QUINTESSENCE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Quintessence

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/kwɪntˈɛsəns/ Listen

Quintessence

noun

The fifth and highest element after air and earth and fire and water; was believed to be the substance composing all heavenly bodies. Synonym: ether.

The purest and most concentrated essence of something.

The most typical example or representative of a type.

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Etymology of 'Quintessence'

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"Quintessence" Quotes from Famous Books

... more real originality in some respects than Hugo, and possesses truer dramatic genius. Two or three of his comedies will probably hold the stage longer than any dramatic work of the romantic school. They contain the quintessence of romantic imaginative art; they show in full flow that unchecked freedom of fancy which, joined to the spirit of realistic comedy, produces the modern French drama. Yet De Musset's prose has in greater measure ...

— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... we insensibly regard death as threatening to the continuance of the ego, in spite of the theories of a future life which we have so elaborately developed. Indeed, the psychical shrinking is really the quintessence of the physical fear. We cleave to the abstract idea closer even than to its concrete embodiment. Sooner would we forego this earthly existence than surrender that something we know as self. For sufficient cause we can imagine ...

— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... in that matter the very quintessence of woman. Even I, who have known her for years, don't pretend ...

— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... her past an open bathroom door whose garment-littered floor showed indeed that the laundry hadn't been sent out for some time, into another room that was, so to speak, the quintessence of pinkness. ...

— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... This hath no other Idea than of it selfe, and can have no reference but to itselfe. It is not one especiall consideration, nor two, nor three, nor foure, nor a thousand: It is I wot not what kinde of quintessence, of all this commixture, which having seized all my will, induced the same to plunge and lose it selfe in his, which likewise having seized all his will, brought it to lose and plunge it selfe in mine, with a mutuall greedinesse, and with a semblable concurrance. I may truly ...

— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

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