"Excellence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... French verse its distinction are very different from those that make the strength and the charm of our English lyrics. But we must guard ourselves against the conclusion that because a work is unlike those that we are accustomed to admire it is necessarily bad. There are many kinds of excellence. And this little book must have been poorly put together indeed if it fail to suggest to the reader that France possesses a wealth of lyric verse which, whatever be its shortcomings in those qualities that characterize our English lyrics, has others ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... so arranged and discussed that the whole class receives real benefit. The ingenious teacher will be able to establish a tradition in his course for a careful preparation and critical discussion of these reports. The rivalry of students for excellence in this work is not difficult to stimulate. A premium should be put on criticism which finds mentioned in the characterization qualities inconsistent with the facts recorded in the text, or omissions which the facts of the text seem ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... unparalleled purity of life: David's two grandsons, Malcolm IV. and William, and William's son and grandson, Alexander II. and III., were noble Catholic kings. Thus did the influence of this saintly queen extend {168} over the space of two hundred years and form monarchs of extraordinary excellence to ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... purport that I have ever had in view in my writing. I have always desired to 'hew out some lump of the earth', and to make men and women walk upon it just as they do walk here among us,—with not more of excellence, nor with exaggerated baseness,—so that my readers might recognise human beings like to themselves, and not feel themselves to be carried away among gods or demons. If I could do this, then I thought ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... idea of the century. Does it, for instance, contain that thrice fruitful idea which Turgot developed in 1750, of all the ages being linked together by an ordered succession of causes and effects? These and other objections, however, hardly affect the brilliance and substantial excellence of all this part of the book. It is when he proceeds to estimate these great men, not as writers but as social forces, not as stylists but as apostles, that M. Taine discloses the characteristic weaknesses of the bookman in dealing with the facts of concrete sociology. He ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century • John Morley
... probably never be opened to them otherwise. From our experience in one of the branches of the Cleveland Public Library, where club work has presented great difficulties, I know that, given a leader who understands, girls whose standard of excellence has been met by boarding- school stories, can be interested in studying and reading in their club the plays of Shakespeare or in listening to extracts from Vasari's "Lives of the painters" or Ruskin's ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... Calphurnia home, One giues him a paper. 1660 What hast thou heare that thou presents vs with, Pre. A thing my Lord that doth concerne your life. Which loue to you and hate of such a deed, Makes me reueale vnto your excellence. Caesar laughs. Smilest thou, or think'st thou it some ilde toy, Thout frowne a non to read so many names. That haue conspird and sworne ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... was before their eyes, lying on the deck of the Catamaran. That was the albacore,—a fish whose flesh is equal in excellence to that of any taken out of the ocean. But the flesh of the albacore was raw; while that of Snowball's stock, if not cooked, was at least cured; and this, in the opinion of the Catamarans, rendered it ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS, now in the occupancy of Lord Palmerston. Possesses advantages rarely to be met with. From its connexion with the continental powers, Eau de Cologne, bear's grease, and cosmetics of unrivalled excellence, can be procured at all times, thus insuring the favour ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... Stern, uncompromising, unloveable and unloved, an object of fear rather than of affection, John Calvin stands out the incarnation of his own Deity; verifying one of the noblest and truest sentences ever penned by man:—"As the man, so his God. God is his idea of excellence, the compliment of ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... what is agreeable to the eye as well as pleasant to the taste, and therefore we love to have our bread made of the whitest and finest of the wheat. Attaching superior excellence to what thus pleases the eye, we call the good Scotch bannock an inferior food, and the wholesome black bread of the north of Europe a disgusting article of diet. When our experience and knowledge are local and confined, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... which but few artists, in their delineations of the "thorn-crowned head," can successfully depict. It had been brought from Spain many years before by her father, with a cabinet picture of Mater Dolorosa, which now hung over it. Both were invaluable, not only on account of their artistic excellence and age, but as mementos of her father, and incentives to devotion. Thither she now went to offer the first fruits of the day to heaven in mingled thanksgiving and prayer. Almost numbed with the intense cold, she felt inclined to abridge her devotions, but she remembered the cold, ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... helpful resource. Straight as an arrow, her shoulders the perfect curve, bosom and hips full-moulded to the ideal of ripe girlhood, she could not make a gesture which was not graceful, nor change her position without revealing a new excellence of form. Yet a certain taste would have leant towards Miss Hannaford, whose traits had more mystery; as an uncommon type, she gained by this juxtaposition. Miss Derwent, despite her larger experience of the world, her vastly better education, was a much younger ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... relieved at this answer; but, nevertheless went on to urge the excellence of the ale as a ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... cities, castles, and villages, all well peopled and rich, the inhabitants being all idolaters and subject to the great khan. At the end of these three days journey, we come to Quinsay, or Guinsai, its name signifying the City of Heaven, to denote its excellence above all the other cities of the world, in which there are so much riches, and so many pleasures and enjoyments, that a person might conceive himself in paradise. In this great city, I, Marco, have often been, and have considered it with diligent attention, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... between Christianity and Paganism; by which indeed Paganism may be to some extent purified and exalted, but Christianity defiled and depressed. For Christianity, in its essence, is that which beckons and urges onward, not to excellence only, but to perfection. Of course its march is always in advance of the present. By such union with Paganism then, or Judaism, its essential characteristic will disappear; Christianity will, in effect, perish. You may suppose, accordingly, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... native. "It is inconceivable," he concludes, "that an introduced art could have developed at so rapid a rate that in seventy years, probably less, for this art would hardly have been introduced the first day, such a high pitch of excellence could have been attained ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... forget their lessons and simply and unconsciously make use of all the advantages of their training. Even when the education is finished, and the prima donna has made her successful debut, continued daily repetition of primary exercises is necessary to maintain excellence and insure the progress that every performer desires. Our best singers to-day are as diligent students of the technique of the voice as are the tyros struggling with ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... position explains this phenomenon. The pretty town overlooks a salt-marsh, the product of which is called throughout Brittany the Guerande salt, to which many Bretons attribute the excellence of their butter and their sardines. It is connected with the rest of France by two roads only: that coming from Savenay, the arrondissement to which it belongs, which stops at Saint-Nazaire; and a second road, leading from Vannes, which connects it with the Morbihan. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... in the Hotel de Ville is supreme. If you are ever in France you should see it. It has been copied often by American architects. Infinite thought and skill were brought to bear on all the iron work door-handles, lanterns, and so forth. The artistic excellence of this work has not been equaled since this period of the Eighteenth Century. The greatest artists of that day did not think it in the least beneath their dignity and talent to devote themselves ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... beauty and excellence of the Homoeopathic system of medicine consists in the ability to treat patients successfully thereby, without making well organs sick, or aggravating existing diseased action, or creating an opposite diseased state, as you do when you give a cathartic remedy ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... you describe, you too well know her wond'rous Brightness, her commanding Excellence, where ev'ry Star seems glitt'ring in her Person, and ev'ry Science cultivates her Mind; no Swain but kindles at her vast Perfections, Sighs at her Feet, and trembles to approach her; but then a baneful Mischief thwarts our Transports, and while we feast us with luxuriant Gazing, that bug-bear ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... understands knows the difference between mankind, and I'm sure it can be no great sacret to the Lord, when it is so well known to a poor fellow like myself. There's a plenthy of fellow-cr'atures that has a mighty good notion of their own excellence, but when it comes to r'ason and thruth, it's no very great figure ye all make, in proving what ye say. This chapel is the master's, if chapel the heretical box can be called, and yonder bell was bought ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... vainly search for in the meagre pages of Sallust and Appian, in the captious criticism of Dion, and even in the pleasant anecdotes of his friendly biographer Plutarch, his amiableness, his refined urbanity, his admiration for excellence, his thirst for fame, his love of truth, equity, and reason. Much indeed of the patriotism, the honesty, the moral courage he exhibited, was really no other than the refined ambition of attaining ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... doctor, "I have grown to love you as a son, and to esteem you as a man. I have lived long enough to value solid integrity far beyond wealth or birth, and when that integrity is adorned and enriched by high talents, it forms a character of excellence not often met with in this world. I have proved both your integrity and your talents, Traverse, and I am more than satisfied with you—I am proud of you, ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... presenting them to the public more than sixty years after they were originally written, think that they will prove of general interest, not because they lay claim to literary excellence, but because they present a simple, unexaggerated picture of the everyday life in the navy a century ago, and give us an insight into the characters of the men who helped to build up the sea power of Great Britain, and to bring her to her present ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... quickly the ferocious fanaticism of the Saracens was transformed into a passion for intellectual pursuits. At first the Koran was an obstacle to literature and science. Mohammed had extolled it as the grandest of all compositions, and had adduced its unapproachable excellence as a proof of his divine mission. But, in little more than twenty years after his death, the experience that had been acquired in Syria, Persia, Asia Minor, Egypt, had produced a striking effect, and Ali the khalif reigning at that time, avowedly encouraged all kinds of literary pursuits. Moawyah, ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... improvements, we intend to assure that our vigilance, power, and technical excellence keep abreast of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... "boys", the young professor of English literature gave his enthusiasm, his idealism, his love of all that was fair in art and the world of books. His enthusiasm inspired them with a love of artistic excellence, which, neither in his own work, nor in that of his pupils would tolerate anything commonplace. Before coming to Thornbrook, he had written "The Truce of God," first published as a serial in the United States Catholic Magazine, established by John Murphy of Baltimore, ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... to note his superiority with the sneer, "they call this man as good as me," Bacon, in one of his finest antitheses, draws a contrast between the love of Excellence and the love of Excelling. Carlyle is possessed by both; he had none of the exaggerated caution which in others of his race is apt to degenerate into moral cowardice: but when he thought himself trod on he became, to use his own figure, ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... Poesy. In the Life of Dryden Johnson refers to this passage as a "perpetual model of encomiastic criticism," adding that the editors and admirers of Shakespeare, in all their emulation of reverence, cannot "boast of much more than of having diffused and paraphrased this epitome of excellence." ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... and the marksman equaled and perhaps surpassed the pilot. Captain Galliot, who is a specialist, has called him "the thinker-fighter," thereby emphasizing that his excellence as a gunner arose from meditation and preparation. The same officer adds that "accuracy was Guynemer's characteristic; he never shot at random as others occasionally do, but always took long and careful aim. Perfect weapons and perfect mastery of them were ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... Paris and his lady attended the old man, whose advanced age, his excellence in the use of the French language, which he spoke to admiration,—above all, his skill in applying it to poetical and romantic subjects, which was essential to what was then termed history and belles lettres,—drew from the noble hearers ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... their first captain, they had made but few determined forays against the Spaniards. The greater number of them were French cattle hunters dealing in boucanned meat, hides, and tallow. A few hunted wild boars; a few more planted tobacco of great excellence, with a little sugar, a little indigo, and a little manioc. Among the company were a number of wild Englishmen, of the stamp of Oxenham, who made Tortuga their base and pleasure-house, using it as a port from ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... a lion just caught, or rather polar bear, having only then returned from a trip to the arctic regions, in which his ship had covered itself with glory; a young lady who had written a novel, and another who had written a poem, both unpublished, but both understood to be of a mysterious excellence; and others not necessary to mention. Even for these great people the chance to see a genius off his guard was not to be resisted. He seemed to be so soundly asleep that they might safely approach him. They tiptoed toward ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... simple style; and that nothing whatever is known about its internal sense, and for this reason it is not believed that so much wisdom lies hid in it. The angels said that although the style of the Word seems simple in the sense of the letter, it is such that nothing can ever be compared to it in excellence, since Divine wisdom lies concealed not only in the meaning as a whole but also in each word; and that in heaven this wisdom shines forth. They wished to declare that this wisdom is the light of heaven, because it is Divine truth, for that which shines in ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... being clever, still less as being famous; but we valued her as one always kind, sympathising, and amusing. To all this I am a living witness, but whether I can sketch out such a faint outline of this excellence as shall be perceptible to others may be reasonably doubted. Aided, however, by a few survivors {3} who knew her, I will not refuse to make the attempt. I am the more inclined to undertake the task from a conviction that, however little ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... itself. Christophe's sentimentality, his noisy outbursts, his facile emotions, used sometimes to exasperate Olivier, to whom they seemed absurd. Not to speak of a certain worship of force, the German conviction of the excellence of fist-morality, Faustrecht, to which Olivier and his countrymen had good reason for ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... the former students, with an "exhibition," as it is called, in which the graduates of the year have an opportunity of showing their proficiency in the various branches taught. On that occasion prizes are awarded for excellence in different departments. It would be hard to find a more interesting ceremony. These girls, now recognized as young ladies, are going forth as missionaries of civilization among our busy people. ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... by the excellence of the roads in Brittany, as indeed throughout France; in no instance does the French administrative talent more fully display itself. The roads are of three classes: the "routes imperiales," under the care of the Government; "departementales," kept ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... sustained excellence this year is most impressive are Katharine Fullerton Gerould and Wilbur Daniel Steele. Lincoln Colcord's two stories show qualities of artistic conscience reenforcing an imaginative substance so real that another year or two should suffice for ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... life at the palace-gates, and to practise his nobles in martial exercises he would lead them out to the hunt whenever he thought it well, holding the chase to be the best training for war and the surest way to excellence in horsemanship. [35] A man learns to keep his seat, no matter what the ground may be, as he follows the flying quarry, learns to hurl and strike on horseback in his eagerness to bring down the game and win applause. [36] And here, above all, was the field in which to inure his colleagues ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... Ellen joyfully allotted the whole morning to the examination and trial of her new possessions; and as soon as breakfast was over and the room clear she set about it. She first went through the desk and everything in it, making a running commentary on the excellence, fitness, and beauty of all it contained; then the dressing-box received a share, but a much smaller share, of attention; and lastly, with fingers trembling with eagerness she untied the packthread that was wound ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... us neither the half nor the whole. The stage is ultimately the touchstone of dramatic excellence. But if it is to be such a touchstone, it must have an audience with a penetration of intelligence and a soundness of taste such as had long ceased to characterize Roman audiences. The Senecan drama has lost touch with the stage and ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... planned as a pleasant surprise for the hosts. Du Moustier took a small helping himself and divided the rest among the others. The chronicler adds, "I can attest to the truth of the story and the excellence ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... made the acquaintance of Buffalo Bill, the famous hunter, and some Indian chief and cowboys in his troupe, men in whom natural instincts are combined with a Barnum and Bailey business sense, and real excellence with the actor's vanity. Willy's especial friend, whom he had been very eager for Frederick to meet, was a well-known acrobat who had jumped from the Brooklyn ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... I had another proof of the excellence of my faithful aneroid. Its needle pointed imperatively to "Change." This, in fact, I had already decided to do, but to a less careful man the instruction must have been of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... furnished the robe par excellence, few of which pass through the hands of the taxidermist nowadays. Their place has, in some degree, been taken by the Galloway and other cattle hides, which also make a practically one piece robe of good weight leather. These are too heavy for economical dressing by hand, but the ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... that the constitution provided for its own abrogation, and that the act of destruction could at any time be legally and regularly accomplished. The absolute humanity, justice, and morality of slavery, its excellence as a social institution, and its efficiency in maintaining order and insuring progress, must be fully established and universally admitted, in order to enlist the powerful motives of self-interest on the side of the projected revolution. And finally, it was necessary to show that the divine ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... two, with which he did his best in court. Still, he was far from being the successful pleader he hoped to be, for law, of all professions, is one which demands time and industry for the attainment of any degree of excellence. It is rarely that a young lawyer can go to sleep and wake to find himself famous; he must crawl rather than run. With diligence and punctuality, and observance of every chance, in time the wished-for goal is reached, ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... sixpences that go from pocket to pocket. Therefore I want, before I go further, to make this one distinct point, that the New Testament righteousness is no theological, cloistered, peculiar kind of excellence, but embraces within its scope, 'whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are fair, whatsoever things are of good report'; all that the world calls virtue, all which the world has combined to praise. There are countries on the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... and "the natural of his pleasant wit," are alike judiciously commanded. One of Puttenham's best qualities as a critic is that he never speaks without his book; and he comes very near to discovering Chaucer's greatest gift when noticing his excellence in "prosopographia," a term which to Chaucer would perhaps have seemed to require translation. At the obsoleteness of Chaucer's own diction this critic, who writes entirely "for the better brought-up sort," is obliged to shake his ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... extraneous sources. She received all her inspirations from Chaldaea—her civilisation, her manners, the implements of her industries and of agriculture, besides her scientific and religious literature: one thing alone is of native growth, the military tactics of her generals and the excellence of her soldiery. From the day when Assyria first realised her own strength, she lived only for war and rapine; and as soon as the exhaustion of her population rendered success on the field of battle an impossibility, the reason for her very ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... or discernment, and, for this reason, these ones who are speaking have a desire to know how the matter will present itself in your eyes. Which is it the more commendable and honourable for a person to train to a condition of unfailing excellence, human beings of confessed intelligence or insects of a low ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... wonders, and let me entreat them to remember the immense responsibility which rests on their shoulders. According to the example they set, so may the benighted natives be brought to perceive the beauty and excellence of true religion, or they may remain in their present darkness. Let me ask you a question: Who will be answerable for the ignorance and crimes of the poor natives— they who have never had the light presented to them, or you who might, by your example and precept, have offered it to them ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... to be forgotten by four persons; two others remembered it to their last days on account of its amazing excellence. A dozen persons were crowded into the little dining-room; no one went forth upon his travels with an empty stomach. No such profitable harvest had ever been reaped by the farmer. Dauntless and Anne ate off of a sewing-table in the corner. Mrs. Van Truder deliberately refused to ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... us, of whom I happen to be one, take up the study of naval architecture as an amusement; and those who, like myself, belong to the Engineer corps, are to some extent qualified by our technical education to achieve excellence in the art. I can assure you that some of the officers in my corps have turned ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... I mingle such grave reflections as these with my narratives. It becomes me, in my present way of thinking, to do so, when I see, in Miss Harlowe, how all human excellence, and in poor Belton, how all inhuman libertinism, and am near seeing in this abandoned woman, how all diabolical profligacy, end. And glad should I be for your own sake, for your splendid family's sake, and for ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... seriously warn any parent anxious about the choice of a school not to attach much weight to the apparent excellence of arrangements. Some of the worst schools have these arrangements in the highest perfection. They cannot afford to have them otherwise. Neat cubicles and spotless dimity have beguiled an uninterrupted sequence of mammas, and have kept alive, and even flourishing, schools which are in ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... Bibliotheca, 118, 130) passes a severe censure on the immorality of certain passages in the works of Tatius, and would scarcely have omitted to inveigh against the further scandal of their having proceeded from the pen of an ecclesiastic. "In style and composition this work is of high excellence; the periods are generally well rounded and perspicuous, and gratify the ear by their harmony ... but, except in the names of the personages, and the unpardonable breaches of decorum of which he is guilty, the author appears to have closely copied Heliodorus ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... its footing, but now more visibly in vain. The rhymed scenes in these plays are too plainly the survivals of a ruder and feebler stage of work; they cannot hold their own in the new order with even such discordant effect of incongruous excellence and inharmonious beauty as belongs to the death- scene of the Talbots when matched against the quarrelling scene of Somerset and York. Yet the briefest glance over the plays of the first epoch in the work of Shakespeare will suffice to show how protracted ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... criticising Pragmatism (as he conceives it) in the McGill University Quarterly published at Montreal, for May, 1904.] that our trust is at any rate UNTRUE WHEN IT IS MADE, i. e; before the action; and I seem to remember that he disposes of anything like a faith in the general excellence of the universe (making the faithful person's part in it at any rate more excellent) as a 'lie in the soul.' But the pathos of this expression should not blind us to the complication of the facts. I ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... its vogue. After Sue and Dumas, Balzac is (with the exception, perhaps, of Madame Dudevant,) the best known, and most read, out of France, of all the living French novelists. We hold him much over-rated, but his great fertility, and the real excellence of a few of his books, have made him a widely-spread reputation. His early efforts were less successful than those of Sue; and his first thirty volumes scarcely attained mediocrity. At last he made a start, and took ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... though not the first, place. Technical excellence in needlework, as in all other artistic crafts, is a question of the worker's perseverance and her ability in the use of tools. In embroidery these are few and ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... communicating true visions of future events to those worthy of the gift. And to become worthy a combination of innate and acquired powers is necessary together with the grace of God. The faculties chiefly concerned are reason and imagination. Moral excellence is also an indispensable prerequisite in aiding the development of ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... distinctions cooperates, in a very powerful way, with the contempt of the born gentry, to degrade these professions; and this double agency is, a third time, reinforced by those political arrangements which deny every form of state honor or conspicuous promotion to the very highest description of excellence, whether of the bar, the pulpit, or the civic council. Not "the fluent Murray," or the accomplished Erskine, from the English bar—not Pericles or Demosthenes, from the fierce democracies of Greece—not Paul preaching at Athens—could snatch a wreath ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other. At the short intervals since these conversations, when I could justifiably abstract my mind from public affairs, the subject has been under my contemplation. But the more I considered it, the more it expanded beyond the measure of either my time or information. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... of Nantwich, Middlewich and Northwich were in active operation at the time of Edward the Confessor, and at that date the mills and fisheries on the Dee also furnished a valuable source of revenue. Twelfth century writers refer to the excellence of Cheshire cheese, and at the time of the Civil War three hundred tons at L33 per ton were ordered in one year for the troops in Scotland. The trades of tanners, skinners and glove-makers existed at the time of the Conquest, and the export trade in wool in the 13th and 14th centuries was ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... the whole gang,"—I hardly felt complimented by the word,—"and whatever he gives you, he'll give you good. Don't look forward to variety, but you'll have excellence. And there'sa nother rum thing in his house," proceeded Wemmick, after a moment's pause, as if the remark followed on the housekeeper understood; "he never lets a door or ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... particularly that which in the West Indies is called the Jamaica Plum. Our men gave it the same name; it has a pleasant tartish taste, but is a little woody, probably only for want of culture: These plums were not plenty; so that having the two qualities of a dainty, scarcity and excellence, it is no wonder that they were held in the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... us was in proof of the truth of what has here been said. The Signor Soranzo was a man of great natural excellence of character, and the charities of his domestic circle had assisted in confirming his original dispositions. Like others of his rank and expectations, he had, from time to time, made the history and polity of the self-styled Republic his study, and the power of collective interests and specious ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Catholic saints did not fly through the air, nor were their hearts pierced with supernatural darts, as the mendacious hagiology of their Church would have us believe; but they have a better title to be remembered by mankind, as the best examples of a beautiful and precious kind of human excellence. ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... I about? Am I not all this time arraigning my own heart?—I know I am, by the remorse I feel in it, while my pen bears testimony to her excellence. But yet I must add (for no selfish consideration shall hinder me from doing justice to this admirable creature) that in this conversation she demonstrated so much prudent knowledge in every thing that relates to that part of the domestic ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... you shall be provided, as well as with a mounted guide for the road. Le fils de son Excellence," said he, with emphasis, bowing to the major as he spoke; who, in his turn, repaid the courtesy ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... remarks as to the degree of Mr. Macready's genius; and now, as I recognize here many who are devoted to literature and art, I will ask them if I am not right in this doctrine—that the true measure of the genius of an artist is the degree of excellence to which he brings the art that he cultivates. Judge of Mr. Macready by this test, and how great is that genius that will delight us no more; for it is because it has so achieved what I will call the symmetry of art that its height and its breadth have been often forgotten. We know ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... performing an elaborate duet. It was one of her most irksome duties instructing these children in music, who would never attain to more than mechanical excellence. When they had arrived at the final crash, with not more than half a bar between them, Bluebell was summoned to sing. The gentlemen came in from the dining-room at the last verse, and, after a slight pause, she began another unasked. ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... place. "Mamma, if you were queen," says he, "And such a book was writ for me; I know 'tis so much to your taste, That Gay would keep his coach at least." "My child, what you suppose is true, I see its excellence in you; Poets whose writing mend the mind, A noble recompense should find: But I am barr'd by fortune's frowns. From the best privilege of crowns; The glorious godlike power to bless, And ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... countenance of my old friend. Was not the last noticeable publication in post-classical literature the "Rasselas" of Dr. Johnson? Had not all those well-disposed people who hailed it as the brightest combination of literary and moral excellence which a mere modern could produce,—had they not lived and died in respectable allegiance to the Homeric personality? To say nothing of a mystical admiration of the Greek hexameters which he could not construe, Colonel Prowley was a diligent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... constitution, designed to beautify and beatify man. To cultivate and improve it is an essential part of education. The highest civilization known in Christendom is but the result or product of good taste. Even religion and morality, in their highest excellence, are but, so far as society is concerned, developments and demonstrations of cultivated taste. There may, indeed, be a fictitious or chimerical taste without Poetry or Religion; but a genuine good taste, in our judgment, without these ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... brought Beltane into his humble dwelling where was a coffer wrought by his own skilful fingers; and from this coffer he drew forth a suit of triple mail, wondrously fashioned, beholding the which, Beltane's eyes glistened because of the excellence of its craftsmanship. ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... strung of all excellences the mean man hunts for faults and never an excellence; in a palace all compact of jewels it is the ant ...
— The Tattva-Muktavali • Purnananda Chakravartin
... the law-giver. Christ made known only such sacraments as He Himself could partake. But He could not receive either penance or extreme unction because he was sinless. The institution of a new sacrament belongs to the power of excellence which is competent for Christ alone: so that it must be said that Christ instituted such a sacrament as confirmation not by making it known, ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... celebrated for its honey; Olinthian honey was held to be superior to all other, except that of Hymettus. The bees are of a special kind, which work hard, and go out in wind and slight rain; but the excellence of the honey was probably due to the rosemary blossoms, on which they feed by preference, only visiting other flowers when these have been completely rifled. Of late years the inhabitants have cleared a great part of the land in order to cultivate vines or chrysanthemum, so the yield of honey ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... in advocating a favorite subject to appropriate all possible excellence, and endeavor to concentrate every doubtful auxiliary, that we may fortify to the utmost the theme of our attention. Such a design should be utterly disdained, except as far as is consistent with fairness; and the sophistry of ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... means of securing respect and good care of library books is for libraries to maintain higher standards of excellence in respect to intelligent repairing and binding, to discard promptly a book which is to any extent mutilated or which is so soiled as to make it seem unwarrantable to ask a boy to wash his hands before ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... and divers were the magic virtues that were in Cuchulain [11]that were in no one else in his day.[11] Excellence of form, excellence of shape, excellence of build, excellence [W.661.] in swimming, excellence in horsemanship, excellence in chess and in draughts, excellence in battle, excellence in contest, excellence in single combat, excellence in reckoning, excellence in speech, excellence in ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... did owe for the excellence of the Expeditionary Force, such as it was in point of size, and much of what we have since owed for the excellence of the great armies that we subsequently raised, was due to the unbroken work of the fine Administrative Staff, developed in those ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... drinking the froth out of a pop-bottle, and equally as exhilarating. Like other sots, the more the literary bacchanal drinks the more he thirsts— appetite increased by what it feeds upon. We can forgive Byron and Boccaccio the lax morals of their productions because of their literary excellence, just as we wink at the little social lapses of Sarah Bernhardt because of her unapproachable genius; but Du Maurier's book is wholly bad. It could only have been made worse by being made bigger. It is a moral crime, a literary abortion. The style is ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... is a tender of cattle, Supreme; and he owes his peculiar aptitude to the fact that his parents, for twenty generations back, were engaged in similar work. The same may be said for the younger of the two women; she is small, but we owe much of the excellence of our crops to her ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... Atkinson, Keohane, and Dimitri made their way to Cape Evans via the Castle Rock, Glacier Tongue route, as described in the earlier part of this narrative, but, as it happens, under almost unparalleled conditions, for they sailed over the ice, riding on their sledge, such was the excellence of ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... but that he report How much this virtue unto thee is pleasing, To him I leave; for hard he will not find them, Nor to be boasted of; them let him answer; And may the grace of God in this assist him!" As a disciple, who obeys his teacher, Ready and willing, where he is expert, So that his excellence may be revealed, "Hope," said I, "is the certain expectation [67] Of glory in the hereafter, which proceedeth From grace divine and merit precedent. From many stars this light comes unto me; But he instilled it first into my heart, Who was chief singer unto the chief captain. [72] Hope they in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... said and what she felt might not be the same; that persons who have no great command over language are obliged to make one word do duty for a dozen; and that, if his wife was defective at one point, there were in her whole regions of unexplored excellence, of faculties never encouraged, and an affection to which he offered no response.' There is more philosophy in the cunning way in which those happy lovers in the lane accommodate their strides to the comfort of each other than we have been accustomed to suspect. It is done very easily; it is done ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... peonies expanded like tropic blooms, and the heart of each peony was a sixteen-candle-power electric lamp. No other two cinemas in the Five Towns, it was reported, consumed together as much current as the Imperial de Luxe; and nobody could deny that the degree of excellence of a cinema is finally settled by its consumption ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... modesty, may have influenced, to a considerable extent, his moral nature. The erect form of man, by freeing the hands from all locomotive uses, has been necessary for his intellectual advancement; and the extreme perfection of his hands, has alone rendered possible that excellence in all the arts of civilization which raises him so far above the savage, and is perhaps but the forerunner of a higher intellectual and moral advancement. The perfection of his vocal organs has first led to the formation of articulate speech, and then ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Such a child may be sometimes recognized by the neglected appearance of his teeth and finger-nails, the "high-water marks" about his neck and wrists, the dust on his clothing and shoes, his untidy hair, etc. In fact, he seems to have adopted as his life motto the paraphrase, "There is no excellence about ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... "O, thus she stood, even with such majesty, when I first wooed her. But yet, Paulina, Hermione was not so aged as this statue looks." Paulina replied, "So much the more the carver's excellence, who has made the statue as Hermione would have looked had she been living now. But let me draw the curtain, sire, lest presently you ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... master. During three years he had made golden use of his opportunities. He was remarkable among his fellow-students for his indomitable perseverance, and his power of concentrating all his thoughts upon his work. He experienced a desire to attain excellence for its own sake, not for the petty ambition of excelling others. Thus he became very popular among his associates, and excited their admiration without ever awakening the jealousies of wounded self-love. Though he had determined to devote his life to art, from the conviction that it ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... is one creed, and only one, That glorifies God's excellence; So cherish, that His will be done, The common ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... have dwelt on the essential characteristics of the introduction and have shown what it should be like when completed. No one but an expert writer, however, can hope that his argument, in either introduction, discussion, or conclusion, will attain any considerable completeness and excellence without first passing through a preliminary ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... without any Regard how they are applied. The Gifts of Nature and Accomplishments of Art are valuable, but as they are exerted in the Interest of Virtue, or governed by the Rules of Honour. We ought to abstract our Minds from the Observation of any Excellence in those we converse with, till we have taken some Notice, or received some good Information of the Disposition of their Minds; otherwise the Beauty of their Persons, or the Charms of their Wit, may make us fond of those whom our Reason and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... society to which I myself hereditarily belong, namely, the Lower Orders; but their appearances are like angels' visits—in the obvious, as well as in the conventional but remoter sense. I can count no less than three men of this stamp among my ten thousand acquaintances. When the twofold excellence of such ambidexters is not stultified by selfishness, you have in them a realised ideal upon which their Creator might pronounce the judgment that it is very good. Move heaven and earth, then, to multiply that ideal ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... memorial, and that he tacitly consents to it, they also, are satisfied with it. As this same memorial has been circulated throughout the whole of China, everybody has learned of our innocence and of the excellence of the law of God, which was dwelt upon at length in the memorial. Accordingly, as they inform us from here, a great number of literati and mandarins have become friendly toward Ours, and wish them to spread the holy gospel to the most ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... under a hill, and is built in many ways by many men. As to who is the best builder of trenches there can be little doubt, and any British soldier would probably admit that for painstaking work and excellence of construction there are few to rival Von Hindenburg. His Hindenburg line is a model of neatness and comfort, and it would be only a very ungrateful British ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... French lady to me, whose husband's collection of old pictures had brought unexpectedly low prices in the auction-room,—"How can you be so senseless," she said, "as to attach yourself to the study of an art in which you see that all excellence is a mere matter of opinion?" Some of us have thus come to imagine that the laws of Nature, as well as those of Art, may be matters of opinion; and I recollect an ingenious paper by Mr. Frederic Harrison, some two years ago, on the "Subjective Synthesis,"—which, after proving, what does ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... this time attained, may contend in the public examination for the Newcastle scholarship, just before the Easter holidays, and it is a great testimony to a boy's ability and industry if his name appears among the nine select for their excellence. This time, 1843, Coley, who was scarcely sixteen, had of course but little chance, but he had the pleasure of announcing that his great friend, Edmund Bastard, a young Devonshire squire, was among the 'select,' and he says of ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... James's powder; and other simple and compound medicines of great potency, who carry on their diabolical trade on an amazingly large scale. Indeed, the quantity of medical preparations thus sophisticated exceeds belief. Cheapness, and not genuineness and excellence, is the grand desideratum with the unprincipled dealers ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... a "cordon bleu," etc., while our girls are at school, far away from domestic comments, deep in the agonies of algebra perhaps; and directly they leave school, in many cases they marry. As a preparation for the state of matrimony most of them learn how to make cake and preserves, and the very excellence of their attainments in that way proves how easy it would be for them, with their dainty fingers and good taste, to far excel their European cousins in that art which a French writer says is based on "reason, health, common ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... the fine effects of their two vigorous, strenuous outings. Each had taken on weight slightly, though there was no superfluous flesh on any of the six. They were bronzed, comparatively lean-looking, trim and hard. Their muscles were at the finest degree of excellence. ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... vulgar man is hopelessly excluded. They are all around him; but he has no eyes to see, no taste to appreciate, no heart to respond to them. "All things excellent," so Spinoza tells us, "are as difficult as they are rare." The vulgar man has no heart for difficulty; and hence the rare excellence of art and beauty remain ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... essay writing, from Addison to the successors of Johnson, which had formed one of the most original features of our national literature, would now fail in its attraction, even if some of those elegant writers themselves had appeared in a form which their own excellence had rendered familiar and deprived of all novelty. I was struck by an observation which Johnson has thrown out. That sage, himself an essayist and who had lived among our essayists, fancied that "mankind may come in time to write all aphoristically;" and so athirst was that first of our ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... that Speaks sharp affection, when my words fall flat; I reade you like my mistresse, and discry In every line the quicknesse of her eye: Her smoothnesse in each syllable, her grace To marshall ev'ry word in the right place. It is the excellence and soule of wit, When ev'ry thing is free as well as fit: For metaphors packt up and crowded close Swath minds sweetnes, and display the throws, And, like those chickens hatcht in furnaces, Produce or one limbe more, or one limbe ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... that the labourers in the book-field of our own country are not numerous. Touchstone's remark, 'a poor thing, but mine own,' might, on the worst view of the case, have suggested greater diligence at home; but on a wider view English book-work is by no means a 'poor thing.' Its excellence at certain periods is as striking as its inferiority at others, and it is a literal fact that there is no art or craft connected with books in which England, at one time or another, has not held the primacy ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... the showing made by all three companies," said Captain Putnam after the drilling and marching were at an end. "Companies B and C have done very well indeed. But for general excellence the average of Company A is a little above the others, so the prize must go ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... Richard was held to be the prophet of the Armagnacs and the men-at-arms really believed that this evangelical preacher had caused the beans they gathered to grow; thus had he provided for their nourishment by his excellence, his wisdom and his penetration into the counsels of God, who gave manna unto the people of Israel in ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... off, struck silent by a wholly unexpected display of energy on the part of Tots, who had suddenly hurled a piece of chalk at him from the other end of the room. It hit him smartly on the shoulder, leaving a white patch to testify to the excellence of ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... This comparative excellence is to be referred to the very general acquirement of what we call "art cultivation" among American women, and this, in conjunction with a knowledge that her social world will be apt to judge of her capacity by her success or want of success in making her own surroundings beautiful, determines ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... Having drawn his young excellence up to the bank, it Appear'd that himself was all dripping, I swear; No wonder he soon became dry as a blanket, Exposed as he was to the count's SON and HEIR. Dear Sir, quoths the count, in reward of your valour, To show that my gratitude ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... would!" Sarah agreed, still questioning Caroline with her watery, appealing eyes. In Caroline, Sarah saw her salvation, and snatched at it. Caroline could no nothing well; she had no excellence; all that Caroline could do Sarah could do better. And yet Caroline, by the mysterious virtue of her dry and yet genial shrewdness, and of the unstable but reliable equilibrium of her temperament, was the skilled Sarah's superior. They both knew it and felt ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... called Effroc. The legend related that a Duke of Effroc had been drowned at the foot of the wall. Certainly the water there was deep enough to drown a duke. At low water it was six good fathoms. The excellence of this little anchorage attracted sea vessels, and the old Dutch tub, called the Vograat, came to anchor at the Effroc Stone. The Vograat made the crossing from London to Rotterdam, and from Rotterdam to London, punctually once a week. Other barges started twice a day, either ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... "The excellence of one's technic depends upon the accuracy of one's understanding of these subjects and his skill in applying them to his interpretations at the keyboard. Mechanical skill, minus real technical grasp, places the ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... main source of literary recreation in reading: the great books of all time on which one generation after another has set the seal of excellence so that we know them certainly to be worth reading. There is a wide and varied choice, and it is amongst the old books that the surest and most lasting recreation is to be found. Some one has said, "Whenever a new book comes out ...
— Recreation • Edward Grey
... to carve the Venus of Milo out of mottled pumice-stone. Still he did not regret to-night the freak of fancy that had brought him to the Lake House, since it had led to his meeting a woman who was to him a new and beautiful revelation of the rarest excellence and grace. ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... father, William Moy Thomas, whose name was introduced into the case, was for many years past one of the most esteemed and admired of our profession, owing to his knowledge, fairness, judgment and excellence of style. The Court of Appeal upheld the verdict, and Punch's record of long existence without a verdict against it for libel is spoilt. Its licence, the licence of a ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... thought would do the most good for Siwash. It was a team that I wouldn't have hired to chase a Shanghai rooster out of a garden patch, but the blind and happy Faculty didn't stop to reason about its excellence. It held a meeting the night before the Muggledorfer game and suspended nine of the men for inattention to chapel, smoking cigarettes during vacation and other high crimes. The whole school roared with indignation. Bost appeared before the Faculty meeting and almost shook his fist in Prexy's ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... with two or three thin, yellow, miserable looking daughters, so timid that they dared not look up, made their appearance. Virginia soon put them at their ease; she waited upon them with refreshments, the excellence of which she endeavoured to heighten by relating some particular circumstance which in her own estimation, vastly improved them. One beverage had been prepared by Margaret; another, by her mother: her brother himself had climbed some lofty tree for the very ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... what excellence was he possessed that her life should so abandon itself at his feet? In what had he proved himself generous or capable of the virtues that subdue? Such reasoning led to self-mockery. She was no longer the girl who questioned her heart as ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... character be cleared from all stain—if not a whisper taint his name, and his true excellence be known to all—oh, may we not hope? mother, mother, you will not be inexorable; you will not, oh, you will not condemn your child to misery!" exclaimed Emmeline, in a tone of excitement, strongly contrasting with the hopelessness ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... letters of the great Roman orator, merit points to those of the philosopher Seneca. He, too, cultivates and enjoins an easy and unstudied diction. So great is the excellence of his letters; so nearly is their beauty allied to the beauty of our Holy Scriptures; so does he seem to anticipate the morals and teachings of our Christian dispensation, that it is almost reprehensible to speak ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... to him the signals of his triumph; and he smiled with satisfaction as he surveyed this lovely woman, so long acknowledged to be the beauty par excellence of the imperial court at Vienna. Margaret allowed him to take her hand, and stood coldly passive, while he covered it with kisses; but when he would have gone further, and put his arm around her waist, she raised ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... hidden fear of decline. They knew current rumours well enough; they agreed with the opinion that since his 'Village Wedding' the painter had produced nothing equal to that famous picture. Indeed, after maintaining something of that standard of excellence in a few works, he was now gliding into a more scientific, drier manner. Brightness of colour was vanishing; each work seemed to show a decline. However, these were things not to be said; so Claude, when he had recovered his ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... gasped at the thought of the young enterprising spirit thus caged for nine weary months, and to whom this bare confined space was still the only resting-place. He could not look by any means delighted with the excellence of the arrangements, grant it though he might; and he was hurried on to the vast kitchens, their ranges of coppers full of savoury steaming contents, and their racks of loaves looking all that was substantial and wholesome; but his eyes were ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ungraciously made, only prove the rigor of the rule. Practically, to all but members of noble families, and men distinguished for military, naval, or political services, or eminent lawyers or clergymen, the House of Lords is unattainable. Brown may reach the highest range of artistic excellence, he may achieve world-wide fame as an architect, his canvas may glow with the marvellous coloring of Titian or repeat the rare and delicate grace of Correggio, the triumphs of his chisel may reflect honor upon England and his age; the inventive genius of Jones, painfully elaborating, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... subsequent philosophies borrowed from it, as it in its later developments borrowed from them; and thus along with them it formed the mind of the world, for further apprehensions, and yet more authentic revelations, of divine order and moral excellence. ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... to find in a vast and profound inventor, a writer also who bestows immortality on his language. The English language is the only object, in his great survey of art and of nature, which owes nothing of its excellence to the ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... be as willing to see her brother bear hardships in the London streets, as she had herself been to dismiss Owen the first to his wigwam, Honor took the more homely view of arguing on the health and quietness of Turnagain Corner, the excellence of the landlady, and the fact that her own cockney eyes had far less unreasonable expectations than those trained to the luxuries of Beauchamp. But by far the most efficient solace was an expedition for the purchase of various amenities of life, on which Phoebe expended ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... visits to Paris he lodged in a dingy hotel of the Latin Quarter, the chief merit of which was its nearness to the cheap and excellent restaurant where the two Americans had made acquaintance. But Garnett's assiduity in frequenting the place arose, in the end, less from the excellence of the food than from the enjoyment of his old friend's conversation. Amid the flashy sophistications of the Parisian life to which Garnett's trade introduced him, the American sage's conversation had the crisp and homely flavor of a native dish—one of the domestic compounds for ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... nut contest the past year have been unsatisfactory. The nut crop was a failure over quite a portion of the country covered by the association. The number of nuts sent in was not over one-tenth of those received in 1920 and no nuts of notable excellence were received. Were it not for the fact that this year promises to be a great year for nuts in the northeastern United States, one might think that the nut contests had outlived their usefulness. They have, however, brought ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... feel the majesty,— By heaven, I'd almost said the holiness,— That circles round a fair and virtuous woman: There is a gentle purity that breathes In such a one, mingled with chaste respect, And modest pride of her own excellence,— A shrinking nature, that is so adverse To aught unseemly, that I could as soon Forget the sacred love I owe to heav'n, As dare, with impure thoughts, to taint the air Inhal'd by such a being: than whom, my liege, Heaven cannot look on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... gathered to such an extent that it is difficult to see her plainly through the mass of it. Much has been cleared away; much remains. Mrs. Oliphant's dreadful theories are still on record. The excellence of Madame Duclaux's monograph perpetuates her one serious error. Mr. Swinburne's Note immortalizes his. M. Heger was dug up again the ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... in conversation, she wields a powerful influence over many minds of a peculiar order; and through the few mediums whom she selects to represent her characteristics, she displays a calmness and coolness of reasoning and an excellence of judgment such as few are able ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... after the matutinal muffin, without exposing the mind to the cruelties of a Maynooth debate, or the body to the tender mercies of the novel mode of ventilation. I find the theatres much more amusing, not from the excellence of the dramatic performances, but from their sheer and gross absurdity, which, without actual experience, is almost too monstrous for belief. The fact is, that a new Cockney school has arisen, ten times more twaddling and impotent than the ancient academy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... on sliding over the surface of this opening paragraph, begins to think there's mischief singing in the upper air. 'No, reader, not at all. We never were cooler in our days. And this we protest, that, were it not for the excellence of the subject, Coleridge and Opium-Eating, Mr. Gillman would have been dismissed by us unnoticed. Indeed, we not only forgive Mr. Gillman, but we have a kindness for him; and on this account, that he was good, he was generous, he was most forbearing, through twenty years, to poor Coleridge, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Mad ambition parleying with the devil, in the guise of a woman lost to all virtue save a desire to aggrandize her husband and herself. These have a pretence of history; but Hamlet, with hardly that pretence, stands alone supreme in varied excellence. Ambition, murder, resistless fate, filial love, the love of woman, revenge, the power of conscience, paternal solicitude, infinite jest: ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... say that everything that means, intelligence, experience, and hard work can suggest, to continue the school at its present high grade of excellence, will be afforded by those who are, and who will be, intrusted with the charge; and it is proper to add that the school has benefited greatly by the untiring efforts of Mr. Samuel C. Bennett (son of Judge Bennett), who is ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... Much of his life was deformed by inquietude and disease, and it terminated at middle age; he composed in a language then scarcely settled into form, or admitted to a rank among the cultivated languages of Europe: yet his writings are remarkable for their extent and variety as well as their intrinsic excellence; and his own countrymen are not his only, or perhaps his principal admirers. It is difficult to collect or interpret the general voice; but the World, no less than Germany, seems already to have dignified him with the reputation of a classic; to have enrolled him among that ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... "redskin" from the "paleface," were his arms, his trinkets, and his "firewater." He could appreciate whatsoever gave him superiority in war, gratified his childish vanity, or ministered to his brutal appetite. But the greater comfort of the white man's house—the higher excellence of his boat—his improved agricultural implements or extended learning—none of these things appealed to the Indian's passions or desires. The arts of peace were nothing to him—refinement was worse than nothing. He would spend hours ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... first began to give trouble to the Inner Nation, they relied on the strength of their ships and the excellence of their guns. It was therefore proposed to build large ships and cast heavy cannon in order to oppose them. I represented, however, that vessels are not built in a day, and pointed out the difficulties in the way of naval warfare. I showed that the power of a cannon ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... eighteenth, and the man of the eighteenth for the nineteenth, and most of us would be out of place in the world of a hundred years hence. But all higher minds are much more akin than they are different: genius is of all ages, and there is perhaps more uniformity in excellence than in mediocrity. The sublimer intelligences of mankind—Plato, Dante, Sir Thomas More—meet in a higher sphere above the ordinary ways of men; they understand one another from afar, notwithstanding the interval which separates them. They are 'the ...
— Sophist • Plato
... achieved success in politics and agriculture. They were given for sea rescues, for heroic deeds by firemen and school-patrol boys, and for outstanding community and civic work. Within our time they have been given as trophies for excellence in athletics, automobile ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... Swannington Railway; after which, at his father's request, he was made joint engineer with himself in laying out the London and Birmingham Railway, and the execution of that line was afterwards entrusted to him as sole engineer. The stability and excellence of the works of that railway, the difficulties which had been successfully overcome in the course of its construction, and the judgment which was displayed by Robert Stephenson throughout the whole conduct of the undertaking to its completion, established his reputation as an ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... excellence betray; O could I Write in thy Immortal Way! If Art be Nature's Scholar, and can make Such vast improvements, Nature must forsake Her Ancient Style; and in some grand Design She must her Own Originals decline, And for the Noblest Copies follow ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... to which He conforms; and that whatsoever things are fair and lovely, and good, and pure down here, those things are fair, and lovely, and good, and pure up there; that He is the Archetype of all excellence, the Ideal of all moral completeness: that we can know enough of Him to be sure of this that what we call right He loves, and what we ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... certain rich dry-goods merchant in the United States who had made a large fortune for those days, and while he knew nothing about art, he wanted to spend his money for fine things. So he employed people who did understand the matter to buy for him many pictures whose excellence he, himself, could not understand, but which were to become a fine possession for succeeding generations. This was about 1860, and this man, A.T. Stewart, bought two of Fortuny's pictures at high prices. "The Serpent Charmer," and ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon |
