"Excellence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in America were erected on Manhattan Island in the year 1633 by a governor of the Dutch West India Company. These bricks were made in Holland, where the industry had long reached great excellence; and for many years bricks were imported into America from Holland and from England. In America burnt bricks were first made at New Haven about 1650, and the manufacture slowly spread through the New England states; but for many years the home-made article ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... festival. "For the king said, so that we might hear, that this night was born the Lord, in whom we are now to believe, if we do as the king bids us." Kjartan says: "So greatly was I taken with the looks of the king when I saw him for the first time, that I knew at once that he was a man of the highest excellence, and that feeling has kept steadfast ever since, when I have seen him at folk-meetings, and that but by much the best, however, I liked the looks of him to-day; and I cannot help thinking that the ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... service of the government. His administration was marked by a sincere desire to do justice to all under him, a feature that was sadly deficient in too many officers of the time that is spoken of. He was a perfect example of sobriety, and his case certainly was a commendation of the excellence of education of the academy at West Point, of which he was ...
— Frontier service during the rebellion - or, A history of Company K, First Infantry, California Volunteers • George H. Pettis
... upon a governor that would continue the interrupted scheme. It is, however, to be borne in mind that the Emperor Napoleon had certain arguments in favor of his opinions for the time being, which his nephew has not employed. On the 13th Vendemiaire, when General Bonaparte believed in the excellence of a Directory, it may be remembered that he aided his opinions by forty pieces of artillery, and by Colonel Murat at the head of his dragoons. There was no resisting such a philosopher; the Directory was established forthwith, and the sacred cause of the minority triumphed, in like manner, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... quarter of the Testaccio, the region of horrea par excellence, has given us the chance of studying the institution in its minutest details. I shall mention only one discovery. We found, in 1885, the official advertisement for leasing a horrea, under the empire of Hadrian. It ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... in life, faults are endured without disgust when they are associated with transcendent merit, and may be sometimes recommended to weak judgments by the lustre which they obtain from their union with excellence; but it is the business of those who presume to superintend the taste or morals of mankind, to separate delusive combinations and distinguish that which may be praised from that which can only be excused. As vices never promote happiness, though, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... bear testimony to Byron's "splendid and imperishable excellence, which covers all his offences and outweighs all his defects—the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... accompanies it, that they submitted to Spain. The people then grew rich as weavers, merchants and traders. Splendid cities like Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp became the seats of commerce and their artists and workmen of all sorts were known throughout Europe for their thrift and the excellence of their workmanship. We recall how Raphael's cartoons were sent to Flanders to be copied in tapestry the finest in ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... wherever there might be a rightful cause to defend or evil to avert; the gates of the now hospitable castle stood always open also to receive and shelter every stranger; and old Rolf, who was almost grown young again at the sight of his lord's excellence, was established as seneschal. The winter of Sintram's life set in bright and glorious, and it was only at times that he would ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... were gratified to the full. Having successfully carried off his degree of graduate of the third rank, his name was put by selection on the list for provincial appointments. By this time, he had been raised to the rank of Magistrate in this district; but, in spite of the excellence and sufficiency of his accomplishments and abilities, he could not escape being ambitious and overbearing. He failed besides, confident as he was in his own merits, in respect toward his superiors, with the result that these officials looked upon him scornfully with ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... friendship of Jesus. It has been suggested by an English preacher that Christ exhibited the blended qualities of both sexes. "There was in him the womanly heart as well as the manly brain." Yet tenderness is not exclusively a womanly excellence; indeed, since tenderness can really coexist only with strength, it is in its highest manifestation quite as truly a manly as a womanly quality. Jesus was inimitably tender. Tenderness in him was never softness or weakness. It was more like true motherliness than almost any other human affection; ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... personality which he could not think of common occurrence. He was yet far from understanding her; she exercised his powers of observation, analysis, conjecture, as no other person had ever done; each time he saw her (were it but for a moment) he came away with some new perception of her excellence, some hitherto unmarked grace of person or mind whereon to meditate. He had never approached a woman who possessed this power at once of fascinating his senses and controlling his intellect to a glad reverence. Whether in her presence or musing upon her in solitude, he found that the unsparing ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... from operas long since fallen into disuse even on street organs. This public saw the same comedians march out; the most famous are the most monotonous; the comical ones abused their privileges; the lover spoke distractedly through his nose; the great coquette—the actress par excellence, the last of the Celimenes—discharged her part in such a sluggish way that when she began an adverb ending in "ment," one would have almost had time to go out and smoke a cigarette or drink a glass of beer before she reached the end of ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... as good sense to make it), a proud man would be as rare as in reality he is a ridiculous monster. But suppose a man, on this comparison, is, as may sometimes happen, a little partial to himself, the harm is to himself, and he becomes only ridiculous from it. If I prefer my excellence in poetry to Pope or Young; if an inferior actor should, in his opinion, exceed Quin or Garrick; or a sign-post painter set himself above the inimitable Hogarth, we become only ridiculous by our vanity: and the persons themselves who are thus humbled in the comparison, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... thy lessons, man in society would everywhere sink into a sad compound of the fiend and the wild beast; and this fallen world would be as certainly a moral as a natural wilderness. But I little thought of the excellence of thy character and of thy teachings, when, with a heavy heart, I set out about this time, on a morning of early spring, to take my first lesson from thee in a ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... and discussion, the combination of the reflecting obedience of citizens with the mechanical regularity of soldiers—which confer such immortal distinction on the Hellenic character. The importance of this expedition and retreat, as an illustration of the Hellenic qualities and excellence, will justify the large space which has been devoted to ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... up with his usual alacrity to read the letter from the earnest and unspotted Hawkins. Moses Gould could imitate a farmyard well, Sir Henry Irving not so well, Marie Lloyd to a point of excellence, and the new motor horns in a manner that put him upon the platform of great artists. But his imitation of a Canon of Durham was not convincing; indeed, the sense of the letter was so much obscured by the extraordinary leaps and gasps of his pronunciation ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... of labor cannot be executed with equal ease. Some require great superiority of skill and intelligence; and on this superiority is based the price. The artist, the savant, the poet, the statesman, are esteemed only because of their excellence; and this excellence destroys all similitude between them and other men: in the presence of these heights of science and genius the law of equality disappears. Now, if equality is not absolute, there ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... class, little better than a human brute; and, in addition to his general profligacy and repulsive coarseness, the creature was a miserable drunkard. He was, probably, employed by my old master, less on account of the excellence of his services, than for the cheap rate at which they could be obtained. He was not fit to have the management of a drove of mules. In a fit of drunken madness, he committed the outrage which brought the young woman ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... Indians, and to men who achieved success in politics and agriculture. They were given for sea rescues, for heroic deeds by firemen and school-patrol boys, and for outstanding community and civic work. Within our time they have been given as trophies for excellence in athletics, automobile racing, and ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... surlily who he was and what he would; whereupon quoth the other, "O my lord the Imam Aboubekr, I am thy slave Mubarek and I come to thee on the part of my lord the Amir Zein ul Asnam. He hath heard of thy learning and of the excellence of thy repute in the city and would fain become acquainted with thee and do that which behoveth unto thee; wherefore he hath presently sent me with these things and this money for thine expenses and hopeth of thee that thou wilt not blame him, inasmuch as this ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... farcical interruptions, which, through the interest of some, and the depraved taste of others, broke in upon the stage like a torrent, and swept down before thorn all taste for competitions of a more intrinsic excellence. These foreign monsters obtained partisans amongst our own countrymen, in opposition to English humour, genuine wit, and the sublime efforts of genius, and substituted in their room the airy entertainments of dancing and singing, which conveyed no instruction, awakened no generous ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... relaxation of the cigar-duty Mr. HURD quoted Mr. BONAR LAW for the dictum that the excellence of a dinner largely depended upon the quality of the cigar that followed it, and went on to remark that he did not on this matter expect the support of the Labour Party. Mr. JACK JONES stentoriously ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... which characterizes the American people. Mr. Lecky has more than once remarked upon this humane temperament which is so characteristic of our peaceful civilization, and which sometimes, indeed, shows the defects of its excellence and tends to weaken society by making it difficult to inflict due punishment upon the vilest criminals. In respect of this humanity the American of the nineteenth century has without doubt improved very considerably upon his forefathers of the seventeenth. The England of Cromwell and Milton was ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... ladies Dorothea and Virginia Duvidney were thin—sweet old-fashioned grey gentlewomen, demurely conscious of their excellence and awake to the temptation in the consciousness, who imposed a certain reflex primness on the lips of the world when addressing them or when alluding to them. For their appearance was picturesque of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... cette correspondance, dont je serais heureux de mettre les originaux sous les yeux de Votre Excellence, Monsieur le Ministre, que partout mes ouvertures ont ete accueillies avec empressement; qu'en Baviere et en Autriche il a ete donne a mon plan un commencement d'execution, c'est-a-dire qu'on s'est prepare a entrer en echange aussitot ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... full as they are of splendid poetry, and even of splendid dramatic poetry, suffer from a lack of that 'continual slight novelty' which great drama, more than any other poetical form, requires. There is, in the writing, a monotony of excellence, which becomes an actual burden upon the reader. Here is a poet who touches nothing that he does not transform, who can, as in Mary Stuart, fill scores of pages with talk of lawyers, conspirators, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Notwithstanding its excellence and the reputation it once had, this work is now almost unknown. But few have ever heard of it, still fewer read it; a fact due, of course, to its incompleteness. The first and only volume ends with the departure of Louis from Versailles to Paris, when the Revolution was as yet in its earliest stages. ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... possesses all power, wisdom, and so on, in one word, all perfection—the conception, that is, of an all-sufficient being. For the predicates of very great, astonishing, or immeasurable power and excellence, give us no determinate conception of the thing, nor do they inform us what the thing may be in itself. They merely indicate the relation existing between the magnitude of the object and the observer, who ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... for two generations of reformers, and, in time, to excite fears of violent revolution. Without undertaking the easy task of denouncing exploded systems, we may ask what state of mind they implied. Our ancestors were perfectly convinced that their political system was of almost unrivalled excellence: they held that they were freemen entitled to look down upon foreigners as the slaves of despots. Nor can we say that their satisfaction was without solid grounds. The boasting about English freedom implied some misunderstanding. But it was ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... from this trial. He had triumphantly stood the test. There was nothing he would not do for a Brahmin.[421] The poem also contains a type of female perfection in person and character,—Savitri. [422] The Greeks had many standards of personal excellence and social worth which entered to some extent into their mores. The ideal types were noble and refined. They have affected the mores of the class educated in the "humanities" since the Renaissance. They have never been truly incorporated in the mores of any society. Olbos was wealth, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... "I would be certified whether this vintage is indeed of such excellence as to prevail upon a faithful Mussulman to jeopard Paradise, the same ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... of one room. Strickland shut the door behind her, and, moving to the other end of the table, took his place between the K.C. and the Government official. He passed round the port again and handed us cigars. The K.C. remarked on the excellence of the wine, and Strickland told us where he got it. We began to chat about vintages and tobacco. The K.C. told us of a case he was engaged in, and the Colonel talked about polo. I had nothing to say and so sat silent, trying politely to show interest in the conversation; ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... By what the eldest said he presently understood the subject of their conversation was wishes: "for," said she, "since we are talking about wishes, mine shall be to have the sultan's baker for my husband, for then I shall eat my fill of that bread, which by way of excellence is called the sultan's; let us see if your tastes are as good as mine." "For my part," replied the second sister, "I wish I was wife to the sultan's chief cook, for then I should eat of the most excellent ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... of gradual reduction is much more complicated than either of those which preceded it; but the results obtained are a marked advance over the 'new process.' The percentage of high-grade flour is increased, several grades of different degrees of excellence being produced, and the yield is also greater from a given quantity of wheat. The system consists in reducing the wheat to flour, not at one operation, as in the old system, nor in two grindings, as in the 'new process,' but in several successive reductions, four, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... road home. Yes, your excellence. You see it was the fete of the Madonna, and we danced and drank together—I and Peppino—all the night; and this morning about an hour ago says he to me, 'Gaetano, do you take your horses, and go find two travellers and a servant ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... him for that. In a way, the position in which we stand to each other is a kind of poetical justice. I don't blame myself, either, for I always did loathe a cad and Stokes is a cad par excellence. He visited, more or less on suffrance, at two or three houses where I used to go a good deal, in my palmy days. How he got asked, originally, I don't exactly know, for the people weren't a bit his sort; but money does a lot for a man in these days; and once in, he wasn't easy ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... makes it the more unpardonable, as it is not the result of sudden passion, but of an indulged and slowly-meditating ill-nature. What a merry mixed mortal has nature made you, that can debase that strength and excellence of genius to the lowest human weakness, that of offering unprovoked injuries, at the hazard of your being ridiculous too, when the venom you spit falls short of your aim!" I have quoted largely, to show that Cibber was capable of exerting ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... her, and in my sober moods, which occur once or twice in a twelvemonth, have some idea of following her example. And now, Arthur," Ella added playfully, "if Miss Wiltshire comes not up to your standard of female excellence, I should despair of ever finding ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... not warm then the kitchen table or a small table pulled up near the stove is a place par excellence for the dip. ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... "It is a question whether it does not rival 'The Prisoner of Zenda' itself in excellence.... It strikes a ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... for other conclusions more germane to the subject of this essay. The late Bert Leston Taylor, a journalist whose journalism had a literary facet of critical brilliance, once declared that he could not perceive the excellence of Francis Thompson's poetry. When someone suggested that it might be that he was not spiritual enough, the retort was laconic and crushing, "Or, perhaps, not ecclesiastical enough." Like most good retorts Taylor's ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... how, or if any, rains had fallen out west. I therefore despatched Mr. Tietkens and Jimmy to take a tour round to all our former places. At twenty-five miles was the almost bare rocky hill which I called par excellence the Cups, from the number of those little stone indentures upon its surface, which I first saw on the 19th of October, this being the 29th of November. If no water was there, I directed Mr. Tietkens then only to visit Elder's Creek and return; ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... thee. It grants thee all excellence, So that thine every matter is right, And thou receivest every Heavenly favour. It sends down to thee long-during happiness, Which the days are not ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... she began, after the departure of Miss Edmonds, to consider the propriety of sending me to a noted seminary for young ladies, about two hundred miles from Philadelphia, as she learned from various sources of the excellence of the institution. There was but one difficulty in the way, and that was the money needful for defraying my expenses. At my father's death, he left us the owners of the house we occupied, and a sum of money, though not a ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... markets: and that its character should be sacrificed to the sordid speculations of any unprincipled traders. Wine drinkers in England are very commonly deceived into the idea that a voyage to the East or West Indies is sufficient to ensure the excellence of the wine; but this is an obvious fallacy, for if the wine were not of a good quality when shipped from the island, a thousand voyages could not make it what it never had been. It is well known to every merchant in Madeira, ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... be necessary, in the brief account of Honora's life at boarding-school, than to add an humble word of praise on the excellence of Miss Turner's establishment. That lady, needless to say, did not advertise in the magazines, or issue a prospectus. Parents were more or less in the situation of the candidates who desired the honour and privilege of whitewashing Tom Sawyer's fence. If you were a parent, and were allowed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... friend's encomiums were fully justified by the excellence of the tobacco; nor was his coffee to be despised. Several officers looked in occasionally, and we had a very pleasant evening. They were, however, at last hurriedly summoned off, and I threw myself down on the camp bedstead my host had prepared for ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... design, as well as the number of illustrations, than the one here presented to the reader. To speak of the choice humorous talent engaged in the work would only be to re-echo the applauding sentiments of the reviewers and admirers of rich graphic excellence. Cruikshank and Rowlandson are names not unworthy a space upon the same roll with Hogarth, Gilray, and Bunbury: to exhibit scenes of character in real life, sketched upon the spot, was an undertaking of no mean importance; particularly, when it is remembered ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... to, the fire was speedily kindled, and the trapper himself began the culinary performance. It was executed with the characteristic excellence of the hunter, and a luscious meal was thus provided for all. At its conclusion, all stretched themselves upon the ground for the purpose of smoking and chatting, as was their usual custom at ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... for the veteran guide to begin his tale; but as I knew he could not proceed without smoking, I passed him my pouch of Lone Jack—the brand par excellence in ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... lacked the smoothness and suavity of the practised advocate, while the petty details and trickeries of the profession disgusted him. As an editor he made his journal, the American Mercury, notable for the high literary and moral excellence of its articles, but it was not successful financially, simply because it lacked a constituency sufficiently cultured to appreciate and sustain it. His bookstore, which stood on the quiet, elm-shaded main street of the then provincial village, was opened to dispose ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... afterwards, and my young bear, whom I could no longer lead, and who had taken a prodigious friendship for Charley, went to the Chartreux School, where his friend took care that he had no more beating than was good for him, and where (in consequence of the excellence of his private tutor, no doubt) he took and kept a good place. And he liked the school so much, that he says, if ever he has a son, he shall be sent ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... according to the demands of the common safety,—to consider your honour to be as much at stake in submitting to a command to remain stationary and not to stir, as to dash forward,—these are the peculiarities, which constitute the substantial excellence of the national character; and the shipwrecks of the Royal Navy illustrate this national character even more than the battles of the Nile and of Trafalgar. The perils of a shipwreck are so much beyond those of a battle, that the loss of life, when the ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... congratulations you express therein. The freedom of commerce between Ireland and America is undoubtedly very interesting to both countries. If fair play be given to the natural advantages of Ireland, she must come in for a distinguished share of that commerce. She is entitled to it, from the excellence of some of her manufactures, the cheapness of most of them, their correspondence with the American taste, a sameness of language, laws, and manners, a reciprocal affection between the people, and the singular circumstance of her being the nearest European land to the United States. I am not, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... sayings—like "Be good, and you will be happy," or "Virtue is its own reward"—that, like Topsy, "never was born, only jist growed." From the earliest times it has been the popular tendency to call this or that cardinal virtue, or bright and shining excellence, a jewel, by way of emphasis. For example, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... authors, from Calvin down, have cheerfully added their testimony to the worth and excellence of this magnificent Confession—the first since the Athanasian Creed. A late writer of this class says of it that "it best exhibits the prevailing genius of the German Reformation, and will ever be cherished as one of the noblest ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... the Swedenborg Publishing Association, Philadelphia, published every Thursday in sixteen large pages, at $2 per annum. At so moderate a price it should have a large circulation. The name of Rev. B. F. BARRETT is a sufficient guarantee of the literary excellence, profound thought and liberal aims of this weekly. The Association, of which Mr. Barrett is president, holds "the good of life to be paramount to the truth of doctrine; charity superior to faith; doctrine (though it be from the Lord out of heaven) to be of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... even boasted of his ignorance of "law-cases and acts of Parliament." But his coadjutor in the House of Lords (Lord Camden, at this time Chief-justice of the Common Pleas) owed the chief part of the respect in which he was held to his supposed excellence as a constitutional lawyer, and he fully endorsed and expanded Pitt's arguments when the bill came up to the House of Lords. He affirmed that he spoke as "the defender of the law and the constitution; that, as the affair was of the greatest consequence, and in its consequences ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... some ranting blades, who also came from the metropolis to visit Saint Ronan's, attracted by the humours of Meg, and still more by the excellence of her liquor, and the cheapness of her reckonings. These were members of the Helter Skelter Club, of the Wildfire Club, and other associations formed for the express purpose of getting rid of care and sobriety. Such dashers occasioned many a racket ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... angularity, it would indeed produce a remarkable effect of grandeur. The other windows, and the arcading of the triforium, are singularly graceful; not lacking either strength or firmness, though having no glass of great rarity or excellence. In this transept is the altar of St. Romain, a seventeenth-century work of ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... natures and slowly destroy them under a hateful appearance of wisdom! I would rather discover ugly and active defects in you than that beautiful impassiveness. Besides, as I have told you many a time, the excellence that seems to me ideal has its weaknesses. It is rather a way of perfection for our poor humanity, a way that is all the better because it is adapted for our feeble ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... abandoned herself to him with a greater excess of lust than she had ever yet done, and fucked with an excellence, vigour, and energy that drew from him eight discharges in a wonderfully short time. The fact of his having put a baby into her appeared to stimulate both their passions. She declared she never in her life had enjoyed fucking ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... gave it the same name; it has a pleasant tartish taste, but is a little woody, probably only for want of culture: These plums were not plenty; so that having the two qualities of a dainty, scarcity and excellence, it is no wonder that they were held ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... Solimann has published nothing[1] he deserves, because of his extensive learning and still more by the morality and excellence of his character, one of the first places among the Negroes who have distinguished themselves by a high ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... may be reduced to the same level. Men are in the main alike, but they were made several in order that they might be various. If a low use is to be served, one man will do nearly or quite as well as another; if a high one, individual excellence is to be regarded. Any man can stop a hole to keep the wind away, but no other man could serve so rare a use as the author of this illustration did. Confucius says,—"The skins of the tiger and the leopard, when ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... antipathy must be sought in the dread he always had, that the notion he loved to cherish of their perfection and almost divine nature might be disturbed. Having always been governed by them, it would seem that his very self-love was pleased to take refuge in the idea of their excellence,—a sentiment which he knew how (God knows how) to reconcile with the contempt in which, shortly afterwards, almost with the appearance of satisfaction, he seemed to hold them. But contradictions ought not to surprise ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... agreed to by that princess and her council; and while she was allured by his youth, and beauty, and exterior accomplishments, she had at first overlooked the qualities of his mind, which nowise corresponded to the excellence of his outward figure. Violent, yet variable in his resolutions; insolent, yet credulous and easily governed by flatterers; he was destitute of all gratitude, because he thought no favors equal to his merit; and being addicted to low pleasures, he ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... little beak was all; And yet how neatly finished!—What nice hand, And every implement and means of art, And twenty years' apprenticeship to boot, Could make me such another? Fondly then We boast of excellence, whose noblest skill Instinctive ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... is certain: however sound your arguments in depreciation of personal prowess may be, you will never gain a unanimous feminine verdict. It must be an extraordinary exhibition of mental excellence that will really interest the generality of our sisters for the moment as deeply as a very ordinary feat of strength or skill. It is not that they can not thoroughly appreciate rectitude of feeling, brilliancy of conversation, and distinguished ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... faith, by prayer and by vigil. The devil, seeing himself vanquished thus, took the shape of a young and lovely woman and imitated the most lascivious actions in order to beguile him, but Antony raising his thoughts towards heaven and considering the loftiness and excellence of the soul which is given to us, extinguished these burning coals by which the devil hoped to inflame his heart through this deception, and drove ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... they sit, or stand, or move, is that of their species. Every motion of theirs is observed with that correctness of eye which is always found in early times among animal painters, long before painters of the human figure rise to the same excellence. There are perfect descriptions of Ysengrin, who feels very foolish after a rebuke of the king's, and "sits with his tail between his legs"; of the cock, monarch of the barn-yard; of Tybert the cat; of Tardif the slug; of Espinar the hedgehog; of Bruin the bear; of Roonel the mastiff; of Couard ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... planting I would make a list about as follows: Niblack, Major, Greenriver, Busseron, Indiana. I list the Niblack as first choice because it seems to be about as productive as any of the other varieties, and because of its excellence as a cracking nut and the quality of the kernel. The Niblack is really a very desirable nut for cracking, when it is cracked by such devices as the Squirrel cracker which applies pressure to both ends. The kernel comes free from the shell. In a good many varieties, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... myself, I, Ishmael, should infallibly light upon, for all the world as though it had turned out by chance; and in that vessel I must immediately ship myself, for the present irrespective of Queequeg. I have forgotten to mention that, in many things, Queequeg placed great confidence in the excellence of Yojo's judgment and surprising forecast of things; and cherished Yojo with considerable esteem, as a rather good sort of god, who perhaps meant well enough upon the whole, but in all cases did not succeed in his benevolent designs. Now, this plan of Queequeg's, or rather Yojo's, touching the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... inattention of a single player may occasion an accident. Why incur its possibility? I know that certain artists feel their self-love hurt when thus kept in leading-strings (like children, they say); but with a conductor who has no other view than the excellence of the ultimate result, this consideration can have no weight. Even in a quartet, it is seldom that the individual feeling of the players can be left entirely free to follow its own dictates. In a symphony, that of the conductor ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... the holiness of God mentioned together. In Ex. xxix. 43 we read, 'And the tent shall be made holy by my glory,' that glory of the Lord of which we afterwards read that it filled the house. The glory of an object, of a thing or person, is its intrinsic worth or excellence: to glorify is to remove everything that could hinder the full revelation of that excellence. In the Holiness of God His glory is hidden; in the glory of God His Holiness is manifested: His glory, the revelation of Himself as the Holy One, ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... as if Hamilton had procured a letter from Sir J. Herschel, which indicated the importance of Macullagh's memoir in such a way as to decide the issue. It then became Hamilton's duty to award the medal from the chair, and to deliver an address in which he expressed his own sense of the excellence of Macullagh's scientific work. It is the more necessary to allude to these points, because in the whole of his scientific career it would seem that Macullagh was the only man with whom Hamilton had ever even an approach to a dispute about priority. The incident referred to took place in connection ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... foregoing, that useful conversation was characteristic of the Franklins of each generation, indicating a good degree of intelligence and talents of high order. Ignorance does not indulge in improving conversation; it could not if it would. Nor do small mental powers show themselves in excellence of conversation. So that it is quite evident that talents in the Josiah Franklin family were not limited to Benjamin. They reached back to ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... a soldier's duty, and obey each order at your commander's nod: aye, if it be possible, divine what he would have done; for between that Command and this, there is no comparison, either in might or in excellence. ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... bore over their doors the sign of an Ivybush, to indicate the excellence of the liquor supplied within. From which fact arose the saying that "good wine needs no bush," "Vinum vendibile hedera non est opus." And of this text Rosalind cleverly avails herself in As You Like It, "If it be true" says she, "that good wine needs no bush,"—"'tis true ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... measure of the value of an international exposition is determined by the number of important countries represented by exhibits, the characteristics and comprehensive nature of these exhibits, or the excellence in quality according to the standards of the countries from which they come. That an exposition affords the greatest opportunity that manufacturers and producers of a nation have to increase their export trade by displaying their samples and products before the eyes of foreign ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... In all-around excellence, the pecan is equalled by none of the native American nut-bearing trees and certainly it is surpassed by no exotic species. It stands in the list of nut trees with but few equals and no superiors. With this fact known and admitted by all, it seems reasonable to suppose that the pecan will be grown ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume
... the morning and lasting till night. All this time was necessary because they formed contests for a prize which the people awarded to the poet and chorus whose presentation was judged of highest excellence. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... truth, Fra Giovanni; a poor old woman may not only equal but surpass all the Doctors of Theology in the world. And seeing the sole excellence of man lies in loving, I tell you again—the most ignorant of women shall be exalted in ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... manner, as Dr. Johnson here understands it, or, as it is often used by Cicero, with propriety, or elegantly. In short, it is a rare instance of a defect in perspicuity in an admirable writer, who with almost every species of excellence, is peculiarly remarkable for that quality. The length of this note perhaps requires an apology. Many of my readers, I doubt not, will admit that a critical discussion of a passage in a favourite classick is very engaging. BOSWELL. ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... in temper, in habits, do not marry him. Why? Because you would enact a swindle. What would you do with a perfect man who are not perfect yourself? And how dare you hitch your imperfection fast on such supernatural excellence? What a companion you would make for an angel! In other words, there are no perfect men. There never was but one perfect pair, and they slipped down the banks of paradise together. We occasionally find a man who says he never sins. We know ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... governments, and initiated into the "mysteries" of the naval profession—mysteries that would always remain mysteries to them, if their initiation were begun too late in life. Many instances are known of men who obtained great excellence in professions which they entered late in life; but not one instance in the case of a man who entered the naval profession late in life. And though some civilian heads of navies have shown great mental capacity, and after—say three years'—incumbency have shown a comprehension of naval ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... great importance that we should not be anxious about these faults, because the anxiety only springs from a secret pride and a love of our own excellence. We are troubled at feeling what ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... peril, would probably be called into use and be evaded in exactly the same way as it has been in the past. And even if it were not evaded, we must remember that the Civil Service examinations and rules are not a guarantee of efficiency or excellence. The best that can be said for them is that they are a protection against absolute incompetence and, to a certain extent, against political spoiling. But in a positive sense, the Civil Service is merely ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... perdition! Avaunt from me, O thou who devotes thyself to corrupt others!' So saying, he threw his goat's-hair cloak over his eyes, that he might not see her face, and betook himself to calling upon the name of his Lord. When the angel saw the excellence of his obedience (to God), he went out from him and ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... intimate knowledge, and would under no circumstances take for granted what he could not by personal observation verify for himself. In speaking of India and the Cotton plant, he says: "The wild trees in that country bear for their fruit fleeces surpassing those of sheep in beauty and excellence, and the natives clothe themselves in cloths made therefrom." In another place he refers to a present which was sent by one of the kings of Egypt, which was padded with cotton. He also describes a machine for separating the seed from the fibre or lint. Compared with our modern gins, as they are ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... example, the bodily pleasures of eating and drinking, which we were just now mentioning—you mean to say that those which promote health, or any other bodily excellence, are good, and ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... conversations with the chief of the guardians of the temple, I discovered that they acknowledged a supreme being, whom they called Coyococop-Chill, or Great Spirit. The Spirit infinitely great, or the Spirit by way of excellence. The word chill, in their language, signifies the most superlative degree of perfection, and is added by them to the word which signifies fire, when they want to mention the Sun; thus Oua is fire, and Oua-chill is the supreme fire, or the Sun; therefore, by the word Coyocop-Chill ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... Novels of Marion Harland are of surpassing excellence. By intrinsic power of character-drawing and descriptive facility, they hold the reader's attention with the most ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... true. One of them, a moonlight picture, was really magical—the moon shining so brightly that it seemed to throw a light even beyond the limits of the picture; and yet his sunrises and sunsets, and noontides too, were nowise inferior to this, although their excellence required somewhat longer study to be ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... end, Taj al-Muluk was pleased with his verses and wondered at his eloquence and the excellence of his recitation, saying, "Indeed, thou hast done away with somewhat of my sorrow." Then quoth the Wazir "Of a truth, there occurred to those of old what astoundeth those who hear it told." Quoth the Prince, "If thou canst recall aught of this kind, prithee let us hear thy subtle lines ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... as in 'Siegfried' and 'Roland' is of exceptional merit, and is to be classed with the 'Tanglewood Tales' of Hawthorne rather than with the average story for the young. Mr. Pyle has furnished the volume with a dozen drawings of great artistic excellence and of genuinely illustrative character." —The ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... foreseene) it was prouided for aforehand by intercession made vnto your maiestie: for you your selfe, you (I say) mightie lord Maximian eternall emperour, vouchedsafe to aduance the comming of your diuine excellence by the neerest way that might be, which to you was not vnknowne. You therefore suddenlie came to the Rhine, and not with anie armie of horssemen or footmen, but with the terrour of your presence did preserue and defend all that frontire: for ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (4 of 8) - The Fovrth Booke Of The Historie Of England • Raphael Holinshed
... breathes suspicion. It supposes that men are but men; it confides in no integrity; it trusts to no character. It annexes responsibility, not only to every action, but even to the inaction of the powers it has created. I will risk my all upon the excellence of this bill. I will risk upon it whatever is most dear to me—whatever men most value—the character of integrity, of present reputation, and future fame; these will I stake upon the constitutional safety, the enlarged policy, the equity and wisdom of the measure. Whatever, therefore, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... in letters, were not taught in William and Mary at all, except in the grammar school. That Tazewell knew enough of Latin to translate easily a Latin author, and even to write the language grammatically, is certain; but that he never rose to that excellence in those tongues to which his old tutor Mr. Wythe attained is equally certain. But of English literature he had drunk deeply. He had Bacon, Locke, Burke, Pope, Shakspeare, Swift, Hume, Gibbon, Johnson, Gillies, Addison, and Roscoe, within three feet of his ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... without ornament. Of the two books which he composed on Analogy, and those under the title of Anti-Cato, scarcely any fragment is preserved; but we may be assured of the justness of the observations on language, which were made by an author so much distinguished by the excellence of his own compositions. His poem entitled The Journey, which was probably an entertaining narrative, is likewise ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... into the lump, it diffuses itself through the whole, such a strange contagion is it. That wretched aim at a higher wisdom, hath thrown us all down into this brutish and stupid condition, to be like wild asses colts. Yet this false and fond imagination of wisdom and excellence remains within us, which is so much the nearer madness, that now there is no apparent ground left for such a fairly.(434) And if one of a cubit's height should imagine himself as tall as a mountain, and accordingly labour to stretch out ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... Grecs, cette faveur divine, dont on ne peut pas douter, est un preuve insigne de l'excellence de leur communion. Mais ne pourrait-on pas objecter aux Grecs, que les Armeniens et les Cofes, qu'ils traitent d'heretiques, participent a cette meme grace. Ennemis acharnes les uns des autres, les ministres de ces trois sectes se reunissent en apparence pour la ceremonie du feu sacre. ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... which the "Spectator" has sent down to posterity, and poetry which gave the promise of excellence, did not bound the noble ambition of Henley; ardent in more important labours, he was perfecting himself in the learned languages, and carrying on ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... writing a history of the Roman people, I do not know. The work, however, will be a pleasure to me; and even if any fame that might otherwise be mine should be hidden by the success of other writers, I shall console myself by thinking of their excellence and greatness." No such thing happened, however, for the kindly historian was so praised and his work so fully appreciated that he said he had all the ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... inglorious peace Brock had now been serving on in Canada, while his comrades in arms were winning distinction on the battlefields of Europe. This was partly due to his own excellence: he was too good a man to be spared after his first five years were up in 1807; for the era of American hostility had then begun. He had always been observant. But after 1807 he had redoubled his efforts to 'learn Canada,' and learn her thoroughly. People and natural resources, ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... the office all the morning, at noon dined at home, and then my wife, and Deb., and I to the King's playhouse, and saw "The Indian Queene," but do not doat upon Nan Marshall's acting therein, as the world talks of her excellence therein. Thence with my wife to buy some linnen, L13 worth, for sheets, &c., at the new shop over against the New Exchange; [and the master, who is] come out of London—[To the Strand.]—since the fire, says his and other tradesmen's retail trade is so great here, and better than it was ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... evangelists can be said to reveal any ascertainable personality, and only St. John is sufficiently outlined to stand as a type; but I do not think we mean to imply a resemblance to St. John. The bringer of good news, the evangelist par excellence, was Jesus. He it was who made it evident that the sons of men have power to forgive sins. Victory over evil possible—this was the good news. No doubt every sincere Christian is supposed to be a more or less successful imitator of Jesus; ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... appreciation of the duties of genius. Not less but more than most of us is the genius bound to act up with all his might to the highest moral law, to be the prophet and interpreter of the highest moral excellence. To whom much is given, of him much shall be required. Just because the man or woman of genius stands raised on a pedestal so far above the mass have we the right to expect that he or she should point us the way, should go before ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... heralded the modern novel of character and manners. It is the latest, most pliable, most catholic solution of the old problem,—how to unfold man to himself. It improves on the old methods, while missing little of their excellence. No one can read a great novel without feeling that, from its outwardly prosaic pages, strains of genuine poetry have ever and anon reached his ears. It does not obtrude itself; it is not there for him who has not skill to listen for it: but for him who has ears, it is like the music of a bird, ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... he habitually drank far too much port wine. He joined the opposition, and ranged himself with his father's old followers who acted under Shelburne's leadership. On all questions of importance he spoke with lofty eloquence, and his speeches, often splendid as oratory, had the surpassing excellence of appealing to his hearers by raising them to a higher level of thought and feeling than that from which they had previously regarded the matter in debate. His voice was rich, his words well chosen, and he was singularly happy ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... chintzes calicoes, tapes, gauze, and cambric needles, I grew up a very ladylike sort of a gentleman. It is not assuming too much to affirm that the ladies themselves were hardly so ladylike as Thomas Bullfrog. So painfully acute was my sense of female imperfection, and such varied excellence did I require in the woman whom I could love, that there was an awful risk of my getting no wife at all, or of being driven to perpetrate matrimony with my own image in the looking-glass. Besides the fundamental principle already hinted at, I demanded the fresh bloom ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... teachers of the people well knew, when they put the history of creation on the stage and the monks themselves became the actors. I recall that in planning my first European journey I had soberly hoped in two years to trace the entire pattern of human excellence as we passed from one country to another, in the shrines popular affection had consecrated to the saints, in the frequented statues erected to heroes, and in the "worn blasonry of funeral brasses"—an illustration that when we are young we all long for those mountaintops ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... With Hetty, the case had been very different. To her simple and innocent mind, the remembrance of her mother brought no other feeling than one of gentle sorrow; a grief that is so often termed luxurious even, because it associates with itself the images of excellence and the purity of a better state of existence. For an entire summer, she had been in the habit of repairing to the place after night-fall; and carefully anchoring her canoe so as not to disturb the body, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Your excellence, you pay like the greatest of lords and emperors!" cried the painter, with joy-beaming countenance. "You make me forever your debtor, and so long as I live I shall be ready ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... works and published his letters in 1885, with a preface, saying that her desire was to make him known for himself as well as he was loved and honoured in his artistic importance. As she had written in 1871, "the purity of his life, his noble aspirations, the excellence of his heart, can never be fully known except through the communication of his ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... an eclogue rather than a drama. He says: "The universal homage paid to Virgil had a decided influence on the rising drama. The scholars were persuaded that this cherished poet combined in himself all the different kinds of excellence; and as they created a drama before they possessed a theater, they imagined that dialogue rather than action, was the essence of the dramatic art. The Buccolics appeared to them a species of comedies or tragedies, less animated it is true, but more poetical ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... he went away, "Take my word for it, Lady Maude, we shall be burning these apostles of ballot and universal suffrage in effigy one day; but I intend to go beyond every one else in the meanwhile, else the rebound will lose half its excellence."' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... the framers of the Constitution, which had no model in the past, should not have fully comprehended the excellence of their own work. Fresh from a struggle against arbitrary power, many patriots suffered from harassing fears of an absorption of the State governments by the General Government, and many from a dread that the States would break away from their orbits. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... can athletic games injure it? Do they spoil woman's usefulness as a woman? Do they damage her specific excellence? Do they tend to give her less endurance and nerve at critical times? I do not think so. Certainly lawn tennis does not. It is undoubtedly a strenuous game. There is more energy of physical frame, more brain-tax and will-discipline demanded in ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... devout, wise, and earnest, he is saved, whether he ever heard of Christ or not. Are Plato and Aristides, Cato and Antoninus, to be damned, while Pope Alexander VI. and King Philip II are saved, because those glorious characters merely lived at the then height of attainable excellence, but these fanatic scoundrels made a technical profession of Christianity? The "Athanasian" creed asserts that whoever doth not fully believe its dogmas "shall without doubt perish everlastingly." And ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... but were brought together from all the fields to which he had access in his vicinity. The grains of each of these selected heads were [114] sown separately, and the lots compared during their whole life-period and chiefly at harvest time. Three of the lots were judged of high excellence, and they alone were propagated, and proving to be constant new varieties from the outset were given to the trade under the names of "Shirreff's bearded white," "Shirreff's bearded red," and "Pringle's wheat." They have found wide acceptance, and the first ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... motive, as vain as an attempt to carve the Venus of Milo out of mottled pumice-stone. Still he did not regret to-night the freak of fancy that had brought him to the Lake House, since it had led to his meeting a woman who was to him a new and beautiful revelation of the rarest excellence and grace. ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... and neck, with the large green patch behind each ear; length fourteen inches. Green-winged Teals are our smallest representative of the Duck family. They are eagerly sought by sportsmen, both because of their beauty and the excellence of their flesh. They are among the most common of Ducks in the interior, where they nest generally in tufts of grass along ponds, lakes or brooks. Nest of grass and weeds, lined with down from the bird. Eggs buffy, four to ten in number. Size ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... the excellence of the passage," returned Heyward, smiling; for, as the reader has anticipated, it was he. "It is enough, for the present, that we trusted to an Indian guide to take us by a nearer, though blinder path, and that we are deceived in his knowledge. In plain words, ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... Philadelphian of an influential family, was elected president, Professor Brooks received more votes than any of the other competitors. In 1827, he married Mary Elizabeth, eldest daughter of William Gobright, a lady of great beauty and excellence, and in 1867, married Christiana Octavia, youngest daughter of Dr. William Crump, of Virginia. Of the former union four sons and two daughters are living; of the latter union a son. The following poems are selected ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... fail to perceive the strange difference between himself and the crowd that hurried by him, nor to take in the wondrous beauty that would sometimes flit before his longing vision. The very thought that in his own person he was denied the excellence and majesty of a perfect development enhanced so much the more the value of these perfections in his estimation, and helped him to feel that of all the objects in the wide world, he was the most ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... vessel have often been blessed abundantly; and among the tens of thousands afloat upon the broad waters, who seldom enjoy any ecclesiastical ministrations, may be found some of the highest types of Christian excellence. Though regularly ordained pastors are necessary to the growth and well-being of the Church, such facts shew that they are not essential to its existence. But, according to the Catholic system, they are the veins ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... to fit everything in so that each battalion had its fair share of duty and of rest. Even with the best intentions matters did not always pan out straight, for considerations of strength, of comparative excellence, of dangerous and of safe localities, of moral, of comfortable or uncomfortable trenches, of spade-work and of a dozen other things, had to be fitted together like a ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... developed rather than artificially enticed to extend itself. Its outward and visible sign is a navy, strong in the discipline, skill, and courage of a numerous personnel habituated to the sea, in the number and quality of its ships, in the excellence of its materiel, and in the efficiency, scale, security, and geographical position of its arsenals and bases. History has demonstrated that sea-power thus conditioned can gain any purely maritime object, can protect ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... iver made, but the less fraquent they are the better I loike them." So saying, he mounted his pony and, once more saluting me and then the flag, made off with his friend. Every now and then, however, I could see him sway in his saddle under the gusts of laughter at the excellence of McFarquhar's joke. ...
— Michael McGrath, Postmaster • Ralph Connor
... his due. If he is dishonoured and insulted, he despises the insult as an absurdity, offered to a man of his deserts. He is too conscious of his real worth to be much affected by the expression of his neighbour's view of him. For a man is most elated, when complimented on an excellence which he was not very sure of possessing: and most sensibly grieved at an insult, where he half suspects himself of really making a poor figure, whereas he would like to make a good one. It is doubtless the serene and settled conviction that Englishmen generally ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... when I look on her and hope To tell with joy what I admire, My thoughts lie cramp'd in narrow scope, Or in the feeble birth expire; No mystery of well-woven speech, No simplest phrase of tenderest fall, No liken'd excellence can reach Her, thee most excellent of all, The best half of creation's best, Its heart to feel, its eye to see, The crown and complex of the rest, Its aim and its epitome. Nay, might I utter my conceit, ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... commendable. He who gave life intended it to be a joy. To be always seeking after pleasure, however, exercises a dissipating and debilitating influence on the mind, and prevents the acquirement of true nobleness and worth of character. And would a creature, which is the highest workmanship of Infinite Excellence with which we are acquainted, yield himself to this, if given to the consideration of the fact the Almighty here ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... in the gayest spirits, enlivening the little party with many a merry jest and light, silvery laugh, enjoying the good things before her, and gratifying her hostess with praises of their excellence. Yet through it all she was furtively watching her friends, and grieved to notice the unwonted paleness of her cheek, the traces of tears about her eyes, that her cheerfulness was assumed, and that if she ate anything it was only from a desire to ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... virtues was easily first. He could rope a steer, bunch cattle, play poker or drink whisky to the admiration of his friends and the confusion of his foes, of whom he had a few; while as to "bronco busting," the virtue par excellence of western cattle-men, even Bronco Bill was heard to acknowledge that "he wasn't in it with the Dook, for it was his opinion that he could ride anythin' that had legs in under it, even if it was a blanked centipede." And this, ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... Religion, or love, has never humanized their hearts; they want the vital part; the mere body worships. Taste is unknown; Gothic finery, and unnatural decorations, which they term ornaments, are conspicuous in their churches and dress. Reverence for mental excellence is only to be found in a ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... me a chair, and though I spoke Italian, with which language I knew him to be well acquainted, he answered me in Spanish, styling me 'ussia' (a contraction of 'vuestra senoria', your lordship, and used by everyone in Spain), while I gave him his proper title of excellence. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... fall somewhat more frequently to the share of the common people. I cannot much commend the flavour of their fowls; but we all agreed, that a South Sea dog was little inferior to an English lamb; their excellence is probably owing to their being kept up, and fed wholly upon vegetables. The sea affords them a great variety of fish. The smaller fish, when they catch any, are generally eaten raw, as we eat oysters; and nothing that the sea produces comes amiss to them: They are fond of lobsters, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... waited in a state of expectation which was so high-pitched that it would have proved disastrous in the extreme to any piece, or any singer who should have proved to be in the slightest degree inferior. Consummate excellence alone in every part could now save the piece from ruin. This Langhetti felt; but he was calm, for he had confidence in his work and in his company. Most of all, ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... especially esteemed at table—and those who have eaten it at the hospitable boards of Americans will acknowledge its excellence; though when, on several occasions, some braces of these birds have been sent to England, they have failed to elicit the admiration due to their merits— in consequence, it is said, of not being accompanied by an ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... not reply; but she did not feel quite so much confidence as her employer appeared to do in the excellence of the home which Herbert had ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... became noted for their excellence all over the world. The fame of these products has never waned. Unfortunately, most hotels and restaurants in the United State now use the term "Virginia ham" on their menus to designate this sort of meat regardless of its origin or cure. ...
— Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Lyman Carrier
... deliberately pinned the napkin to his waistcoat, ordered all the windows to be thrown open, and set to work like the good Canon in Gil Blas. He still retained enough of his former self, to preserve an excellent cook; so far at least as the excellence of a she-artist goes; and though most of his viands were of the plainest, who does not know what skill it requires to produce an unexceptionable roast, or a blameless boil? Talk of good professed cooks, indeed! they are plentiful as ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 1748; M.A., 1751. In 1750 he came to London, to the Middle Temple. In 1756 Burke became known as a writer, by two pieces. One was a pamphlet called "A Vindication of Natural Society." This was an ironical piece, reducing to absurdity those theories of the excellence of uncivilised humanity which were gathering strength in France, and had been favoured in the philosophical works of Bolingbroke, then lately published. Burke's other work published in 1756, was his "Essay on the ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... conscious, too, that his own attitude towards Miss Minturn had not been quite considerate. He recognized her loveliness of character, her excellence in scholarship, her conscientious deportment; in fact, he had no fault whatever to find with her, except that she was a Christian Scientist, and the remembrance of this always stirred him, in the most unaccountable manner, whenever he came ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... prelusive apologies for the liberty he was about to take, stated that he had accidentally come into possession of some contraband goods, chiefly Hollands, Geneva, and India silk handkerchiefs, of prime and indisputable excellence; which he could part with at unparalleled low prices;—that he had already, in this private way, disposed of the greatest portion, and that if his honor was inclined to become a purchaser, he now had the opportunity of blending economy ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... into its wider meaning of general benevolence. So under another phase of its primary sense we find the epithet used to express the excellence and characteristic qualities proper to the idea or standard of its subject, to wit, genuine, thrifty, well-liking, appropriate, not abortive, monstrous, prodigious, discordant. In the Litany, "the kindly fruits of the earth" is, in the Latin versions "genuinus," ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... of a quite different genius from any I have ever read, heard of, or seen, since or before his time; and yet his general excellence may be comprehended in one article, viz. a plain and palpable simplicity of nature, which was so utterly his own, that he was often as unaccountably diverting in his common speech, as on the stage. I saw him once, giving ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... wood together, secure them with pins of whalebone or ivory, fashion the timbers of a canoe, shoe a paddle, and rivet a scrap of iron into a spear or arrow-head. Their principal tool is the knife (panna); and, considering the excellence of a great number which they possessed previous to our intercourse with them, the work they do is remarkably coarse and clumsy. Their very manner of holding and handling a knife is the most awkward that can be imagined. For the purpose of boring holes, they have a ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry |
