bedaub

Though we smile to ourselves, at least ironically, when parasites bedaub us with false encomiums, as many princes cannot choose but do, Quum tale quid nihil intra se repererint, when they know they come as far short, as a mouse to an elephant, of any such virtues; yet it doth us good.

Anatomy of Melancholy 2007

Such things are “but shadowy pretences with which we bedaub each other and repay our mutual debts; but we cannot repay them, but increase rather, the debt owed to that Great Judge who rips our tattered rags from our pudenda and really sees us through and through, right down to our innermost and most secret filth.”

Montaigne Explains the Birds and the Bees « So Many Books 2005

All this madness yet proceeds from ourselves, the main engine which batters us is from others, we are merely passive in this business: from a company of parasites and flatterers, that with immoderate praise, and bombast epithets, glossing titles, false eulogiums, so bedaub and applaud, gild over many a silly and undeserving man, that they clap him quite out of his wits.

Anatomy of Melancholy 2007

While we were deliberating upon what was to be done, a hackney coachman, driving softly along, and perceiving us standing by the kennel, came up close to us, and calling, “A coach, master!” by a dexterous management of the reins made his horses stumble in the wet, and bedaub us all over with mud.

The Adventures of Roderick Random 2004

Some of the natives had really climbed the baobab, and now they were seen rising on all sides, winding along the boughs like reptiles, and advancing slowly but surely, all the time plainly enough discernible, not merely to the eye but to the nostrils, by the horrible odors of the rancid grease with which they bedaub their bodies.

Five Weeks in a Balloon 2003

Nay, besides these, many societies that make a great figure in the world are reflected on in this book; which caused Rabelais to study to be dark, and even bedaub it with many loose expressions, that he might not be thought to have any other design than to droll; in a manner bewraying his book that his enemies might not bite it.

Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

Nay, besides these, many societies that make a great figure in the world are reflected on in this book; which caused Rabelais to study to be dark, and even bedaub it with many loose expressions, that he might not be thought to have any other design than to droll; in a manner bewraying his book that his enemies might not bite it.

Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

His fair locks, which the Russian was used to wash every morning, he was now bidden to bedaub with grease and flour, while he energetically cursed the black spatterdashes which it took him an hour to button every morning.

Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) The Romance of Reality Charles Morris 1877

Kiechel, writing in 1585, says, "Item, the women there are charming, and by nature so mighty pretty as I have scarcely ever beheld, for they do not falsify, paint, or bedaub themselves as in Italy or other places;" yet he confesses (and here is another tradition preserved) "they are somewhat awkward in their style of dress."

For Whom Shakespeare Wrote Charles Dudley Warner 1864

Kiechel, writing in 1585, says, "Item, the women there are charming, and by nature so mighty pretty as I have scarcely ever beheld, for they do not falsify, paint, or bedaub themselves as in Italy or other places;" yet he confesses (and here is another tradition preserved) "they are somewhat awkward in their style of dress."

Complete Essays Charles Dudley Warner 1864