"Acme" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his hand on the young man's shoulder but did not answer at once. The growing clamor about them had reached the acme of insistence. The nearest people pressed through the tribal lines and, rushing forward, began to throw themselves on their knees, tumbling in circles about the majestic Hebrew. Others kept their feet, and with arms and clenched ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... the start, and here they come, And the hoof-strokes roar like a mighty drum Beat by a hand unsteady; They come like a rushing, roaring flood, Hurrah for the speed of the Chester blood; For Acme is making the pace so good There are some ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... has no Political System; yet it is controlled by the very Acme of System. Each Individual of their vast population is guided by "The Light ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... mysteriousness. His dark, well-marked countenance was a complex one always, but at that moment I was utterly unable to discern whether he spoke the truth, or whether he only wished to mislead my suspicions into a different channel. That he was the acme of shrewdness, that his powers of deduction were extraordinary, and that his patience in unravelling a secret was almost beyond comprehension I knew well. Even those great trackers of criminals, Shaw and Maddox, of New Scotland Yard, held him in respect, and admired his acute intelligence and ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... The last moments of the great tea-masters were as full of exquisite refinement as had been their lives. Seeking always to be in harmony with the great rhythm of the universe, they were ever prepared to enter the unknown. The "Last Tea of Rikiu" will stand forth forever as the acme of tragic grandeur. ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... all wrong, does not generally contribute to the light-heartedness of such parties. Moreover, the very young element was hardly represented, and there was a dearth of those sprightly boys and girls who think it the acme of delicate wit to shut up an aunt in the ice-box and throw the billiard-table out of the window. Neither Lady Maud nor her father liked what Mr. Van Torp called a 'circus'; and besides, the modern youths and maids who delight ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... to man's estate, such as being a policeman, or a performer on the high trapeze. The poet would not have been the "Peoples' Laureate," had his fairy god- mother granted his boy-wish, but the Greenfield baker. For to his childish mind it "seemed the acme of delight," using again his own happy expression, "to manufacture those snowy loaves of bread, those delicious tarts, those toothsome bon-bons. And then to own them all, to keep them in store, to watch over and guardedly exhibit. The thought of getting money for them was to ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... in its decorations, and has been left almost entirely in its original form. A more perfect example of a Norman abbatial church, is perhaps no where to be found; and, as this edifice had the farther advantage of having been raised at the period when the province was at the acme of its power, of having been erected by an individual of the highest rank, and of having owed its existence to an occasion peculiarly calculated to call forth the exercise of the utmost liberality and splendor, it has been conceived ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... this insect achieved the very acme and culmination of repulsive villainy. Fortunately she has mitigated it in two ways. The stench is volatile and soon disappears; while settler's noses get used to it in a measure. Were it not for these merciful provisions, colonization in this land would be an utter impossibility ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... was not alone. But the feeling seemed, when he recalled it, to have been altogether different from that with which we recognise the presence of the most unwelcome bodily visitor. The whole of his nervous skeleton seemed to shudder and contract. Every sense was intensified to the acme of its acuteness; while the powers of volition were inoperative. He could not move ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... point of circulation. Yet the old man wrote and spoke well, and had, from 1824 to 1829, as an ally the sharp and clever Thiers, and the better read, the better informed, and the more judicious Mignet. It was during the Vitelle administration that the Constitutionnel attained the very highest acme of its fame. It was then said to have had 30,000 subscribers, and to have maintained them with the cry of "Down with the Jesuits!" In 1827-28, during its palmiest days, the Constitutionnel had no Roman feuilleton. It depended then on its leading articles, nor was it till its circulation ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... bedrock of his character once he gains assurance that he is playing a useful and respected part in a superior and successful organization. To give men working as a group the feeling of great accomplishment together is the acme of ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... Verskunst. p. 426, where he has taken up the question again with reference to my treatment of it. As he has now conceded the possibility of referring the legislation to the earlier date, the difference between us is really very slight, and it is of course possible, perhaps even probable, that the acme of the poet has been antedated.—Aristoph. Av. 1071: "On this very day it is made public, that if one of you kills Diagoras from Melos, he shall have a talent, and if one kills one of the dead tyrants, ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... streets, and came to a quiet suburb, where road after road, lined on either side with houses exactly like each other, stretched in depressing monotony. To Kitty it looked the very acme of correct, neat, yet hateful propriety, and her thoughts flew back longingly to the dear old irregular wind-swept street of Gorlay, which was to her then the most lovable and lovely spot on the face of the earth. At last, when she was almost tired of speculating ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... country, why not in the whole of it? If it would be a damning sin for us to admit another Slave State into the Union, why is it not a damning sin to permit a Slave State to remain in the Union? Would it not be the acme of effrontery for a man, in amicable alliance with fifteen pickpockets, to profess scruples of conscience in regard to admitting another pilfering rogue to the fraternity? "Thou that sayest, A man should not steal, dost thou steal," or consent, in any instance, to ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... melophones yield the finest music I have ever heard. In sweetness and purity of tone, softness and wealth of harmony, which is pervaded by some electric quality of inspiration, so stirring, so thrilling that every nerve and every cell in the body responds. They stand unrivaled as the very acme of musical art. I now understand why your lovely home here should be named 'Fairy Fern Cottage.' I fully appreciate the significance of the title. This royal temple of ferns makes the name most fittingly appropriate, and easily ranks this cottage ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... the splendour and corruption of the French Court had reached their acme. The seraglio of the great King recalled to mind that of Solomon, whilst his brother, enslaved by effeminacy and debauchery, had only to hold up his finger and the most important personages of the state were suitably provided with ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... the acme of refinement and culture might possibly be found in the smart set, but that it was a very small island, surrounded by a very large sea of other styles which spoke nothing so much as squandered opportunities. ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... ourselves and what we feel, Have something in them secretly divine. 30 Vainly the eye, once schooled to serve the brain, With pains deliberate studies to renew The ideal vision: second-thoughts are prose; For beauty's acme hath a term as brief As the wave's poise before it break in pearl, Our own breath dims the mirror of the sense, Looking too long and closely: at a flash We snatch the essential grace of meaning out, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... men lend themselves willingly, as do their kin over the sea, to the ebb and flow of powerful contrary feelings, and rush body and soul from the extreme of joy to the acme of sorrow. The mild serenite, enjoyed by men with classical tendencies was to them unknown, and the word was one which no Norman Conquest, no Angevin rule, no "Augustan" imitation, could force into the language; it was unwanted, for the thing was unknown. But they listen with unabated pleasure, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... shore, a train is in waiting to take on board the now sleepy passengers. The railway sleeping-car is essentially an American institution. Like every other institution, it has its critics, favourable and severe. On the one hand, it is said to be the acme of comfort; on the other, the essence of unrest. But it is just what might be expected under the circumstances, neither one thing nor the other. No one in his senses would prefer to sleep in a bed which was being bornc violently along over rough and uneven iron when he could ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... soft calm of Malta, and of Ceylon, the Paradise of the Ancients." It does not evince much knowledge of a ploughman's mind to seek to awaken his martial ardour by old myths about the Garden of Eden; nor is it specially alluring to him to mention, as the acme of glory, that he may distinguish himself so much as to gain "thanks from both Houses of Parliament." Such weak and watery declamation won't do for a country that has had thirty-eight years of compulsory education. ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... nights sitting up on my mattress, looking at the light and shade, listening to the sounds or stillness, dreaming of one matter and another (but more particularly of the poetic, voluptuous happiness which, in those days, I believed was to prove the acme of my felicity) and lamenting that until now it had only been given to me to IMAGINE things. No sooner had every one dispersed, and I had seen lights pass from the drawing-room to the upper chambers (whence female voices would presently ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... state and clergy would be a mere waste of time. The only alternative was flight. That would mean the wreck of Rezanov's avowed purposes in coming to this quarter of New Spain, and perhaps of others she dimly suspected. It would mean the very acme of misery for his Sitkans, and an indefensible blow to the Company. It might even prove the fatal mistake in his career, for which his enemies were ever on the alert. He was not communicative about himself except when he had an object in view, but he ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... soldier, this is the immortal climax of the senses. This is the acme of the flesh, the one superb tiger who has devoured all living flesh, and now paces backwards and forwards in the cage of its own infinite, glaring with blind, fierce, absorbed eyes at that which is ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... phrase, we need a childhood saturated with the sense of personal values on the plane of affection. Selfishness may indeed pollute this mainspring of personal power, and selfishness sometimes reaches its acme in motherhood's partiality for its own. The ideal of social solidarity and the claim of all upon each one must never be absent from the family influence if that influence is to be wholesome. The family, however, exists to make a small spot in which there ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... works near Calcutta; collected a vast number of vessels of all kinds, and improvised a regular marine establishment; and raised nine new battalions of sepoys, and a numerous corps of native artillery. In the meantime the army under Colonel Leslie was marching towards the acme of action. In his progress he was directed to conciliate and captivate the goodwill of the rulers and people in every district through which his line of inarch lay; but at the same time he was to fight his way where he could not win it by conciliation. Leslie had to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... his skill at modifying them. As these efforts have resulted, in past time, in the production of our best varieties, so they may, in future, in something far better than we yet have. There is no probability that any of our fruits have reached the acme of perfection. ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... you know, were unusual occurrences in the little village of Acme. Of course this one furnished a ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... he should ask the question, was the acme of his offense. As if she could tell how he had offended. Was there ever so impertinent a question and questioner? "How had he been so unfortunate as to offend?" Any other man would have said "unhappy," ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Raf to share in his own pride. To the pilot's mind it bore little resemblance to any form of aircraft past or present with which he had had experience in his own world. But he did not doubt that it was the present acme of alien construction, and he was eager to see ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... mouth, inform Caesar of Antipater's wickedness. Now at this very time there was seized a letter of Antiphilus, written to Antipater out of Egypt [for he lived there]; and when it was opened by the king, it was found to contain what follows: "I have sent thee Acme's letter, and hazarded my own life; for thou knowest that I am in danger from two families, if I be discovered. I wish thee good success in thy affair." These were the contents of this letter; but the king made inquiry about the other letter also, for it did not appear; ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... king, "the great men of antiquity recognized it as the acme of wisdom, that they must be mindful that 'in the midst of life we are in death.' At the gay festivities and the luxurious feasts they were interrupted in the merry song and voluptuous dance, with the warning: 'Remember, O man, that thou must die!' Let ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... a king" and the fatherhood of the sovereign reach their acme in Peru, where the Inca was king, father, even god, and the halo of "divine right" has not ceased even yet to encircle the brows of the absolute monarchs ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... has been so much occupied; and he described them with the enthusiasm that we have occasionally noted. He saw the battle-field on which Inarus had just been defeated—the ground strewn with the skulls and other bones of the slain; he made his longest stay at Memphis, then at the acme of its greatness; he visited the quarries on the east of the Nile whence the stone had been dug for the pyramids, and he gazed upon the great monuments themselves, on the opposite side of the stream. We have seen that he visited Lake Moeris, and examined the famous ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... putt-boys below and the windlass-boys above, I proceeded down a dipple to another place like a standing, for in this mine there were six, or perhaps seven, veins: and there immediately I came upon the acme of the horrible drama of this Tartarus, for all here was not merely crowded, but, at some points, a packed congestion of flesh, giving out a strong smell of the peach, curiously mixed with the stale coal-odour ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... there are perhaps two, at the most three pianoforte virtuosos who really deserve to be called great. To listen to them is the acme of musical delight. But right next to this comes the performance of any musical person, whether a child or grown up, on the pianola. It is better than the playing of any virtuoso not absolutely of the very first rank, and infinitely preferable to the ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... he ran back to me, only just in time to rescue me from the nearer thunder yet of those who had seized the very acme of their opportunity to beat out ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... White Cabbage, Early Curled Simpson, Black-Seeded Simpson, Early Prize Head, Big Boston, Grand Rapids, All the Year Round, Yellow-Seeded Butter Musk Melons.—Extra Early Hackensack, Fine Large Green Nutmeg, Baltimore Acme Cantaloupe, Jenny Lind, Montreal Market, Bay View, Cosmopolitan, Long Island Beauty, Paul Rose or Petoskey, Delmonico, Early Christiana, Banana, Tip Top Water Melons.—Cole's Early, Green Gold, Florida Favorite, ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... of all speculation—simply as speculation—reaches its acme in the Essay on Bacon. The curious naivete with which Macaulay denounces all philosophy in that vigorous production excites a kind of perverse admiration. How can one refuse to admire the audacity which enables a man explicitly to identify philosophy with humbug? It is what ninety-nine ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... desolation—men's souls rise above the distress—they have to, in order to survive." "Every man I have met out here has the amazing guts to wear his crown of thorns as though it were a cap-and-bells." They have shredded off their weaknesses, and attained that "corporate stout-heartedness" which is "the acme of what Aristotle meant by virtue." For himself, he discovers that the plague of his former modes of life lay in self-distrust. It was the disease of the age. The doubt of many things which it were wisdom to believe had ended in the ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... can lose the essential qualities of a fight, or (save in the treatment of prisoners) be more brutal or less brutal when fought between two little savage tribes, than when fought between two colossal groups of Christian nations, civilized to the highest point. War is the acme of the endeavor of man. Each side determines that it will win at all costs and at all hazards; that nobody's comfort, happiness, or safety shall receive the slightest consideration; that everybody's strength and courage must be worked to the limit by night as well as by day, and ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... the dark electioneering tricks and gutter legislation which for years had been committed by the Magyars to the end that the Autonomists and they should have all the amenities of some one else's house, it surely is the acme of ingratitude to call this tottering benefactor "Hote insalue." If the Autonomists did not desire to reap advantages from any Magyar corruption, they might at any time since November 17, 1868, have ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... as he said, crowded. There was a loud continued murmur of human voices. Traffic was intense, and had reached what might be supposed its acme. It seemed as if business was undergoing a paroxysm, or fit, rather than pursuing her steady, healthful course. Bodies of men were standing in groups—some were darting from corner to corner, pen in mouth—a few were walking leisurely with downcast looks—others quickly, uneasy and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... fresh and sweet, So large and lovely—and so cheap! They lay in one delicious heap, And added to the sumptuous feast For each and all in taste expert The acme of all fine dessert; So, singling out the very least As in itself an ample treat, While sparkling repartee and jest Exhilarated host and guest, Of rarity so delicate In dreamy reverie I ate, By magic pinions ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... must be noticed that the process of transforming beasts into citizens was one to which only the tamed, but not the tamers, were subjected. The ruler stood outside of and above the rule he made. The law was for his subjects. This was the case with Henry VIII at the acme of civilization as it had been with the first ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... the acme of finesse. He angles soft to the side-lines, stop volleys the hardest drives successfully. He picks openings with an unerring eye. His overhead lacks "punch," but ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... poise which betrays his different origin. And in the Rasika Priya it is once again his courtly aura which determines his new role. A blend of prince and cowherd, Krishna ousts from poetry the courtly lovers who previously had seemed the acme of romance. Adoration of God acquires the grace and charm of courtly loving, passionate sensuality all the refinement and nobility of a spiritual religion. It is out of all these varied texts that the Krishna of Indian ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... peninsula on the north shore of the lake, Tucker and I pitched our camp, sent our mules back to Puyusca for fodder, and set up the Acme folding boat, which we had brought so many miles on muleback, for the sounding operations. The "Acme" proved easy to assemble, although this was our first experience with it. Its lightness enabled it to be floated at the edge of the lake even in very shallow water, and its ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... this acme; and then end. Fassmann, a fellow not without sarcasm and sharpness, as you may still see, has one evening provoked Gundling to the transcendent pitch,—till words are weak, and only action will answer. Gundling, driven to the exploding point, suddenly seizes his Dutch smoking-pan, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... am here this evening is as complete a mystery to me as to you. I do not know why your Society, at whose annual meetings orators are as the sand upon the seashore for multitude, should call upon Philadelphia, a city in which the acme of eloquence is attained by a Friends' Yearly Meeting, "sitting under the canopy of silence." I can only suppose that you designed to relieve the insufferable brilliancy of your annual festival, that you wished ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... pulsing existence that ebbs and flows through plant and tree and flower and flying bird. And today we turn to Plato and find the corroboration of our thought that to live now and here, up to our highest and best, is the acme of wisdom. We prepare to live by living. If there is another world we better be getting ready for it. If heaven is an Ideal Republic it is founded on unselfishness, truth, reciprocity, equanimity and co-operation, and only those will be at home there who have practised these virtues ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... teetering knobless bureau reflecting upon the singular coincidence which should place her in the same room for her second social affair in the Prouty House as that to which she had been assigned upon her first. The bureau had been new then and, to her inexperienced eyes, had looked the acme of luxurious magnificence. She recalled as vividly as though the lapse of time consisted of days, not years, the round eager face, that had ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... on an evening of delicious coolness, there so coveted, that a cavalier issued on horseback from the gates of the castle, which was then at the acme of its pride and strength. Numerous retainers stood on either side by the drawbridge their heads bared to the evening sun, until the horseman should have passed, but he went forth unattended; and the men resumed their caps, and swung ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... for a telephone line. They had just been reconnoitering the rooms befouled with the night's saturnalia, and were ha-haing boisterously over Captain von Hartrott's inscription, "Bitte, nicht plundern." To them it seemed the acme of wit—truly Teutonic. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the wisdom of the Egyptians," by receiving the priestly education of the royal princes, and that he had advanced from grade to grade in the religious mysteries, even to the highest, in which the great truth of the One Supreme, the omniscient, omnipotent God was imparted, as the sublime acme of all human knowledge, thus attributing to Moses before his flight into Midian, an almost modern conception of an ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... inspiration has been supplied, and the policy devised of the whole series of massacres. When the Sultan carries massacre into his own capital under the eyes of the Ambassadors, he appears to have gained the very acme of what it is possible for him to do. But the weakness of diplomacy, I trust, is about to be strengthened by the echo of ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... this letter in my new mess which is in a Neissen hut. For the present I remain Lieutenant A.S.C.—till the period of probation is past. But that's no matter, for the acme of my military ambitions is now attained. My new messmates are almost all ex-infantry men, many of whom, most in fact, are here learning their new job. Strangely enough, I am the third Senior Lieutenant in the company, and in point of active service, with my ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... no less fine government clerk called Ivan Dmitritch Tchervyakov was sitting in the second row of the stalls, gazing through an opera glass at the Cloches de Corneville. He gazed and felt at the acme of bliss. But suddenly. . . . In stories one so often meets with this "But suddenly." The authors are right: life is so full of surprises! But suddenly his face puckered up, his eyes disappeared, his breathing was arrested . . . he took the opera glass from his eyes, bent over and . . . ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... concrete Thought is neither shadowy nor illusory. It is the acme of reality and this world which we mistakenly regard as the only verity, is but an evanescent replica ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... said Oldbuck, removing his hand, and turning again to the road, "if you are so true a philosopher as to think you have money enough, there's no more to be saidI cannot pretend to be entitled to advise you;you have attained the acme'the summit of perfection. And how came Fairport to be the selected abode of so much self-denying philosophy? It is as if a worshipper of the true religion had set up his staff by choice among the multifarious idolaters of the ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... used for charging, better work can be done under some conditions by using special charging barrows of larger capacity and dumping from the end and ahead of the wheel. Two forms of charging barrow are shown by Figs. 16 and 17. The Acme barrow will hold 4 cu. ft. and the Ransome barrow is made in 3 to 6 cu. ft. capacities. Where inclines are necessary these barrows can often be hauled up the incline by power. A sprocket chain in the plane of the incline and operated by ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... partner in the brokerage firm of Bray, Parkinson & Co., and is president of the Free Gold Mining Company. Brooks is manager of the Acme Advertisers, and secretary of Free Gold. Bray and Parkinson are stockholders, and Wagstaff is a stockholder and also manager of the Free Gold properties in B. C. All are well ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... he does not much mind other people being so. He says what he thinks, and you have got to lump it. Sometimes he is good-natured enough, and even brave. There is an admirable sketch of a good-natured cad in one of Mrs. Walford's novels, who is the acme of kind indelicacy. The cad is dreadful to live with, because he is always making one ashamed, and ashamed of being ashamed, because many of the things he does do not really matter very much. Then, when he is out of sight and hearing, you cannot trust him. He makes mischief; he throws mud. ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... dazed, staggered beneath the violence of the onslaught. But the epithets became viler, for the acme of elegance, even for the more refined among these young fellows, was to rival one's friends in beastly language. He was, nevertheless, recovering and beginning to answer, when Dubuche recognised him. The latter turned crimson, for he detested that kind of adventure. He felt ashamed of ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... them ever received; and they were charmed with the little viceregal court over which Lady Maria Carleton, despite her youthful two-and-twenty summers, presided with a dignity inherited from the premier ducal family of England and brought to the acme of conventional perfection by her intimate experience of Versailles. On New Year's Eve Carleton gave a public fete, a state dinner, and a ball to celebrate the anniversary of the British victory over Montgomery and Arnold. The bishop held a special thanksgiving and made all notorious renegades ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... cleared the way to the throne for Victoria. Leopold continued to hold the property, and it became a generation later the asylum of Louis Philippe. To an ordinary mind the miseries of any one condemned to make this lovely spot his home are not apt to present themselves as the acme of despair. A sensation of relief and lulling repose would be more reasonably expected, especially after so stormy a career as that of Louis. The change from restless and capricious Paris to dewy shades and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... his closed sanctum Livingstone still sat with intent gaze, poring over the page of figures before him. The expression on his face was one of profound satisfaction. He had at last reached the acme of his ambition—that is, of his later ambition. (He had once had other aims.) He had arrived at the point towards which he had been straining for the last eight—ten—fifteen years—he did not try to remember just how long—it had ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... suffering. I hated everything earthly and was glad to see it all punished and destroyed. I felt so alone and so strangely. And as a delicate spirit often grows melancholy in the very lap of happiness over its own joy, and at the very acme of its existence becomes conscious of the futility of it all, so did I regard my suffering with mysterious pleasure. I regarded it as the symbol of life in general; I believed that I was seeing and feeling the everlasting discord by means of which ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... me! if this isn't the acme of good luck! Here are horses—three, four of them, just one ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... volleys died down to sharpshooting across the lines; and then to hear him laugh when he turned the vegetable snowdrift out into the wooden butter-bowl a little too soon, and a last shot or two blew the fluffy kernels all over the room—all this was the very acme of success in making a pleasant evening. All the time I was ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... is the building burning? Why this haste?" Hester raised her eyes to those of the preceptress. Miss Burkham was the acme of all that was cultured and elegant. No imagination was strong enough to picture her, other than deliberate, low-voiced, serene of countenance. Hester who knew more of bluntness than irony, replied fearlessly, "No, ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... less than suicidal to let a stranger come into his heart and maybe weaken his position. He remembered his last thought before falling asleep. It appeared unutterably rash, though when hit upon, it had been a decision that moderated a more extreme action. Now he realized that it was the very acme of foolishness deliberately to sacrifice half his fortune, especially the farm itself, to which he had given so many years of complete concentration. Certainly, if Rose were ready to be his, he might not hesitate ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... veldt covered with short grass, just beginning to get burnt up by the summer's heat. Our host, Mr. J. B. Currey, a name well known in Diamond-Field circles, met us at the station. This is a good old South African custom, and always seems to me to be the acme of welcoming hospitality, and the climax to the kindness of inviting people to stay, merely on the recommendation of friends—quite a common occurrence in the colonies, and one which, I think, is never sufficiently appreciated, the entertainers ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... considerable danger, and many a voice has undoubtedly been ruined for after use by singing at this time. The reason for encouraging the boy to keep on singing is, of course, that the choirmaster, having trained a voice for a number of years, dislikes losing it when it is at the very acme of brilliancy. For this feeling he can hardly be blamed, for the most important condition of successful work by a male choir is probably permanency of membership; and the leader must exercise every ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... plenty of black flour at 9 dollars a-hundred, and salt salmon, four for 1 dollar." What lively visions of scurvy these provisions conjure up! The acme of extravagance was not arrived at, however, until the poor miner came to purchase auxiliaries to his rocker. At Sailor's Bar "rocker irons were at an ounce of gold each (16 dollars), and at Hill's Bar, 30 dollars each." ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... and flourished; and was himself eminently a picture of the age in which he lived. But of more importance even than this, to a right understanding of Dante, is the consideration that the scholastic philosophy was then at its acme even in itself; but more especially in Italy, where it never prevailed so exclusively as northward of the Alps. It is impossible to understand the genius of Dante, and difficult to understand his poem, without some knowledge of the characters, studies, and writings of the schoolmen ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... training are capable of imposing grave restrictions upon freedom of action. Material equipment, even though it may represent the acme of perfection in design and construction, will not surely function unless skillfully operated and maintained. Even though mobility and endurance be otherwise assured, the capacity which they represent is not susceptible of effective employment unless the methods ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... brilliant toilet. She was adorned with diamonds and costly jewelry, and looked as beautiful and proud as a queen. She had now reached the acme of her career. She was still lovely, and besides she had become, as it were, the protectress of the most refined society of Vienna and the centre of the intellectual as well as aristocratic circles. She had accomplished her purpose. Marianne Meier, the Jewess, was now a noble lady, to whom ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... The acme of all constructions, in which strength, beauty, and capacity for ornamentation are blended, is the Hammer Beam Truss. Here the hammer beam projects inwardly farther than in the preceding figure, and has a deeper bracket (B), and this also extends down the pendant ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... enslaved the understanding. But these societies had been more successful in pulling down than in building up, and blinded with excess of zeal were hurrying us onward to a goal which might or might not be the acme of sanitative dress, but was certainly the zero of artistic excellence. The cause of this was not far to seek. We were inventing a new science, that of dress, and were without rules to guide us. So long as ladies had to choose between Paris fashions and those of Piccadilly Hall, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... other hand, many obvious improbabilities will be endured, as belonging to the ground-work of the story rather than to the drama itself, in the first scenes, which would disturb or disentrance us from all illusion in the acme of our excitement; as for instance, Lear's division of his kingdom, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... Christ. The surfaces of many of them are covered with alto-relievos of beaten silver—a circumstance which traces back their origin to imperial times, distinguishing them, at the same time, from the bas-relief ornamentations of the acme of Greek art. The gilding of the draperies and weapons, and the silver color of the naked parts, in imitation, as it were, of the gold-and-ivory statues of Greek art, also indicate Roman workmanship. The annexed cuts show some of the finest pieces of this treasure. The ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... portion of the whole science was so backward as this. Thirty-five centuries ago Darius, son of Hydaspis, suffered a simple luxation of the foot; it was not diagnosed in this land of Apis and of the deified discoverer of medicine. Among the wise men of Egypt, then in her acme of civilization, there was not one to reduce the simple luxation which any student of the present day would easily diagnose and successfully treat. Throughout the dark ages and down to the present century, the hideous and unnecessary ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Gothic of Henry IV.'s time. The late seventeenth-century work is a manifest expression of the debasement of Gothic, and such other additions as were made in the reigns of the Louis carry the vulgarities still further, the acme being reached in the pseudo-classical north and south porches, which are sepulchral-looking of themselves, and not even of the most admired variety of the species. The most that can be remarked, considering all the distinctive features, is the fact that this cathedral ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... or departs from the sun. It means also that about the same conditions that Secretary Deepwaters suggested as desirable for the earth, prevail here, and that Jupiter represents, therefore, about the acme of climate naturally provided. On account of its rapid rotation and vast size, the winds have a tornado's strength, but they are nothing at this distance from the sun to what they would be if a planet with its present rate of rotation and size were where Venus or even the ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... and the State, until the Pontiff of Rome remained the only representative of the union of the spiritual and temporal authority—his spiritual authority enormous, his temporal authority growing smaller, and badly used, so that in the States of the Church in Italy there was almost the acme of bad temporal government; and there was little to choose, really, between the States of the Church and the odious tyranny of Naples. In the States of the Church the old ideal of the Priest-King was degraded ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... who practised it with impunity: it gave a finish to the character of a woman, proved she would sometimes act for herself, not always be in leading-strings; it gave a taste of power, gratified her ambition; in short, flirtation was the very acme of enjoyment, and gave a decided ton ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... world could e'er cause me to tremble While trusting my all in a heart such as this, Too fond to deceive me; too true to dissemble— 'Twere a foretaste of Heaven, the acme of bliss. ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... exact portion of the bitter stuff, which had been allowed to foam copiously in order to eke out, the five desperadoes solemnly touched glasses and Slops Barnett, who had visited in Princeton, led them in that whispered toast that is the acme of devilment: ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... among the most interesting in the great East, for they strike the key of true cosmopolitanism. Along them 'rickshaws pass in endless procession, electric cars roar, and sedan-chairs swing. The chair borne by four bearers provides the acme of transportation in fine weather. Eighty per cent, of Hong Kong's people are Chinese, and to this multitude the human contributions of Europe and America form necessarily a thin relief. Extremely picturesque are the compradore and taipan in costumes of the richest ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... reaches the acme of its admiration. Dead to beauty must be heart and eye that could behold thee here, in this thy southern land, without ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... at the very acme of fame. He had succeeded in becoming the most noted negro of his day. He felt that the time was not ripe for him to gather up his wealth and honors and lay them, with his heart, at Viola's feet. One afternoon he invited Viola ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... Oh, acme of faith! The martyrs knew that the Almighty was equal to the occasion. She knows that her husband is not; yet she trusts, or, what is the same thing here, gets trusted. Men allied to such women are soon lifted up to—attics. ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... foliage has passed its acme; and indeed it has not been so magnificent this season as in some others, owing to the gradual approaches of cooler weather, and there having been slight frosts instead of severe ones. There is still a shaggy richness ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... she complains in your halls decorated with a more than Grecian beauty of architecture; she complains where all of past civilization, all of past adornment, and all of past education comes down to satisfy us that we stand upon the very acme of human progress; she complains that you have been tyrant to her. Mr. President, let me read from the proceedings of the Twenty-ninth Annual Meeting of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. I propose to read from the remarks of Mrs. Gage, a woman, a lady, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... in the ancient and once imperial, but now provincial and remote, city of Ravenna. It was Carnival time, and the very acme and high-tide of that season of mirth and revel. For the theory of Carnival observance is, that the life of it, unlike that of most other things and beings, is intensified with a constantly crescendo movement up to the last minutes of its existence. And there now remained but an hour ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... twenty. On the average, after about thirty years of age, the elasticity of the body to rise to the strain of emergency diminishes, and, when forty years is reached, a man, medically speaking, reaches his acme. After that, degeneration of the fabric of the body slowly and maybe imperceptibly sets in. As the difficulties of exploration in cold regions approximate to the limit of human endurance and often enough exceed it, ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... like the acme of metaphysical paradox, and we all know that "coxcombs vanquished Berkeley with a grin;" while common-sense folk refuted him by stamping on the ground, or some such other irrelevant proceeding. But the key to all philosophy ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... all its painters: heavy in Ghirlandajo, vulgarly jaunty in Filippino, preposterously starched and prim in Mantegna, ludicrously undignified in Signorelli; while mediaeval stiffness, awkwardness, and absurdity reach their acme perhaps in the little boys, companions of the Medici children, introduced into Benozzo Gozzoli's Building of Babel. These are the prosperous townsfolk, among whom the Renaissance artist is but too glad to seek for models; but besides these there are lamentable ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... do not begin by an internal revolt against society. They are only quieted by their own discouragement. Some are resigned from a more lofty feeling to the place which God assigns to them. To put up with the world humbly is still more beautiful than to control it. This is the very acme of virtue. Religion leads to it in a day; philosophy only conducts to it by a lengthened life, misery, or death. These are days when the most elevated place in the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... of man's nature; and in the depths of this western wilderness, many hundreds of Alexanders and Caesars, who have never been heard of. At the time I emigrated to Ohio the deadly hatred of the red men toward the whites had reached its acme. The rifle, the tomahawk and the scalping knife were daily at work; and men, women and children daily fell victims to this sanguinary spirit. In this state I found things when I reached the small village opposite the mouth of Licking river, and now the great city of Cincinnati. Here in this ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... some hungry fish is the ordinary fate of the species. Possibly splendour is bestowed upon the shrimp as a means by which certain fish distinguish a particularly choice dainty, and the fish show the very acme of admiration by "wolfing" it. Thus are the examples of high art in ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... Waterloo Road had the following announcement displayed on the front of his house: "The Acme of Stencil!" A "learned Theban" in the same line in an adjoining street, in order to outdo the "old original" stenciller, thus set forth his pretensions: "Stencilling in all its branches performed in the very ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... vanishing amid the glory of success, was to him to be wretched at his last moment, and to be wretched at his last moment, or to anticipate that he should be so, was to him,—even so near his last hours,—the acme of misery. How much of life was left to him, so that he might recover something of success? Or was ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... tastes, all other cravings, one passion reigned supreme, and that acme of enjoyment to me was music. This also was met by indulgence as unlimited as its cravings; for not only did my father possess one of the finest voices in the world, and the very highest degree of scientific knowledge, taste, and skill in the management of it, but our house ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... acme of audacity—yes. The telegram has just come. 'Must see you tonight on important business affecting the past. Shall hope to be with you ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... unless absolutely necessary in order to arrange some ingenious piece of trickery, and they could all live weeks at the same hotel without either, by word or sign, betraying previous knowledge of each other. Indeed, Count Bindo di Ferraris was the very acme of well-dressed, ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... They were, as all thy royal line have been, Yet none of those who went before have reached The acme of Sardanapalus, who 10 Has placed his joy ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... failing, there was always the pleasure of watching Opdyke, now lounging lazily in his seat and mocking at his fellows, now bending forward above the table, heedless of his cooling plate, the while he harangued his companions with a facility which seemed to Scott the acme of ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... know, mademoiselle; I can only guess. There is but one person who can perhaps judge of you correctly,—a man older than myself by many years—whose life is the very acme of spiritual perfection—whose learning is vast and unprejudiced. I must see and speak to him before I try any more of my, or rather his, remedies. But we have lingered long enough out here, and unless you have something more to say to me, we will return to the ballroom. You will otherwise ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... lucky as to the time in which he took up public life in Birmingham, and he was equally fortunate in regard to the period at which he quitted it. He had set afloat great local schemes, he had laboured assiduously for the good of the town, he had attained the acme of his local popularity, he was admired even by his opponents, and an imposing memorial was erected in his honour. After this, anything that might have happened would have been in the nature of an anti-climax so far as his local career ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... cruiser turned, a great, gray British battleship came up to port, saluted, and passed on, followed by another far in the distance, those two great vessels with their black smoke trailing out in the distance and moving along majestically seeming to be the acme of power. ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... in her day was looked upon as the ne plus ultra in naval architecture, the very acme of marine engineering. The highest speed she developed was eight and one-half knots or about nine and three-quarters miles an hour. She covered the passage from Liverpool to Boston in fourteen and one-half days, which was then ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... possession of it, and deposited it in safety till better times. This once popular Prince is now associated with Nero and Caligula, and it is "leze nation" to speak of him to a thorough republican.—I know not if the French had before the revolution reached the acme of perfection, but they have certainly been retrograding very fast since. Every thing that used to create fondness and veneration is despised, and things are esteemed only in proportion as they are worthless. Perhaps the bust of Robespierre may one day replace that of Henry the Fourth, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... will gather about the hearth. In the meanwhile, the Tentaillons are obliging; the table, with your additions, will pass; only the wine is execrable—well, I shall send for some to-day. My Pharaoh will be gratified to drink a decent glass; aha! and I shall see if he possesses that acme of organisation—a palate. If he has a ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... throws with such force and accuracy as to split a bait top. This is the acme of the game and the crowning glory of the player. Often the bait consists of toothless, battered wrecks, but this does not lessen ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... the deepened lines of the thin face moved in her compassion as tender as she felt for the bleeding bruise on the cheek. She remembered how he had nursed her, and given her, by his mere sympathy and control, that hour's wonderful sleep. She remembered him crawling, at the acme of her terror, through the slit of the window; saving her from the Dutch woman; turning his back while she dressed; leaping like a heaven-sent devil over the stair-rail; fighting Ockley with his fists—and refused to remember that same ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... descendants perhaps of the chieftains that helped Herman overcome Varus, and whose names may be found five hundred years back among the Deutsch Ritters that conquered Northern Europe from heathendom, and thence all the way down to now, occurring in martial and princely connection. It was the acme of martial splendour. ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... Dr. Sommer's reprint, but as these are long quarto lines, let us multiply them by some three to get the equivalent of the "skipping octosyllables." There will remain fifty to a hundred and fifty, with, in the prose, some extra matter not in the verse. But the acme of the contrast is reached in these words of the prose, which answer to some forty lines of the poet's watering-out. "Great was the joy that they made each other that night, for long had each suffered for the other. And when the day came, they ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... however—planted by her lover—to be thrashed by her husband, for inconstancy to her regular Servente, who is coming home post about it, and she herself retired in confusion into the country, although it is the acme of the opera season. All the women furious against her (she herself having been censorious) for being found out. She is a pretty woman—a Countess * * * *—a fine old Visigoth ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... at what he heard, Don Antonio then said to his comrade, "Why, Signor Don Juan, do you not finish your work, and raise the joy of these Signors to its acme, by requiring from them the albricias for discovering the Lady Cornelia and ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... keep his eyes upon the floor as he said this, and after he had finished, so as not to spy upon her confusion. She stood silent for a moment, then walked suddenly away, and falling on her uncle's chair, fairly burst out sobbing. Denis was in the acme of embarrassment. He looked round, as if to seek for inspiration, and seeing a stool, plumped down upon it for something to do. There he sat, playing with the guard of his rapier, and wishing himself dead a thousand times over, and buried in the nastiest ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mathematical, aenigmatical, technical, biographical, romantical, chemical, and obstetrical, with fifty other branches of it, (most of them ending, as these do, in ical,) has, for these two last centuries and more, gradually been creeping upwards towards that acme of their perfections, from which, if we may form a conjecture from the advantages of these last seven years, we cannot possibly ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... when timber burns," he said. But though both boys were looking directly at what seemed the very acme of destruction and loss, neither as yet comprehended the full significance of the statement ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... from an English official in Africa, who tells me of his camp life. He says: "The wagon was generally my sleeping quarter. I had two tents and a riding horse, and very seldom slept in a house or put the horse in a stable. Such a life was ever, and is now, to me the acme of bliss. No man can be said to have really lived who has not camped out in some such way, and I know well that you especially will say Amen! to this sentiment. Since 1848, I have lived altogether for about six years in the open, and have ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... next few moments, stared him in the face; and it seemed curiously irrelevant that, in a sort of unnatural calmness, he should be attempting to analyse his feelings and emotions concerning it. All his life it had seemed to him that the acme of human mental torture was the cell of a condemned criminal, with the horror of its hopelessness, with the time to dwell upon it; and that the acme of that torture itself must be that awful moment immediately preceding execution, when anticipation at ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... other being the vast Arabia Stony of your friends and the world aforesaid. To grow bigger every moment in your own conceit, and the world to lessen: to deify yourself at the expense of your species; to judge the world—this is the acme and supreme point of your mystery—these the true PLEASURES of SULKINESS. We profess no more of this grand secret than what ourself experimented on one rainy afternoon in the last week, sulking in our study. We had proceeded to the penultimate point, at which the true ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... trilobites are exclusively Palaeozoic in distribution, but their course must have begun long before that era, as is shown by the number of distinct types among the genera of the lower Cambrian. The group reached the acme of abundance and relative importance in the Cambrian and Ordovician; then followed a long, slow decline, ending in complete and final disappearance before the end of the Permian. The newly-hatched and tiny trilobite ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... birch-trees are out, though three stations back the buds were not even bursting. Thank God, I have at last reached a summer in which there is neither rain nor a cold wind. Krasnoyarsk is a picturesque, cultured town; compared with it, Tomsk is "a pig in a skull-cap and the acme of mauvais ton." The streets are clean and paved, the houses are of stone and ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... and for unusual emotions. The winters seemed too warm for her, the snowfalls too light; the springs dragged along too slowly, the summers were too cool, the autumns too dry; all this she visioned in her imagination in far grander outlines. She wished to see the acme of beauty, the acme of evil, and every act ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... the bliss of these never-to-be-repeated moments, I looked at the printed song to see how many verses had to be sung before I could step away from the torture which the cold air sent through my teeth. It was the acme of suffering. As the glow of the piled-up torches subsided, my pain subsided too. How thankful I was, though! Gentle eyes were fastened upon me all around. All wanted to speak with me, to press ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... between Doug's towering seventy-four inches and Gordon's sixty-nine, though she strove to conceal the exaltation which her uniformed gallants stirred in her soul by bringing to bear upon them all the superlative superiority which she had studied as the acme of success in the habitues of the Hotel Astor. With Douglas it worked to a charm. He rose to the corresponding role as a trout to a fly, but poor Gordon was only too thankful when the companionship and conversation became more general. The superior young lady from the metropolis was ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... vision, the interest and suspense of all increased; and when the iron implements met the solid resistance of a broad flagstone, which returned a cavernous sound to the stroke, the excitement of all present rose to its acme. ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... and as it is so beyond a doubt, we should not have been led into such an analysis as we have made in these two chapters, were it not that, in the disguise of other ideas, it looks like something better, and frequently makes its appearance. One person sees in it the acme of strategic sagacity and foresight; another rejects it, and with it the idea of any reserve, consequently even of a tactical one. This confusion of ideas is transferred to real life, and if we would see a memorable instance of it we ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... case and Fanning-Smith's. To use courageous gambling as means to a foothold in business—he regarded that as wise audacity. To use a firm-established foothold in business as a means to gambling—he regarded that as the acme of reckless folly. Besides, when he marked the cards or loaded the dice for a great Wall Street game of "high finance," he did it with skill and ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... right too. Nothing can surely be more delightful than to have one's house full of friends at will, and then be able to turn them out at a moment's notice (as a life-boat gets rid of superfluous water) by that simple mechanism of a Chamberlain. When the Social System attains its acme, all of us will have a Chamberlain and be ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... orison is the mind's detachment from outer sensations, for these interfere with its concentration upon ideal things. Such manuals as Saint Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises recommend the disciple to {398} expel sensation by a graduated series of efforts to imagine holy scenes. The acme of this kind of discipline would be a semi-hallucinatory mono-ideism—an imaginary figure of Christ, for example, coming fully to occupy the mind. Sensorial images of this sort, whether literal or symbolic, play an enormous part in mysticism.[251] But ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... inferiority as an individual, business, political or social equal of the allied peoples. The goal of Honor, he had attained in every war waged by America. He was with Jackson at New Orleans, a pioneer in the Mexican struggle, 200,000 strong in the great civil crisis, the acme of terror to Geronimo in the later Indian wars, the hero of San Juan in the Spanish-American combat, and at Carrizal in the latest Mexican imbroglio. By 1914, however, he had lost all rewards of honor which he had previously won. As for Equality, since the Civil War, he had ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... periodicity,—diurnal, monthly, seasonal, or annual, and more marked in women than in men, and in mania than in melancholia,—and adds: "I found that the younger the patient, the greater is the tendency to periodic remission and relapse. The phenomenon finds its acme in the cases of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... The acme of self-control is reached and best illustrated in the first of the two institutions which we shall now bring ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... was going to be ill, and I have reason to thank Heaven that I am provided with the constitution that I have, for it is certain that I need it. On Sunday night a violent storm cooled the atmosphere, and on Monday morning the nurse was good enough to forgive me, and came back: so that the acme of my trial did not last too long. On Tuesday the children were removed to the country, and though the physician and my own observation assured me that F—— required sea-bathing, it is an unspeakable relief to me to see her out of the city, and to find this ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... terrified. He would have given anything in the world to be able to drive away this implacable dream. He longed for heavy sleep to crush his thoughts. So long as he remained awake, he had sufficient energy to expel the phantom of his victim; but as soon as he lost command of his mind it led him to the acme of terror. ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... been the weak bluff of one whose strength had suddenly deserted him. He had snatched at it to cover his weakness. But to the score or more who saw that spiral of smoke dissolving jauntily into air, no such thought was possible. The filmy wreath represented the acme of dare-devil recklessness, the final proof of gameness in John Beaudry's son. He had turned his back on a drunken killer crazy for revenge and mocked the fellow at the risk of ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... forth to the dining room, where I took up my usual quarters. Out of politeness I waited three minutes, but no sign of my uncle, the Professor. I was surprised. He was not usually so blind to the pleasure of a good dinner. It was the acme of German luxury—parsley soup, a ham omelette with sorrel trimmings, an oyster of veal stewed with prunes, delicious fruit, and sparkling Moselle. For the sake of poring over this musty old piece of parchment, my uncle forbore ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... the first apartment there was a round table, two lounges, and some easy-chairs; and in the second, which was somewhat smaller, most of the space was occupied by the bed. Mother Fetu drew attention to a crystal lamp with gilt chains, which hung from the ceiling. To her this lamp was the veritable acme of luxury. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... afterwards, "It was just too lovely for anythin'." And the men were scarcely less affected, though they were better able to control their emotion. The joyous renunciation of five thousand dollars a year struck these hard men of business as something almost uncanny. They would have considered it the acme of folly in an ordinary man, but in a preacher they felt vaguely ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... ultimately married. She was very solicitous in the poor lad's behalf, and it was decided that he should have a berth on the mate's ship, and in the presence of the youth she easily extracted a pledge from her lover that he would have him kindly treated. He felt in all probability the acme of joy in serving this amiable female, but soon there came one of those accidents that break the current of human affairs. The boy thought he was safe after dark in paying a visit to the vessel he had practically shipped to serve aboard ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... theological passion with which he was becoming more and more inspired by the circumstances of the time. By 1637 the country had been eight years without a parliament, and the persecution of Puritans had attained its acme. In that year Laud's new Episcopalian service book was forced, or rather was attempted to be forced, upon Scotland; Prynne lost his ears; and Bishop Williams was fined eighteen thousand pounds and ordered to be imprisoned ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... him sauntering carelessly down the steps. He had removed the cigar and was whistling very softly, unconsciously, as one who is deep in some quandary, but to Masterson it seemed the acme of studious carelessness to ignore his own presence; it seemed insolent as the mocking glance through the window, and it decided him. His shoulders unconsciously squared as he ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... "Imitatio Christi;" in the same way I might underline your "Lohengrin" note for note. In that case, however, I should like to begin at the end; that is, at the duet between Elsa and Lohengrin in the third act, which to my thinking is the acme of the beautiful and true ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... Nizam-ul-Mulk, the generous and high-minded Vizier of the Tartar Sultan Malik Shah of Mero, and Hassan ibu Sabbah, the ambitious and revengeful founder of the sect of the Assassins. The scene is laid partly at Naishapur, in the Province of Khorasan, which about the period of the First Crusade was at its acme of civilization and refinement, and partly in the mountain fortress of Alamut, south of the Caspian Sea, where the Ismailians under Hassan established themselves towards the close of the 11th century. Human nature is always the same, and the passions of love ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... adversary, England—could look on with neutral eyes at her awful struggles, could keep America calmly aloof from all her entanglements. Not so Mr. Jefferson. Such a return for her services seemed to him but the acme of selfishness and ingratitude. It was not bad statesmanship that made him bear so long with the blunders, the impertinences, the fatuity of Monsieur Genet; it was the remembrance of all the benefits showered upon us by the country which that charlatan ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... This is a brief survey of those causes which made Flanders, though insignificant in size, a principality any king might esteem riches. In the era of William the Silent the Netherlands had reached an acme of relative wealth, influence, and commanding importance, and supplied birthplace and cradle to the Emperor Charles V, who, for thirty-seven years (reaching from 1519 to 1556) was the controlling force in European politics. This ruler was grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, and thus of interest to ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... over-runner, Rome's inveterate foe, Such hosts; all one machine for overthrow, Coruscant from the Master's hand, compact As reasoned thoughts in the Master's head; were shown Yon lightning moment when his acme might Blazed o'er the stream that cuts the sandy tract Borussian from Sarmatia's famished flat; The century's flower; and off its pinnacled throne, Rayed servitude ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... tragic error to which short-sighted youth is apt to wander that "bad-heartedness is strength." And so, from this point of view, to our sorrow, he too much verified Goethe's saw that "simplicity (not artifice) and repose are the acme of art, and therefore no youth can be a master." In fact, he might very well from another side, have taken one of Goethe's fine sayings as ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... served as a bed for the repose of the whole family. Need I attempt to describe my sensations? The statement alone cannot fail of conveying to a mind like yours an adequate idea of them—I could not long remain a witness to this acme of human misery. As I left the deplorable habitation the mistress followed me to repeat her thanks for the trifle I had bestowed. This gave me an opportunity of observing her person more particularly. She was a tall figure, her countenance composed of interesting features, ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith |
