"Pinnacle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from side to side, singing wildly as the Lorelei. The scene changed, and it was the depths of the earth, red-glowing and full of gnomes. And a third time, after a change, you saw from mountain-tops the city which the giants had built in the heavens for the gods,—a glittering dome or pinnacle now and then breaking the line of white palaces, now and then a superb cloud floating before it, until, at last, a mist seemed to rise from valleys below, wrapping it little by little, till all became invisible ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... their long, big-eared faces out of the water, like weird, glutted beasts, staring stupidly, some in one direction, some in another, all herded together by the dominating tower of the Halles. The moon shone across the houses, throwing shadows on some glorifying roof-tree and pinnacle, the peaked cap of a Chaldean magician which crowned a little turret, and above it all, stood out the sublime octagonal diadem of the mighty tower. But no beam fell on the dark waters. Nevertheless Jeanne and Noerni leaned for some time against the parapet, gazing into the gloomy depths; Noemi ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... us a pleasant journey, and rode away at a scrambling canter up the pass. He had been gone but a few moments when I heard a shout, and, looking up, saw him standing on a pinnacle by the way-side, on the summit of the ascent. He was looking in the opposite direction, and I saw him fire three shots from his carbine in rapid succession. Dismounting the men, I made rapid preparations to meet an attack, and proceeded to work our way slowly up the height, and ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... cast away Such numerous atoms as to cause a waste Greater than nutriment whereby they wax. For 'tmust be granted, truly, that from things Many a body ebbeth and runs off; But yet still more must come, until the things Have touched development's top pinnacle; Then old age breaks their powers and ripe strength And falls away into a worser part. For ever the ampler and more wide a thing, As soon as ever its augmentation ends, It scatters abroad forthwith to all sides round More bodies, sending them from out ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... Sympathizing pity and blame were mingled in the judgments which were being passed on the Marchese every hour, and in every place where men or women met; and the proportions in which they were mingled differed greatly. None, however, could fail to see and to admit that the fall from the high pinnacle, on which the Marchese had stood, had been a very terrible one. It was felt that it was a fall from which he could never, ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... The figure of Captain Driver appeared high against the dome of the Statehouse. The strains of "The Star-Spangled Banner" burst upon the ear; and amid cheers and cries of "Old Glory! Old Glory!" that echoed to the distant hills the old sea flag unfurled and floated above the topmost pinnacle of the Capitol of Tennessee. And thus Old Glory ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... the summit of his cruelty—blind cruelty it may have been—but it dragged her also to the climax of her mood. Like the falling of the Tower of Babel, with its crumbling of dust and its confusion of tongues, she tumbled headlong from her pinnacle of strength. ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... to his artistic side. In this he has been allowed to stand on the highest pinnacle of excellence. Whether he paints the character of a nation or an individual; whether he paints it by pausing to reflect on its elements, as in the beautiful studies of Cato and Cicero, [48] or by describing it in action, which is the poetical and dramatic ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... forget our fetters, or by some queer trick of self-hallucination turn them into golden crowns. But perhaps the finer task of our humanity is to turn our eyes calmly into 'the dark backward and abysm' not of time, but of the eternal present on whose pinnacle ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... he understood the nature of the man—"a great genial boy"—but he did not understand that these "great genial boys" have all the mischievous tendencies, and all the irresponsibility of real boys. He was kind and forbearing enough, God knows. But he had set up his Posh on such a pinnacle of pre-eminence over all his fellow-men that it is possible that his bitterness in discovering that after all his protege was merely a well-built, handsome, ordinary longshoreman caused a greater revulsion than would ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... for a mile into mid-air. On the right, the snow descended in a steep, unbroken sheet into the tremendous {p.124} basin which lies between the southern and the northern peaks, and which is enclosed by them as by two mighty arms.[6] Sheltered behind a pinnacle of ice, we fastened our flags upon the Alpine staffs, and then, standing erect in the furious blast, waved them ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... Spring's Box-office door, I've stood and eyed the builders. They had a plan to render less their labours; Workmen in olden times would mount a ladder With hodded heads, but these stretch'd forth a pole From the wall's pinnacle, they plac'd a pulley Athwart the pole, a rope athwart the pulley; To this a basket dangled; mortar and bricks Thus freighted, swung securely to the top, And in the empty basket workmen twain Precipitate, ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... which, for a moment, made her shrink and quiver. His words were often unintelligible to her, until Miss Merriman, silent-footed and efficient, translated them into action, as, before the wide eyes of the mountain child, there began to unfold the swift drama of modern surgical science at its pinnacle, amid that ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... Montero was carried away. Look at what the Second Empire had done for France. It was a regime which delighted to honour men of Don Carlos's stamp. The Second Empire fell, but that was because its chief was devoid of that military genius which had raised General Montero to the pinnacle of fame and glory. Pedrito elevated his hand jerkily to help the idea of pinnacle, of fame. "We shall have many talks yet. We shall understand each other thoroughly, Don Carlos!" he cried in a tone of fellowship. Republicanism had done its work. Imperial ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... transposed for the piano becomes hysterically sad. This literature of woe, as Whitman calls it, this Maladie de Rene, as we like to call it in Europe, is in many ways a most humiliating and sickly phenomenon. Young gentlemen with three or four hundred a year of private means look down from a pinnacle of doleful experience on all the grown and hearty men who have dared to say a good word for life since the beginning of the world. There is no prophet but the melancholy Jacques, and the blue devils dance on all our ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... line to his mother that very night and tell her all about it, and put E. S. after his name. Eagle Scout. The bicycle his father had promised him when he should attain that pinnacle of scout glory, he would now demand. That would be where dad ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... were excessively pleased over his little slip, and he at last descended from his lofty pinnacle and humbly begged them not to ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... far cry of Innocent Smith, apparently from some remote pinnacle. "Come up here; and bring some of my things to eat and drink. It's just ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... approaches and the shadows begin to fall, every turret and pinnacle stands out in bold relief. The bands of yellow and red shade into purple, and everything, save the long winding trail, begins to have ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... of events placing in my hands, precisely at the moment of their greatest value, clear opportunities that none but a hopeless blunderer could have disregarded. What men call Chance operated in my favour as though with superb calculation, lifting me to this miniature pinnacle I could never have reached by my own ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... marriage,—was carried on after a somewhat humdrum fashion, and in a manner that must be called commonplace. How different had it been when Crosbie had made his offer! Lily for the time had been raised to a pinnacle,—a pinnacle which might be dangerous, but which was, at any rate, lofty. With what a pretty speech had Crosbie been greeted! How it had been felt by all concerned that the fortunes of the Small House were in ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... I append, for I have been examining the mechanism of the gate since I came in, and have made a discovery which dislodges my savant from his pinnacle; namely, that the only fastening on the gate is a huge wooden latch, which not one of us had sense enough to lift; but then who thinks of taking a fort by assault and battery on the latch? Halicarnassus hit upon it by mere accident, and I therefore remorselessly expose him. Then we saunter about ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... retain their fellow creatures in bondage, let the example of the superior productiveness of free labor be set before their eyes, and let Congress avail itself of the happy opportunity to elevate the Territory itself to a pinnacle of prosperity, while it supports our national character, in the preservation of human ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... was borne away from the pinnacle of his imaginary triumph as if dead, Zell following, wringing her hands, and with streaming eyes; but Edith reminded one of some wild, timid creature of the woods, which, though in an extremity of danger and fear, is alert and watchful, ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... None does offend. I say none. I'll able 'em. Look when I stare, see how the subject quakes.' These laws have failed, you see. They shelter the most frightful depths of wrong. That Bench has failed, you see; and that Chair, with all its adjunct divinity. Come here and look down with me from this pinnacle, into these abysses. Look at that wretch there, in the form of man. Fetch him up in his blanket, and set him at the Council Table with his elf locks and begrimed visage and inhuman gibberish. Perhaps, he will be able to make some suggestion there; and those five ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... inheritance to the world of art. All his powers were swept impetuously into one current, the poetic side of art, and alike as critic and composer he stands in a relation to the music of the pianoforte which places him on a pinnacle only less lofty than ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... sensational account of our adventure. My exploit was related in a very graphic manner, and for a long time afterward I was considerable of a hero. The reporter who had thus set me up, as I then thought, on the highest pinnacle of fame, was John Hutchinson, and I felt very grateful to him. He ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... year 1533, and the peaks of the mighty mountains that appeared to pierce the bright blue sky, appearing to bear out the fabulous belief of the eastern lands, for their icy summits glowed, and flushed, and sparkled in the rays of the sun, which gilded every pinnacle and turned each glacier into a river of gold, seeming to flow slowly downwards towards the vales and plains of the Andes, as yet flooded with ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... prisoners and herded them back to Nolan for such reassurance and comfort as that grim old trooper saw fit to administer. When morning broke the depths of the valley were still shrouded in mist and gloom. Up on the heights the brilliant hues of the dawn shone far and wide on rocky peak and pinnacle and, above the wooden tower of the office building, on the fluttering ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... and rumbled onward. The hissing of steam was audible. The vehicle swung around a pinnacle of stone, and Cochrane ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... almost to overhang the water; and going on farther amongst the wind-brushed pines, we came to another spot which we had previously viewed from above. It was a little round stone oratory perched on the crest of a jutting pinnacle, and linked to the main rock by a narrow causeway which rested on a slender arch. It was lit by a lantern in the roof, and over the altar was the marble effigy of a ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... but for the breezes and the cattle bells afield. And there was something satisfactory in the sight of that great mountain that enclosed us to the north; whether it stood, robed in sunshine, quaking to its topmost pinnacle with the heat and brightness of the day; or whether it set itself to weaving vapours, wisp after wisp growing, trembling, fleeting, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... within one annular reef. Let the island continue subsiding, and the coral-reef will continue growing up on its own foundation, whilst the water gains inch by inch on the land, until the last and highest pinnacle is covered, and there remains a perfect atoll. A vertical section of this atoll is shown in the woodcut by the dotted lines;—a ship is anchored in its lagoon, but islets are not supposed yet to have been formed on the reef. The depth of the lagoon and the width and slope of the reef, will ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... a jagged pinnacle of rock, which, just before Brown had fired, had been straight ahead. The towing monster had seen it and veered sharply to avoid crashing. The barest change of course, yet ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... of those remarkable conclusions which sound so well in the observations one often hears when anything is said about India. The tendency of caste, you will hear it gravely urged, is to elevate the upper classes on the highest possible pinnacle, and keep the Pariah grovelling in the dust. "What," continues the speaker, "keeps the Brahmin at the top and the Pariah at the bottom?" Why, let me ask in turn, is a cow's tail long, and a fox's tail bushy? Is it in this nineteenth ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... slept, and cooled his brow with gentle breezes stirred up to life by fairy fans. His last thoughts had been of his vast wealth, his uninterrupted prosperity, and his great power. He was king of kings, and the whole world trembled at his feet. He had attained to the highest pinnacle of glory. Earth had yielded to him its most costly treasures, and had nothing more that she could give. Men had profusely showered upon him their highest flatteries, and addressed ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... morning hours. The road from Cadore ran on a high level, through sloping pastures, white villages, and bits of larch forest. In its narrow bed, far below, the river Boite roared as gently as Bottom's lion. The afternoon sunlight touched the snow-capped pinnacle of Antelao and the massive pink wall of Sorapis on the right; on the left, across the valley, Monte Pelmo's vast head and the wild crests of La Rochetta and Formin rose dark against the glowing sky. The peasants lifted their hats as we passed, and gave us a pleasant evening ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... trump of future fame" With an impeded utterance—a puff Suggesting that a pinch or two of snuff Would clear the tube and somewhat disinflame. Nay, Abner Doble, you'll not get from me My voice and influence: I'll cheer instead, Some other man; for when my voice ascends a Tall pinnacle of praise, and at high C Sustains a chosen name, it shan't be said My ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... obstacles nor temptations induce ye to leave it; bound along if you can; if not on hands and knees follow it, perish in it, if needful; but ye need not fear that; no one ever yet died in the true path of his calling before he had attained the pinnacle. Turn into other paths, and for a momentary advantage or gratification ye have sold your inheritance, your immortality. Ye will never be heard ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... schoolboys they who unaware"—instead of two women they had found a man with a gun. And the Princess was miles off and forever beyond their reach. When they had settled with him they would no doubt burn the House down, but that would serve them little. From his airy pinnacle he could see the whole sea-front of Huntingtower, a blur in the dusk but for the ghostly eyes of ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... probable that these gypseous beds have undergone some metamorphic action. The strata are much hidden by detritus, but they appeared in most parts to be highly inclined; and in an adjoining lofty pinnacle they could be distinctly seen bending up, and becoming vertical, conformably with the underlying porphyritic conglomerate. In very many parts of the great mountain-face [F], composed of thin gypseous beds, there were innumerable masses, irregularly shaped and not like dikes, yet with well-defined ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... shall I build, and set Upon the pinnacle of being-thine. Let Time By its subtle dim crime Eat it from life, or with men's violence fret To pieces out of unity and presence. Ay, let that be! Our love shall stand so great In thy statue of us, like a god's fate, Our love's incarnate and discarnate ...
— Antinous: A Poem • Fernando Antonio Nogueira Pessoa
... taking the exercise needed, filling his mind with the learning of the world, winning when others would have failed, profiting by experience allotted to him through fate's kindly offices and association with the healthy, true men. What has been the result? He has risen to the very pinnacle of human endeavor ... no honors await him. He has lived consistently and cleanly and he can look any man in the eye and say honestly: "I have lived ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... I"—then mused Theos disconsolately,—"How can I make him believe that some undeclared evil threatens him, when he is at the very pinnacle of fame and fortune with all Al-Kyris at his feet? ... He would never listen to me, ... nor would any persuasions of mine induce him to leave the city where his name is so glorious and his renown so firmly established. Of Lysia's treachery I may perhaps ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the days that followed, Justine found herself thinking that she had never known happiness before. The old state of secure well-being seemed now like a dreamless sleep; but this new bliss, on its sharp pinnacle ringed with fire—this thrilling conscious joy, daily and hourly snatched from fear—this was ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... friend and a few Turkish guards whom I requested might return, as I wished to go alone, my mission being perfectly pacific. In about eight hours I reached Cambus (? Kampos), a prodigiously strong position in the mountains, and on approaching afar off I beheld the three Greek flags flying on the pinnacle of the highest mountain in sight. The pass to the position of Cambus is most narrow and difficult, and then at the summit it is a plateau of fine soil with large trees and gardens. It is a most beautiful spot and well worth fighting for. I was soon ushered into an assembly of the ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... up there?" he shouted, for Sile had clambered away up among the rocks of the lodge and stood upon a sort of pinnacle, spy-glass ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... of discriminating between the possible and the impossible, and has not broken down in the task which for greatly gifted natures is the most difficult of all— the task of recognizing, when on the pinnacle of success, its natural limits. What was possible he performed, and never left the possible good undone for the sake of the impossible better, never disdained at least to mitigate by palliatives evils that were incurable. But where he recognized that fate had spoken, he always obeyed. Alexander ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the horse and mounting it, turned the pin of ascent, whereupon bird-like it flew with him high in air and soared towards the upper regions of the sky. In early morning his father missed him and, going up to the pinnacle of the palace, in great concern, saw his son rising into the firmament; whereat he was sore afflicted and repented in all penitence that he had not taken the horse and hidden it; and he said to himself, "By Allah, if but my son return to me, I will ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... An American original, unconsciously bringing the revolutionary mind to the climax of all utterances possible to it, has said that 'men are degraded when considered as the members of a political organisation.'[2] Shelley's position was on a yet more remote pinnacle than this. Of mankind he was barely conscious, in his loftiest and divinest flights. His muse seeks the vague translucent spaces where the care of man melts away in vision of the eternal forces, of which man may be but the ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... making her first anchorage in the lovely harbor on the west side of Prince's Island. That island, in about 1 30' north latitude, covered with all the luxuriance of tropical growth and verdure, and broken into every conceivable shape of pinnacle, castellated rock and chasm, and frowning precipice, streaked with silvery threads of leaping streams in their dash to the sea, is indeed one of the most enchanting spots the eye ever rested on. The chief ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... plummet has sounded the depths of a woman's devotion; no surveyor's chain will ever mark the limits of a woman's faithful, patient endurance; and only the wings of an archangel can transcend that pinnacle to which the sublime principle of self-sacrifice ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... hour later, descended to the Den he found a revolution in active progress. Dick was the hero of the hour. His valiant stand against solid odds, his last victorious blow, but, most of all, the cowardly blow of his opponent, had suddenly raised him to a pinnacle of glory which took away his breath. Culver, despite his dress-coat, despite his exertions at levee, despite his seniority and long service, had been ignominiously deposed from office, and subjected to the rigour of rule ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... is so sweet As this: to cradle in security And restfulness an unsuspecting heart, And then from the pinnacle of happiness To dash it down into ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... from Lorimer that it was all fair sailing I went out and called on Mrs. Johnson. Well, you should have seen her! She was quite set up on a pinnacle and declared that she must write out the story. It is as well I suppose that Newton should have it first hand, and she will take most of the glory. The ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... silver were employed in its execution. Below the chancel is a crypt. Fronting the Duomo is the Baptistery, begun 1339 (by C. di Nese), an elegant octagonal structure, also in alternate layers of black and white marble, each corner terminating in a pinnacle. The font is quadrangular, of panelled marbles, and constructed in the 13th cent. Outside, near the door, is a beautiful stone pulpit. Adjoining is the Palazzo del Podest (now the seat of the Tribunale ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... poverty, the splendor, the rags, the men and women, all acting under the stern discipline of an immense society, the boys, the beggars, the chimney-sweeps, the hilarious and the sorrowful, the fine ladies and noble lords, were all duly appreciated by him. If he had been taken up to the pinnacle of a mountain, instead of entertaining one of Wordsworth's sublime contemplations, he would have been very likely to flap his arms and crow like chanticleer. Indeed, in middle age he was accustomed to boast that he had never ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... forbade me to indulge in the luxury of evincing my gratitude. Gladly would I have escorted her back to her home—even if I could not make that home again what it had been, or restore her husband to the pinnacle from which I had dashed him—but I dared not do this. I was forced to content myself with less, and was about to offer to send one of my men with her, when a hurried knocking at the outer door arrested the ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... promontory, which forms the last wreck of a great crater. On the beach of this promontory, a quadrant-shaped segment of a small subordinate point of eruption stands exposed. It consists of nine separate little streams of lava piled upon each other; and of an irregular pinnacle, about fifteen feet high, of reddish-brown, vesicular basalt, abounding with large crystals of glassy albite, and with fused augite. This pinnacle, and some adjoining paps of rock on the beach, represent the axis of ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... vale, we began to ascend the Pyrenees upon a noble road, indeed! hewn upon the sides of those adamantine hills, of a considerable width, and an easy ascent, quite up to the high Fortress of Bellegarde, which stands upon the pinnacle of the highest hill, and which commands this ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... a buttelike pinnacle. The lights of the ship were close over us. And there were moving lights up there, tiny moving spots on the adjacent rocks. The brigands had come out, prowling about to investigate ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... such colossal treason, Musa referred Count Julian to his master the Khalif, at Damascus, who at once accepted his infamous proposition. In Spanish legend and history this man is always designated as The Traitor, as if standing alone and on a pinnacle among the men ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... scene; and the kind fingers which did the pasting-in; and the care with which we made portrait and landscape fit into and illustrate one another. And what memories, what impressions, strong and clear as yesterday's, clung to each succeeding view! The Spire—that "pinnacle perched on a precipice"—with its embosoming trees, as one had so often seen it from the North-Western Railway, while the finger of fate, protruding from the carriage window, pointed it out with—"That's where you will ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... bright peaks from shadowed vales, by incredible distances. As far as the eye could travel with utmost straining, away to the dark, imposing background of the Djurdjura range, billowed ridges and ravines, ravines and ridges, each pointing pinnacle or razor-shelf adorned with its coral-red hamlet, like a group of poisonous fungi, or the barnacles on a ship's steep side. Such an extraordinary landscape Stephen had never imagined, or seen except on a Japanese fan; and it struck him that the scene actually did resemble ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to watch the mists drifting, to listen to the swell and lull of the wind and the patter of the cold rain. There were glimpses now and then of the inner Cuchullins, a fragment of ragged sky line, the sudden jab of a black pinnacle through the mist, the open mouth of a gorge steaming ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... feet in depth, but part of the bank on which he stood had slipped down into the stream, leaving an uneven surface by means of which an agile man might descend. A tall slab of rock, evidently part of the fallen mass, rose in a pinnacle from the water, and on top of it rested the branches of the tree that Gladwyne had used as a bridge and had afterward dislodged. The rock behind it on the opposite bank was absolutely smooth, but the thicker end of the log, which had fallen against the face, reached to within about ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... Booth? His superb acting of Cato raised him to such an airy pinnacle of fame that he soon became one of the managers of Drury Lane. The other players were evidently all more or less effective, barring Cibber, whose Syphax (the Numidian warrior who seeks the downfall of Cato), must have made the judicious grieve. Indeed we can ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... like it, particularly 'Excelsior.' Beulah, I have written 'excelsior' on my banner, and I intend, like that noble youth, to press forward over every obstacle, mounting at every step, until I, too, stand on the highest pinnacle, and plant my banner where its glorious motto shall float over the world. That poem stirs my very soul like martial music, and I feel as if I should like to see Mr. Longfellow, to tell him how I thank him for having written ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... prime of life was passed in vicissitude and study. He did not set himself about writing books for mankind, until he knew what they possessed and what they wanted. It was his opinion that a writer who would do any good should stand upon the pinnacle of his age, and from thence look into ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... eagle, yellow in colour, glittering as gold about the neck, with a body-plumage of deep red-purple. Its tail is sky-blue, with some of the pennae of a light rose colour. The head is adorned with a crest and pinnacle beautiful to ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... found myself staring up at its top, a full 800 feet high, the bottom being an ornate and elaborate temple. The middle, which supplied most of its height, was a long, round tower, and at top there was a spherical pinnacle which had what looked to be a room ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... jealous watchings the three powers decided to finish their infamous work, and Poland was blotted from the map of Europe. In the two divisions Austria received forty-five thousand square miles and five million of inhabitants. Maria Theresa was now upon the highest pinnacle of her glory and her power. She had a highly disciplined army of two hundred thousand men; her treasury was replenished, and her wide-spread realms were in the enjoyment of peace. Life had been to her, thus far, but a stormy sea, and weary of toil and care, she ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... trumpet, a mere breath of air—may dislodge it, and cause it to descend, carrying destruction into the valley. But the force of gravitation is necessary to bring it down and give it the impetus of ruin. So the might of a great people may be poised on some lofty pinnacle of human destiny; but unless there he involved in the existing sentiments and convictions, the situation and surroundings of that people, the elements of force and action, for good or evil, no individual agency and no combination ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... whisperings of Nature—the goddess, as she has been called, of a hundred voices—until here and there he can pick out a few simple notes to which his own powers can resound. If, then, at a moment when he finds himself placed on a pinnacle from which he is called upon to take a perspective survey of the range of science, and to tell us what he can see from his vantage ground; if at such a moment after straining his gaze to the very verge of the horizon, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... agnosticism of the later half of last century, had felt her faith, not indeed extinguished, but obscured and darkened. From the perusal of certain writers she had shrunk, perhaps with cowardice. They were put on such a pinnacle that she feared she would find no arguments fit to oppose to theirs. Weakly, she locked the skeleton cupboard. Then she was attacked by a malady which, while leaving her mind free and strong, she knew might be very speedily fatal. Straightway she said ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... simplicity of the Italian edifice, by being that of utility instead of that of pride.[40] Consequently the building must not be Gothic or Elizabethan: it may be as commonplace as the proprietor likes, provided its proportions be good; but nothing can ever excuse one acute angle, or one decorated pinnacle,—both being direct interruption of the repose with which the eye is indulged by the undulations of the surrounding scenery. Tower and fortress outlines are indeed agreeable, for their fine grouping and roundness; but we do not allude to them, ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... in the long run, rightly or wrongly, always assume the ascendency over an excitable one. The moderateness of Rupert's words, the coolness of his manner, here brought Tanty rapidly down from her pinnacle of passion. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... some years ago had been inspired or drawn by his Emperor and Kaiser. It had been called by some "The Yellow Peril," and depicts the figure of Germania, surrounded by the nations of Europe, standing on a pinnacle, and pointing to a broad plain below traversed by a river, and from the plain volumes of smoke rose skywards. No one seemed to know quite definitely what the actual meaning of the picture was. But since this latest crusade towards ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... his personality, and drawn to him in a loving loyalty. The attraction to these very women was his unworldliness, his separateness, his devotion to an ideal which in their reason seemed a delusion. And no women would have been more sensitive than they to his fall from his spiritual pinnacle. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... associated these have been with their various forms of worship. Thus, the Singhalese seem to have used flowers to an almost incredible extent, and one of their old chronicles tells us how the Ruanwelle dagoba—270 feet high—was festooned with garlands from pedestal to pinnacle, till it had the appearance of one uniform bouquet. We are further told that in the fifteenth century a certain king offered no less than 6,480,320 sweet-smelling flowers at the shrine of the tooth; and, among the regulations of the temple at ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... nobler ends. He never knew peace, and the rest for which he sighed slipped him at the very last. "I'm tired, so tired," he sighed again and again in those later years, when he had reached the highest pinnacle. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... questions reaching down into the under-soul of things were silent. Also, again—mark of a change so radical that none but a Thomas Jefferson may read and understand—an awe-inspiring Major Dabney had ceased to be the first citizen of the world, that pinnacle being now occupied by a tall, sallow, smooth-faced gentleman, persuasive of speech and superhuman in accomplishment, who was the life and soul of the activities, and whom his father and mother always addressed respectfully ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... contentm[en]t of the goods and honors of this world. And surely there are none, but the true children of the Lord, who by the faire illusions of the one or the other cast not themselues headlong from the top of the pinnacle. But in the ende, what is all this contentment? The couetous man makes a thousand voiages by sea and by lande: runnes a thousand fortunes: escapes a thousand shipwrackes in perpetuall feare and trauell: ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... East did not long remain at the pinnacle of greatness to which Justinian had raised it. His conquests, indeed, weakened rather than strengthened the empire, since now there were much more extensive frontiers to defend. Within half a century after his death it was ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... awful to warn or punish. Mysteries are unfolded, secrets reveal themselves, hidden things are proclaimed, and courts and juries, awed and abashed, yet elevated and inspired, accept and act upon his conclusions as infallible. For one hour he touches the pinnacle of ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... queens, and of the ——,' the friend of Voltaire, the greatest lady-freethinker of her age. But she wrote still farther:—'Secondly, the honour of Russia as a state, which has been brought to the highest pinnacle of her victorious arms with the loss of so much blood, is actually trodden under foot through the newly-concluded peace with her bitterest enemy.' And who is this bitterest enemy of the orthodox Russia? The King of Prussia, Frederick II.! Yes, the King of Prussia was once declared to be the bitterest ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... Charlemagne. For God thou has known fear, when from His side Men wandered, seeking alien shrines and new, But still the sky was bountiful and blue And thou wast crowned with France's love and pride. Sacred thou art, from pinnacle to base; And in thy panes of gold and scarlet glass The setting sun sees thousandfold his face; Sorrow and joy, in stately silence pass Across thy walls, the shadow and the light; Around thy lofty pillars, tapers white Illuminate, with delicate sharp ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer
... settling for the night presently." She made no sound. Round them all was peace and declining sunshine. Near by, the topmost pinnacle of Malata, resembling the top of a buried tower, rose a rock, weather-worn, grey, weary of watching the monotonous centuries of the Pacific. Renouard leaned his shoulders against it. Felicia Moorsom faced him suddenly, her splendid black eyes full on his face as though she had made up her ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... banker, enriched yourself in speculations, each more dishonorable than the other, and you encountered a man who crushed you like a worm under his heel. You fell, but you are of the kind that bounds, and to-day you are once more upon a pinnacle. You vegetated for years, until the moment came when you could once more seize fortune in your grasp. You are no longer Danglars the bankrupt and thief—you are Laisangy, respected and trusted. Know then ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... that, by this time, the theme of universal admiration was lifted to the very pinnacle of popularity. No such thing. The curate began to cough; four fits of coughing one morning between the Litany and the Epistle, and five in the afternoon service. Here was a discovery—the curate was consumptive. How interestingly ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Hirondelle had left Yarmouth, on the Norfolk coast, where she had been lying for two or three days, the day before she was lost, and was then intending to cruise round the coast of Great Britain. The baron was immediately raised from the depths of despair to the highest pinnacle of hope on hearing this, for he felt sure Leon had gone ashore at Yarmouth to place the baby with some Englishwoman, and had remained there some days on purpose. Confiding his new hope to Pere Yvon, he at once decided to start that night for England by Dover and Calais, for already ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... up very early. He found himself at the highest pinnacle of human happiness; but it was not that prevented him from sleeping; the question, the vital, fateful question—how he could dispose of his estate as quickly and as advantageously as possible—disturbed ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... was shouting for some explanation, a great black wall rose out of the deep on the port bow. It was a pinnacle rock, high as the ship's masts, but only a few feet wide at sea level, and the Kansas sped past this ugly monitor as though it were a buoy in a ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... imposing phenomenon does history present to us than the rise of Spanish power to the pinnacle of greatness and glory in the sixteenth century? The Mohammedans, after centuries of fierce and stubborn war, driven back; the whole peninsula brought under a single rule with a single creed; enormous acquisitions from the Netherlands of Naples, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... which the men of the West lay aside with their pinafores, or when their curls are cut. If we, in the conceited pride of our superior civilization, look down upon this as childish, we must remember that the Oriental, from the pinnacle of his lofty, and to him immeasurably elevated, civilization, looks down upon our manly sports with contempt, thinking it a ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... on each successive attempt. Every one must know the feeling of triumph and pride which a grand view from a height communicates to the mind. In these little frequented countries there is also joined to it some vanity, that you perhaps are the first man who ever stood on this pinnacle or ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... career, than which no other in his time had grander and nobler aims—aims, however mistaken, for the greatness and good of England; aims for the enlargement of knowledge and truth, and for the benefit of mankind. So ended a career which had mounted slowly and painfully, but resolutely, to the highest pinnacle of greatness—greatness full of honour and beneficent activity—suddenly to plunge down to depths where honour and hope were irrecoverable. So closed, in disgrace and disappointment and neglect, the last sad chapter of a life which had begun so brightly, ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... selfishness takes counsel of his cunning, and subtly states a new suggestion. If Association is this glorious truth to renovate the nations, then glorious should be its announcement; loud, wide, startling, should be its call; sudden, as from the skies, its appearing. Here on the pinnacle of the temple of peace (or of Salem), shalt thou stand, and cast thyself down among the multitudes like an angel. Some splendid boldness should introduce thy reign. Take no heed of care and caution; count not the cost; risk all in a providential career. Surely thou shalt be guided ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... oppression. Cromwell must govern, and govern to his best. The restless and ardent spirit that had ever prompted him onwards and upwards, and which had carried him to that high place, was now upon the wane. It had borne him to that giddy pinnacle, and threatened to leave him there. Men were now aiming at his life; the assassin was abroad; one-half the world was execrating him; we doubt not that he spoke with sincerity when he said, that "he would gladly live under any woodside, and keep ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... long time past been displaying, in a series of complicated and difficult operations in the Mediterranean, those splendid qualities which had already won for him unusual honours and fame, and which were about to raise him to that proud pinnacle which he ultimately attained as England's greatest naval hero. His address and success in matters of diplomacy had filled his superiors and the Government with sentiments of respect; his moral courage in risking reputation and position, with unflinching ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... laughter which a clown's joke brings down in mighty avalanches. In the pit, sober people relax themselves, and suck oranges, and quaff ginger-pop; in the boxes, Miss, gazing through her curls, thinks the Fairy Prince the prettiest creature she ever beheld, and Master, that to be a clown must be the pinnacle of human happiness: while up in the galleries the hard literal world is for an hour sponged out and obliterated; the chimney-sweep forgets, in his delight when the policeman comes to grief, the harsh call of his master, and Cinderella, when the demons are foiled, and the ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... the topmost part Of lofty mountain, massively sublime; A pinnacle of trachyte, seamed and scarred By countless generations' ceaseless war And struggle with the restless elements; A rugged point, which shot into the air, As by ambition or desire impelled To pierce the eternal ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... the life of the conqueror of Marathon. The last act of it," continues Mr Grote, "produces an impression so mournful, and even shocking—his descent from the pinnacle of glory, to defeat, mean tampering with a temple-servant, mortal bodily hurt, undefended ignominy, and death under a sentence of heavy fine, is so abrupt and unprepared—that readers, ancient and modern, have not been satisfied without finding some one to blame for it: we must ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... it seemed as though the spirit of the new ocean had arisen in wrath, forbidding his further progress. He was even driven south of the strait to Cape Horn, where he landed and looked from the southernmost pinnacle of the cape to the mysterious southern sea, declaring triumphantly that he had been farther south than any man in the world and had placed his foot on the extreme of the new continent. Then all at once the weather changed and Drake sailed rapidly up ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... leading Prussian social stars Opines that War, although it makes for leanness, Not only banishes discordant jars And purifies Berlin of all uncleanness, But places her, beatified by Mars, Upon a pinnacle of mental keenness, Changing the cult of trencher and of bowl To feasts of reason and o'erflows ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... possible to have a berg as high out of water as it is deep below the surface, for if we imagine a large, solid lump, of any regular shape, which has a very small, sharp, high pinnacle in the centre, the height above water can easily be equal to the depth below. An authentic case on record is that of a berg grounded in the Strait of Belle Isle, in sixteen fathoms of water, that had a thin spire about one ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... left, spied a small pinnacle of rock about three yards away, fit for his purpose, sidled towards it, and, grasping, made sure that it was firm. Next, reeving one end of the rope into a running noose, he flung it over the pinnacle, and with a ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... singularity of their entertainment. The Count, at length, rose from the table, and addressing himself to the company, said, "Gentlemen, I was willing to convince you how well I can rely upon the officers of my artillery; for I ordered them to fire during the time we continued at dinner, at the pinnacle of the tent, and they have executed my orders with ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... fire- flies and out beyond this pool of utter night flew by unceasingly the white foam of the rapids; sound there was none save their thunder. The majesty and beauty of the scene fascinated me, and I stood leaning with my back against a rock pinnacle watching it. Do not imagine it gave rise, in what I am pleased to call my mind, to those complicated, poetical reflections natural beauty seems to bring out in other people's minds. It never works that way with ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... are well inside the ring. But let us go back to Lexington. What a pinnacle the man reached, and what a drop he had! It has always seemed to me an extraordinary instance of the human leaven running through us all. What was the real cause of his collapse?" he asked, suddenly. "Was it drugs or drink? I have often wished ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... white lying below the rocky shores to which the castaways still clung. Through the marvellously clear air the smoke of the pastoral village of Poker Flat rose miles away. Mother Shipton saw it, and from a remote pinnacle of her rocky fastness hurled in that direction a final malediction. It was her last vituperative attempt, and perhaps for that reason was invested with a certain degree of sublimity. It did her good, she privately informed the Duchess. "Just you go out ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... afraid we'll shock the ladies terribly, Dick. We ought to get out on a pinnacle with a good ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... too, and sympathy, and kindness. It's no use, Mrs Willoughby. I've put you on the topmost pinnacle in my mind, and nothing that you can say can pull you down. I think you are ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... chains at Tyburn.[1] They were then buried at the foot of the gallows along with he moldering remains of highway robbers and criminals of the lowest sort, but Cromwell's head was cut off and set up on a pinnacle of Westminster Hall.[2] ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... foundering vessel. Most persons will, I think, own to a feeling of awe in looking up at it. Few can look down from a great height without creepings and crispations, if they do not get as far as vertigos and that aerial calenture which prompts them to jump from the pinnacle on which they are standing. It does not take much imagination to make one experience something of the same feeling in looking up at a very tall steeple or chimney. To one whose eyes are used to Park Street and the Old South steeples as standards of height, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... it, I might even say the joke of it. I do not object to his rejecting the story as a tall story; but I find it deplorable when he cannot see the point or end or upshot of the tall story, the very pinnacle or spire ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... step below no one. You stand on a pinnacle which no other mother can reach, as far as I am concerned. Compare you with Mrs. ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... in front of us stretched a level, shimmering expanse of sand as far as the silvery ribbon of the Gulf of Suez, beyond which, and dominating the whole scene, the gaunt, black mass of Gebel Atakah (Mountain of Deliverance) thrust its mighty pinnacle ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... shyly, and felt that it was indeed a proud moment for him. To be called Mr. Trotter by the great Bunsby, and to have his hand shaken into the bargain, put him on a pinnacle of greatness which he had never ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... that he would, so the dwarf led him through a rear door and up a winding flight of stairs. They emerged presently into a great laboratory housed in the glass-roofed pinnacle of the tower. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... was the display of our craftsmen by the side of that made by their brethren of the other side. It could have been scarce visible to Britannia, looking down from a pinnacle of calico ready for a year's export over and above her home consumption, long enough, if unrolled, to put a girdle thirty times round the globe, though not all of it warranted to stand the washing-test that would be imposed by the briny part of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... neglect of his private interests which almost inevitably accompanies the absorbing duties of public life, his affairs were always somewhat confused, and Lady Montfort, who wished to place him on a pinnacle, had resolved that he should marry an heiress. After long observation and careful inquiry and prolonged reflection, the lady she had fixed upon was Miss Neuchatel; and she it was who had made Lord Roehampton cross the room and ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... of European history, and with the broad level of obscurity stretching over the ages at its feet, there rises one shining pinnacle. Considered as man or sovereign, Charlemagne is one of the most impressive figures in history. His seven feet of stature clad in shining steel, his masterful grasp of the forces of his time, his splendid intelligence, instinct even then ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... must have been Elizabeth's secret wish that she would die, since her death would release the princess from all the embarrassments and restraints of her position, and raise her at once to the highest pinnacle of honor and power. She remained, however, quietly at Hatfield, acting in all things in a very discreet and cautious manner. At one time she received proposals from the King of Sweden that she would accept ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... whirlwind), but they engaged to fight in opposition, and a clamour arose. Telamonian Ajax first slew a man, the companion of Sarpedon, magnanimous Epicles, striking him with a rugged stone, which, mighty in size, lay highest up against a pinnacle within the wall. Not easily would a man support it with both hands, such as mortals now are, not although being very youthful; but he, raising it aloft, hurled it, and burst the four-coned helmet, and along with it crushed ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... apparitions, of which romantic style of writing she was a professed admirer. The "Indian Emperor" had the most ample success; and from the time of its representation, till the day of his death, our author, though often rudely assailed, maintained the very pinnacle of poetical superiority, against all ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... course, was nonsense; but it was proof to the unhappy Hook that Peter did not know in the least who or what he was, which is the very pinnacle of good form. ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... me that will, Tottering Favor's pinnacle; All I seek is to lie still! Settled in some secret nest, In calm leisure let me rest; And, far off the public stage, Pass away my silent age. Thus, when, without noise, unknown, I have lived out all my span, I shall die without a groan, An old, honest countryman. Who, exposed to other's eyes, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... representations of the sacred tree of Buddha, delicately wrought in iron. Tall flagstaffs, 60 or 80 feet high, surmounted by emblematical figures or representations of the Brahminy duck, float their long streamers in the wind, while the sound of tinkling bells descends from the "tis" with which every pinnacle is crowned. Surrounding all is a broad platform fringed with shops and other buildings, for the Burmese love their pagoda, and many spend their days here, and the necessities of life must ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly |
