"Incomparably" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thing that had been done since the "Provincial Letters" of Pascal. Once a month or so that weekly always found some picture which was the finest that had been done since the old masters, or some satire that was the finest that had appeared since Swift or some something which was incomparably the finest that had appeared since something else. If Ernest had put his name to the book, and the writer had known that it was by a nobody, he would doubtless have written in a very different strain. Reviewers like to think that for aught they know they are patting a Duke or even a ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... covered by one great forest, except where a few green patches have been cleared round the thatched cottages. From a distance the view somewhat resembles that of Tierra del Fuego; but the woods, when seen nearer, are incomparably more beautiful. Many kinds of fine evergreen trees, and plants with a tropical character, here take the place of the gloomy beech of the southern shores. In winter the climate is detestable, and in summer it ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... could not form a new race (or several were he to separate the stock of the original organism and work on several islands) adapted to new ends. As we assume his discrimination, and his forethought, and his steadiness of object, to be incomparably greater that those qualities in man, so we may suppose the beauty and complications of the adaptations of the new races and their differences from the original stock to be greater than in the domestic ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... chanted was incomparably beautiful. That sublime prayer ending in sobs, at the moment when the soul of the voices was about to overpass human limits, gave a wrench to Durtal's nerves, and made his heart beat. Then he wished to abstract himself, and cling especially to the meaning of that sorrowful plaint, in which the fallen ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... practical or theoretical, instrumental or vocal, and in other things befitting a gentleman. Some of the said persons have also added, in my hearing, that his common discourse was not only significant and witty, but incomparably graceful, which drew respect from all men and women. Many other things I could now say of him, relating either to his most generous mind in his prosperity, or dejected estate in his worst state of poverty, but for ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... upon the existing slave would, if possible, be still more deplorable. At present he is treated with kindness and humanity. He is well fed, well clothed, and not overworked. His condition is incomparably better than that of the coolies which modern nations of high civilization have employed as a substitute for African slaves. Both the philanthropy and the self-interest of the master have combined to produce this humane ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... there. The shrivelled lichen alone, clinging to the weathered surface of the broken brick, seems to glory in its universal dominion over those barren walls. Of all the desolate pictures I have ever seen that of Warka incomparably surpasses all." Surely in this case it cannot be said that appearances are deceitful; for all that space, and much more, is a cemetery, and what a cemetery! "It is difficult," again says Loftus, "to convey anything like a correct idea of the piles upon piles of human remains which there utterly ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... of means was one more complicated, more delicate, and hence incomparably more difficult of solution. To draw largely upon these seafaring classes, numerous and fit though they were, meant detriment to trade, and if the Navy was the fist, trade was the backbone of the nation. ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... had now grown into an immense dog, heavy of muscle and huge of bone. A great bull head; undershot jaw, square and lengthy and terrible; vicious yellow gleaming eyes; cropped ears; and an expression incomparably savage. His coat was a tawny lionlike yellow, short, harsh, dense; and his back running up from shoulder to loins ended abruptly in a knoblike tail. He looked like the devil of a dog's hell, and his reputation was as bad as his looks. He never attacked unprovoked; but a challenge ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... listener which all the nicely-calculated trills and cadences of the ingenious mechanical toy failed to set in motion. In like manner we repeat that the power to determine his own course raises man to a plane incomparably higher than he could have occupied as an automaton. The same faculty of free choice which in its abuse makes the sinner, in its right {99} exercise furnishes forth the saint. All that we mean by moral progress, by "the steady gain of man," his rise to more exalted ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... this resentment extended rapidly to all the frontiers of the empire, where the armies felt that the praetorian cohorts had no exclusive title to give away the throne, and their leaders felt, that, in a contest of this nature, their own claims were incomparably superior to those of the present occupant. Three great candidates therefore started forward— Septimius Severus, who commanded the armies in Illyria, Pescennius Niger in Syria, and Albinus in Britain. Severus, as the nearest to Rome, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... us in the romances. There, too, is the same feverish strength, welding the fiery iron of his idea under forge-hammer repetitions - an emphasis that is somehow akin to weaknesses - strength that is a little epileptic. He stands so far above all his contemporaries, and so incomparably excels them in richness, breadth, variety, and moral earnestness, that we almost feel as if he had a sort of right to fall oftener and more heavily than others; but this does not reconcile us to seeing him profit by the privilege so freely. We like to have, in ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... against the policy of Arnold. A little Christianity, nay a slight touch of humanity, would have sufficed for that purpose. Sussex was a nobleman, and considered himself, no doubt, a very godly man, but everyone must admit that, in all heroic qualities, he was incomparably beneath the uncultured Shane O'Neill, while in baseness and wickedness he was not far behind his northern foe, 'half wolf, half fox.' Cecil, however, was a man of a very different stamp from Sussex. Evidently shocked at the prevailing English notions about the value of Irish ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... commit a bank, are beyond comparison greater than any which a fraudulent manager would be able to conceal, even with the utmost ingenuity. If the losses by mistake in banking and the losses by fraud were put side by side, those by mistake would be incomparably the greater. There is no more unsafe government for a bank than that of an eager and active manager, subject only to the supervision of a numerous board of directors, even though that board be excellent, for the manager may easily glide ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... turned her shoulder on him, stared through the back window, studying this typical center of a typical Main Street block, a vista hidden from casual strollers. The backs of the chief establishments in town surrounded a quadrangle neglected, dirty, and incomparably dismal. From the front, Howland & Gould's grocery was smug enough, but attached to the rear was a lean-to of storm streaked pine lumber with a sanded tar roof—a staggering doubtful shed behind which was a heap of ashes, ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... Englishman sets before himself—the vision of a Federation of all the parts—a Federation not unlike that which the United States has enjoyed for over a hundred years (save that Englishmen hope that there will always be a monarchy at the centre) but which, as has been said, is almost incomparably larger in conception than was the Union of the States and requires correspondingly greater labour in ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... thoughtful men thoroughly wakened on the subject of human rights, it was impossible not to reflect on the wrongs of the slaves, incomparably worse than those against which their masters had taken up arms. As the political institutions of the young Federation were remolded, so grave a matter as slavery could not be ignored. Virginia in 1772 voted an address to the King remonstrating against the continuance of the African slave trade. ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... not exceed a large wine-glassful to a quart of soup. This is as much as can be admitted, without the vinous flavour becoming remarkably predominant; though not only much larger quantities of wine (of which claret is incomparably the best, because it contains less spirit and more flavour, and English palates are less acquainted with it), but even veritable eau de vie is ordered in many books, and used by many (especially tavern cooks). So much are their soups overloaded with relish, that if you will eat enough ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... value of the said pieces, invested in useful and necessary articles for the service of your Majesty, which have already been received. Immediately upon sending the guns I had six other larger ones cast, for from twenty-five to thirty-pound balls, and incomparably better. For we are continually becoming more skillful in foundry-work and in working the metals; so that, of almost forty pieces which have been cast in my time, with the assistance and care of Don Hieronimo de Silva, commander of the artillery, only one has ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... galleries, the library, the museums of sculpture and archaeology, the outbuildings, including the barracks of the Swiss Guards, and, lastly, the gardens with the Pope's Casino. Of these the Sixtine Chapel, the galleries and museums, and the library, are incomparably the most important. ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... so long as experiments in selective breeding had not produced varieties which were more or less infertile; and that insecurity remains up to the present time. But, with any and every critical doubt which my sceptical ingenuity could suggest, the Darwinian hypothesis remained incomparably more probable than the creation hypothesis. And if we had none of us been able to discern the paramount significance of some of the most patent and notorious of natural facts, until they were, so to speak, thrust under our noses, what force remained in ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... profession, to sum it all up, the root of the evil is this, that we believe that mere dexterity and cunning are incomparably superior to knowledge and that cleverness is infinitely more valuable than sound learning. Those who follow professions believe this, and the lay public that employs the professions is not dismayed by this attitude of the professional class; ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... such an accident is likely to be most closely analyzed. Assuming even that he may be in a position to account for his syncope by illness or the stifling atmosphere of the locality, he has none the less given rise to suspicion! He has lied incomparably, but he has counted without nature. Here is the pitfall! Again, a man off his guard, from an unwary disposition, may delight in mystifying another who suspects him, and may wantonly pretend to be the very criminal wanted by the ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... Pedro was much shorter and my observation of him was less complete but incomparably more anxious. It ended in a sudden inspiration to get out of his way. It was in a hovel of sticks and mats by the side of a path. As I went in there only to ask for a bottle of lemonade I have not to this day the slightest idea what in my appearance or actions could have roused his terrible ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... in words is incomparably greater than that of any other English author: he almost infuses colour into his words and phrases, so full are they of pictorial power. It would be impossible to give any adequate idea of this power here; but a few lines may ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... tell them that in order to make the path of the missionary practicable, the system of trade must be inverted, the trader and the missionary must go hand in hand, and commerce and religion—although incomparably different in their nature and ends—must act the part of brother and sister if anything great is to be done for the ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... resorted to mob violence, and what they lacked in courage they supplied with numbers, and beat their helpless victim into insensibility. In the very next issue of the ICONOCLAST, Brann, its outraged but incomparably fearless editor, in speaking of his cowardly assailants, used the following defiant and sadly prophetic words: "Truth to tell there's not one of the whole cowardly tribe who's worth a charge of buckshot who deserve so much honor as ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... walks, and went and drank, where I ate some bread and butter, having ate nothing all day, while they were by chance discoursing of Marriot, the great eater, so that I was, I remember, ashamed to eat what I would have done. Here Swan shewed us a ballad to the tune of Mardike which was most incomparably wrote in a printed hand, which I borrowed of him, but the song proved but silly, and so I did not write it out. Thence we went and leaving Swan at his master's, my Lord Widdrington, I met with Spicer, Washington, and D. Vines in Lincoln's ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Pilate an account of his Life; not to insist on the general Opinion, that Joseph was not then alive. But notwithstanding these few failures, it can't be deny'd, that his Description of our Saviour's Passion in the Fourth Book, is incomparably fine; the disturbance among the Angels on that occasion; his Character of Michael, and the Virgins Lamentation under the Cross, and at the Sepulchre, are inimitable. And thus much for Vida, on whom I've been more large because I've ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley
... was the wit he was after, the pure jewel, and he would pick it up out of the mud or dirt just as readily as from a parlour table." In any case his best remembered utterances of this order, when least fit for print, were both wise and incomparably witty, and in any case they did not prevent grave gentlemen, who marvelled at them rather uncomfortably, from receiving the deep impression of what they ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... keep in mind the obvious fact that the production of seed is the chief end of the act of fertilisation; and that this end can be gained by hermaphrodite plants with incomparably greater certainty by self-fertilisation, than by the union of the sexual elements belonging to two distinct flowers or plants. Yet it is as unmistakably plain that innumerable flowers are adapted for cross-fertilisation, as that the teeth and talons ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... are against him. Where both agree is in the fact of Thackeray's pre-eminence as a writer of English and the master of one of the finest prose styles in literature. His manner is the perfection of conversational writing. Graceful yet vigorous; adorably artificial yet incomparably sound; touched with modishness yet informed with distinction; easily and happily rhythmical yet full of colour and quick with malice and with meaning; instinct with urbanity and instinct with charm—it is a type of high-bred English, a climax of literary art. He may not have been a ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... had never been kissed before and would never be kissed again; and in the doing so knocked his wig awry and his hat off. He bleated in my embrace; so bleats the sheep in the arms of the butcher. The whole thing, on looking back, appears incomparably reckless and absurd; I no better than a madman for offering to advance on Dudgeon, and he no better than a fool for not shooting me while I was about it. But all's well that ends well; or, as the people in these days kept singing and whistling ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... may best agree with your Taste. This makes an excellent dish of Meat, which must be served up in the Liquor; and though for a need it may be made with Butter instead of Oyl, and with Vinegar in stead of Juyce of Lemons, yet is the other incomparably better for such as are not Enemies to Oyle. The same Dish may be made also of Veal, or Partridge, or Rabbets, and indeed the best of them all, is Rabbets, if they be used so before Michaelmas, for afterwards me-thinkes they grow ranke; for though they be fatter, yet the ...
— The Compleat Cook • Anonymous, given as "W. M."
... before it, and one that affected a far larger share of the world's surface. For the first time there began to be something which at least foreshadowed a "world movement" in the sense that it affected a considerable portion of the world's surface and that it represented what was incomparably the most important of all that was happening in world history at the time. In breadth and depth the field of intellectual interest had greatly broadened at the same time that the physical area affected by the civilization had ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... Peshawer. Mahmud made twelve expeditions into India altogether, on one of which he carried off the famous gates of Somnat; but he was content to leave subordinate governors in the Punjab and at Guzerat and never sought to organise an empire. During his life Mahmud was incomparably the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... was only less notorious than her lawless rider. It was noised in travellers' huts and around campfires that she would do more at her master's word than had been known of horse outside a circus. It was the one touch that Stingaree had borrowed from a more Napoleonic but incomparably coarser and crueller knight of the bush. In all other respects the fin de siecle desperado was unique. It was a stroke of luck, however, that there happened to be an old white mare in the bank stables, ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... mother in her library. Felicita was alone, reading in the light of a lamp which shed a strong illumination over her. In his eyes she was incomparably the loveliest woman he had ever seen, not even excepting Alice; and the stately magnificence of her velvet dress, and rich lace, and costly jewels, was utterly different from that of any other woman ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... and this makes the difference in men. Because of this new birth one man sees the things of God to which another would be totally blind, and this makes the difference in books and leaves the Bible incomparably beyond ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... evening and draw solace for their weary souls from a Saturday, Sunday, and possibly Monday, at Brighton? Madame became a frozen statue of offended womanhood! What, mon Dieu, had she done that he should conceive her to be a light woman? She, the never-to-be-comforted widow of the incomparably gallant hero of anthracite stoves and le Grand Couronne. She had been too unsuspicious, too trustful; their pleasant acquaintance must end upon the instant; the too-gross insult which he had put upon her could never be pardoned. ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... de Conde should marry the late Margrave; this lady was incomparably more handsome than her sister; but I think he had a greater inclination for Mademoiselle de Vendome, because she seemed to be ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... that their lives were endanger'd. The same rage encounter'd the attempt in theatricals to perform women's parts by real women, which was publicly consider'd disgusting and outrageous. Byron thought Pope's verse incomparably ahead of Homer and Shakspere. One of the prevalent objections, in the days of Columbus was, the learn'd men boldly asserted that if a ship should reach India she would never get back again, because the rotundity of the globe ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... carrying water down the Aar Valley, and through the Lakes of Brienz and of Thun to the Rhine and North Sea, whilst you keep the other in another little stream, whose particles will pass by the Rhone gorge and valley through the Lake of Geneva to the great Rhone and the Mediterranean. Three incomparably fine days—September 17th, 18th, and 19th—atoned for three weeks of sunless cloud. One of them we spent in the high valley of Rosenlaui, where are hairy-lipped gentians and the blue-iced glacier, but of these I have not space to tell. Then the clouds and the rain resumed their ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... in the eye of the historian, the ethnologist, and the antiquary, a peculiar and pre-eminent importance. The result of personal observation, eminently truthful and accurate, their testimony must in all future time be incomparably the best that can be obtained relating to the aborigines on this ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... from scientific data that no form of animal life could obtain except under conditions similar to our own, would not reason rebel at such an inference, on the mere ground that to assume that there is no conscious being in the universe save man, is incomparably more unwarrantable, and in ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... several deceitful processes) that Saccarum Saturni with Spirit of Turpentine will afford a Balsom, so Beguinus and many more tell us, that the same Concrete (Saccarum Saturni) will yield an incomparably fragrant Spirit, and a pretty Quantity of two several Oyles, and yet since many have complain'd, as well as I have done, that they could find no such odoriferous, but rather an ill-sented Liquor, and scarce any oyl in their Distillation of that sweet Vitriol, a ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... gravies. If they stew gently, little more water need be put in at first, than is expected at the end; for when the pot is covered quite close, and the fire gentle, very little is wasted. Gentle stewing is incomparably the best; the meat is more tender, and the soup better flavoured. The cover of a soup kettle should fit very close, or the most essential parts of the broth will soon evaporate, as will also be the case with quick boiling. It is not merely the fibres ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... gambling-room who loads dice, but you leave a tradesman in flourishing business, who loads scales! For observe, all dishonest dealing is loading scales. What does it matter whether I get short weight, adulterate substance, or dishonest fabric? The fault in the fabric is incomparably the worst of the two. Give me short measure of food, and I only lose by you; but give me adulterate food, and I die by you. Here, then, is your chief duty, you workmen and tradesmen—to be true to yourselves, and to us who ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... always more than satisfied with his perfect surroundings so long as he can point out his advantages over the wretched victims of paternalism in Europe. This is both a low and ignorant self-laudation. Of course, wretched though you may be, you are incomparably better off than the miserables of cruel Russia, because our national government could not possibly be as outrageous as is of necessity that of the Czar. It has taken many centuries to evolve such a monster cuttle-fish as the Russian government that has fastened its tentacles upon ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... in France and Germany, where publishers are not so wealthy or enterprising as with us,* and where Lithography is more practised, is infinitely higher than in England, and the appreciation more correct. As draughtsmen, the French and German painters are incomparably superior to our own; and with art, as with any other commodity, the demand will be found pretty equal to the supply: with us, the general demand is for neatness, prettiness, and what is called EFFECT in pictures, and these can be rendered completely, nay, improved, by the engraver's conventional ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... those effects which it is of most importance to render amenable to human foresight and control are determined, like the tides, in an incomparably greater degree by general causes, than by all partial causes taken together; depending in the main on those circumstances and qualities which are common to all mankind, or at least to large bodies of them, and only in a small degree on the idiosyncrasies of organization ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... of this hateful tribe Dunton is able to speak well. He declares Mr. Bradshaw to have been the best accomplished hackney author he ever met with. He pronounces his style incomparably fine. He had quarrelled with him, but none the less he writes: 'If Mr. Bradshaw is yet alive, I here declare to the world and to him that I freely forgive him what he owes, both in money and books, if he will only be ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... state, in these quiet old towns during the last century. It is not with any thought of pity or depreciation that we speak of them as in a certain sense decayed towns; they did not fulfil their early promise of expansion, but they remain incomparably the most interesting places of their size in any of the three northernmost New England States. They have even now prosperity enough to keep them in good condition, and offer the most attractive residences ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... exhibits them in forms not less picturesque. Castle Caon, on the South Fork of the Price, is the equivalent of Echo Caon, and is equal or superior in everything except color. The brilliant red of the Echo cliffs is wanting. The towers and walls of Castle Caon are yellowish-gray. But their forms are incomparably various and grotesque—in some instances sublime. The valley of Green River at this point is a cheerless sage-brush desert, as it is further north. To be sure, this uninviting stream, a couple of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... see how the rooms in Hampton Court became the "compartments" in the "Crystale" Palace, and how the "Gaierty" Hotel grew out of the Gaiety Theatre, with many other agreeable changes. The novelist will find the tale a model for his future work. How incomparably, for instance, the authoress dives [Pg xi] into her story at once. How cunningly throughout she keeps us on the hooks of suspense, jumping to Mr Salteena when we are in a quiver about Ethel, and turning to Ethel when we are quite uneasy about Mr Salteena. This authoress ...
— The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan • Daisy Ashford
... at his side a high-minded, appreciative woman, a wife that would have understood the war that was constantly waged within him," is the judgment passed on Wagner's first wife by one of her friends. He had now found this woman, and in a way that proved on every hand a blessing. Her incomparably unselfish, self-sacrificing first husband himself declared afterwards that this was the only proper solution. Siegfried was the name given to the fruit of this union. The "Siegfried Idyl" of 1871 is dedicated to the boy's happy childhood in the ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... trench above the ruin of its former mending. We repaired the long skeleton, soft and black, of its timbers. From that dried-up drain we besomed the rubbish of equipment, of petrified weapons, of rotten clothes and of victuals, of a sort of wreckage of forest and house—filthy, incomparably filthy, infinitely filthy. We worked by night and hid by day. The only light for us was the heavy dawn of evening when they dragged us from sleep. Eternal night covered ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... is under a greater obligation to bestow on them the effect of charity. It will however be possible in heaven for a man to love in several ways one who is connected with him, since the causes of virtuous love will not be banished from the mind of the blessed. Yet all these reasons are incomparably surpassed by that which is taken ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... than they in body and in the understanding of things, which he could not make them know. This repression made him often like a wild beast, though mostly he was half-clown and half-infant in his conduct. He had a gift of mimicry incomparably finer than any professional's I knew of. This, with his gestures, stood him instead of speech. A certain haughty English woman whose elaborate hats in an island where women were hatless, or wore simple, native weaves, were noted atrocities, and whose chin was almost nil, kept the carriage and ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... legends were written down by a converted native some time in the seventeenth century. They carry the national history back about two centuries, beyond which all is professedly mythical. Although both translations are colored by the peculiar views of their makers, this is incomparably the most complete and valuable work ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... the first time there is a pause in the urging madness of his despair. All the pulses of his being slacken; he draws back as it were from his own fate, surveys it as a whole, separates himself from it. The various scenes of it succeed each other in memory, set always—incomparably set—in the spring green of the forest, or under a charmed moonlight, or amid the flowery detail of a closed garden. Her little figure flashes before him—he sees her gesture, her smile; he hears his own voice and hers; recalls the struggle to express, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... charmingly tall, a splendid piece of linen will be got from me. Oh, how happy I am! how can any one be happier? Everything around me is so pleasant, and I shall be of use for something or other. How the sun cheers one up, and how fresh and sweet the rain tastes! I am incomparably happy; I am the happiest vegetable ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... friend Morris joined me, we've been as busy as Wall street brokers in a gold panic—eyes and ears, and every sense filled with the novel sights and sounds that greet us on every side in this most delightful, charming, incomparably beautiful summer land. ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... drawing of our artists under the Anglo-Saxon kings was incomparably superior to the dead copies from Byzantine models which were in favour abroad. The artistic instinct was not destroyed, but rather strengthened, by the incoming of Norman influence; and of the twelfth and ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... that of the fashionable routine of the schools, without the kind of discipline she had. A world whose females were all educated in the family schools—and especially in the school of affliction, and poverty, and hardship—would be incomparably a better world than one whose young women should "wear soft clothing," and live in "kings' courts"—who should be educated by merely fashionable mothers, amid ease and abundance, and "finished" at the institute ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... it, had been teaching the passions to move at the command of virtue. In other words, Richardson had discovered an incomparably more effective way of preaching a popular sermon. He had begun, as we know, by writing a series of edifying letters to young women; and expounded the same method in Pamela, and afterwards in the famous Clarissa Harlowe ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... a principle of general mistrust. And that such a principle should have so large a spread among persons, whose honesty, candour forbids us to suspect, is surely, of all the paradoxe upon the face of the earth, incomparably the greatest.—The man of virtue then will be willing, before he gives up all our political connexions without distinction, to go along with me to the review of the only one that yet remains to be examined, that of the late ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... contemporary artists, his style as a piano-forte player and composer was more modified by Clementi than by any other. He was wont to say that no one could play till he knew Clementi by heart. He adopted many of the peculiar figures and combinations original with Clementi, though his musical mentality, incomparably richer and greater than that of the other, transfigured them into a new life. That Beethoven found novel means of expression to satisfy the importunate demands of his musical conceptions; that his piano works display a greater polyphony, stronger ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... time, though no great English work written "in the English tongue for English men," yet the spectacle, unique in history, of a language and a literature undergoing a sea-change from which it was to emerge with incomparably greater beauty and strength than it had before, and in condition to vie with—some would say to outstrip—all actual or possible rivals. German, if not quite supreme in any way, gives an interesting and fairly representative example of a chapter of national literary history, less brilliant and ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... is said, 'Miracles require exceptional evidence.' True: exceptional evidence they both require and possess; but that evidence is not external. Incomparably the strongest attestation to the Gospel narratives is that which they bear to themselves. Miracles have exceptional evidence because the non-miraculous portions of the narrative with which they are bound up are exceptional. These carry their truth stamped upon their face, ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... more flattering, more healing, than all that was implied in Maxwell's earnestness, in the peculiar sympathy and kindness with which the elder man strove to win the younger's confidence; but George could not respond. His whole inner being was too sore; and his mind ran incomparably more upon the damnable letter that must be lying somewhere in the archives of the memory of the man talking to him, than upon his own political prospects. The conversation ended for Maxwell in mere ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... listening senate, thrilled by his magic eloquence, and ready to stand by him in his boldest flights, could say, GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH, and this saying was a sublime one, even for a freeman; but, incomparably more sublime, is the same sentiment, when practically asserted by men accustomed to the lash and chain—men whose sensibilities must have become more or less deadened by their bondage. With us it was a doubtful liberty, at best, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... arts. The very heaviness and stubbornness of its material, precluding it from happy dalliance with us fleeting individual creatures, fit it to cope with that which in mankind is permanent and universal. It can through the symbol give us incomparably the type. Wise is that sculptor who, when portray an individual he must, treats arbitrarily the mere actual husk, and strives but to show the soul. Of course, he must first catch that soul. What M. Rodin knew about the character ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... in his very last preface to it, in 1867, formally acknowledged. Several years previously, while sauntering with him to and fro one evening on the grass-plot at Gadshill, we remember receiving from him that same admission. "Which of all your books do you think I regard as incomparably your best?" "Which?" "David Copperfield." A momentary pause ensuing, he added, readily and without the smallest reservation, "You are quite right." The acknowledgment then made as to this being in fact ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... approach you, most excellent beauty, with this most humble petition, that you will deign to permit me to throw my unworthy self before the throne of your mercy, there to receive the sentence of my life or death; a happiness, though incomparably too great for so mean a vassal, yet with that reverence and awe I shall receive it, as I would the sentence of the gods, and which I will no more resist than I would the thunderbolts of Jove, or ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... is, to my thinking, incomparably the most artistic, spirited, and brilliant of our illustrators of books for boys, and one of the most humorous also, as his ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... of conversation, Heideck said to the Lieutenant-Colonel: "I don't think we need trouble ourselves any more about the communications of Countess Arselaarts and Messrs. Amelungen and Co. The court-martial may settle with them. I attach incomparably greater importance to skipper Brandelaar, whom I hold in my hand, and through whom—perhaps with the help of Camille Penurot—I hope to obtain information about the British fleet and its proposed employment. Brandelaar's vessel should now be off Ternenzen. I will ask you, Herr Lieutenant-Colonel, ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... attended the rehearsal of Signor Jomelli's opera, which is well written and pleases me exceedingly. Signor Jomelli spoke to us and was very civil. We also went to a church to hear a mass by Signor Ciccio di Majo, and it was most beautiful music. Signora de' Amicus sang incomparably. We are, thank God, very well, and I feel particularly so when a letter from Salzburg arrives. I beg you will write to me every post-day, even if you have nothing to write about, for I should like to have a letter by every post. It would not be a bad idea to write ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... praises herself. As to form it is a Declamatio, such as he had translated from the Greek of Libanius. As to the spirit, a revival of Lucian, whose Gallus, translated by him three years before, may have suggested the theme. It must have been in the incomparably lucid moments of that brilliant intellect. All the particulars of classic reading which the year before he worked up in the new edition of the Adagia were still at his immediate disposal in that retentive and capacious ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... dominant State. They paid taxes, they fought in the armies; they were strong; they were less corrupt, politically and morally, as having fewer temptations and fewer opportunities of evil; and in their simple country life they approached incomparably nearer to the old Roman type than the patrician fops in the circus or the Forum, or the city mob which was fed in idleness on free grants of corn. When Samnium and Tuscany were conquered, a third of the lands had been confiscated to the Roman ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... battles of the Somme, on the 1st of July 1916, the Royal Flying Corps held the mastery of the air, that is to say, they held a predominant position in the air, and were able to impose their will upon the enemy. At the date of the armistice, the 11th of November 1918, the united Royal Air Force was incomparably the strongest air force in the world. Most of the pilots and observers who were flying at that time are now scattered in civil employ, but they will never forget the pride of their old allegiance nor the perils and raptures of their old ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... decisions (which put the Soviet Union astride the globe like a menacing colossus and placed the incomparably stronger United States in the position of appeasing and retreating) can be traced to persons who were members of the Council on ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... of amusement, and some profit, in the perusal of those little items which characterize the manners and circumstances of the country. New England was then in a state incomparably more picturesque than at present, or than it has been within the memory of man; there being, as yet, only a narrow strip of civilization along the edge of a vast forest, peopled with enough of its original race to ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the descent to the boat incomparably preferable to the tedious climb of two hours previous, and, thanks to the promise of a "nobbler of rum each," Cato and Ferdinand transported my precious "run" in safety to the stern-sheets; the sun having then sunk ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... comparison began and ended with her." Without desiring to appear ungallant, I may say that there were many homely young women in Essex; but each of them had the delicate satisfaction of knowing that Martha was incomparably her superior in ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... stars. Down rushed the steep slopes to the plain, clad in the decaying leaf and mast of former years, and at the edges of these precipitous glades, or scattered at long intervals across them, great single trees emerged, the types and masters of the forest, their trunks, incomparably tall, and all their noble limbs, now thinly veiled by a departing leafage, drawn sharp, in black and silver, on the pale background of the chalk plain. Nothing so grandiose as these climbing beech woods of middle England!—by day, as it were, some vast procession marching joyously ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... heroic, unselfish, noble about it. Its votaries do not eat to their liking nor drink to their thirst. They learn deep lessons almost unconsciously; to conquer their desires, to make light of toil and pain and discomfort; the true humanist is well aware that Spartan discipline is incomparably superior to Greek accidence. This is what one of the greatest of them, Goethe, meant when he said: "Anything which emancipates the spirit without a corresponding growth ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... Will, "you cannot deny that the children of these times are incomparably better clothed, have more and better books, live in more comfortable homes, and are enjoying privileges never known to ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... craters, it is evident, at a glance, that the mightiest volcanoes of the earth fall into insignificance beside them. Now, the slight force of gravity on the moon has been appealed to as a reason why volcanic explosions on the lunar globe should produce incomparably greater effects than upon the earth, where the ejected materials are so much heavier. The same force that would throw a volcanic bomb a mile high on the earth could throw it six miles high on the moon. The giant cannon that ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... entree with very composed assurance and grace. He managed his hoop with such skill and dexterity, that he well deserved the praise of being a universal genius. The Countess de Pomenars spoke French and broken English incomparably well, and she made out that she was descended from the Pomenars of the time of Mad. de Sevigne: she said that she had in her possession several original letters of Mad. de Sevigne, and a lock of Mad. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... not impose on lovers of truth; for they know the tax of talent, or what a price of greatness the power of expression too often pays. I believe it is the conviction of the purest men, that the net amount of man and man does not much vary. Each is incomparably superior to his companion in some faculty. His want of skill in other directions has added to his fitness for his own work. Each seems to have some compensation yielded to him by his infirmity, and every hindrance operates as ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... continued the painter, with a face expressing that he had not at all tried to be found out as the man possessing incomparably superior knowledge of the poetess. 'I beg pardon really, but don't press me on the matter. Upon my word the secret is not my own. As I was saying, the Colonel said, "Do you know her?"—but you don't care ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... seen the place of his birth and traced out the path of his life-story; but he couldn't contrive the same kind of trip for Sir Walter Scott's country without going over the whole road twice. Besides, he wanted us to see Melrose by moonlight, and said it would be "incomparably better than Sweetheart Abbey." But I knew it wouldn't be better for me, and I didn't quite forgive him for thinking it possible, now that we had got so mixed up ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... may, however, occur with acute congestion of the kidney, with tumors in its substance, or with papilloma or other diseased growth in the bladder. Acrid diuretic plants present in the feed may also lead to the escape of blood from the kidney. The predisposition to this affection is, however, incomparably less than in the case of the ox or the sheep, the difference being attributed to the greater plasticity of the horse's blood in connection with ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... not hinder the Hegelian system from playing an incomparably greater role than any earlier system and by virtue of this role developing riches of thought which are astounding even to-day. Phenomenology of the mind (which one may parallel with embryology and palaeontology ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... passion had regained throughout possession of me, with all its train of symptoms: a sweet sensibility, a tender timidity, love-sick yearnings tempered with diffidence and modesty, all held me in a subjection of soul, incomparably dearer to me than the liberty of heart which I had been long, too long! the mistress of, in the course of those grosser gallantries, the consciousness of which now made me sigh with a virtuous confusion and regret. No real virgin, in short, in view of the nuptial ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... and psychology is apt to clash with the facts of history. Scherer described Taine, somewhat unjustly, as "a pessimist in a passion," whilst the critical and conscientious Aulard declared that his work was "virtually useless for the purposes of history." Mr. Gooch classes Sorel's work as "incomparably higher" than that of Taine. Montalembert is an extreme case of a French historian who adopted thoroughly unsound historical methods. Clearly, as Mr. Gooch says, "the author of the famous battle-cry, 'We are the sons of the Crusades, and we will never yield to the ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... to mobilise, the manhood of the Boer Republics sprang to arms as quickly, as well prepared, and with incomparably more zeal than the best trained conscripts of Europe. Not urged to the front like slaves by the whips of innumerable penalties, their needs not considered to the provision of a button, or a ration of salt, shabby even to squalor in their appointments, ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... practical.... His conversation corresponds to his appearance. It abounds in vigour, in fire, in vivacity. Yet all the time it is entirely free from mystery, vagueness, or technical jargon. It is the crisp, emphatic and powerful discourse of a man of the world, who is incomparably better informed than the mass of his congeners. Mr Browning is the readiest, the blithest, and the most forcible of talkers. Like the Monsignore in Lothair he can 'sparkle with anecdote and blaze with repartee,' and when he deals in criticism the edge of his sword is mercilessly whetted ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... is enough to say that experience, if it proves any thing, proves this to be an inaccurate view of human nature. All the threats of theologians with infinite stores of time and torture to draw upon, failed to wean men from sins which gave them a passing gratification, even when faith was incomparably stronger than it is now, or is likely to be again. One reason, doubtless, is that the conscience is as much blunted by the doctrines of repentance and absolution as it is stimulated by the threats of hell-fire. But is it not contrary to all common-sense ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... which celebrate some of the most inspiring moments in the life of Napoleon,—such as his Baptism, his Horoscope cast by a Gypsy, and others,—have neither sparkle nor splendor. The prophet is not intoxicated, and wants enthusiasm. On the theme of Napoleon, Victor Hugo has done incomparably better; and as to the songs, properly so called, of this last collection, there are at this moment in France numerous song-writers (Pierre Dupont and Nadaud, for instance) who have the ease, the spirit, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... early or late spring forcing, or for planting in the open ground, the most vigorous strain should be chosen, and there is one which is incomparably superior to all others, producing finer spikes and larger individual flowers. As a rule these roots are obtainable in November, but, if necessary, it is far better to wait a week or two than attempt to force such as have been ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... been to be buried there; and from my bed I could see his white tombstone gleaming in the moonlight, a few steps from my window. Every evening I rolled my piano out upon the terrace, and there, facing the most incomparably beautiful landscape, all bathed in the soft and limpid atmosphere of the tropics, I poured forth on the instrument, and for myself alone, the thoughts with which that scene inspired me. And what a scene! Picture to yourself a gigantic amphitheatre hewn out of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... woe betide those upon whom he vented his hatred. On the other hand, though but few knew it, he had an uncommonly warm corner in his heart; he was an ideal husband, the best of fathers, and a faithful friend. But the number of those he despised was incomparably greater than those who gained his affection, and he himself was in no doubt whatever as to his being the most unpopular person in the Monarchy. But there was a certain grandeur in this very contempt of popularity. He never could bring himself to make any advances to newspapers ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... the Bible excepted as above all comparison, which I, according to my judgment and experience, could so safely recommend as teaching and enforcing the whole saving truth according to the mind that was in Christ Jesus, as the Pilgrim's Progress. It is, in my conviction, incomparably the best summa theologiae evangelicae ever produced by a writer not miraculously inspired. I read it once as a theologian—and let me assure you, there is great theological acumen in the work—once with devotional feelings, and once as a poet. I could not have ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... the incomparably exquisite touch of its author in its arrangement and revision, it does, nevertheless, present him in all of his most characteristic veins, and it is in respect both to style and to substance perhaps the most mature and ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... gratefully proud of all the use he had been to Conrad's family, and especially his miserable old father. To her mind, March was the principal actor in the whole affair, and much more important in having seen it than those who had suffered in it. In fact, he had suffered incomparably. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... made a necessary dish to the boatmen on our rivers, and made in perfection only by the keepers of cobarets on their banks, is incomparably good. Lovers of fish never see it without expressing their gratification, either on account of its freshness of taste, or because they can without difficulty eat an indefinite quantity, without any fear of satiety or indigestion. Analytical gastronomy ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... vegetables, such as cabbages, turnips, and potatoes, prosper very well: the latter are raised even by the Kalushes, who have learned from the Russians the manner of cultivating them, and consider them as a great delicacy. Upon the continent of America, the climate, under the same latitude, is said to be incomparably better than on this island, although the cold is rather more severe. Great plains are there to be met with, where wheat ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... the treatment of epilepsy, but they are the best we have at present. Get them made up to the prescription of a doctor, and see him every month to report progress and be examined. In the end, this plan will be very much cheaper, and incomparably better, than buying crude ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... one is daughter of the Duc de Guines, with whom I am in high favour, and I give her two hours' instruction in composition daily, for which I am very liberally paid. He plays the flute incomparably, and she magnificently on the harp. She possesses much talent and cleverness, and, in particular, a very remarkable memory, which enables her to play all her pieces, of which there are at least two hundred, without book. She is doubtful whether she ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... Saints attend him, as though attesting to his act of faith. Opposite kneels Ippolita, his wife, the brilliant queen of fashion, the witty leader of society, to whom Bandello dedicated his Novelle, and whom he praised as both incomparably beautiful and singularly learned. Her queenly form is clothed from head to foot in white brocade, slashed and trimmed with gold lace, and on her forehead is a golden circlet. She has the proud port of a princess, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... recompensed by the pleasure. I found myself so warm in celebrating the praises of military men, two such especially as the prince[36] and general, that it is no wonder if they inspired me with thoughts above my ordinary level. And I am well satisfied, that, as they are incomparably the best subject I ever had, excepting only the royal family, so also, that this I have written of them is much better than what I have performed on any other. I have been forced to help out other arguments; but this has been bountiful to me: they have been low and barren ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... have been before her we were most frequently reminded of Madame Bishop's quality (not quantity) of voice. Their voices are of metal somewhat akin. Jenny Lind's had incomparably more power and more at all times in reserve; but it had a shade of that same veiled quality in its lowest tones, consistently with the same (but much more) ripeness and sweetness, and perfect freedom from the crudeness often called clearness, as they rise. There is the ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... continued Richard, "in that Art Building, of merit incomparably greater than 'Breaking Home Ties'; and yet the crowd never looked at those, because it did not understand them. But at any hour of the day, if you happened to pass this picture, it took you some time to do so. You could pass any of John Sargeant's ...
— Mother • Owen Wister
... served, neither after reefing topsails, nor at any other time; but what is very shameful, in many instances no substitute is allowed. If sailors might have coffee instead of rum, they would thankfully accept the substitute, for coffee is incomparably a better stimulant. The invigoration from rum is only momentary, and afterwards is perhaps rather pernicious; but the wholesome effect of coffee is felt for an hour. So they very excusably observe, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... who views Jesus from the standpoint of a pantheistic naturalism, and expels all miracles from the gospel history, calls him 'the incomparable man, to whom the universal conscience has decreed the title of Son of God, and that with justice, since he caused religion to take a step in advance incomparably greater than any other in the past, and probably than any yet to come;' and he closes his 'Life of Jesus' with the remarkable concession: 'Whatever may be the surprises of the future, Jesus will never be surpassed. His worship will grow ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... use their wits as well as their hands at every turn; and resourcefulness and versatility are therefore in constant demand. The industrial life of a Russian peasant, who is of necessity a Jack-of-many-trades, is incomparably more educative than that of the Lancashire cotton operative, most of whose thinking and much of whose operating may be said to be done for him by the complicated machinery which he controls; who does, indeed, learn to do one thing surpassingly well, but in doing ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... saved them from ruin and destruction." This subject was peculiarly favourable to a display of that impassioned eloquence in which the orators of antiquity so much excelled, when acting as public accusers; and it is universally agreed that Sheridan's speech was incomparably the best of its class that had ever been delivered in the British senate. Its power was seen in its effects. When the orator sat down, all, or nearly all in the house, both members, peers, and strangers, joined in a tumult of applause, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... obtained from the coast of Africa is often much inferior to that obtained from the Indian Archipelago. The best rule for determining the quality is probably that of its vicinity to the equator. The ivory brought from within the 10th degrees of north and south latitude is incomparably the finest in the market; it is at the same time the most transparent, which of itself is a valuable characteristic. Our Indian ivory for some years back, instead of being shipped by way of the Cape for England, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... civilization like ours without having the bad; but I am not going to deny that the bad is bad. Some people like to do that; but I don't find my account in it. In either case, I confess that I think the buyer is worse than the seller—incomparably worse. I suppose you are not troubled with either case ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... stately edifice which bears his name," cried the orator, "witness for him what sums he expended in public munificence. This building, erected by him, at his own immense charge, for the convenience and ornament of the town, is incomparably the greatest benefaction ever yet known to ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... exception, were cut down into paddles by Peter, for the paddle, in ice navigation, is incomparably superior to the oar, which requires open water for effectual use. One oar, however, was left of its original length for a support to the McIntosh, which, being about eight feet square, and furnished with brass eyelets, was easily fitted as a sail; and owing to its black hue, was ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... stronger prisoners were allowed to plunder the weaker. Such was the state of things in the Fleet Prison at the period of our history, when its misgovernment was greater than it had ever previously been, and the condition of its inmates incomparably worse. ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... it was wrong. As he did so he was detected and accused of cribbing. He denied the charge, the matter was investigated, the papers were compared, and the man who gave good advice was disqualified. In all his other papers he had done incomparably better than anyone else. ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... to clasp them over her laughing face a moment. "And I don't remember what you were saying!" They both laughed a long time at this; it seemed incomparably droll, ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... and thus are capable of opening vistas in the quickened mind which were unknown before. Authors of this class often dart a ray into the recesses of our souls, so that we see what they never saw, gain what they never gave. A book that increases mental activity is incomparably better than one that multiplies learning. The value of knowledge that lies in libraries is overestimated by all save those who read Nature's runes. The Countess Ossoli gathered from the garners, rather than from the glorious field, and therefore she does not range with the marked originals. In this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... the shyest and most nervous men that ever lived, but his appointment to the police-court—first at Greenwich, then at Southwark—removed much of his undue modesty, and he was recognised as being energetic, sagacious, and humane. He was a tremendous worker, incomparably quick, and above all was absolutely punctual in his delivery of "copy"—a virtue quite sufficient to account for his popularity with publishers, who also were attracted by his retiring and distinguished manners. Though his conversation was bright, he preferred to keep his witticisms for ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... shut to the door. This, it seems to me, is the work for which genius, temperament, and intellectual habit would alike have fitted him. For while his feeling for internal nature was undoubtedly less profound, less mystically penetrating than Wordsworth's, his sensibilities in general were incomparably quicker and more subtle than those of the friend in whom he so generously recognised a master; and the reach of his sympathies extends to forms of human emotion, to subjects of human interest which lay altogether outside the somewhat ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... not responsible for the morbid craving that stirs in him. He begins life, so far as responsibility is concerned, so far as merit or demerit is concerned, with a fresh start. He is not responsible for the craving; he is responsible only for assenting to it. True, the pull in his case is incomparably stronger than in others; still he can resist. He is responsible, not for the hideous thing itself, but for the degree in which he yields to it. He is meritorious to the extent of the effort he puts forth not to yield to it. The reason why this point is often obscured is that from the first ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... answer for, that in this he was encouraged beyond the usual fate of men who become slaves to that calling. And yet, though from this time he was privileged to be regarded one of the sweetest singers in American literature, and incomparably the noblest bard of childhood, though the grind of journalism was measurably taken from him, he chafed under the conviction that he was condemned to mingle the prosaic and the practical with the fanciful and the ideal, and that, ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... in London or out of it; and you were extremely kind to me on all occasions; but then so many other men were kind also, that really beyond the flowers,"—going back to her second finger,—"(which were incomparably finer than those I ever received from any one else), I don't see that you were more ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... one of these would have been sufficient to saturate him, and they had all, in the decrees of Fate, come together. His life hitherto had been like some dry sponge, dusty and crackling; now it was plunged in the waters of three seas, all incomparably sweet. ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... nobler nature than Elizabeth; she was a woman of higher courage and greater conviction, more generous, magnanimous, and confiding, and, apart from her incomparably greater beauty and fascination, she possessed mental endowments fully equal to those of the English queen. But, whilst caution and love of mastery in Elizabeth always saved her from her weakness at the critical moment, Mary Stuart possessed no such safeguards, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... the cultivation of virility, but far more useful for the social ends of civilisation. For these ends warfare is altogether less adapted than it is for the social ends of savagery. It is much less congenial to the tastes and aptitudes of the individual, while at the same time it is incomparably more injurious to Society. In savagery little is risked by war, for the precious heirlooms of humanity have not yet been created, and war can destroy nothing which cannot easily be remade by the people who first made it. But civilisation ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... nebulae and solar coronas has made the study of these phenomena incomparably more effective than the old visual methods. There is no longer any necessity to make "drawings" of them. The old dread of comets has been relegated into the shade of ignorance. The long switching tails regarded so ominously ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... sorrow that he felt lay in the relation of his doctrine to the life of his nation. He had founded a new church on his pure gospel, and had given to the spirit and the conscience of the people an incomparably greater meaning. All about him flourished a new life and greater prosperity, and many valuable arts—painting and music—the enjoyment of comfort, and a finer social culture. Still there was something in the air of Germany which threatened ruin: ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... actions as an element in their morality, attaches more importance to the distinction than I do. While I dispute the pretensions of any theory which sets up an imaginary standard of justice not grounded on utility, I account the justice which is grounded on utility to be the chief part, and incomparably the most sacred and binding part, of all morality. Justice is a name for certain classes of moral rules, which concern the essentials of human well-being more nearly, and are therefore of more absolute obligation, than any ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... their own whenever they stood in need of it. Their rapacity differed in no respect from that of the rebels, except that they seized upon things with less of ceremony and excuse, and that his majesty's soldiers were incomparably superior to the Irish traitors in dexterity at stealing. In consequence, the town grew very weary of their guests, and were glad to see them march ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... a time, then, as we have read in the ancient histories of the Cypriotes, there was in the island of Cyprus a very great noble named Aristippus, a man rich in all worldly goods beyond all other of his countrymen, and who might have deemed himself incomparably blessed, but for a single sore affliction that Fortune had allotted him. Which was that among his sons he had one, the best grown and handsomest of them all, that was well-nigh a hopeless imbecile. His true name was Galesus; ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... appealed strongly to Monroe had to be put aside—fortunately for all concerned, for Monroe's desire for military glory was probably not equalled by his capacity as a commander and the western campaign proved incomparably more difficult than wiseacres ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... never lamented that his benevolence outran his discretion. But there was one man in England at the time who had the rare union of qualities necessary for Crabbe's purpose. Burke is a name never to be mentioned without reverence; not only because Burke was incomparably the greatest of all English political writers, and a standing refutation of the theory which couples rhetorical excellence with intellectual emptiness, but also because he was a man whose glowing ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... tower for a village of palaces!" he thought, not of the Tower of London, but of the tower of the Workhouse which he was now approaching. He thought he could design an incomparably better tower than that. And he saw himself in the future, the architect of vast monuments, strolling in a grand garden of his own at evening with other ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... years; or if he can, then is the licensee, a purchaser for value, to be excluded from very many sources of pecuniary emolument? To us, the injury to the public, in this and similar cases, appears of incomparably greater consequence than that to the individual; but what the authorities at Westminster Hall may say is another question. Even could the patent laws be so modified, that the benefits derived from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... highwaymen, we have none, not even an amateur. Why do not some of these choice spirits quit the salons of Pall-Mall, and take to the road? the air of the heath is more bracing and wholesome, we should conceive, than that of any "hell" whatever, and the chances of success incomparably greater. We throw out this hint, without a doubt of seeing it followed up. Probably the solution of our inquiry may be, that the supply is greater than the demand; that, in the present state of things, embryo ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... tributaries from sources on both of the enclosing slopes. The tributaries springing from the Kikuyu forest on the southern side—on which we were—are the smaller; those from the northern side are incomparably more copious, for their source is the Kenia range. This giant among the mountains of Africa, which covers an area of nearly 800 square miles and rises to a height of nearly 20,000 feet, now—despite the 50 miles between us and that—showed itself to our intoxicated ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... CCCCXCVII-DXIII) and Aladdin (Nights DXIV-XCI), the last two bearing traces of a Syrian origin, especially Aladdin, which is written in a much commoner and looser style than Zeyn Alasnam. The two tales are evidently the work of different authors, Zeyn Alasnam being incomparably superior in style and correctness to Aladdin, which is defaced by all kinds of vulgarisms and solecisms and seems, moreover, to have been less correctly copied than the other. Nevertheless, the Sebbagh text is in every respect preferable ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne |
