Why starved on earth our angel appetites, While brutal are indulged their fulsome fill? Were then capacities divine conferred As a mock diadem, in savage sport, Rank insult of our pompous poverty, Which reaps but pain from seeming claims so fair?

Its rude end unadorned simplicity suited, the peculiar ideas of the Puritans, who, in their zeal to escape from the elaborate ornaments and pompous ceremonial employed by the Papists, had rushed into the opposite extreme, and desired that both their place of worship, and their mode of performing it, should be divested of every external decoration and every prescribed form.

Ford's return, when he should make it, was to take him to a great, pompous, stylish, crowded "up-town boarding-house," in one of the fashionable streets of the great city.

Fernando did not like the Englishman, for, with all his blandness, he thought he could observe a pompous air and self-consciousness of superiority, disgusting to sensible persons.

I well remember one occasion while we were at Hereford, a very pompous and extremely proper town, as all cathedral cities are; my lord and I were robed for the reception of the High Sheriff (as he is called) and his chaplain, who were presently coming with the great carriage to take us to be churched before we charged the grand jury.

I was about to pronounce sentence in accordance with the law, which it was not possible for me to avoid, however much my mind was inclined to do so, when the pompous old High Sheriff, all importance and dignity, said, "My lord, are you not going to put on the black cap?"

The rapidly failing daylight showed a large elderly, rather pompous gentleman, with a bald head, grizzled whiskers, and heavy plebeian features.

When he spoke again his voice sounded not much less measured and pompous than usual.

His slightly pompous, patronizing manner returned upon him.

I doubt not but by this my pompous shew, By vestures wrought with gold so gorgeously: By reverence done to me of high and low: By all these ornaments of bravery, By this my train, that now attends me so: By kings, that hale my chariot to and fro, Fortune is known the queen of all renown: That makes, that mars; sets up and throws adown.

Pompey was pompous, overrated, and proud, and had been fortunate in the East.

Nevertheless, this monarch, who so severely proscribed luxury in daily life, made the most magnificent display on the occasions of political or religious festivals, when the imperial dignity with which he was invested required to be set forth by pompous ceremonial and richness of attire.

The father is pompous, conceited, and a bore.

The mother is pompous, conceited, and a bore.

The earth was bursting with green; the early flowers were turning the sunny slopes into coloured splashes of red and white and purple, and everything that had life was singingthe fat whistlers on their rocks, the pompous little gophers on their mounds, the big bumblebees that buzzed from flower to flower, the hawks in the valley, and the eagles over the peaks.

His artistic good taste, his classical polish, his sound shrewd sense, his hatred of cant, his insight into humbug above all, his shallow, pitiable habit of being always intelligiblethese are the sins which condemn him in the eyes of a mesmerising, table-turning, spirit-rapping, spiritualising, Romanising generation, who read Shelley in secret, and delight in his bad taste, mysticism, extravagance, and vague and pompous sentimentalism.

He was a portly figure, though tall, with masterful, big hands, his fingers rather thick and red; and his dignity, that just escaped being pompous, held in it something that was implacable.

He looked, I thought, like some pompous Heavenly Butler who denied to all the world, and to us in particular, the right of entry without presentation cards signed by his hand as proof that we belonged to his own exclusive set.

If so, 'tis certain thou must dearly pay For playing thus the war-lord's pompous part, And thou shalt feel at no far-distant day The people's dagger driven through thy heart.

Even then, the term sumptuousness may seem ill-chosen, since the nomadic nature of African life persists in spite of palaces and chamberlains and all the elaborate ritual of the Makhzen, and the most pompous rites are likely to end in a dusty gallop of wild tribesmen, and the most princely processions to tail off in a string of half-naked urchins riding bareback on donkeys.

A marble monument, with an inscription palpably false and ridiculously pompous, is far more offensive to true taste, than the wooden memorial of the rustic, sculptured with painted bones, and decked out with death's head in all the colours of the rainbow.

How delightful it would be to drag up some pompous pretender who passes off at once upon himself and others as a profound and able man, and make him measure his height upon that pillar, and understand beyond all cavil what a pigmy he is!

We may go into raptures over the ivy-covered ruin known as Alfred's Hall, fitted up as it is with black oak and rusty armour and all the pompous simplicity of the old baronial halls of England.

He did not consider it requisite to tumble everything out on the floor, and put you to every possible inconvenience, by way of exhibiting his importance; satisfied on that point himself, he impressed you with it by simple courtesy, thus gaining respect where the pompous inquisitive type of the animal would have excited ill-will and contempt.

The speaker was a man of fifty, stout and floridthe latter peculiarity especially marked in his nose; he looked like a substantial merchant, and spoke with rather pompous geniality.