"Paragon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... good graces. You can't think how dearly I do love him, legislation and all that apart; and yet, if there ever was a woman peculiarly prone to love and admire a man for his public affections and public usefulness, I do say I am that she, and that I could not love a paragon of beauty, wit, and private kindness, if he looked on the good or ill being of mankind with indifference or scorn, or with anti-social feelings. Think of the divine old man growing a sort of vetch in his garden to cram his pockets with for the deer in Kensington Garden. I remember his pointing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... was wrapped up in her servants, began talking at houses where she called of her paragon among saises—the man who was never too busy to get up in the morning and pick flowers for the breakfast-table, and who blacked—actually BLACKED—the hoofs of his horse like a London coachman! The turnout ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... please don't think me a paragon," cried her hostess in horror. "I am a creature of vague enthusiasms and I have the sense to know it. Sometimes I fancy I am a woman of business, and then I take up half a dozen things till Jack has to ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... first answer was a saucy laugh. Why, she said, her cousin was really only a big cadet in lieutenant's uniform. And she could not even love a cadet, to saying nothing of marrying one. Then she spoke of Innstetten, who suddenly became for her a paragon of ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... is amiable and lovely," said his father, interrupting him ironically: "no doubt in your opinion she is a pattern of excellence for all her sex to follow; but come, Sir, pray tell me what are your designs towards this paragon. I hope you do not intend to complete your ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... finicky,—like that paragon, Patty. You think she's perfect, because she never raises her voice above a certain pitch, and she expects all you men to lie down and let ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... dwelling place The lady of illustrious race: Haste on an embassy to her, My kind white-bosomed messenger— Upon the waves thy course begin, And then at Cemaes take to shore; And there through all the land explore, For the bright maid of Talyllyn, The lady fair as the moon's flame, And call her "Paragon" by name; The chamber of the beauty seek, And mount with footsteps slow and meek; Salute her, and to her reveal The cares and agonies I feel— And in return bring to my ear Message of hope, my heart to cheer! Oh, may no danger hover near (Bird of majestic head) ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... thought of as his successor. In his place Aurelius, on his way to Syria, had nominated Lutorius Rusco, a man who impressed everyone at first sight, and more and more the better anyone knew him, as the paragon of a Pontifex. He was not lacking in ecclesiastical unction, but did not wallow in it as had Bambilio. He was pious, but did not think it necessary to advertise it day and night unremittingly. He was not lax in religious matters, but he was no stickler for minute trifles. ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... "'But this paragon has one fault. He is a bit of a Don Juan, and you can imagine that for a man like him it is not a very difficult part to play in a quiet country district. When he was married it was all right, but ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... made a deep impression on Keith. He thought and thought of it, and his reason, which already was very active, appreciated the logic of such a dispensation, but his heart rebelled strangely and turned for a while to his own father as a paragon of mildness, while the black-bearded Uncle Laube became an object of repulsion bordering on hatred. Fortunately the disciplinarian was away most of the day and Keith was running wild around the island. This was not possible without some protests from his ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... seem," continued Anthony, "so far as I'm concerned, and even so far as I know, Geraldine is a paragon of virtue." ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... dwelt longingly upon Hascombe Hall and the acres of parkland, moorland, and farmland that were its inheritance. Then he thought bitterly upon that paragon of perfection who had caused his banishment. How completely she would have filled the role of mistress of that noble hall! He pictured her in irreproachable toilets, pouring tea in the east drawing-room, and receiving her guests with the exact shade of ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... stranger to the neighbourhood, having lived within thirteen miles of it when he dwelt at Horton. Ellwood could not welcome him on his arrival, being in prison on account of an affray at what should have been the paragon of decorous solemnities—a Quaker funeral. When released, about the end of August or the beginning of September, he waited upon Milton, who, "after some discourses, called for a manuscript of his; which he delivered to me, bidding me take it home with me and read it at my leisure. When I ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... Edward VI., Sir Henry Sidney had been nicknamed "the only odd man and paragon of the court." The same stanch virtues that made him "odd" in Edward's time rendered him a man apart at the fawning, flattering, self-seeking court of ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... politicians of the south have lived to witness the practice of the monarch who had most laid to heart the precepts of the "Prince," he would have felt that he had not written in vain, and that his great paragon of successful falsehood, Ferdinand of Arragon, had been surpassed by the great grandson. For the ideal perfection of perfidy, foreshadowed by the philosopher who died in the year of Philip's birth, was thoroughly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a paragon! I have not wit enough to know whether you are as simple as sunshine or as deep as a well, but ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... in your shoes, and such a pearl and prize and paragon as Lynette Mildare had consented to marry me, I should want the whole world to envy me my colossal good luck. I should go about in sandwich-boards advertising it. I should buy a megaphone, and proclaim it through that. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... of the Airlie Manse, paragon of scholars, and exemplar to his four brothers, was depending from a small bridge over the burn, his head downward and a short distance from the water, his feet being held close to the parapet by the muscular arms of his eldest brother, Tammas Cassilis, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... astringent flavour; that the sides of a passage not carefully planed are painful to the skin. This is the utmost limit of its acquired wisdom. In comparison, the statue with the sensitive nostrils was a marvel of knowledge, a paragon too generously endowed by its inventor. It remembered, compared, judged, reasoned: does the drowsily digesting paunch remember? Does it compare? Does it reason? I defined the Capricorn-grub as a bit of an intestine that crawls about. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... pluck and courage are the great twin virtues, and that cowardice is the fundamental sin. The perfectly plucky and courageous man would never sin meanly; he would have no need to do so. He, and not the beefy brute or the intellectual paragon, would be Superman. The Christ, it often seems to me, keeps his hold on the world, and will keep it, not because he was God-man or man-God, not because he was born normally or abnormally, not because he redeemed mankind or didn't, not because ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... slowly working for my advantage, and paving the road to my promotion. The story had got abroad, and was in every one's mouth. I was looked upon as a paragon of moderation. ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... a rap over the knuckles. To promote a dugout to be a Brigadier of Infantry was risky, but to put in a Cavalry dugout as a Brigadier of Infantry was outrageous! Still, I stuck to Lorenzo, and lo and behold! Douglas, the Commander of the East Lancs. Division, is fighting tooth and nail for his paragon Brigadier![26] ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... much the same opinion of the paragon, only she expressed it in a different way. "He believes in every thing, and he might as well believe in nothing. Confucius and Christ are about the same to him, and he thinks Juggernaut only 'a clumsier spelling of a name ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... how exorbitant, that could have been asked for this little paragon, Madame de N. would very gladly have paid; but, unhappily, Sylphide was not to be sold: Lady R. was very fond of her, and never seemed to understand the various hints thrown out from time to time, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... was a very paragon, with a fine manly countenance, frank-hearted, blithe, and, in many points of character, very like my old friend the Lord Eaglesham, who was shot. Indeed, in some respects, he was even above his lordship; for he had a great ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... of widows, she Resolved that Juan should be quite a paragon, And worthy of the noblest pedigree, (His Sire was of Castile, his Dam from Aragon) Then, for accomplishments of chivalry, In case our Lord the King should go to war again, He learned the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery, And how to scale a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... knew, to classify them by their intelligence rather than by their knowledge, for they were all lamentably ignorant. Some among them were the children of parents who had been free before the war, and of these some few could read and one or two could write. One paragon, who could repeat the multiplication table, was immediately promoted to the position of ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... my learned friend introduced his most distinguished client—his most delicate minded—sensitive client!—Truly, to hear him speaking I should have thought he had been describing a lovely, blushing young lady, but when he comes to exhibit his paragon of perfection, and points out that great, red-faced, coarse, vulgar-looking, lubberly lump of humanity—(here Bumptious looked at Jorrocks as he would eat him)—sitting below the witness-box, and seeks to enlist the sympathies of your worships on the Bench—of you, gentlemen, the high-minded, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... the comedy before we are introduced to this paragon, who enters just after Lady Easy and the maid, Edging, have discovered fresh proofs of his flirtation with Lady Graveairs. Charles is inclined to be philosophical in a blase, tired way, and he says: "How like children do we judge of happiness! When I was stinted in ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... think you're rather prejudiced, Bertie. You're such a convinced Londoner yourself that you think every one who lives in the country must be a paragon of virtue, just as people who live in the country suppose their London friends to be given up to wickedness and frivolity. Lots of people have a very good time ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... accomplishments, he held and expressed the meanest opinion of human nature in general. Not even Sir ROBERT WALPOLE could have more cynically estimated the price at which men might be bought. As for women, this precocious paragon despised them, and women, as is their wont, repaid him by admiration, and, here and there, by genuine affection. I shudder to think how he might have developed in the course of years. It happened, however, that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... expected of thee, my paragon of wisdom! Well, never mind. I'll tell her she was her aunt. That ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... children's librarian who is possessed of the wisdom of Solomon, the patience of Job, the generalship of Napoleon, and put her into a room in which every arrangement is conducive to physical discomfort, and even such a paragon will fail of attaining that ideal of happy order which she aims to realize in her children's reading room. The temper even of an Olympian is not proof ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... sake of providing food enough for his aged father. In another he unhesitatingly divorces his wife for having dared to poke fun, in the shape of bodkins, at some wooden effigies of his parents which he had had set up in the house for daily devotional contemplation. Finally another paragon actually sells himself in perpetuity as a slave that he may thus procure the wherewithal to bury with due honor his anything but worthy progenitor, who had first cheated his neighbors and then squandered his ill-gotten gains in riotous living. Of these tales, as of certain ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... cup to one made up of loveliness alone; A woman, of her gentle sex the seeming paragon, To whom the better elements and kindly stars have given A form so fair, that, like the air, 'tis less of earth ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... winning, insinuating manners—he was still the favorite of teachers and pupils. As he grew older, he was taken much into society, and young as he was, inhaled, with the most intense delight, the incense of female adulation. The smiles and caresses bestowed upon the boy-paragon by beautiful and charming women, instead of fostering his affections, as they would have done, had they been lavished upon him for his virtues rather than his graces, gave precocious growth and vigor to his vanity, till, like the cedar of Lebanon, it towered above all other passions. ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... May 5, 1789, at the very moment when all the resources of nature and art seemed exhausted to render the Queen a paragon of loveliness beyond anything I had ever before witnessed, even in her; when every impartial eye was eager to behold and feast on that form whose beauty warmed every heart in her favour; at that moment a horde of miscreants, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... always been an enigma to the majority of the show people. Never any trumpets, jewelry, petty squabbles, lime-lights, and silks; she never read criticisms, save those I sent her. Managers had to knock on her dressing-room door. Oh, I do not say that she is an absolute paragon, but I do say that she is a good woman, of high ideals, loyal, generous, frank, and honest. And I have often wondered why the devil I couldn't fall in love with her ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... I will merely say that she is a perfect paragon of wives, can make puddings and sweets and treacle posset, and is the best woman of business in Eastern Anglia. Of my stepdaughter—for such she is, though I generally call her daughter, and with good reason, seeing that she has always shown herself a daughter to me—that ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... characters fail; their ideals grow dim; there is a general disappearance of youthful ambitions. There is a love story at the center; but the element of romance, which furnishes the light and music and fragrance of love, is inconspicuous. The hero, after ten years of devotion to a young woman, a paragon of beauty, finally marries her mother, and ends with a few pious observations concerning Heaven's mercy and his own happy lot. Such an ending seems disappointing, almost bizarre, in view of the romantic novels to which we are accustomed; but we must ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... tradesmen all renewed my credit on the strength of the match, and so we went on very well for a year; but at last they began to smell a rat, and grew importunate. I entreated Dia to interfere; but she was a paragon of daughters, and always took the side of her father. If she had only been dutiful to her husband, she would have been a perfect woman. At last I invited Deioneus to the Larissa races, with the intention of conciliating him. The unprincipled old man bought the horse that I had backed, and ...
— Ixion In Heaven • Benjamin Disraeli
... a most unexpected attack; but it was evident that I was set down by this curious woman as a paragon of piety; though indeed her object was rather to smooth the way in my mind, for what she intended should be a very excellent opinion of her ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... a wild-cat. In short, every one asserted stoutly that the boy was mad, with the exception of the women of the settlement, who thought him a fine, bold, handsome fellow; and his own mother, who thought him a paragon of perfection, and who held the opinion (privately) that, in the wide range of the habitable globe there was not another like him—and she ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... perfectness &c adj.; indefectibility^; impeccancy^, impeccability. pink, beau ideal, phenix, paragon; pink of perfection, acme of perfection; ne plus ultra [Lat.]; summit &c 210. cygne noir [Fr.]; philosopher's stone; chrysolite, Koh-i-noor. model, standard, pattern, mirror, admirable Crichton; trump, very prince ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... or some exclusive possession on which a peculiar fame rests. For example, the church of San Georgia Maggiore has some wooden carved-work by a Belgian artist, of surprising beauty. Gli Scalzi is a paragon of elaborate decoration. The church of the Frari, old and Gothic, is full of grand tombs, including those of several doges, that of Titian, and a monument to Canova. The Santa Maria della Salute has a fine collection of pictures over and above those in the church. This church was built in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... in disposing of the accumulations at Slough, St. Omer and elsewhere was decidedly lively. Mr. HOPE led off by attacking the recent report of the Committee on National Expenditure, and declared that its Chairman, though a paragon of truth, was not necessarily a mirror of accuracy. The Chairman himself (Sir F. BANBURY), seated for the nonce upon the Opposition Bench, replied with appropriate vigour in a speech which caused Sir GORDON HEWART to remark that the passion for censoriousness ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... what would be called likely. But there's a sincerity about the writing which one has to respect. Of her two heroes, Red is Redfield Pepper Burns, the rude and rugged doctor, and Black is the Rev. Robert McPherson Black, the perfect paragon of a padre in an American provincial town. The author's main thesis is that padres are made of the right stuff. Black, who was all for getting into the War from the beginning, rushes off to Europe as chaplain with the first American drafts, gets wounded, decorated and married. The conversion ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... late enough, I told you! The main thing To ask is, how I left her chamber,—sure, Content yourself, she'll grant this paragon Of ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... dear Moore, I am going to be married—that is, I am accepted[49], and one usually hopes the rest will follow. My mother of the Gracchi (that are to be) you think too strait-laced for me, although the paragon of only children, and invested with 'golden opinions of all sorts of men,' and full of 'most blest conditions' as Desdemona herself. Miss Milbanke is the lady, and I have her father's invitation to proceed there in my elect capacity,—which, however, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... campaigns against the Turks during the following years. In 1750 he was promoted to be a captain of cuirassiers by the Empress Elizabeth, and about 1760 he retired from the Russian service to live upon his patrimonial estate at Bodenwerder in the congenial society of his wife and his paragon among huntsmen, Roesemeyer, for whose particular benefit he maintained a fine pack of hounds. He kept open house, and loved to divert his guests with stories, not in the braggart vein of Dugald Dalgetty, but so embellished ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... apparent that what is customarily called reason is the distinguishing endowment which makes man the "paragon of animals," we very often meet with attempts to set up some other distinction. We cannot here go into an examination of these various theories, or even allude to them specially. We will, however, briefly refer to a view ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... one of his letters appealing for pity because he "had never known the sweetness of a father's embrace." With extraordinary self-conceit, too, he looked upon himself, all the while, in his numerous illicit loves, as a paragon of virtue, being apparently without any moral sense or perception of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and movement, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... you— Let a man tread on your coat and he'll see! Eyes like the lakes of Killarney for clarity, Nose that turns up without any vulgarity, Smile like a cherub, and hair that is carroty— Whoop, you're a rarity, Barney McGee! Mellow as Tarragon, Prouder than Aragon— Hardly a paragon, You will agree— Here's all that's fine to you! Books and old wine to you! Girls be divine to you, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... thought proper to bestow a few gentle lashes on her, for a letter which she wrote to me, and which I mentioned in my first from Paris, insinuating her own superiority, and giving me to understand how fortunate it would be for the world should I but prove as consummate a paragon as herself. She richly deserved it, and yet I now wish I had forborne; for, if she have her sex's love of vengeance in her, she may injure me in the tenderest part. Never was woman so devoted to woman as Anna St. Ives is to Louisa. I should suspect any other of ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... American, as his neighbour was ultra-British.—If there is lajeune France, there is also la jeune Amerique, although the votaries of the latter march with less hardy steps than the votaries of the first. Mr. Wenham fancied himself a paragon of national independence, and was constantly talking of American excellencies, though the ancient impressions still lingered in his moral system, as men look askance for the ghosts which frightened their childhood on crossing a church-yard in the dark. John Effingham knew the penchant ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... it, too," he used to say, "for when a woman has big feet she always keeps them tucked in below her gown. A woman with an eight-size glove and feet to correspond is usually a paragon of modesty, and strong ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... translation by North (my edition, pp. 118-22), where the crane becomes "a great Paragone of India (of those that live a hundredth yeares and never mue their feathers)." The crab, on hearing the ill news "called to Parliament all the Fishes of the Lake," and before all are devoured destroys the Paragon, as in the Jataka, and returned to the remaining fishes, who "all with one consent gave ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... route, and in Yezo with Mr. Maries, a botanical collector, that he understood drying plants, that he could cook a little, that he could write English, that he could walk twenty-five miles a day, and that he thoroughly understood getting through the interior! This would-be paragon had no recommendations, and accounted for this by saying that they had been burned in a recent fire in his father's house. Mr. Maries was not forthcoming, and more than this, I suspected and disliked the boy. However, he understood ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... thinks of your throat-cutting and Sabbath-breaking except when very old people gossip over the fire, and your wickedness brightens up the evening for them. To the rest of us you are just a stone in the churchyard which describes you as a paragon of all the virtues. And outside of Bellegarde, sir, your name and deeds mean nothing now to anybody, and no one anywhere remembers you. So really your wickedness is not bothering any person now save these poor toiling devils: and I think that, in consequence, you might consent to put up with ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... only child, the Princess Angelica, who, you may be sure, was a paragon in the courtiers' eyes, in her parents', and in her own. It was said she had the longest hair, the largest eyes, the slimmest waist, the smallest foot, and the most lovely complexion of any young lady ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... an aptitude for family pedigrees will now understand that Reginald, Master of Hoppet Hall, was first cousin to the father of the Foreign Office paragon, and that he is therefore the paragon's first cousin once removed. The relationship is not very distant, but the two men, one of whom was a dozen years older than the other, had not seen each other for more than twenty years,—at a time when one of them was a big ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... Carr. He's a double-faced swab, and a thundering hypocrite as well. There's only one good point about him—he's a rattling good sailor man. As for Sam Chard, he's simply a drunken bully. I shall be glad to be quit of this hooker. I'm not a paragon of virtue, but this ship is a bit too rocky for me. Now I will show you what I meant just now when I said I'll prove that both Hendry and Chard are sneaks, and ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... Pool, Fleda's nervousness returned a little; but she went through the dreaded introduction with great demureness and perfect propriety. And throughout the day Mr. Carleton had no reason to fear rebuke for the judgment which he had pronounced upon his little paragon. All the flattering attention which was shown her, and it was a good deal, could not draw Fleda a line beyond the dignified simplicity which seemed natural to her; any more than the witty attempts at raillery and endeavours to amuse themselves at her expense, ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Characters of Theophrastus, on deportment for a Greek citizen. No wonder that successive generations of English undergraduates have failed to respond to the human excellence or social charm, of his hero or paragon, described as 'the big-souled' or 'magnificent man'. Similarly the Politics is a book in which it needs a trained reader, already familiar with Greek life, to pick out the universal from the particular and draw his own modern conclusions. But when you have read, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... morning papers, and the smirk of satisfaction with which he gloated on the triumph of having gratuitously gleaned their entire contents, was in keeping with every other ludicrous phase of his distorted nature. He looked upon me as a paragon of stupidity; and I fear I considered him a piece of personal property, and felt as much pride in the possession as did Barnum in ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... next week. Mary, what do you think? A.O. has a suitor! A boy from home. He is to come next week, armed with a note from her 'fond payrents,' giving him permission to call. After talking about him all term and getting my curiosity up to fever heat about such a paragon as she makes him out to be, she blasts all my hopes by flatly refusing to let me meet him. Pig!" she made a grimace of mock disgust ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... I say, a careless answer, and turning upon her heel; and not coming to me at my first word, I flung a book which I had in my hand, at her head. And, this fine lady of your's, this paragon of meekness and humility, in so many words, bids me, or, which is worse, tells my own daughter to bid me, never to take a book into my hands again, if I won't make a better use of it:—and yet, what better use can an offended father make of the best books, than to correct a rebellious ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... the age of Victoria. It would not be possible to present a complete picture of Gordon's mother, and therefore none will be attempted here; but all the available evidence agrees in describing her as a paragon of women, and as having exercised an exceptional influence over her children. Gordon himself bore the most expressive testimony to her virtues and memory when, long years afterwards, he closed an exordium on ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... said quite enough about myself and a certain groom, I have not said quite enough about my wife and daughter, I will add a little more about them. Of my wife I will merely say that she is a perfect paragon of wives—can make puddings and sweets and treacle posset, and is the best woman of business in Eastern Anglia—of my step-daughter—for such she is, though I generally call her daughter, and with good reason, seeing that she has always ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... Elizabeth impatiently, 'I do allow that she is a redeeming point, but I do not give her such hyperbolical praise as you do; I may say she is the best of them, without calling her a paragon of perfection.' ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Lucy enough for you both and a large family to boot?—though to be sure she made a precious bad bargain over that estate of hers. D'you want her to be snapped up under your very nose? Why, young Cludde will have her yet, if he has turned out such a paragon as you would ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... man, the paragon of animals. "In form and moving how express and admirable!" His frame is perfect mechanism, instinct with glowing life, and guarded by the great conservative and healing powers of nature from disease and death. His ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... their senses and understanding by this meanes fast ynough bound with three sure chains, no marvell if this art grew in processe of time to such an head, that it was and is at this day reputed by most nations of the earth for the paragon and cheefe of all sciences: insomuch as the mightie kings and monarchs of the Levant are ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... shaped, and her eyes, though they might have been larger, could not have been more brilliant or more expressive. If it had not been for her furious jealousy and her blind confidence in fortune-telling by cards, which she consulted every day, Zaira would have been a paragon among women, and I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... been Rushton, would you rather have become bankrupt than treat your 'hands' and your customers in the same way as your competitors treated theirs? It may be that, so placed, you—being the noble-minded paragon that you are—would have behaved unselfishly. But no one has any right to expect you to sacrifice yourself for the benefit of other people who would only call you a fool for your pains. It may be true that if any one of the hands—Owen, for instance—had ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... well," he added in a muffled voice. "Living as an adopted child, and with such a paragon as Sofya Lvovna,—one must ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... temper, it was in dealing with this Edmund Russell of Athens. Grant Allen used to say, "The spores of everything are everywhere, and a certain condition breeds a certain microbe." A period of prosperity always warms into life this social paragon, who lives in a darkened room hung with maroon drapery where incense is burned and a turbaned Hindu carries your card to the master, who faces the sun and exploits a prie-dieu when the wind blows east. Athens had these men ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... demi-gods; the vivifying chisel of Phidias was thought worthy to typify the sublimity of Jupiter; the master-hand of Canova wrought the Parian block into the semblance of the sea-born goddess, giving to insensate stone the warmth and etheriality of the Paphian paragon; and Stultz, with his grace-bestowing shears, has fashioned West of England broad-cloths, and fancy goods, into all the nobility and gentility of the "Blue Book," the "Court Guide," the "Army, Navy, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... paragon of scientific erudition must the public prosecutor be, in whose eyes all this is not sufficient to lend a publication the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... ways, too, as will be seen from the following quotation from a Colorado writer: "White-headed, grave, and sedate, he seems a very paragon of propriety, and if you appear to be a suitable personage, he will be apt to give you a bit of advice. Becoming confidential, he sputters out a lot of nonsense which causes you to think him a veritable 'whiskey Jack.' Yet, whenever he is disposed, a more bland, mind-your-own-business appearing ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... her near-thoroughbred Maid, carrying the blood of "old" Lexington, Morella, and a streak of the super-enduring Morgan, could run, walk, and work my unregistered Outlaw into the ground; and that was the very precise reason why such a paragon of a saddle animal should not ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... again with men occupying eminent positions in Church and State. We see how a prime minister or an archbishop is represented by men who know him as a liar and a hypocrite, while by others he is spoken of as a paragon of honour and honesty, and a true Christian. My narrow Dessau views became a little widened when I went to school at Leipzig; still more when I spent two years and a half at the University of Leipzig, and afterwards at Berlin. ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... fighter of lions," Nero said unsteadily. "I would see this paragon of whom Rufinus tells me, whom you guard so jealously from my eyes. Send and fetch her hither. She will be a worthy queen ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... piece, entitled "The Beggars," may be taken, in fancy, as a touchstone of Mr. Wordsworth's merit. There is something about it that convinces us it is a favourite of the author's; though to us, we will confess, it appears to be a very paragon of silliness and affectation.... "Alice Fell" is a performance of the same order.... If the printing of such trash as this be not felt as an insult on the public taste, we are ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... a paragon of prudence and discretion," rejoined the woollen-draper, drawing his chair closer to hers. "Disparity of rank is ever productive of unhappiness in the married state. When Captain Darrell's birth is ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... a strange thing, father," she said, as if he were actually there to hear her, "if your paragon should turn aside from her friends, the artists, philosophers, and statesmen, to give herself to an illiterate prize-fighter. I felt a pang of absolute despair when he replied to my forty thousand pounds a year with ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... his head slowly in response. "Our paragon might not be found in the House of Lusignan, perchance. But surely he would not be a Louis of Savoy—nor a Ferdinand of Naples—no more than a Carlotta. Nor any Cyprian noble who hath ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... idol of the women, the envy of men, the paragon of the best company in Paris, the renowned duelist, not to produce more effect on a miserable notary! It was odious; although he was tete-a-tete with Jacques Ferrand, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... beauty's paragon? Well, we will try her choler to the proof, And make her know, Locrine can brook no braves. March on, Assarachus; thou must lead the way, And bring us to their ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... endeavouring to undo his own bad performance with the witness by a worse speech to the jury. What he was going to show, and what he was going to prove, was wonderful; everybody who had been called was guilty of perjury; everybody he was going to call would be a paragon of all the virtues. He expatiated upon the great common sense of the jury (as though they were fools), relied on their sound judgment and denounced the conduct of Mr. Bumpkin in the witness-box as a piece of artful ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form, in moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!" ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... little singular is, that neither of the parties concerned seem to have gained wisdom by their experience. Pelby forgets how other people's children once annoyed him, and Mr. and Mrs. Little seem to be entirely unconscious that their paragon was very much like all other little boys when he was only about two or three years old. For my part, I think we should be careful not to let our children trespass upon visitors. None can feel the ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... obvious thing in following the instincts of the gentle blood that was in her: she had cast her lot with her mother. He forgot his own aspirations and hopes for her in this bitter hour. He wanted to hurt her, so that she might cry out with him in ugly rage against the smug, serene paragon. If he only could bring Mary to his level, so that Christine might no longer be so arrogantly proud of the blood that ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... John. This paragon of a servant would rather have cut off his tongue and hands than ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... does not necessarily suppose him to be the most brilliant specimen in existence, so a congregation will generally be found to prefer their own minister, if he is a genuine man, to every other, although surely not always entertaining the hallucination that he is a paragon of ability. Thus to love and to be loved is the secret of a happy and ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... enthusiastic description of a girl he has met; he declares she's a paragon. This, of course, is nothing new, but it's a little astonishing that he doesn't seem to contemplate making love to her in his usual haphazard manner. She seems to have inspired ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... Denmark comes, the Royal Bride! O loveliest Rose! our paragon and pride— Choice of the Prince whom England holds so dear— What homage shall we pay To one who has no peer? What can the bard or wildered minstrel say More than the peasant who on bended knee Breathes from his heart an ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dynasty, it is instructive to compare the following character-sketch of the successor of Frederick the Great with the idealist portrait of Treitschke ("Germany History," vol. i.), who would make us believe that Frederick William II. was a paragon of all the ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... covered with tritons and nereids; the pages of the family were converted into wood-nymphs, who peeped from every bower; and the footmen gamboled over the lawns in the figure of satyrs. When her majesty hunted in the park she was met by Diana who, pronouncing our royal prude to be the brightest paragon of unspotted chastity, invited her to groves free from the intrusions of Acteon." The most elaborate of these entertainments of which we have any notice, were, perhaps, the games celebrated in her honor by the Earl ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... brings out the pathos of the writer's position, while at the same time showing quite clearly the defects that explained it. Mr. LUCAS, in short, does not commit the error of making his hero merely a mute, misunderstood paragon, whom anyone with common penetration must have recognised as such. On the contrary, we sympathise with him, especially in the big tragedy of his life, while quite admitting that to any casual acquaintance he must have appeared only a dull and uninteresting egoist. This ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... paragon in January. I interviewed applicants of both sexes and all nationalities, but there was none perfect; no, not one. I was not exactly discouraged, but I certainly began to grow anxious as the time approached when I should need my dairymaid, and need her badly. ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... a mission, Paragon of common sense, Running fount of erudition, Miracle of eloquence, Altos: We are blind and we would see; Sops: We are bound, and would ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... be, Mr. McElroy," she glared at him with straightening lips, "that I misunderstood you to say George Washington was not a paragon ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... contempt for fortune, and women, and good cheer, and idleness, and to begin to Catonise, what would he be but a hypocrite? Rameau must be what he is—a lucky rascal among rascals swollen with riches, and not a mighty paragon of virtue, or even a virtuous man, eating his dry crust of bread, either alone, or by the side of a pack of beggars. And, to cut it short, I do not get on with your felicity, or with the happiness of a few ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... himself being shown a photograph under a lamp. It represented an unsymmetrical face singularly void of expression, the upper part of an "art" dress, and a fringe of curls. He perceived he was being given to understand that this was a Paragon of Purity, and that she was the particular property of Parkson. Parkson was regarding him proudly, and apparently awaiting ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... the situation is hopeful. Prof. Collins said at the Harrisburg Conference in February that "There is no reason to doubt that we may eventually see an immune hybrid chestnut that will rival the American chestnut in flavor and the Paragon in size". ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... like bobbins, without a hand to weave with them; therefore easily overcome by the Romans, though at that time, for number, a far less considerable people. If your liberty be not a root that grows, it will be a branch that withers, which consideration brings me to the paragon, the Commonwealth ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... literary and business duties after her husband's death, or whether her extreme affection prevented her from refusing her only child anything she wished, the results were disastrous. It was fortunate for Balzac that he did not live to see the fate of this paragon, for this would have grieved him deeply, while he probably would not have ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... those That an acre hath of nose: Be her forehead and her eyes Full of incongruities: Be her cheeks so shallow too As to show her tongue wag through; Be her lips ill hung or set, And her grinders black as jet: Has she thin hair, hath she none, She's to me a paragon. ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... later there was a vacation for a week. Nicholas expected to spend this with his mother, but for some reason Mrs. Kent gave him no invitation. Probably she thought that Nicholas, though a paragon in her eyes, was not likely to win favor in the eyes of Mr. Kent. His rough, brutal disposition would have repelled the sick man, who had become ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... breast of the leader of the more numerous party. He was aware, that if the ranks were thinned, no other recruits could fill them up; that each man was as a priceless gem in a kingly crown, which if destroyed, the earth's deep entrails could yield no paragon. He was a young man, and had been hurried on by presumption, and the notion of his high rank and superiority to all other pretenders; now he repented his work, he felt that all the blood about to be shed would be on his head; with sudden impulse therefore he spurred his horse between ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... mole, what flaw, what lapse, What least defect or shadow of defect, What rumor, tattled by an enemy, Of inference loose, what lack of grace Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's — Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, Jesus, good Paragon, Thou Crystal Christ?"*2* How tenderly Lanier was touched by the life of our Lord may be seen in his 'Ballad of Trees and the Master', a dramatic presentation of the scene in Gethsemane and on Calvary. How implicit was his trust in ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... fill this cup to one made up Of loveliness alone, A woman, of her gentle sex The seeming paragon; To whom the better elements And kindly stars have given A form so fair that, like the air, 'Tis ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... published, is accompanied by a great number of swollen panegyrics in verse, showing that the writers had been favored with the perusal of the volume before it was published. Valor, piety, virtue, learning, wit, are by them ascribed to the "great Smith," who is easily the wonder and paragon of his. age. All of them are stuffed with the affected conceits fashionable at the time. One of the most pedantic of these was addressed to him by Samuel Purchas when the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... entered the room. "I own a parrot which my great-grandfather inherited from his great-grandfather, who was hair-dresser to Henry the Fourth, and which to-day still sings with the same volubility as he did a hundred years ago: 'Long live the king! long live this paragon of virtue, sweetness, beauty, and mercy! Long live the king!' He has cried this for hundreds of years, and he has repeated it for Henry the Fifth and Henry the Sixth, for Henry the Seventh and Henry the Eighth! And wonderful, the kings have changed, ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... George was sent to school, but Lucy, in charge of a governess, remained year in, year out, at Hamlyn's Purlieu with her books, her dogs, and her horses. And gradually, she knew not how, it was borne in upon her that the father who had seemed such a paragon of chivalry, was weak, unreliable, and shifty. She fought against the suspicions that poisoned her mind, charging herself bitterly with meanness of spirit, but one small incident after another brought the ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... that, to his father's great joy, he recognised that it was his imperative duty to seek the hand of such a paragon of wisdom and learning. And I am empowered by him to prepare you for his arrival in the course of a day or two, in the character of the Princess Royal's suitor. So you see," she concluded, "I haven't been at Clairdelune all this ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... sir knight, for how can I tell who see not mine own eyes, and would therefore know of thee, of whom men say, some that thou speakest truly, other some that thou speakest naughtily. But be the truth as it may, every knight yet saith to his own mistress that in all things she is the paragon ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... forced on too fast either a breaking point comes and the child, too much teased into perfection, turns in reaction and becomes self-willed and rebellious; or if, unhappily, the forcing process succeeds, a little paragon is produced like ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... were frequent in the snow out in the forest, and not a few approached our clearing. But we lost not one sheep or goat to any wolf. Hylactor frightened off most and killed three, a medium-sized female and two full-grown young males, at the acme of their fighting powers. We rated Hylactor a paragon among dogs. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... moved her admiration. He had, too, she realized, a sunny and sensuous nature, alive to beauty—even the beauty of the trivial things in his sickroom. He had an odd, poetical trick of phrase. He was a paragon of young Greek gods. She had discovered him; and women don't discover even mortal paragons every day in the week. Also, she was a woman of forty-three, which, after all, is not wrinkled and withered eld; and ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... he said at length, "the count is very agreeable, and his daughter is the paragon of all the virtues and accomplishments." There was something a little disparaging in his tone as he made the last remark, which seemed to me a clumsy device to throw me off the scent, if scent there were. Considering his surpassing personal vanity, of which I had received an ocular demonstration ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... an Aureole of Virtue seemed to curdle above him, while his Countenance bore an Expression of Placid Triumph, which meant that he was the real Asbestos Paragon who had been tried in the Furnace and ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... meant, and took upon himself, like a man who hated all pottering nonsense, to make the necessary correction without consulting the author. The consequence was, that people read with some surprise, under the authority of the paragon of accuracy, that Theodore Beza had gone to sea in a Canadian vessel. The victim of this calamity had undergone minor literary trials, which he had borne with philosophical equanimity; as, for instance, when inconsiderate people, destitute of the organ of veneration, thoughtlessly asked him ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... son would incline to follow in the footsteps of the mighty genius whose name he bore. But from his very infancy he developed traits widely different from those of the stern philosopher whom we had set up before him as the paragon of human excellence. I have always suspected that little Erasmus inherited his frivolous disposition from his uncle (his mother's brother), Lemuel Fothergill, who at the early age of nineteen ran away from the farm in Maine to travel with a thrashing machine, and who subsequently ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... extolling the virtues of his platoon commander, proceeds to tell his friend Bob: "No, I haven't been made a corporal yet, but our section has none now and I am the oldest soldier left." One feels great curiosity as to the state of this paragon's conduct sheet. ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... and the first are constantly in the company of their father, while the latter, as we have seen, share the dull fate of the mother. The first thing a male child is taught is love, deep respect, and obedience to his governor, and in this he is, as a general rule, a paragon. If the father be ill, he will lie by his side day and night, nursing him, and giving him courage; and if any misfortune befalls him, the duty of a good son is to ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... kinsmen of Lorraine, and made, as it was hoped, a future powerful instrument to aid Catholic French objects against England, and the reformation in France and elsewhere. As she grew towards womanhood in the bravest and most amorous court in Europe, the queen-dauphiness became a paragon of beauty, charm, accomplishments, the theme of poets, the despair of lovers ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... all nonsense," cried Washington Otis; "Pinkerton's Champion Stain Remover and Paragon Detergent will clean it up in no time," and before the terrified housekeeper could interfere, he had fallen upon his knees, and was rapidly scouring the floor with a small stick of what looked like a black cosmetic. In a few moments no trace of the ...
— The Canterville Ghost • Oscar Wilde
... did not like it, for she was looking round the room as if it were a hated prison and all that was done in it contemptible; and these things were his life. "Well, you know best. And what's this paragon like? I've not ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... comparative resistance. Some of my trees went down instantly, and went all to pieces, while others stood up for four or five years. Chestnuts of the Paragon type I hoped were going to be fairly immune, but they are going pretty fast. I have advised people who have asked about Paragon chestnuts to buy them, but be prepared to have to cut out blighted branches as they appeared. It is a question whether ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... married a wife too inflexibly refined, he would have deviated somewhat from that perfect straightness. His tastes had always been a little vulgar. But there was no reason why he should go abroad to gratify them when he possessed the paragon of amenable vulgarity at home. The Gardners, whose union was almost miraculously complete, were not in their way more admirably mated. And Lawson's reform must have been a stiff job for any woman to tackle at ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... plaintiff, with her mother, was early in attendance, and under the Colonel's advice appeared in the same modest garb in which she had first visited his office. This and her downcast, modest demeanor were perhaps at first disappointing to the crowd, who had evidently expected a paragon of loveliness in this Circe of that grim, ascetic defendant, who sat beside his counsel. But presently all eyes were fixed on the Colonel, who certainly made up in his appearance any deficiency of his fair client. His portly figure was clothed in a blue dress coat with brass buttons, a buff waistcoat ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... compassionately, knowing what it was to be tempted and to fall, and her companions were more inclined to follow the example of one who was striving to do right than to be influenced by the precepts of a self-sufficient paragon. ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... paragon of comeliness is cut nor low nor high But just enough of both to show a bright imported tie: Bound neatly with the choicest silks its lappets wave-like roll, While a watch-chain dangles sprucely from the proper buttonhole ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson |
