"Superiority" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ever since the publication of the forty-seventh volume of the Philosophical Transactions, printed in 1752, and yet that none of our philosophical instrument-makers should use the construction. The superiority of this pump, to any that are made upon the common plan, is, indeed, prodigious. Few of them will rarefy more than 100 times, and, in a general way, not more than 60 or 70 times; whereas this instrument must be in a poor state indeed, if it does not rarefy 200 ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... inconsistent, or inappropriate expressions: such as, "I have observed that the superiority among these coffee-house politicians proceeds from an opinion of gallantry and fashion."—"These words do not convey even an opaque idea of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... was set up in Washington to inculcate the advantages of disunion, and to inflame the South against the North. It portrayed the advantages which would result from Southern independence; and assumed to tell how Southern cities would recover colonial superiority; how ships of all nations would crowd Southern ports and carry off the rich staples, bringing back ample returns, and how Great Britain would be the ally of the new "United States South." In brief, it asserted that a Southern convention ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... might otherwise have had its effect, was lost in the cries, accusations, and counter-accusations that arose like a babel. Morton made no further attempt. He better than any one realized, I think, the numerical superiority against him. ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... country-houses of France, and, when it comes to a consideration of their surrounding parks and gardens, or those royal hunting preserves in the vicinity of the Ile de France, or of those still further afield, at Rambouillet or in the Loire country, their superiority to similar domains beyond the ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... The British officers were often incapable, but they had a military training, and were accustomed to require and to observe discipline. The American officers came in most cases from civil life, had no social superiority over their men, and were so unruly that John Adams wrote in 1777: "They quarrel like cats and dogs. They worry one another like mastiffs, scrambling for rank and pay like ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... township; still others of a state; some of a country; and fewer yet of the world as a single thing. A person can be no larger than his unit of thinking. One who thinks in small units convicts himself of provincialism and soon becomes intolerant. Such a person arrogates to himself superiority and inclines to feel somewhat contemptuous of people outside the narrow limits of his thinking. If he thinks his restricted horizon bounds all that is worth knowing, he will not exert himself to climb to a higher level in order that he may gain a wider view. He is disdainful and intolerant ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... discover whether they are occasioned by circumstances unsusceptible of investigation or regulation, or by causes which can be ascertained, and may be within human control. To us, as Englishmen, it is of still deeper interest to inquire whether the causes of our superiority are still in operation, and whether their force is capable of being increased or diminished; whether England has run her full career of wealth and improvement, but stands safe where she is; or, whether to remain ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various
... chiefs, calling it "black rent", to indicate how they regarded it. Their greatest difficulty was to counteract the tendency of the earlier colonists to become Hibernicized—a most unwilling tribute to the superiority of the Irish race. They, and still more those in England who supported them, knew nothing of the Irish language, laws, and institutions but that they should all be impartially hated, uprooted, and supplanted by English people and everything English as soon as means enabled ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... a globe or ball of fire was, as we have seen (ante, p. 21), a power claimed by expert nagualists, and to handle it with impunity, or to blow it from the mouth, was one of their commonest exhibitions. Nothing so much proved their superiority as thus to ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... the monarchs of the Old World is by no means restricted to this question of the control and custody of the junior members of their respective families. Every prince and princess of the latter, no matter what his or her age, or superiority in point of years to the sovereign may be, is subjected to the will of the head of the house. For instance, no Russian grand duke or grand duchess can leave the Muscovite empire without previously asking ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... commissaries-general, and other superiors are those who govern us, they try to favor those of the provinces of the cloth with offices as superiors and commissaries, and with other privileges, whereby they are advantaged and plant the foot of superiority above others much more deserving and worthy than they; consequently they plant their feet upon all in order to attain their ends. In this way do they destroy the peace of one and all of us, so that I am fain to be able to express my grief to your ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... sought, especially about election time, to cheer the workingman with the assurance of better times just ahead, the more serious economic writers seem to have frankly admitted that the superiority formerly enjoyed by American workingmen over those of other countries could not be expected to last longer, that the tendency henceforward was to be toward a world-wide level of prices and wages—namely, the level of the country where they were lowest. In keeping ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... retainers of the daimyos and of the shogun. They were the descendants of the soldiers of the time of Yoritomo, who appointed shiugo to reside with a company of troops in each province, for the purpose of keeping the peace. They had already grown to claim a great superiority over the common people, and Ieyasu encouraged them in this feeling of superciliousness. The people were divided into four classes, arranged in the following order: samurai, farmers, artisans, and merchants. And in his Legacy Ieyasu thus expresses himself(235): "The samurai are masters ...
— Japan • David Murray
... markedly in the strife to reproduce State churches in Canada. I look back with distress to the bitter controversy which went on from year to year over the possession of the revenue from the clergy reserves. The cause of strife was not altogether the money, but the proof of superiority the possession of the fund would give. With many it was as much pride as covetousness. When we recall the energy that characterized the agitation over the clergy reserves, I think of what the same effort would have accomplished had it been directed ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... his isolation, from the lack of opportunities of gratifying this affection. He admired Aurora, comparing her with his youthful ideal, the strong animal, self-reliant, careless of custom. True, she lacked the intellectual superiority with which he had endowed his defiant Dulcinea, but he had even forgotten to take delight in his own mental excellence of late, so that did matter. He only concerned himself with living now. He was quite at his ease in Aurora's society, and the atmosphere on the Kyley establishment ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... that vigilance which ought to characterize the soldier. If he allowed to be retrenched, or indeed left unemployed, any of that military exhibition, which tends to impress upon the many the moral superiority of the few, where, he argued, would be their safety in the hour of need; and if those duties were performed in a slovenly manner, and without due regard to SCENIC effect, the result would be to induce the wily ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... dwelt on the ends and purposes of life, as involving everything. Now and then she essayed a feeble argument, or met some of his propositions with light banter. But with a word he obliterated the sophism—and with a glance repressed the badinage. I think she could never before have so felt the superiority of this man, whose pure love—almost worship—she had put aside as a thing of light importance; and I think the interview helped him in the work upon which he had entered, that of obliterating from his heart all traces of ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... always to his advantage. So long as a woman finds all men very much alike (as Lobelia Brewster did, save that she allowed some to be worse!), she is in no danger. But the moment in which she perceives and discriminates subtle differences, marveling that there can be two opinions about a man's superiority, that moment the ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... animal licked my hands, and, after having drunk, tried to rise to follow me, but its strength failing, its glances followed me as I was walking to and fro; they spoke volumes; I could understand their meaning. I hate to hear of the superiority of man! Man is ungrateful as a viper, while a horse, a dog, and many others of the "soulless brutes," will never ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... sort. I'll leave when I want to leave." Jason knew there was logic in her words, but his back was up at her automatic superiority. ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... that the contest will very soon be over, that the Russian army could not act before June, and that between February and June the country is not practicable for military operations. They have now so many months before them that the weight of their numerical superiority will crush the Poles. Austria and Prussia, too, do their utmost by affording every sort of indirect assistance to the Russians and thwarting the Poles ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... really of great advantage to him: it served as a mask for his remarkable athletic abilities, and so lulled the outlaws with whom he had to deal into a false sense of superiority and security. ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... further aid in money, and of a naval superiority of the allies.—Answer to the objections made to the raising of a loan in France by the ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... which foreshadowed the higher structures of the land vertebrates which were yet to come: air sacs which were to develop into lungs, and cartilaginous axes in the side fins which were a prophecy of limbs. The vertebrates had already advanced far enough to prove the superiority of their type of structure to all others. Their internal skeleton afforded the best attachment for muscles and enabled them to become the largest and most powerful creatures of the time. The central nervous system, with the predominance given to the ganglia at the fore end of the nerve cord,—the ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... Perceval. Then, adverting to the present state of affairs in Portugal, he said that he rejoiced not so much in the mere favourable turn, as in the end that must now be put to the base reign of opinion respecting the superiority and invincible skill of the French generals. Brave as Sir John Moore was, he thought him deficient in that greater and more essential manliness of soul which should have made him not hold his enemy in such fearful respect, and which should have taught him to care less ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... for ever. Consequently, on the first approach of sickness their first endeavour is to ascertain whether the boollia [magic] of their own tribe is not sufficiently potent to counteract that of their foes. Should the patient recover, they are, of course, proud of the superiority of their enchantment over that of their enemies: but should the boollia [magical influence] within the sick man prove stronger than their own, as there is no help for it, he must die, the utmost they can do in this case is to revenge his death."[19] But the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... second place before the Turks, who, without any swagger at all, lorded it over every one. For the Turk is a conqueror, whatever else he ought to be. The poorest Turkish servant is race-conscious, and unshakably convinced of his own superiority to the princes of the conquered. One has to bear that fact in mind when dealing with the Turk; it colors all his views of life, and accounts for some of his ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... defined a mimetic animal. The African boy, who amused the whole kafle he journeyed with, by mimicking the gestures and the voice of the auctioneer who had sold him at the slave-market a few days before, could have had no sense of scorn, of superiority, or of malignity; the boy experienced merely the pleasure of repeating attitudes and intonations which had so forcibly excited his interest. The numerous parodies of Hamlet's soliloquy were never made in derision of that solemn monologue, any more than the travesties of Virgil by Scarron and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... flower from another, except the forest wildlings. She detests horses and dogs. I am never happier than when among them. She reads AEschylus as glibly as I can read a French newspaper. But she will make an admirable mistress for Briarwood. She has just that tranquil superiority which becomes the ruler of a large estate. You will see what cottages and schools we shall build. There will not be a weed in our allotment gardens, and our farm-labourers will get all the ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... position of a white officer is a difficult one, that of the colored officer is still more so. He has not the self-assumed superiority of the white man, naturally feels that he is on trial, and must worry himself incessantly about his relations to his white comrades of the shoulder straps. While the United States Navy has hitherto been closed to negroes who aspire to be officers, ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... rugged salutations I saw that Alma, with the bad manners of a certain type of society woman, looked on with a slightly impertinent air of amused superiority, until she encountered my father's masterful eyes, which nobody ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... good men was sorely encumbered with the armor of Saul. Too much favorable legislation and patronizing from a foreign proprietary government, too arrogant a tone of superiority on the part of official friends, attempts to enforce conformity by imposing disabilities on other sects—these were among the chief occasions of the continual collision between the people and the colonial governments, which culminated in the struggle for independence. ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... of the Tartars was a chieftain called a Cham. He was a potentate of great power and dignity, superior, indeed, to the Czars who ruled in Muscovy. In fact, there had been an ancient treaty by which this superiority of the Cham was recognized and acknowledged in a singular way—one which illustrates curiously the ideas and manners of those times. The treaty stipulated, among other things, that whenever the Czar and the Cham should ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... the United Nations in munitions and ships must be overwhelming—so overwhelming that the Axis Nations can never hope to catch up with it. And so, in order to attain this overwhelming superiority the United States must build planes and tanks and guns and ships to the utmost limit of our national capacity. We have the ability and capacity to produce arms not only for our own forces, but also for the armies, navies, and air forces fighting ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of the two Divisions from this point onwards was one of grave danger. They were forced by the overwhelming superiority in numbers of the enemy to retire. From Ghent all the way to Ypres it was a desperate rearguard fight. They had to trek across a difficult country without any lines of communication and without a base, holding on doggedly from position ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... connection of their powers with the moral character of their lives, we shall find that the best art is the work of good, but of not distinctively religious men, who, at least, are conscious of no inspiration, and often so unconscious of their superiority to others, that one of the greatest of them, Reynolds, deceived by his modesty, has asserted that "all things are possible to ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... this fact which should show us what civilization can hope for—namely, transformation into true society, in which there will no longer be classes with their necessary struggle for existence and superiority: for the antagonism of classes which began in all simplicity between the master and the chattel slave of ancient society, and was continued between the feudal lord and the serf of mediaeval society, has gradually become the contention between ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... employed in packing. Bourgonef's talk rambled over the old themes; and I thought I had never before met with one of my own age whose society was so perfectly delightful. He was not so conspicuously my superior on all points that I felt the restraints inevitably imposed by superiority; yet he was in many respects sufficiently above me in knowledge and power to make me eager to have his assent to my views where we differed, and to have him enlighten me where I knew myself ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... of Gujarat asked permission to send ships to Aden, Albuquerque refused, and every vessel carrying merchandise in that direction was regarded as legitimate prey. The next step to closing the sea by means of {152} the superiority of the Portuguese vessels was to build fortresses in spots commanding the trade routes. This was why Albuquerque laid such weight on the necessity of building a fortress at Ormuz, and of endeavouring to ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... be realized the importance which is attached to the electric current in the warm bath. And here let me ask the question: May not the remedial superiority, in many cases, of the mineral water bath over the ordinary warm bath be due mainly, if not solely, to the more abundant generation in the former of electricity? Or rather, is it not very likely that this is so? And if such is the ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... those young men were the bravest, purest, and most talented of the band both in dress and habits: they were distinguished by a magnanimous recklessness and a noble simplicity. A divine command bound them together to seek harder and more pious superiority: what could be feared from them? To what extent this fear was merely deceptive or simulated or really true is something that will probably never be exactly known; but a strong instinct spoke out of this fear and out of its disgraceful and senseless persecution. This instinct hated the Burschenschaft ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... government of the people, by the people and for the people is yet to be realized; for that which is formed, administered and controlled only by men, is practically nothing more than an enlarged oligarchy, whose assumptions of natural superiority and of the right to rule are as baseless as those enforced by the aristocratic powers of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... of the promenade deck. MILDRED DOUGLAS and her aunt are discovered reclining in deck chairs. The former is a girl of twenty, slender, delicate, with a pale, pretty face marred by a self-conscious expression of disdainful superiority. She looks fretful, nervous and discontented, bored by her own anemia. Her aunt is a pompous and proud—and fat—old lady. She is a type even to the point of a double chin and lorgnettes. She is dressed pretentiously, ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... a further sense of superiority added to that already induced by the contrast of her new white muslin frock ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... necessity and comfort—which any individual can consume is really very small; and that the bad distribution, the shocking waste of this material bread arises from being, so to speak, used symbolically, used as spiritual bread, as representing those ideas for which men hunger: superiority over other folk, power of having dependants, social position, ownership, and privilege of all kinds? For what are the bulk of worldly possessions to their owners: houses, parks, plate, jewels, superfluous expenditure of all kinds [and armies and navies when we come to national ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... may be remarked as perhaps somewhat singular, that with regard to comfort—a matter respecting which the French are as noted for their general heedlessness as the English are for their almost uniform concern—the Diligence can lay claim to unquestionable superiority over the coach. On the other hand, the coach is constructed in such a way as to possess far greater facilities for rapidity of locomotion,—a quality which it might be supposed the quick vivacious temperament of the French would especially prize in their conveyances. As to appearance ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... throughout the civilized world. In 1820 he brought out his now famous work, entitled "Observations on a General Iron Railway, or Land Steam Conveyance, to supersede the necessity of horses in all public vehicles; showing its vast superiority in every respect over all the present pitiful methods of conveyance by Turnpike-roads, Canals, and Coasting Traders: containing every species of information relative to Railroads and Locomotive Engines." The book is illustrated by a plate exhibiting different kinds of carriages ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... the Portuguese returning to Lisbon. A great proportion of specie had been taken up in exchange for government bills on the treasuries of Bahia, Pernambuco, and Maranham. But these provinces, from the revolution in February, had disclaimed the superiority of the government at Rio, and had owned no other than that of the Cortes at Lisbon, and above all the ministry well knew, even at the time of granting the bills, that they had refused to remit any portion of the ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... remaining there till the master put in an appearance. All were envious of the favourite cat who was seated serenely inside the window, blinking complacently at the assemblage through a safe shield of glass, and at last her airs of superiority and content became too ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... is of greater significance is the fact that there seems to have been more uniformity of effort and style in the first secular drama, doubtless owing to its great superiority as a piece of literary art. That sacred plays were seldom written by men of literary rank and ability we have already noted. That they were long drawn out, cumbersome, disjointed and quite without dramatic design has also been indicated. Their real ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... sustained by justifiable self-confidence and a new-laid egg which he had sucked scarcely a minute before he made his bow to their reverences, sings out with such richness and compass that all the auditors recognize his great superiority. ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... the sun has increased in apparent magnitude, until now it enormously outshines all the other stars, and its rays begin to produce the effect of daylight upon the orbs that they reach. But we are in no danger of mistaking its apparent superiority to its fellow stars for a real one, because we clearly perceive that our nearness alone makes it ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... SILVER, exclusively used at all the Photographic Establishments.—The superiority of this preparation is now universally acknowledged. Testimonials from the best Photographers and principal scientific men of the day, warrant the assertion, that hitherto no preparation has been discovered which produces uniformly such perfect pictures, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... of them was five feet ten inches in height, and a hundred and ninety-two pounds in weight. The other was fully six feet in his stockings, and two hundred and twelve pounds in weight,—a fearful superiority in the eyes of a man, under five feet seven and weighing less than a hundred and fifty pounds. The smaller of these men failed to lift eight of my iron disks, which, with the connections, amounted to eight hundred ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... fairly quickly and without great difficulty. The Chinese drew from the ease of their success a sense of superiority and a clear feeling of nationalism. This feeling should not be confounded with the very old feeling of Chinese as a culturally superior group according to which, at least in theory though rarely in practice, every person who assimilated ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... We believe this to be a country of equals. We went into the last Presidential contest as equals—and as such we elected Mr. LINCOLN. Now, when we have the right to do so, we wish to come into power as equals—with that superiority only which our majority gives us. When we are in power and disturb or threaten to disturb the rights of any portion of the Union, then ask us for security, for guarantees, and if need be you shall have both. How would you have treated us if we had come to you with ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... immunity from all risk of blowing open." "The combination of a perfect trigger action with a perfect cocking action." Ted Haviland was standing outside the window of a gunsmith's shop in the King's Road, Chelsea, reading the enticing legends in which Mr. Webley sets forth the superiority of his wares above those of all other makers. It was the second day after he had got Audrey's letter. In his least hopeful moods he had never expected that blow; and when it fell, as a bolt from the blue, ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... which, in a country, many of whose inhabitants were Roman Catholics protected in their religion by treaty rights, declared that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state or potentate hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, {113} power, superiority, pre-eminence of authority, ecclesiastical ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... a-tingle with extravagant hopes. A few, it is true, lived to become substantial cities buzzing with the American spirit, panting, fighting for progress with an energy that shamed the Old World, lethargic in its smug and self-sufficient superiority. But many towns died in their gangling youth, tragic monuments to hopes; but monuments also to effort, and to the pioneer courage and the dreams of ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... a splendid physique and a handsome face, and also with sufficient good judgment to appreciate that while he might enjoy the contemplation of his superiority to the masses, there was little likelihood of the masses being equally entranced by the same cause. And so he easily maintained the reputation of being a most democratic and likeable fellow, and indeed he was likable. Just a shade of his egotism was occasionally apparent—never sufficient to ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to the theater!" exclaimed Sam, with a gratifying sense of superiority. "I've been ever so ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... time also he learned and understood more rapidly, though he never came to show any great superiority in the faculties most prized of this world, whose judgment differs from that of God's kingdom in regard to the comparative value of intellectual gifts almost as much as it does in regard to the relative value of the moral and the intellectual. Not the less desirable ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... into Fifth Avenue. Before he had gone a block the bulky eminence of a Fifth Avenue stage awakened his imagination. How could anybody think of confinement in a taxicab when he might ride in the elephant's howdah of that top platform, enjoying mortal superiority over surrounding humanity? Jack hung the howdah with silken streamers and set a mahout's turban on the head of the man on the seat in front of him, while the glistening semi-oval tops of the limousines floating in the mist of the rising grade from Madison Square to Forty-second Street, ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... Buttercup was more than usually exasperating, Mrs. Baxter said to the Prophet, who was bracing himself to keep from being pulled into a wayside brook where Buttercup loved to dabble, "Elisha, do you know anything about the superiority of mind over matter?" ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... line sprang flowers and singing birds. For a long space there was silence after they had sat down, and then she said, "I think I always loved you, Michael, only I didn't know it. . . ." Thereafter, foolish love talk: he had claimed a superiority there, for he had always loved her and had always known it. Much time had been wasted owing to her ignorance . . . she ought to have known. But all the time that existed was theirs now. In all the world there ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... dear." Mirah felt that she had committed an offense against Mrs. Meyrick by angrily rebuking Hans, and mixed with the rest of her suffering was the sense that she had shown something like a proud ingratitude, an unbecoming assertion of superiority. And her ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... could not exchange ground strokes with the Japanese star player successfully, and could not stand the terrific pace of rushing the net at every opportunity. Kumagae conclusively proved his slight superiority over ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... found. His day and generation uttered itself through him. With such thoughts, and from this point of view, it is possible to contemplate Lincoln's early days, amid all their degraded surroundings and influences and unmarked by apparent antagonism or obvious superiority on ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... accommodates itself, with an astonishing condescension, to the circumstances of the whole human race. It rejects none on account of their pecuniary wants, their personal infirmities, or their intellectual deficiencies. No superiority of parts is the least recommendation, nor is any depression of fortune the smallest objection. None are too wise to be excused from performing the duties of religion, nor are any too poor to be excluded from the ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... child," said he, with that voice which the strong assume to the weak—the man to some wounded infant—the voice of tender superiority and compassion, "there is no cause for fear now. Be soothed. Do you live near? Shall I ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... aversion to hereditary monarchy. Yet he was no democrat. He was the head of an ancient Norman house, and was proud of his descent. He was a fine speaker and a fine writer, and was proud of his intellectual superiority. Both in his character of gentleman, and in his character of scholar, he looked down with disdain on the common people, and was so little disposed to entrust them with political power that he thought them unfit even to enjoy personal freedom. It is a curious circumstance that this man, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Caslon's superiority over all other letter-cutters, English or Dutch, was quickly recognised, and from this time forward until the close of the century all the best and most important books were printed with Caslon's letter; the old letter-founders, such as James ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... scenery, all the material details are so easily absorbed by that informing expression of passing light, and elevated, throughout their whole extent, to a new and delightful effect by it. And hence the superiority, for most conditions of the picturesque, of a river-side in France to a Swiss valley, because, on the French river-side, mere topography, the simple material, counts for so little, and, all being so pure, untouched, and tranquil in itself, mere light ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... time there was no doubt of the enemy's superiority in artillery, and to make matters worse, the craters were changing hands daily or even hourly. We never knew, for sure, whether our troops or those of the enemy held any certain crater, except the ones on each end, numbers one and six (we held them throughout the entire two months ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... ideal setting of the tale of the death of the Man of Sorrows, one is apt to follow Spitta in his curious mistake of regarding the differences between the two as altogether to the disadvantage of the "John." Spitta, indeed, goes further than this. So bent is he on proving the superiority of the "Matthew" that what he sees as a masterstroke in that work is in the "John" a gross blunder; and, on the whole, the pages on the "John" Passion are precisely the most fatuous of the many fatuous pages he wrote when he plunged into artistic criticism, leaving ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... body, but has no knife. Balak knew the place where disaster awaited Israel, but did not know how it was to be brought about, whereas Balaam knew how evil is conjured up, but did not know the places set for disaster, to which Balak had to lead him. [757] Balaam's superiority over Balak and the other magicians lay in this, that he could accurately determine the moment in which God is wrathful, and it was for this reason that his curse was always effective because he knew how to curse at the very instant of God's anger. It is true that ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... your greatness," politely said the yellowish-visaged gentleman, "and far be it from me to question your superiority. It was but yesterday evening that I attended a social assembly which was described to me as a full-undress party, and as I entered and beheld many of the other sex, I was struck by the accuracy of the description. As I promenaded through the brilliant throng ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... which to effect his purpose. The elements, however, spared him any effort on his part, for the next day a terrible hail-storm swept over the land, and its hard stones defaced all the ornaments which had led the lofty one to boast so loudly of its superiority. ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... universally known among us, what changes of property are advantageous, or when the balance of trade is on our side; what are the products or manufactures of other countries; and how far one nation may in any species of traffick obtain or preserve superiority over another. The theory of trade is yet but little understood, and, therefore, the practice is often without real advantage to the publick; but it might be carried on with more general success, if its ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... side of his dying father forthwith, at all risks. The messenger, however, was shot dead ere he could reach Hugh Saint Leger's side, and the urgent message remained undelivered. At length the stubborn courage of the English prevailed, and, despite their vast superiority in numbers, the Spaniards, who had boarded, were first driven back to their own deck and then below, when, further resistance being useless, they flung down ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... with glittering drops of water on his hair and beard, came back looking angry, and Hollis, who, being the youngest of us, assumed an indolent superiority, said without stirring, "Give him a dry sarong—give him mine; it's hanging up in the bathroom." Karain laid the kriss on the table, hilt inwards, and murmured a few words in ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... Goody, anxious to invest herself with an appearance of forbearance towards the frivolities of youth, readiness to forego (from amiability) any share in the conversation, insight into the rapports of others (especially male and female rapports), and general superiority to human weakness, had endeavoured to express all these things by laying down her knitting, folding her hands on her circumference, and looking as if she knew and could speak if she chose. But if you do this, even the maintenance of an attentive ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... from those weak scruples that prevented rival business men from underbidding the F. C. C. He congratulated himself on the fact that at thirty-four he was much more of a cynic than men of sixty. He held no illusions, and he rejoiced in a sense of superiority over those of his own class in college, who, in matters of business, were still hampered by ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... Northsquith made a special trip to the East Algerian Highlands to visit Timgad, and spent several minutes in the tepidarium of the Roman baths. It was understood from the expression of his features that he was profoundly impressed by the superiority of the arrangements over those contemplated by the Coalition Minister of Health in the new bath-houses ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... wondered that the French officers should talk with the Arab as with an equal, yet knew in his heart that such prejudice was narrow-minded, especially at the moment when he was travelling to the Arab's own country. He tried, though not very strenuously, to override his conviction of superiority to the Eastern man, but triumphed only far enough to admit that the fellow was handsome in a way. His skin was hardly darker than old ivory: the aquiline nose delicate as a woman's, with sensitive nostrils; and the black velvet eyes under arched brows, that ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... nothing sweeter to a lover than to feel that his mistress is of a higher nature and a finer quality than himself. With many lovers, no doubt, this feeling is but the delusion of a fond fancy, having no basis in any real superiority on the part of the loved one. But the mystery surrounding Ida would have tinged the devotion of the most prosaic lover with an unusual sentiment ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... of Artajona. The plain on the left bank of the river was evidently to be the scene of the approaching conflict. On few occasions during the war, had actions taken place upon such level ground as this, the superiority of the Christinos in cavalry and artillery having induced Zumalacarregui rather to seek battle in the mountains, where those arms were less available. But since the commencement of 1835, the Carlist horse had ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... Hugues Delorme, the French artist; and numerous other guests, discussed the theatre and the "Caillaux case" from every conceivable point of view, and their conversations were only interrupted by serious attempts to prove their national superiority at bridge, and long delightful walks ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... friends for my sake; been cheerful and easy, whomsoever I had brought home with me; and, whatever faults she had observed in me, have never blamed me before company; at least, with such an air of superiority, as should have shewn she had a better opinion of her own judgment, ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... too young to think of men at all," answered Annis, reprovingly, and with all the conscious superiority of age. "Nor do you know enough as yet to ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... drank almost savagely. My inexpert fingers hurt cruelly as I bandaged them, and they winced and cried. But the next minute they would stroke my hand, to show they understood good intentions. They had a great belief in the superiority of our civilization—at any rate in its medical aspect. They insisted, those who had been bandaged by the Turkish aid-posts, in tearing off their bandages—perfectly good ones, but smaller than ours—and on having new bandages from me. Just when the 5.9's ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... that, that 'Dounia can put up with a great deal.' If she could put up with Mr. Svidrigailov and all the rest of it, she certainly can put up with a great deal. And now mother and she have taken it into their heads that she can put up with Mr. Luzhin, who propounds the theory of the superiority of wives raised from destitution and owing everything to their husband's bounty—who propounds it, too, almost at the first interview. Granted that he 'let it slip,' though he is a sensible man, (yet maybe it was not a slip at all, but he meant to make ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... last development in women, the woman who refuses as an outrage both the theory of masculine superiority and the fact so evident in Germany of masculine domination, here is the self-constituted superwoman calling as if she was Eve to the primaeval male. It may be perverse of me, but my imagination refuses ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... curious discussions have been written on the causes of laughter with grown-up persons. The subject is extremely complex. Something incongruous or unaccountable, exciting surprise and some sense of superiority in the laugher, who must be in a happy frame of mind, seems to be the commonest cause.[4] The circumstances must not be of a momentous nature: no poor man would laugh or smile on suddenly hearing that a large fortune had been bequeathed ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... ambulance was in a grange, of which the two stories had been partitioned off into wards. Under the cobwebby rafters the men lay in rows on clean pallets, and big stoves made the rooms dry and warm. But the great superiority of this ambulance was its nearness to a canalboat which had been fitted up with hot douches. The boat was spotlessly clean, and each cabin was shut off by a gay curtain of red-flowered chintz. Those curtains must do almost as much as the hot water to make over the morale of ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... canvassed the whole position, bringing to bear his really profound knowledge of naval equipment and routine—and incidentally helping me greatly to realise the improbability of my own guesswork solution—I was able to maintain an air of lofty superiority. I must have aggravated him intensely, unpardonably, for I was his guest. He ought to have kicked me out. Yet he bore with me like the sweet-blooded kindly angel that he is, and when at the end it appeared ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... greatly injured in so short a time led a London paper, in speaking of the battle, to say, "The fact seems to be but too clearly established, that the Americans have some superior mode of firing; and we cannot be too anxiously employed in discovering to what circumstances that superiority ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... considerable. A community can afford to buy and keep a thorough-bred horse, or bull, or boar, or buck, which would cost far too much for the means of a single owner, and thus gradually give to the stock of the whole neighborhood a superiority that will secure it a wide-spread reputation and insure good prices. Let us keep always in view the important principle of making two blades of grass grow where but one grew before; but let us remit no effort which may tend to make one blade worth ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... gesture, tilted his hat more forward on his eyes, as though he were bored. The Editor went on with the remark that to be sure neither he (Renouard) nor yet Willie were much used to meet girls of that remarkable superiority. Willie when learning business with a firm in London, years before, had seen none but boarding-house society, he guessed. As to himself in the good old days, when he trod the glorious flags of Fleet Street, he neither had access to, nor yet would have cared ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... of the province. It was desirable that they should unite and coalesce, and that such distinctions of the people should be extinguished for ever, so that the English laws might soon universally prevail throughout Canada, not from force but from choice, and a conviction of their superiority. The inhabitants of Lower Canada had not the laws of France. The commercial code of laws of the French nation had never been given to them. They stood upon the exceedingly inconvenient "Coutume de Paris." Canada, unlike the West Indies, was a growing country. ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... is then said to be pure and unmixed. The distinction which Plato here makes seems to be the same as that between pure and applied mathematics, and may be expressed in the modern formula—science is art theoretical, art is science practical. In the reason which he gives for the superiority of the pure science of number over the mixed or applied, we can only agree with him in part. He says that the numbers which the philosopher employs are always the same, whereas the numbers which are used in practice represent different sizes or quantities. ...
— Philebus • Plato
... out of the revolutionary war, he enlisted as a common soldier in the militia of Barenas; but soon proving his superiority over his companions, he was able to raise and organise an independent body of cavalry, with which ere long he rendered important service to the cause. His troops ever had the utmost confidence in him; when charging, he was sure to be the first among the ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... The great superiority of printing over writing was so generally felt and acknowledged, that before the end of the century in which Gutenberg lived, printed books began to be common, and in the year 1471, an Englishman of the name of Caxton, introduced ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... had encountered, in serious battle, any Asiatics except the Turks—and these had proved quite equal to the strife. Hence the vast superiority which the more progressive civilization had attained was little realized. The American aborigines had indeed fallen an easy prey to Europe, but the conquest of Asia and Africa had not yet been begun. Thus the victories of Clive seemed to his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... Levi Fairfield, the boy hero of this volume, as it is graphically traced by Oliver Optic, will be apt to hold boy-readers spell-bound. His manly virtue, his determined character, his superiority to mean vice, his industry, and his stirring adventures, will ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... punctilious equals. On the floor of Congress North and South are to come together after a passionate duel, in which the South, though proving her valor, has been made to bite the dust. Upon differences in debate shall acrimonious recriminations be exchanged? Shall censorious superiority assumed by one section provoke defiant self-assertion on the other? Shall Manassas and Chickamauga be retorted for Chattanooga and Richmond? Under the supposition that the full Congress will be composed ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... him, in an odd humour of tolerant superiority, as one might contemplate the presumption of an ill-bred child. And she wondered dumbly at herself, whom she found able to imagine without flinching an encounter with him of the mildly flirtatious description licensed by the masquerade. Would he know instinctively ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... of opinion, my child," said Ada Dawkins. "Now, according to our standard, every member of the Lower School is a kid, even if she were six feet in height! Our superiority lies in brains, not inches! All Juniors are kids, you are a Junior, therefore you must be a kid. ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... illuminator of manuscripts and a painter of miniatures that he boasted that no one could surpass him. Now he not only is conscious of his former blatant pride, but in proof of his change of heart he gives full credit for superiority to his former pupil and subsequent rival, ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... is the nucleus of Jesus' teaching. For the cripple has to face the dilemma either of warping everything into a powerful, misanthropic hatred, or else to overcome this feeling of revenge for the high moral superiority of a Plato, Mendelssohn, or a Kant. Jesus chose the latter of the two courses, and we may well imagine that it was not at Golgotha that he had the first occasion to cry out, "Father, forgive them for they know ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... that a higher kind of humour was required, and accordingly we now, for the first time, hear of "wits"—men of good birth and position, who prided themselves on their talent. They were generally remarkable for their manners and address, and affected a superiority in acuteness, but not always in humour. Wycherley speaks of wits not exactly in the sense of humorists, but rather as coxcombs, endued with a certain cunning: "Your court wit is a fashionable, insinuating, flattering, cringing, grimacing fellow, and has wit enough to solicit a suit of love; and if ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... conventionally holding a book, and giving a blessing with a conventional twist, not entirely ungraceful, nor devoid of a certain dignity, rather felt than perceived. Yet we contemplate them with a smile of conscious superiority, appreciating our own refined sense of their merits and infantine progress towards something good, that time—a long time—would, and did evolve. But those efforts at last culminated in a Christian art, such as is seen in the splendid forms and adornments in ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... close to realities, who have done things in the world. Keith felt himself to be better educated, to own a better brain, to have a wider outlook, to be possessed, in short, of all the advantages of superiority. He had never mingled with rough men, and he had always looked down on them. In this attitude was no condescension and no priggishness, Now he felt, somehow, that the best of these men had something that he had not suspected, some force of character that raised them above his previous conception. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... to the natural depravity of flesh and blood is due the discord and disagreement of men in this world. Let one become conscious of personal superiority in point of uprightness, learning, skill or natural ability, or let him become aware of his loftier station in life, and he immediately grows self-complacent, thinks himself better than his fellows, demands honor and recognition from ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... to be thrown out or treated with small consideration. Reason may be the lever, but sentiment gives you the fulcrum and the place to stand on if you want to move the world. Even "sentimentality," which is sentiment overdone, is better than that affectation of superiority to human weakness which is only tolerable as one of the stage properties of full-blown dandyism, and is, at best, but half-blown cynicism; which participle and noun you can translate, if you happen to remember the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... what it could to safeguard its own constitution by putting it on record that it had assented to the continuance of the bishops only in their civil capacity, and in order to give a legal claim on the benefices to those who held them, and that it allowed the bishops no superiority within the Church over the ordinary ministers, or, at any ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison |
