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Garish   /gˈɛrɪʃ/   Listen
Garish

adjective
1.
Tastelessly showy.  Synonyms: brassy, cheap, flash, flashy, gaudy, gimcrack, loud, meretricious, tacky, tatty, tawdry, trashy.  "A flashy ring" , "Garish colors" , "A gaudy costume" , "Loud sport shirts" , "A meretricious yet stylish book" , "Tawdry ornaments"



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"Garish" Quotes from Famous Books



... about him on all sides: their many forms closed round him, the garish sunshine bleaching the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... decorative scheme I had in mind. The kitchen with its ranges I found would be almost quite suitable for my purpose, requiring but little alteration, but the large room was of course atrociously impossible in the American fashion, with unsightly walls, the floors covered with American cloth of a garish pattern, and the small, oblong tables and ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... vulgar thing sunligh'. Art is always superior to Nature. You love the garish day being a gross Philistine, wha'? Now I only live at night. Glorious wicked nigh'. So I make my own nigh'. Wha'? Have some Green Chartreuse—only drink fit for a Hedonist. I drink its colour and I taste its glorious greenness. Ichor and ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... express is gliding into Cirencester, the ancient capital of the Cotswold country. How fair the old place seems after the dirt and smoke of London! Here town and country are blended into one, and everything is clean and fresh and picturesque. The garish church, as you view it from the top of the market-place, has a charm unsurpassed by any other sacred building in the land. In what that charm lies I have often wondered. Is it the marvellous symmetry of the whole graceful pile, as the eye, glancing down the massive square tower and ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... call, cool, passionless, commanding. She flew up the stairs, closing Jane's door as she hurried by. The door to her mother's room was open. It was brightly lighted. The shade of the lamp had been removed and its garish yellow fell full upon the bed and the strange figure which ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... A garish, gray figure arose and stumbled into the candle-light. It was Anthony. His eyes were half shut. He seemed desperately sleepy, and gibbering as ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... ago it was much the same as now; twenty years from now the garish newness will be worn off and it will return to its appearance of ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... iron-hearted senseless mass of madness and folly! why did I ever dream that I had the power to arrest thy headlong course, and fix thy bewildered wits, thy garish idiot eye on me? On my weak efforts! my humble wishes! my craving wants! What signs of luxury, what tokens of dissipation, what innumerable marks of extravagant waste did I every where see around me, at the moment that poverty was thus pinching me to the very bone! Here a vain mortal, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... thee, dark pile! departs the Chief; His feudal realm in other regions lay: In thee the wounded conscience courts relief, Retiring from the garish blaze of day. ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... trousers? And later on, had I dreamed it, or had there really been a cry? It came back to me with horrible distinctness. It was a real cry, the cry of a man in terror for his life. I stopped short in the road and wiped my damp forehead. What a fool I was! The night was over. Here in the garish day there was surely nothing to fear? Nevertheless, I, who had started out thirsting only to breathe the fresh salt air, now walked along with stealthy nervous footsteps, looking all the time from left to right, starting ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... in the home of Calvin Wentworth, a millionaire mine-owner. Into the garish and vulgarly ostentatious reception-room a pale, sweet slip of a girl drifted, with big eyes shining with joy of her home-coming. Some of the auditors again failed to recognize the great actress, so wonderful was her transformation in look and manner. The critics themselves, ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... luxurious restaurants for people who can spend a great deal of money, but in Berlin they have them for people who cannot spend much. That is the difference between the two cities. How Berlin does it is a mystery. In the restaurants I have seen there is neither noise nor bustle nor garish colours nor rough service nor any other of the miseries we find in our own cheap eating-houses. In one of them the walls were done in some kind of plain fumed wood with a frieze and ceiling of soft dull gold. In another each room had ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... but to "stick it." It did not even occur to him to resist though his eyes seemed to be bulging out of his head and his lungs on the point of bursting. But the reward was near at hand. There, at the bottom of Griffith's Road, they could see it—the Green, unfamiliar with its garish lights ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... wear nothing more comfortable and graceful than the blouse. It may be worn loose or confined by a belt. If your occupation is a very dusty one, wear overalls. In the counting-room and office, gentlemen wear frock-coats or sack coats. They need not be of very fine material, and should not be of any garish pattern. In your study or library, and about the house generally, on ordinary occasions, a handsome dressing-gown is ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells

... even sweet, the rumble of the train— 'Tis Circe singing near her golden loom; No garish lamps afflicted his charmed brain— Demeter's poppies brighten o'er ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... Boy still watches, in memory, old Jimmy on his rounds, they are a bit odd, these queer old street lamps that just seem to belong to the night, after the garish blaze of electric signs and the great arc-lights in the shop windows. Yet it shines through the years, this simple lamp of the Long Ago, as it shone through the night of old—a friendly beacon only, the modest ...
— The Long Ago • Jacob William Wright

... Ilverthorpe alone directly after dinner, and went straight to bed. She slept from ten o'clock that night, till the next morning, and awoke to the consciousness that the light of day was garish, that she herself was an insignificant trifle on the face of the earth, and that everything ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... it stands, far away from Broadway's theatrical district—a low-lying, little Georgian building. It is but three stories high, built of light red brick, and finished with white marble. All around garish millinery shops display their showy goods. Peddlers with pushcarts lit by flickering flames, vie with each other in their array of gaudy neckties and bargain shirtwaists. Blazing electric signs herald the thrills of movie shows. And, salient by the force of extreme contrast, a plain little white ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... dine we are not tempted by the Voice. We are wary of weird sauces. We shun the cunning aspics. We look about at our neighbor's table. He is eating of things French, and Russian and Hungarian. Of food garnished, and garish and greasy. And with a little sigh of Content and resignation we settle down to ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... built for himself with some trepidation; for though Byng came of people whose names counted for a good deal in the north of England, still, in newly acquired fortunes made suddenly in new lands there was something that coarsened taste—an unmodulated, if not a garish, elegance which "hit you in the eye," as he had put it to himself. He asked himself why Byng had not been content to buy one of the great mansions which could always be had in London for a price, where time had softened ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... now night had fallen—that wondrous velvet night of Arizona, which blots out garish day with a cloak of violet, purple-edged where the hills rise vaguely in the distance, and softens magically all harsh details beneath the starry vault—she slipped out to the summit of the ridge ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... cold separation has but warmed And rendered sacred dictate to thy skill, And guide thy pencil. From the jetty hair Take off that gaudy lustre that but mocks The true original; and let the dry, Soft, gentle-turning locks, appear instead. What though to fashion's garish eye they seem Untutored and ungainly? still to me, Than folly's foppish head-gear, lovelier far Are they, because bespeaking mental toil, Labor assiduous, through the golden days (Golden if so improved) of guileless youth, Unwearied mining in the precious stores Of classic lore—and ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar

... you got older, and felt yourself to be at the centre of your time, and not at a point in its circumference, as you had felt when you were little, you were seized with a sort of shuddering, he perceived. All around you there seemed to be something glaring, garish, rattling, and the noises and glares hit upon the little cell called your life, and shook ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... so-called. These were found to be unprofitable, and were abolished when the house was remodeled about ten years after the opening. The decoration of the interior was intrusted to E. P. Tredwill, an architect of Boston, who followed Mr. Cady's wishes in avoiding all garish display and tawdry effect. The deepest color in the audience room was the dark, rich red of the carpet on the floor. The silk linings of the boxes and the curtains between them and the small salons in the rear were of fabrics specially made for the purpose. They had an old gold ground ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... Street on the edge of Chinatown. It was a disreputable place but it had a certain air of brilliancy, although below the sidewalk, and was favored by men that worked late on newspapers, not only for its excellent cuisine but because there was likely to be some garish bit of drama to ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton

... That garish daub which was sopped up from the burning homes of men and bespattered over the forest's dark crest was already mellowing under the gentler touch of dawn, when the three travelers gained ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... mean by our bad conscience is the feeling with which we see the last remnant of charm, of the graceful and the agreeable, removed from Balzac's literary physiognomy. His works had not left much of this favoring shadow, but the present publication has let in the garish light of full publicity. The grossly, inveterately professional character of all his activity, the absence of leisure, of contemplation, of disinterested experience, the urgency of his consuming money-hunger—all this is rudely exposed. It is always a question whether we have a right to investigate ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... we were passing the new Christian Science Temple on Drexel Boulevard,—a building quite simple and delightful, barring some garish ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... and provocatively across the table from him. Her eyes sparkled behind the almond slits of her mask, caught the color changes and cast them back. She was wearing contact lenses of a garish green. ...
— A Bottle of Old Wine • Richard O. Lewis

... evening it rose in the hollow glade, Where wild-flowers blushed 'mid silence and shade; Where, hid from the gaze of the garish noon, They were slily wooed by the trembling moon. It rose—for the guardian zephyrs had flown, And left the valley that night alone. No sigh was borne from the leafy hill, No murmur came from ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich

... began what Stopford Brooke has called "the ten fallow years in the life of Tennyson." But fallow years are not all fallow. The dark brooding night is as necessary for our life as the garish day. Great crops of wheat that feed the nations grow only where the winter's snow covers all as with a garment. And ever behind the mystery of sleep, and beneath the silence of the snow, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... crudeness about the city. Its growth has been dominated by the economic motive, and everything has been sacrificed to the desire to make money. Dirty slums, crowded tenements, uncouth business blocks, garish bill-boards and electric signs, dumped rubbish on vacant lots, constant repairs of streets and buildings—these all are marks of crudity and experimentation, evidences that the city is still in the making. Many of the weaknesses that appear ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... this desert as a place created barren, lifeless, dead, and severe for some inscrutable purpose—perhaps even fashioned by the Maker as His place to be alone. But the haunter was there with his garish town, his canvas-tented circus of a day, and God ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... with happy pride. I thought of those cold scenes of his, with their picturesque peasants and cypresses and olive-trees. They must look queer in their garish frames on the walls of the ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham

... of ominous calm, with an hour of bright sun, gradually softening into a white shadow, as a fleecy cloud of fairy whiteness rolled over the sun's face, giving a light on the earth like the garish light in a tent at high noon, a light of blinding whiteness that hurts the eyes, although the sun is hidden. It was as innocent a looking morning as any one would wish to see, still, warm, bright, with a heavy brooding air which deadens sound ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... from our revels of overnight, while you were wisely sleeping." Kseniya Ippolytovna's voice rose higher. "'We are the heisha-girls of lantern-light,' you remember Annensky? At night we sit in restaurants, drinking wine and listening to garish music. We love—but are childless.... And you? You live a sober, righteous and sensible life, seeking the truth.... Isn't that so?' Truth!" Her cry was ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... longer saw a mass of vulgarians seeking gross joys. He now looked clearly upon a hundred thousand true idealists. Their offenses were wiped out. Counterfeit and false though the garish joys of these spangled temples were, he perceived that deep under the gilt surface they offered saving and apposite balm and satisfaction to the restless human heart. Here, at least, was the husk of Romance, the empty but shining casque of Chivalry, the breath-catching ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... whole valley is filled by a garish light which resembles the magnesium light used in photography, and I am conscious of a wave of heat. I jump to the window to find out the cause of this remarkable phenomenon, but I see nothing more than that brilliant yellow light. ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States

... A garish twilight washed Forty-second Street from wall to wall by the time the car swung round in front of the Knickerbocker. As yet, however, there was little evidence that the town was growing restive in its sleep with premonition of the ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... a frameless crayon, thrust aside and somewhat overshadowed by a huge and garish thing in gaudy-flowered gilt, which easily caught and held the eye of ...
— The Story of a Picture • Douglass Sherley

... anybody would have used for the purpose in the West supported the low ceiling, and—for there was a fire on the wide hearth—the ruddy gleam of burnished copper utensils pierced the shadows. The room was large, and there was only a single candle upon the table, but he felt that a garish light would somehow be out of harmony with ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... make a morning call. The garish light of day, that never suits a chamber, was broken by a muslin veil, which sent its softened twilight through a room of moderate dimensions but of princely decoration, and which opened into a conservatory. The choice saloon was hung with rose-coloured silk, which diffused ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli

... spectators of the scene, portraits of himself, Sir Godfrey Kneller, and Mr. May, surveyor of the works, all adorned with the profuse periwigs of the period. But he could not transfer to his pictures a decorum and a common sense that had no place in his mind. Hence he loved to depict a garish and heterogeneous whirl of saints and sinners, pan-pipes, periwigs, cherubim, silk stockings, angels, small-swords, the naked and the clothed, goddesses, violoncellos, stars, and garters. A Latin inscription ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... himself nor his imitators have succeeded in equalling it since, it is because they have thought too much of the external devices of abrupt and uncouth change of modes and tonalities, of exotic scales and garish orchestration, and too little of the fundamental element of melody which once was the be-all and end-all of Italian music. Another fountain of gushing melody must be opened before 'Cavalleria rusticana' finds a successor in all things worthy of ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... the brightness of that future day dimmed all earth's garish glories into darkness. It was because Paul saw the Beyond flaming with such lustre that the nearer distance to him seemed to have sunk into gloom. Just as a man or other object between you and the western sky when the sun is there will be all dark, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... come. Not yet (with us) have the kindly old bars, reverend in their attenuation, been restored to their time-honoured throne; not yet have the dingy festoons of pink and white paper disappeared from the garish mantel. Still desolate and cheerless shows the noble edifice. The gaunt chimney yawns still in sick anticipation of deferred smoke. The "irons," innocent of coal, and polished to the tip, skulk and cower sympathetically into the extreme corner of the fender. The very ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... of Kensington Gardens, with tall soot-blackened trees lifting their stately tracery of dark branches into the sky; a reach of the wide, muddy river, with a gaunt bridge looming through the fog; a gin-palace at night time, with garish lamps shining out upon the ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... front of a smaller room, enclosed by heavy quartz. Inside that room was the great bank of mercury-vapor rectifiers. From them lashed a blue-green glare that splashed against his face and shoulders, painting him in angry, garish color. The glass guarded him from the terrific blast of ultra-violet light that flared from the pool of shimmering molten metal, a terrible emanation that would have flayed a man's skin from his body within the space ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak

... themselves in his brain into a hundred snatches of old tunes, all full of a strange merriment, as if mocking at his misery, striving to keep him awake and conscious of who and what he was. He closed his eyes and shut out the hateful garish world: but that sound he could not shut out. Too tired to sleep, too tired even to think, he could do nothing but submit to the ridiculous torment; watching in spite of himself every note, as one jig-tune after ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... not led Tunis Latham to give particular note to one certain girl in the throng. She had stepped through the door of a cheap but garish restaurant. Somebody had thrown a peeling on the sidewalk, and she had slipped on it. Tunis had leaped and caught her before she measured her length. She looked up into his face with startled, violet eyes that seemed, in that one moment, to hold in them a fascination and ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... and Jim was made to the tailor's and each got fitted out in a new suit of the latest model, with fancy and somewhat garish waistcoats. Cigars of the best brand—five boxes of them—and two thousand cigarettes were purchased for the purpose of ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... arise, Great queen-triumphant! See how wildly fair Before me lies my realm! And from its air Soft, sensuous, new life as ruddy wine, My spirit drinks. Nor beauty so divine Hath Eden's self. Look, where upon the sands The garish mosses spread with dainty hands, Like goblin network fine, each fairy frond. And dusky trees shut in broad fields beyond, And hang long trembling garlands, age-grown-gray, From topmost boughs adown, athwart the day; And sweet amid ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier

... since, the more hir beauty hath power and doth still usurpingly gaine upon my affections. I love that citie for hir own sake, and more in hir only subsisting and owne being, than when it is fall fraught and embellished with forraine pompe and borrowed garish ornaments. I love hir so tenderly that hir spottes, her blemishes and hir warts are deare unto me. I am no perfect French man but by this great citie, great in people, great in regard of the felicitie of hir situation, but above all great and ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... moment to set an example to Lord John. "'The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,' Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don't lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so ...
— The Outcry • Henry James

... reached her delightful apartments—which looked even more luxuriantly comfortable bathed in the soft radiance that now flooded them from quiet-toned shaded lamps than they did in the more garish light of day—she walked up and down her sitting-room in deep meditation. She was in a quandary—whether or not to risk sending a coded telegram to her paper was the question that presented itself to her. If she were sure that no one else would learn the news, she ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr

... you break upon this old, cool peace, This painted peace of ours, With harsh dress hissing like a flock of geese, With garish flowers? Why do you churn smooth waters rough again, Selfish old Skin-and-bone? Leave us to quiet dreaming and slow pain, Leave ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various

... body vexed us; being dead 'T is like to give us trouble and to spare. O for a cavern in deep-bowelled earth! Quick, ere the dusky petals of the night Unclosing bare the fiery heart of dawn And thus undo us with its garish light, Let us this mute and pale accusing clay In some undreamed-of sepulchre bestow, But where? Hold back thy fleet-wing'd coursers, Time, Whilst we bethink us! Ah—such place there is! Close, too, at hand—a place wherein a man Might lie till doomsday safer from the touch Of prying clown than ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... October sun shone through the one window of the little rudely furnished room that Leah occupied in the inn. Weary from her long, toilsome journey, she still slept. Though tired nature for a time resisted the intrusion of the garish sunlight, the chirruping of her little child at length aroused Leah to consciousness. The tiny, dimpled hands were tangled in the long black hair that hung about the mother's shoulders in dishevelled grace, and the merry child laughed gleefully as ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott

... soil of American perception is a poor little barren artificial deposit. Yes! we are wedded to imperfection. An American, to excel, has just ten times as much to learn as a European. We lack the deeper sense. We have neither taste, nor tact, nor power. How should we have them? Our crude and garish climate, our silent past, our deafening present, the constant pressure about us of unlovely circumstance, are as void of all that nourishes and prompts and inspires the artist, as my sad heart is void of bitterness in saying ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James

... city! Garish, it might have been, and tawdry, in the full light of the sun. But on these weirdly unreal structures the sun's rays never shone; they were illumined only by the soft golden glow that diffused across this world from ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various

... outside. But the hand became instantly tense. It fell upon the sill and clutched it so hard that the knuckles stood out, white, strained and garish. Banneker's own strong hand descended upon the wrist. A voice ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... Shows Pep", are positive affronts to the dignity of amateur journalism. There is room for an alert and informing news sheet in the United, yet we feel certain that the Sun must become a far more sedate and scholarly publication before it can adequately supply the need. At present, its garish rays dazzle and blind more than they illuminate; in a perusal of its pages we experience more of sunstroke than of sunshine. Of "The Best Sport Page In Amateurdom" we find it difficult to speak or write. Not since perusing the delectable lines ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... the floor and on the books Through old, high, rounded windows, dim with age. The noisy city-sounds of modern life Float softened to us across the old graveyard. The room is filled with a warm, mellow light, No garish colours jar on our content, The books upon the shelves are old and worn. 'T was no belated effort nor attempt To keep abreast with old as well as new That placed them here, tricked in a modern guise, Easily got, and held in light esteem. Our fathers' fathers, slowly and carefully Gathered them, ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell

... luculent^, lucific^, luciferous; light, lightsome; bright, vivid, splendent^, nitid^, lustrous, shiny, beamy^, scintillant^, radiant, lambent; sheen, sheeny; glossy, burnished, glassy, sunny, orient, meridian; noonday, tide; cloudless, clear; unclouded, unobscured^. gairish^, garish; resplendent, transplendent^; refulgent, effulgent; fulgid^, fulgent^; relucent^, splendid, blazing, in a blaze, ablaze, rutilant^, meteoric, phosphorescent; aglow. bright as silver; light as day, bright as ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... flames. Rosendo came to him and placed his straw hat over his face. Hours, interminable and torturing, seemed to pass on leaden wings. Then Juan, deftly swerving his paddle, shot the canoe into a narrow arm, and the garish sunlight was suddenly lost in the densely intertwined branches ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... clumsiness, the rudeness and crudeness that had made him pity her, a whole provincial and "second-rate" side. Miss Rooth was light and bright and direct to-day—direct without being stiff and bright without being garish. To Nick's perhaps inadequately sophisticated mind the model, the actress were figures of a vulgar setting; but it would have been impossible to show that taint less than this extremely natural yet extremely distinguished aspirant to distinction. ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... form, it was entirely Greek in feeling; and brightly coloured as it was, in accordance with the racial love of colour, the tasteful refinement with which the decoration of the case was treated made those around look garish and barbaric. But the most striking feature was a charming panel portrait which occupied the place of the usual mask. This painting was a revelation to me. Except that it was executed in tempera instead of oil, it differed ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... California wines that vulgarise the august spectacle of the Thames by night. It is true that the proprietors of "Castoria" have occupied nearly every blank wall that is visible from Brooklyn Bridge; but their advertisements are so far from garish that I should scarcely have noticed them had not Mr. Steevens called my attention to them. Sky-signs, as Mr. Steevens admits, are unknown in New York; so are the flashing out-and-in electric advertisements which make night hideous in London. One or two large ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... chandelier. The figures of the musicians are vaguely seen in the dim light, swaying to and fro with their instruments. The outline of Someone in Gray is sharply visible. The flame of the candle flickers, illuminating His stony face and chin with a garish, yellow light. He turns around without raising his head, walks slowly and calmly through the whole length of the room, and disappears through the door ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev

... young men of enigmatic appearance, with oily thick hair, shifty eyes, and hands covered with cheap rings, swaggered about smoking cigarettes and talking in loud, ostentatious voices. Some women were there, fat and garish for the most part, liberally powdered and painted, and crowned with hats at which Paris would have stared almost in fear. There were also children, dark, even swarthy, with bold eyes, shrill voices, immodest bearing, who looked as if they had long since received ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... alone in the empty courtyard, standing a little aside, sheltered by one of the stone pillars from which the gates hung. Behind me the door of the house stood ajar. Candles, which the daylight rendered garish, still burned in the rooms on the first floor, of which the tall narrow windows were open. On the wide stone sill of one of these stood Croisette, a boyish figure, looking silently down at me, his hand on the latticed shutter. He looked pale, ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman

... tossing some credits on the counter and following Tom and Roger out into the street. They walked past the shops, their blue cadet uniforms reflecting the garish colors of the nuanium signs in the shop windows. At the first corner they hailed a jet cab and were soon speeding out of the city toward ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell

... bare piece of wall, were spread large, flamboyant posters showing a garish but not unattractive landscape. There was the sun sparkling on a wide stretch of water edged with high trees, and gay with little sailing boats, each boat with its human freight of two lovers. Jutting out into the blue ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... whirled it over its head, and then threw a complete somersault around it. Now it snatched up the keys again, and holding them close to its ear, rattled them furiously. Finally, with an incredible spring, it leapt on to the chain supporting the lamp above my head, and with the garish shade swinging and spinning wildly, clung there looking down at me like an acrobat on a trapeze. The tiny, bluish face, completely framed in grotesque whiskers, enhanced the illusion of an acrobatic comedian. Never for a moment ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... went, or clad in ruder hide, Or homespun russet void of foreign pride. But thou can'st mask in garish gaudery, To suit a fool's far-fetched livery. A French head joined to neck Italian, Thy thighs from Germany and breast from Spain. An Englishman in none, a fool in all, Many in one, and one ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... these recitations and the Third Reader was envied. Its members were pointed out and gazed upon, until one realised one was standing in the garish light of fame. The other readers, it seemed, longed for fame and craved publicity, and so it came about that the school was to have an exhibition with Miss Carrie's genius to plan and engineer the whole. For general material Miss Carrie drew ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin

... absence, if need be, till they could find trace of her. The sun rose brightly and made weird gleaming of the silver wire on which the dying roses hung. The air was heavy with their breath, and the rooms in the early garish light looked out of place as if some fairy wand had failed to break the incantation at the right hour and left a piece of Magicland behind. The parlor maid went about uncertainly, scarcely knowing what to do and what to leave undone, and the milk cars, ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill

... one can hardly imagine a more momentous change of environment than this which took him from a quiet rural village to the garish Residenz of a licentious and extravagant prince. Karl Eugen,[4] Duke of Wuerttemberg, whom men have often called the curse, but the gods haply regard as the good genius, of Schiller's youth, came to power in ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... race, Of different language, form, and face - Avarious race of man; Just then the chiefs their tribes arrayed, And wild and garish semblance made The chequered trews and belted plaid, And varying notes the war-pipes brayed To every varying clan; Wild through their red or sable hair Looked out their eyes with savage stare On Marmion as he passed; Their legs above the knee were ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... artillerists who wanted to turn on their own curtains of fire instantly the charge started. Then there were other little flashes and darts of light and flame which insisted on adding their moiety to the garish whole. And under the German trenches at several points were vast charges of explosives which had been patiently borne under ground through ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... resting-place - In slow procession sweeping by; I follow at a stranger's space; His kindred they, his sweetheart I. Unchanged my gown of garish dye, Though sable-sad is their attire; But they stand round with griefless eye, Whilst my regret ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... East street, it consisted of solid blocks of ramshackle frame buildings, that housed all the varieties of sharks and harpies who live off Jack ashore; it was an ugly, dirty, fascinating way, a street with a garish, besotted face. But on this morning it seemed the most wonderful avenue in the world to me. I saw East street through the colorful eyes of youth—the eyes ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... but a few hours ago that Dainty had swallowed the laudanum while just sinking into the stupor of a malignant fever; but to all intents and purposes, in the garish light, she looked like a corpse of ten ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller

... O'Valley had swung jauntily out of the office, secure in his secretary's ability to meet any crisis, to have to work alone in the almost garish office apparently quite content that she was not going to Florida, too. Trudy's imagination pictured there a someone petulant, spoiled, and altogether irresistible in the laciest of white frocks and a leghorn hat with ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... existence of railways, but no roads; electric light in streets without sewers, and pretentious-looking stucco buildings where solid stone should have been employed. Buenos Ayres, Lima, Santiago, Mexico—all bear witness to this tendency, in more or less degree. And under the garish electric arc at night, or silhouetted against the new white stucco wall of some costly hygienic institution, or art gallery, or Governor's palace, glaring in the bright sun, stands the incongruous figure of the half-naked and sandalled Indian, ignorant and poverty-stricken! These, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... fathomless mysteries of the Almighty Creator, and must ascribe our birth to the Will of God as piously as it was done in the eldest mythical epochs of the world. Notwithstanding the careless frivolity of skepticism and the garish light of science abroad in this modern time, there are still stricken and yearning depths of wonder and sorrow enough, profound and awful shadows of night and fear enough, to make us recognise, in the golden joys that visit us rarely, in the illimitable visions that ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... grimly, on her way to the door. "It's clear as Pittsburgh." With that sarcasm directed against legal subtleties, she tripped daintily out, an entirely ravishing vision, if somewhat garish as to raiment, and soon in the glances of admiration that every man cast on her guileless-seeming beauty, she forgot that she had ever ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana

... has succeeded? It has been as faithfully imitated as the colors on the pallet can copy these living, glowing colors; but those who have best succeeded—even Cole, with his accurate eye, and faithful, beautiful art—have but failed. The pictures, if toned down, are dull; if up to nature, are garish to repulsiveness. Is it not that nature's toning is inimitable, and that the broad overhanging firmament with its cold, serene blue, and the soft green of the herbage, and brown of the reaped harvest-fields, temper to the eye the intervening brilliancy, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... leaves not the slightest room for considering the doing so a bold or forward action, she puts the remainder of the grapes in my coat pockets, a peculiar fluttering sensation - but I draw a veil over my feelings, they are too sacred for the garish pages of a book. I do not inquire about their nationality, I would rather it remain a mystery, and a matter for future conjecture; but before leaving I add something to her already conspicuous array of coins that have been ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... dress. In five minutes you meet Spanish officers; nuns in broad-leaved white bonnets; a bearded sergeant nursing a baby; bare-legged, sun-burnished Moors; pink-and-white cheeked ladies'-maids from Kent; local mashers in such outrageously garish tweeds; stiff brass-buttoned turnkeys; Jews in skull-cap and Moslems in fez; and while you are lost in admiration of a burly negro, turbaned and in grass-green robe, with face black and shiny as a newly-polished stove, ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... might idly flirt with to-night, and quite as easily forget to-morrow. Yet from some cause the mind failed to respond to such suggestion. There was something within the calm, womanly face as revealed beneath the reflection of garish light, something in the very poise of the slender figure bending slightly forward in aroused enthusiasm, which compelled his respect, aroused his admiration. She was not a common woman, and he could not succeed ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... she speaks, and is, as always, even and civil, but a bit disdainful toward her servant.] Terribly garish light, Benson. Pull down the— [BENSON, obeying, partly pulls down the shade.] Lower still—that will do. [As she speaks she goes about the room, giving the tables a push here and the chairs a jerk there, and generally arranging the vases and ornaments.] Men hate a clutter of chairs ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell

... sensation, a single ray in a sunset, missed by a small literary coterie! The circle is perhaps eclectic. It may seem hard that good work is overwhelmed in the cataract of production, while relatively bad, garish work is rewarded. But so it must be. 'The growing flood of literature swamps every thing but works of primary genius.' Good taste is valuable, especially when it takes the form of good criticism. The best critics of contemporary ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... have concluded That Midas' brood shall sit in Honour's chair, To which the Muses' sons are only heir; And fruitful wits, that inaspiring are, Shall discontent run into regions far; And few great lords in virtuous deeds shall joy But be surpris'd with every garish toy, And still enrich the lofty servile clown, Who with encroaching guile keeps learning down. Then muse not Cupid's suit no better sped, Seeing in their ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman

... sun shone in through the large windows upon the garish furniture of the apartment, upon Emma's gay attire, and upon the shining faces of the three children, who stood gazing upward at Susannah, quick, as children always are, to perceive signs ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... ever; they excite the same exquisite interest; perhaps in their maiden hearts they are one or another variety of that flower which bears such a sweet perfume in all literature; but can it make no difference in character whether a young girl comes out into the garish world as a rose or as a chrysanthemum? Is her life set to the note of display, of color and show, with little sweetness, or to that retiring modesty which needs a little encouragement before it ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... such raciness he had little taste. What we find in him is that quality which the French call brutal. The description, for instance, in the essay on Hallam, of the licence of the Restoration, seems to us a coarse and vulgar picture, whose painter took the most garish colours he could find on his palette, and then laid them on in untempered crudity. And who is not sensible of the vulgarity and coarseness of the account of Boswell? 'If he had not been a great fool he would not have been a great writer ... he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb,' ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley

... peak they assumed almost the ethereal softness of clouds. It was a glorious scene that the island presented, slumbering langorously under the brilliant rays of the tropical moon, more enchanting in some respects than when viewed in the garish light of the sun; and so strong was the enticement of its beauty upon me that, but for the dull cramping influence of the doctrines accepted by the settlers upon which to frame the guiding rules of their lives, I could without very much difficulty have reconciled myself to the ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... of progress, like some vast snowball, rolls steadily along, gathering to itself all manner of weird and unlikely places and people, filling up the hollows, laying the high hills low. Rays of searching garish light reflected from its surface are pitilessly flashed into the dark places of the earth, which have been wrapped around by the old-time dim religious light, since first the world began. The people ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... about trifles, these conscientious objectors assure us, and trifles are unimportant. Trifles are unimportant, it is true, but then life is made up of trifles. To those who dislike the word, it suggests all that is finical and superfluous. It means a garish embroidery on the big scheme of life; a clog on the forward march of a strong and courageous nation. To such as these, the words etiquette and politeness connote weakness and timidity. Their notion of a really polite man is a dancing master or ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... visible in this brilliantly lighted room of the sober modes to which the eye of late had become so accustomed. Silken doublets of bright and even garish colors stood out in bold contrast against the gray monotone of the walls and hangings. Fantastic buttons, tags and laces, gorgeously embroidered cuffs and collars edged with priceless Mechlin or d'Alencon, bunches of ribands at knee and wrists, full ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... talk; she had received instructions. Before her windows was spread a wonderful vista of mountains and ravines, which changed hourly in color, from the opalescent tints of the dawn, through the garish spectrum of daylight to the deep purple shadows of the sunset, to the crepuscular opalescence again. Under any other conditions, she would have been content to sit and muse alone with her grief—and Hugh. He was constantly present in her thoughts. It was as though his spirit hovered ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... Annie's wearing garish hats is not really a reason against her joining a Trade Union. You ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor

... curving outlines gave such a sense of eternal rest. There was a patch of lovely blue sky above him, he noticed where the clouds opened up and a glint of golden glorious sunshine came through; but it looked garish and it closed again and the white clouds trailed away, their lower fringes clinging to the hill tops like veils of gossamer woven by time to deck the bride of Spring. A lark rose at the edge of the crowd of weeping women and children ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... the Night, the solemn Night, When Earth is bound with her silent zone, And the spangled sky seems a temple wide, Where the star-tribes kneel at the Godhead's throne; O the Night, the Night, the wizard Night, When the garish reign of day is o'er, And the myriad barques of the dream-elves come In a brightsome fleet from Slumber's shore! O the Night for me, When blithe and free, Go the zephyr-hounds on their airy chase; When the ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... spoke of her save at the dusk hour. During the broad, garish light of day, his lips were sealed. In the soft twilight of the evening, if it happened that Lucy was alone with him, then he would pour out his heart—would tell of his past tribulation. As past he spoke of it; had he not regarded it as past, he never ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... thus, nor prayed that thou Shouldst lead me on: I loved to choose and see my path, but now Lead thou me on! I loved the garish days, and, spite of fears, Pride ruled my ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... relief from care, light had faded into darkness and evening deepened into night, and still the young creature lingered in the gloom; feeling a companionship in Nature so serene and still, when noise of tongues and glare of garish lights would have been ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... conformable to the world that God made. May they possess their own land, and may their influence come again from Italy to save from jar, and boasting, and ineptitude the foolish, valourless cities, and the garish crowds of shouting men.... And let us especially pray that the revival of the faith may do something for ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... in the garish light of a cloudless day, slipping and rushing in wildest extravagance from the rapids above. But at night the beauty is enchanting. There is a dim veiled grandeur as in viewing mountains from a great distance. While standing at Terrapin ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... four had been effected in one end of the wide garish space: among the loungers of the lobby, all eyes were turned in that direction. There were salutations; the introduction of Mr. Canning to Mrs. Heth; inquiries after Miss Heth's health. Quite easily the square ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... unseen, in realms of pitchy night, Ne'er dreaming that the chivalrous affray Will e'er be heard of—more than heroes they, And more deserving they their country's praise Than nobler names that wear their country's bays. Duty, which glistens in the garish beam That makes it beautiful—as jewels gleam When sunlight pours upon them—lacks the pow'r, The grandeur, which, in dark and secret hour, Crowns lowly brows with bravery more bright Than fame achieved in Glory's dazzling light. Nature's heroics need but suns to shine To show the world their ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... The little, garish woman did not reply directly, but shook back her red hair and caught her boy to her breast and kissed him; then she said, in that staccato manner which had given her words on the stage such point and emphasis: "Oh, this house is a'most too warm for ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... of sorrow, when these other things come between. The darkness gives birth to the light, and every grief blazes up a witness to a future glory. Each drop that hangs on the wet leaves twinkles into rainbow light that proclaims the sun. The garish splendours of the prosperous day hide the stars, and through the night of our sorrow there shine, thickly sown and steadfast, the constellations of eternal hopes. The darker the midnight, the surer, and perhaps the nearer, the coming of the day. Sorrow ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... more of a pretentious establishment than Selwood had expected it to be. It was typically Italian in outward aspect. There were the usual evergreen shrubs set in the usual green wood tubs at the entrance; the usual abundance of plate-glass and garish gilt; the usual glimpse, whenever the door opened, of the usual vista of white linen, red plush, and many mirrors; the waiter who occasionally showed himself at the door, napkin in hand, was of the type which Selwood had seen a thousand times under similar circumstances. But all this related ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher

... once a stream of gay couples enveloped them in passing. Bright, flashing, vivid faces and bare shoulders, arms and breasts appeared above the short bodices of the girls. Few of them were gowned in white. The colors seemed too garish for anything but musical comedy. But the freshness, the vividness of these girls seemed exhilarating. The murmur, the merriment touched a forgotten chord in Lane's heart. For a moment it seemed sweet to be there, once more in a gathering where pleasure was the pursuit. ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... of the day's journey," most of Nature's sights appear to me to be at their plainest. In the evening, when the shadows grow long and all hard lines are blurred, how soft, how different, everything is! It was noontide, that garish cruel time of day, when I first came in sight of the falls. I'm glad I went again in other lights—but one should live by the side of all this greatness to learn to love it. Only once did I catch Niagara in beauty, with pits of color in its waters, no one color definite—all ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... of plaudits, Nor before the garish day, Does she shed her soul's sweet perfume, Does she ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... year going away to college, bringing back the fruits of their work and planting the seeds of them at home. The log cabin was rapidly disappearing, the frame cottages were being built with more neatness and taste, and garish colors were becoming things of the past. Indeed, a quick uplift through all the mountains was perceptible to any observant eye that had known and knew now the hills. To the law-makers at the capital and to the men of law and business ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... poured in steady, quiet streams down the carpeted aisles to their places, and there was a gentle murmur of silk as ladies settled in their pews and bowed their heads for the conventional moment of prayer. Exquisitely stained windows challenged the too garish daylight, but permitted to enter subdued rays in azure, violet and crimson tints which fell athwart the eastern pews and garnished the marble font and the finely carved pulpit. They fell upon the silvering hair of the Reverend ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock

... I was able to teach you how the seeming veils the real; how though the garish lights dazzle and blind us, there are lights invisible, which glow persistently after the brief flare burns out. One came to realise how all matter was one, how unified all life was. In the various expressions of life ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... skin was an expensive item, but the Professor forgot his cupidity in vindicating himself as an outraged husband. He continued to kick, and then, taking Nickie by the scruff and the back, he rushed him from the tent, and pitched him headlong into the garish day. ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson

... dinner in his own apartments to a party of ladies and gentlemen and that I was expected to furnish the musical entertainment. When the grave, dignified man at the door let me in, the place struck me as being almost dark, my eyes had been so accustomed to the garish light of the "Club." He took my coat and hat, bade me take a seat, and went to tell his master that I had come. When my eyes were adjusted to the soft light, I saw that I was in the midst of elegance and luxury in a degree such as I had never seen; but not ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson

... eyelids close, and let me lie, On this old-fashioned sofa, in the dim And purple twilight, shut out from the sky, Which is too garish for my softer whim. And while I, looking inward on my thought, Tell thee what phantoms thicken in its air. Twine thou thy gentle fingers, slumber-fraught, With the loose shreds of my disheveled hair: I shall see inly better if thou keep My outer senses ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... beside the road with her back against the post that held the macaroni box, and waited for the stage. Her face did not need the pink light of the parasol, for it was red enough after that broiling walk of yesterday. The desert did not look so romantic by the garish light of midday, but she stared out over it and saw, as with eyes newly opened to appreciation, that there was a certain charm even in its garishness. She had lost a good deal of moodiness and a good deal of discontent, ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... surprise. It was a popular "magasin of fashion" in Montgomery Street. To connect this refined girl with its garish display and vulgar attendants ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... out into the world, and was dressed accordingly. A neat dark-blue cloth dress, plainly made, a dull red and blue checked apron; a broad, round hat, shoes and stockings, all in the best and quietest taste—marked contrast to the usual garish Sunday best of the Anglo-Saxon. She herself exemplified the most striking type of beauty to be found in the mixed bloods. Her hair was thick and glossy and black in the mode that throws deep purple shadows under the rolls and coils. Her face was a regular oval, like the ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... and gentlemen, in but two short weeks from this time I hope that you may enter, in your own homes, on a new series of readings, at which my assistance will be indispensable; {23} but from these garish lights I vanish now for evermore, with a heartfelt, grateful, respectful, ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... there was a pool Fringed all about with flag-leaves cool And spotted with cow-lilies garish, Of frogs and pouts the ancient parish. Alders the creaking redwings sink on, Tussocks that house blithe Bob o' Lincoln. Hedged round the unassailed seclusion, Where muskrats piled their cells Carthusian; And ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... These be gaudy, flaunting, flashy days! Our sober Spey, in the matter of salmon fly-hooks, is gradually yielding to the garish influence of the times. Spey salmon now begin to allow themselves to be captured by such indecorous and revolutionary fly-hooks as the "Canary" and the "Silver Doctor." Jaunty men in loud suits of dittoes have come into the north country, and display fly-books that vie ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... before them, there arose a grand and stately castle. Perched upon the crest of a spur where it projected from the flank of a mountain, it stood before the new-comers the centre of the whole scene, the crown and glory of it all. In the garish sunlight there might have been perceptible many and many a mark wrought by the destructive hand of time, for ages had passed since it first reared its lordly form on high. Its architecture spoke of hoar antiquity, of a time ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... turned sharply and saw him. Her face was pale; it had a strained expression. But it changed at sight of him. She regarded him with that look of frozen scorn which once she had flung him when they had met in the garish crowd at Valrosa. ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... pine, or monumental oak, Where the rude axe with heaved stroke Was never heard the Nymphs to daunt, Or fright them from their hallowed haunt There, in close covert by some brook, Where no profaner eye may look, Hide me from day's garish eye, While the bee with honeyed thigh, That at her flowery work doth sing, And the waters murmuring, With such concert as they keep, Entice the dewy-feathered Sleep. And let some strange, mysterious dream Wave at his wings, in aery stream Of lively portraiture displayed, ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... and winged hour-glasses with which our ancestors grimly decked their graves. Whitgift's monument has been restored and is a striking example of rich and intricate decoration, even if the pomp and colour of it are too garish ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... instinct, before I had been seen by her, was to hurry her out of the garish little reception room, where, through the door which opened into the hallway, she might well have been seen by anybody; it was only when she greeted me and turned her face toward the tiled floor, and I saw that her shoulders drooped and that her hands hung down at her side, and that she stood ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... not solicitous of modern improvements, and Mr. Dooley views with distaste the new and garish. But he consented to install a nickel-in-the-slot machine in his tavern last week, and it was standing on a table when Mr. McKenna came in. It was a machine that looked like a house; and, when you put a nickel in at the top of it, either the ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne

... the Boulevard Saint Michel, alert with the Sunday crowd, to that part of Paris which was dearest to her heart. L'Ile Saint Louis to her mind offered a synthesis of the French spirit, and it pleased her far more than the garish boulevards in which the English as a rule seek for the country's fascination. Its position on an island in the Seine gave it a compact charm. The narrow streets, with their array of dainty comestibles, had the look of streets in a provincial town. They had a quaintness which appealed to the fancy, ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham

... through the one uncurtained window, cast a long pale green ray, like the extended arm of an appealing ghost, against one side of the velvet hangings—a spectral effect which was heightened by the contrast of the garish glitter of the waxen tapers. Each man looked at the other with a sort of uncomfortable embarrassment, and somehow, though I moved my lips in an endeavor to speak and thus break the spell, I was at a loss, and could find no language suitable ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... As she floats through the moonlight and the shadows of the beech-aisles of Dollan, she appears to be a large bird, with a philosophic contentment of mind—an ancient creature that, shunning the fellow-ships of the garish modern day and loving the leisure and the solitude of night, dreams of the past. But, beneath its loose feathery garments, her body, hardly larger than that of a ringdove, is altogether out of proportion to her long, narrow head and wide-spreading talons. Visions of the past ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... well-known restaurant, the other night, it was forcibly brought to my mind what a lot they would have to teach us regarding the enjoyment of such social functions. A perfect din and rattle of plates and knives filled the air, a mob of undisciplined servants charged about tumultuously, garish lights lit up vulgar ornamentation, and one almost had to shout to be heard across the table, while a band of music outside ineffectually endeavoured to drown the din within. There were flowers, it is true, but their profusion was no compensation for an utter lack of artistic arrangement. But ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... composition, the vulgarity of the lines, the cheap ugliness of the group. In that singular abstraction which comes so frequently in moments of high emotion, he let his glance wander to the pictures on the wall, the enormities in embroidery which adorned the chair backs, the garish hues of the rug lying before the open grate. Then it occurred to him, with a vague sense of amusement, how great was the incongruity between such a setting as this vulgar boarding-house reception-room, and the woman before him. The idea brought to his mind the contrast between ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... rather grumpily. Most Englishmen dislike ostentation and display; and to Stafford the place seemed garish and "loud." Howard surveyed ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... of course put a stop for a while to the matrimonial projects so interesting to the house of Newcome. Hymen blew his torch out, put it into the cupboard for use on a future day, and exchanged his garish saffron-coloured robe for decent temporary mourning. Charles Honeyman improved the occasion at Lady Whittlesea's Chapel hard by; and "Death at the Festival" was one of his most thrilling sermons; reprinted at the request of some of the congregation. There were those of his ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... little side of it! The dear people who "thought you would like this or dislike that"—the kind givers of presents even—the little people who shop for one! The friends who invite one to their queer, soulless, thin entertainments, with their garish lights; the people who choose a book for one, who counsel one, even with importunity, to go to some play which they are "sure we shall like." "So long"—they are old friends, and yet they thought we should like that play or that book! "So long"—and yet they think one capable of certain ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... see rolling sternward immense volumes of thick smoke, gleaming yellow under the light of the blazing fires; and the figures of men looming like giants in the glare of the garish flames,—some standing in front of the furnace, others moving about, and actively engaged in some species of industry, that to the eye of any other than a whalesman might have ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... book into the open day; Happy, if made so by its garish eye. O'er earth's wide surface take thy vagrant way, To imitate thy master's genius try. The Graces three, the Muses nine salute, Should those who love them try to con thy lore. The country, city seek, grand thrones to boot, With gentle courtesy humbly bow before. Should ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... the dead was sung, amid an array of dropping crape and cobwebs. The lad, with his full red lips and open blue eyes, coming as with a great cup in his hands to life's feast, revolted from the like of that, as from suffocation. And still the suggestion of it was everywhere. In the garish afternoon, up to the wholesome heights of the Heiligenberg suddenly from one of the villages of the plain came the grinding death-knell. It seemed to come out of the ugly grave itself, and enjoyment was dead. On his way homeward sadly, an hour later, ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater

... pathetically. "I am sorry I came here. Some of that brute's slobber has got on my pretty clean waistcoat." Those words express another of his incomprehensible oddities. He is as fond of fine clothes as the veriest fool in existence, and has appeared in four magnificent waistcoats already—all of light garish colours, and all immensely large even for him—in the two days of his residence ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... gone, but the two old cronies sat smoking; and the twilight, that great gleaner of the past, crept about them, bringing tender memories that mistrusted the garish day. In the very midst of them, ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... South Africa. Pretoria may boast the memories of the fallen republic, and its old-time position as the capital of an independent state. Bloemfontein has the advantage of a central position, and even garish Johannesburg might claim the privilege of the money power. The present arrangement stands as a temporary compromise to be altered later at the will ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... of his heart! The long three-week ride had ended. The stage had rolled down a main street the like of which Pan had never even imagined. It was crude, rough, garish with lights and stark board fronts of buildings, and a motley jostling crowd of men; women, too, were not wanting in the throngs streaming up and down. Again it was Saturday night. Always it appeared Pan hit town on this of all nights. Noise and dust filled ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... ethereal, the vital, the flowing, the iridescent? Did not the solitary and silent night brood like a hen on the nest of the poet's imaginings? Was it not the night that waked the soul? Did not the commonplace vanish along with the "garish" day? How then could its light afford the mood fit for judging a poem—the cold sick morning, when life is but half worth living! Walter did not think how much champagne he had taken, nor how much that ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald

... somewhat garish light of the War and the Peace, it would not be difficult to feel a real and even poignant sympathy for two causes that were prominent and popular in the first fourteen years of the present century, namely, the philosophy ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... their return. The house had been thrown open, and supper was being served to whoever cared to stay and partake of it. The murmur of idle purposeless talk drifted out to him; he was irritated and offended by it. There was something garish in this indiscriminate hospitality in the very home of tragedy. As the moments slipped by his sense of displeasure increased, with mankind in general, with himself, and with the judge—principally with the judge—who was to make a foolish target of himself in ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... although Lord Reggie prided himself on being altogether impervious to the influences of Nature, he was not unaware that a warm and fantastic twilight may incline the average woman favourably to a suit that she might not be disposed to heed in the early morning, or during the garish sunshine of a summer afternoon. He presumed that Lady Locke was an average woman, simply because he considered all women exceedingly and distinctively average; and therefore, when he saw a soft expression ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens

... Gardil Silas Gardiner William Gardiner Alexander Gardner (3) Dominic Gardner James Gardner (3) Joseph Gardner (5) Larry Gardner Robert Gardner Samuel Gardner Silas Gardner Thomas Gardner Uriah Gardner William Gardner Dominico Gardon John Garey Manolet Garico James Garish Paul Garish John Garland (2) Barney Garlena Joseph Garley —— Garner Silas Garner John Garnet Sylvester Garnett Isaac Garret Michael Garret John Garretson Antonio Garrett Jacques Garrett Richard Garrett William Garrett Louis C. Garrier Jacob Garrison ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... papers, and this vulgar marring of the woodland glade was curiously akin to the character of this crucial interview between them, for the beauty of its inner import was overlaid with much that was common and garish. A rude bench had been knocked together by some picnicker of the past, and on this Bates was fain to sit down to regain his breath. Sissy stood near him, plucking at some coloured leaves she had picked ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... fate is in our power to-night. The day is near dawning, and at the stroke of five my coach will be at the door to take us to Bristol, where the ship lies that shall carry us to New England—to a new world, and liberty; and to the sweet simple life that will please my dear love better than all the garish pleasures of a licentious court. Ah, dearest, I know thy mind and heart as well as I know my own. I know I can make thee happy in that fair new world, where we shall begin life again, free from all old burdens; and where, if thou wilt, my motherless children ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... But the possible customer was not to be landed so easily. Twice and yet once again he broke away from the detaining finger; and when at last he finally allowed himself to be drawn into the garish, ill-smelling little shop, he proved to be discouragingly indifferent and hard to please in the matter of prices, hanging back and taking refuge in countrified reticence when Mr. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde



Words linked to "Garish" :   tasteless



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