"Crowning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and prayerful ejaculations. Then his wonder ceased. Not a pilgrim but envied the Emir—that he should die so young was a pity—that he should die at the base of the sanctuary, in the crowning act of the Hajj, was a grace of God. Each felt Paradise stooping low to receive a martyr, and that its beatitude was near. They trembled with ecstasy at hearing the gates opening on their crystal hinges, and seeing light as from the robe of the Prophet ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... hour she knew why her love lay wounded unto death, though not then did she recognise the revelation as a crowning mercy. She saw herself bruised and abased, humbled beyond belief. She saw her proud purity brought low, brought down to the very mire which all her life she had resolutely ignored, from the very though of which she had always ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... women inferior to men, we must raise them; in so far as we are keeping men, in other and certainly no less important respects, inferior to women, we must raise them. The future needs and will obtain the utmost of the highest of both sexes. Thus and thus only "springs the crowning race of human kind": wherein, as we hasten to the dust, living for a day, yet for ever, our eyes prophetic may behold the sure and certain hope ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... rare treat to come across one of those solitary camps when out on a prolonged hunt, for the visitor was certain of a cordial welcome, and everything the generous men had was freely at your service. The crowning pleasure came at night, when stories were told under the silvery pines, with troops of stars overhead, around a glowing camp-fire, until the lateness of the hour warned all that it was time to roll up in their robes, if they intended ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... the very edge of mutiny and revolt against Gambara's injustice, it had needed but what seemed a crowning one such as this to ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... not to sympathize with Boone's disappointment at the failure of this long-planned expedition, which he had looked forward to as the crowning achievement of his presidentship. The time had come for him to return to England. His successor, Mr. William. Phipps, had arrived from Mocha, in August, and had taken the second seat in Council, while awaiting Boone's departure. Boone's last year in Bombay ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... nation. It is the work of the blood and tears of long generations of men. It is not in man, inborn or innate, but is enshrined in his traditions, in his customs, in his literature and his religion. Its creation and sustenance are the crowning glory of man, and his consciousness of it puts him in a high place above the animal world. Men live and die; nations rise and fall, but the struggle of individual lives and of individual nations must be measured not by their immediate ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... head mechanically, hardly conscious of what he was doing. A great restlessness that was utterly foreign to his nature had taken possession of him. He had been aware of it growing within him for some time, becoming stronger daily, and now the coming of Raoul de Saint Hubert seemed to have put the crowning touch to a state of mind that he was unable to understand. He had never been given to thinking of himself, or criticising or analysing his passing whims and fancies. All his life he had taken what he wanted; nothing on which he had ever laid eyes of desire had been denied him. His wealth had ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... Boston as Massachusetts' own. To make the entire thirteen Colonies adopt the quarrel and back the Colonial army in the vicinity of Boston was the only way to make the issue a success, and to unite the factions by choosing for a leader a Virginian aristocrat was a crowning ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Egyptian), a falconer, an elephant with a howdah containing a figure embodying the spirit of the East, attended by Oriental mystics representing India, a Buddhist Lama bearing his emblem of authority, a camel and rider (Mahometan), a Negro servitor, and a Mongolian warrior. The size of the group, crowning a triumphal arch one hundred and sixty feet in height, may be inferred from the fact that the figure of the Negro servitor is thirteen feet six inches ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... Sevier got off?" exclaimed Nick. "Egad, that was a crowning stroke of genius! Cozby and Evans, Captains Greene and Gibson, and Sevier's two boys whom you met on the Nollichucky rode over the mountains to Morganton. Greene and Gibson and Sevier's boys hid themselves with the horses in a clump ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Jim was made to enhance. And then Mr. Waymarsh. It's the crowning touch—it supplies ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... therefore useless, correction, but determined to take immediate steps to have his wild and rather unmanageable little daughter sent to a first-class school. Hester was on her way there now, and very sore was her heart and indignant her impulses. Father's "good-bye" seemed to her to be the crowning touch to her unhappiness, and she made up her mind not to be good, not to learn her lessons, not to come home at midsummer crowned with honors and reduced to an every-day and pattern little girl. No, she would be the same wild ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... that which has been considered the crowning feature of European society, the feudal system. The nobles held their lands upon the tenure ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... all this energy he gained a corresponding warmth, and, so to speak, eagerness of affection, a keen appreciation of humor, in which he found a rest, and an indescribable frankness and simplicity of character, which, crowning his other qualities, made him, I think, and I strive to think impartially, nearly or quite the most interesting ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... of Bloody Bridge." Picture a slightly undulating country covered with thick low forest; a narrow road that by an open plank bridge crosses a wide, sluggish stream with marshy banks, and curves beyond abruptly to the right to avoid a low, steep hill facing the bridge; crowning this hill an earth-work, rude to be sure, but steep, sodded, almost impregnable to men without artillery to play upon it; within, two cannon, for which there is plenty of ammunition, and six hundred Confederate soldiers, fresh, eager, determined; on the road in front of the battery, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... The crowning quality of nearly all of his mercies, as one may easily see, was their humor. Even he was not unaware, in retrospect, of the figure he made at times, and would smilingly tell, under provocation, of his peculiar attitude on one occasion or another. Partially from himself, from those ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... thinks of himself; he is hoping to make a fortune for us. He spends his whole time in experiments in paper-making; he begged me to take his place and look after the business, and gives me as much help as his preoccupation allows. Alas! I shall be a mother soon. That should have been a crowning joy; but as things are, it saddens me. Poor mother! she has grown young again; she has found strength to go back to her tiring nursing. We should be happy if it were not for these money cares. Old Father Sechard will not give his son a farthing. David went over ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... little; to the noble person, much; and the greater their familiarity with it, the more contemptible it became to one, and the more sacred to the other; until vulgar commentators explained it entirely away, while Virgil made the crowning glory of ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... only he did not KNOW it was stuff. God forbid that we should pretend to enjoy such things if we do not—and, after all, the man is not a hypocrite. But his view is that any one who is cut in a different mould is necessarily inferior; and what put the crowning touch to my disgust was that on Sunday afternoon we met a Cabinet Minister, who is a great student of literature. He talked about books to Mr. Welbore, and Mr. Welbore heard him with respect, because the Minister was in ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... king's galleys, had hastened to present her at court. Louis XIV, who at the time of her presentation was barely twenty years old, was struck by her enchanting face, and to the great despair of the famous beauties of the day danced with her three times in one evening. Finally, as a crowning touch to her reputation, the famous Christina of Sweden, who was then at the French court, said of her that she had never, in any of the kingdoms through which she had passed, seen anything equal to "the beautiful Provencale." ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... indescribably wistful, indescribably compelling: it sprang at him and possessed him. Even in permitting him her acquaintance, she had trusted him far past what he had any right to expect; and now, with his own sickening game at the touch, she gave this crowning proof of confidence in him—dashing it full in the face of the whispering and hinting Higginson, full in his own face too. Could anything in all the world matter beside the fact that this girl believed in him, ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... pretty large town, of rather ancient aspect, with many gray stone houses, the gables of which are notched on either side, like a flight of stairs. The town stands on the slope of a hill, at the summit of which, crowning a long ascent, up which the paved street reaches all the way to its gate, is Stirling Castle. Of course we went thither, and found free entrance, altho the castle is garrisoned by five or six hundred men, among whom are bare-legged ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... crowning beauty of the Island is certainly THE SEA! viewed in all the splendor of its various aspects;—whether under the awful grandeur of the agitated and boundless Ocean,—as a rapid and magnificent River,—or reposing in all the glassy tranquillity of a spacious land-locked ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... The sun, breaking through the clouds, shone on the mountain-wall which stood on the opposite side, touching with his glow the bare and rocky precipices that frowned far above the stream. Descending to the valley, we followed its course toward the Rhone with the ruins of feudal "bourgs" crowning the crags ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... is: 'May thy lofty head be crowned round with many a tower and terrace, and here and there (may thy lofty head be crowned) with groves of myrrh and cinnamon (growing) upon thy banks.' This makes 'banks' objective, and 'upon' a preposition: the only objection to this reading is that the notion of crowning the head upon the banks is peculiar. The difficulty vanishes when we recollect that Milton frequently connects two clauses with one subject rather loosely: the subject of the second clause is 'thou,' implied in 'thy lofty head.' An exact parallel to this is found in L'Alleg. 121, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... and winding Rhine, Whose breast of waters broadly swells Between the banks which bear the vine, And hills all rich with blossom'd trees, And fields which promise corn and wine, And scattered cities crowning these, Whose far white walls along ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... the term STYLE) of Beethoven—works which, whatever Mr. Oulibicheff and other learned men may say who succeed more easily in POURING FORTH in these matters than in being well versed [A play on words—verser and verse.] in them, will remain the crowning point of Beethoven's greatness. ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... of Jesus on the cross, and I saw in this single vision all that I see in my meditations on the Passion. The treason of Judas, the flight of the disciples, the insults which were offered our Lord before Annas and Caiphas, Peter's denial, the tribunal of Pilate, Herod's mockery, the scourging and crowning with thorns, the condemnation to death, the carrying of the cross, the linen cloth presented by Veronica, the crucifixion, the insults of the Pharisees, the sorrows of Mary, of Magdalen, and of John, the wound of the lance in his side, after death;—in ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... with all the fructifying glories of civilization—to foster and cherish her until she shone upon the earth like a morning star! Advertising had clothed her, Advertising had fed her, schooled, roofed, and sheltered her. In a sense she was the crowning advertisement of her father's career, and her innocent perfection taunted him just as much as the bright sky-sign he knew was flashing the words CHAPMAN PRUNES above the teeming pavements of Times Square. He groaned to think that he himself, by his conscientious ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... such frequent eclipses. The Governor-General's Council during Lord Minto's tenure of office may have been exceptionally weak, and there will always be a serious element of weakness in it so long as membership of Council is not recognized to be the crowning stage of an Indian career. So long as it is, as at present too frequently happens, merely a stepping-stone to a Lieutenant-Governorship, it is idle to expect that the hope of advancement will not sometimes act as a restraint upon the independence and sense of individual responsibility which a seat ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... breasts of French civilians, still exists to a great extent amongst the military classes of the population. A traditionary feeling of hatred and humiliation has been handed down from the days of our Peninsular victories, and especially from that of the crowning triumph at Waterloo,—the battle won by treachery, as many Frenchmen affirm, and some positively believe. A French barrack-room, I can assure you, is anything but a bed of roses to a British volunteer. I was better off, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... been held to possess a goodly person, and a very fair development of the parts of speech. He even ventured to speculate upon the possibility of Jared passing into the White House—the dawn of that era having already arrived, which left nobody safe from the crowning ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... to-day, to become a "mantilla"; and a magnificent "willow plume" snipped from Aunt Nettie's Sunday hat. This plume, when tacked to Missy's broad leghorn, was intended to be figuratively as well as literally the crowning feature ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... and air, even when the windows were closed, the walls were of a faint greenish blue, like what is called dead turquoise, and the relation between floor and walls was so perfect that it remained with me to this day as a crowning instance of ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... routed them from their houses, turned them on to do their trick upon the roads, and in two days has seen them cured. But this other remedy is more original: a Marquesan, dying of this discouragement—perhaps I should rather say this acquiescence—has been known, at the fulfilment of his crowning wish, on the mere sight of that desired hermitage, his coffin—to revive, recover, shake off the hand of death, and be restored for years to his occupations—carving tikis (idols), let us say, or braiding old men's beards. From all this it may be conceived how ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is as dangerous to us as the criminals are. Every man's hand is against us, and yet the interests at stake are colossal. Should I bring it to a successful conclusion it will certainly represent the crowning glory of my career. Ah, here is my latest from the front!" He glanced hurriedly at the note which had been handed in. "Halloa! Lestrade seems to have observed something of interest. Put on your hat, Watson, and we will ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have been made to depict the shocking tragedies of this dreadful morning, but no pen or pencil ever has succeeded in fitly portraying the terrible reality, the ghastly horrors of this crowning event in the life of a ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... the dominance of steam, the crowning wrong that is wrought us of furnace and piston-rod lies in their annihilation of the steadfast mystery of the horizon, so that the imagination no longer begins to work at the point where vision ceases. ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... for, however, was her cap. I had forgotten that your Parisian grisette[1] would no more dream of wearing a bonnet than of crowning her head with feathers and adorning her countenance with war-paint. It had totally escaped me that I, a bashful Englishman of twenty-one, nervously sensitive to ridicule and gifted by nature with but little of the spirit of social defiance, must in broad daylight make my appearance in the streets ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... colleague, almost his friend,—but, bah! friendship of committees and sub-committees!—Sulpice was sufficiently an artist to be somewhat impressed with the contrast afforded by the display of official pomp crowning the rather obscure life of the Nantes advocate. He had ever obtrusively before him, as if haunted by the spectre of the Poor Man before Don Juan, the lean face of Garnier and the white moustache of Ramel. Which of the two had better served his cause, Ramel vanquished or Collard—of ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... delighted with this place, but especially with being here to see the crowning of the edifice of Italian Independence. The people have rather their hearts full than their voices loud. When the Italian flag was first raised none of the crowd could cheer for weeping and sobbing. It is a mighty ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... taken out of me now. To be called a little boy was bad enough; to be referred to as a child was even worse; but to be sent to bed at a quarter to eight on a summer evening was the crowning stroke. Certainly, Plummer's itself was ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... apple flanked the building to east and west. Behind was a field or two crowning a little upland where sedate cows fed demurely; and in front, toward the south, which was the side of entrance, lay a narrow walled garden, with box-bordered beds full of early flowers, mimulus, sweet-peas, mignonette, stock gillies, and blush and damask ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... been moved by the tragic grandeur of the verse, as well as by the dramatic intensity of the episode of the lovers' "crowning night"? ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... pity there is no piano," said Loiseau as a crowning point to the situation, "we might have finished up ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... harmoniously balanced, whether above ground or beneath, that existence is full of joy in spite of the tremendous strain of life, in spite also of a dreariness of outlook, on barren nature, which is not to be matched by the most inhospitable regions of the earth; and death is looked upon as the crowning joy of all, although life is prolonged by all the means ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... of the destruction of the tea as the "crowning outrage," Lecky says, "It will probably strike the reader that every argument which shewed that the tea duty was not a grievance, was equally powerful to show that it was perfectly useless as a means of obtaining a revenue. It would be difficult ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... of Louis Blanc, "None but the dead come back." To absolve him is impossible, for we know, better than his persecutors, how he intrigued to recover uncontrolled authority by bringing havoc and devastation upon the people over whom he reigned. The crowning tragedy is not that which Paris witnessed, when Santerre raised his sword, commanding the drums to beat, which had been silenced by the first word of the dying speech; it is that Lewis XVI. met his fate with inward complacency, ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... moving up from high to higher, Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope The pillar of a people's hope, The centre of a ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... to know that you suffered for him was—would have been his crowning sorrow. Is there anything ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... when the guest of the evening stood up to reply: a young man, looking somewhat older than his twenty-nine years, his powdered hair crowning a strong face; with keen, deep-set eyes, full lips and masterful chin. He wore a belaced purple coat; a crimson sash crossed his embroidered vest; a diamond flashed upon his finger. Letting his eyes range ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... opinion—" in her entirely characteristic effort to get all the threads of conversation into her own hands for the climax that always wound up her dinners. How the other women used to hate those concluding raids of hers! I forget most of the other people at that dinner, nor can I recall what the crowning rally was about. It didn't in any way join on ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... change decrees of kings, Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents, Divert strong minds to the course of altering things; Alas! why fearing of Time's tyranny, Might I not then say, 'Now I love you best,' When I was certain o'er incertainty, Crowning the present, doubting of the rest? Love is a babe, then might I not say so, To give full growth to that ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... engaged in the pleasant task of burning the prisoners to death. Little did the five, seeing and feeling only their part of it there in the dark woods, dream that the deeds of this day and night would soon shock the whole civilized world, and remain, for generations, a crowning act of infamy. But they certainly felt it deeply enough, and in each heart burned a fierce desire for ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... secure its foundations. Christ is the corner-stone of the spiritual universe, by which all things in heaven and earth are kept from falling away from God, its great centre of light and life. No wonder, then, that when this crowning event in the moral government of the universe was about to be accomplished, the heavenly host should have shouted, "Glory ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... the state of your mind and to the need of your heart? Let us proceed, then, to look at Mansoul's two pulpits and her two lectureships as they stand portrayed on the devil's last card and in Emmanuel's crowning commission; that is, if our eyes are sharp enough ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... lukewarmness and backsliding by the other. Meanwhile he was to carry on a truly colossal war by means of both; he was to disengage the country from diplomatic entanglements of unprecedented peril undisturbed by the help or the hindrance of either, and to win from the crowning dangers of his administration, in the confidence of the people, the means of his safety and their own. He has contrived to do it, and perhaps none of our Presidents since Washington has stood so firm in the confidence of the people as he does after ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... willing service. Only a man or a nation educated for willing service to their neighbours is a really free man or free nation. All other theories of freedom are illusions. Freedom asking for rights and not for willing service means an endless quarrel crowning with unhappiness all its champions. Neither Pericles' republic nor Octavian's monarchy were the States of happiness, but St Paul's pan-human state, with a single Magna Charta of willing service, will be a ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... the end of it is Cape Misenum, and a little on the hither side, obscured in remoteness, lies what once was Baiae. Beyond the promontory gleams again a blue line of sea. The low length of Procida is its limit, and behind that, crowning the view, stands the mountain-height ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... good, O reverend stranger! He hath taught me of His ways, By this great and crowning lesson, in the evening of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... other sententiously, 'the crowning merit of a private secretary is exactly that sort of memory. Your intellects, if properly trained, should be the complement of your chief's. The infinite number of things that are too small and too insignificant for him, are to ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... connected with the Philadelphia Water Department), and the late Erastus W. Smith, of New York, developed a duty of 71,278,486 foot pounds per 100 pounds of coal, which long remained the best record in the United States. In 1863, Mr. Worthington brought out at Charleston, Mass., his crowning success, the duplex engine, which fairly deserves to be placed first among the hydraulic inventions of this century. This engine has since been more extensively duplicated for water works purposes than any other, with the possible ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... ancient gateway and along the ghostly streets, and survey the crowning achievement of the cultured Boche. The great buildings—the Cathedral, the Cloth Hall—are jagged ruins. The fronts of the houses have long disappeared, leaving the interiors exposed to view, like a doll's house. Here is a street full of shops. That heap of splintered ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... lagoon narrowed down to about a mile in width, forming a sort of strait between the largest of the islands above- mentioned and a bold projecting promontory; and beyond this strait the horizon was again clear save for certain faint grey blots which our experienced eyes told us were the foliage crowning another group of islands. It was an enchanting prospect for a man to gaze upon; the broad sheet of water upon which we were sailing was perfectly smooth save for the slight ruffle of the breeze upon it; every spot of dry land, large ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... very striking effect. The later work seems not so much to be stuck upon the earlier as to grow out of it. One could hardly have thought that spires, among the most elegant of the elegant spires of the district, would have looked so thoroughly in place as they do when crowning towers, the lower parts at least of which are the work of the famous Odo. There is nothing of that inconsistency which is clearly marked between the upper and lower parts of the front of St. Stephen's at Caen. The general ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... Walking in the deep, moist woods suddenly one sees a mass of big leaves and white flowers. The same irresistably lovely trilliums have come again. Three big leaves, then a flower stalk shooting up from the centre of this whorl of leaves, and on top the crowning glory—the three-petaled trillium flower. A fragrant white or pink form is called the nodding wake robin. These in a glance tell their wishes. The plant sometimes is nearly two feet high. So a clump of these could easily go toward the ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... baby. He had shown those Cattle-men how to fill the weak place in their pack; the Foxhounds may be good and the Greyhounds swift and the Russians and Danes fighters, but they are no use at all without the crowning moral force of grit, that none can supply so well as a Bull-terrier. On that day the Cattlemen learned how to manage the Wolf question, as you will find if ever you are at Mendoza; for every successful Wolf pack there has with it a Bull-terrier, ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... were exercising in the prison-yard, when Trompe-la-Mort appeared there, were to be the actors in a scene of crowning importance in the life of Jacques Collin, it will be well to depict a few of the principal personages ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... necessary to speak truths; and this may seem cruel, so well chosen is the moment. Yet when such a man as M. de Lamartine has deemed it becoming not to close the year 1848 without giving to the public the confessions of his youth and crowning his political career with idyls, shall criticism hesitate to follow him and to say what it thinks of his book? shall it exhibit a discretion and a shamefacedness for which no one, the author least ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... doubtless, young and innocent) soldiers, disarmed upon the faith of a solemn guarantee from a Christian general, standing in the very steps of the noble (and the more noble, because bigoted) Crusaders, were all mowed down by the musketry of their thrice accursed enemy; and, by way of crowning treachery with treachery, some few who had swum off to a point of rock in the sea, were lured back to destruction under a second series of promises, violated almost at the very instant when uttered. A larger or more damnable murder does not stain the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... to bear your name, and to win your hand would be the crowning of all my hopes. I should never repent of giving myself ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... that the time had come for Him to move on to Jerusalem to meet there the crowning act of His strange career. And, knowing full well that such a course would be virtually thrusting His head into the very jaws of the lion of ecclesiastical and temporal authority, He set His feet firmly on the road which led to Jerusalem, the capital city, and the center of ecclesiastical ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... for whose sake these deeds of velour were undertaken, to bestow all her respect upon the conqueror, and Thaisa did not depart from this custom, for she presently dismissed all the princes and knights whom Pericles had vanquished, and distinguished him by her especial favour and regard, crowning him with the wrath of victory, as king of that day's happiness; and Pericles became a most passionate lover of this beauteous princess from the first moment he ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... swing themselves over rapid and deep watercourses on their way to Glory, by means of a rope, and himself deftly plunging off a platform, and flying a hundred feet or two, as an encouragement to them to begin. And there he also passed, perched on a crowning eminence (probably the Corporal's careful hands), the small Bebelle, with her round eyes wide open, surveying the proceeding like a wondering sort of blue and ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... the same time the surest and the slowest teacher of men. Wisdom, the crowning glory of humanity, is but an enlarged perception of man's needs, and how to meet them, based upon individual experience and observation of the effects of natural law upon all. An individual is an epitome of the world—society. Discipline is everywhere considered indispensable to the individual. ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... that all else was forgotten. A chill of grim, accusing horror was on him. His brain was in a whirl as he tried to recall the desired number. Did Providence, Fate, or whatever the ruling force was, intend this as his crowning punishment? Had the impalpable hand, reaching for him, descended on his offspring? He finally got the doctor's servant on the 'phone, then Dr. Loyd himself, who had ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... dull brain turning under the impression that this crowning mercy had been his own doing, lost his head, forgot that there was a commander-in-chief, and sending his news to Congress, left Washington to find out from chance rumors, and a tardy letter from Putnam, that Burgoyne had actually surrendered. This ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... that a formal examination reacts upon and intensifies the sinister tendencies of which it is at once a product and a symptom. The examination system is, as I have said, the keystone of the arch of Western education, crowning and completing the whole structure, and at the same time holding it together, and preventing it from falling, as it deserves to fall, into a ruinous heap. Education, as it is now interpreted and practised in the West, could not continue to exist ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... Strelitz, who, on her reception into the Orthodox Church, took the name of Militza. Montenegro was still excited about the wedding. She looked dazzlingly fair among her dark "in-laws." Old Princess Milena came, stately and handsome, her hair, still black, crowning her head with a huge plait. Prince Mirko, the second son, was still a slim and good looking youth. Petar, the youngest, a mere child, mounted a little white pony and galloped past in the full dress of an officer, reining up and saluting with a tiny ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... discovery that the family had but just returned from a continental residence of a couple of years—a matter of which no letter or word had given me the knowledge at my school. My next discovery was, that an old uncle had died, and left us money enough to carry the county; and the last and crowning one was, that my eldest brother had just been returned for the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... crowning virtue and glory of his life was his acceptance of the mission which brought him here. Though whitened by the frosts of nearly eighty winters, neither lofty mountains nor intervening space could restrain his patriotic heart from a prompt response ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... the war. But it is at least an evidence of our desire for peace, and a sufficient assurance that if unseen powers were working on our side also, they were the powers of good. Yet so strangely do the invisible forces confound the plans of men that the crowning proof of this came two days later—on August 8, in the Commons—when our Foreign Minister defined the British position, and practically declared ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... and imprinted a kiss on his forehead; then crowning himself with a garland, he knelt before an altar that stood in the apartment, and prayed aloud: "O thou, who art King of Heaven, life and death are in thy hand! Grant what is good for us, whether we ask it, or ask it not; and refuse that which would ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... board—at least for heaven; And yet they had even then enough to do, So many conquerors' cars were daily driven, So many kingdoms fitted up anew; Each day, too, slew its thousands six or seven, Till at the crowning carnage, Waterloo, They threw their pens down in divine disgust, The page was so ...
— English Satires • Various
... persuaded three of them to risk the peril of being caught alone. They would not move farther than the wall of the house, and as it was in a narrow street, again there were difficulties. But the crowning perplexity was at the water-side. It was windy, and our calls were blown away, so they did not hear what we wanted them to do, and they splashed too vigorously. Their only idea just then was to get themselves and their garments ceremonially clean, defiled as ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... an ideal of human character, and at least a partial realization of that ideal in Hebrew heroes. If the final ideal was to stand incarnate before men, there must be approximations to that ideal before the crowning incarnation could be appreciated. We look upon the character of Jesus as the complete embodiment of human excellencies. Such a revelation, however, would have been futile if there had not previously been glimpses of and anticipations of the ideal in ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... within the very circle of Shakespeare's culminant and crowning constellation, bathing my whole soul and spirit for the last and (if I live long enough) as surely for the first of many thousand times in the splendours of the planet whose glory is the light of his very love ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... stimulated her with some singular vague perception of the meaning of it all. The dawn was breaking, and the spirit of the dawn all about her possessed and drew her till she revelled in an ecstasy of yearning towards its crowning glory—Rise, Great Sun! When she first sat down, the hollow of the sky was one dark dome, only relieved by a star or two; but the darkness parted more rapidly than her eyes could appreciate, and was succeeded, in the hollow it had held, by rolling clouds monotonously grey, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... in the beginning of the rehearsal was just what Nelly wanted, for it enabled her to add what she considered would be the crowning beauty of their decorations. She had conceived the idea only that afternoon, while engaged in the busy whirl of keeping the sound peaches at the top of the basket and the unripe ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... spare. It was an inspiring victory from one point of view, but rather doleful for the enemy. The latter had imported a carload of fireworks, which now stood sadly unused upon the very tracks which, apparently, must in the future be raised. The crowning insult was offered when the successful forces offered to take them off their ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... to the chief to "crown" him; that is, to place his hand on his head. The players who are making "backs" try in every way, without rising to a standing position, to throw this player off and so prevent his crowning their chief. Each player of the "out" side tries in turn to crown the chief. Should they be unsuccessful the sides change. If one or more players succeed in crowning the chief, each successful player has a second chance before the sides change. The side that succeeds in oftenest crowning ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... the crowning work of Washington accomplished. Out of the tempests of war, and the tumults of civil commotion, the ages bore their fruit, and the long yearning of humanity was answered. "Rome to America" is the eloquent ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... explanation of these difficulties, the gospels clearly represent Jesus as predicting his own return in glory to establish his kingdom,—a crowning evidence of his claim to supernatural knowledge. It is all the more significant, therefore, that it is in connection with his prediction of his future coming that he made the most definite declaration of his own ignorance: "Of ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... charged. Their ranks had been sadly depleted as they marched across the open ground, but they stuck to the work bravely. Clear to the German trenches they ran, a second and still a third line close behind; and then the Germans swarmed out to meet them. A fierce hand-to-hand encounter ensued with victory crowning German arms. What was left of the French attacking party scurried back to ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... different was the demeanour, the address, and the conversation of the young Englishman, who had been bred in courts, and, at the same time, had travelled much! There was an interest in all he said, so much information blended with novelty and amusement, so much wit and pleasantry crowning all, that Wilhelmina was fascinated without her being aware of it; and, before the terms of intimacy had warranted her receiving his hand on meeting, she had already unconsciously given her heart. The opportunities arising from her father's close attention to his commercial affairs, and ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... discharged when, as frequently happened, no election of censors had taken place, and which they now took as a part of their ordinary official duties. Compared with the substantial gain that by the shelving of the censorship the magistracy lost its crowning dignity, it was a matter of little moment and was not at all prejudicial to the sole dominion of the supreme governing corporation, that—with a view to satisfy the ambition of the senators now so much more numerous—the number of the pontifices and that of the augurs was increased from ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... over it perhaps unrecognised for some change in that terrible place, or rather in himself; wept then as never before in his life; dragged himself on once more, till suddenly the whole country seems to move under the rumour, the very thunder, of "the crowning victory," as he is made to understand. Falling in with the tide of its heroes returning to English shores, his vagrant footsteps are at last directed homewards. He finds himself one afternoon at the gate, turning out of the quiet Sussex road, through the fields for whose safety he had ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... work is basic. Perhaps it is for that reason, that it is obscure and dull; basic work is apt to be so. The spectacular success of an individual in any walk of life is often but the crowning of the unrecognized, and often utterly unknown work—of ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... it is that cannot, will not see, understand.... And they say: Well, we don't see it. Here we were born and here we die.... And they say: Show us somebody who has been there.... They forget how long is the journey and how a man may have affairs in the crowning cities.... Dearest, I am losing myself, but ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... missionaries of culture each in a long frock coat, tightly buttoned, with cane, gloves and shining silk hats, paced side by side down the Lake Shore Drive they had the effect of an esthetic invasion, but their crowning audacity was a printed circular which announced that tea would be served in their office in the Caxton Building on Saturday afternoons! Finally as if to convince the city of their utter madness, this intrepid trio adventured the founding ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... moaned. She drew herself up on her bed, and lay with her face buried in the pillow. Again she fought against sleep, but sleep came again, and in overpowering dream she lay as if dead. And she sees herself dead. All her friends are about her crowning her with flowers, beautiful garlands of white roses. They dress her in a long white robe, white as the snowiest cloud in heaven, and it lies in long, straight plaits about her limbs, like the robes of those who lie in marble in cathedral aisles. It falls over her feet, ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... leader of light troops then living. How gallantly he headed the forlorn hope under the icy walls of Quebec, where he was taken prisoner, and at Saratoga with his shrill whistle and stentorian voice called his dauntless braves where the fight was thickest! But Cowpens was Morgan's crowning feat. Inspiring militia and veterans alike with a courage they had never felt before, he routs Tarleton's trained band of horse, and then, skilful in retreat as he had been bold in fight, laughs at baffled ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... windows and balconies and roofs of the houses, as well as the streets themselves, were thronged with a gaily dressed and wildly excited crowd. At length the procession reaches the presence of the King and Queen and, crowning and unprecedented honour! as the Admiral comes before them Ferdinand and Isabella rise to greet him. Under their own royal canopy a seat is waiting for him; and when he has made his ceremonial greeting he is invited to sit in their presence and give ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... The crowning ambition in Will's heart as we know was to secure a place on the college track team. And he had been working quietly yet persistently under the guidance of Wagner for the desired end. At last, early in May, came the trial meets of the college when the selections for the ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... fronting the point of land on which the city is placed, covered with sails and glistening in the sun—mellows the landscape most exquisitely. Quebec, as seen from the river, too, has a fine commanding aspect. The Citadel crowning the height does not give so great an appearance of extent or strength as it possesses. In reality, Gibraltar preeminent over all, it is one of the most impregnable strongholds in the world; and its underground works, I am told, are so extensive that ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... But the crowning mercy of the year came at our Annual Meeting, when we were able to announce the gift of over a million of dollars from that generous friend of the poor Negro, Mr. Daniel Hand. It is a wonderful gift, and ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 1, January, 1889 • Various
... thunder-storm, was brooding over the snowy peaks beyond. In spite of the cold this singular suggestion of summer phenomena was still borne out by the distant smiling valley, and even in the soft grasses at her feet. It seemed to her the crowning inconsistency of the climate, and with a half-serious, half-playful protest on her lips she hurried forward to seek ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... in dreams a particular CRESCENDO, a weird effect that grows more pronounced as we proceed. The first concession extorted from reason introduces a second; and this one, another of a more serious nature; and so on till the crowning absurdity is reached. Now, this progress towards the absurd produces on the dreamer a very peculiar sensation. Such is probably the experience of the tippler when he feels himself pleasantly drifting into a state of blankness ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... in the corridors of hotels or barrooms hushed into silence the free or merry expression of their patrons, now fled and hid away "like damned ghosts at the smell of day" from the popular uprising of the people. The event which precipitated the movement—the last and crowning act of this oligarchy—was the shooting of James King, of William, a banker and publisher of a paper dedicated to the exposure and denunciation of this ring of dishonest officials and assassins. It was done in broad daylight on Montgomery Street, the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... Patroness of England's National Sports. We might turn her to that purpose; wander over England with a tail of shouting riff-raft; have exhibitions, join in them, display our accomplishments; issue challenges to fence, shoot, walk, run, box, in time: the creature has muscle. It's one way of crowning a freak; we follow the direction, since the deed done can't be undone; and a precious poetical life, too! You may get as royally intoxicated on swipes as on choice wine; win a name for yourself as the husband of such a wife; a name ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of her own shadow she set her teeth for that answer. It was to be the crowning act of her self-renunciation, and it strained every fibre of her resolution. She could not allow him to stay where he was, even in uniform. The danger was two-fold. In a moment of weakness he would probably shoot Conward, and in a moment of weakness ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... The trick of my letters to the late lamented Langernault! That was my crowning triumph. Oh, the joy of it, when I invented and constructed my little mechanical toy! Wasn't it nicely thought out? Isn't it wonderfully neat and accurate? On the appointed day, click, the first letter! And, ten days after, click, the second letter! ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... recess itself has open tabernacle-work, now containing a series of figures representing the crowning of the Virgin; on one side are figures of King Ethelbert and St. John the Baptist, and on the other St. Thomas a Becket (with double crozier) and Bishop Thomas de Cantilupe. Of these, however, only the two central carvings are in their original positions, the others ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... those which inflict a wound whose mark we bear to our graves. Such are so keen that no future gratification of the same desire can ever obliterate them: they become registered as a permanent loss of happiness. Such a one was Stephen's now: the crowning aureola of the dream had been the meeting here by stealth; and if Elfride had come to him only ten minutes after he had turned away, the disappointment would ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... what may be called the domestic side of this crowning event of Mr. Hope's religious life to a future chapter. The following is the letter alluded to by Mr. Gladstone in his letter to Miss Hope-Scott, given in Appendix III., and on which he wrote the words 'Quis desiderio.' [Footnote: Let me balance Mr. Gladstone's ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... This fear it was—a fear like this, as I have often thought—which must, amidst her other woes, have been the Aaron woe that swallowed up all the rest to the unhappy Marie Antoinette. This must have been the sting of death to her maternal heart, the grief paramount, the "crowning" grief—the prospect, namely, that her royal boy would not be dismissed from the horrors of royalty to peace and humble innocence; but that his fair cheek would be ravaged by vice as well as sorrow; that he would be tempted into ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... pace on dolphin steeds; the Triton company, with every sea-creature that frights not the eye, tripped it around the maid; for Posidon on his car, with Amphitrite by him, led them in festal mood, ushering his brother through the waves. But, crowning all, a Triton pair bore Aphrodite, reclined on a shell, heaping the bride ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... States. In most other countries, perhaps, it could only be accomplished through that series of revolutionary movements which are too often found necessary to effect any great and radical reform; but it is the crowning merit of our institutions that they create and nourish in the vast majority of our people a disposition and a power peaceably to remedy abuses which have elsewhere caused the effusion of rivers of blood and the sacrifice of thousands of the human race. The result thus far ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... crooked plough; The sweat of honest labor is despised; Now sloth possession of the threshold takes; The sluggish frames their native vigor lose; The minds in hopeless indolence are sunk; And slavery, the crowning curse of all, Degrades and crushes ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... a noble ruin of a castle of the middle ages appeared in the distance, crowning the summit of a high conical eminence. These were the finest remains we had seen in a long time, and viewed from the road, they were a beautiful object, for half an hour. This was the castle of Hohenzollern, erected about the year 980, ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... chapter we come to the crowning point of Abraham's history, the highest step and perfection of his faith; beyond which it seems as if man's trust in God ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... likeness in feature to Alain himself, a stronger likeness to the picture of her first cousin (his mother) which was preserved at Rochebriant. Her descent was indeed from ancient and noble houses. But to the distinction of race she added that of fashion, crowning both with a tranquil consciousness of lofty ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the statues look to the north. The sculpture on the north side of the pedestal represents a cavalry fight; the south, "sacrificing;" the west, acombat between infantry; and the east, which is the most dilapidated, "Victory crowning a wounded soldier." Alongside stands a triumphal arch, of which the most perfect portions are the ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... But the crowning glory of all that is ear-rending and peace-destroying, is carried around by the Pifferari about Christmas time. It is a hog-skin, filled with wind, having pipes at one end, and a jackass at the other, and is ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Greenwood; garlands and tears, the ritual and the requiem, eulogy and elegy, consecrated the final scene. By a singular coincidence, the news of his decease reached the United States simultaneously with the arrival of the ship in James River with the colossal bronze statue of Washington, his crowning achievement. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the storming of Jerusalem, the final object and crowning glory of the Crusades, is animated and interesting in ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... life, the crowning fortune of a man, is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... proposed, but the Queen—convinced by his own admission of the real aim and object of the war, and driven by outraged pride to hate the man who offered her this crowning insult, and determined that at all costs it must be thwarted—had lent an ear to Concini's purpose to avenge her, and was ready to repay infidelity with infidelity. Concini and his fellow-conspirators had gone to work so confidently that a week before ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... institution does so cruel a despotism reign. In early days Popes and bishops were elected by the faithful, and were deposed from power if they used it badly. The aristocracy of the Church exists still; it may be a canon upwards, or one who succeeds in crowning himself with a mitre; from them no account is required. Among the laity appointments are changed, ministers are turned out, soldiers are degraded—even kings are dethroned; but who exacts responsibility from Pope or bishops once they are anointed and in more ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... or in becoming contrast to, the expressive features of the face? Is it comfortable, portable, durable, or cheap? What qualities, either of use or ornament, has it in its favour that it should be the crowning point of a well-dressed man's toilet? The hat is, beyond all doubt, one of the strangest vestimental anomalies of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... suddenly seized him was remote from self-pity. He was thinking of Elizabeth. What unspeakable wretchedness he had brought into her life, and he was still to bequeath her this squalid brutal death! It was the crowning shame and misery to the long months of doubt ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... fly, Master. That tribe was a brotherhood which had abjured women. Look on me now. I am misshapen, hideous, am I not? Born thus, it is said, because before my birth my mother was frightened by a dwarf. Yet the law of the Ethiopians is that their kings must marry within a year of their crowning. Therefore I chose a woman to be the queen whom I had long desired in secret. She scorned me, vowing that not for all the thrones of all the world would she be mated to a monster, and that if it were done by force she would kill herself, a saying that went abroad throughout ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... with positions taken on such high ground, no less than the superior dignity and spiritual importance of Confirmation above Baptism itself—whether considered as a sacramental rite and mystery distinct from Baptism, or as its completory and crowning part (the 'finis coronans opus')—that we are ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... found on a flank, or slightly in advance of a flank of the attacking force. "Cavalry make it possible for a general to adopt the most skilful of all manoeuvres, the converging attack, and properly handled, as at Appomattox or Paardeberg, to bring about the crowning triumph of Grand Tactics, the hemming in a force so closely that it has either to attack at a disadvantage or to surrender" (Henderson). In the Mesopotamian campaign a surprise attack of General Sir ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... a queen of noble Nature's crowning, A smile of hers was like an act of grace; She had no winsome looks, no pretty frowning, Like daily beauties of the vulgar race: But if she smiled, a light was on her face, A clear, cool kindliness, a lunar beam Of peaceful radiance, silvering o'er the stream Of human thought ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... me, leaping and gambolling at my elbow, though I kept my eyes straight before me. Anon, his clutching fingers were upon my arm, and fain I would have shaken him off, but could not; while, as I watched the swing and grace of the lithe, feminine body before me, from the little foot to the crowning glory of her hair, she seemed a thousand times more beautiful than I had supposed. And I had saved her tonight—from what? There had been the fear of worse than death in her eyes when that step had sounded outside her chamber door. ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... supreme aim: prompt obedience to all known truth, a single eye in serving God, and zeal for His glory. Many a life has been more or less a failure because habits of heart well pleasing to God have been neglected. Nothing is more the crowning grace than the unconscious grace of humility. All praise of man robs God of His own honour. Let us therefore be humble and turn all eyes ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... ashamed not only of you, but of us who are your friends, when I reflect that the whole business will be attributed entirely to our want of courage. The trial need never have come on, or might have been managed differently; and this last act, or crowning folly, will seem to have occurred through our negligence and cowardice, who might have saved you, if we had been good for anything; and you might have saved yourself, for there was no difficulty at all. See now, Socrates, how sad and discreditable are the consequences, both to us ...
— Crito • Plato
... ill-adjusted effort, spasmodic aims, these give the quality of all my Bromstead memories. The crowning one of them all rises to desolating tragedy. I remember now the wan spring sunshine of that Sunday morning, the stiff feeling of best clothes and aggressive cleanliness and formality, when I and my ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... now how it was that I passed from a mood so darkened and sunless to one of exceptional exaltation, but I recall very clearly that I did. I believe that I made a crowning effort against this despair and horror that had found me out in the darkness and overcome. I cried in my heart for help, as a lost child cries, to God. I seem to remember a rush of impassioned prayer, not only for ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... it was possible to obtain them, they were read with avidity. Chief among the new, infallible prophets whose works were profoundly venerated was Auguste Comte, the inventor of Positivism. In his classification of the sciences the crowning of the edifice was sociology, which taught how to organise human society on scientific principles. Russia had merely to adopt the principles laid down and expounded at great length in the Cours de Philosophie Positive. There Comte explained that humanity had to pass through three ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... in vigour and in majesty. Let us not forget that it is from the very nonmorality of destiny that a nobler morality must spring into life; for here, as everywhere, man is never so strong with his own native strength as when he realises that he stands entirely alone. As we consider the crowning injustice of fate, it is the negation of high moral law that disturbs us; but from this negation there at once arises a moral law that is higher still. He who no longer believes in reward or punishment ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... department, including posts, telegraphs, &c. A man of such strength of character was not to be turned from his course by any amount of opposition, and he rather enjoyed to be alluded to as "the iron-handed minister." The crowning point of his railway policy was the regulation of the Danube at the hitherto impassable Iron-Gates Rapids by the construction of canals, which opened up the eastern trade to Hungary and was an event of international importance. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... For a crowning disaster, throughout his years of manhood, Richard had had nothing to do. He had been idle with no work and no object to work for. You can suffer from brain famine and from hand famine. You may starve your brain and your ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... or so Poe lived quietly at Fordham, guarded by the watchful care of Mrs. Clemm,—writing little, but thinking out his philosophical prose poem of "Eureka," which he deemed the crowning work of his life. His life was as abstemious and regular as his means were small. Gradually, however, as intercourse with fellow literati re-aroused his dormant energies, he began to meditate a fresh start in the world. His old and never thoroughly abandoned project of starting ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... with the national life throbbing in his veins, and himself participant of the thoughts and emotions of his brethren. Then he is to be 'like unto' Moses,—not in all points, but in his receiving direct communications from God, and in his authority as God's messenger. The crowning characteristic, 'I will put My words into his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him,' invests his words with divine authority, calls for obedience to them as the words of God ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... reliquit—we pronounced—in reference to the stockings still—that Modesty taking her final leave of Mortals, her last blush was visible in her ascent to the Heavens by the tract of the glowing instep. This might be called the crowning conceit; and was esteemed tolerable ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... working in the Naval Observatory, Washington, on the great equatorial telescope, he was startled to have his sanctum invaded by the gaunt, extenuated figure of the President. He was made welcome, of course, and the varied mechanism explained to him. As the crowning "treat," he was given a peer through the celebrated instrument. It was leveled at the moon, or, rather, arranged to have that orb in its focus at the time. The visitor was appalled, as well as wondering at the view, and slowly withdrew by the trap-door. ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... before my eyes again. From it spread on all sides the wonderful Connecticut valley. Up and down the paths to the dining hall, the buildings in which classes were held, the Chapel crowning the topmost crest, wandered groups of boys in their absurd, postage-stamp caps, their peg-top trousers, their ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... crowning event of his military career, Bonaparte is still a great man. All his glory is due to himself alone; because he alone has developed a character and a genius of which no one else has ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... where hints of future marriages were given to many a pretty girl, and to nudges and pinches were returned small screams suggestive of additional assault—and inviting denials of "Indeed I won't," and that crowning provocative ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... end of May, Marie, our eldest, was professed, and Therese, the Benjamin, had the privilege of crowning her with roses on the day of her mystical espousals. After this happy feast trials again came upon us. Ever since his first attack of paralysis we realised that my Father was very easily tired. During our ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... had just risen, and all nature looked fresh and green, rejoicing in the genial warmth of a Canadian spring. On the left was the town, the bright tin steeples and housetops of which, crowning the summit of Cape Diamond, glittered in the rays of the glorious luminary. Ships of all rigs and sizes lay close under the cliffs, and from their diminutive appearance I calculated the great height of the promontory. About eight miles off, on the right, I could see the falls of ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... Elsie declared should be the crowning pleasure of Mrs. Harrington's visit. They would ride down to the sea-side tavern on horseback, have a chowder party on the precipice behind it, looking out upon the ocean, and return home at dusk or by moonlight, as caprice might determine. Mr. Rhodes and Miss Jemima were ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... the balloon soon shot up above the mountain-top, when, lo! a miracle. The phenomenon of sunrise was reversed! We our very selves instead had risen on the sun! There he stood, full and round, peeping at us through the trees crowning a distant Berkshire hill, as if startled by ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... there had resulted a magnetic reciprocity between the correspondents, notwithstanding that one of them wrote in a character not her own. That he had been able to seduce another woman in two days was his crowning though unrecognized fascination for her as ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... was late; it had been a severe and prolonged winter; the last deep snow had but just disappeared before yesterday's rains; on the hills, indeed, white remnants of it yet gleamed, flecking the hollows and crowning the peaks; the lawn was not verdant, but bleached, as was the grass on the bank, and under the hedge in the lane. Three trees, gracefully grouped, rose beside the cottage. They were not lofty, but having ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... pretended. Were the duchess(15) and her daughters silent on so scandalous an insinuation? Agrippina would scarce have heard it with patience. Moriar modo imperet! said that empress, in her wild wish of crowning her son: but had he, unprovoked, aspersed her honour in the open forum, would the mother have submitted to so unnatural an insult? In Richard's case the imputation was beyond measure atrocious and absurd. What! taint ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole |
