"Incomparable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to give life or fulfilment to twenty heroic existences, twenty destinies of gladness or sorrow. Not a single event ever paused as it passed by her threshold; yet did every event she could claim take place in her heart, with incomparable force and beauty, with matchless precision and detail. We say that nothing ever happened; but did not all things really happen to her much more directly and tangibly than unto most of us, seeing that everything that took place about her, everything ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... garden in the starlight, with their ears full of those sounds of strange insects which, though they are supposed to be, all over the world, a part of the magic of summer nights, seemed to the Baroness to have beneath these western skies an incomparable resonance. ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... Paolo Veronese, Schiavone, and the other painters who, striving in friendly rivalry, had been engaged a short time before on the ceiling of the great hall in the same building. This noble design contains a pronounced reminiscence of Raphael's incomparable allegorical figures in the Camera della Segnatura, but excels them as much in decorative splendour and facile breadth of execution as it falls behind them in sublimity ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... into the bond that held the two countries together. Nor was it material unity alone that was attained; in the utterances of the head of the Republic the highest aspirations of Canadians for the future ordering of the world found incomparable expression. ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... everything that means civilization. Of the ancient mathematical and astronomical knowledge a corner of which is revealed to us by the Maya glyph remains, only a distorted fragment appears in the Mexican, where also hieroglyphs have yielded to a cruder rebus-writing. The stately and incomparable compositions and architecture of Palenque, Copan and Quirigua have yielded to the ball courts and local strifes of Chichen Itza—all this following the very course of changing historical succession preserved in the Chronicles. The later the ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... has so many thoughts and but one troubled thinker. Indeed, were I now to be asked—Were the fingers cold of these bright ladies? Were their eyes blue, or hazel, or brown? or, haply, were Dianeme's that incomparable, dark, sparkling grey? Wore Julia azure, and Electra white? And was that our poet wrote our poet's only, or truly theirs, and so even more lovely?—I fear I could ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... did not suspect the calamities that awaited her, till the close of the year. She gained an additional three months of comparative happiness. But she purchased it at a very dear rate. Perhaps no human creature ever suffered greater misery, than dyed the whole year 1795, in the life of this incomparable woman. It was wasted in that sort of despair, to the sense of which the mind is continually awakened, by a glimmering of fondly cherished, ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... employments; but horsemanship is the greatest pride and passion of their souls; nor is there an individual who does not at least possess several of these noble animals, which, though small in size, are admirably adapted for the fatigues of war and the chase, and endowed with incomparable swiftness. As to the Scythians themselves, they excel all other nations, unless it be the Arabs, in their courage and address in riding; without a saddle, or even a bridle, their young men will vault upon an unbacked courser, and keep their ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... attention of all persons in Virginia who might have important interests in litigation. His great renown throughout the country, his high personal character, his overwhelming gifts in argument, his incomparable gifts in persuasion, were such as to ensure an almost dominant advantage to any cause which he should espouse before any tribunal. Confining himself, therefore, to his function as an advocate, and taking only such cases as were worth his attention, he was immediately ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... that which before she had uncertainly experienced, the immodest character of that mother's beauty. With the pearls in her fair hair, with neck and arms bare in a corsage the delicate green tint of which showed to advantage the incomparable splendor of her skin, with her dewy lips, with her voluptuous eyes shaded by their long lashes, the dogaresse looked in the centre of that table like an empress and like a courtesan. She resembled the Caterina Cornaro, the gallant queen ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... moral and mental attribute in a high degree, and if any one was more marked than another it was his incomparable instinct against oppression, which his wonderful anti-slavery record accentuated as his chief endowment, though in all respects he was well equipped for a leader among men. That instinct, it might be said, fixed his destiny. At Jefferson's request ...
— The Jefferson-Lemen Compact • Willard C. MacNaul
... duped, for they had just acquitted him. He was saved. This thought caused him to experience a feeling of delightful moisture all along his body, a warmth that restored flexibility to his limbs and to his intelligence. He continued to act his part of a weeping friend with incomparable science and assurance. At the bottom of his heart, he felt brutal satisfaction; and he thought of Therese who was in bed ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... said, "the big hotel you passed in coming here is mine. I built it to prevent a more hideous one being built, and let it to the proprietor. You might like to ascend the tower. The view at sundown is incomparable. At present the hotel is shut, but the guardian will show you everything if ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... of spirit over matter. Walls were broken up into pillars and soaring arcades; monotonous facework was tolerated less and less, and every available inch was moulded into a living semblance. The result may be studied in the incomparable facades of many of the cathedrals in the North of France; and in tower-pieces almost vibrating with life and passion such as that of St. Stephen's in Vienna. The conflict between matter and pure form is settled—for the first and only time—in Gothic ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... reward. Having attained the highest renown as a naval officer, he fell in the great sea-fight with the Dutch, off Southwold-bay, on the 28th of May, 1672. Evelyn, in his diary of the 31st, gives the following high character of the Earl:—"Deplorable was the loss of that incomparable person, and my particular friend. He was learned in sea affairs, in politics, in mathematics, and in music: he had been on divers embassies, was of a sweet and obliging temper, sober, chaste, very ingenious, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... our sins, God Almighty should take from us my incomparable sister (forgive me, my dear brother, but to intimate what may be, although I hourly pray, as her trying minute approaches, that it will not), you will, for her sake, take care that her honest parents have not the loss of your favour, to deepen the inconsolable one, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Langdon was right and more. They were getting continuous practice not only in the art of living without food, sleep or rest, but also of going everywhere on a run instead of a walk. Those who survived it would be incomparable soldiers. ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... appeared—I forgot every thing but him.—Such a countenance!—Such an expression of latent malice and revenge, of every thing detestable in human nature! Whether speaking or silent, the Jew fixed and kept possession of my attention. It was an incomparable piece of acting: much as my expectations had been raised, it far surpassed any thing I had conceived—I forgot it was Macklin, I thought only of Shylock. In my enthusiasm I stood up, I pressed forward, I leaned far over towards ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... Sydney sate there in the same group with his lovely sister, the Countess of Pembroke, and with Edmund Spenser, the poet of 'the Faerie Queen.' Of the first of these eminent persons, it is enough to say, that his own age conceded to him the style of 'the Incomparable,' and that posterity has amply ratified the title. The second is known to us by that affectionate tribute of her brother's love, which has identified the name of the Countess of Pembroke with his principal work; nor will ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... Skelton was poet laureate to Henry VII. Court, and refers in his poems to his wearing of the white and green of Tudor liveries.[45] He celebrated in verse Arthur's creation as Prince of Wales and Henry's as Duke of York;[46] and before the younger prince was nine years old, this "incomparable light and ornament of British Letters," as Erasmus styles him, was directing Henry's ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... pear getting "sleepy;" and I'm pretty nearly in the worst temper I can be in, for W. W. But what are these blessed feathers? Everything that's best of grass and clouds and chrysoprase. What incomparable little creature wears such things, or lets fall! The "fringe of flame" is Carlyle's, not mine, but we feel so much alike, that you may often mistake one ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... instance, can a man include the song "Come away, come away, death" from Twelfth Night, and omit "O mistress mine, where are you roaming?"; or include Amiens' two songs from As you Like It, and omit the incomparable "It was a lover and his lass"? Or what but stark insensibility can explain the omission of "Take, O take those lips away," and the bridal song "Roses, their sharp spines being gone," that opens The ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... life in lodgings in New York, as in other large cities, is the incomparable solitude attainable in that blessed state of deliverance from promiscuous "board." One may dwell for a twelvemonth in lodgings for single gentlemen, without incurring the obligation of knowing by sight, or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... younger brothers. O child, I will relate what will please thee highly, O son of Pandu! Do thou listen to it, O king, with Krishna and the Rishis that are with thee. O bull of the Bharata race, Partha hath obtained from Rudra that incomparable weapon for the acquisition of which thou hadst sent him to heaven. That fierce weapon, known by the name of Brahma-sira which arose after Amrila, and which Rudra had obtained by means of ascetic austerities, hath been acquired by ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... the aesthetic imagination. Its main function, however, is to safeguard the German people. Its faults are the faults of its virtues. Other German writers praise the German government especially for its efficiency, for its incomparable body of officials—indeed for its very clock-work perfection that Bergson hates in Prussian life. Lehmann goes so far as to say that the German state had reached the perfect balance between individualism and communism. These writers see plenty of self-realization in German society, and quite ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... "Here you witness the incomparable scenery of an old, new land with its snow-clad peaks, its magnificent mountain heights, its awe-inspiring canyons, its vast plains, its picturesque villages, its ancient ruins, its historic towns, ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... for his blood, and repeatedly tried to shed it. Had he not been a man of imperturbable temper, dauntless courage and consummate skill in fence, his life would have been a short one. But neither anger nor danger ever deprived him of his presence of mind; he was an incomparable swordsman; and he had a peculiar way of disarming opponents which moved the envy of all the duellists of his time. His friends said that he had never given a challenge, that he had never refused one, that he had never taken a life, and yet that he had never fought without having his antagonist's ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fecundity, her seductiveness, her empire! Moreover, even the decorative figures of the pilasters at the corners of the frescoes celebrate the triumph of the flesh: there are the twenty young men radiant in their nakedness, with incomparable splendour of torso and of limb, and such intensity of life that a craze for motion seems to carry them off, bend them, throw them over in superb attitudes. And between the windows are the giants, the prophets and the sibyls—man and woman deified, with inordinate wealth of muscle ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... came from the match! O incomparable marvel! Clouds of smoke rose from the cigarette, real smoke, of which the cripple at once knew ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... Incomparable Sibyl cease, I pray! Hand us thy liquor without more delay. And to the very brim the goblet crown! My friend he is, and need not be afraid; Besides, he is a man of many a grade, Who ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... light of Emerson. Emerson's specific influence on slavery or any other social problem is hard to measure, for his power was thrown on the illumination and inspiration of the individual man. But in the large view his was an incomparable influence in diffusing that temper of mingled courage and sweetness, the idealist's vision and the soldier's valor, which is the world's best help and hope. He spoke out against slavery whenever he saw that his word was needed; he vindicated the right of the Abolitionists to ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... "you're incomparable! What an undefeatable combination you and I would have made if we'd met twenty ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... aunt's copulations were to me more exciting than you can imagine. You will have observed, too, what is the real quarter to which, when excited, I pay my devoirs. Glorious as is the backside of your incomparable aunt, your young charms, virgin in that respect, excited me still more. I began by gentle touches, and then tried the insertion of my finger, when I saw you were far too busy operating within the orbit of your lustful and lusty aunt to observe or even feel what I was doing. I found a facility ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... plant—stunted by the secateurs, yet vigorous—which showed, with three or four buds as yet closed and green, one solitary bloom, pure white and of incomparable shape. ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... you regard your individuality as something so very delightful, excellent, perfect, and incomparable that there is nothing better than it; would you not exchange it for another, according to what is told us, that is better and ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the point of fine frenzy, nonconformist in the matter of card-playing, and thereafter frank bandit with a high ethic as to the superiority of plain robbery under arms over mere vulgar swindling—a gentleman with a code, in fact; his strictly incomparable "secretary," Ricardo of the rolling eyes and gait and deathly treacherous knife, philogynist sans phrase; and Pedro, their groom, a reincarnated Caliban. It may also be noted that Heyst has a freak servant, the disappearing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... replied that he was entirely satisfied with the one he had received. He regarded it and esteemed it as a thing of gold, and said that Michael Angelo's offer proved his noble soul and generosity, inasmuch as when he had already made what could not be surpassed and was incomparable, he still wanted to ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... porticos. Any old English village, or cluster of farm-houses, drawn with all its ins and outs, and haystacks, and palings, is sure to be lovely; much more a French one. French landscape is generally as much superior to English as Swiss landscape is to French; in some respects, the French is incomparable. Such scenes as that avenue on the Seine, which I have recommended you to buy the engraving of, admit no rivalship in their expression of graceful rusticity and cheerful peace, and in the beauty of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... already five o clock, and in this incomparable city of Samarkand scene succeeded scene. There! I am getting into that way of looking at it now. Certainly the spectacle should finish before midnight. But as we start at eight o'clock, we shall have to lose the end of the piece. But ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... gilded wainscoting and various quaint little medallion pictures of shepherds and shepherdesses, and other fancies of the time of Madame de Sevigne. Those little shepherds were supposed to have looked down upon la mere beaute, and upon la plus jolie fille de France as she danced her incomparable minuets. Those grand saloons were now devoted to the humble service of a school for young ladies. But on the third floor, to which one ascended by a fine stone stairway, broad and easy, with elaborate iron railings, ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... newspapers of the province said, the sister of M. Desalleux, receiving the compliments of all the ladies around her; while, at a little distance, the old father was weeping with joy at the sight of the noble son and incomparable orator whom he ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... sun set with an incomparable glory one evening in May, eighteen thirty-five. The white, flat-roofed, terraced houses—each one in its flowery court—and the domes and spires of the Missions, with their gilded crosses, had a mirage-like beauty in the rare, soft atmosphere, ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... there was a serious outbreak of Asiatic cholera in London, and my father determined to have the water of the celebrated spring analysed. There were loud protests at this:—what, analyse the finest drinking-water in England! My father, however, persisted, and the result of the analysis was that our incomparable drinking-water was found to contain thirty per cent. of organic matter. The analyst reported that fifteen per cent. of the water must be pure sewage. My father had the spring sealed and bricked up at once, but it is a marvel ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... translation permanently established. The English Bible, on the other hand, was the growth of centuries. But to the contributions of able hands through many generations, during which the English language itself passed through a wonderful formative development, the incomparable beauty of King James' version owes its existence, and our literature ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... offered L2,000 and all his expenses to go and dispose of a valuable property in New York. His annual income was guessed at L12,000. It is said that half the landed property in England had passed under his hammer. Robins, with incomparable powers of blarney and soft sawder, wrote poetical and alluring advertisements (attributed by some to eminent literary men), which were irresistibly attractive. His notice of the sale of the twenty-seven years' lease of the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... in his earlier verse illustrated the same sentimental primitivism. It would be unfair to quote Peter Bell, for that is Wordsworth at his dreadful worst, but even in Tinlern Abbey, which has passages of incomparable majesty and beauty, there are lines in which he ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... deliver, with a dogma in one's right hand by way of pistol; to cover reams of paper in a galloping, headstrong vein; to cry louder and louder over everything as it comes up, and make no distinction in one's enthusiasm over the most incomparable matters; to prove one's entire want of sympathy for the jaded, literary palate, by calling, not a spade a spade, but a hatter a hatter, in a lyrical apostrophe; - this, in spite of all the airs of inspiration, is not the way to do it. It may be very wrong, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his treatise, "Theatre Italien," speaks of a Scaramouch, who, waiting for his master, Harlequin, seats and plays on the guitar. Suddenly, by Pasquariel, he is thrown into a fright. "It was then," says Gherardi, "that incomparable model of our most eminent actors displayed the miracles of his art; that art which paints the passions in the face, throws them into every gesture, and through a whole scene of frights upon frights, conveys the most powerful expression of ludicrous terror. This man moved all hearts by the simplicity ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... the wagon, through a clump of syringa bushes, and up the stone steps to the terrace, and after me galloped one of those incomparable cossack riders—an Uhlan, lance in rest, setting his wiry little horse to the stone ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... worth visiting at least twice a year: in spring when the Poet's Narcissus flowers in great clumps under the north hedge, and the columbines grow breast-high—pink, blue, and blood-red; and again in autumn, for the sake of an apple which we call the gillyflower—small and shy, but of incomparable flavour—and for a gentle melancholy which haunts the spot like—yes, like a human face, and with faint companionable smiles and murmurs of ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... spottes, her blemishes and hir warts are deare unto me. I am no perfect French man but by this great citie, great in people, great in regard of the felicitie of hir situation, but above all great and incomparable in varietie and diversitie of commodities; the glory of France and one of the noblest and chiefe ornaments of the world. God of his mercy free hir and chase away all our divisions from hir. So long as she shall continue, so long shall I never ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... her to the seclusion of his country house, where she lived in elegance, luxury and honor. But as the years passed her malady increased; her presence became dangerous; in a word, the gentleman, distinguished and noble, saw the advertisement of my 'Calm Retreat,' my institution incomparable, and he wrote to me. In a word, he liked my terms and brought to me his young relative, so lovely and so unfortunate. Ah! he is a good man, this officer, so gallant, so chivalrous; but she ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... sex is adorable in many ways, but in the abandon of a genuine love-letter it is incomparable. I have seen a string of women's love-letters, in which the creature enlaced herself about the object of her worship as that South American parasite which clasps the tree to which it has attached itself, begins with a slender succulent network, feeds on the trunk, spreads ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... been circumstantial, that you might have a full view of the noble, disinterested Lady Mary Sutton:—you may gather now, from whence sprang her unbounded affection for the incomparable, unfortunate ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... first trip ever made by white men up the great river. How many millions have made it since! But he, at this gentlest time of year, won with the magic not only of what he saw, but of the unknown that lay before him—what must have been his sensations! As reach after reach of the incomparable panorama spread itself out quietly before him, with its beauty of color, its majesty of form, its broad gleam of placid current, the sheer lift of its brown cliffs, its mighty headlands setting their titanic shoulders across his path, its toppling pinnacles assuming the likeness of ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... a magnificent diamond of enormous size and incomparable purity and of that undefined blue which clear water takes from the sky which it reflects, the blue which we can just suspect in newly-washed linen. People admired it, went into raptures over it ... and cast terrified glances round the victim's ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... peculiar restraint of line, an effect of lady-like concession to the ruling mode, a temperance of ornament, marked the whole array, and stamped it with the unmistakable character of Boston. Her clear tints of lip and cheek and eye were incomparable; her blond hair gave weight to the poise of her delicate head by its rich and decent masses. She had a look of independent innocence, an angelic expression of extremely nice young fellow blending with a subtle maidenly charm. She indicated her surprise at seeing Mr. Arbuton by pressing the point ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... of the incomparable renown of the prodigious wisdom of Solomon, as also of the exceeding great liberality with which he accorded proof thereof to all that craved such assurance, being gone forth over well-nigh all the earth, many from divers parts were wont to resort to him ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... EARLY LIFE OF THE UNIVERSITY.—Nearly four years had passed, when the Professor of music started out with a band of colored youth, who had been named the Jubilee Singers. That they could sing with incomparable sweetness he knew. That the songs they were to sing had incomparable pathos no one who heard them doubted. But nothing short of sublimest faith could have sent forth this band of friendless youth on their ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 01, January, 1900 • Various
... "Le Vol Nuptial" of his charming book on the life of bees Maeterlinck has given an incomparable picture of the tragic ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... pacific Conduct, from the Capitulation of Limerick, to this Day; and from their unanimous and chearful Obedience to our Civil Government, e're long obtain some Mitigation of their Affairs; such the benevolent Temper and Disposition of the present incomparable Reign! Some late excellent(3) Pamphlets, wherein these Gentlemen's political Principles are fully and clearly explained, shew of what signal Advantage it had been to the Numbers, Industry, Health, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... 'Mountain of Light.' A dazzling splendour lighted up the features of the divine countenance. Hiouen-thsang was lost in contemplation and wonder, and would not turn his eyes away from the sublime and incomparable object.... After he awoke from his trance, he called in six men, and commanded them to light a fire in the cave, in order to burn incense; but, as the approach of the light made the shadow of Buddha disappear, the fire was extinguished. Then ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... on knee, face in thin, clutching hands, slippered feet on fender, thinking, thinking once again. Thinking now of the gates of Paradise that had opened to her for a few brief weeks. Of the man who never had to make good, being the wonder of wonders of men, the delicious companion, the incomparable lover, the all-compelling revealer, the great, gay, scarcely, to her woman's limited power of vision, comprehended heroic soldier. Of the terrifying meaninglessness of life, now that her God of Very God, ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... was now my sister, and who was in authority over the rest, that the bishops loved her as a daughter, the abbots as a sister, and the laity as a mother. All alike marvelled at her religious zeal, her good judgment and the sweetness of her incomparable patience in all things. The less often she allowed herself to be seen, shutting herself up in her cell to devote herself to sacred meditations and prayers, the more eagerly did those who dwelt without demand her presence and the ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... contact with others. Excess vitality may go into shouting or song,[1] but language as an instrument of specific utterance comes to have a more definite use and provocation. Man, as already pointed out, is a highly gregarious animal, and language is his incomparable instrument for sharing his emotions and ideas and experience with others. The whole process of education, of the transmission of culture from the mature to the younger members of a society, is made possible through this instrument, whereby achievements and traditions are preserved ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... each other, were rising in the middle like the hinge of a toggle-joint into the most momentous crisis in the nation's history. It looked as if the strong man, with his almost blasphemous intolerance of disunion, his columnlike power of supporting, and his incomparable intellect, was to stand in the background and watch the nightmare play from afar. He fought for his place in the forefront of the battle with a great fervor of bitterness, and the possibility of defeat weighed upon his glowering ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... at once that through this young man I soon became an amateur of the remarkable North-American idioms, of humour and incomparable brevities often more interesting than those evolved by the thirteen or more dialects of my own Naples. Even at our first breakfast I began to catch lucid glimpses of the intention in many of his almost incomprehensible statements. I was able, even, to penetrate his meaning ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... type to whom praise acts as a tonic of incomparable worth, especially when he who administers the praise is respected. And there are employers, teachers and parents who ignore this fact entirely, who use praise too little or not at all and who rely on adverse criticism. ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... and rather listen to his talk than hear Nicolini. Was ever man so gracefully drunk as my Lord Castlewood? I would give anything to carry my wine (though, indeed, Dick bore his very kindly, and plenty of it, too) like this incomparable young man. When he is sober he is delightful; and when tipsy, perfectly irresistible." And referring to his favourite, Shakespeare (who was quite out of fashion until Steele brought him back into the mode), Dick compared Lord Castlewood to ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... From being a rather matter-of-fact, indifferent observer, he becomes a bewildering cavalier bent on conquest at any cost. I am swept aside as if I were a parcel of rags. For two days I stood between him and the incomparable Miss Guile. Then he suddenly arouses himself. My cake is dough. I am nobody. My feet get cold, as they say in America,—although I don't know why they say it. What has the temperature of one's feet to do with it? See! There they ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... opinion that all human encomium falls short of what it deserves. In fact, in the midst of all the marvels which we find in the life of St. Francis, we are compelled to admit that this is the one which, without any exaggeration, may be termed incomparable. What can there be so beautiful as to be visibly clothed with Jesus Christ, to bear on the body the lively resemblance of those wounds which are the price of our redemption, the source of life, and the pledge of salvation? What interior conformity must ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... contributions to our knowledge of the French Revolution; but such works as Lavisse's full-length portrait of Louis XIV, Segur's volumes on Turgot and Necker, Sorel's massive treatise on Europe and the Revolution, and Vandal's incomparable presentation of the Consulate rank as high in scholarship as ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... might serve as an antidote to the word of mental distempers, and awaken the most callous and sarcastic mind to confess the dignity of our Nature, and the beneficence of our God. In stating to you the merits of HOWARD, I might expatiate with delight on the various qualities of this incomparable man; I might trace his progress through the different periods of a life always singular and always instructive. I could not be checked by any fear of overstepping the modesty of Truth in the celebration of Virtue, so solid and so extensive, that ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... sensitive on the point of vanity, and disinclined to any measure not originating with himself.[12] The King's irresolution was perfectly natural. How could he dissolve the first Chamber, avowedly royalist, which had been assembled for twenty-five years,—a Chamber he had himself declared incomparable, and which contained so many of his oldest and most faithful friends? What dangers to himself and his dynasty might spring up on the day of such a decree! and even now, what discontent and anger already existed in his family and amongst his devoted adherents, and consequently what ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... these important historic facts, it is certainly strange that any parents, who permit their children to read all sorts of trashy and worthless books, without protest, should pretend they do not want them to read the Bible, the one infallible and incomparable book, that does not become old and out-of-date like the best of other books, but is as fresh and life giving to day as twenty centuries ago. The number of those, who have opposed the reading of the Bible in the public schools have comprised but ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... spirit, distracted by his miscellaneous studies and his varied interests. Of all the elements that entered into his early culture, indeed, Goethe gives the first place to the Bible. "To it, almost alone," he expressly says, "did I owe my moral education." To the Bible as an incomparable presentment of the national life and development of a people, and the most precious of possessions for human culture, Goethe bore undeviating testimony at every period of his life. It need hardly be said ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... building were hidden over with foliage and fruit, the architect would stand in much the same situation as the writer of allegories. The Faery Queen was an allegory, I am willing to believe; but it survives as an imaginative tale in incomparable verse. The case of Bunyan is widely different; and yet in this also Allegory, poor nymph, although never quite forgotten, is sometimes rudely thrust against the wall. Bunyan was fervently in earnest; with 'his ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who have been raised to the Supreme Pontificate can be cited Denys, and Gregory of incomparable memory. Now Gregory, amongst many other things by which he furthered the advantage of the Church, had the glory of being the chief organizer of the Office for clerical use." ...
— St. Gregory and the Gregorian Music • E. G. P. Wyatt
... he cannot get out of it, and has hardly more likelihood of seeing the Northern Heights than of visiting the mountains of the moon. Yet Hampstead Heath, which he could see in a morning for the cost of a threepenny ride in the Tube, is one of the incomparable things of Nature. I doubt whether there is such a wonderful open space within the limits of any other great city. It has hints of the seaside and the mountain, the moor and the down in most exquisite union, and the ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... and Pitt's "AEneid." I recollect, also, your spouting passages from Pope, that I learned from hearing you recite them before—many years before I read them myself. But after you lost, so young, that incomparable guide, you had none left. Our dear -father was always abroad, usefully or ornamentally; and, after giving you a year in Paris with the best masters that could be procured, you came home at fifteen or sixteen to be exclusively occupied by musical studies, save ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... Muzzarelli, then by his grand-daughter, Giuseppina Roux, and last by S.S. Genovesi and Campi; so that it had the honour, which it still possesses, of being chosen by Emperors, Kings, Princes, and Ambassadors, and by great men of all countries whose artistic travels bring them to this incomparable city, so justly called the ...
— A Summary History of the Palazzo Dandolo • Anonymous
... part of the history of European colonisation more full of romance and of heroism than the early history of French Canada; an incomparable atmosphere of gallantry and devotion seems to overhang it. From the first, despite their small numbers and their difficulties, these settlers showed a daring in exploration which was only equalled by the Spaniards, and to which there ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... not conceivably have been interpreted otherwise by contemporaries; nor could Swift have been unaware of its provocative impact upon his readers. Oldmixon remarks ironically of this part the Proposal—and small wonder that he does—that it is "incomparable, full of the most delicate Eulogy In the World." Furthermore Swift knew, in view of his position as leading writer for the Tory ministry, that to sign his name was to invite attack—even if he wrote, ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... is the Prince Charming among correspondents. One cannot love him as one loves Charles Lamb and men of a deeper and more imaginative tenderness. But how incomparable he is as an acquaintance! How exquisite a specimen—hand-painted—for the collector of the choice creatures of the ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... to talk business. Mr. Balch had found it quite as difficult to entice Mr. Bixby away from the boxes and the Railroad Room. The weeks drifted on, until twelve went by, and then Mr. Bixby found himself, with his block of river towns and one senator, in the incomparable position of being the arbiter of the fate of the Consolidation Bill in the House and Senate. No wonder Mr. Balch wanted to buy the services of that famous ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... skippers for twenty years, and every item he had accumulated Rezanov had extracted. To-day he had drawn further information from Concha and her brothers; and their artless descriptions as well as this incomparable bay had filled him with enthusiasm. What a gift to Russia! What an achievement to his immortal credit! The fog rolled in from the Pacific in great white waves and stealthily enfolded him, obliterated the sea and the land. But he did not see it. ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... it gorgeous? The chapel has been removed! A whole Gothic chapel collected stone by stone! A whole population of statues captured and replaced by these chaps in stucco! One of the most magnificent specimens of an incomparable artistic period confiscated! The chapel, in short, stolen! Isn't it immense? Ah, Monsieur le Juge d'Instruction, what a ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... armies at Chaeronea, 338 B.C., placed all Greece at his feet; his next project was an expedition against Persia, but while preparations were on foot he was assassinated at AEgae; a man of unbridled lust, he was an astute and unscrupulous politician, but of incomparable eloquence, energy, and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... scare us any more. Now we can sing all we want and can live here with you every summer, Cornelli. Oh, we are the happiest creatures in all the world, and it has all happened through you, Cornelli; you wonderful, incomparable Cornelli!" ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... pretences nor gulled by rhetoric; a man who can instinctively see what is important and what is unimportant. But of course the chief external reason, apart from the character of Johnson himself, for his supremacy of fame, is that his memory is enshrined in an incomparable biography. It shows the strange ineptness of Englishmen for literary and artistic criticism, their incapacity for judging a work of art on its own merits, their singular habit of allowing their disapprobation of a man's private ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... been known to protract an already lost battle to lengthen out the delectation of his offspring. The Caesars gave to their people "Bread and the circus!" But they did not usually enter the arena themselves—save in the case of the incomparable bowman of Rome, and then only when he knew that no one dared stand against him. But Boyd Connoway fought many a losing fight that his small citizens might wriggle with delight on their truckles. "The Christians to the lions!" Yes, that was noble. But then they had no choice, ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... the most distinguished moderns. Alberti tells us, that 'we ought not so much to love the likeness as the beauty, and to choose from the fairest bodies, severally, the fairest parts.' Da Vinci uses almost the same words, and desires the painter to form the idea for himself; and the incomparable Raphael thus writes to Castiglione concerning his Galatea: 'To paint a fair one, it is necessary for me to see many fair ones; but because there is so great a scarcity of lovely women, I am constrained to make use of one certain idea, which I have formed in my own fancy.' Guido ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... punsters. "I have indorsed your Bill, Sir," said a pedagogue to a merchant, meaning he had flogged his son William.—My old master the Rev. James Bowyer, the 'Hercules furens' of the phlogistic sect, but else an incomparable teacher,—used to translate, 'Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu',—first reciting the Latin words, and observing that they were the fundamental article of the Peripatetic school,—"You must ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... can spend no word in this brief summary. Fierce fighting, fiery irresistible onslaught; but it went too far, lost all its captured cannon again; and returned only with laurels and a heavy account of killed and wounded,—the leader of it being himself carried home in a very bleeding state. 'Oh, the incomparable troops!' cried Paris;—cried Voltaire withal (as I gather), and in very high company, in that Visit at Aachen. A ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... their ancient footing; restored to them their glorious surnames of Invincible, Incomparable, Terrible, One to Ten, &c. &c., which they had acquired and merited in the field of battle. He recalled to their standards the brave men who had been banished from them; and the army, which was scarcely fourscore thousand strong, soon reckoned on its ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... 1112, an advantage fell to Henry which may have gone far to secure him the remarkable terms of peace with which the war was closed. He arrested Robert of Belleme, his constant enemy and the enemy of all good men, "incomparable in all forms of evil since the beginning of Christian days." He had come to meet the king at Bonneville, to bring a message from Louis, thinking that Henry would be obliged to respect his character as an envoy. Probably the king took the ground that ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... their foes. Yet, though calumny has done its bitterest against him, Hannibal not only dazzles the imagination, but takes captive the heart. He stands out as the incarnation of magnanimity and patriotism and self-sacrificing heroism, no less than of incomparable military genius. Napoleon, the only general who could plausibly challenge the Carthaginian's supremacy, had throughout the greater part of his career an immense superiority to his adversaries in the quality of the forces which he wielded. He had the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... only setting suitable for the breeding and growing of such giants—next to which such land animals as elephants or rhinoceroses are mere dwarves. The liquid masses support the largest known species of mammals and perhaps conceal mollusks of incomparable size or crustaceans too frightful to contemplate, such as 100-meter lobsters or crabs weighing 200 metric tons! Why not? Formerly, in prehistoric days, land animals (quadrupeds, apes, reptiles, birds) were built on a gigantic scale. Our Creator cast them using ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... met her face to face, he shivered with a shock of realisation—her ineffable beauty glowed like coals in a trance of some unearthly devotion. Her human mind was not there—an incomparable ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... pronunciation, it will be seen that they too are impressed by his lively wit as by the loftiness of his thought. It would be possible, too, to extract, for young persons, without modification, admirable passages of incomparable force. But those who have brought out expurgated editions of him, or who have thought to improve him by trying to rewrite him in modern French, have been fools for their pains, and their insulting attempts have had, and always will have, the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... lower-deck ports were often not more than three feet above the water. The Constant Warwick had afterwards many more guns placed in her, so that she ultimately rated as a 46-gun ship, when, from being an incomparable sailer, she became a slug. Mr Pepys remarks on this subject, in 1663 and 1664: "The Dutch and French built ships of two decks, which carried from 60 to 70 guns, and so contrived that they carried their lower guns four feet from the water, and could ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... Ethwald[1802] and De Montfort[1798]. It is the fashion to underrate Horace Walpole; firstly, because he was a nobleman, and secondly, because he was a gentleman; but, to say nothing of the composition of his incomparable letters, and of the Castle of Otranto[1765], he is the "Ultimus Romanorum," the author of the Mysterious Mother[1768], a tragedy of the highest order, and not a puling love-play. He is the father of the first romance and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... Bedeea-el-Jemal, who possessed incomparable beauty and manifold accomplishments. And seeing that, though a Jinneeyeh, she was of the believing Jinn, I despatched messengers to Suleyman the Great, the son of Daood, offering him her hand in marriage. But a certain Jarjarees, the son ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... at his disposal. The third zone, the most valuable of all, is that which mainly constitutes Southern Siberia. It is the region of the Steppes, that endless natural garden which again makes Siberia an incomparable land. Sheeted with flowers, variegated by woodlands, it holds in its lap ranges of mountains, all running with fairly uniform trend from north to south, while in its heart lies the romantic and mysterious Baikal, the deepest of lakes. Through the spurs of the taiga, running irregularly ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... three minutes afterwards this promise was broken; for as soon as we had discussed the bottle which the incomparable Tim had so opportunely introduced, the master of the house, seeing us at length quite at his mercy, and eager to go on, rose, and said, to ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... incomparable gem of Gothic art, by some marvellous good fortune was neither touched by fire nor shells. It will still be an object for the pilgrimages of ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... twilight, and twilight deepened into a luminous Southern night; the effect was incomparable. The belfries and roofs of mediæval Orange rose in the clear air, overtopping the half ruined theatre in many places. The arch of Marius gleamed white against the surrounding hills, themselves violet and purple in the sunset, their shadow broken here and there by the outline of a crumbling ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... will be discovered in most of the famous names of the cycle.] child of valour and true wisdom, the body did not predominate over the spirit, or the spirit over the body, for as her form was of matchless, incomparable, and inexpressible beauty, so her mind was not a whit less well proportioned and refined. Jocund and happy, breathing innocence and love, she came up the dell. The birds of Angus [Footnote: Angus Ogue's kisses became invisible birds whose singing inspired ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... persons. I see many intelligent and well-informed persons, and some fine geniuses. I have every day a better opinion of the English, who are a very handsome and satisfactory race of men, and, in the point of material performance, altogether incomparable. I have made some vain attempts to end my lectures, but must go on a little longer. With kindest regards ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... one of the giants. Think of it: he had made, on an impulse of out and out creation, the most expressive of all languages, so far as mere sound goes; and as if that were not enough, he had gone ahead and composed in that language incomparable lyrics. The meanings were in the sounds. You couldn't mistake them. Have you ever heard a tiger roar—full steam ahead? There was one piece that began suddenly with a kind of terrible, obsessing, strong purring ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... theirs, when I visited them repeatedly at their pretty rural dwelling near Hereford, where they enjoyed in tranquil repose the easy independence they had earned by honorable toil. There, the lovely garden, every flower of which looked fit to take the first prize at a horticultural show, the incomparable white strawberries, famous throughout the neighborhood, and a magnificent Angola cat, were the delights of my out-of-door life; and perfect kindness and various conversation, fed by an inexhaustible fund of anecdote, an immense knowledge of books, and a long and interesting acquaintance ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... has ever produced. His command of strong, idiomatic, controversial English was unrivaled. His faculty of lucid statement and compact reasoning has never been surpassed. Without the graces of fancy or the arts of rhetoric, he was incomparable in direct, pungent, forceful discussion. A keen observer and an omnivorous reader, he had acquired an immense fund of varied knowledge, and he marshaled facts with singular ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... poured out as lavishly as wealth, and who need never condescend to thoughts of their natural needs. It is the love of Romeo and Juliet amidst the gardens of Verona; or rather the love of Aladdin of the wondrous lamp for some incomparable beauty, deserving to be enshrined in a palace erected by the hands of genii. The passion of the lover must be vivid and splendid enough to stand out worthily against so gorgeous a background; and it must flash and glitter, and ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... division coming out of the last great battle in France, battered and reduced in numbers, but with all {viii} its splendid energy and confidence untouched. The presence of the Canadians there, their incomparable spirit and resolution, the sacrifices they had just been making, with unflinching generosity, for the Empire, seemed only the last consequences of the political struggle for autonomy described in the pages which follow. ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... entanglement among the cross-roads of the West, to see for half an hour by spring sunshine:—the Holy Family, and the Graces, side by side now in the principal room. Great, as ever was work wrought by man. In placid strength, and subtlest science, unsurpassed;—in sweet felicity, incomparable. ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... a lion, but a lion not accounted for. Fashionable Paris, Paris of the turf and of the town, admired the ineffable waistcoats of this foreign gentleman, his spotless patent-leather boots, his incomparable sticks, his much-coveted horses, and the negro servants who rode the horses and who were entirely slaves and ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... Then had she, bright enchantment! bloom'd for ever In all the charms consenting Gods could give her— Wit, Wisdom, Beauty, she had every grace Which makes man play the madman for a face! But chief, bless'd gift! for him ordain'd to ask it, The gem of gems, th' incomparable casket; And, lo! with trembling hands and ardent eyes The bridegroom claims it—and—behold the prize! First, like a vapour o'er the heavens obscured, From that dark confine, rose the fiends immured, Then groan'd the earth, in fury swell'd the floods, ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... open secret among King's friends in California that he meditated writing of the Yosemite as he had written of the White Hills of New Hampshire. Had he done so that region of incomparable beauty would have been known to the people of our country at least twenty years earlier. What a volume it would have been, "The Beauty and Glory of the Yosemite" by Starr King! What a vision he would have given us of that mighty gorge; of the crystal clearness of Mirror Lake; of the ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... do not admire his victories, the incomparable plans of his battles, which he conceives with the coolness of a wise and experienced chieftain, and carries out with the bravery and intrepidity of a ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... with the candid intent of being tactful, "reminds me of a song a pardner of mine wrote up about 'em once. Comical? T'—t'—t'—!" He wagged his head as if he had no words in which to describe its incomparable humor. "He had another song that was a reg'lar tear-starter: 'Whar the Silver Colorady Wends Its Way.' Ever hear it? It's about a feller that buried his wife by the silver Colorady, and turned outlaw. This pardner of mine used to beller every time he sung it. He cried like he was a ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... in all respects, exceedingly robust, and able to conquer such difficulties of diet and of travel, as would have killed most men alive;" "he was well set, and he was therewithall of a very comely, though a very manly, countenance." He is described as of "a most incomparable generosity," "of a forgiving spirit." His faults are tenderly touched; "upon certain affronts, he has made sudden returns, that have shewed choler enough; and he has, by blow, as well as by ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... hungering for Puritans to pillory and mangle, plaguing the Cavaliers, for want of somebody else to plague with his peevishness and absurdity, performing grimaces and antics in the cathedral, continuing that incomparable diary, which we never see without forgetting the vices of his heart In the imbecility of his intellect minuting down his dreams, counting the drops of blood which fell from his nose, watching the direction of the salt, and listening for the note of the screech-owls. Contemptuous mercy was the only ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
