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More "Loftiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of a high order: in brightness of expression and unsolicited ease and natural vehemence of language, he stands in the first rank of poets: in choice of subjects, in happiness of conception, and loftiness of imagination, he recedes into the second. He owes little of his fame to his objects, for, saving the beauty of a few ladies, they were all of an ordinary kind: he sought neither in romance nor in history for themes to the muse; he ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... qualities so conspicuously brilliant that they arrest the eyes and attention even of those who have but modest pretensions to learning. His reasoning is acute, weighty, and elegant, often attaining to the breadth and loftiness that we find in Plato. His conversation flows in a copious yet varied stream, strikingly pleasant to the ear, and with a charm that seizes and carries away even the reluctant hearer. Add to this a tall, commanding presence, a handsome face, long flowing hair, a streaming ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... claims can never be allowed. Then, besides, what folly to attempt to contend with me! Me, the strongest, bravest, and most terrible of the Greeks, and the special favorite of many deities." With this introduction Achilles went on to set forth the greatness of his pedigree, and the loftiness of his pretensions to superiority over all others in personal prowess and valor, in a manner very eloquent indeed, and in a style which it seems was very much admired in those days as evincing only a proper spirit and energy,—though in our times ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... met the order to close his doors with smiling loftiness, easy understanding of what he read it to mean. Astonished to find his offer of money silently and sternly ignored, Peden had grown contemptuously defiant. If it was a bid for him to raise the ante, ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... Bartholomew, this answer is more than creditable. The Germans, who have either felt or affected great indignation at the want of reverence for their great poet shown by the authors of "Faust" and "Mignon," ought to admire Meyerbeer in a special degree for the moral loftiness of his determination and the dignified beauty of its expression. Composers like Kreutzer, Reissiger, Pierson, Lassen, and Prince Radziwill have written incidental music for Goethe's tragedy without reflecting ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... of taste would have degraded if to the level of a comedy; throughout it maintains a uniform tone of loftiness and sincerity. The language is easy but powerful, the art with which the story is told is consummate. Finally, it is one of the few pieces in the literature of the world which are truly sublime; it ranks with Job and Dante. The great purpose ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... instance by participation in local politics and other social contests, and by such practice of charity as must be accompanied by physical exertion and bad smells. Culture is, to them, the name for that serenity and loftiness of mind that can be attained and preserved only by keeping a safe distance from the madding crowd; and the cultured man is pictured by them as sitting in a comfortable chair, preferably with a book in his hand, and rapt in ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... man, he is at least the silhouette of one. The need of expression that drove him to composition was indubitably mighty. The passion with which he addressed himself to his labor despite all discouragement and lack of success, the loftiness and nobleness of the task which he set for himself, the splendor of the intentions, reveal how fierce a fire burnt in the man. He was not one of those who come to music to form little jewels. On the contrary, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... solitude and darkness, not because one flees the company of others and can endure only one's own, but because of their quality of loftiness and religion. Strange how all things pass distantly, yet all is near; we sit in an omnipresence. It must be God. It must be ourselves as a part ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... the company of his great books. Had the summons come to pack his effects to-morrow and, saying good-by to everything else, start on a journey to the congenial places where his mighty masters lived and wrought, he would have wished her alone to go with him, sharer of life's loftiness. Her companionship wherever he might be—to have just that; to feel that she was always with him, and always one with him; to be able to turn his eyes to hers before some vanishing firelight at an hour like this, with deep rest near ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... and loftiness of the place wrought upon her by and by with a strange effect. Wandering along among pillars and galleries and arcades, where saints and apostles and martyrs looked down upon her as out of past ages, she seemed to be surrounded by a "great cloud of witnesses." They looked down upon her with ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... the first floor of a Piccadilly mansion (I wish somebody would!); but for thinking in let me have an attic up ten flights of stairs in the densest quarter of the city. I have all Herr Teufelsdrockh's affection for attics. There is a sublimity about their loftiness. I love to "sit at ease and look down upon the wasps' nest beneath;" to listen to the dull murmur of the human tide ebbing and flowing ceaselessly through the narrow streets and lanes below. How small men seem, how like a swarm of ants sweltering ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... their boarders for their bread; yet their manners were a mixture of loftiness and condescension that had the effect of making their guests believe that they—the guests—were highly honored in being permitted to board ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... He controls a highly trained bureaucracy not unlike that of British India to-day, and his system of government is wonderfully effective so long as it is informed by his untiring energy and singular loftiness of purpose. ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... in luxury have patiently bowed to toil and weariness. Men living in self-indulgence have shaken off their sloth, and roused the old slumbering fearlessness of their race. Men, living for selfish ends, have been penetrated by the light of a great purpose, and have risen to the loftiness of human duty. Men, who shrank from pain as the sorest evil, have voluntarily accepted pain, and borne it with a fortitude we once believed lost from among mankind; and, over all, the flaming light ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... separated from childhood, and it was a severe blow to him when she shunned the amusements they had so long shared together. He admired indeed the excellency of her second life, the beauty of her aspirations, the loftiness of her aims, but he felt deeply the want of that unity in hope and purpose which had existed between them. He felt, at times, indignant, as if something had been taken from himself. Therefore, he strove by many a device to lure her into the ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... poor gentleman, would go into the lodging-house business." I couldn't help agreeing with Jone, and I didn't like it a bit. The gentleman hadn't said anything or done anything that was out of the way, but there was a benignant loftiness about him which grated on the inmost fibres of ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... with a big hand that held a short smouldering pipe. Donkin bent over the cask, drank out of the tin, splashing the water, turned round and noticed the nigger looking at him over the shoulder with calm loftiness. He moved ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... its like. Therewithal the girl's wit fled for joy and she went forth from his presence and returned to her mistress. When she came in to her, she acquainted her with that which she had seen of El Abbas and that which was with him of servants and attendants and [set out to her] the loftiness of his station and gave her ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... servitude to those who in no respect were superior in dignity or could aspire to a better place than that of hangmen to the tyrants to whose sceptred pride they had opposed an elevation of soul that surmounted and overpowered the loftiness of Castile, the haughtiness of Austria, and the overbearing arrogance ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... are natural only to prosperity. One cannot, indeed, sufficiently lament the continuance of that spirit of delusion, by which, for a long time past, we have thought fit to measure our necessities by our inclinations. Moderation, prudence, and equity are far more suitable to our condition than loftiness, and confidence, and rigor. We are threatened by enemies of no small magnitude, whom, if we think fit, we may despise, as we have despised others; but they are enemies who can only cease to be truly formidable by our entertaining a due respect for their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... mind that!" said his father. "When she is once your wife trust me to lower her loftiness, and make her as meek and humble as you could wish. Let us go in now. How wildly this storm is driving! I hope it may clear before the hour for the marriage arrives." Thus speaking, the father and son entered the hall and sought ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... Richards were not those of an adventurous traveller. Travellers are in general constitutionally gifted with high animal spirits: they are talkative, eager, imperious. Mr Richards was calm and subdued in tone, with manners which were made distant by the loftiness of punctilious courtesy—the manners of a former age. I observed that the English he spoke was not exactly of our day. I should even have said that the accent was slightly foreign. But then Mr Richards remarked that he had been little in the habit for many years ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... to exhibit together his busts of the two poets, Scott wrote: "I am happy my effigy is to go with that of Wordsworth, for (differing from him in very many points of taste) I do not know a man more to be venerated for uprightness of heart and loftiness of genius. Why he will sometimes choose to crawl upon all fours, when God has given him so noble a countenance to lift to heaven, I am as little able to account for as for his quarrelling (as you tell me) with the wrinkles ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... meant to such a man as Randolph. He was a high-bred, high-spirited man of thirty, descended from a long line of proud and chivalrous men; educated, refined, sensitive, generous, and brave. His fine talents, his dash, his polished manner, his industry, his integrity, his loftiness of character, had lifted him upon the shoulders of popularity and prosperity; so that, in the city of his home, there was not another man of his age, a member of his profession, the law, who was so well known, so well liked, or ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... undeservedly; and I beg you to believe, Mrs Pipchin, that I am more than satisfied with your excellent system of management, and shall have the greatest pleasure in commending it whenever my poor commendation—' Mr Dombey's loftiness when he affected to disparage his own importance, passed all bounds—'can be of any service. I have been thinking of ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... looking cathedral—as a whole; and particularly the tower. It is broad, bold, and lofty; but, like all edifices, seen from a neighbouring and perhaps loftier height, it loses, at first view, very much of the loftiness of its character. However, I looked with admiration, and longed to approach it. This object was accomplished in twenty minutes. We entered Ulm about two o'clock: drove to an excellent inn (the White Stag—which I strongly recommend to all fellow-travellers) and ordered our dinner ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... a spring of human conduct; treating patriotism and disinterestedness with an elaborate sneer, and receiving the suggestions of duty with a horse-laugh. There is a difference not easily to be mistaken between the lessening of men which is occasioned by the loftiness of the platform whence the observation is made, and that which is produced by the malignant envy of the observer; between the gloomy judicial ferocity of a Pope or a Tacitus, and the villain levity which revels in the contemplation of imputed faults, or ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... attitude toward the woman that is of chief interest. Adam is plainly bored. What if the woman has broken into the sanctuary of knowledge, she will only be the bigger fool, he seems to say. As for the professor in the red robes, his easy, patronizing manner is indicative enough of his mental top-loftiness toward the woman question. You can almost hear him say as he strokes his beard: ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... fancy, the daring imagination which he shared with the Elizabethan poets, the large but ordered beauty which he had drunk in from the literature of Greece and Rome, the sublimity of conception, the loftiness of phrase which he owed to the Bible, blended in this story "of man's first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste brought death into the world and all our woe." It is only when we ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... rocks at Matlock, Bath, that "scene of romantic magnificence; from such scenes, probably, was conceived the wild imagination, in ancient mythology, of the giants piling Pelion upon Ossa; the loftiness of the rocks, and the character of the Derwent, a torrent in which force and fury prevail; the cascades in it are innumerable; before the water is recovered from one fall, it is hurried down another; and its agitation being ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... meadows, as the tide laps and murmurs close to the old monastic church. Grey Abbey owes its foundation to the piety of a princess of the Isle of Man, wedded to De Courcy, the Norman warrior whose victories and defeats we have recorded. The great beauty of its church is due to the soaring loftiness of the eastern window, and the graceful daring of the arches which in former days upheld the ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... high hope, of generous expectation, he went to Buffalo, and there, on the threshold of eternity, he delivered that memorable speech, worthy for its loftiness of tone, its blameless morality, its breadth of view, to be regarded as his testament to the nation. Through all his pride of country and his joy of its success runs the note of solemn warning, as in Kipling's noble hymn, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... drawing rein to rest, but found the wall thereof as it were one block, without breach or way of ingress; and on the third day, he came again in sight of his companions, dazed and amazed at what he had seen of the extent and loftiness of the place, and said, "O Emir, the easiest place of access is this where you have alighted." Then Musa took Talib and Abd al-Samad and ascended the highest hill which overlooked the city. When they reached the top, they beheld beneath them a city, never saw eyes a greater ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... oak, although unwitting that others were so near, and neither man dared to move. The moonlight, in softened silver, fell upon the faces of the lovers, disclosing all the beauty of the woman's and all the loftiness of the man's. Harley thought he had never seen ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... broad as his sunny acres that led far back from the river; his clearness of thought was like that of his native springs which gush in crystal clearness, leaving a path of verdure along their course; his loftiness of purpose towered sublimely above average life, like the glorious outlines of the Blue ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... York, his voice was yet in perfect preservation. It lacked nothing that is to be expected in a tenor voice of the first class; and it had that mingling of manliness and tenderness, of human sympathy and seraphic loftiness which, for lack of any other or better word, we call divine. As a vocalist he was not in the first rank, but he stood foremost in the second. His presence was manly and dignified, and he was a good actor. But it was as a vocalist, pure and simple, that he captivated and moved his audiences. ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... not possible for imagination and mathematics together, to do anything nobler or stronger than that procession of window, with material of glass and stone—nor anything which shall look loftier, with so temperate and prudent measure of actual loftiness. ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... which the author is unknown; Molire seems to have partly followed an Italian comedy, written by Giacinto Andrea Cicognini, under the name of Le Gelosie fortunata del principe Rodrigo; the style, loftiness and delicacy of expression are peculiar ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... Callidius, are the most celebrated. The talents, indeed, of Caesar were not more conspicuous in arms than in his style, which was noted for its force and purity.[264] Caelius, whom Cicero brought forward into public life, excelled in natural quickness, loftiness of sentiment, and politeness in attack;[265] Brutus in philosophical gravity, though he sometimes indulged himself in a warmer and bolder style.[266] Callidius was delicate and harmonious; Curio bold and flowing; Calvus, from studied opposition to ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... than money," repeated Mr. Wright, not to be denied: for it struck him as a really fine utterance, with a touch of the epigrammatic too, of which he had not believed himself capable. In the stir of his feelings he was conscious of an unfamiliar loftiness, and conscious also that it did him credit. He paused and added, ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its own soul; it is to live in a nutshell and to count yourself the king of infinite ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... into an isolating chain that refinement of mind and loftiness of character which your want of self-control may convert into misfortunes instead of blessings. Whenever, even now, a sense of total want of sympathy forces itself upon you, you console yourself with such thoughts as these: "Sheep ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... proud, dark father, as everyone said. I remember the sally of an indignant Parisian street arab, who called after me: "Hey, boy, why so high and mighty?" And in my own country, where one turns more quickly to measures sharper than words, this loftiness brought upon me even fiercer attacks. A country lad imitated my proud bearing and pure Italian, getting for it a slap with a towel which I carried on my way to bathe in the sea. On my return the answer ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... wonderful abilities are recognized by us all. His father, Hamilcar, had the very highest hopes of him, Hasdrubal has written again and again saying that in his young kinsman he recognized his superior, and that in loftiness of aim, in unselfish patriotism, in clearness of judgment, in the marvellous ascendency he has gained over the troops, in his talent in administration, and in the greatness of his military conceptions, he saw in him a genius of the highest ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... The quasi-supernatural religious awe that reigned over Greek tragedy, French tragedy does not affect. You miss also in French tragedy the severe simplicity, the self-restraint, the statuesque repose, belonging to the Greek model. Loftiness, grandeur, a loftiness somewhat strained, a grandeur tending to be tumid, an heroic tone sustained at sacrifice of ease and nature—such is the element in which French tragedy lives and flourishes. You must grant your French tragedists this their conventional privilege, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... eternal mountains; like gigantic watchers, they kept their vigil over the placid scene beneath—the vigil of untold centuries. Cloudless, unsympathizing, changeless, they had no part in the busy drama of human experience their loftiness overlooked, and now they loomed with shadowy outline, through the sanctifying light, habitants alike of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... elevation of manner. Dignity, grace, loftiness of manner. Title, name. Solitary, living by oneself. Crags, steep, rugged rocks. Base, foot, bottom. Plumes, feathers. Talons, claws. Eyrie, the nest of a bird that builds in a lofty place. Ledge, a ridge or projection. Rook, a bird resembling a crow, but smaller. Reared, ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... overwhelming extent on the Parish Churches and Cathedrals of the country, and to it he added a Dome. There is one feature that these two apparent opposites have in common. Gothic Churches vary greatly, but many of them are notable for their appearance of loftiness. The clustered columns seem to lead the eye upwards to the roof, as if men naturally went about the world cramped and confined, and were now bidden turn their gaze to the heights. A dome has a somewhat similar ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... do with our castle," said the lady wonderingly. "Look- -the keep is no higher than your roof-tree. My lord chose not the site for its loftiness but ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... which ever appeared in so condensed a form. A.'s contributions to literature were few, and, in comparison with his extraordinary learning, comparatively unimportant. He wrote upon Cardinal Wolsey (1877) and German Schools of History (1886). He was extremely modest, and the loftiness of his ideals of accuracy and completeness of treatment led him to shrink from tasks which men of far slighter equipment might have carried out with success. His learning and his position as a universally acknowledged master in his subject were recognised by his appointment in 1895 as Professor ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... of which it is so loudly accused in its solitary occupations—that loftiness of spirit, those quick jealousies, those excessive affections and aversions which view everything as it passes in its own ideal world, and rarely as it exists in the mediocrity of reality. If this irritability of genius ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... you predicate for your countryman. Trust me, we shall have to greet his departure from the debate with many hisses and few cheers; and if we could penetrate through the plates of yon iron door, and gaze into the court it conceals from our view, we should find that the loftiness of his pretensions has been already humbled, and his arguments graveled. For la Litania de los Santos! to think of comparing an obscure student of the pitiful College of Saint Andrew with the erudite doctors of the most erudite ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a few days to the pure loftiness of the mountains; the life of to-day is so practical, if full of shams that a day with nature is as a tonic to ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... yet she sang as if possessed by him. Had she, Patrick thought, been bent upon charming Philip, she could not have thrown more fire into the notes. And when she had done, after thrilling the room, there was a gesture in her dismissal of the leaves displaying critical loftiness. Patrick noticed it and said, with the thrill of her voice lingering in him: 'What is it you do like? I should ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... lacks all these advantages, and who then would be far away from you. When I called to mind all the amiable qualities possessed by Maria Louisa, I could not but tremble at the thought that I should soon be indifferent to you, but surely I was then ignoring the loftiness and generosity of your soul, which still preserves the memory of its extraordinary devotedness, and of its tenderness toward me, a devotedness and tenderness whose superabundance was proportioned to those eminent qualities which have surprised Europe, and which cause you ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... wrote: "The work that actually created a furious storm of applause is of the calmest character that can be conceived; always powerful, it leaves the all-controlling sensation of loftiness and purity." "The union of decoration, poetry, music and dramatic representation in a wonderfully beautiful picture, that with impressive eloquence points to the new testament—a picture full of peace and mild, conciliatory harmony, is something entirely ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... the two foremost (and then only) pilasters; in the place of which doors now the two stage boxes are fixt. That where the doors of entrance now are, there formerly stood two additional side-wings, in front to a full set of scenes, which had then almost a double effect in their loftiness and magnificence. ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... ancient periods this miserable town was once the capital of a separate kingdom. In our dining room were three beds, or rather we dined in the bed room. I use the former expression out of compliment to the pride of our little host, who replied with some loftiness to one of our companions, who, upon entering the room, and seeing so many accommodations for repose, exclaimed, with the sharpness of appetite, "my good host, we want to eat, and not to sleep;" "gentlemen," said our mortified little maitre d'hotel, "this chamber is ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... to the palace-gate, which is a great pillared archway, of wonderful loftiness and state, giving admittance into a spacious quadrangle. A stout, elderly, and rather surly footman in livery appeared at the entrance, and took possession of whatever canes, umbrellas, and parasols he could get hold of, in order to claim sixpence on our departure. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... piece of collective property. But all talents are not equally costly. It takes but few teachers, but few years, and but little study, to make a farmer or a mechanic: the generative effort and—if I may venture to use such language—the period of social gestation are proportional to the loftiness of the capacity. But while the physician, the poet, the artist, and the savant produce but little, and that slowly, the productions of the farmer are much less uncertain, and do not require so long a time. Whatever ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... in times of peace. There is then, he says, 'a small and uncomfortable agitation, a sort of incessant attrition of man against man, which troubles and distracts the mind without imparting to it either loftiness or animation.' It rests with you to prove whether these things are necessarily so—whether scientific genius cannot find, in the midst of you, a ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... writers were as yet unknown, or just beginning to give sign of what they were. Dr. Channing was already distinguished as an eloquent and powerful preacher, but the general public had not yet recognized in him that remarkable combination of loftiness of thought with magic charm of style, which was soon to be revealed in his essays on Milton and Napoleon Bonaparte. Ticknor and Everett were professors in Harvard College, giving a new impulse to the minds of the students by their admirable lectures; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... the devil!" I cried at last, in anger, and rushed into the street, leaving him still writhing in the loftiness of his enthusiasm. ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... at the same time he could not conceal from himself the fact that Margaret's passion for the poetic cut, so to speak, both ways. He admired and loved the loftiness of her soul, but, on the other hand, it was a tough job having to live up to it. For Archibald was a very ordinary young man. They had tried to inoculate him with a love of poetry at school, but it had not taken. Until he was thirty he had been satisfied ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... displays no magnificence, and the impressions on the gazer's mind, partake of none of that involuntary admiration and religious awe, which the sight of an old English cathedral, or the splendid churches of Italy, never fails to produce. One of its greatest defects arises from want of loftiness in the dome, the diameter of which is one hundred and fifteen, while its height does not exceed twenty feet. There is an immense number of columns, the spoils of various heathen temples. Of these, eight, of porphyry, are from that dedicated to the Sun by the Emperor Aurelian; and ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... independent savage communities can not long exist within the limits of a civilized population. The progress of the latter has almost invariably terminated in the extinction of the former, especially of the tribes belonging to our portion of this hemisphere, among whom loftiness of sentiment and gallantry in action have been conspicuous. To civilize them, and even to prevent their extinction, it seems to be indispensable that their independence as communities should cease, and that the control of the United States over them should ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... thrilled her with its loftiness. She thrilled to him suddenly, too. She saw that she was within the aura of a fiery spirit—a business man aflame. And she saw in a white light that the builders of things, even of perishable things, are as great as the weavers of immortal words—not so well remembered, ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... not taken the occasion to accept your apology and thank you for the warning which may save the life of one who—believe me—is no longer your foe, if he had been one. I am not able to judge the greatness and loftiness of your act from your people's point of view, but I shall no longer have a mean opinion of the creed which can perform such a conversion as yours—that is, making you a true gentleman instead of leading one to believe you a ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... us are tolerably numerous, and enable us to select certain prominent characteristics of his style. The loftiness for which he is celebrated seems to be of expression rather ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... seen further, when she went to Tanna, where, in less than three months, she had collected a class of eight females, who came regularly to her to receive instruction. There was about her a maturity of thought, a solidity of character, a loftiness of aim and purpose, rarely found in one so young. Trained up in the fear of the Lord from childhood, like another Mary she had evidently chosen that good part, which is never taken away from those possessed of it. When she left this island, she had to all human appearance ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... for his own supper, as well as for his guests Noor ad Deen and the fair Persian walked up and down the garden, till at last they came to the pavilion of pictures. They stood awhile to admire its wonderful structure, size, and loftiness; and after taking a full view of it on every side, went up many steps of fine white marble to the hall-door, which they ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... the spirit of pioneers. They had set themselves a lofty task: to prove themselves the equal of man—to win privileges which they believed were maliciously denied their sex. The spirit with which they attacked their studies was illumined by the loftiness of their aim. The girl who enters college nowadays has rarely the opportunity to be either pioneer or martyr. She is doing what has come to be regarded as a matter of course. Nevertheless, to-day as then, in the coeducational institution she is ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... obnoxious articles were carefully folded up and taken to the officer of the guard, who, when I left the box, at the end of the opera, brought them to me and offered to assist me in putting them on; but I refused them with true cavalier-like loftiness, and entered my carriage without either hat ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... Venetians; and that industrious people employed every resource that was known and practiced before the invention of gunpowder. A double line, three bow-shots in front, was formed by the galleys and ships; and the swift motion of the former was supported by the weight and loftiness of the latter, whose decks, and poops, and turret, were the platforms of military engines, that discharged their shot over the heads of the first line. The soldiers, who leaped from the galleys on shore, immediately ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... wildest guess Of Love's most innocent loftiness Had dared to dream of its own worth, Till Heaven's bold sun-gleam lit the earth. Christ's marriage with the Church is more, My Children, than a metaphor. The heaven of heavens is symbol'd where The torch of Psyche flash'd despair. But here I speak of heights, and heights Are hardly scaled. ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... last words, in spite of all her pride, appealingly. But still, there was a note of high pride in all this—in all she said and did, in her attitude and movement, in the tones of her voice, in the loftiness of her carriage and the steadfast look of her open, starlit eyes. Altogether, there was something so rarely lofty in herself and all that clad her that, face to face with it and with her, my feeble attempt ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... carried his Pegasus over the clouds to the stars could not keep it there without artificial aid, the immense value of his influence remained. He is one of the most interesting representatives, not only of his own, but of all similar periods of exaggerated feelings and ideals. Despite his loftiness of thought and speech, and his seraphic raptures, he was not without a full share of sensuous development, and women's eyes, or a girl's rosy lips, would draw him away from the finest view ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... loftiness, likewise, took possession of Mr Wegg; a condescending sense of being in request as an official expounder of mysteries. It did not move him to commercial greatness, but rather to littleness, insomuch that if it had been within the possibilities of things for the wooden ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... impression, like Whistler. To penetrate beneath the seen to the unseen was the aim of his art. He wrestled to express thoughts in paint that seem inexpressible. When we go to the Tate Gallery in London, to the room filled with most precious works of Watts, we feel almost overawed by the loftiness of his ideas, though they may seem to strain the last resources of the painter's art. One of them is a picture of 'Chaos' before the creation of the world. Half-formed men and women struggle from the earth to force themselves into life, as the half-wrought statues of Michelangelo ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... the baseness of the ancestors never was, it is not possible for oblivion of them to be, since oblivion is a destruction of remembrance, and in those other animals, and in plants, and in minerals, lowness and loftiness are not observed, since in one they are natural or innate and in an equal state, and Nobility cannot possibly be in their generation, and likewise neither can vileness nor baseness; since one regards the one and the other as habit and privation, which are possible to occur in the same ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... not pure Schubert. About six years elapsed between this and the next sonata, in A minor (1823). Schubert had already written his B minor Symphony, and though the first two movements of the sonata will not compare with those of the former in loftiness of conception, there is a certain kinship between the two works. In both there are fitful gusts of passion, a feeling of awe, and a tone of sadness which tells of disappointed hopes, of lost illusions. The Finale, though fine, stands on a lower level. During the years 1825-26, ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... of Jesus were written from thirty to a hundred years after his death. In these records memory and imagination are intimately blended. On the one hand, the power and loftiness of his character and words stamped certain traits unmistakably and indelibly on the minds of his followers. But on the other hand, he was so suggestive and inspiring—there were among his disciples natures so susceptible, responsive, yet untrained, and their community was soon fused ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... being no covered sewers, the odour still continues. A zealous Scotsman would have wished Mr Johnson to be without one of his five senses upon this occasion. As we marched slowly along, he grumbled in my ear, 'I smell you in the dark!' But he acknowledged that the breadth of the street, and the loftiness of the buildings on each side, made ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... Berengaria loved her husband passionately, but she feared the loftiness and roughness of his character; and as she felt herself not to be his match in intellect, was not much pleased to see that he would often talk with Edith Plantagenet in preference to herself, simply because ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... that Adam, in the state of innocence, saw the angels through their essence. For Gregory says (Dialog. iv, 1): "In paradise man was accustomed to enjoy the words of God; and by purity of heart and loftiness of vision to have the company of the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... this all. In order adequately to appreciate the loftiness of utilitarian teaching, and its utter exemption from the sordidness with which it is ignorantly charged, we must devote a few moments to examination of those distinctive peculiarities of different kinds of pleasure ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... I don't suppose you will know these people, anyway," she added with an unconscious touch of loftiness in her voice. "The name is Ashton—Mrs. ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... and powers, a diviner height in the loftiness, and a diviner depth in the condescension, and a diviner tenderness in the love, and a diviner energy in the power, of the redeeming God have been made known, and this is the thought of His eternal ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... code of the honest villager does not exclude in women either keen intelligence, a subtle mind, or loftiness of ideas. Their soul seems to have something of the humming-bird which flits in and out the thickest shrubs, without getting entangled in their branches, or touching ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... circumstance of being free from such conventions as the cameo relief, the picturesque costume details, the goldsmith's work characteristic of the Renaissance, now so much in vogue, M. Rodin's things acquire a certain largeness and loftiness as well as simplicity and sincerity of sentiment. The same model posed for the "Saint Jean" that posed for a dozen things turned out of the academic studios, but compared with the result in the latter cases, that in the former is even more remarkable ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... and here is Mrs. Cowperwood," she commented, turning to the painting by Van Beers. "It's high in key, isn't it?" she said, loftily, but with an innocent loftiness that appealed to him. He liked spirit and some presumption in a woman. "What brilliant colors! I like the idea of the ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... cathedral, at the center door, by descending two steps, you are struck with the length and loftiness of the nave, and with the lightness of the gallery which runs along the upper part of it. Perhaps the nave is too narrow for its length. The lantern of the central large tower is beautifully light and striking. It is supported by four massive clustered pillars, about forty feet in circumference; ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... scrutinizing gaze upon the grand chamberlain, who, having delivered his message, stood in buckram dignity, drawn up to his full stature, curling his whiskers, stroking his beard, and looking down upon him with inexpressible loftiness through his lack-lustre eyes. There was no doubting the word of so grave and ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... Magism, though less elevated and less pure than the old Zoroastrian creed, must be pronounced to have possessed a certain loftiness and picturesqueness which suited it to become the religion of a great and splendid monarchy. The mysterious fire-altars on the mountain-tops, with their prestige of a remote antiquity—the ever-burning flame believed to have been ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... whatever the type, show either that the mind of the writer is tainted with affectation, or else that an effort is making to conceal conscious poverty of sentiment under loftiness of expression." Here is an example of a kind of sentence that can be mended in only one way—by rewriting, which might be done thus: Violations of simplicity, whatever the type, show either that the writer is tainted with affectation, ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... in fact, one of the most exquisite and tender pieces of writing in the language. He had ended his literary labors with that perfect thing which so marvelously speaks the loftiness and tenderness of his soul. It was thoroughly in keeping with his entire career that he should, with this rare dramatic touch, bring it to a close. A paragraph which he omitted may be ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... harmony with this effect is the absence of all comic relief—although Shakespeare was to prove later that this has a useful place in tragedy. A smile, a jest would be sacrilege in the prevailing gloom. Two effects alone are aimed at; an impression of loftiness in the theme, and a profound melancholy. Not warm gushing tears. Those are the outcome of a personal sorrow, small and ignoble beside an abstract grief at 'the falls of princes', 'the tumbling down of crowns', 'the ruin of proud realms'. What does ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... again was an immense success, and was greeted invariably by a specially selected choir chanting the Hymn of Hate. And yet the damage done was not very great from the material point of view. It was the mental jolt, the jar to their spiritual loftiness, that tickled the dear souls up. . ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... Marius wished to have free and obligatory, multiplied under all forms lavished on every one, like the air and the sun in a word, respirable for the entire population, they were in unison, and they almost conversed. M. Fauchelevent talked well, and even with a certain loftiness of language—still he lacked something indescribable. M. Fauchelevent possessed something less and also something more, than a ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... not unlike Wordsworth in the insufficiency of his sense of form. We have just seen the essential cause of this insufficiency to lie in the nonesthetical attitude of his mind, and we have tried to show one of the roots of such an attitude in the very loftiness and earnestness of his purpose. Yet, there are others, for living nature is many-rooted as it is many-branched. It cannot be doubted that a certain refractoriness to form is a typical feature of the Basque character. The sense of form ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... scenery helped to make her heart palpitate newly. Was it at the novelty simply, or the almost incredible fulfilment about to be given to her girlish dreams of being "somebody"—walking through her own furlong of corridor and under her own ceilings of an out-of-sight loftiness, where her own painted Spring was shedding painted flowers, and her own fore-shortened Zephyrs were blowing their trumpets over her; while her own servants, lackeys in clothing but men in bulk and ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... over her. In her family, in her court, in her kingdom, she remained equally mistress: the force of the tender passions was great over her, but the force of her mind was still superior; and the combat which her victory visibly cost her, serves only to display the firmness of her resolution, and the loftiness of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... into the plan of a treatise in defence of the Christian religion—seems beyond doubt. He had himself, according to the statement of his nephew, unfolded such a plan to his friends, in a lengthened conversation about the year 1657 or 1659. They were charmed with the loftiness of his design, and listened to his exposition of it for two or three hours with unabated interest. He was to commence with an analysis of human nature, and to advance from the contemplation of its mysteries, obscurities, and perplexities, to the consideration of the various methods, philosophical ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... aristocracy of birth and privilege, but one of worth and intelligence; not a band of hereditary lords, but a company of well-chosen leaders. Their value will depend not so much upon their technical knowledge and skill as upon the breadth of their mind, the clearness of their thought, the loftiness of their motives, the balance of their judgment, and the strength of their devotion to duty. For the cultivation of these things I say—pardon the apparent contradiction of what you said—I say the study of the classics has been and still is of ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... distinguished loftiness of moral grandeur: "Then I decline," etc.: you are aware that you are quoting? "as the drummerboy said to Napoleon." I think you forgot to add that? It is the same young soldier who utters these immense ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that of Richard Grenville, as it stands in Prince's "Worthies of Devon;" of a Spanish type, perhaps (or more truly speaking, a Cornish), rather than an English, with just enough of the British element in it to give delicacy to its massiveness. The forehead and whole brain are of extraordinary loftiness, and perfectly upright; the nose long, aquiline, and delicately pointed; the mouth fringed with a short silky beard, small and ripe, yet firm as granite, with just pout enough of the lower lip to give hint of that capacity of noble indignation which lay hid under its usual courtly calm and sweetness; ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... his father. "When she is once your wife trust me to lower her loftiness, and make her as meek and humble as you could wish. Let us go in now. How wildly this storm is driving! I hope it may clear before the hour for the marriage arrives." Thus speaking, the father and son entered the hall ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... "Yes, Your Loftiness. Many cycles ago we sent a ship against the Omans with a new device of destruction. The Omans must have intercepted it, drained it of power and allowed it to drift on. After all these cycles of time it must have come upon a small source of power and ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... the character I already guessed. Then, Dora, when I saw you, as I have seen you in these last weeks, struggling so nobly to render complete the sacrifice you came hither to make; when I saw the sweetness, the power, the loftiness, and the divine truth, of your nature, shining more clearly day by day, and yourself the only one unconscious of the priceless value of such a nature,—then, Dora, I came to know for truth what I tell you now, God hearing me, that you are the woman of all the world whom I love, honor, ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... this manly response. Although, contrary to his custom, he had a lady on his knee, he adjured the young prince, with a sublime loftiness of soul, to be faithful to ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... me through any other way. Let me stay." She said the last words, in spite of all her pride, appealingly. But still, there was a note of high pride in all this—in all she said and did, in her attitude and movement, in the tones of her voice, in the loftiness of her carriage and the steadfast look of her open, starlit eyes. Altogether, there was something so rarely lofty in herself and all that clad her that, face to face with it and with her, my feeble attempt at moral precaution seemed puny, ridiculous, and out ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... enough perhaps to raise to princely power and rank this foreign adventurer. Could he not be satisfied with something less? But Columbus was as inexorable as the Sibyl with her books, and would hear of no abatement in his price. For this "great constancy and loftiness of soul,"[506] Las Casas warmly commends his friend Columbus. A querulous critic might call it unreasonable obstinacy. But in truth the good man seems to have entertained another grand scheme of his own, to which he wished to ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... lies in the hand of God, Waiting, like seed, to fall on the sod; Tranquil its lakes were, and lovely its shores, While idly each stream o'er the fretting rocks pours. Its forests are fair and its mines fathomless, Grand are its mountains in their loftiness; Its fields wait the plow, and its harbors the ships, No sail down the blue of the water-way slips. God keeps in his palm, through centuries dim, This hid, idle seed. It belongeth to him. Away in a corner, where God only knows, The seed when he plants it quickens and grows. The pale buds unfold ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... restitution of Placidia as an indispensable condition of the treaty of peace. But the daughter of Theodosius submitted, without reluctance, to the desires of the conqueror, a young and valiant prince, who yielded to Alaric in loftiness of stature, but who excelled in the more attractive qualities of grace and beauty. The marriage of Adolphus and Placidia was consummated before the Goths retired from Italy; and the solemn, perhaps the anniversary, day of their nuptials was afterward celebrated in the house ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... sufficiently animated, he brought together words, that were astonished to find themselves in each other's company, and created a language of his own, a language rich and impressive, that might sometimes infringe established rules, but compensated this happy fault, by giving more loftiness ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... to do so, at this moment; but even the small quantity of ale or spirits which he imbibed to drown his mental anguish acted like poison upon a weak and ailing body, now more than usually debilitated by insufficient food. In the winter of 1823, Clare found himself almost penniless; yet with inborn loftiness of mind, he hid the fact from his family, so as not to distress them. His wife and parents, therefore, lived as well as ever, while he, to save expenditure, got into the habit of absenting himself at meal-times, ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... a bad bargain-driver. David's nature was of the sensitive and affectionate type that shrinks from a dispute, and gives way at once if an opponent touches his feelings. His loftiness of feeling, and the fact that the old toper had himself well in hand, put him still further at a disadvantage in a dispute about money matters with his own father, especially as he credited that father with the best intentions, and took his covetous greed for a printer's attachment to his old ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... itself alone. Thence, once again, arise its infirmities. Thus, what will happen, if, because the truths which I utter here are obscure and do not at the first glance appear to conform to the requirements of logic, you hastily reject them with all the loftiness of your scornful reason, which would blush to admit what it did not understand! Poor reason! which in and of itself understands so little, and admits so many follies as soon as a scholar affirms them. The consequence will be that you ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... affections, and they were merry hours that sped so swiftly at the Literary Club. The great are never greater than in the hearts of their homes and the simplicities of their friendships. At this club the gods forgot their power and high beings laid aside their loftiness. In the midst we find the man they teased the man most welcome; that one that all affected to despise, each in his inmost heart unfeignedly respected. The man most laughed at was most loved. Oliver Goldsmith made the mirth of things. He was always forbearing, and to this ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... truths in his theory are chained to dead fancies, and the fancies have an odour as repulsive as Taylor's 'million of dead dogs.' But on the truths is founded a religious and moral system which, however erroneous it may appear to some thinkers, is conspicuous for its vigour and loftiness. Edwards often shows himself a worthy successor of the great men who led the moral revolt of the Reformation. Amongst some very questionable metaphysics and much outworn—sometimes repulsive—superstition, he grasps the central truths on which all really noble morality ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... beside the mark to add that there are some fine men in British politics. There are, of course, in all professions, including (I dare say) that of burglary. There still are in the political arena gentlemen whose single aim, pursued with undeviating loftiness of purpose, is the service of their country. I will not pretend to think their number large, for I know it is not. (But I dare say it is larger than it will be a few years hence, when we have pursued a little farther the enlightened ideal of ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... embrasure of one of the guns, I feasted my eyes upon one of the finest and most interesting views I had ever beheld. The city, with its minarets, towers, kiosks, and stately palm-trees, lay at my feet, displaying, by its extent, the solidity, loftiness, and magnificence of its buildings, its title to the proud name of "Grand Cairo." Beyond, in one wide flood of silver, flowed the Nile, extending far as the eye could reach along a plain verdant with its fertilizing waters. To the ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... high and responsible office. No longer the inactive scholar, the gay companion, he rose at once to pre-eminence above all his fellow-citizens. Never before had authority been borne with so austere an integrity, so uncorrupt a zeal. He had sought to impregnate his colleagues with the same loftiness of principle—he had failed. Now secure in his footing, he had begun openly to appeal to the people; and already a new spirit seemed to animate ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... undeserved, so far as related to his efforts to restore her to her throne. The legions which Caesar had sent for into Syria had not yet arrived, and his situation in Alexandria was still very defenseless and very precarious. He did not, however, on this account, abate in the least degree the loftiness and self confidence of the position which he had assumed, but he commenced immediately the work of securing Cleopatra's restoration. This quiet assumption of the right and power to arbitrate and decide such a question as that of the claim ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... articles were carefully folded up and taken to the officer of the guard, who, when I left the box, at the end of the opera, brought them to me and offered to assist me in putting them on; but I refused them with true cavalier-like loftiness, and entered my carriage without either hat ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... nor win friends. He was large visioned and adept at mapping out broad policies, but he lacked the elements of leadership requisite to carry his plans into effect. He scorned the everyday arts of politics, and by the very loftiness of his ideals he alienated support. In short, as one writer has remarked, he was "a weigher of scruples and values in a time of transition, a representative of old-school politics on the threshold of triumphant democracy. The people did not understand him, but they felt instinctively ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... when have you gone into melodrama?" The voice was pettish, but the listener was not slow to catch a tremor of discomfort under its attempted loftiness. "As if I cared!—or need to fear such stuff as Gregoriev's!—Go to Zaremba, if you like, and tell him I sent you for the manuscript.—Much good may it do you!—Oh, yes, take the thing! Have it played! Hear the fools howl over it and praise it! The day of real greatness ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... of to-day. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its own soul; it is to live in a nutshell and to count yourself the king ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... father's host, without let or stay, so they might know the multitude of the Great King's troops and the might of his empire. And all who had seen him selling stuffs in the linendrapers' bazar marvelled how his soul could have consented thereto, considering the nobility of his spirit and the loftiness of his dignity; but it was his love and inclination to the King's daughter that to this had constrained him. Meanwhile, news of the multitude of her lover's troops came to Hayat al-Nufus, who was still jailed by ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... pervades,—the very backbone and marrow of society,—he felt that to fall far short of his rivals in display was to give them an advantage which he could not compensate either by the power of his connections or the surpassing loftiness of his character and genius. Playing for a great game, and with his eyes open to all the consequences, he cared not for involving his private fortunes in a lottery in which a great prize might be drawn. To do Vargrave justice, money with him ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the most celebrated. The talents, indeed, of Caesar were not more conspicuous in arms than in his style, which was noted for its force and purity.[264] Caelius, whom Cicero brought forward into public life, excelled in natural quickness, loftiness of sentiment, and politeness in attack;[265] Brutus in philosophical gravity, though he sometimes indulged himself in a warmer and bolder style.[266] Callidius was delicate and harmonious; Curio bold ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... depreciate her was simpler, and had generally been his wont; but subjugation had reached another stage in him. He summoned all possible pleadings on the girl's behalf: her talents, her youth, her grievous trials. Devotion to classical music cannot but argue a certain loftiness of mind; it might, in truth, be somehow akin to 'religion'. Remembering his own follies and vices at the age of four-and-twenty, was it not reason, no less than charity, to see in Alma the hope of future good? Nay, if it came to ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... cunning eyes, and a very round face, glistening and shining with its absurd obesity; and in shape and complexion bearing a close resemblance to a sun-flower stuck into a Dutch cheese. The awe with which she regarded her nephew arose partly from his size, but principally from the aristocratic loftiness of his birth—being the third in descent from the original founder of the family, while nothing stood between her and the tallow vat except the six years during which her father had enacted the country squire. What could be more appalling to these unhappy beings than the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... irked me much that any one should take advantage of me; yet everybody did so as soon as ever it was known that my wits were gone moon-raking. For that was the way they looked at it, not being able to comprehend the greatness and the loftiness. Neither do I blame them much; for the wisest thing is to laugh at people when we cannot understand them. I, for my part, took no notice; but in my heart despised them as beings of a lesser nature, who never had seen Lorna. Yet I was vexed, and rubbed myself, when ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Temple. Rigaud was especially successful with the rich bourgeoisie of Paris, and later became court painter, supreme in expressing the grandiose and inflated pomposities of the age. He, says Reynolds, in the tumour of his presumptuous loftiness, was the perfect example of Du Pile's rules, that bid painters so to draw their portraits that they seem to speak and say to us: "Stop, look at me! I am that invincible king: majesty surrounds me. Look! I am that valiant soldier: I struck terror everywhere. I am that great minister, etc." By Largilliere, ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... more completely mastered by sentiment. In the very circumstance of being free from such conventions as the cameo relief, the picturesque costume details, the goldsmith's work characteristic of the Renaissance, now so much in vogue, M. Rodin's things acquire a certain largeness and loftiness as well as simplicity and sincerity of sentiment. The same model posed for the "Saint Jean" that posed for a dozen things turned out of the academic studios, but compared with the result in the latter cases, that in the former ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... teachings of its Founder." And again he says, "How much soever spiritual culture may advance, the natural sciences broaden and deepen, and the human mind enlarge, the world will never get beyond the loftiness and moral culture of Christianity as it shines and glistens in the ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... servants were the severest sticklers for propriety, and the butlers of the old families rivalled each other in the loftiness of their standards. Jack, the butler of "the last of the Barons," was wide awake to the demands of his position, and when an old sea captain, an intimate friend of Mr. Huger, dining with the family, asked for rice when the fish was served he was first met with a chill silence. Thinking that he ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... replied for an hour in an eloquent and convincing defense of the Christian religion, in which he answered in order every objection the young men had uttered. So impressive was the simplicity and loftiness of his discourse that the erstwhile critics ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... for our welfare; and this solicitude is not only pardonable, but may justly be demanded from those who choose us for their companions. This state of things was more slow to arrive at on this occasion than on most others, on account of the gravity and loftiness of this ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... accident of war, could do nothing to shake or to diminish. We have noticed other instances in which Marcus Aurelius labored, at the risk of his popularity, to elevate the condition of human nature. But those, though equally expressing the goodness and loftiness of his nature, were by accident directed to a perishable institution, which time has swept away, and along with it therefore his reformations. Here, however, is an immortal act of goodness built upon an immortal basis; for so long as armies congregate, and the sword ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... will say, for the good providence of God, that of all the many places I have seen in the world, I remember not one better seated; so that it seems to me to have been appointed for a town, whether we regard the rivers, or the conveniency of the coves, ducks, and springs, the loftiness and soundness of the land, and the air, held by the people of those ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... hear no more injuries. He said: "You'll don' got money enough, Mr. Durgin, by gosh! to reduce my wages," and he started down the hill toward Whitwell's house with as great loftiness as could comport with a down-hill gait and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to do it. It condemns us for not doing right, even when we have no power to do anything but what is wrong. It shows us a great ideal of goodness to which we ought to aspire, and discourages us by the very loftiness of the standard. It tells us in the same breath that we are sinners, and that we ought to be angels. It seems at the same time to elevate and degrade us. It elevates us by giving a great object to life, and making it serious and earnest; ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... think of the creator of Hamlet, Ophelia, Othello, Desdemona, Cordelia, Portia, Rosalind, Miranda, and Prospero as other than a man of a contrite spirit and a pure heart. As he surpassed his contemporaries in breadth and loftiness of intellect, so too he surpassed them in the reach and vigor ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... with that stilted loftiness which dignitaries are wont to assume on great occasions. All the same, there were tears of joy in Jan's eyes and he had hard work to keep his ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... truly free, not in the degree only in which he governs himself, but in the degree that he governs himself according to the central truth and right of things, or according to the loftiness of the standard by which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... official existence, he followed in the wake of his party submissively, doing its appointed work with patience, and vindicating its declared policy with skill, but never emerging as a distinct and prominent figure. He never exhibited any peculiar largeness of mind or loftiness of character; and though he spoke well and wrote well, and played the part of a cool and wary manager, he was scarcely considered a commanding spirit among his fellows. Amid that array of luminaries, indeed, which adorned the Senate, where his chief reputation was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... Falkland departed. Through the interview he, no doubt, conducted himself in a way that did him peculiar credit. Yet the warmth of his temper could not be entirely suppressed: and even when he was most exemplary, there was an apparent loftiness in his manner that was calculated to irritate; and the very grandeur with which he suppressed his passions, operated indirectly as a taunt to his opponent. The interview was prompted by the noblest sentiments; but it unquestionably served to widen the breach ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... every resource that was known and practiced before the invention of gunpowder. A double line, three bow-shots in front, was formed by the galleys and ships; and the swift motion of the former was supported by the weight and loftiness of the latter, whose decks, and poops, and turret, were the platforms of military engines, that discharged their shot over the heads of the first line. The soldiers, who leaped from the galleys on shore, immediately planted and ascended their scaling-ladders, while the large ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... reason to believe in the loftiness of human nature. Therefore he dissolved himself like a mist and returned to his gas-plugs without a word of apology. Bessie watched the flight with a certain uneasiness; but so long as Dick appeared to be ignorant of the harm that had been ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... at the coldness of my attitude, but would have sacrificed their feelings and their personality to their superior convictions. For hardly can it be that I failed to note their overtures and the loftiness of their motives, or that I would not have accepted any wise and useful advice proffered. At the same time, it is for a subordinate to adapt himself to the tone of his superior, rather than for a superior to adapt himself to the tone of his subordinate. Such a course is at once ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Willson lived and worked, in the midst of the most crowded thoroughfares of New York, always made me think of Professor Teufelsdrockh on the attic floor of "the highest house in the Wahngasse." The two had more than one point of resemblance. They shared the loftiness of their point of view, their sympathetic understanding of other folks, their loneliness, and, above all, their patient, even humorous resignation to the ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... what this meant to such a man as Randolph. He was a high-bred, high-spirited man of thirty, descended from a long line of proud and chivalrous men; educated, refined, sensitive, generous, and brave. His fine talents, his dash, his polished manner, his industry, his integrity, his loftiness of character, had lifted him upon the shoulders of popularity and prosperity; so that, in the city of his home, there was not another man of his age, a member of his profession, the law, who was so well known, so well liked, or wielded such ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... 'And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be brought low: and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. And the idols shall utterly pass away. And men shall go into the caves of the rocks, and into ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... of the Cyprian temper—thy comprehension of their grievances—thy loyal Cyprian pride—thy staunchness to the House of Lusignan—make thyself charming to these great Cyprian nobles; help the Queen to see the need of their conciliation, and stoop a little from thy loftiness to win it for them. To two such women, the impossible is easy. I ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... alone together since first we saw each other," life seems to begin for each upon new and so incredibly sweeter terms. The stranger knight, whom mystery enwraps, shows himself, despite certain sweet loftiness which never leaves him, most convincingly human. In the simplest warm way, a way old-fashioned as love, we hear him rejoice: "Now we are escaped and hidden from the whole world. None can overhear the exchange of greetings between our hearts. Elsa, my wife! ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... exercise of that profession. He had a singular force and solidity of thought, an admirable ardor of ambitious devotion to the service of poetry, a deep and burning sense at once of the duty implied and of the dignity inherent in his office; a vigor, opulence, and loftiness of phrase, remarkable even in that age of spiritual strength, wealth, and exaltation of thought and style; a robust eloquence, touched not unfrequently with flashes of fancy, and kindled at times into heat of imagination. The main fault of his style is one more commonly found in the prose than ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... 'you have not acquired your reputation undeservedly; and I beg you to believe, Mrs Pipchin, that I am more than satisfied with your excellent system of management, and shall have the greatest pleasure in commending it whenever my poor commendation—' Mr Dombey's loftiness when he affected to disparage his own importance, passed all bounds—'can be of any service. I have been thinking ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... received the keys, but did not deign a word of reply. The distance and reserve which it had been customary to maintain between the English sovereigns and their people was always pretty strongly marked, but Philip's loftiness and grandeur ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the dignity of Bucolicks is sufficiently cleared, for as much as the Golden Age is to be preferred before the Heroick, so much Pastorals must excell Heroick Poems: yet this is so to be understood, that if we look upon the majesty and loftiness of Heroick Poems, it must be confest that they justly claim the preheminence; but if the unaffected neatness, elegant, graceful smartness of the expression, or the polite dress of a Poem be considered, then they fall short of Pastorals: for ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... intellect, pronounced her a woman of genius, who had grown to be a prodigy of wisdom, under the tuition of her father, the most sagacious statesman of the age. In attachment to the Roman faith and ritual, in superhuman loftiness of demeanour, and in hatred of heretics, she was at least a worthy child of that sainted sovereign. In a moral point of view she was his superior. The archdukes—so Albert and Isabella were always designated—were ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to a role so clogged by the honeyed sentimentality covering most of the scenes. Barrymore gives us that "quickened sense" of the life of the young man, a portrayal which takes the eye by "its fine edge of light," a portrayal clear and cool, elevated to a fine loftiness ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... that have reached us are tolerably numerous, and enable us to select certain prominent characteristics of his style. The loftiness for which he is celebrated seems to be of expression rather than ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... antiphonal singing of the loveliest and most faultless sort. Strangers journeyed from afar over rough country roads to hear this wonderful chorus, and were moved in the depths of their souls with the indescribable sweetness and loftiness of the music, and with the charm and expressiveness of its rendering ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... may excite the sentiment of awe-struck distance. But we need that the righteousness shall be loving, and that the love shall be righteous, in order that the one may be apprehended in its tenderest tenderness and the other may be adored in its loftiest loftiness. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... found by man and opening to his coming; this was an imaginative moment, and Cooper seized it by his imagination. He especially did so in the Indian elements of his tale, and gave permanent ideality to the Indian type. The trait of loftiness which he thus incorporated belongs with the impression of the virgin forest and prairie, the breadth, the silence and the music of universal nature. The distinction of his work is to open so great a scene worthily, to give it human dignity ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... "But I don't suppose you will know these people, anyway," she added with an unconscious touch of loftiness in her voice. "The name ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... resentment of every man, who recollects, that their poor and invincible ancestors were not distinguished from the meanest of the soldiers, by the delicacy of their food, or the splendor of their apparel. But the modern nobles measure their rank and consequence according to the loftiness of their chariots, [37] and the weighty magnificence of their dress. Their long robes of silk and purple float in the wind; and as they are agitated, by art or accident, they occasionally discover the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... the Parish Churches and Cathedrals of the country, and to it he added a Dome. There is one feature that these two apparent opposites have in common. Gothic Churches vary greatly, but many of them are notable for their appearance of loftiness. The clustered columns seem to lead the eye upwards to the roof, as if men naturally went about the world cramped and confined, and were now bidden turn their gaze to the heights. A dome has a somewhat similar effect: it carries on the gaze and it gives an increased and unexpected vision. ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... hope. Let her do it for so much money, and nothing more, and she becomes morose, discontented, sad and cheerless. Let her do this for love. Let her feel that she is contributing to some one's joy, or that she is to use the money earned for some worthy purpose, and at once the loftiness of her purpose sanctifies her deed, and renders that which would have been unbecoming, if done without a motive, right and noble when performed under the pressure of a great and noble aspiration, for "'tis sweet to labor for ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... an innate loftiness, an ethereal quality, about the girl's personality which Carder always felt, in spite of himself, even at the very moments when he was obtruding his familiarities upon her. She was like a fine ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... him at his best one must turn to the Confessions and to the other papers which describe his life, particularly those which recount his marvellous dreams. In these papers we find the passages where De Quincey's passion rises to the heights which few other writers have ever reached in prose, a loftiness and grandeur which is technically denominated as "sublime." In his Essay on Style, published in Blackwood's, 1840, he deprecates the usual indifference to form, on the part of English writers, "the tendency of the national mind to value the matter ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... high-toned, too punctilious, to recognize me. I attribute this not to the loftiness of their highnesses nor to prejudice, but to the depth of their ignorance, and of course I forgive and forget. Others again are so "reckless," so "don't care" disposed, that they treat me as fancy dictates, now friendly, now vacillating, and now inimical. With these I simply do ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... place of which doors now the two stage boxes are fixt. That where the doors of entrance now are, there formerly stood two additional side-wings, in front to a full set of scenes, which had then almost a double effect in their loftiness and magnificence. ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... internal arrangements of the ancient town beyond the fact of the closeness and loftiness of the houses. Externally Aradus depended on her possessions upon the mainland both for water and for food. The barren rock could grow nothing, and was moreover covered with houses. Such rainwater as fell on the ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... truth, his second cardinal discovery on that notable evening: namely, that no matter how high you rise, you will always find that others have risen higher. Nay, it is not until you have achieved a considerable peak that you are able to appreciate the loftiness of those mightier summits. He himself was high, and so he could judge the greater height of Seven Sachs; and it was only through the greater height of Seven Sachs that he could form an adequate idea of the pinnacle occupied by the unique Archibald Florance. ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... master's soul, and disturbed the sleep of his nights. You wanted to have Henry Howard in your power; and this crafty and hypocritical earl knew how to conceal his guilt so securely under the mask of virtue and loftiness of soul! But I knew him, and behind this mask I had seen his face distorted with passion and crime. I wanted to unmask him; but for this, it was necessary that I should deceive first him, and then for the hour even yourself. I knew that he burned with an adulterous love for ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... southern island, which is the larger, also has its natural attractions, but they are of a different kind; chief of all is the grand range of mountains called, not inappropriately, the "Southern Alps," vying with its European representative in the loftiness of its peaks and the splendour of its snowfields and glaciers, but formed of more ancient and solid rocks than those of ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... stupidity of the red, sweating bullies and athletes let loose upon the world by the example of the Sistine Chapel made him think of cast-iron. Only for Michael Angelo did he have a secret feeling of pious sympathy with his tragic sufferings, his divine contempt, and the loftiness of his chaste passions. With a pure barbaric love, like that of the master, he loved the religious nudity of his youths, his shy, wild virgins, like wild creatures caught in a trap, the sorrowful Aurora, the wild-eyed Madonna, with her Child ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... volume is one of engrossing interest. All the characters are skilfully drawn, the events are interestingly marshalled, and the plot most naturally developed. For humour and pathos, for sympathy yet fidelity, for loftiness of tone yet simplicity of style, this charming volume has few superiors. Here and there it reminds us of Mark Twain, anon of Dickens, and often of George Eliot, for the authoress has many of the strong points ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... those ages been actual, those great men would have been wrong to complain. The man who thinks should accept simply and calmly the surroundings in which Providence has placed him. The splendour of human intelligence, the loftiness of genius, shine no less by contrast than by harmony with the age. The stoic and profound philosopher is not diminished by an external debasement. Virgil, Petrarch, Racine are great in their purple; Job is still greater ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... their note was mournful and complaining. All within this house, until Harley's arrival, had been strange and saddening to Helen's timid and subdued spirits. Lady Lansmere had received her kindly, but with a certain restraint; and the loftiness of manner, common to the countess with all but Harley, had awed and chilled the diffident orphan. Lady Lansmere's very interest in Harley's choice, her attempts to draw Helen out of her reserve, her watchful eyes whenever Helen shyly spoke or shyly moved, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the words in order as he sang them in his sleep. For verses, though never so well composed, cannot be literally (that is word for word) translated out of one language into another without losing much of their beauty and loftiness."* ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... use of abstract terms; the splendid use of mean associations by Shakespeare; Milton's wise avoidance of mean associations, and of realism; nature of his similes and figures; his use of proper names; his epic catalogues; his personifications; loftiness of his perfected style; the popularity of Paradise Last; imitations, adaptations, and echoes of Milton's style during the 18th century; his enormous influence; the origin of "poetic diction"; Milton's phraseology stolen by Pope, Thomson, and Gray; the degradation ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... they stand, leave no doubt. If Mahler is not a great man, he is at least the silhouette of one. The need of expression that drove him to composition was indubitably mighty. The passion with which he addressed himself to his labor despite all discouragement and lack of success, the loftiness and nobleness of the task which he set for himself, the splendor of the intentions, reveal how fierce a fire burnt in the man. He was not one of those who come to music to form little jewels. On the contrary, in gesture ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... Winthrop, first Governor of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. The effigies expressed a countenance, features, and a tone of character in beautiful harmony with all that we know of the man, all that he was and did. Gravity and loftiness of soul, tempered by a mild and tender delicacy, depth of experience, resolution of purpose, native dignity, acquired wisdom, and an harmonious equipoise of the robust virtues and the winning graces have set their unmistakable tokens on those lineaments. That vignette, after ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... would seek to diminish the force of this moral spring; he would cripple at a blow all the virtues. I do not, however, place this noblest of sentiments on the somewhat isolated height where it is put by the exclusive adorers of liberty. Let us not confound dignity with mere loftiness. Moreover, by the side of dignity let us never forget that other inspiring sentiment, which is at least its equal in value, humanity; that is to say, the remembrance, the care, of that great number who are condemned to a life of poverty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... their pages, it is certain that we would feel a loss, a gap. Were we old enough to comprehend Emerson's philosophy, we might endeavour to buoy ourselves up with the thought that thus we were at one with him in his nobility and loftiness of sentiment. And yet there would be something childish and pathetic in the endeavour, by reason of its very unreality. Certainly if Providence should, either directly or indirectly, separate us from our friends, ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... of 'plain living and high thinking' in communities, all classes of which are more and more yielding to the temptation to ostentation, so-called comfort, and extravagant expenditure; and that this is a danger—we are tempted to say the danger—to the purity, loftiness, and vigour of religious life among us, he must be blind who cannot see, and he must be strangely ignorant of his own life who cannot feel that it is the danger for him. I believe that for one professing ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... one of the most exquisite and tender pieces of writing in the language. He had ended his literary labors with that perfect thing which so marvelously speaks the loftiness and tenderness of his soul. It was thoroughly in keeping with his entire career that he should, with this rare dramatic touch, bring it to a close. A paragraph which he ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... flower, which is one of the most abundant, and certainly the most beautiful of the climate; the noise of the trees, which are continually kept in motion by the trade winds; the fluttering and various notes, though not musical, of the birds; the loftiness of the green canopy, for the trunks of the trees are bare to a great height, and seem like pillars supporting the thick mass of leaves above; and the rich mellow light which the intense rays of ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... five times; tinged with pessimism, he is nevertheless less severe than his great predecessors Sophocles and AEschylus, surpassing them in tenderness and artistic expression, but falling short of them in strength and loftiness of dramatic conception; Sophocles, it is said, represented men as they ought to be, and Euripides as they are; he has been called the Sophist of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... a rather comical sense of duty) he made me look him over to see if he were worthy of the occasion. He certainly was in splendid looks, his rich, profuse beard and hair were well arranged, and his fine bronzed face had not lost its grave expression when at rest, but had acquired a certain loftiness of countenance, which gave him more than ever the air, I was going to say, of a demigod; but he had now an expression no heathen Greek could give; it was more like that of the heads by Michael Angelo, where Christian yearning is added to ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... experience in Honora's room; nor did the noble solitude of the place permit the thought of an excursion into the realms of any sort of dalliance. Moreover, though Karl's words might have led her to think of him as ready to play with a sentimental situation, the essential loftiness of his gaze forbade her ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... and self-protection, the President apparently looked upon the appeals made to him as genuine expressions of humanitarianism and as manifestations of the opinion of mankind concerning the part that the United States ought to take in the reconstruction of the world. His high-mindedness and loftiness of thought blinded him to the sordidness of purpose which appears to have induced the general acquiescence in his desired system of mandates, and the same qualities of mind caused him to listen sympathetically to proposals, the acceptance of ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... abstract and sublime. On one great point the mind of Epicurus was at peace. He neither sought nor expected, here or hereafter, any personal profit from his relation to the gods. And it is assuredly a fact, that loftiness and serenity of thought may be promoted by conceptions which involve no idea of profit of this kind. 'Did I not believe,' said a great man. [Footnote: Carlyle.] to me once, 'that an Intelligence is at the heart of things, my life ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... the beautiful; but in Mr. Arnold there is no trace of any such tendency; pure, without effort, he feels no enjoyment and sees no beauty in the atmosphere of the common passions; and in nobleness of purpose, in a certain loftiness of mind singularly tempered with modesty, he continually reminds us of his father. There is an absence, perhaps, of colour; it is natural that it should be so in the earlier poems of a writer who ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... The severe bleedings had, indeed, rendered his complexion perfectly colourless; but there was something in this, as well as in the height which the loss of hair gave his brow, which, added to the depth and loftiness of countenance that this long period of patience and resolution had impressed on his naturally fine features, without taking away that open candour that had first attracted Diane when he was a rosy lad. His frame had strengthened at the same ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... David: 'Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered. Like as the smoke vanisheth so shalt thou drive them away!' Even to common minds this familiarity with grand poetic imagery in prophet and apocalypse, gave a loftiness and ardor of expression that with all its tendency to exaggeration and bombast we may prefer to the ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... to the development of an austere character. Deep study, especially deep study which haunts and rules the imagination, necessarily removes men from life, absorbs them in themselves; purifies their conduct, with some risk of isolating their sympathies; develops that loftiness of mood which is gifted with deep inspirations and indulged with great ideas, but which tends in its excess to engender a contempt for others, and a self-appreciation which is even more displeasing ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Near these a simpler building attracts the eyes of the traveller by its magnificent situation and imposing size; it is the chateau of Chaumont. Built upon the highest hill of the shore, it frames the broad summit with its lofty walls and its enormous towers; high slate steeples increase their loftiness, and give to the building that conventual air, that religious form of all our old chateaux, which casts an aspect of gravity over the landscape of most of our provinces. Black and tufted trees surround this ancient mansion, resembling from afar ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... mechanically, still surveying the beautiful, calm features of the charming egotist whose nature seemed such a curious mixture of loftiness and littleness.. "She ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... omnipotence, he was aware of his own weakness and humanized by it. The man was soiled but softened by his traffic with the world. There was moreover an indescribable pathos in the contrast presented by the remains of the old self, its loftiness, its lucidity, and the vulgarity with which he had wrapped it round. Jewdwine's intellectual splendour had never been so impressive as now when it showed thus ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... elemental forces and shaped by time, extends. It is a stratified arch, whence you gaze down two hundred feet upon the flowing water; its sides are rock, nearly perpendicular. Popular conjecture reasonably deems it the fragmentary arch of an immense limestone cave; its loftiness imparts an aspect of lightness, although at the centre it is nearly fifty feet thick, and so massive is the whole that over it passes a public road, so that by keeping in the middle one might cross unaware of the marvel. To realize its height it must be viewed from beneath; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... walked about the floor of the church a few minutes longer, though they found but little to interest them in what they saw except the vastness of the enclosed interior and the loftiness of the columns and walls. There were several colossal monuments standing here and there; but in general the church had a somewhat empty and naked appearance. The immense magnitude, however, of the spaces which the party traversed, ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... a sense of exaltation that Johnson beheld as applicants for his consideration and suppliants for his mercy many of those in the South who had never recognized him as a social equal. A mind of true loftiness would not have been swayed by such a change of relative positions, but it was inevitable that a mind of Johnson's type, which if not ignoble was certainly not noble, should yield to its flattering and seductive ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... sister through the drawing-rooms first; and she admired the unusual loftiness of the rooms, the blaze of white and gold, and of ce'ladon and gold, and the great Russian lusters, and the mighty mirrors. But when they got to the dining-room she was enchanted. That lofty and magnificent salon, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... rises, flash after flash, for an hour and a half! Some day or other, perhaps you will see some of the glittering splinters that I gathered up. I have written under his print these lines, which are not only full as just as the original, but have not the tautology of loftiness and majesty: ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... which I mean that Miss Churm, keeping an appointment or coming to make one on days when I had much work in hand, encountered her invidious rivals. The encounter was not on their part, for they noticed her no more than if she had been the housemaid; not from intentional loftiness, but simply because as yet, professionally, they didn't know how to fraternise, as I could imagine they would have liked—or at least that the Major would. They couldn't talk about the omnibus—they always walked; and they didn't know what else to try—she wasn't ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... elegantly turned, and introduced so artfully, that they read very much like the high bred compliments ascribed to Louis XIV., in his intercourse with eminent public officers. These have generally a regal air of loftiness about them, and prove the possibility of genius attaching even to the art of paying compliments. But else, in reviewing the spirit of traffic, which appears in the reciprocal flatteries passing between Crassus, Antony, Cotta, &c., too often a sullen suspicion crosses the mind of a politic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... mere literary amusement, or the gratification of taste, is designed by the present volume. It is the selector's most earnest hope, that the "First Principles" these pages so eloquently inculcate, may be transcribed in all their purity, loftiness, and truth, into the Reason and Conscience of his countrymen. And among these, for whose especial guidance he ventures to think the profound wisdom of these pages to be invaluable, are the rising statesmen ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... slight veneration for men, or their feelings, or opinions; and he would sometimes pronounce a judgment in a tone of superiority justly offensive. But he possessed the uncommon virtue of sincerity: he thoroughly believed in the infallibility of his own conclusions; and for this the loftiness of his ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... it will be found that those who knew him best, loved him most, and that many who were constrained to differ from him, in his management of public affairs, did full justice to the purity and generosity of his motives, to the nobility, loftiness, and ultimate success of his aims, and to the disinterestedness and value of his varied and manifold labours for the country, and for ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... bored. What if the woman has broken into the sanctuary of knowledge, she will only be the bigger fool, he seems to say. As for the professor in the red robes, his easy, patronizing manner is indicative enough of his mental top-loftiness toward the woman question. You can almost hear him say as he strokes his ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... the nave piers mere small, plain bands as capitals, and for churchly decoration has allowed only a moulding of acanthus leaves placed high and unnoticed at the vaulting's base. There is no pleasing detail and no charming fancy; but a fine, exquisite loftiness, a faultless balance of proportion, are in this severe interior, and its solemn and majestic beauty is not surpassed ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... fate had imposed on him. I only dissembled with him in one particular; I endeavoured to soften his wife's too conspicuous follies, and extenuated her failings in an indirect manner. To this I was prompted by a loftiness of spirit; I should have broken the band of life, had I ceased to respect myself. But I will hasten to an important change ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... taken the occasion to accept your apology and thank you for the warning which may save the life of one who—believe me—is no longer your foe, if he had been one. I am not able to judge the greatness and loftiness of your act from your people's point of view, but I shall no longer have a mean opinion of the creed which can perform such a conversion as yours—that is, making you a true gentleman instead of leading one to believe ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... In the sight of the figure that stood before him full of contempt there was something that disarmed him. It was the power of truth, the loftiness of innocence confronting the sinner. He pulled himself together with an effort. "Did he tell you so? Have you got so far already?" he said, forcing the words out between his teeth. Christiane wanted to go into the house; he stopped ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... survive, like the writings of Epictetus, St. Augustine, and Thomas a Kempis: one of the few immortal books,—immortal, in this case, not for artistic excellence, like the writings of Thucydides and Tacitus, but for the loftiness of thoughts alone; so precious that the saints of the Middle Ages secretly preserved them as in accord with their own experiences. It is from these "Meditations" that we derive our best knowledge of Marcus Aurelius. They reveal ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... the island abound in an uncommon degree operate directly, though obscurely, to the producing this irregularity of the surface of the earth. They derive their number and an extraordinary portion of activity from the loftiness of the ranges of mountains that occupy the interior country, and intercept and collect the floating vapours. Precipitated into rain at such a hight, the water acquires in its descent through the fissures or pores of these mountains ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... emotion is an end in itself, and whatever we may read into it of "purposes" and "expediencies," is an invention, and independent of the emotion itself. The aim of the purely spiritual love of the second stage was not propagation, and yet it was an emotion whose loftiness cannot easily be surpassed. With the deification of woman love reached far beyond the beloved into infinitude, and the phenomenon of the love-death renders all the supposed generic purpose of love impossible. But even if we ignored love altogether and admitted the existence of the ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... with her heats; forever longing, and forever unsated, it parched her lips and burnt her gasping mouth, but there was no draught to allay it. And even so food failed of its office. Kindly hands brought to her, whose queenliness asserted itself to their souls with an innocent loftiness, careless of pomp or insignia, all delicate dates and exquisite viands; but neither the keen and stimulating odors of savory meat, the crisp whiteness of freshest bread, nor the slow-dropping gold of honeycomb could tempt her to eat. The simplest peasant's fare, in measure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... whole genius of Milton expressed itself in the "Paradise Lost." The romance, the gorgeous fancy, the daring imagination which he shared with the Elizabethan poets, the large but ordered beauty which he had drunk in from the literature of Greece and Rome, the sublimity of conception, the loftiness of phrase which he owed to the Bible, blended in this story "of man's first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste brought death into the world and all our woe." It is only when we review the strangely ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... Falmouth, and then swung round and carried Edgar up its own wake. Baptist was a glorious hand with the paddles, and, as the Lady Fal swept easily over the glassy water, Edgar gazed at the familiar things coming into view. There, at last, was the huge house of Graysroof, belittled by the loftiness of the quilted hill, on whose slope it stood, and by the extent of its surrounding woods. And there in the water lay mirrored a reflection of house and trees and hillside. Baptist rested on his ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... intelligence, and accustomed to make the heaviest sacrifices for these objects, will voluntarily exclaim, 'We will break our swords,' and will destroy its whole military system, lock, stock, and barrel. To make ourselves defenceless (after having been most strongly defended), from loftiness of sentiment, is the means towards genuine peace.... The so-called armed peace that prevails at present in all countries is a sign of a bellicose disposition, that trusts neither itself nor its neighbour, and, partly from hate partly from fear, refuses to lay down its weapons. ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... the finest palace on the face of the earth. But what made the thing worse, was, that the old tradition said that these rooms were to be kept entirely for the use of the owner of the castle. And, indeed, whenever they entered them, such was the effect of their loftiness and grandeur upon their minds, that they always thought of the old story, and could not help believing it. Nor would the brother permit them to forget it now; but, appearing suddenly amongst them, when they had no expectation of being interrupted by him, he rebuked them, both for the indiscriminate ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... of their literature, although most of his works have perished. [Footnote: Born B.C. 239.] Virgil borrowed many of his thoughts, and he was regarded as the prince of Roman song in the time of Cicero. The Latin language is greatly indebted to him. Pacuvius imitated Aeschylus in the loftiness of his style. [Footnote: Born B.C. 170] The only tragedy of the Romans which has reached us was ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... monstrous and infernal. His motives were sordid and flagitious. To display all their ugliness and infamy was not his province. No; he did not tell you that he stole at midnight to the chamber of his mistress; a woman who astonished the world by her loftiness and magnanimity, by indefatigable beneficence and unswerving equity; who had lavished on this wretch, whom she snatched from the dirt, all the goods of fortune, all the benefits of education; all the treasures ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... idea (often perfumed, so to speak, with reminiscence of some actual poem), has ever been the Chinese artist's aim. "A picture is a voiceless poem" is an old saying in China, where very frequently the artist was a literary man by profession. Oriental critics lay more stress on loftiness of sentiment and tone than on technical qualities. This idealist temper helps to explain the deliberate avoidance of all emphasis on appearances of material solidity by means of chiaroscuro, &c., and the exclusive use of the light medium of water-colour. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... was full of fresh hopes of happiness for his people and himself. If the compact was made, the time had arrived for him to establish a home of his own, and Miriam's image again appeared in all its loftiness and beauty. The thought of gaining this splendid maiden was fairly intoxicating, and he wondered whether he was worthy of her, and if it would not be presumptuous to aspire to the hand of the divinely-inspired, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... for the future purity of the boy on the threshold of manhood whether he has learned to love "the woman" in the dreamland of youth or in the very real world of life. It is simply a question of the intensity of the devotion and of the loftiness of the ideals which She ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... you may have a view of other cascades-though none so imposing. But they are beautiful; and you will not soon forget the effect of one,—flanked at its summit by white-stemmed palms which lift their leaves so high into the light that the loftiness of them gives the sensation of vertigo.... Dizzy also the magnificence of the great colonnade of palmistes and angelins, two hundred feet high, through which: you pass if you follow the river-path from the cascade—the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... insufficiency of his sense of form. We have just seen the essential cause of this insufficiency to lie in the nonesthetical attitude of his mind, and we have tried to show one of the roots of such an attitude in the very loftiness and earnestness of his purpose. Yet, there are others, for living nature is many-rooted as it is many-branched. It cannot be doubted that a certain refractoriness to form is a typical feature of the Basque character. The sense of form is closely ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... illimitable loftiness the owner of the cardboard treasury looked down upon the squat commonplaceness of those three lives. The condition of Jane and Genesis and Clematis seemed almost laughably pitiable to him, the more so because they were unaware of it. They breathed not the starry air that ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... customary victuals, neglectful also of his customary jokes. He disliked the worse side of a bargain as much as in his most happy moments; and the meditation (which is generally supposed to be going on where speech is scarce) was not of such loftiness as to overlook the time a man stopped round the corner. As a horse settles down to strong collar-work better when the gloss of the stable takes the ruffle of the air, so this man worked at his business all the harder, with the brightness of the home joys fading. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... who gave her no peace till her desk was opened, and a manuscript drawn forth, that they might hear the two new pages of her morning's work. It was a Fouque-like tale, relieving and giving expression to the yearnings for holiness and loftiness that had grown up within Isabel Conway in the cramped round of her existence. The story went back to the troubadour days of Provence, where a knight, the heir of a line of shattered fortunes, was betrothed to the heiress of the oppressors, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... these could make Job angry. Bildad follows them up with an attempt to frighten him by a picture of the power of that God whom he was blaspheming; but Job cuts short his harangue, and ends it for him in a spirit of loftiness which Bildad could not have approached; and then proudly and calmly rebukes them all, no longer in scorn and irony, but in high, tranquil self-possession. 'God forbid that I should justify you,' he says; 'till I ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... and develop our innate love of death or of rebirth to a new life." These words are all the more remarkable because, in spite of his great physical sufferings, Joseph Alexeevich is never weary of life though he loves death, for which—in spite of the purity and loftiness of his inner man—he does not yet feel himself sufficiently prepared. My benefactor then explained to me fully the meaning of the Great Square of creation and pointed out to me that the numbers three and seven are the basis of everything. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... will be 'my high places,' that I never could have got at by my own scrambling, but to which Thou hast lifted me up, and which, by Thy grace, have become my natural abode. I am at home there, and walk at liberty in the loftiness, and fear no fall ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... reigned alas! but for a few weeks, was positively worshipped by the German people, and not without cause, for he was undoubtedly one of the finest personalities of this century. His appearance, his demeanor, his unaffected dignity, kindness of heart, and loftiness of purpose were difficult to surpass, and it was a bitter disappointment to his subjects when death snatched him away before he had had time to carry out the grand plans and ideas which he had long cherished and reserved for the time when he would have ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... curtains, made the clock keep quiet, brought an expression of pity to the cruel, slanting face of the glass, disguised or even completely dispelled the scent of flowering grasses, and distinctly reduced the apparent loftiness of the ceiling. Custom! that skilful but unhurrying manager who begins by torturing the mind for weeks on end with her provisional arrangements; whom the mind, for all that, is fortunate in discovering, for without the help of custom it would never contrive, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... maturity in either Florence or Rome. Even in color he was fine for Florence, though not equal to the Venetians. In composition, modelling, line, even in texture painting (see his portraits) he was a man of accomplishment; while in grace, purity, serenity, loftiness he was the Florentine leader ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... the spiritual loftiness of his changed mood, his visitor wished to take leave of him with this image in her memory; but just then a half-paralyzed Jewish graybeard made his appearance, and Heine's instant dismissal of him on her account made it difficult not to ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... same name, of which the author is unknown; Molire seems to have partly followed an Italian comedy, written by Giacinto Andrea Cicognini, under the name of Le Gelosie fortunata del principe Rodrigo; the style, loftiness and delicacy of expression are ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... was very large, and of excessive loftiness. Flat, rectagonal pillars of a rose-tinted, variegated marble, rose from the floor almost flush with the walls, finishing off at the top with gilded capitals of a Corinthian design, which supported the ceiling. The ceiling itself, instead of joining the ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... height, n. altitude, loftiness; elevation; stature, tallness; eminence, exaltation; summit, zenith, apex, culmination. Associated words: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... read in such a spirit will tend to resort more and more to large and wise and beautiful books, to press the sweetness out of old familiar thoughts, to look more for warmth and loftiness of feeling than for elaborate and artful expression. They will value more and more books that speak to the soul, rather than books that appeal to the ear and to the mind. They will realize that it is through wisdom and force ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... brick wall, through which we passed by a gate into an extensive court or yard. The darkness would allow me to see nothing but outlines. Compared with the pigmy dimensions of my father's wooden hovel, the buildings before me were of gigantic loftiness. The horses were here far more magnificently accommodated than I had been. By a large door we entered an elevated hall. "Stay here," said he, "just while I fetch ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... Charles I. King of Naples, Count of Anjou, and brother of St. Lonis. He died in 1284. The annalist of Florence remarks, that "there had been no sovereign of the house of France, since the time of Charlemagne, by whom Charles was surpassed either in military renown, and prowess, or in the loftiness of his understanding." G. Villani, 1. vii. c. 94. We shall, however, find many of his actions severely reprobated ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... was talking about, who is a cross between a rich farmer and a poor gentleman, would go into the lodging-house business." I couldn't help agreeing with Jone, and I didn't like it a bit. The gentleman hadn't said anything or done anything that was out of the way, but there was a benignant loftiness about him which grated on the inmost fibres ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... invented for the dancers of the chorus. Sophocles still further improved tragedy by adding the third actor, and snatched from AEschylus the tragic prize. He was not equal to AEschylus in the boldness and originality of his characters, or the loftiness of his sentiments, or the colossal grandeur of his figures; but in the harmony of his composition, and the grace and vigor displayed in all the parts—the severe unity, the classic elegance of his style, and the charm of his expressions he is his superior. These two ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... Harley Street were very grim with one another. Indeed, the mansions and their inhabitants were so much alike in that respect, that the people were often to be found drawn up on opposite sides of dinner-tables, in the shade of their own loftiness, staring at the other side of the way with the dullness ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... the just resentment of every man who recollects that their poor and invincible ancestors were not distinguished from the meanest of the soldiers by the delicacy of their food or the splendor of their apparel. But the modern nobles measure their rank and consequence according to the loftiness of their chariots and the weighty magnificence of their dress. Their long robes of silk and purple float in the wind; and as they are agitated, by art or accident, they occasionally discover the under-garments, the rich tunics, embroidered ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... that he had grown selfish, for the canker which ate at the roots of his personality had affected not his character merely, but the very force of his will. Though the imperative he obeyed had always been not "I must," but "I want," his natural loftiness of purpose might have saved him from the results of his weakness had he not lost gradually the capacity for successful resistance with which he had started. If only in the beginning she had upheld not his inclinations, but his convictions; if only she had sought not to soothe his weakness, but ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
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