"Greatness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... course which yet makes him more spoken of than all these blessings." In another passage Sidney wishes to describe the perfections of a woman; and "that which made her fairness much the fairer, was, that it was but a fair ambassador of a most fair mind." Musidorus considers it "a greater greatness to give a kingdome than get a kingdome."[210] Phalantus challenges his adversary to fight "either for the love of honour or honour of his love." In many of these sentences the same words are repeated like the rhymes of a song, taken up from strophe to strophe, and the sentence twists and turns, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... sister, who met him in mid-career, and they fought, he and she, a sore fight, yet sorer than the first. Bartus right soon found himself unable to cope with her might and would have sought safety in flight, but of the greatness of her prowess could not avail unto this sleight; for, as often as he turned to flee, she drave after him and still clave to him and pressed him hard, till presently she smote him with the sword in his throat, that it issued ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... under the impression that the Prussians were going to attack them. One battalion did not stop until it had found shelter within the walls of the town. General Trochu's attempt, for political ends, to force greatness upon these heroes, is losing him the goodwill of the army. On Wednesday and Thursday several regiments of the Line and of the Mobiles bitterly complained that they should always be ordered to the front to protect not only Paris but the National Guards. The ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... indefinable. It depends on the codes and standards of the group. Realism presents everyday experience, no humbug, the world as it is. It must, therefore, be cynical and ruthless to all conventions. It shows the meanness of greatness, the other side of virtue, the weakness of heroes. No doubt it is great fun to pour scorn and ridicule on all who assume to be better than we are, and to look down on us. The easiest way to do it is ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... man. "Listen, then. So surely as you harm these people, so surely do you kill your earthly prospects. You, the first man of Mexico, the Dictator indeed! Think what you are doing before it is too late. Is your dream of greatness only a dream? Will you sacrifice yourself and all your aspirations in the heat of this unholy and impossible passion? Tonight, now, you must choose whether you will be famous or infamous, glorious or shameful, honored or dishonored! Restrain your hatred ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... yourself already arrived there. The one presents to us a God who is very "wonderful in working;" the other exhibits the same power, but with it is blended loveliness in a thousand forms. In each is vastness. Greatness constitutes the whole of one; but the other is elegant, as well as great. Of each we must retain lively impressions; and to witness such displays of the Creator's power, must ever be considered as happy ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... was impossible. That is to say, he picked his men, and he chose men of his own type—healthy, restless, eager, enthusiastic, honest men. The criticism of Disraeli that "Cobden succeeded in business simply because he got other people to do his work," is sternly true. It proves the greatness of Cobden. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... let me say that the responsibility for the preservation of the all-too-few remaining great primeval trees, and of their often notable progeny, in our Eastern States, rests with those who care for trees, not alone with those who ought to care. To talk about the greatness and beauty of a fine oak or maple or tulip, to call attention to its shade value, and to appeal to the cupidity of the ground owner by estimating how much less his property will be worth when the trees are gone or have been mishandled, will aid to create the necessary public sentiment. ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... wonder of Shakespeare, the greatness which has made men try to make a dozen specialists out of him, is not so very wonderful when one considers that he was a dramatist. A dramatist cannot help growing great. At least he has the outfit for it if he wants to. One hardly ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... manner. Socrates, who is always on the look-out for teachers of virtue, is interested in the youth Cleinias, the grandson of the great Alcibiades, and is desirous that he should have the benefit of their instructions. He is ready to fall down and worship them; although the greatness of their professions does arouse in ...
— Euthydemus • Plato
... modern minds, starlight brought thoughts of eternity: 'If the greatness of the sky is beyond human comprehension, what mind, what understanding could fathom ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... mingling of the elements is projecting, also, the Great Rebel: if a national cause is to be asserted, the principles upon which it rests will first create its appropriate Exponent. But when no such agitation is on the point of breaking out—when the crisis is not near, and the necessity for such greatness distant—national character probably retains its level; and though there be no one whom the people will recognise as the arch-man, the representatives, losing in intensity what they gain in numbers, become a class. They fill the ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... know," he said to me one day, in discussing modern statesmen and political fame in general, "but getting up in politics is a queer game. I can't understand it. Men that you'd think ought to get up don't seem to. It doesn't seem to be real greatness ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... in different strains. Flavius urged "the Roman greatness, the power of Caesar, the severe punishment inflicted on the vanquished; and the clemency vouchsafed to those who submitted; that neither the wife nor son of Arminius was treated as a captive." Arminius to this opposed "the claims ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... condition to the railway station. All of which is here recorded to the honour of that good Christian pair, representatives of hundreds of other good Christian pairs as conscientious and as useful, who merge the smallness of their work in its greatness, and feel in no danger of losing dignity when they adapt themselves to ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... remaining rooms were entirely empty, and of the treasure set aside in long past ages by King Chaltzantzin there was no sign. Yet here, truly, was stored wealth the like of which the richest monarch in the world could not match for greatness; and as Young beheld before him such enormous riches his face grew ruddy, an eager light came into his eyes, the muscles of his throat worked convulsively, and his breathing was labored and short—until I demolished ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... is not expedient, but I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord—for if I should desire to glory I shall not be foolish; for I shall speak the truth; but I forbear, lest any man should account of me above that which he seeth me to be, or heareth from me. And by reason of the exceeding greatness of the revelations—wherefore that I should not be exalted overmuch, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... Egypt's greatness, the world was divided into three main countries, named Jaffeth, Shem and Arabin'ya. There were other less populated lands and places; Uropa in the west, Heleste in the north, and the two great lands of the far west, called North ...
— The Sun King • Gaston Derreaux
... I'm not a heretic, for I recognise the greatness of the music, and I could hear it with pleasure if it were confined to the orchestra, but I can find no pleasure in listening to a voice trying to accompany a hundred instruments. I heard 'Lohengrin' last season. I was in Mrs. Ayre's ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... to a caravansery. There he laid down his weary lacerated head, reflecting on the sorrows of earth, on merit so often unrewarded, and on the nothingness and transientness of all human blessings. He went to sleep with the determination to give up all hopes of greatness, and to become an honest burgher. Nor on the following day did he repent of his resolution, for the heavy hands of his master, and the journeymen, had cudgelled out of him ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... the honor of being his birthplace, but it is most probable that it was in the latter he first saw the light. Legends, too, are not wanting of extraordinary occurrences which took place during his infancy, that seemed to presage his future greatness. Be these as they may, his life and works, which are before the world, stand in need of no such embellishments, now that they have become matters of history. His father died in his infancy, and his mother returned to Rome, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... at its best, Or greatness in the true sense of the word, Has one day started even with that herd Whose swift feet now speed but at sin's behest. It is the same force in the human breast Which makes men gods or demons. If we gird Those strong emotions by which ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... confessed and cast out.—When the defeat at Ai came, Joshua and Israel were ignorant of the cause. God dealt with Israel as a nation, as one body, and the sin of one member was visited on all. Israel as a whole was ignorant of the sin, and yet suffered for it. The Church may be ignorant of the greatness of this sin of restraining prayer, individual ministers or believers may never have looked upon it as actual transgression, none the less does it bring its punishment. But when the sin is no more hidden, ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... hereby to be understood as withdrawn or to be withdrawn. Moreover we command you in virtue of holy obedience, that, employing all due diligence in the premises, as you promise—nor do we doubt your compliance therewith to the best of your loyalty and royal greatness of spirit—you send to the aforesaid countries and islands worthy, God-fearing, learned, skilled, and experienced men in order to instruct the aforesaid inhabitants and dwellers therein in the Catholic faith, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... he looked forward to a childless old age, and reflected that all the fruitful straths of the Toggenburg, and the valleys and townships, would pass away to some kinsman, and no son of his would there be to prolong the memory of his name and greatness. When this gloomy dread had taken possession of him, he would turn savagely on the Countess in his fits of fury, and cry aloud: "Out of my sight! For all thy meekness and thy praying and thy almsgiving, ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... strange vicissitudes of history. Greatness has often sunk to the dust, and has tempered itself to its new surrounding. Smallness has risen aloft, has flourished for a time, and then has sunk once more. Rich monarchs have become poor monks, brave ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... class were judged, yet she suddenly realised that he possessed a touch of that quality which lifted him at once far over their heads, The man had genius. Without education or culture he had yet achieved greatness. By his side the men who were passing about on the lawn became suddenly puppets. Form and style, manners and easy speech became suddenly stripped of their significance to her. The man at her side had none of these things, yet he was of a greater world. She felt her enmity towards ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... their heroes not because they have been perfect characters under all conditions, but because they have been brave, true, able, and unselfish, A man may have few faults and count for very little in the world, because he lacks force, daring, the greatness of soul which moves before a generation like a flaming torch; a man may lead a stainless life, not because he is really virtuous but because he has very few temptations within or without. Some of the most heroic ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... with calmness the trying moment of her return to that home, where there was no longer a parent to welcome her. 'Yes,' said she, 'let me not forget the lessons he has taught me! How often he has pointed out the necessity of resisting even virtuous sorrow; how often we have admired together the greatness of a mind, that can at once suffer and reason! O my father! if you are permitted to look down upon your child, it will please you to see, that she remembers, and endeavours to practise, the precepts ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... savage broke! Not Salem's walls defil'd with wilful blood, A crime, her victor's clemency withstood: Not all her honours levell'd with the dust, Styl'd Titus good, or merciful, or just: Love knit the charm on which his greatness rose, A charm! not worlds united can oppose! Behold the glorious pattern marks your rise! Nor quit the steps by which he gain'd the skies: Try to surpass! (but heav'n his fate refuse!) He wept a day! ... ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... sheer dedication of their {173} moderate gifts. Their capacities expand through their self-surrender, as leaves unfold under the touch of the sun. They lose themselves and then they find themselves. The devil tempts these men, not with a sense of their greatness, but with their self-distrust; yet he tempts them in vain. Their weakness issues into strength; their temptation develops their power. The angels of God have come and ministered ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... For he lived chastely, and he might have been chaste without marrying, but it was not requisite then." Nevertheless if the patriarchs of old had perfection of mind together with wealth and marriage, which is a mark of the greatness of their virtue, this is no reason why any weaker person should presume to have such great virtue that he can attain to perfection though rich and married; as neither does a man unarmed presume to attack his enemy, because Samson slew many foes with the jaw-bone of an ass. For those fathers, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... must turn back in fancy three hundred years. We must picture to ourselves the aspect of the New World at the time when Elizabeth sat on the throne of England, and when the kingdoms of western Europe, Britain, France, and Spain, were rising from the confusion of the Middle Ages to national greatness. The existence of the New World had been known for nearly a hundred years. But it still remained shadowed in mystery and uncertainty. It was known that America lay as a vast continent, or island, as men often called it then, midway between Europe and the great empires of the East. Columbus, and ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... now I got an inside view—and what a view! I had read some reference to Douglas van Tuiver's Harvard career: how he had met the peerless Southern beauty, and had given up college and pursued her to her home. I had pictured the wooing in the rosy lights of romance, with all the glamour of worldly greatness. But now, suddenly, what a glimpse into the soul of the princely lover! "He had a good scare, let me tell you," said Claire. "He never knew what I was going to do from one ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... Rome's greatness, Sicily was known as "the granary of Rome" because from this little island came the grains to supply her vast armies. 12,000,000 bushels of grain was the tribute that Rome claimed of Sicily each year, and yet Sicily had ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... nonsense" was theirs, to find pleasure in the role of the mysterious stranger, who by a word could change a disdainful gypsy into a fawning, awe- stricken slave. Fame to satisfy George Borrow must carry with it something of the greatness of Olympus. ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... which is said to contain a considerable intermixture of silver; "but he replied, with more feeling than could have been anticipated, that he was unwilling to deprive Aden of the only remaining sign of its former greatness and strength." Several of them have been sent to England since the capture of the place, measuring from fifteen to eighteen and a half feet in length; they are covered with ornaments and inscriptions, stating them to have been cast in the reign of "Soliman the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... have—God, or Nature, or Law. But the anguish of Atheism is only a negative proof of man's incompleteness. A witness more overwhelming is the prayer of the Christian. What a very strange thing, is it not, for man to pray? It is the symbol at once of his littleness and of his greatness. Here the sense of imperfection, controlled and silenced in the narrower reaches of his being, becomes audible. Now he must utter himself. The sense of need is so real, and the sense of Environment, that he calls out to it, addressing it articulately, and imploring it to satisfy ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... quarrels, envy, and rivalry; ambition is unbridled, avarice reigns supreme. With the termination of so wretched a war, there will shine forth a joyous and blessed peace, which I can justly term a 'precious conquest,' since it will render his Majesty redoubtable to all Europe, which has learned the greatness of the two powers which the king will ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... in every way a transition period for Spain. The old chivalrous Spain had passed away. The new Spain was the mightiest power the world had seen since the Roman Empire and it had not yet been called upon to pay the price of its greatness. By the policy of Ferdinand and Ximenez the sovereign had been made absolute, and the Church and Inquisition adroitly adjusted to keep him so. The nobles, who had always resisted absolutism as strenuously as they had fought the Moors, had been divested of ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... threw herself on Karen's pity, tearing from herself, with a humility far above pride and shame, the glamour that had held Karen's heart to hers. Deep instinct guided her spontaneity. Her glamour, now, must consist in having none; her nobility must consist in abasement, her greatness ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... days or more with varying successes. Day and night in the city they heard the drums beat to arms, the cries of the Sheiks, and more piercing, drawn-out cries than theirs. To the nightly shrilled pronouncement of the greatness of God came as answer the Christian's wailing prayer, 'Save us, Holy Sepulchre!' The King of France had an engine which he called The Bad Neighbour, and did well with it until the Turks provided a Bad Kinsman, much bigger, which put the Neighbour to ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... were conducted with the deliberate coolness and celerity which the greatness of the occasion required. They resolved instantly to fill the vacant throne with an emperor whose character would justify and maintain the action that had been committed. They fixed on Pertinax, praefect of the city, an ancient senator of consular rank, whose ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... transitory as a bubble of water. This thy young wife is overwhelmed with grief on account of the evil that hath befallen thee. Alas, how shall I comfort her who is even like a cow without her calf! Alas, O son, thou hast prematurely fled from me at a time when thou wast about to bear fruit of greatness, although I am longing for a sight of thee. Without doubt, the conduct of the Destroyer cannot be understood even by the wise, since although thou hast Kesava for thy protector, thou wast yet slain, as if thou wast perfectly helpless. O son, let that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of greatness in Pennybet. He willingly acknowledged that the coup d'etat was not his but Salome's, and the riot must inevitably crumble away. So he made a point of leading the cheers that greeted my announcement, and, coming ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... such queen! A queen is one Who shares her husband's greatness and his throne. I am no more than yonder dancing girl Who struts and smirks before a royal court! But I will loose my veil and loose my tongue! Now listen, sire—my master and my king; And let thy princes and the court give ear! ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... do carry it, with a grandly mournful though stolid insolent air, as if born superior to this Earth and its wisdoms and successes and multiplication-tables and iron ramrods,—really with "a certain greatness," says somebody, "greatness as of great blockheadism" in themselves and their neighbors;—and, like some absurd old Hindoo Idol (crockery Idol of Somnauth, for instance, with the belly of him smashed by battle-axes, and the cart-load of gold coin all run out), persuade mankind that ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Cuba, and end an exterminating conflict; it is to provide honest means of paying our honest debts, without overtaxing the people; it is to furnish our citizens with the necessaries of everyday life at cheaper rates than ever before; and it is, in fine, a rapid stride toward that greatness which the intelligence, industry, and enterprise of the citizens of the United States entitle this ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... interest in common things and common men—a tune the Concord bards are ever playing, while they pound away at the immensities with a Beethovenlike sublimity, and with, may we say, a vehemence and perseverance—for that part of greatness is not ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... by his successor, Lot M. Morrill, who delivered an appreciate eulogy upon his character and public service. Mr. Sumner bore testimony to the greatness of his career in the Senate. "All that our best generals were in arms, Mr. Fessenden was in the financial field," said the Massachusetts senator. Describing Mr. Fessenden's "extraordinary powers in debate—powers which he commanded so readily," Mr. Sumner said, "His words warmed ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... tolerant to folly, and patient at the sight of the extreme waywardness of men; but I confess that, when I reflect on the renown of our past history, on our present prosperity and greatness, and on what the future hath yet to unfold, and when I see that there are men who can find in all this nothing good, nothing valuable, nothing truly glorious, I feel that all their reason has fled away from them, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... effect upon the awed lad, who, leaning against the rock behind him, the stock of his rifle resting at his feet, surveyed it all with feelings that drew him nearer to heaven, and gave him a more vivid knowledge of the greatness and majesty of the Author of all that he ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... The greatness and majesty of it all gave Pennie feelings which she did not understand and could not put into words; they were half pleasure and half pain, and quite prevented the service from being wearisome to her, as it sometimes was at Easney. She had so much to think of here. The Cathedral was so full ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... mallet was not able to check the burst of laughter caused by the horrible picture which Uncle Charley drew, but after it had subsided, he continued: "As to the wonderful masters and teachers in the city, far be it from me to deny their greatness and power. But the beautiful village of Vernondale is less than an hour from New York; no mosquitoes, no malaria; boating, bathing, and fishing. Miss Fairfield could, therefore, go to New York for her instructions in the various arts and sciences, and return again to her Vernondale ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... my dear," put in the Vicar. "Some minds are so contemptibly small that they are simply crushed by greatness. It requires an eagle to ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... replying to the first part of his lieutenant's remark and ignoring the second, "we must fight to prove our courage. As to losing many of our best men, of course we cannot help that. Then we must kill, burn, and destroy right and left in Poloeland, to prove our power. After that we will show the greatness of our forbearance by letting our enemies alone. Perhaps we may even condescend to ask them to become our friends. What an honour that would be to them, and, doubtless, what ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... and there remain only 85 12 millions for Buddhism. Of the numbers assigned to other countries, as well as of their whole populations, I am in considerable doubt, excepting in the cases of Ceylon and India; but the greatness of the estimates turns upon the immense multitudes said to be in China. I do not know what total population Cunningham allowed for that country, nor on what principal he allotted 170 millions of it to Buddhism;—perhaps he ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... Englishman, though not knowing which side to take. The Resident hastened after the Tinjars, threw himself before them, and appealed and threatened, pointing to the two guns at the fort now trained upon them; and Tama Bulan showed his true greatness by haranguing his people, saying his wound was purely accidental and unintended, that it was a mere scratch, and commanding them to stand their ground. Several of the older and steadier chiefs followed his example and ran to and fro ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... gilding them with glory, by crowning them with the halo of genius; where the abolition of entail and of eldest sonship, by frittering away estates, compels the nobleman to attend to his own business instead of attending to affairs of state, and where personal greatness can only be such greatness as is acquired by long and patient toil: quite ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... City, in doing honor to the memory of O'Connell. "From the Campus Martius," writes Dr. Miley, "and the Roman Forum, from both sides of the Tiber, and from all the seven hills and their interjacent valleys, this people, who grow up from infancy with the trophies of thirty centuries of greatness around them on every hand, assembled with enthusiasm to supplicate heaven for the eternal happiness of Ireland's liberator, and to exult in the wonders he had achieved, as if he had been their own." The greatest homage paid by Rome on this melancholy occasion, was undoubtedly, the ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... the pride of a great nation, and taught them of an Empire on which the sun never sets. What shall we say to them in the hour of defeat and after the treaty of peace imposed by the victor? They will say: "Find us work and we will earn our bread and in due time win back the greatness that has been lost." But how are they to earn their bread? In this country half the employers will have been ruined by the war. The other half will have lost heavily, and much of the wealth even of the very rich will have gone to keep alive the innumerable ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... diminished, but is not banished, by a calculation of probabilities, and the military spirit and capacity exhibited by the Mahdi's forces under Osman Digma in the fighting with General Graham's well-equipped British force at Teb and Tamanieb revealed the greatness of the peril with which Gordon had to deal at Khartoum where he had only the inadequate and untrustworthy garrison described by Colonel de Coetlogon. During the summer of 1884 there was therefore a growing fear, not only that the worst news might come ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... nations; exhibited the short-comings and the excellencies of patriarchal and of monarchical forms of government; exposed the warrings and bickerings among men; told of the manner in which a people escaped from bondage and raised themselves on the wreck of thrones, principalities, and powers, to greatness; published the laws by which that most chosen people were governed; and dwelt upon the perversity of human nature; and as other men, divinely inspired, have sublimely represented the highest stages ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... forbidding the publication in France of Bulls, Briefs, &c., should be enforced. But he could not, any more than his uncle, forbid the excommunication to take effect. The first Napoleon was at the height of his greatness when struck with excommunication. He received the sentence with jeers. Would it make the arms fall from the hands of his soldiers? How literally this question was answered, let the snows of Russia tell. There are other ministers ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... show a frivolous and unholy disposition in its heralds if they did not bring together the most copious resources within their power and consecrate them all to religion, so that they might thus perhaps exhibit it in its appropriate greatness and dignity. Hence it is impossible, without the aid of poetry, to give utterance to the religious sentiment in any other than an oratorical manner, with all the skill and energy of language, and freely using, in addition, the service of ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... make misery for the man who loves thee best of all the world, merely to satisfy a notion o' thine own? Greatness and goodness," saith he, "dwell in the heads and hearts o' mankind, not in their birth or purses. I do ask thee, with all respect, to be my wife, and I am prepared to face th' anger o' my mother and o' th' Queen. Ay," saith he, his face gone red as a girl's, and ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... fasten your attention on the Florentine Revolution of 1250, because its date is so easily memorable, and it involves the principles of every subsequent one, so as to lay at once the foundations of whatever greatness Florence afterwards achieved by her mercantile and civic power. But I must not close even this slight sketch of the central history of Val d'Aruo without requesting you, as you find time, to associate in your minds, with this first revolution, the effects of two which followed ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... this has of the old, splendid audacity of the Elizabethans! How unlike timid modern verse! Beddoes is always large, impressive; the greatness of his aim gives him a certain claim on respectful consideration. That his talent achieved itself, or ever could have achieved itself, he himself would have been the last to affirm. But he is a monumental failure, more interesting ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Unluckily, in proportion as his fame increased, his peculiarities grew with the advance of age more manneristic and defined; so that his imitators fixed precisely upon that which sober critics now regard as a deduction from his greatness. They failed to perceive that he owed his grandeur to his personality; and that the audacities which fascinated them, became mere whimsical extravagances when severed from his terribilita and sombre simplicity of impassioned thought. His power and his spirit ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... had been in charge of this work during the winter, providing a home for the men of the territorials in this ancient Indian capital. A series of lectures by leading Indians served to interpret Indian life and thought to these soldiers, who were seeing at once the needs and greatness of the Indian Empire at first hand, while leading Indian Christians of the type of Mr. K. T. Paul, Dr. Datta, and Bishop Azariah told them the fascinating story of Indian missions and the history of Christianity in Asia. A new sense of race brotherhood is ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... love in it were of the sort. All I insist, however, on my reader's believing is, that it showed, in a youth like Robert, not less but more love that he could go against love's sweetness for the sake of love's greatness. Literally, not figuratively, Robert would kiss the place where her foot had trod; but I know that once he rose from such a kiss 'to trace the hyperbola by ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... last, turning away, "this is not for us. The measureless sadness we feel, but the triumphant reflection of ancestral greatness is for them alone. Heavens! what an artist he must have been who composed this!—if it be not like the Iliad, the work of an age ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... more desirable than breathless struggle for existence, furious trampling down of the weak by the strong, huge fortunes accumulated out of the toil of others, to be handed down to those who had done nothing to earn them. Be it ours to maintain that the greatness of a nation depends not on the number of its great proprietors, on the wealth of its great capitalists, or the splendour of its great nobles, but on the absence of poverty among its people, on the education and refinement of its masses, on the universality of enjoyment in life.... ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... this rare lesson, and in this case he says: "I had a secret satisfaction in the greatness of the difficulties which were in the way. So far from being cast down on account of them, they delighted my soul; for I only desired to do the will of the Lord in ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... point out further that within the last few months we have doubled the difficulty at a stroke by sharing the government of our country with women and admitting them to Parliament. It beseems a great nation to take great risks: to dare them is at once a sign and a property of greatness: and for good or ill—but for limitless good as we trust—our country has quietly made this enterprise amid the preoccupations of the greatest War in its annals. Look at it as you will—let other generations judge it as they will—it ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... were then laying in the heart of neighbouring states the foundation of that formidable greatness to which France has now risen: the police was somewhat neglected; the highways were impassable by day, and the streets by night; but robberies were committed elsewhere with greater impunity. Young ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... this enormous wall, fortified by numerous towers at short distance; and I wondered at the grandeur of the ancients, exhibited even in their unreasonable caprices of despotism—that greatness to which the effeminate rulers of the East cannot aspire, in our day, even in imagination. The wonders of Babylon, the lake of Moeris, the pyramids of the Pharaohs, the endless wall of China, and this huge bulwark, built in sterile places, on the summits ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... and witness the works of the Almighty in the wilderness. I hold it to be an object worthy the ambition of a great man to act the part of pioneer to the missionary and the merchant in nature's wildest and most inaccessible regions; and although I pretend not to greatness, I endeavour, humbly, to ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... give distinction and results to utterance and that make a journal worth while. The editorial page has been practically abandoned by most journals, because most journals have been abandoned by their editors: they have become printed counting-rooms. With all their greatness, their crowds of writers, and masses of readers, and piles of cablegrams, they are not able to produce the kind of man who is able to say a thing the kind of way that will make everybody stop and listen to him, cablegrams and all. Horace Greeley and ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... with strangers. When manoeuvring with them, he could play, if not a deeper, at least a safer game; and of this he himself was perfectly conscious. Had his heart been capable of any noble or dignified emotion, he must necessarily have admired the greatness of his daughter's mind, her indomitable love of truth, and the beautiful and undying tenderness with which her affection brooded over the memory of her mother. Selfishness, however, and that low ambition which places human happiness in the enjoyment of wealth, and ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... long cushion, rapt from another compartment, was placed on the knees of the quartette, and the game began. The ticket-collector examined the tickets of Brindley and Edward Henry, and somehow failed to notice that they were of the wrong colour. And at this proof of their influential greatness Messieurs Garvin & ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... desires, endless compassion, passionate envy. An epileptic genius whose very exterior speaks of the stream of mildness that fills his heart, of the wave of almost insane perspicuity that gets into his head, finally the ambition, the greatness of endeavour, and the envy that small-mindedness begets.... His heroes are not only poor and crave sympathy, but are half imbeciles, sensitive creatures, noble drabs, often victims of hallucinations, talented epileptics, enthusiastic ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... be perceptible, has yet its effect upon all objects: in some cases it alters, or rather bestows, a colour which does not properly belong to them; frequently impairs their form and beauty, but sometimes adds to their sublimity, and invests them with imposing greatness, proportioned to the obscurity with which ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... are just such as a majority of the most distinguished Americans, in all walks of life, including Lincoln and Garfield, have had to contend with, and which they have made the stepping stone to their future greatness. Mr. Bush's strong and life-like illustrations add much to the ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... arguments and examples, proved the instability of every condition by which envy or ambition are excited. They have set before our eyes all the calamities to which we are exposed from the frailty of nature, the influence of accident, or the stratagems of malice; they have terrified greatness with conspiracies, and riches with anxieties, wit with criticism, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... grandeur. The chronicles of the Old World told of many a generation gone by. They traced the rise and fall of many empires, and the succession of many dynasties. They recorded the advance of art and science. They contained long lists of names inscribed, some in the annals of human greatness, some on the pages of the Book of Life. They spoke of the glorious triumphs of the Church, and enumerated the nations gathered within her fold, and still, on that fair land of the West, no step had trodden but that of the Red Man; on its ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... revived romantic fiction. Very great Frenchmen or French writers had written novels; but, with the exceptions of Lesage in Gil Blas, Prevost in that everlastingly wonderful "single-speech" of his, and Rousseau in La Nouvelle Heloise, none had written a great novel. No single writer of any greatness had been a novelist pure and simple. No species[433] of fiction, except the short tale, in which, through varying forms, France held an age-long mastery, had been thoroughly developed ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... that of Holland. For a period covering a little more than the seventeenth century, Holland, like some of the Italian city-states at an earlier period, stood on the dangerous heights of greatness, beside nations so vastly her superior in territory and population as to make it inevitable that sooner or later she must fall from the glorious and perilous eminence to which she had been raised by her own indomitable ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... aroused by the roll of drums and the shouts of hundreds, calling to a mass meeting in Court House Square. Thither we followed the crowd, listening for awhile to the blatant Southern orators roaring about the future greatness of the 'Mother of Presidents,' deploring the reign of carpet-baggers and calling for a white man's government amidst the shouts of the great unwashed; while the sons of Ham looked silently and ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... was held, where, through the influence of Simon de Montfort, a most important new class of members—the commons—was present, which was destined to give it its future greatness. In addition to the nobles and prelates, the sheriffs were ordered to summon two simple knights from each county and two citizens from each of the more flourishing towns to attend and take ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... ungodliness of decent people. I am not here to-day to call your attention simply, as people sometimes do, to the lowest classes of society. They are bad enough. They are a festering mass at the foundation of all the greatness of the nation; they are a mass which, if not corrected in their tendencies, may at any time be quickened into an activity that will utterly wreck the entire superstructure of all that as Christians and as Englishmen we hold dear. But higher up, where there ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... truth is that Shakespeare passed through life unnoticed because he was so much greater than his contemporaries that they could not see him at all in his true proportions. It was Jonson, the nearest to him in greatness, who alone saw him at all fairly and appreciated his ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... provide them with 'a good laugh' will doubtless prefer this book, which is packed from cover to cover with mirth-provoking material, to those other books by the same author, in which humour acts chiefly as train-bearer to tragedy. The determination of Charles to invent for himself a greatness which he is incapable of otherwise achieving, and its effect on his circle of intimates, are set forth in an exceedingly lively story, the plot of which it would be unfair ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... was wilder and more rapacious than the waves of the sea; she knew that it needed only a voice, a Moses, to set all this human sea in motion, hurling it irresistibly onward until it should sweep away all the glory of wealth and greatness in its blood-red waves. ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... gone, but that the ecclesiastical system was a tolerated humbug which served many interests. Burckhardt quotes[2230] a passage from Guicciardini in which the latter says that he had held positions under many popes, which compelled him to wish for their greatness, on account of his own advantage. Otherwise he would have loved Martin Luther, not in order to escape the restraints of the current church doctrine, but in order to see the corrupt crew brought to order, so that they must have learned to live either without power or ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... turning the head, the clustering spires of Laon, the white chalk cliffs of Kent, and this vast pile of building, like a ship at sea, that seems to lie at anchor in the heart of the "sounding plain." Nothing, perhaps, in Europe is so strangely significant of vanished greatness—not even Rome, with its shattered Forum, or Venice, with a hundred marble palaces—as this huge fourteenth-century building, with a facade that is four hundred and thirty-six feet long, and with its lofty central tower, that was built for the pride and need of Ypres, and as a market for the ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... better. Health is a splendid possession in the battle of life. The men of great physical vitality, as a rule, achieve most; other things being equal, their success in life is sure. Everything shows that the greatness of great men is almost as much a bodily affair as a mental one. It has been computed that the average length of life of the most eminent philosophers, naturalists, artists, jurists, physicians, musical ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... I don't. The greatness of a country does not in all cases turn on its great rogues. New-York and Washington may not assent; but, Mr. PUNCHINELLO, isn't it so? These may give it character, but of the sort nobody is anxious to carry in his pocket as a wedge by which to enter good, genteel society. "Character," says a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... less exemplary. It is the testimony of one of his contemporaries: "He had more virtues and less faults, than I ever yet knew in any human being; and the goodness of his head, admirable as it was, was exceeded by that of his heart." His own measure of true greatness, humanly speaking, he has left behind him, in very emphatic words: "If I am asked, who is the greatest man? I answer, the best. And if I am required to say, who is the best? I reply, he that has deserved most of ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... consented to this marriage which I desire with all my heart. I am an old man, Monsieur, and it was a happy hour to me when I knew that, after I had gone, she would have at her side, one who loved her and who would help her in continuing our common labours. I love and esteem Monsieur Darzac both for his greatness of heart and for his devotion to science. But, two days before the tragedy, for I know not what reason, my daughter declared to me that she would never ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... Alfune, who had founded St. Giles's Church, Cripplegate, in the year 1090; and there is a story to the effect that three noble travellers, or merchants, from Byzantium were present at the foundation, when they foretold its future greatness, and were consulted by Rahere as to the design and character of the building while ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... just powers from the consent of the governed." "No man is good enough to govern another against his will." Great truths, from men whose greatness and moral elevation the world admires. But there is a higher authority than Jefferson or Lincoln, Who said: "If a man smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." Yet he who acted literally on even that divine injunction toward the Malays ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... are all very admirable things, but it is the men and women with vices who have ruled the world. The good die young because there is no useful work for them to do. No really satisfactory person, from a moral point of view, ever achieved greatness!" ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... extensive tracts of Africa now unpeopled solely on account of the want of surface water. We may be allowed to speculate a little at least on the fact of much greater vegetation, which, from whatever source it comes, presents for South Africa prospects of future greatness which we can not hope for in Central Australia. As the interior districts of the Cape Colony are daily becoming of higher value, offering to honest industry a fair remuneration for capital, and having a climate unequaled in salubrity ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone |
