"Matchless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... harpsichords, Theology, fine arts, or finer stays, May be the baits for gentlemen or lords With regular descent, in these our days, The last year to the new transfers its hoards; New vestals claim men's eyes with the same praise Of 'elegant' et caetera, in fresh batches— All matchless creatures, and yet ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... the right of secession. The Constitution was obscure about it, and one easily became befogged if he sought to weigh the right and the wrong of it. But Webster had replied to Hayne. Those were the days when schoolboys "spoke pieces," and in thousands of schoolhouses the favourite piece was his matchless peroration. From its opening, "When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in the heavens," to the final outburst, "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!" it was all as familiar to us as the sentences of ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... And the long lotus-stalks flow down on each side of the neck toward the ground. At the back of this head-dress are a scarab and a cartouche. The goddess is advancing solemnly and gently. A wonderful calm, a matchless, ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... O wise PESTALOZZI! we place on thy brow A coronet, bright and unfading; for thou A legacy rich hast bequeathed unto men: Our one feeble talent by thee is made ten; We prize thy rare gift, but we never may know How much to thy matchless invention we owe. ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... begs to present his compliments to Miss Minford, and to assure her, from the depths of his heart, that his feelings toward her are only those of the purest admiration for the matchless charms of her mind and person. He takes this method of explaining himself, because he has observed with great sorrow that Miss Minford has shown a desire to avoid him on several recent occasions, when they have accidentally met in the street. It was ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... unfinished mansion slowly decaying beside his small and homely dwelling. The pictures, many of which were the rarest originals in early Flemish and Italian art, were dusted with tender care, and hung from hasty nails upon the bare ghastly walls. Delicate ivory carvings, wrought by the matchless hand of Cellini-early Florentine bronzes, priceless specimens of Raffaele ware and Venetian glass—the precious trifles, in short, which the collector of mediaeval curiosities amasses for his heirs to disperse amongst the palaces of kings and the cabinets ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... beneath such a set of garments. I used to consider my brother Rupert the most especial dandy I had ever seen; but that, evidently, was my limited experience: even Rupert cannot display so perfect a fit in bottle-green coats, so faultless a silken stock, buckskins of such matchless drab!" ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... volume, admirably expresses the intensity, alertness and intrepidity which have carried this remarkable personage through so many harrowing experiences. A certain bold defiance, which is one of Dr. Traprock's characteristics, has here been caught to the life. With just this matchless courage we know that he must have faced death a thousand times even though, as now, he had not a cartridge in his belt. That Dr. Traprock knows no fear is evidenced by the fact that he has not only explored every quarter of ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... were gazing with mouths wide open, as if fascinated, upon the preacher who, moving up and down with quick, lithe steps, was telling them a story. A wonderful story, too, it seemed, the wonder of it apparent in the riveted eyes and fixed faces. It was the immortal story, matchless in the language, of Joseph, the Hebrew shepherd boy, who, sold into slavery by his brethren, became prime minister of the mighty empire of Egypt. The voice tone of the minister, now clear and high, now low and soft, vibrating like the deeper notes of the 'cello, was made for ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... not kneel to me, my matchless General; you have wrought royally, and royal courtesies are your due." Noticing that she was pale, he said, "But you must not stand; you have lost blood for France, and your wound is yet green—come." He led her to a seat and sat down ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... being now twenty-eight years of age, Byron took final leave of England, and sailed with two servants for Ostend. His route, by Flanders and the Rhine, may be traced in his matchless verses. He settled in Geneva, where he met Shelley and Mrs. Shelley; they boated on the lake and walked together, and Byron's susceptible mind was deeply influenced by his mystical companion. We may discover traces of that vague sublimity in the third canto ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... Captain Bonneville; so wrote the matchless American litterateur, Washington Irving, of "Sunnyside," author and authority, creator of The Life of George Washington, and the Broken Heart, which made Lord Byron weep. The doughty Captain Benjamin L. E. Bonneville, who died as late as 1878, obtaining leave of absence ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... to use her for training the Dogs, he had her roughly thrown into a bag, then carried a quarter of a mile away and dumped out. At the same time the Greyhounds were slipped and chivvied on. Away they went bounding at their matchless pace, that nothing else on four legs could equal, and away went the Coyote, frightened by the noise of the men, frightened even to find herself free. Her quarter-mile start quickly shrank to one hundred yards, the one hundred to fifty, and on sped the flying Dogs. Clearly there was no chance ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... With marvelous and matchless swiftness and precision they got under arms. There were but fifteen hundred or so in all—six squadrons of French Lancers, the only French troops yet to reach Belgian soil, and a small body of ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... matchless power of silence! There are words that concentrate in themselves the glory of a lifetime; but there is a silence that is more precious than they. Speech ripples over the surface of life, but silence ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... corruption. What a snare the wonderful organism of the eye may become when used to read corrupt books or look upon licentious scenes at the theatre, or when used to meet the fascinating gaze of the harlot! What an instrument for depraving the whole man may be found in the matchless powers of the brain, the hand, the ear, the mouth, or the tongue! What potent instruments may these become in accomplishing the ruin of the whole being for ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... Jean entered. After the usual salutations, he exclaimed, "I have just seen a most lovely creature." "Who is she?" inquired his majesty, hastily. "No high-born dame," answered comte Jean, "but the daughter of a cabinet-maker at Versailles; I think I never beheld such matchless beauty." "Always excepting present company," replied the king. "Assuredly," rejoined my brother-in-law, "but, sire, the beauteous object of whom I speak is a nymph in grace, a sylph in airy ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... such lengths did he, at this time, carry his enthusiasm for Kean, that when Miss O'Neil soon after appeared, and, by her matchless representation of feminine tenderness, attracted all eyes and hearts, he was not only a little jealous of her reputation, as interfering with that of his favourite, but, in order to guard himself against the risk of becoming a convert, refused to go ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... me, must produce the same effect upon my mind as if the object represented was really there. This is the reason, perhaps, why I feel less pleasure in examining those pictures by the ancient masters, though portrayed with matchless skill, which represent the heathen deities. With Jupiter, Mars and Venus, I can feel little sympathy, while the truthful and spirited delineations of Wilkie and Gainsborough, which have beep familiar from childhood, strike home ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... Unwise talk is matchless in unwisdom. Unwise work, if it but persist, is everywhere struggling towards correction, and restoration to health; for it is still in contact with Nature, and all Nature incessantly contradicts it, and will ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... impertinence, for which indeed I blush, your stern reproof recalls me to my senses, to my better nature; and I beg that upon the unsullied word of an American gentleman, you will accept with my apology the earnest assurance that in quitting this room I honour and revere my matchless countrywoman far more than when I entered her noble presence. Fashionable freedom may have demoralized my tongue, but by the God above us, I swear it has not blackened my heart, nor deadened my perception and ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Temple of Aphrodite at Cnidus, and was regarded by the ancients as the most perfect embodiment of the goddess of beauty. Pilgrimages were made from distant countries to Cnidus for the sake of looking upon the matchless statue. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... furnish bread and homes to three hundred million freemen. The republic is great in the intelligence, thrift, industry, energy, virtue, and valor of its unconquered and unconquerable children, and great in its matchless, wise, and beneficent Constitution. I pray the Congress of the United States to propose to the people all needful amendments to the Constitution, that by their sovereign act they may crown the republic for all time ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... marvelous display of universal erudition been heard within these schools. By my faith, I am absolutely wonder-stricken, and not I alone, but all. In proof of which I need only tell you, that coupling his matchless scholarship with his extraordinary accomplishments, the professors in their address to him at the close of the controversy have bestowed upon him the epithet of 'Admirable'—an appellation by which he ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... climes where I have late been straying, Though Beauty long hath there been matchless deemed, Not in those visions to the heart displaying Forms which it sighs but to have only dreamed, Hath aught like thee in truth or fancy seemed: Nor, having seen thee, shall I vainly seek To paint those charms which varied as they beamed - To such as see thee not my ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... steep climb up a hill and through a pretty garden brought us at last to the Sultan's town-house, which is full of lovely things, especially those brought from Japan. Such delightfully hideous monsters in bronze and gold, such splendid models, magnificent embroideries, matchless china, rare carvings, elaborate tables and cabinets, are seldom found collected together in one house. After a long examination of all these pretty things, Tom arrived, and then we had to show them to him all over again. By this time we were quite ready for tea served in the verandah, ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... grandeur that reigns in the general arrangement of the gallery is very striking: and the tasteful and judicious distribution of this matchless assemblage of antiques does great honour to the Council of the CENTRAL MUSEUM. Among the riches which Rome possessed, the French commissioners also, by their choice selection, have manifested the depth of their knowledge, and the justness ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... destined to see him sooner or later, though she stayed at home with almost morbid fidelity to a resolution she had made. He rode out the Quemado Road one matchless December day when the very air would have seemed sufficient to produce flowers without calling the ungracious desert into service. Sylvia sat in her boudoir by an open window and watched him approach. She immediately guessed that it was Runyon. The ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... written several valuable pamphlets. In 1844, Mr. Garnett appeared before the Judiciary Committee of the Legislature at the capital, in behalf of the rights of the colored citizens of the State, and in a speech of matchless eloquence, he held them for four ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... price that caused the vendors to rejoice, for these men gave 100 pounds of gold, 100 of silver, 100 webs of Indian silk, 100 scarlet mantles, 100 good horses, and 300 birds, such as falcons, hawks, and sparrow-hawks: last and greatest of all, they gave a cup matchless in beauty and beyond all price. Vulcan had made this cup, and on it he had pictured how Paris, son of Priam, king in Troy, had carried off Helena, and was pursued in wrath by Menelaus, Helena's ...
— Fleur and Blanchefleur • Mrs. Leighton
... carefully it is read the greater the interest in it and the profit from it become. It is the volume that teaches us how to live here that we may live hereafter, and in the dying hour no one will regret having been a diligent student of its matchless pages ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... the year after the sham Popish Plot concocted by those matchless scoundrels, Titus Oates, an expelled naval chaplain, and Bedloe, a swindler and thief, Temple Bar was made the spot for a great mob pilgrimage, on the anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth. The ceremonial is supposed to have been organised by that restless plotter against ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... there is a soul behind the matchless eyes, and a keen wit animates the lovely mouth, and when the indication of the white forehead is not belied, it is a nice question whether great beauty be a gift of benign or malicious fairies. Not a woman in this room or in any room she entered could look at Rachael Breckenridge without ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... walking and grinding, approximately seven billion Puffyloaves are at this moment cruising eastward over Middle America. Remember that a six-month supply for deep-freeze is involved and that the current consumption of bread, due to its matchless airiness, is eight and one-half loaves per person ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... a really good story of that matchless building, which yet however will hardly be appreciated at its full value by those who have never yet seen it. When the Austrian troops were occupying Florence, one of the white-coated officers had planted himself in the Piazza in front of the tower, and was ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... play any thing that was ever invented, whether game or instrument, and talked in every tongue of Europe, from Romaic to Swedish. Both could ride like Arabs. Count Theodore was a splendid shot, his sister was matchless in singing, and neither was ever tired of fun or frolic. They seemed of the Lorenskis' years, but had seen more of the world; and though scarcely so dignified, most people preferred the frank familiarity and lively converse of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... experience, full and exalted character, and unwavering fidelity to Republican principles of our distinguished fellow-citizen, John Sherman, entitle him to the honors and confidence of the Republican party of Ohio, and of the country. His matchless skill and courage as a financier have mainly contributed to accomplish the invaluable and difficult work of resumption and refunding the public debt, and made him the trusted representative, in public life, of the business interests of ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... too glorious for the mere earth-born. There was a central point, however, which chiefly fixed my attention, where the vast Temple of the Sun stretched upward its thousand columns of polished marble to the heavens, in its matchless beauty casting into the shade every other work of art of which the world can boast. I have stood before the Parthenon, and have almost worshipped that divine achievement of the immortal Phidias. But it is a toy by the side of this bright crown of the Eastern capital. I have been at Milan, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... court; "and there were not a few who declared that they had seen fair forms of female beauty beckoning them from the mouth of the chasm." [16] Tannhauser was a Frankish knight and famous minnesinger, who, travelling at twilight past the Horselberg, "saw a white glimmering figure of matchless beauty standing before him and beckoning him to her." Leaving his horse, he went up to meet her, whom he knew to be none other than Venus. He descended to her palace in the heart of the mountain, and there ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... those lustrous eyes That follow me with longing gaze, Which sometimes seem so human-wise, I look for human speech and ways. By your quick instinct, matchless love, Your eager welcome, mute caress, That all my heart's emotions move, And loneliest moods and hours bless, I do believe, my dog, that you Have ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... imperceptible to others. The worst writer may easily happen to touch a spring which is connected in their minds with a long succession of beautiful images. They are like the gigantic slaves of Aladdin, gifted with matchless power, but bound by spells so mighty that when a child whom they could have crushed touched a talisman, of whose secret he was ignorant, they immediately became his vassals. It has more than once happened ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... —Its matchless hospitality; purple pompons; its five horns, 227; its one mission; the humming-bird its friend, 228; complex mechanism; enticing fragrance; removal of pollen on insects' legs, 229; four captives, 230; its honey trap; its tenacious grip, 233; an assortment of victims; cumbersome handicap, ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... that, the jewel—cast away so majestically was one of a pair which Cleopatra wore as ear-rings, and that when Antony restrained his hostess from a repetition of the draught, she presented the now matchless pearl to him. Another version implies that the ear-ring^ had been originally one monster pearl, which Cleopatra had caused to be sawn in two to gratify her lust for unique and ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... character of self-consciousness than this extreme sensitiveness to alien opinions; for if a man really knew himself he would utterly despise the ignorant notions others might form on a subject in which he had such matchless opportunities for observation. Indeed, those opinions would hardly seem to him directed upon the reality at all, and he would laugh at them as he might at the stock ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the dress she was to wear to-night, a white organdie of the pearly tint high in favour with blondes of matchless complexion, a white sash, and a white ribbon to be knotted about the throat. The neck of the gown was cut ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... domain, of matchless wealth, the discovery of which belonged entirely to the old overman. Ten years' sojourn in the deserted mine, an uncommon pertinacity in research, perfect faith, sustained by a marvelous mining instinct—all these qualities together ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... night-cap on, [1] And every star its glim is hiding, [2] And forth to the heath is the scampsman gone, [3] His matchless cherry-black prancer riding; [4] Merrily over the Common, he flies, Fast and free as the rush of rocket, His crape-covered vizard drawn over his eyes, His tol by his side and his pops ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... matchless child had thus spoken, Dom. Consul rose, pulled off the black skull-cap which he ever wore, because the top of his head was already bald, bowed to the court, and said, "We hereby make known to the ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... Genius of your own Great Shakespear at their Head, Directing their different Powers, and wing his own boundless Imagination into Satyr and Panegirick for the Purpose— They could not be too Severe upon Your Vices— nor could they do Iustice to your Matchless Virtues. ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... answer, "By Allah, O my brother, I am abashed at thee; but I must tell the truth and may Allah harm all who harm folk in their goods!" The other would exclaim, "Tell me what hath happened;" and Abu Kir would reply, "As for thy stuff I dyed that same on matchless wise and hung it on the drying rope but 'twas stolen and I know not who stole it." If the owner of the stuff were of the kindly he would say, "Allah will compensate me;" and if he were of the ill-conditioned, he would haunt him with exposure and insult, but would get nothing of him, though ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... slope, and be ever ready at a moment's notice and on the smallest cause to fly at the others' throats! Contrary to every principle alike of morality, religion, political economy and social science! All true; and yet how wonderful, how matchless was the amount of deathless work produced under the conditions ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... majstro. Mr. sinjoro. Masterpiece cxefverko. Mastic mastiko. Masticate macxi. Mastication macxado. Mastiff korthundo. Mat mato. Match alumeto, egaligi. Match-box alumetujo. Match kompari, egaligi. Matchless nekomparebla. Matchmaker alumetisto. Match (marriage) svatisto. Mate sxipoficiro. Mate kunulo. Material (cloth) sxtofo. Material materialo. Materialism materialismo. Materialist materialisto. Maternal patrina. Maternity patrineco. Mathematician matematikisto. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... last and crowning exploit of our matchless captain was to capture, and execute, and quarter, and hang up on a gallows at the market- cross, the head and the hands and the feet of his oldest, most sworn, and most deadly enemy, one Self-love. So stout and so insufferable was our captain in the matter of Self-love that when it was ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... lived in the love of their own people; but who, like this man, has drank his sweetest cup of welcome with another? Matchless chief! of glory's immortal tablets there is one for him, for him alone! Oblivion shall never shroud its splendor; the everlasting flame of Liberty shall guard it, that the generations of men may repeat the name recorded there, the beloved ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... designation of "The Rampart of Montmartre." Unlike his master, he made no pretension to any gift of poetic power, but his inexhaustible memory made him a living encyclopaedia; and for his stock of anecdotes and trooper's tales he was matchless. ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... Therefore the Lord did cease to preserve them by his miraculous and matchless power, for they had fallen into a state of unbelief and awful wickedness; and they saw that the Lamanites were exceedingly more numerous than they, and except they should cleave unto the Lord their God, they ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... human instruments were fabricated, one and all, by the Hands of the same Divine Artist: and I have yet to learn that when the same man builds an organ, fills it with breath, and performs upon it a piece of his own composition with matchless skill,—I have yet to learn that any part of the honour, any part of the praise, any part of the glory of the performance is to be withheld from him! ... The illustration is at least as old as Christianity itself. Pray take ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... slipped her pencil into her pocket; she could not write. And although she thrilled through every nerve over the majestic sentences that followed and was carried to a pitch of enthusiasm almost beyond her control, when the jubilant thunder of thousands of voices rang together in the matchless closing words, "Blessing, and glory, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might, be unto our God, forever and ever. Amen." She made no further attempt to write; her heart was full; there rang in it this eager cry, "Oh, to rest in arms like these!" Strong enough? Aye, indeed! Doubts ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... a relief to be able to shout at the top of my voice and sing hymns of glory confronting the enemy. I should like to hear the whole army following my example behind me, to hear all the bands and all the trumpets accompanying our advance with those matchless war-songs which thrill the soul and ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... larks never, for their songs seemed to her of heaven, while the cuckoos were of earth. The gulls, too, were somewhat difficult from the friendly point of view, but she lay for hours overlooking their domestic arrangements and envying the wonders of their matchless flight. ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... short career, Unfading laurels twine thy early bier. To mourn thy exit, how can we refrain, For seldom shall we see thy like again! Who, to deep learning, and the soundest sense, Join'd the rare gift of matchless eloquence. Thy wit most keen, thy penetration clear, Thy satire poignant, made corruption fear. And such thy knowledge of the human heart, So prompt to see, and to unmask each art. Oppression shrunk abash'd, while innocence Call'd thee her champion—her sure defence. Once more, ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... blind to beauty; the lenses of his eyes seem to be made of smoked glass, draping the whole world in mourning. While one man sees only gravel, fodder, and firewood, as he looks into a richly-wooded park; another is ravished with its beauty. One sees in a matchless rose nothing but an ordinary flower; another penetrates its purpose, and reads in the beauty of its blended colors and its wonderful fragrance ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... have that little head of hers Painted upon a background of pale gold, Such as the Tuscan's early art prefers! No shade encroaching on the matchless mold Of those two lips, which should be opening soft 5 In the pure profile; not as when she laughs, For that spoils all; but rather as if aloft Yon hyacinth, she loves so, leaned its staff's Burthen of honey-colored ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... Monastery of Spazac—hesitate at such a time? For myself, I wanted to hurry on, and to come at once to the fight with my country's foes; and well I knew that the Gospodar Rupert, with a lion's heart meet for his giant body, would press on with a matchless speed. We of the Blue Mountains do not lag when our foes are in front of us; most of all do we of the Eastern Church press on when the Crescent wars ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... Chancellorsville because, although not a victory for us, the campaign inflicted on the enemy losses at least equal to our own; and we say also Gettysburg because that victory was won by the army Hooker had re-organized, and led with such matchless skill from Falmouth to ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... weave the web, spin, and do all the drudgery of a modern washerwoman; and rarely allows them any share of social intercourse with the other sex. Yet the very foundations on which he has constructed his two matchless poems are women. It appears also from all the dramatic writers of ancient Greece, whose aim was "to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature, to shew the very age and body of the time its form and pressure," ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... the whole. There is not a line written by him during this year which, if it were deleted from his works, would anyway impair his poetic fame. But this long barrenness was atoned for by a burst of inspiration which came on him, in the fall of 1790, and struck off at one heat the matchless Tale of Tam o' Shanter. It was to the meeting already noticed of Burns with Captain Grose, the antiquary, at Friars Carse, that we owe this wonderful poem. The poet and the antiquary suited each other ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... look well even in my coffin," she said with her matchless smile, as she lay down on the bed where she was ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... v.; great &c 31; distinguished, ultra [Lat.]; vaulting; more than a match for. supreme, greatest, utmost, paramount, preeminent, foremost, crowning; first-rate &c (important) 642, (excellent) 648; unrivaled peerless, matchless; none such, second to none, sans pareil [Fr.]; unparagoned^, unparalleled, unequalled, unapproached^, unsurpassed; superlative, inimitable facile princeps [Lat.], incomparable, sovereign, without parallel, nulli secundus [Lat.], ne plus ultra [Lat.]; beyond compare, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... employed to collect plants at the Cape, for the Royal Garden at Kew, and in which employment he so honourably acquits himself, as the Hortus Kewensis bears ample testimony, sent hither seeds of this Pelargonium, which flowered in that matchless collection in the year 1792; a few plants of it have also been raised from Cape seeds, by Mr. WILLIAMS, Nurseryman, at Hammersmith, some of which flowered this spring with ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 7 - or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... no longer turn our thoughts from the treasures of art which make Perugia rich above all cities of the Tiber, save Rome alone. We cannot tarry before the cathedral, noble despite its incompleteness and the unsightly alterations of later times, and full of fine paintings and matchless wood-carving and wrought metal and precious sculptures; nor before the Palazzo Communale, another grand Gothic wreck, equally dignified and degraded; nor even beside the great fountain erected six hundred years ago by Nicolo and Giovanni da Pisa, the chiefs ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... her long, in fact, she could scarce take her eyes off her. The girl seemed to fill her with equal astonishment and rapture. At each moment the contours of her virginal figure revealed fresh charms. Ah! in the eyes of real connoisseurs sixty thousand florins were but a bagatelle for such a matchless creature! ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... are fled, Broken is the "golden bowl," Loosed the "silver chord," whose thread Bound to earth th' immortal soul. Closed the eyes whose glance so dear Once love's language fond could speak, And the worm, foul banqueter, Riots on that matchless cheek. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... Prince of Orange. The position of William had for some time been one of singular difficulty. He had been forced, and chiefly through the treacherous diplomacy of Charles the Second, to consent to the Treaty of Nimeguen which left France matchless in arms and dominant over Europe as she had never been before. Holland indeed was saved from the revenge of Lewis, but fresh spoils had been wrested from Spain, and Franche-Comte which had been restored at the close of the former war was retained at the end of this. ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... desire and love to understand them? This is the Book of books, as David said of Goliah's sword, 'There's none like that.'" The Bible is, indeed, what that great philosopher, the Honorable Robert Boyle, called it, "that matchless book." We have often thought that the sublime descriptions which it gives of God, the humbling and exalting doctrines which it reveals, and the high-toned morality which it inculcates, are of themselves proofs decisive of ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... were so obvious and facile that it is everybody's wonder that they were not sooner hit upon. The bemisted world must jog on for thousands of years without the knowledge of the loadstone, till a Neapolitan stumbled upon it about three hundred years ago. Nor must the world be blessed with such a matchless engine of learning and virtue as that of printing, till about the middle of the fifteenth century. Nor could one old man, all over the face of the whole earth, have the benefit of such a little, though most needful, thing as a pair of spectacles, till a Dutchman, a little ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... matchless beauty. The clouds that swung low in the early morning had floated higher and higher till they hung now in shining billows above the highest balsam-crowned peaks ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... glittering mosaics, precious slabs of marble, priceless columns of beautiful marble. And where the mosaics have been destroyed or left unfinished, as in the cupola and the body of the church, baroque artists have filled the place with their paintings, paintings which in their own style are matchless and which it is now foolishly proposed should ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... patent in its beauty, and has struck, and, in so far as we can tell, will for ages strike, with its greatness multitudes of widely different degrees of cultivation whose intellectual capacity is as far apart as their critical faculty. I mean the matchless Campanile or bell-tower 'towering over the Dome of Brunelleschi' at Florence, formed of coloured marbles—for which Giotto framed the designs, and even executed with his own hands the models for the sculpture. With this lovely ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... all the riches of matchless Peru, To revel in splendour as emperors do, I'd forfeit the whole with a hearty good will, To dwell in a cottage on ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... the foremost Chiefs of Troy Fell back; the Argives sent a shout to heaven, And dragging Phorcys and Hippothoeus thence Stripp'd both. In that bright moment Ilium's host Fear-quell'd before Achaia's warlike sons 385 Had Troy re-enter'd, and the host of Greece By matchless might and fortitude their own Had snatch'd a victory from the grasp of fate, But that, himself, the King of radiant shafts AEneas roused; Epytis' son he seem'd 390 Periphas, ancient in the service grown Of old Anchises whom he dearly loved; His form assumed, Apollo thus began. ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... land of fancies and of shadows, we raised a trusting eye to the glittering host of silent stars that glistened in all their matchless beauty in heaven's blue vault above, then listened to the dashing of the briny wave, and felt that God was there, that His eye slumbereth not, and His hand holds not only individual life, but the destinies ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... the assumption of a gross improbability; whereas Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedies are, almost all of them, founded on some out of the way accident or exception to the general experience of mankind. But observe the matchless judgment of our Shakspeare. First, improbable as the conduct of Lear is in the first scene, yet it was an old story rooted in the popular faith,—a thing taken for granted already, and consequently without any of the effects ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... about that the poetry of the modern world is a store-house of obsolete diction. The most surprising characteristic of the right poetic diction, whether it draw its vocabulary from near at hand, or avail itself of the far-fetched inheritance preserved by the poets, is its matchless sincerity. Something of extravagance there may be in those brilliant clusters of romantic words that are everywhere found in the work of Shakespeare, or Spenser, or Keats, but they are the natural leafage and fruitage of a luxuriant ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... was brought to the Teuton after he had come to England, found him already cast in a semi-heroic mold. But before he could proceed on his matchless career of world conquest, before he could produce a Shakespeare and plant his flag in the sunshine of every land, it was necessary for this new faith to develop in him the belief that a man of high ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... her curiosity; the pure white walls and ceiling, shining with matchless cleanness, the glittering instruments arranged carefully on glass tables, the attentive and pleasant-faced nurses, standing also in pure white, and the doctor in his vestments, smiling reassuringly. In the centre of the room was a large glass table, long enough for a reclining body, and ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... pleasure which awaits them in their elder years, when they come to the rich treasures from which these small and valueless coins are extracted; pretending to no other merit than as faint and imperfect stamps of Shakespeare's matchless image. Faint and imperfect images they must be called, because the beauty of his language is too frequently destroyed by the necessity of changing many of his excellent words into words far less ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... when they have so often professed to be for the true Protestant religion, shall they not be ashamed to thirst so much after Protestant blood, and in that cause desire to associate themselves with all the Papists at home and abroad whose assistance they can have, and particularly with those matchless monsters (they call them subjects) of Ireland, who, if the computation fail not, have shed the blood of some hundred thousands in that kingdom? For our part, it seems they are resolved to give the worst name to the best thing which we can do, and therefore they have ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... With all the fervor which her matchless beauty inspired, he begged of the princess her fair hand for his future sovereign the Archduke of Austria. As the count ceased, every eye turned toward the infanta. She had listened with calm dignity to the words of the ambassador, and her large, melancholy eyes had ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... time, when all the northern land Was sinking under Christiern's ruthless hand; When patriotism from Sweden's hills sublime With tearful eyes o'erlook'd the subject clime, And saw where Stenon and a matchless few, To her bright race unalterably true, Regardless of the thunders launch'd by Rome, Self-titled arbitress of future doom, O'er a waste realm her shatter'd flag unfurl'd, Conspicuous to the whole applauding world. Ernestus' sire in Sweden's state before High eminence ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... school whose scholars and masters showed the daemonic, or at least prophetic, inspiration of Michelet, the milder and feebler but still inspiring enthusiasm of Quinet, the academic clearness and discipline of Villemain and Nisard, the Lucianic wit of Merimee, the matchless appreciation of Gautier, and, above all, the great new critical idiosyncrasy of Sainte-Beuve. Between these men there were the widest possible differences, not merely of personal taste and genius, but of literary theory ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... glittered for the lustre of its ornaments. When the night came, the eunuchs threw open the doors of the bride-chamber and stood on either hand; whereupon the bride entered, among her damsels, like the moon among stars or a pearl of matchless beauty in a string of lesser pearls, and seated herself upon a couch of alabaster inlaid with pearls and jewels, that had been set for her there. Then came the King in to her and God filled his heart with love of her; so he ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... singular and noble appearance. I was always fond of dress; and, in this instance, gave a carte blanche to my taste, and invented the most splendid costume that ever perhaps decorated a soldier. I am, as I have stated already, six feet four inches in height, and of matchless symmetry and proportion. My hair and beard are of the most brilliant auburn, so bright as scarcely to be distinguished at a distance from scarlet. My eyes are bright blue, overshadowed by bushy eyebrows of the color of my hair, and a terrific gash of the deepest purple, which goes over ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was a child made to be loved. When he was two years old he was beyond all comparison the dearest and most beautiful little fellow I have ever seen. His fat, plump, chubby little figure, modelled after Cupid's own; his curly flaxen hair; his matchless complexion, fair and clear as the sky on a sunny summer day; and his bright, round, expressive eyes, which imparted intelligence to his every feature, combined to make him the idol of his father, ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... receive from your own lips the answer which is to make me the happiest or the most miserable of mankind. Hear me, adorable girl! You know not the extent of my devotion. No mercenary consideration influences me. Love—admiration for your matchless beauty alone sways me. Let your father—if he chooses, leave all his wealth to his adopted son. I care not. Possessed of you, I shall have a treasure such as ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... remarks do not indicate that he ranked Dryden with Virgil, Tasso, or Milton; for he recognized as well as we that the power to embellish and to imitate successfully does not constitute the highest excellence in poetry. In the Epistle to a Friend he affirmed his admiration for Dryden's matchless style, his harmony, his lofty strains, his youthful fire, and even his wit—in the main, qualities of style and expression. But by 1700 Wesley had absorbed enough of the new puritanism that was rising in England to qualify his praise; now he deprecated ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley
... the gain or wisdom of blowing smoke upon a diamond? The sun itself has holes in it too large for half a dozen worlds like ours to fill, but wherein is that great luminary thereby unfitted to be the matchless centre of our system, the glorious source of day, and the sublime symbol ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... will be all the burden I should lay on you; and that will be more than my Heavenly Master indulged Himself in. I am just setting out for Norwich with Mr. Wesley, whose renewed strength and immense labours astonish me. What a pattern for preachers! His redeeming the time is, if I mistake not, matchless. ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... of the race of rangers, Matchless with horse, rifle, song, supper, courtship, Large, turbulent, generous, handsome, proud, and affectionate, Bearded, sunburnt, drest in the free costume of hunters, Not a single one over ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... back his divorced queen Ingelburga of Denmark. Braisnes, planted upon a peak, overlooks what is left of the exquisite twelfth-century church of St.-Yved, ruthlessly battered and abused in 1793, and robbed of certain matchless monuments in enamelled copper for the benefit of a syndicate of patriotic rogues. The Chateaux de Gandelu, de Neuville, de St.-Lambert are ruins. The lordly cradle of the great House of Guise; the tower of Marchais in which, tradition tells us, the League was first conceived ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... gift is displayed as to stand unparalleled in any European literature at its dawn.[17] Celtic poets excel in the art of giving a lifelike representation of deeds and events, of graduating their effects, and making their characters talk; they are matchless for speeches and quick repartees. Compositions have come down to us that are all cut out into dialogues, so that the narrative becomes a drama. In such tales as the "Murder of the Sons of Usnech," or "Cuchulainn's Sickness," in which ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Mr. Somers," he said. "In the name of all this company let me congratulate you on having become the owner of the matchless 'Odontoglossum Pavo' for what, under all the circumstances, I consider the quite moderate price ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... clad in rich aray, The Sun now enters loving Gemini, And heats us with the glances of his eye, Our thicker rayment makes us lay aside Lest by his fervor we be torrified. All flowers the Sun now with his beams discloses, Except the double pinks and matchless Roses. Now swarms the busy, witty, honey-Bee, Whose praise deserves a page from more than me The cleanly Huswife's Dary's now in th' prime, Her shelves and firkins fill'd for winter time. The meads with Cowslips, Honey-suckles dight, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... be understood from the beginning to the end as examining, with intense anxiety, the effect of her own words on his mind and countenance; as watching for that relenting spirit, which she hopes to awaken either by reason or persuasion. She begins by an appeal to his mercy, in that matchless piece of eloquence, which, with an irresistible and solemn pathos, falls upon the heart like "gentle dew from heaven:"—but in vain; for that blessed dew drops not more fruitless and unfelt on the parched sand of the desert, than do these heavenly words ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... length of the room with matchless grace and self-possession, and pausing before the astonished group, said, in a voice clear as the chime of ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... impulse pure, That thrills and nerves thy brave To deeds of valor, that secure The rights their fathers gave? Oh! grieve not, hearts; her matchless stain, Crowned with the warrior's wreath, From beds of fame their proud refrain ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... her ears. Link Stevens hunched low over the wheel. His eyes were hidden under leather helmet and goggles, but the lower part of his face was unprotected. He resembled a demon, so dark and stone-hard and strangely grinning was he. All at once Madeline realized how matchless, how wonderful a driver was this cowboy. She divined that weakening could not have been possible to Link Stevens. He was a cowboy, and he really was riding that car, making it answer to his will, as it had been born in him to master a horse. He had never driven ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... door behind her, and he sat staring at it after she had gone. The matchless pride of her, that she could forget herself so completely and think of the subordinate sorrow of her servant when she might have been absorbed by ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... aimless, should wax feeble. It is because I love you that I hold your fame far dearer than my love. Go rather forth again, travel through heathen lands, defend the weak against the strong; go, battle for the right, show yourself the matchless knight you are; and God and my love ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... in their order, just as they fell, and some money and care might set them all up again in their places; yet there is not in Greece the patriotism or even the common sense to enrich the country by this restoration, matchless in its certainty as ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... advantages became idle and useless; none could be followed up, none could be maintained. Lucan says of Caesar, when besieged in the fortified palace of the Ptolemies at Alexandria, that often, whilst thrown on his most difficult defence, the matchless ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... weak-minded hysterical mother, by threatening to commit suicide when the beloved object was forbidden the house. Comparing the girl of seventeen with the matured and cultivated woman of later years, what a matchless example Mrs. Gallilee presented of the healthy influence of education, directed to scientific pursuits! "Ah!" she thought, as she put the book back in its place, "my girls will have reason to thank me when they grow up; they have had a mother ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... great!" he exclaimed. "I have never seen anything to equal it! It is a matchless gem, ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... the German conqueror insolently has bivouaced within her walls. Yet, like a virgin undefiled, she shows no sign of storm and stress, she offers her dimpled cheek to the rising sun, and when fall the shadows of night and a billion electric bulbs flash in the siren's crown, her resplendent, matchless ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... country grow at the edges of green meadows, tall and stately as the trees of Lorrain's brush. Sheep, with soft-sounding bells, feed along the rich rolls of the land. Birds sing in the thicket at daybreak. The hills are alive with springs of matchless clearness. Butterflies hover over hedges and dart ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... The butt of it heard jest and ridicule. They were pillorying him with the light and matchless cruelty of wits. And he, poor fool, had believed them to be his dupes, whereas he was theirs! Gently he disengaged himself ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... metaphysics and pithy proverbs, psalms of unrivalled grandeur and pastorals of exquisite loveliness, parables fraught with solemn meaning, the mournful wisdom of the preacher, the exultant faith of the apostle, the matchless eloquence of Job and Isaiah, the apocalyptic ecstasy of St. John. At a time when there was as yet no English literature for the common people, this untold wealth of Hebrew literature was implanted in the English mind as ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... a couple of long shots, which had the effect only of setting them off again over the prairie. After another run this matchless dog closed and seized the wolf by the haunch, but again retreated to avoid the fierce return chop. Then there was another stand at bay, and again a race over the snow. Every few hundred yards this scene ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... hoping, at the same time, that it will not be inferred that those which I have not named, of which it would be impossible to offer a description without filling a bulky volume, are inferior to the works which I have presumed to mention. The recording pen must rival that matchless pencil, which has thus adorned the walls of the Museum, before it can do justice to such ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr |
