Flat

“ But how unreasonable, how unjust, that there should be such configuration of the land, as you call it. There should be no elevations and no depressions anywhere—a universal flat is the landscape for you. ”

“ Instead of the cozy little rooms, all radiant with her spirit, with a friendly tree waving its delicate foliage against the windows, they took an enormous, comfortable, well-arranged flat which they did not, could not, love, where they were bored to death. ”

“ FLAT. In a general sense, any honest man, or square cove, in opposition to a sharp or cross-cove; when used particularly, it means the person whom you have a design to rob or defraud, who is termed the flat, or the flatty-gory. A man who does any foolish or imprudent act, is called a flat; any person who is found an easy dupe to the designs of the family, is said to be a prime flat. It’s a good flat that’s never down, is a proverb among flash people; meaning, that though a man may be repeatedly duped or taken in, he must in the end have his eyes opened to his folly. ”

“ It is my good or ill fortune to have taken a furnished flat at a dizzy altitude in the neighbourhood of that London terminus which is at once nearest the sea and the Promised Land. Immediately above the flat is a spacious roof, which affords a pleasant retreat in the cool of the evening and commands what the agents call an extensive prospect, and where, at most hours, toy dogs may be met. The flat itself consists of a number of rooms the walls of which are covered with photographs of men, women, and children, almost as thickly as the pages of a schoolboy's album are covered with stamps. ”

“ When I left that flat I could not help feeling I was going downstairs to a lower and more common world, a world where passions and desires were thrust upon one's eyes and ears, leaving no room for imagination or wonder. ”

“ I, who have lived happily in a flat, nevertheless feel more human, less like some ingeniously constructed doll, when I can take my candle in hand and go upstairs to sleep. Because I have lived happily in a flat, I want no bungalow. ”

“ We are moveless in the centre of the flat, unchanging circle of things. Our magic carpet (or table-cloth) may be taking us on a trip to America or Europe, as the case may be, but so far as our senses are concerned we are standing still for ever and ever. There is nothing that registers progress to the mind. The circle we looked out on last night is indistinguishable from the circle we look out on this morning. Even the sky and cloud effects are lost on this flat contracted stage, with its hard horizon and its thwarted vision. ”

“ CHAPTER ONE Go to, my Daughter. Knowest thou a man who hath lived long in a bachelor flat? Then beware of him! For his ways are full of guile and he hath not a thrill left.
Alas, the bachelor flat is a curse sent upon Woman. For, lo, though a man hath dwelt in the back hall-room of a boarding-house for many years and hath suffered all its untold horrors, the moment he taketh a flat the sweet feminine thing seeketh him out and yearneth to make him “comfortable”. ”

“ Flat cum Sharp: par nobile fratrum.—There is not a word in cant or flash vocabulary, nor, in the English language, taken in its right sense and meaning, that conveys so much, and is so generally applicable, as the simple monosyllable Flat. There are flats of every rank, grade, and station in society, in every part of the known world—and possibly in the unexplored portion also. There are flats alike in office and out ”

“ Almost everything seemed to be horizontal, but such things as stood perpendicular in this flat world gained a gigantic height. The two human beings looked at each other in amazement that such a tall man and woman existed. ”

“ And my advice to the rich young man would be—sell all thou hast, and give it to the poor—janitor for the privilege of living in a flat with your Art and your Delia.
Flat-dwellers shall indorse my dictum that theirs is the only true happiness. If a home is happy it cannot fit too close—let the dresser collapse and become a billiard table; let the mantel turn to a rowing machine, the escritoire to a spare bedchamber, the washstand to an upright piano ”

“ Those threw shadows and cast lights; but in the flat there were no shadows, no perspective—all was flat. [88] We must draw from this the deduction that the Greeks held that flatness was an essential quality of wall decoration (except in friezes) as well as of all textile ornament; and for every reason we must accept this flatness as a general law for designs in embroidery.
In hangings and dress materials, flatness is more agreeable than a complicated shaded design, especially when it is further confused by folds, disturbing and interrupting the flow of the lines of the pattern. ”

“ Everything about you must be flat; your hats, hair and heels must be flat; your denials must be particularly flat. Always take your meals in your jacket and a hurry, never with the rest of your family; never have time to eat enough, but always have time to brag about it.
I cannot understand why any girl should object to the assumption of a pose; and yet a girl told me the other day that she preferred to be what she seemed to be. ”

“ A FLAT. A people coop. Seven rooms and a landlord, with hot and cold gas and running servants. A flat is the poor relation of an apartment.
ABROAD. A place where people go to be cured of visiting foreign lands.
ABSCOND. To duck with the dough. From The Latin word absconditto, meaning to grab the long-green and hike for the Bad Lands.
ABSINTHE. The national headache of the French. A jag-builder which is mostly wormwood and bad dreams. ”

“ For the artist’s flat picture, which I used as an illustration, is not a stage in our visual education. Our visual education has proceeded pari passu with our education by touch and motion; and we saw objects in space as solids, long before we reflected that for the eye alone a coloured surface would naturally appear as flat. ”

“ For family life there is still, I know, a lingering prejudice against a flat because it is flat, or on the ground that it is not on the ground. To choose your home on high where the air is pure is supposed to hurt the sacred atmosphere of home, and rooms distributed horizontally, it seems, lack the virtue of those placed vertically. ”

“ But perhaps the greatest attraction of a flat is the reduction in the number of the necessary domestics. In a small flat like yours, you ought to manage very well with one servant, provided she is capable and attends to her work. ”

“ It looks as if this bit of world had been left unfinished when land and sea were originally parted. The flat is dreadfully hot at night; but not more uncomfortable than a boat must necessarily be in this climate. ”

“ Flat, according to its derivation from the Anglo-Saxon flet, a floor, applies to a surface only, and, in the first and most usual sense, to a surface that is horizontal or level in all directions; a line may be level, a floor is flat; flat is also applied in a derived sense to any plane surface without irregularities or elevations, as a picture may be painted on the flat surface of a perpendicular wall. Plane applies only to a surface, and is used with more mathematical exactness than flat. ”

“ Yes, one flat; not a pile of flats one above another, as they are built in cities, but one large flat raised high enough to be entirely removed from the moisture of the ground, to give a pleasant sense of security from outside intrusion and to afford convenient outlooks from the windows. One or two guest rooms, that are not often used, might be on a second floor, under the roof, if there was space enough. ”

“ And mind you get the sods flat, old man,—flat as ever a straight-backed young fellow was laid under. And then, with a good tall slab at the head, and a foot-stone six foot away from it, it'll look just as if there was a man underneath. ”

“ Ah, I can see myself that first evening, after the furniture men had gone and I’d managed to get rid of my atrocious old concierge—walking about on tip-toe, arranging and standing in front of the glass with my hands in my pockets and saying to that radiant vision: “I am a young man who has his own flat. ”

“ Flat is an independent, honest, and respectable word. Sharp is diametrically opposite; it owes its very birth to flat, and cannot live without it. Flat is the parent; progenitor, and preserver of sharp, the very root and sap of its existence. Without flats sharps would become extinct. The fact of sharp having sprung from flat is so apparent, that there is not a sharp to be found that has not a flat about him ”

“ Another advantage of a flat is that, if you want to run down to the country or the seaside for the week's end, or for even a longer period, you can lock up your flat and start off gaily; but with a house on your hands it is a very different matter. ”

“ The art of the music-hall's changed since your day. They didn't overdo it a bit. You see, people who believe the earth is flat don't dress quite like other people. You may have noticed that I hinted at that in my account. It's a rather flat-fronted Ionic style--neo-Victorian, except for the bustles, 'Dal told me,--but 'Dal looked heavenly in it! So did little Victorine. And there was a girl in the blue brake--she's a provincial--but she's coming to town this winter and she'll knock 'em--Winnie Deans. ”

“ All these tall houses, built skyward layer upon layer or flat upon flat, until they show half a dozen stories on one street, and twice that number on the other, are doomed, and they will be done for, one by one in its turn. ”

“ One can get a 'self-contained residential flat' for twenty pounds a month. We are such an enthusiastic trio that a self-contained flat would be everything to us; and if it were not fully furnished, here is a firm that wishes to sell a 'composite bed' for six pounds, and a 'gent's stuffed easy' for five. ”

“ On the ground flat are stowed pledges of the greatest bulk, such as furniture or produce. The smaller and lighter articles occupy the upper flats, while one nearest the roof is exclusively for jewellery or other property of great intrinsic value. ”

“ Why, if you think me a dab I will get this strange gentleman, or this, pointing to the flat. Done! cries the sailor, but you shall not tell him.
1789. Geo. Parker, Life’s Painter, p. 142. Who are continually looking out for flats, in order to do them upon the broads, that is, cards.
1819. Moore, Tom Crib’s Memorial, p. 59. Poor Johnny Raw, what madness could impel, So rum a flat to face so prime a swell.
1837. Barham, Ingoldsby Legends. ‘Misadventures at Margate.’ He’s been upon the mill, And cos he gammons all the flats we calls him Veepin Bill. ”

“ The solum on which the flatted house stands, the area in front and the back ground are presumed to belong to the owner of the lowest floor or the owners of each floor severally, subject to the common right of the other proprietors to prevent injury to their flats, especially by depriving them of light. The external walls belong to each owner in so far as they enclose his flat ”

“ An Englishman who inhabits bachelor quarters is said to live in chambers; if he has a flat he calls it a flat, and not an apartment, which term he reserves for a single room. [17] Flat-houses are often mansions. ”

“ The size and plumpness of her feather beds, the Frau Inspector tells me, is a woman's chief claim to consideration from the neighbours. She who can pile them up nearest to the ceiling becomes the principal personage in the community, and a flat bed is a social disgrace. ”

“ When we resumed our climb the poet got talking of the Indians. Curiously enough Flat Top Mountain marks the entrance to the country of the Flat-Heads, the Flat-Heads being so called because they press their babies’ heads to obtain a flat-headed type of beauty. ”

“ I have found in the Rue Plumet a very good flat on the first floor, handsome, splendidly paneled, at only fifteen hundred francs a year, where you would only need one woman to wait on you, and I could be quite content with a boy. ”

“ On the other hand, women with flat waists are devoted in soul, delicately perceptive, inclined to sadness, more truly woman than the other class. The flat waist is supple and yielding; the round waist is inflexible and jealous. ”

“ Painted in the flat—that is, with no part of the picture telling as farther from the eye than another, to distort the proportions of the room—the ceiling yet has great depth, distance, airy lightness. ”

“ I was going back to the flat with the intention of collecting my overcoat, when I saw a number of people walking about the mews behind the block. I had no desire to attract attention, as I have told you before, so I stood waiting until these people, who were employees of a motor-car company which had a garage behind the flat, had dispersed. ”

“ I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.
Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows—only hard and with luminous edges—and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen. ”

“ The average face is round and flat, but there are exceptions, as I have seen one or two persons whose faces were a regular oval, and with the exception of the flat front, seen from a side view, were as well formed as one will meet among other people. ”

“ THE POSSIBILITIES OF A CITY FLAT The possibilities of the city flat will depend upon just how much window space the flat affords and how much sunlight the windows receive, for upon the amount of light will depend not so much the quantities of flowers which may be grown, as their character. ”

“ The painted canvas units which are assembled to make the box set are called "flats." A flat is a wooden frame about six feet six inches wide and from twelve to eighteen feet long, covered with canvas and, of course, painted with any scene desired. ”