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High-minded   /haɪ-mˈaɪndəd/   Listen
High-minded

adjective
1.
Of high moral or intellectual value; elevated in nature or style.  Synonyms: elevated, exalted, grand, high-flown, idealistic, lofty, noble-minded, rarefied, rarified, sublime.  "Argue in terms of high-flown ideals" , "A noble and lofty concept" , "A grand purpose"



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"High-minded" Quotes from Famous Books



... the gallant earl, and the high-minded, though low-born, maiden stepped into the boat. One wave of the hand, when the morning mist interposed its white veil, and parted them for ever;—yet not before old Grimes, taking a last survey of the vessel, was quite sure he saw the magician of the casket looking at him over the ship's side. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... placing themselves in a station which they usurp with insolence, and from which they are driven by their own unworthiness. Where are we then? The religionists are the enemies of liberty, and the friends of liberty attack religion; the high-minded and the noble advocate subjection, and the meanest and most servile minds preach independence; honest and enlightened citizens are opposed to all progress, whilst men without patriotism and without principles are ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... the impetuosity of her temper, the energy and restlessness of her character, placed in a point of eternal friction with us, and our character, which, though quiet and loving peace and the pursuit of wealth, is high-minded, despising wealth in competition with insult or injury, enterprising and energetic as any nation on earth; these circumstances render it impossible that France and the United States can continue long friends, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... both in underlying importance and in the permanence of its nature. That cause does not reside in any special extravagances that there may be in the Volstead act. The cardinal grievance against which the unprecedented contempt for law among high-minded and law-abiding people is directed is not the Volstead act but the Eighteenth Amendment. The enactment of that Amendment was a monstrosity so gross that no thinking American thirty years ago would have regarded it as a possibility. ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin

... Burnside. "Well, I am sorry to say that that chivalrous and high-minded gentleman was found neither among the dead nor the living. Not to mince, matters, sir, he ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... become the high-minded, high-principled country gentleman, that my father has always desired to see him, it is useless for me to guess. On the domains which he is to inherit, I shall never perhaps set foot again: in the halls where he will one day preside as master, I shall ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... companionable womanhood. The fact of the mistress being a blank does not prove that the maid would be a prize. It may be wise to avoid the one, but it is certainly folly to seek the other. Granting that the housemaid or the cook or the daughter of the coachman is virtuous, high-minded, refined, thoughtful, thrifty, and everything else that is desirable under the sun, all will fail to counterbalance the drawbacks that flow from the ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... the same breath we assured them that if Gentry was elected, he would let all such rascals stay in prison as long as the courts of the country decreed they should. And while thousands of honorable, high-minded men voted for Johnson, under the lash of party, or because they were blinded by his glaring demerits, it is not to be disguised that all the petit larceny and Penitentiary men in the State voted for him. There never was a time in Tennessee when there were not five ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... the simple-hearted priest had been tempted by the enemy himself to place these two men in a position where a battle-royal between them was most likely to ensue, he could not have taken a more successful course for that object. Reilly, the firm, the high-minded, the honorable, and, though last not least, the most indignant at any imputation against his integrity, now accompanied the priest in a state of indignation that was nearly a match ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... of purpose he held on his course undismayed. He was a man who looked far ahead,—not so much taking into account the results at the end of each day or of each year, but how the plan he had laid down for conducting the paper would work out in the long run. And events proved that the high-minded course he had pursued with so much firmness of purpose was ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... the best and the worst and the most of women. The pathological view of that complex subject is the most unfortunate which a man can well have. The habit of classifying a woman as neuralgic, hysteric, dyspeptic, instead of unselfish, intellectual, high-minded, is not a wholesome one for the classifier. Something of the abnormal condition of the clientele extends to the adviser. A physician who has a healthy and natural view of women has the making of a great man ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... cruel, cowardly manner, and that the knowledge of this act of his must prevent him, not only from finding fault with any one else, but even from looking straight into other people's eyes; not to mention the impossibility of considering himself a splendid, noble, high-minded fellow, as he did and had to do to go on living his life boldly and merrily. There was only one solution of the problem—i.e., not to think about it. He succeeded in doing so. The life he was now entering ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... a little and coloured, as a pure and high-minded woman naturally does when she is for the first time suddenly brought into actual contact with ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... the letter that conveyed to Augusta the death doom of her hopes. There are moments of agony when the most worldly heart is pressed upward to God, even as a weight will force upward the reluctant water. Augusta had been a generous, a high-minded, an affectionate woman, but she had lived entirely for this world. Her chief good had been her husband and her children. These had been her pride, her reliance, her dependence. Strong in her own resources, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... resolution of never talking about herself; thoughtful about the very pins and ribands of my wife's dress, about the making of a doll's cap for a child,—but of herself, save only as regarded her ripening in all goodness, wholly thoughtless; enjoying everything lovely, graceful, beautiful, high-minded, whether in God's works or man's, with the keenest relish; inheriting the earth to the very fulness of the promise, though never leaving her crib, nor changing her posture; and preserved through the very valley of the shadow of death, from ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston

... which she had lavished upon him would be as nothing. He had regained the control of his mind, and his first thought was to fly. The discovery of this indifference of his was terrible. She had trusted much to her devotion. She had thought that, in a nature like his, which was at once so pure, so high-minded, and so chivalrous, the spectacle of her noble self-sacrifice, combined with the discovery of her profound and all-absorbing love, would have awakened some response, if it were nothing stronger than mere gratitude. And ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... could secretly pray him to death; has seen the day, in his childhood, when it was a crime punishable by death for a man to eat with his wife, or for a plebeian to let his shadow fall upon the King—and now look at him; an educated Christian; neatly and handsomely dressed; a high-minded, elegant gentleman; a traveler, in some degree, and one who has been the honored guest of royalty in Europe; a man practiced in holding the reins of an enlightened government, and well versed in the politics of his country and in general, practical information. Look at ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... effect is what these high-minded men of letters say should have been the attitude of England's guest. He should have received his treatment, harsh and arbitrary though it was, with Christian fortitude, and ought to have borne in mind that he was in the custody of a Christian King ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... when he heard such things said to a pure and high-minded girl; and Lady Laura herself turned a little pale, and cast her eyes down upon ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... what you will think of John's speech last Friday. I am quite surprised at the approbation it meets with here—not that I do not think it deserved, for surely it was a fine high-minded one, and at the same time one at no word of which a Roman Catholic, as such, could take offence—but so many people thought more ought to be done, and so many others that nothing ought to be done, that I expected nothing ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... poor dwelling-place as if comparing them with the comforts and luxuries of the Burnham mansion. The contrast was a sharp one, the change would be great. But Ralph was so delicate in taste and fancy, so high-minded, so pure-souled, that nothing would be too beautiful for him, no luxury would seem strange, no life would be so exalted that he could not hold himself at its level. The home that had haunted Bachelor Billy's fancy was the home for Ralph, and there he should dwell. ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene

... on the other hand with conservative, high-minded men, who expressed the most serious apprehension that the bold and unjustifiable association of Canadian abolitionists with the negro stealers and insurrectionists of America would eventually plunge the two countries ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... conscience not notice. We had quite fun buyin', too—knowin' they was each other's, an' no hard feelin'—only good spirits an' pleased with each other's taste. Everybody knew who'd sent what, an' everybody hed bought it for some not so high-minded use as it hed hed before, an' kep' their dignity that way. Front-stair carpet was bought to go down on back stairs, sittin' room lamp for chamber lamp, kitchen stove-pipe for wash room stove-pipe, an' so on, an' the clothes to make rag rugs—so they give out. The things kep' on ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale

... must hurry the narrative, on which one would gladly linger. The life of this sad and high-minded anchorite has a strong fascination for me. Melancholy had marked him for her own: he himself always felt that he had not a long span before him. Hindered by deafness, threatened with consumption, and a deadlier enemy yet—epilepsy—his ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... qualified to administer in extremities this critical, ambiguous, bitter potion to a distempered state. Times and occasions and provocations will teach their own lessons. The wise will determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable from sensibility to oppression; the high-minded from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands; the brave and bold from love of honourable danger in a generous cause. But with or without right, a revolution will be the very last resource of the thinking and ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes

... spring of 1263, the elder of the Lords Marchers fought on the side of the king—such as Roger Mortimer and Humphrey de Bohun—though the younger men—young Gilbert of Gloucester and Humphrey de Bohun, the son of Hereford—remained under the spell of Simon de Montfort's fascination and high-minded enthusiasm. The war began in the Welsh Marches, Simon attacking the forces of Edward of Chester and Roger Mortimer—the principal royalists. As these were also the most formidable enemies of the Welsh, Llywelyn at the same time attacked them from the other side, the baronial party and ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little

... duty, a conviction of the gross injustice practiced upon one to whom she was most tenderly attached, overcame her delicate, modest, retiring habits, and forced her upon this strange duty. Well did she support the character of an advocate. This delicate, courageous, high-minded woman appeared before Judge Hale, who was much affected with her earnest pleading for one so dear to her, and whose life was so valuable to his children. It was the triumph of love, duty, and piety, over bashful timidity. Her energetic appeals were in vain. She returned ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the Government document to which this cutting relates lies before me. It is bravely and clearly worded, and its intention is evident. The high-minded Hindu—and there are such, let it not be forgotten—revolts from the degradation and pollution of this travesty of religion, and will abolish it where he can. But let it be remembered that, good as this law is, it does not and it cannot ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael

... living. I was utterly alone with him—at his mercy. There was not an ear that I could whisper a complaint to; not one face that would look at me in pity and compassion. My father had been a good man, single-hearted, high-minded, and chivalrous. This man laughed at all honor ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... withal how keenly through all these years he had felt the sting of misrepresentation, I wrote him a lengthy letter. It was not long before I received his reply, and I copy it here, as I believe it casts an additional sidelight upon a subject which caused this brilliant and high-minded gentleman bitter suffering from which he never wholly recovered. I add several more letters written to me by him which are beautiful in expression but ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... learnt that Rumanika had set his heart on the revolving rifle I had brought for Mtesa—the one, in fact, which he had prevented my sending on to Uganda in the hands of Kachuchu, and he would have begged me for it before had his high-minded dignity, and the principle he had established of never begging for anything, not interfered. I then said he should certainly have it; for as strongly as I had withheld from giving anything to those begging scoundrels who wished to rob me of all I possessed ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... daughter of Israel, a descendant of Benjamin, of the house of Kish, the family of Saul, first king of Israel, won the monarch's favour, and was promoted to the place of the disobedient but high-minded Vashti. Esther was an orphan, but she had been carefully guarded and instructed by her kinsman Mordecai; and while we are told that the maiden was exceeding fair, we may believe that her beauty was of a high order, stamped too by intellect and feeling, ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous

... school were Howard Pemberton and Martin Venables. I loved them at the first with all the enthusiasm a boy feels when he thinks he has found his ideal friends. They supplied to me the lack of brothers; they were true, manly, high-minded friends. But as soon as I began to drift away from the good I had ceased to strive after, I ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... like, there is a great deal in blood. His mother was a wonderful woman, most high-minded and intelligent. It was a pleasure to look at her good, candid, pure face; it was like the face of an angel. She drew splendidly, wrote verses, spoke five foreign languages, sang. . . . Poor thing! she died of consumption. The ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... evening lasted, she was tormented by remorse and scruples. She had already felt shame at having violated the secrecy of Albert's letter to Leopold; she had several times asked herself whether, if he knew of her crime, infamous inasmuch as it necessarily goes unpunished, the high-minded Albert could esteem her. Her conscience ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac

... existence that makes havoc through the world to-day. Let us beware. I do not say we must settle now all disputes, such as capital, labour, and others, but that everyone should realise a duty to be high-minded and honourable in action; to regard his fellow not as a man to be circumvented, but as a brother to be sympathised with and uplifted. Neither kingdom, republic, nor commune can regenerate us; it is in the beautiful ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney

... should succeed to the Dukedom of Florence, if Alexander died without issue. Lorenzino cultivated letters, and is said to have possessed considerable wit, but, on the other hand, instead of being a high-minded man, as Queen Margaret pictures him, he was a thorough profligate, and willingly lent a hand in Alexander's scandalous amours. The heroine of this story is erroneously described as Lorenzino's sister; in point of fact she ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... not too near. I am not as high-minded as some people. I like to be within two or three ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess

... de Sagosta went into the wilds with a high heart and a complete faith, in his youthful and credulous soul, that he had behind him the full moral and physical support of a high-minded and patriotic Governor. The high-minded and patriotic Governor, watching the caravan of his new assistant disappearing through the woods which fringe Moanda, expressed in picturesque language his fervent hope that the mud, the swamp, the forest and the wilderness of the M'fusi ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace

... finds an enemy in every one who does not kotow and who interprets as hostile every action not directly conciliating or friendly. In every group of people there is one whose paranoid temperament must be reckoned with, who is distrustful, conceited and disruptive. Often they are high-minded, perhaps devoted to an ideal, and if they convince others of their wrongs they increase the social disharmonies by creating new social wars, large or small according to their influence, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... great rewards, and the thing to do would be to provide them: but in point of fact, while they plainly have the power to guide and stimulate the generous among the young and to base upon true virtuous principle any noble and truly high-minded disposition, they as plainly are powerless to guide the mass of men to Virtue and goodness; because it is not their nature to be amenable to a sense of shame but only to fear; nor to abstain from what is low and mean because it is disgraceful to do it but because ...
— Ethics • Aristotle

... furiously, ascending high above the top of the stake to which she had been chained. Gradually they sunk down; and only when the burning embers covered the ground, a few fragments of bones hanging on the chain were all that remained of the once peerless and high-minded Amine. ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... remain in his memory. In size, in figure, in expression, in the sonorous tones of his voice, Mr. Sutton was everything that a congressman should be. "The people," said Isaac D. Worthington in presenting him, "should indeed be proud of such an able and high-minded representative." We shall have cause to recall that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... most cordial courtesy. He is a frank, dignified, unaffected man, and in his becoming episcopal purple, with the gold chain and cross, looked every inch a bishop. I was particularly anxious to see Dr. Healy, as a type of the high-minded and courageous ecclesiastics who, in Ireland, have resolutely refused to subordinate their duties and their authority as ecclesiastics to the convenience and the policy of an organisation absolutely controlled ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert

... mind. Serene in temper, devoted to his religion and his family, a good father and a good scholar, he deserved the love and respect which every evidence that we have shows him to have gained from his family and his neighbours. His wife's was a somewhat more positive nature: shrewd and acute, high-minded and determined, with a strong sense of humour, and with an energy capable of triumphing over years of indifferent health, she was ardently attached to her children, and perhaps somewhat proud of her ancestors. We are told that she was very particular about the shape of people's noses, ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... now, many of the big corporation lawyers, to whom the ordinary members of the bar then as now looked up, held certain standards which were difficult to recognize as compatible with the idealism I suppose every high-minded young man is apt to feel. If I had been obliged to earn every cent I spent, I should have gone whole-heartedly into the business of making both ends meet, and should have taken up the law or any other respectable occupation—for I then held, and now hold, the belief that a ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... degree upon it. Their progress in the arts of life, their influence on the generations to come, their degree of culture and power, depend much upon their obedience to the laws of health. If they would be the women they ought to be, noble, high-minded, matronly women, impressed with a lofty sense of their duty and high and generous conceptions of womanhood, it is imperatively important that they cultivate judiciously the greatest possible strength and activity of body. What a sickly womanhood grows up in ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... sustained, and besides, not being prepared for a conflict, the Lenapi consulted on what was to be done; whether to retreat in the best manner they could, or to try their strength, and let the enemy see that they were not cowards, but men, and too high-minded to suffer themselves to be driven off before they had made a trial of their strength and were convinced that the enemy was too powerful for them. The Mengwe, who had hitherto been satisfied with being spectators from a distance, offered to join them, on condition that, after conquering ...
— The Problem of Ohio Mounds • Cyrus Thomas

... that had come over his manner to her. Not long before she had read an English novel (no others were allowed to come into her hands). It was rather a stupid book, with many tedious passages, but in it she was told how the high-minded hero, not being able, for grave reasons, to aspire to the hand of the heroine, had taken refuge in an icy coldness, much as it cost him, and as soon as possible had gone away. English novels are ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... There is no reason why I should leave it. I have already proved my sincerity by high-minded and generous acts. I bear myself as my place demands. My ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... Literature: a right which no man dares any longer exercise under pain of excommunication!] "Collins was not a sharper, and would have disdained practices to which Bentley stooped for the sake of a professorship." (p. 310.) [O high-minded Collins!] "The dirt endeavoured to be thrown on Collins will cleave to the hand that throws it." (p. 309.) [O dirty Bentley!] And though "Collins's mistakes, mistranslations, misconceptions, and distortions are so monstrous, that it is difficult for us now, forgetful how low ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... For I had not allowed that deceitful thing any quarters in my pocket, where dear little relics of my father lay, but had fastened it under my dress in a manner intended in no way for gentlemen to think about. Such little things annoy one's comfort, and destroy one's power of being quite high-minded. However, I got it out at last, and a flash of the sun made ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... to Scott was the inventor. It is founded on the fortunes and misfortunes of the Stuart family, of which Scott was the zealous defender and apologist, doing all that in his power lay to represent the members of it as noble, chivalrous, high-minded, unfortunate princes; though, perhaps, of all the royal families that ever existed upon earth, this family was the worst. It was unfortunate enough, it is true; but it owed its misfortunes entirely to its crimes, viciousness, bad ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... and distress. Reginald was as different as possible from his father. In one respect only did he bear any resemblance to that terrible old man, and this resemblance was the deformity of a club-foot, a blemish which one soon forgot when one came to know the gentle and high-minded nature of the young man. As I have said, it was at his instance that Lord Rantremly had engaged me to set in order those historical papers. Reginald became enthusiastic at the progress I had made, and thus ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... bright and high-minded Somers was the debauchee that Mrs. Manley and Mr. Cooksey would have us believe him is incredible. It is doubtful if Mackey in his 'Sketch of Leading Characters at the English Court' had sufficient ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... they would not'; but the day came when the Roman soldiers cast their torches into the beautiful house where their fathers had praised Him, and sinned against Him, and it was left unto them desolate. Let us not be high-minded nor victims of our levity ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... brave hearts laid low by hunger and exposure, of the girlish forms washed away, of the babes and little children who perished for want of proper food and raiment. They have nothing to tell of the courageous, high-minded mothers, wives and daughters, who bore themselves as bravely as men, complaining never, toiling with men in the fields, banishing all regrets for the life they might have led had they sacrificed their ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody

... so absorbed in his own interest, so strictly confined to the views of his own class, as never to have dreamt of the sensibilities he wounded. In fact, the shame excited by this prospect was artificial. Godwin had already felt that it was unworthy alike of a philosopher and of a high-minded man of the world. The doubt as to Andrew's state of mind, and this moral problem, had a restraining effect upon the young man's temper. A practical person justifies himself in wrath as soon as his judgment is at one with ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... not understand it. The "Congregation of the son of the C[a]kyas"—such was the earliest name for the Buddhistic brotherhood—were required only to renounce their family, put on the yellow robe, assume the tonsure and other outward signs, and be chaste and high-minded. But the teachers were instructed in the subtleties of the 'Path,' and it needed no little training to follow the leader's thought to its ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... blame her if, during her husband's brief visits, she felt like complaining that he absorbed himself in the interests of the American cause or was always planning fresh enterprises. But though she was now only nineteen years old, she was proving herself the high-minded woman who could sympathize entirely with her husband's ideals, and who could consider him dedicated to a great cause; therefore she could cheerfully lay aside merely selfish wishes. No one ever heard a complaint from her absolutely loyal lips. In December, ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow

... she read between the lines the real state of the case. Alice was indignant, but she did not think it wise to make too much of the incident. Of Evelyn she wrote affectionately—she knew she was a noble and high-minded girl. As to her mother, she dismissed her with a country estimate. "You know, Phil, that I never thought she ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... of parenthood. We have come to the conclusion, based on widespread investigation and experience, that education for parenthood must be based upon the needs and demands of the people themselves. An idealistic code of sexual ethics, imposed from above, a set of rules devised by high-minded theorists who fail to take into account the living conditions and desires of the masses, can never be of the slightest value in effecting change in the customs of the people. Systems so imposed in the past have revealed their woeful inability ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger

... me that the essence of Bahaism is not dogma, but the unification of peoples and religions in a certain high-minded and far from unpractical mysticism. I think that Abdul Baha is just as much devoted to mystic and yet practical religion as his father. In one of the reports of his talks or monologues ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne

... wrong-headed boy!" half groaned Master Gottfried. "Why did not all this fall out ten years sooner, when thou wouldst have been amenable? Yet, after all, I do not know that any noble training has produced a more high-minded loving youth," he added, half relenting as he looked at the gallant, earnest face, full of defiance indeed, but with a certain wistful appealing glance at "the motherling," softening the liquid lustrous dark eye. "Get thee gone, boy, I would not quarrel with ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... from association with any but the few still primitive inhabitants of the Point, and where he would be entirely deprived of any advantages of education, seemed almost too much punishment even for the grave offences which those three honorable, high-minded men found it hard to condone. But, again, it was not to be thought of, that, devoid of conscience and right feeling as he was, he should be left alone exposed to the temptations of the great city. For Captain and Mrs. Yorke must shortly return home, Mrs. Yorke's physician having pronounced her ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews

... High-minded, philanthropic, and upright, Lord Elgin made a mistake which led to a renewal of the war. He refused to place Tientsin on the list of open ports, because, as he said, "Foreign powers would make use of it to overawe the Chinese capital,"—just ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... making their way along that thoroughfare, and his face said very plainly, "Well, you hardly know poor creatures, what noble jests your tiny feet, and tiny waists, and faces and figures, your gait and your dress, are causing for that high-minded audience ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... was that, supported by Miss Carroll, this high-minded and sorely tried man held fast to the end. He went into the struggle a rich man, in a position of worldly honor and prosperity. He came out of it reduced in prosperity, having, like other faithful Southern Unionists, ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell

... would have resorted for any ordinary campaign. In this they resembled a sea-captain who should make ready to encounter a gale when his ship was threatened by a typhoon. Hence their unco-ordinated efforts, their chivalrous treatment of a dastardly foe, their high-minded refusal to credit the circumstantial stories of sickening savagery emanating first from Belgium and then from France, their gentle remonstrances with the enemy, their carefully worded arguments, their generous understatement of their country's case, and ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... given a really good and high-minded teacher, might be the appeal to the example of the great and good men of the past, both Greek and Roman, and the study of their motives in action, in good fortune and ill. This is the kind of teaching which we find illustrated in the book of Valerius Maximus, ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... that he should help. In these years, as through all his youth, he was loved, spurred on in his intellectual life, and keenly criticised by his aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, an eager and wide reader, inspired by religious zeal, high-minded, but eccentric. ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... our puny resolutions, Lancelot began to meditate surrender. For surrender of some sort must be—either of life or ideal. After so steadfast and protracted a struggle—oh, it was cruel, it was terrible; how noble, how high-minded he had been; and this was how the fates dealt with him—but at ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill

... do say, that every department is vigilantly watched, and that the losses are trivial, compared with the immense benefits. I do say, emphatically, that to bring a wholesale charge against whole classes, whose members are generally as high-minded and honorable as any other, to accuse them as a body of wretched peculations, is simply false and slanderous. I maintain that fidelity is the rule, and that its reverse is the petty exception; and that it would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... you were those three years with your father in Dublin, at that rigidly popish court. I did not consider that! But however much your opinions may have changed, your heart, I know, still remains the same, and you will ever be the proud, high-minded Jane of former days, who could never stoop to tell a lie—no, not even if this lie would procure her profit and glory. I ask you then, Jane, what is your religion? Do you believe in the Pope of Rome, and the Church of Rome as the only channel of salvation? or do you follow the new teaching ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach

... just calmed her down by laying his hand on her a few moments, it seemed to come. It so happened that in the West it had taken the form of a considerable eloquence. She had certainly spoken with great facility to cultivated and high-minded audiences. She had long followed with sympathy the movement for the liberation of her sex from every sort of bondage; it had been her principal interest even as a child (he might mention that at the age of nine she had christened her favourite doll ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... my child," he said gently, "would you not rather see your grandfather—an honorable, high-minded gentleman—acquitted of an unjust accusation, even at the expense of some abasement and perhaps heart- aches on your part, rather than allow him to continue to suffer disgrace in order to shield you from ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)

... felt that he had very little comprehension of the feminine temperament; he realised to the full how much more generous, unselfish, high-minded, and sympathetic women were than men, their perceptions of personalities more subtle, their intuitions more delicate; in a difficult matter, a crisis involving the relations of people, when it was hard to know how to act, and when, in dealing with ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... spots, to hallow'd wedlock dear, Where rested on its solemn way the bier, That bore the bones of Edward's Elinor To mix with Royal dust at Westminster.— Far different rites did thee to dust consign, Duke Brunswick's daughter, Princely Caroline. A hurrying funeral, and a banish'd grave, High-minded Wife! were all that thou could'st have. Grieve not, great Ghost, nor count in death thy losses; Thou in thy life-time had'st ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... very time when the lectures describing these experiments were being circulated in print and discussed eagerly by the medical profession, the customary denials that patients are experimented on were as loud, as indignant, as high-minded as ever, in spite of the few intelligent doctors who point out rightly that all treatments are experiments on the patient. And this brings us to an obvious but mostly overlooked weakness in the vivisector's ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw

... added. But it disturbed the trooper as little as ever. "Come," he said, "own up. You knew we were going to meet those fellows?" Murguia said nothing. "Of course you knew. But why didn't you change your route, seeing you're too high-minded to fight?—What's that?—Oh that voice! Dive ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... 'we are a gallant nation. Let us therefore descend and mingle with what the high-minded John Bulls call ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... swaddling clothes, father and mother, both alas! will depart, and dwell though you will in that mass of gauze, who is there who will know how to spoil you with any fond attention? Born you will be fortunately with ample moral courage, and high-minded and boundless resources, for your parents will not have, in the least, their child's secret feelings at heart! You will be like a moon appearing to view when the rain holds up, shedding its rays upon the Jade Hall; or a gentle breeze (wafting ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... can you suffer Hell so to preuayle? My brest Ile burst with straining of my courage, And from my shoulders crack my Armes asunder, But I will chastise this high-minded Strumpet. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... for your own happiness than for that of another. For be sure that when love is unequal, and the hours come clouded with sorrow, it is not the wiser of the two who will suffer the most—not the one that shows more generosity, justice, more high-minded passion. The one who is better will rarely become the victim deserving our pity. For, indeed, to be truly a victim it must be our own faults, our injustice, wrongdoing, beneath which we suffer. However ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck

... for a living, and gone back to interviewing. Poor old Adeline lived in the pious hope of making Northwick's old age comfortable in their beautiful home on the money he had stolen; and now that she's dead it goes to his creditors. Why, even Billy Gerrish, a high-minded, public-spirited man like William B. Gerrish,—couldn't have his way about Northwick. No, sir; Northwick himself couldn't! Look how he fooled away his time there in Canada, after he got off with money enough to start him on the high road to fortune again. ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... niece. She joined a widowed friend, and gladly assented to the suggestion that dear Agnes should visit Mrs. Rennes in Paris. The Bishop saw no impediment to the plan. He had been at Oxford with the late Archibald Rennes, an odd fellow but high-minded. Mrs. Rennes was the daughter of a General Hughes-Drummond. Every one knew the Hughes-Drummonds. They were very good people indeed. The Bishop hoped that Agnes would enjoy herself, give her kind friend as little trouble as possible, and come home fully ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... young man of high aims and noble purposes: and the writer believes that it is unpardonable to awaken the interest and sympathy of his readers for any other than high-minded and well-meaning characters. But he is not faultless; he makes some grave mistakes, even while he has high aims. The most important lesson in morals to be derived from his experience is that it is unwise and dangerous for young people to conceal their actions from ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic

... inartistic: it is also faint-hearted and unjust. It alienates sympathy. It substitutes unreal adoration for wholesome admiration; it afflicts the reader, conscious of frailty and struggle, with a sense of hopeless despair in the presence of anything so supremely high-minded and flawless." ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... his life encountered anything which amused him so much, and his only regret was that he had not known the absurd but high-minded old English Quixote who, wiser in his generation than that noble knight, left it to his heir to redress the wrongs of the world, while he himself had the pleasure of the anticipation only, not perhaps ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... Grammont-Caderousse, that maddest of the mad viveurs of the Second Empire, and his friend the prince of Orange. The latter still maintains his reputation in Paris as the most dissipated of European princes. Twice has he essayed to win the hand of an English princess, or rather his high-minded and virtuous mother made the effort in his behalf, but neither his prospective heirship to the crown of Holland nor his Protestantism has availed to gain for him a royal English bride. He is known among the society that he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... one school of writers—mainly those of modern fiction—California before the advent of the gringo was a sort of Arcadian paradise, populated by a people who were polite, generous, pleasure-loving, high-minded, chivalrous, aristocratic, and above all things romantic. Only with the coming of the loosely sordid, commercial, and despicable American did this Arcadia fade to the strains of dying and pathetic music. According to another school of writers—mainly ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... High-minded Gaul! We all praised and honored him, and comforted him for his disappointment. It was a noble attempt he had made, to nail the American banner to the head of Mount James, impelled by the loftiest of motives,—and, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... Ary Scheffer furnishes one of the best examples in modern times of a like high-minded devotion to art. Born at Dordrecht, the son of a German artist, he early manifested an aptitude for drawing and painting, which his parents encouraged. His father dying while he was still young, his mother resolved, though her means were but small, to remove the family to Paris, in order that her ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... is something worth having in the bowels of the earth, he burrows like a mole and gets it. Let him once see utility in flying, give him time and opportunity, and he will fly. So if it is to his interests to be clean-lived, high-minded, exemplary, he will be all these things to admiration. Or, if he should happen to have lost the gout for virtue, if he determines that Evil shall be his good, he will make it so." He smiled dourly. "Deprive him of a solid reason for living, he can die. Hold up before his dying ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... The high-minded and noble youth listened to his father's windy discourse and foolish opposition, and recognized therein the devices of the crooked serpent, and how standing at his right hand he had prepared a snare for his feet, and was scheming how ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... a high-minded, hard-headed, north-country woman. She valued long descent, and noble blood, and loyalty to a fallen dynasty like a Scotchwoman, but, like a Scotchwoman, she also respected capability and energy and endurance. She combined a romantic heart with a practical ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... of manner and bearing, was an honorable high-minded man; clear-sighted and strong-headed; an accurate and ready lawyer; vigilant ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... also a form of justice, is the duty enjoined by St. Paul of forming just judgments of our fellow-men. If we would avoid petty fault-finding and high-minded contempt, we must dismiss all prejudice and passion. The two qualities requisite for proper judgment are knowledge and sympathy. Goethe has a fine couplet to the effect that 'it is safe in every case to appeal ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... she was good, of course she was tender, of course she was high-minded! But how wide-enveloping was the cloak of her goodness? How far did her tenderness reach out? Was her high-mindedness of the practical ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.

... wrong is usually very clear, but it is not so in public affairs. Even the moral aspects of political acts can seldom be rightly estimated without the exercise of a large, judicial, and comprehensive judgment, and the spirit which should actuate a statesman should be rather that of a high-minded and honourable man of the world than that of a theologian, or a ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... speaker objected to all four of the categories. He said that each and every one of them would lead to war. Leapthrough was a chivalrous and high-minded nation, as was apparent by the present aspect of things. Should we presume to take up the bond, using our own funds, it would mortally offend her pride, and she would fight us; did we presume to take up the bond, using her funds, it would offend her ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... political opinions may actually have been is open to doubt; it has often been asserted that he was a Liberal, or even a Radical; and, if we are to believe Robert Owen, he was a necessitarian Socialist. His relations with Owen—the shrewd, gullible, high-minded, wrong-headed, illustrious and preposterous father of Socialism and Co-operation—were curious and characteristic. He talked of visiting the Mills at New Lanark, he did, in fact, preside at one of Owen's public meetings; he corresponded with him on confidential ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... his family property, he answered that he preferred to take his chance with the rest. He won the lasting regard of the Empress, though she knew that he influenced Napoleon in a sense contrary to her own political sympathies. The visits of this high-minded gentleman and devoted friend were as welcome at a court crowded with self-seekers and charlatans as they were to be later in the solitude of Chislehurst. Arese was in Paris during the Congress, having been chosen ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... cheerfully accepted the task of civilizing the Orient, and began an invasion which was quite apostolic in its character,—so joyful and high-minded do noble thoughts render our nation! But diplomatic rivalry, national selfishness, English avarice, and Russian ambition stood in her way. To consummate a long-meditated usurpation, it was necessary to crush a too ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... thoroughly. But, in order to furnish your mind some basis to rest upon, I will say, that during the time Mr. Lyon was here I observed him very closely; and that every thing about him gave me the impression of a pure, high-minded, honourable man. Such is the testimony borne in his favour by letters from men of standing in England, by whom he is trusted with large interests. I do not think an evidence of prepossession for our daughter, on his part, need ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur

... would be to say what is untrue, but I felt that my condition had much of solace. I knew that I had a friend in Captain Haskell—a man whom I admired without reservation, and whose favours were extended to me freely—I mean to say personal, not official, favours. The more I learned of this high-minded man, the more did the whole world seem to me brighter and less deserving of disregard. He was a patriot. An heir to an estate of many slaves, he was at war for a principle of liberty; he was ready at any time to sacrifice personal ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson

... contemporaries. Among these we note especially William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870), whose Yemassee, Border Beagles, Katherine Walton and many other historical romances of Colonial and Revolutionary days were of more than passing interest. He was a high-minded and most industrious writer, who produced over forty volumes of poems, essays, biographies, histories and tales; but he is now remembered chiefly by his novels, which won him the title of "the Cooper of the ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... kind, in his own odd way—and learned, and rich—a more high-minded and honorable man (as I have every reason to believe) doesn't live. But if you ask me which he prefers, his books or his son, I hope I do him no injustice when I answer, his books. His reading and his writing are obstacles between us which I have never been able to ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins

... prolonged and intense suffering, the suffering of a proud, reserved, and over-sensitive mind brought into constant contact with the coarse and brutal facts of life. The creator of Mr. Biffen suffers all the torture of the fastidious, the delicately honourable, the scrupulously high-minded in daily contact with persons of blunt feelings, low ideals, and base instincts. 'Human cattle, the herd that feed and breed, with them it was well; but the few born to a desire for ever unattainable, the ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... and is therefore twenty-seven years of age. Although so young, he is regarded as a fine musician. He grew to manhood in the family of Col. Felix Labatut, by whom and his wife Dennis was treated as a son. Mr. and Mrs. Labatut, who were a noble and high-minded couple, of well-known liberal ideas, spared no pains to give their charge a thorough education. Teachers were employed to instruct him in many branches of learning. Mr. Ludger Boquille, a colored gentleman, became his teacher in French; Prof. Richard ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter

... the evidence against my client; you have heard the life and honor of a high-minded gentleman, against whom there was never before a breath of scandal or blame, sworn away by a handful of saloon loafers, and a pack of ignorant ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... their all that they might help their country. The bravery of the people has never been disputed; while, as to the upper classes, the punctilious honor of a Spanish gentleman has passed into a byword, and circulated through the world. Of the nation generally, the best observers pronounce them to be high-minded, generous, truthful, full of integrity, warm and zealous friends, affectionate in all private relations of life, frank, charitable, and humane. Their sincerity in religious matters is unquestionable; they ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... Wilberforce complained in parliament of the reluctance displayed by the two great powers to enter into the arrangements necessary for carrying into effect the total abolition of the slave-trade. It grieved him, he said, to cast this reproach on a high-minded people like the French; and he was still more grieved to find that America was not free from blame; but he still trusted that all nations would unite in their endeavours to civilize the inhabitants of Africa. He concluded by moving an address to the prince ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... purely human happiness which preserves our powers. He married the divorced Frau Cosima von Buelow, a daughter of Liszt. "This man, so completely controlled by his demon, should always have had at his side a high-minded, appreciative woman, a wife that would have understood the war that was constantly waged within him," is the judgment passed on Wagner's first wife by one of her friends. He had now found this woman, and in a way that proved on every hand a ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl

... European education. Finding that a child was expected, he hastened her marriage with a man of noble character who had loved her for a long time. He helped the young couple for a time, but he was soon obliged to give up, for the high-minded husband refused to accept anything from him. Soon the careless nobleman forgot all about his former mistress and the child she had borne him; then, as we know, he died intestate. P—'s son, born after his mother's marriage, found ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... so it is with our fears and unbelieving apprehensions now. Institutions pass—churches alter—old forms change—and high-minded and good men cling to these as if they were the only things by which God could regenerate the world. Christianity appears to some men to be effete and worn out. Men who can look back upon the times of Venn, and Newton, and Scott—comparing the degeneracy ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... nations that on the whole tend to act justly, disarmed, we might sometimes avoid bloodshed, but we would cease to be of weight in securing the peace of justice—the real peace for which the most law-abiding and high-minded men must at times be willing to fight. As the world is now, only that nation is equipped for peace that knows how to fight, and that will not shrink from fighting if ever the conditions become such that war is demanded in the name of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... to govern the depraved and debased natives of Syria—a country where courage in man and virtue in woman had for centuries been unknown—Varus thought that he might gratify his licentious and rapacious passions with equal impunity among the high-minded sons and pure-spirited daughters of Germany. When the general of an army sets the example of outrages of this description, he is soon faithfully imitated by his officers, and surpassed by his still more brutal soldiery. The Romans now habitually indulged in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... notoriety is something I never cared for. One reason, perhaps, is that I was brought up by noble and generous-hearted Kit Carson, who very much disliked notoriety, and I do not believe that there ever was a son who thought more of his father than I did of that high-minded and ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan

... did not astonish her that a girl should reject ten thousand pounds per annum, for that she was too high-minded; but she had thought it beyond doubt that Alma's heart was engaged. Here, it had seemed to her, was the explanation of a mystery attaching to this original young Englishwoman; unhoped, the brilliant lover, the secretly ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... red-cheeked lass; or he might walk on as an old bachelor, too cautious to be caught at all. But none believed that he would become the victim of a grand passion for a poor, reticent, high-bred, high-minded specimen of womanhood. Such, however, was now ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... moral courage and determination than all the rest of you put together! I know better than any body what a sacrifice she has had to make; but she has made it, and made it nobly—like a heroine, as some people would say; like a good, high-minded, courageous girl, as I say! Do as she tells you! Let that poor, selfish fool of a man have his way, and marry her sister—he has made one mistake already about a face—see if he doesn't find out, some day, that he has made another, about a wife! ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... considerable supply of whisky, which was owned in large part, he says, by the American Fur Company. He then continued: "The trader with the whisky, it must be admitted, is certain of getting the most furs.... There are many honorable and high-minded citizens in this trade, but expediency overcomes their objections and reconciles them for the sake of the profits of ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... dearest lady," grasping Eveline's hand, while she addressed her; "you will not drive your Rose from you? If I am less high-minded than one of your boasted race, I am bold and quick-witted in all honest service.—You tremble like the aspen! Do not go into this apartment—do not be gulled by all this pomp and mystery of terrible preparation; bid defiance ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... parts, of the perfect in the imperfect, but which discovers the whole, the complete and the perfect, and brings each before us in some noble form. The reality of the Ideal as Plato saw it is by no means universally accepted as a philosophical conclusion, but all high-minded men and women accept it as a rule of life. Idealism is wrought into the very fibre of the race, and is as indestructible as the imagination in which it has its roots. Deep in the heart of humanity lies the unshakable faith in its essential divinity, and in the reality of ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... 18th of October; that before the close of the year four large editions had been sold; and that in my opinion it thoroughly deserved the estimate formed of it by one connected with America by the strongest social affections, and otherwise in all respects an honourable, high-minded, upright judge. "You have been very tender," wrote Lord Jeffrey, "to our sensitive friends beyond sea, and my whole heart goes along with every word you have written. I think that you have perfectly accomplished all that you profess or ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... who was intimate with Johnson was the cultivated and high-minded William Windham. No one had a greater reverence for Johnson. The most scrupulous of men, he was probably attracted to Johnson most of all by his character, and sought in him a kind of director for ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey



Words linked to "High-minded" :   noble



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