"Incomparable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... after my first glimpse of Fifth Avenue in taxicabbing hotelward from the Grand Central Station. But I tried with Berlin, and found it a drearier Boston; with Paris, and found it a blonder and blither Boston; with London, and found it sombrely irrelevant and incomparable. New York is like London only in not being like any other place, and it is next to London in magnitude. So far, so good; but the resemblance ends there, though New York is oftener rolled in smoke, or mist, than we willingly allow ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... possess that incomparable manuscript of the 'Golden Legend' which could not escape your keen observation. All-important reasons, however, forbid me, imperiously, tyrannically, to let the manuscript go out of my possession for a single day, for even a single minute. It will be a joy and pride for me ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... But I confess it is the heart remembers, not the poor, pestered brain that has so many thoughts and but one troubled thinker. Indeed, were I now to be asked—Were the fingers cold of these bright ladies? Were their eyes blue, or hazel, or brown? or, haply, were Dianeme's that incomparable, dark, sparkling grey? Wore Julia azure, and Electra white? And was that our poet wrote our poet's only, or truly theirs, and so even more lovely?—I fear I could ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... hour, to the thickest part of the grove; then is the time; it must be the prick of noon, for the slanting lights of morning and eve are quite another concern; only at noon can one appreciate the incomparable effects of palm-leaf shadows. The whole garden is permeated with light that streams down from some undiscoverable source, and its rigid trunks, painted in a warm, lustreless grey, are splashed with an infinity of keen lines of darker tint, since the sunshine, percolating ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... to the place of great men in the development of mankind—to the part played in the human story by those lives in which men have seen all their noblest thoughts of God, of duty, and of law embodied, realised before them with a shining and incomparable beauty. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... enjoyed in tranquil repose the easy independence they had earned by honorable toil. There, the lovely garden, every flower of which looked fit to take the first prize at a horticultural show, the incomparable white strawberries, famous throughout the neighborhood, and a magnificent Angola cat, were the delights of my out-of-door life; and perfect kindness and various conversation, fed by an inexhaustible fund of anecdote, an immense knowledge of books, and a long and interesting acquaintance ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... and the populace is thus not only eager to witness it but even willing to help it along. It is therefore quite easy to set the mob upon, say, the Bolsheviki, despite the fact that the Bolsheviki have the professed aim of doing the mob an incomparable service. During the late high jinks of the Postoffice and the Department of Justice, popular opinion was always on the side of the raiding parties. It applauded every descent upon a Socialist or pacifist meeting, not because it was very hotly ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... ugly to behold; yet show me so many flourishing wits, such divine spirits. Horace, a little, blear-eyed, contemptible fellow, yet who so sententious and wise? Marcilius Ficinus, Faber Stapulensis, a couple of dwarfs; Melanchthon, a short, hard-favored man, yet of incomparable parts of all three; Galba the emperor was crook-backed; Epictetus, lame; the great Alexander a little man of stature; Augustus Caesar, of the same pitch; Agesilaus, despicabili forma, one of the most deformed princes that Egypt ever had, was yet, in wisdom and knowledge, ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... and incomparable. The Yosemite makes us think of the Alps; San Francisco reminds us of Chicago; Foss, the stage driver, hurling his passengers down the mountain at break-neck speed, suggests the driver of an Alpine ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... of course his one incomparable sonnet is the Love-Parting. That is almost the best in the language, if not quite. I think I have now answered queries, and it ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... on a yet firmer basis than before. One result of this experience may perhaps be found in a letter to his father, in which he tells him that he has been weighing the claims of the Christian ministry as his future calling in life. He feels the force of its incomparable attractions, but doubts whether he is fitted in elevation and maturity of character to undertake so vast a responsibility. Besides, he is painfully conscious of personal awkwardness in the common affairs of life, and unfitness for the practical management of business. And so he thinks ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... you know and not know? And a fresh opponent darts from his ambush, and transfers to knowledge the terms which are commonly applied to sight. He asks whether you can know near and not at a distance; whether you can have a sharp and also a dull knowledge. While you are wondering at his incomparable wisdom, he gets you into his power, and you will not escape until you have come to an understanding with him about the money which is to be paid ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... deliberately partisan. It could not conceivably have been interpreted otherwise by contemporaries; nor could Swift have been unaware of its provocative impact upon his readers. Oldmixon remarks ironically of this part the Proposal—and small wonder that he does—that it is "incomparable, full of the most delicate Eulogy In the World." Furthermore Swift knew, in view of his position as leading writer for the Tory ministry, that to sign his name was to invite attack—even if he wrote, as ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... the Canadians and their British brothers did not begrudge them any glory which they may have received. The story of the British troops and their part in the fight will no doubt be written. I can testify to their incomparable valor. Braver men than those from London, Durham, Northumberland, and other parts of England who fought alongside of ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... universal law, to which at the same time he submits himself. For nothing has any worth except what the law assigns it. Now the legislation itself which assigns the worth of everything, must for that very reason possess dignity, that is an unconditional incomparable worth, and the word RESPECT alone supplies a becoming expression for the esteem which a rational being must have for it. AUTONOMY then is the basis of the dignity of human and of ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... I did not go there, after all. We were bound for England, and as I travelled up the Devon country and drank in the pure, homelike landscape and strolled by those incomparable (if occasionally malarial) cottages, my father's and grandfather's blood stirred in me, and half consciously, to tell the truth, I found myself on the way to Oxford. By some miracle of chance my old lodgings were free, and before I quite realised what I was doing, I was making ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... unique, extraordinary, peculiar, singular, unparalleled, incomparable, precious, strange, unprecedented, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... of all classes of his countrymen, he is associated in our memory with the patriotic and Christian struggles of a past generation, which have resulted in securing to our beloved land as large a measure of liberty as is enjoyed by any country under the sun. In respect to the incomparable system of Public Instruction, to the perfecting of which he devoted so many years of his active and laborious life, and with which his name must ever be associated, we feel that he has laboured and we ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... awkwardness, a malice in his innocence, an intelligence in his nonsense, and an insinuating eloquence in his lisp. We know of no other writer who makes such interest for himself and his book in the heart of the reader. He has written an incomparable book. He has written something better, perhaps, than the best history; but he has not written a really good history; for he is, from the first to the last chapter, an inventor. We do not here refer merely to those ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... the nation comes to blows!" And Archbishop Williams told Charles the First confidentially, "There was that in Cromwell which foreboded something dangerous, and wished his majesty would either win him over to him, or get him taken off." The Marquis of Wellesley's incomparable character of Bonaparte predicted his fall when highest in his glory; that great statesman then poured forth the sublime language of philosophical prophecy. "His eagerness of power is so inordinate; his jealousy of independence so fierce; his ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... beauty of the play, the quality which raises it to the rank of its fellows by making it loveable as well as admirable, we find only in the "sweet, serene, skylike" sanctity and attraction of adorable old age, made more than ever near and dear to us in the incomparable figure of the old Countess of Roussillon. At the close of the play, Fletcher would inevitably have married her to Lafeu—or rather possibly, ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... have been foreseen, came an experience which taught us seasonably that these redundant materials, crude and miscellaneous, required a winnowing and sifting, which very soon we had; and the result was, an incomparable militia. Chester shone conspicuously in this noble competition. But here, as elsewhere, at first there was no cavalry. Upon that arose a knot of gentlemen, chiefly those who hunted, and in a very few hours laid the foundation of a small cavalry ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... was the general talk of the town. The common suspicion that the writer was doing the work of the hated Puseyites grew darker and spread further. Then in April came Macaulay's article in the Edinburgh, setting out with his own incomparable directness, pungency, and effect, all the arguments on the side of that popular antagonism which was rooted far less in specific reasoning than in a general anti-sacerdotal instinct that lies deep in the hearts of Englishmen. John Sterling called ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... was the incomparable Wedgwood ware, and there was the little picture by Simon Fuge. I am not going to lose my sense of perspective concerning Simon Fuge. He was not the greatest painter that ever lived, or even of his time. He had, I am ready to believe, very grave limitations. But he was ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... more beautiful than poet's dreams, risin' up from green velvet lawns or marble terraces. Broad highways would dawn on our vision, anon vistas of incomparable beauty way off, way off as fur as we could see would open up other views jest as fair. Anon the columned walls of some nearby palace would seem to close in the view, and then agin the fur vision, and anon the blue ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... attention of all was riveted. A little taller than the average of her sex, very fair of skin, the sparkling eyes in the pure oval of the face framed in tresses reaching almost to her feet, the tiny feet and long fingers appearing from the edge of the robe, the incomparable poise of head and neck, this woman was a beauty, to be rivalled by few in Edo town. The voice too was as musical as were her words to the frozen men—"It is but a water kotatsu; so that one can be cooled in this extreme of heat.... Within? Ice—of course. Deign to enter." The suppressed ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... and mental attribute in a high degree, and if any one was more marked than another it was his incomparable instinct against oppression, which his wonderful anti-slavery record accentuated as his chief endowment, though in all respects he was well equipped for a leader among men. That instinct, it might be said, fixed his destiny. ...
— The Jefferson-Lemen Compact • Willard C. MacNaul
... by fire the Library at Louvain, with its 200,000 volumes and its incomparable treasures. By means of shells and fire they have injured in one place, totally destroyed in another, wonders of art that were an integral part of our human heritage; our Cathedrals at Rheims, ...
— Their Crimes • Various
... it was remarked with satisfaction that the purest and most highly cultivated newspaper editors on his side, without excepting those of Boston itself; agreed with one voice that the Stone-cutter was a noble type of man, perhaps the very noblest that had appeared to adorn this country since the incomparable Washington. ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... Grignan, nine times out of ten, who is queen of the entertainment. You have to reckon with her upon her throne of degrees, set up there like Hippolita, Duchess of Athens, to be propitiated and, if possible, diverted. For her sake, not for ours, her incomparable mother beckons from the wings character after character, and gives each his cue, having set the scene with her exquisite art. In a few cases her anxiety to please spoils the effects. As we should say, she "laboured" the ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... sun inspired with thoughts of rambling. The Candidate had promised the children on some "very fine day" to take them to a wood, where there were plenty of hazel-bushes, and where they would gather a rich harvest of nuts. Children have an incomparable memory for all such promises; and the little Franks thought that no day could by any possibility be more beautiful or more suitable for a great expedition than the present, and therefore, as soon as they discovered that the Candidate and ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... communication by walks and rides, but for variety, and for recurrence of similar appearances." The Highlands have them of all sizes—and that surely is best. But here is one which, it has been truly said, is not only "incomparable in its beauty as in its dimensions, exceeding all others in variety as it does in extent and splendour, but unites in itself every style of scenery which is found in the other lakes of the Highlands." He who has studied, and understood, and felt all Loch Lomond, will be prepared at once ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... of her sister Muse were hardly likely to make much impression in the Oldfield household, where money had more admirers than mythology, and so we are not surprised to learn that, with the death of the gallant captain, this "incomparable sweet girl," who would ere long reconcile even a supercilious Frenchman to the English stage, had to seek her living as a seamstress. How she sewed a bodice or hemmed a petticoat we know not, nor do we care; it is far more interesting to be told that, though only in her early teens, the toiler with ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... and the trees in the Champs Elysees had a distinction which trees had not elsewhere. They were sitting on a stile now by the high-road, and Miss Wilkinson looked with disdain upon the stately elms in front of them. And the theatres: the plays were brilliant, and the acting was incomparable. She often went with Madame Foyot, the mother of the girls she was educating, when she was trying ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... their passionate attachment. And the blissful day arrived. Michael led her to the altar. A hundred curious eyes looked on, admired, and praised, and envied. He might be proud of his possession, were she unendowed with any thing but that incomparable, unfading loveliness. And he, with his young and vigorous form, was he not made for that rare plant to clasp and hang upon? "Heaven bless them both!" So said the multitude, and so say I, although I scarce can hope it; for who shall dare to think that Heaven ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... the charm—partly a perilous charm—of French literature is, before all else, its incomparable clearness, its precision, its neatness, its point; then, added to this, its lightness of touch, its sureness of aim; its vivacity, sparkle, life; its inexhaustible gayety; its impulsion toward wit,—impulsion so strong as often to land it in mockery; the sense of release ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... miscellaneous studies and his varied interests. Of all the elements that entered into his early culture, indeed, Goethe gives the first place to the Bible. "To it, almost alone," he expressly says, "did I owe my moral education." To the Bible as an incomparable presentment of the national life and development of a people, and the most precious of possessions for human culture, Goethe bore undeviating testimony at every period of his life. It need hardly be said ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... winds, the whirlwind, the unending wind: he caused the winds he had created to issue forth, seven in all, confounding the dragon Tiamat, as they swept after him. Then Bel lifted up the Deluge, his mighty weapon: he rode in a chariot incomparable, (and) terrible. He stood firm, and harnessed four horses to its side, [steeds] that spare not, spirited and swift, [with sharp] teeth, that carry poison, which know how to sweep away [the opponent]. [On the right] ... mighty ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... of England are incomparable for excellence, of a beautiful smoothness, very ingeniously laid down, and so well kept that in most weathers you could take your dinner off any part of them without distaste. On them, to the note of the bugle, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his abundant labors as father-confessor to a countless host, his pains and persecutions and imprisonments, I can not but think he received some of the powers of his optimistic endurance from contemplations such as he counsels in his incomparable book. "Run familiarly through the streets of the heavenly Jerusalem; visit the patriarchs and prophets, salute the apostles, and admire the armies of martyrs; lead on the heart from street to street, bring it into the palace of the great king; lead it, as it were, from chamber to ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... Williamsburg, for there was no need to fear Dunmore. Nor was there any doubt about the overwhelming Virginian sentiment for independence. The winter's war, the king's stubbornness, Parliament's Prohibitory Act, Dunmore's martial law, and Thomas Paine's stirring rhetoric in his incomparable Common Sense had all swung public opinion toward independence. Paine's Common Sense touched Virginians through the printed word in much the same manner as Henry's fiery oratory ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... to notice, because M. Comte is perpetually referring to it as the origin of the great superiority which he ascribes to his later as compared with his earlier speculations, is the "moral regeneration" which he underwent from "une angelique influence" and "une incomparable passion privee." He formed a passionate attachment to a lady whom he describes as uniting everything which is morally with much that is intellectually admirable, and his relation to whom, besides the direct influence of her character upon his ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... fairies and nymphs, noted for the shortness of her filmy skirts, the supple beauty of her shapely limbs, her incomparable dancing, and her dark, bright beauty, flashed La ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... or Highland skirt!—It is really entertaining to see what a refinement of criticism has been displayed upon the defects of this incomparable statue. Some have abused the hero for being shirtless, and said it was an abomination to think that a statue in a state of nudity (much larger than life, too!) should be stuck up in Hyde Park, where every lady's ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... business. Mr. Balch had found it quite as difficult to entice Mr. Bixby away from the boxes and the Railroad Room. The weeks drifted on, until twelve went by, and then Mr. Bixby found himself, with his block of river towns and one senator, in the incomparable position of being the arbiter of the fate of the Consolidation Bill in the House and Senate. No wonder Mr. Balch wanted to buy the services of that famous ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Mayor think it natural that the Countess Claudieuse, this incomparable mother in his estimation, should forget her children in the ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... inexperience, but it manifests occasionally some talent for description. He has fallen into the common error of those who aspire to the composition of blank-verse, by borrowing too many phrases and epithets from our incomparable Milton. We give the following extract, as affording a ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... to compose an oglio of impertinence." There is a delightful sketch of one named "Captain All-man-sir," as big a boaster as Falstaff, and a more delicately etched portrait of the Town Wit, who is summed up as the "jack-pudding of society" in the judgment of all wise men, but an incomparable wit in his own. The peroration of this pamphlet, devoted to a wholesale condemnation of the coffee-house, indulges in too frank and unsavoury metaphors for ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... It put her upon equal terms with Mrs Rowland, at last. She did not know how it was, but it was very difficult to patronise Mr Hope. He always contrived to baffle her praise. But here was an unconnected person thrown upon her care: and if Mrs Rowland had a young surgeon to push, Mrs Grey had an incomparable governess, now all ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... flunkeys, and the continual arrest of carriages would attest its inward state; but the genius of the race is to keep its own to itself, even its own splendors and grandeurs, except on public occasions when it shines forth in incomparable magnificence. ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... under consideration for election to the French Academy, his name is not found numbered among the "forty immortals." But he was the greatest of French novelists, a great creator of characters, who by some competent critics has been ranked with Shakespeare, and he has left to posterity the incomparable, though unfinished Comedie humaine, which is in itself sufficient ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... contented; he spoke to me very warmly of his satisfaction, which is shared by all his subjects with but few exceptions. Both when I came in and when I was leaving, he spoke to me in the most gracious manner possible, and especially about the incomparable benefit His Majesty had rendered to European civilization by restoring France to its real basis. He praised our army, and added that he would do what he could to aid those of our soldiers who still remained in the hospitals here. ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... cumbersome authority, she set to work on the preparations for her world-famous supper party. Picture it if you will: five hundred and eighty-three guests[7] all seated laughingly in the immense banqueting-hall—Bianca at the head of the table, superb, incomparable, her corsage a glittering mass of gems, her breast chilled by the countless diamonds on her camisole, her smile radiant and a peach-like flush on the ivory pallor of her face. This was indeed her hour—her triumph—her subtle revenge. Her heart thrilled with the ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... Venus rising from the foam could have presented no more entrancing a spectacle than Mrs. Pontellier, blazing with beauty and diamonds at the head of the board, while the other women were all of them youthful houris, possessed of incomparable charms. She got it into her head that Victor was in love with Mrs. Pontellier, and he gave her evasive answers, framed so as to confirm her belief. She grew sullen and cried a little, threatening to go off and leave him to his fine ladies. There were ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... of woman trots along in an incomparable fashion, and the very rustle of her skirt fills the marrow of your bones with desire. She seemed to give me a side-glance as she passed me. But these women give you all sorts of ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... them. 7. The daring and unreasonable cupidity of those who count it as nothing to unjustly shed such an immense quantity of human blood, and to deprive those enormous countries of their natural inhabitants and possessors, by slaying millions of people and stealing incomparable treasures, increase every day; and they insist by various means and under various feigned pretexts, that the said Conquests are permitted, without violation of the natural and divine law, and, in consequence, without most grievous mortal ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... miss," Polly murmured faintly. "It's like I was goin' 'ome. Say that again about the valley," and the nurse repeated tenderly that promise of incomparable sweetness: ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... without choice or intention, has been born among, and therefore forms a part of them. It involves the secret of the world-historical problems that struggle so long with each other until the right one triumphs. To these problems, with his incomparable depth of soul, the whole life and work of our artist is devoted as long as he breathes and lives, moved by the holiest feeling for his nation, for the time—yes, for mankind, in whose service he as real "poet and prophet" stands with every fibre of his nature and ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... the place around the circus becomes deserted, the parrots cease their chatter, and the monkeys their gymnastics. But "the greatest attractions" do not take part in the procession. The "incomparable artist of the whip," the manager, the "unconquerable Orso," and the "Aerial Angel, Jenny," are all absent. All this is preserved for the evening so ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... nothing to do and merely desiring that everybody could be as comfortable as myself and as undesponding, and then we should have a very tolerable world of it." "I have plenty of work on hand, and writing...." This, embedded among details of an incomparable innocence: "We have got Flossy; got and lost Tiger; lost the hawk, Hero, which, with the geese, was given ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... them Bruennhilda, is imagined with absolute truth; Bruennhilda's Greeting to the sun is Wagner in the plenitude of his powers, blending music which depicts her outspread arms with human rapture in an incomparable way; Siegfried's masterful and passionate entreaties are quite in the strain of Tristan, though the Scandinavian atmosphere prevails; Bruennhilda's awe-stricken song, "O Siegfried, highest hero," interprets the birth of love in a woman's breast with, again, ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... him music, and seeking out a tutor who helped the boy to what he sought most eagerly, not the grammar and mechanism of Greek and Latin but rather the stories, the ideals, the poetry that hide in their incomparable literatures. At twelve years we find the boy already a scholar in spirit, unable to rest till after midnight because of the joy with which his study was rewarded. From boyhood two great principles seem to govern Milton's career: one, the love of beauty, of music, art, literature, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... relentless handling of a difficult situation; in feeling her love for her mother intensified backwards, so to speak, to the degree it had attained in infancy, as the result of the incident, Leonetta showed not only that she was worthy of her incomparable mother, but also that she had survived less unimpaired, than some might have thought, the questionable ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... historian, a great statesman, a great divine; but however excellent these different works may be, we must however acknowledge that Grotius's Letters and Poems much surpass them; and that if he appeared great in those, in these he is incomparable. But what astonishes me is, that he should have written so many letters, and made so many verses, and all should be of equal strength, that is, that all should partake of the powerful and divine genius which animated that great man." Episcopius, who was regarded as an oracle by his party, ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... various quaint little medallion pictures of shepherds and shepherdesses, and other fancies of the time of Madame de Sevigne. Those little shepherds were supposed to have looked down upon la mere beaute, and upon la plus jolie fille de France as she danced her incomparable minuets. Those grand saloons were now devoted to the humble service of a school for young ladies. But on the third floor, to which one ascended by a fine stone stairway, broad and easy, with elaborate iron railings, there was ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... disentangled by the bulky proprietor himself. Uncle Noah made a critical pilgrimage about the store, pausing at last before a counter where the proprietor had laid out a number of turkeys for the careful inspection of this beaming shopper about to select an understudy for the incomparable Job. A very respectable fowl was presently mantled in brown paper and laid beside the other bundles, along with sundry bags of cranberries and apples, oranges and nuts, celery and raisins, cigars for the Colonel, a box of candy ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... could never have been viewed before. And it IS rather a discovery for each individual, because no amount of verbal or pictorial description can ever fully prepare the spectator for, the sublime reality. Even when one becomes familiar with the incomparable spectacle it never ceases to astonish. A recent writer has well said: "The sublimity of the Pyramids is endurable, but at the rim of the Grand Canyon we feel outdone."* Outdone is exactly the right word. Nowhere else can man's insignificance be ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... He had to keep two or three engagements in the day, and even about these there was great elasticity. The independence, the liberty, the kindliness of it all, came home to him with immense charm. And then, too, the city full of mediaeval palaces, the quiet dignity, the incomparable beauty of everything, gave him a deep though partly unconscious satisfaction. But for the first year he was merely a big schoolboy in mind. The real change in his mental history dated from his election to a small society which met weekly, where a paper was read, and a free discussion followed. Up ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... provide for the comfort of the lowly poor, and to guard against all wasting of their humble means, the good Prelate reformed the hospital of Imola, and set over it the Sisters of Charity—that incomparable Order which owes its existence to the most benevolent of men, St. Vincent de Paul. Nor, in his higher state, did he forget his first care—the orphan. An orphanage at Imola is due to his munificence. There were no bounds to his liberality. At his own expense alone he repaired the tomb of St. Cassien, ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... these preliminary reflections, I turn to Shakespeare, I can not forbear wishing that my readers should themselves make the comparison and the application. Here Shakespeare stands out unique, combining the old and the new in incomparable fashion. Wollen and Sollen seek by every means, in his plays, to reach an equilibrium; they struggle violently with each other, but always in a way that leaves the Wollen ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... by spring sunshine:—the Holy Family, and the Graces, side by side now in the principal room. Great, as ever was work wrought by man. In placid strength, and subtlest science, unsurpassed;—in sweet felicity, incomparable. ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... industry. Of his military art, it were needless to speak; it is conspicuously evident. A brilliant talker and a fine orator, his lucidity of observation, his judgment, and his rapidity of decision are all alike, incomparable. ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... human, but above all in Francis of Assisi) has been working through generations toward these paintings, interpreting in its spirit, selecting and emphasising for its meaning the country in all the world most naturally fit to express it; and thus in these paintings we have the incomparable visible manifestation of a perfect mood: that wide pale shimmering valley, circular like a temple, and domed by the circular vault of sky, really turned, for our feelings, into a spiritual church, wherein not merely saints meditate ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... triumphantly through his every limb. "Oh! I feel so indescribably happy," he whispered, the burning blushes mounting into his cheeks. "Oh! I have never felt so happy in all my life before." Rose, who undoubtedly gave another interpretation to his words, smiled upon him with incomparable gentleness. Then, quit of all his embarrassing shyness, Frederick said, "Dear Rose, I suppose you no longer remember me, do you?" "But, dear Frederick," replied Rose, casting down her eyes, "how ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... magnificent landscape flooded with summer glow and lustre, as a background for the rehearsal of some dire scene of mortal anguish. A bitter and irreparable regret seizes the wildly-throbbing human heart, even in the midst of the incomparable splendor of external nature. This contrast is sustained by a fusion of tones, a softening of gloomy hues, which prevent the intrusion of aught rude or brusque that might awaken a dissonance in the touching impression ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... French Canadians of unmixed blood, descendants of the men who came to New France with Samuel de Champlain, that incomparable old woodsman and life-long lover of the wilderness. Ferdinand Larouche is our chef—there must be a head in every party for the sake of harmony—and his assistant is his brother Francois. Ferdinand is a stocky ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... SACCO. Incomparable brother, receive my thanks! A blush is now superfluous, and I can tell thee openly what just now I was ashamed even to think. I am a beggar if the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... The incomparable chapter-house was built in Henry III.'s time, and restored to some of its original beauty by Sir Gilbert Scott. The modern glass windows remind us of Dean Stanley and his love for the Abbey-church. The chapter-house belongs, as ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... failure, and after several severe battles General Lee was forced to return, with his defeated army, to Virginia. It was on that last dread day, the 3d of July, at Gettysburg, that he discovered that even his incomparable infantry could not accomplish ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... flowers is complete without the Tuberose. For the spotless purity of its flowers, and for incomparable fragrance, it has no superior. It is very easy to grow them successfully. Bulbs intended for fall blooming, should be planted in the open ground from the first to the middle of May; plant them about two inches deep. They will do well in any good, rich garden soil, ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... its effort to defend Belgium, and save France in her hour of supreme peril, England might have said, without violating any express obligation arising under the ENTENTE CORDIALE, that in giving its incomparable fleet it had rendered all the service that its political interests, according to former standards of expediency, justified; and it could have been plausibly suggested that the ordinary considerations of prudence and the instinct of self-preservation required it, in the face ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... men. And a modest person, who knows very nearly what his humble mark is, will be quite pleased to find that another man has not only anticipated his thoughts, but has expressed them much better than he could have done. Yes, let me turn to that incomparable essay of John Foster, "On a Man's writing Memoirs of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... long-swords, crying to him to surrender; but they might as successfully have cried aloud to Thuria to cease her mad hurtling through the Barsoomian sky, for Carthoris of Helium was a true son of the Warlord of Mars and his incomparable Dejah Thoris. ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Lamartine ou sur le Souvenir de Musset, qu'on lui a si souvent, et a tort, preferes. Non pas du tout, vous le pensez bien, que je veuille nier le charme pur et penetrant du Lac, ou la douloureuse et poignante eloquence du Souvenir! Incomparable elegie, le Lac de Lamartine a pour lui la discretion meme, l'elegance, l'ideale melancolie, la caresse ou la volupte de sa plainte; et, dans le Souvenir de Musset, nous le verrons bientot, c'est la ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... and Henry Condell, "only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakspere," had given to the world the folio edition of Shakspere's works, very anxious that the said folio might commend itself to "the most noble and incomparable pair of brethern," William, Earl of this, and Philip, Earl of that, and exceedingly unconscious that, next to the production of the works themselves, they were doing the most important thing done, or likely ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... sake, honour's sake, motives of justice, generosity, gratitude, and humanity, which are all concerned in the preservation of so fine a woman. Thou knowest not the anguish I should have had, (whence arising, I cannot devise,) had I not known before I set out this morning, that the incomparable creature had disappointed thee in thy cursed view of getting her to admit the specious Partington for ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... impressionable clay of our young gentleman's mind. It was a lesson, too, the scribe is delighted to say, which our hero never forgot; nor did he ever forget the man who taught it. One of his greatest delights in after-years was to raise his hat to this incomparable embodiment of the dignity and courtliness of the old school. The old gentleman had long since forgotten the young fellow, but that made no difference to Oliver—he would cross the street any time to lift his hat ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... seems the most desirable is the method which the Platonic Socrates employed. Perhaps he was an ideal figure; but yet there are few figures more real. There we have an elderly man of incomparable ugliness, who is yet delightfully and perennially youthful, bubbling over with interest, affection, courtesy, humour, admiration. With what a delicious mixture of irony and tenderness he treats the young men who surround him! When some lively sparks made up their minds ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... past two o’clock and he should have been asleep and out of the way long ago. I crept to his room and threw open the door without, I must say, the slightest idea of finding him there. But Bates, the enigma, Bates, the incomparable cook, the perfect servant, sat at a table, the light of several candles falling on a book over which he was bent with that maddening gravity he had never yet in ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... from having a cheap religion. I shall never handle the gifts of grace as though they had cost nothing. There will always be the marks of blood upon them, the crimson stain of incomparable sacrifice. ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... of our late dear Queen," said the mother; "the image of that incomparable virgin Majesty whose example is a beacon for all time to ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... figure run down the steps of a house fifty yards farther on, cross the pavement, and drop a letter into the red pillar box standing there. Even at that distance, he distinguished a lively slimness in the girlish outline that could belong to no other than the Incomparable Kathleen. He hastened his step, casting hesitance to the wind. But she had already run back into ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... she had picked the fruit from it, and Claude had stood over there, in that patch of common brakes which then rose above his knees, but was now a bed of delicate, elongated sprays leaning backward with incomparable grace. She found the heart to sing—her voice, which used to be strong enough, yielding her but the ghost of song, as the notes of an old spinnet give back the ghost ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... children, of motherly Bernese housewives supplied with knitting and the gossip of the town, of Bernese patriarchs in search of gentle exercise and sunshine. This little park possesses a music-pavilion, a duck-pond, a monument to the Postal Union of 1876, many pretty pathways, and an incomparable promenade. The incomparable promenade has also an incomparable view on those days when the Spirit of the Alps ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... succeeded to the government of Ireland about the time of that afflicting event had been all along of my sentiments and yours upon this subject; and far from needing to be stimulated by me, that incomparable person, and those in whom he strictly confided, even went before me in their resolution to pursue the great end of government, the satisfaction and concord of the people with whose welfare they were charged. I cannot bear to think on the causes by which this great plan of policy, so manifestly ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... song, the exquisite and magnificent overture to "The Two Noble Kinsmen," is hardly so limpid in its flow, so liquid in its melody, as the two great songs in "Valentinian": but Herrick, our last poet of that incomparable age or generation, has matched them again and again. As a creative and inventive singer, he surpasses all his rivals in quantity of good work; in quality of spontaneous instinct and melodious inspiration he reminds us, by frequent and flawless evidence, who above all others must beyond ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... different in Leaf and Berry; the Berry yields Wax that makes Candles, the most lasting, and of the sweetest Smell imaginable. Some mix half Tallow with this Wax, others use it without Mixture; and these are fit for a Lady's Chamber, and incomparable to pass the Line withal, and other hot Countries, because they will stand, when others will melt, by the excessive Heat, down in the Binacles. Ever-green Oak, two sorts; Gall-Berry-Tree, bearing a black Berry, with which the Women dye their Cloaths ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... the more astonishing when it is considered that he made flights only when he thought himself in the fittest condition, and every time he flew he triumphed over the German Aviators. His wonderful success is accredited to his incomparable tactics, keen eyesight and most ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... to set foot on the brink of their land. If you slight human kinship and mortal arms, yet look for gods unforgetful of innocence and guilt. Aeneas was our king, foremost of men in righteousness, incomparable in goodness as in warlike arms; whom if fate still preserves, if he draws the breath of heaven and lies not yet low in dispiteous gloom, fear we have none; nor mayest thou repent of challenging the ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... for my espousals;[17] but do you not think that something was still wanting to the feast? It is true, Jesus had already enriched me with many jewels, but no doubt there was one of incomparable beauty still missing; this priceless diamond He has given me to-day . . . Papa will not be here to-morrow! Celine, I confess that I have cried bitterly. . . . I am still crying so that I can scarcely hold ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... to these compliments; when people have need of us poor servants, we are darlings, and incomparable creatures; but at other times, at the least fit of anger, we are scoundrels, and ought to be ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... officer's servant—anything. He may perform services for which no provision is made in orders and army regulations. Their nature may depend upon his aptitude, upon favor, upon accident. Private Searing, an incomparable marksman, young, hardy, intelligent and insensible to fear, was a scout. The general commanding his division was not content to obey orders blindly without knowing what was in his front, even when his command was not on detached service, but formed a fraction ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... made his hero perform some brilliant exploit; but Thackeray prefers to sketch the scene as Wouvermans might have done it. We have not here the incomparable fire and spirit which Scott throws into the skirmishes at Bothwell Brig and Drumclog; we see the difference of mind and method; but we can have nothing except admiration for the rare imaginative faculty which enabled a quiet man of letters to deal so finely and faithfully, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... shrewd enough to play the hypocrite when it serves his purpose. He may become prime minister—if he accomplishes his purpose! Admirable! that will prove to me that fortune favors him. Should the farce end with a chubby grandchild—incomparable! I will drink an extra bottle of Malaga to the prospects of my pedigree, and cheerfully pay the wench's ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... infinitely alluring gesture, the woman swept the veil away from her face, and looked him squarely in the eyes. She moved toward him slowly, swaying, as graceful as a fawn, more beautiful than any woman he had ever known. His breath caught in his throat, for sheer wonder at this incomparable loveliness. ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance |
