conversant in elegant literature, who shall read this address and ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan

... might be deemed objectionable. I had asked her permission to dedicate the play to her, which she had granted; and though she failed to convince me that a young-lady element had any business whatever in a play, she very kindly allowed her name to adorn the title-page ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... classic preacher of British Methodism." "He ranks," says Dr. Durban, "with Dr. Dallinger and the Rev. Thomas Gunn Selby as the three most learned and refined of living preachers in the English Methodist pulpit. Dr. Watkinson is famous for the glittering illustrations which adorn his style. These are for the most part gathered from biography, the classics, and science, and of late years Dr. Watkinson has become more and more addicted to spiritualizing the aspects of modern scientific discovery. Dr. Watkinson never reads ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser

... girl," a method which encourages intimacy in the telling as well as a sort of gushing attention to the reader not so pleasant. Miss NORA SCHLEGEL has drawn a pretty picture of Julia and Jack to adorn the wrapper, and I can assure everyone who cares to know it that they are just as nice as they look; Jack's passion for abbreviation ("rhodos" for rhododendrons) being the only ground of quarrel I have with them or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various

... thrum, and quaff my wine, joyful at heart that ye are meet to be my mates. The various tables, on which ye are laid, adorn with beauteous grace this quiet nook. The fragrant dew, next to the spot I sit, is far apart from that by the three paths. I fling my book aside and turn my gaze upon a twig full of your autumn (bloom). What time the frost is pure, a new dream steals ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... it is true,' commented Basil, forcing a smile. 'You know, my good Felix, that the Emperor would fain have had her adorn his court; and I would rather see her Queen of Italy. But tell me now, last of all, what talk there has been of me. Or has my ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... under Egbert, who had been a disciple of Beda. And so we see the torch of learning handed on from Northumbria to the Frankish dominions in time to save the tradition of culture from perishing in the desolation that was near. Among the names that adorn the annals of revived learning under Charles himself, we must mention Smaragdus, because lfric acknowledges him as one of his sources. The book referred to would hardly be the "Diadem of Monks," a selection of pieces from the Fathers with Scripture texts, worked up as it were into a Whole Duty ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle



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