"Superlatively" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... know she is alive, revives me, and makes me superlatively brave: if he has dared to kill her, I will report it at once. I shall not spare him. I shall accuse him of both her death and the lawyer's. I shall go further: I shall accuse others—the thief of last winter, the man that stole the sides of bacon from a tradesman and sold me rolls of tobacco out ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... down on the town from the northeast, and is reached from the road that leaves Thrums behind it in another moment by a wide, straight path, so rough that to carry a fraught of water to the manse without spilling was to be superlatively good at one thing. Packages in a cart it set leaping like trout in a fishing-creel. Opposite the opening of the garden wall in the manse, where for many years there had been an intention of putting up a gate, were two big stones a yard apart, standing ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... the piano beautifully." In how much better taste it is to say simply, "She plays the piano well," or, more superlatively, "exceedingly well," or "admirably"! If we talk about performing on musical instruments, to be consistent, we should call those who perform, piano-performers, cornet-performers, ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... and all was, out and in, Superlatively pleasant to behold; The views themselves were highly int'resting, As well as all the creatures of the fold With which they all were pleased, so I am told, Which was a comfort for their cherished pater, Who was just then quite worth his ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... read into both the smile and the straight-gazing eyes a hypocrisy which superlatively embittered the ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... one way in which leisure is very generally misspent in school—and alas, outside, too!—not in managing one's own affairs, but in managing and discussing the affairs of others. At such times the remarks may be superlatively pleasant, but they are more often superlatively disagreeable. It may be said with truthfulness that they are almost never moderate or just. Everything is all black or all white, with no gray. It makes one think of the little girl ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... be seen sitting on a high stool at a still higher desk,—a young man of handsome profile and well-knit form. At the call of his name he unwound his legs from the rounds of the stool and leaped into the Doctor's presence with a superlatively high-bred bow. ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... sheep-bells, which kept up a continual tinkling to the tune of Betty Martin. But still worse. Suspended by blue ribbons to the end of this fantastic machine, there hung, by way of car, an enormous drab beaver hat, with a brim superlatively broad, and a hemispherical crown with a black band and a silver buckle. It is, however, somewhat remarkable that many citizens of Rotterdam swore to having seen the same hat repeatedly before; and indeed the whole assembly seemed to regard it with eyes of familiarity; while the vrow Grettel Pfaall, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... once more superlatively happy. It is good, le fromage. Could anything be more superbly amazing? After ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... said that his art was an art of evasion. But the reason of the evasion was reverence. He kept himself reverently at a distance. He knew how much he could not do, nor was he ever confident even of the things that he could do; and these things, therefore, he did superlatively well, having to grope for the means in the recesses of his soul. The particular quality of exquisiteness and freshness that gives to all his work, whether on canvas or on stone or on copper, a distinction from and above any contemporary work, and makes it dearer to our eyes and hearts, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... salary and no capital except capacity and hope. But Fleeming was not the lad to lose any good thing for the lack of trial; and at length, in the autumn of 1857, this boyish-sized, boyish-mannered, and superlatively ill-dressed young engineer, entered the house of the Austins, with such sinkings as we may fancy, and asked leave to pay his addresses to the daughter. Mrs. Austin already loved him like a son, she was but too glad to give him her consent; Mr. Austin reserved the right to inquire ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and noses could go, and were received in a dark small den by the philosopher, or rather devot, for he spurns the name of philosopher: he was in a dirty reddish night-gown, and very dirty nightcap bound round the forehead with a superlatively dirty chocolate-coloured ribbon. Madame Recamier, the beautiful, the elegant, robed in white satin trimmed with white fur, seated herself on the elbow of his armchair, and besought him to repeat his verses. Charlotte has drawn a picture of this scene. ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... employed by the amphibians in the neutralization of similar beams. With a vastly inferior armament the smallest of Roger's vessels had defeated the most powerful battleships of Triplanetary; what had he to fear in such a heavy craft as the one he now was driving, one so superlatively armed and powered? Well it was for his peace of mind that he had no inkling that the harmless-looking sphere he was so blithely attacking was in reality the much-discussed, half-mythical "super-ship" of Triplanetary's Secret Service; nor that its already unprecedented ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... and the idea that Ortensia, who had been informed that she was to be the wife of his transcendently gifted and desirable self, could stoop to look at a Sicilian music-master, would have struck him as superlatively comic, though his sense of humour was imperfect, to say ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... with him. He'd respect me far more then. I know exactly the type of fellow real boys look up to. It isn't the intelligent softy, however brainy he may be; it's the man who can do all the ordinary things superlatively well." ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... a superlatively great and beautiful artist, yet we must not forget that Velazquez, only eighteen years his senior, and like himself a native of Seville, lived during the greater part of Murillo's lifetime and divided honors with him. As has already been indicated, Velazquez's art was ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... of following. My curiosity regarding the man was aroused, and I had determined, if possible, to know him. So far as one could be influenced from a third-story window, I was favorably impressed with him. I judged him to be superlatively erratic, but without an atom of real evil in his being. I had observed from my window an incident that gave me a glance into the man's heart. A poor, dilapidated, distressed negro, evidently seeking help, ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... creature so popular as Singapore ever entered these gates. Every afternoon three boys who have been perfect in deportment are allowed to brush and comb him, while three other good boys may serve him with food and drink. But every Saturday morning the climax of the week is reached, when three superlatively good boys give him a nice lathery bath with hot water and flea soap. The privilege of serving as Singapore's valet is going to be the only incentive I ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... from seeing Belvoir. The place, with which I am familiar through engravings and descriptions, is a fine house in one of the finest situations in England; and the idea of being out of London once more, in the country and on horseback, is superlatively agreeable to me. ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... found men who, preferring fortune to honour, disgraced themselves by such alliances. Some of these ladies, if handsome, were not unfrequently taken by a man of fortune, and kept from mere ostentation, just as he would sport a superlatively elegant carriage, or ride a very capital horse; others were maintained from caprice, which, like Achilles's spear, carried with it its own antidote; and then, of course, they passed into the hands of different keepers. It cannot be denied, however that a few of these connexions ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... a moment. A porter appeared with two trunks belonging to Sophia. Constance observed that they were superlatively 'good' trunks; also that Sophia's clothes, though 'on the showy side,' were superlatively 'good.' The getting of Sophia's ticket to Bursley occupied them next, and soon the first shock ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... word Adad is a compound: and, as the two terms of which it is made up are precisely the same, there should be a reciprocal resemblance in the translation. If Ad be a chief, or king; Adad should be superlatively so, and signify a king of kings. I should therefore suspect, that, in the original of Sanchoniathon, not [Greek: basileus Theon], but [Greek: basileus basileon] was the true reading. In short, Ad, and Ada, signified first, [Greek: protos]; and, in a more lax sense, a prince or ruler: ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... Preheminence in the Art of Wickedness, I now come to shew you by what famous Atcheivements she comes to deserve it. And when you have seen her cunning in Contriving, and her Patience in Suffering; you must readily acknowledge she is one that spares no Pains to be Superlatively Wicked. ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... stop there. George Silver was a financier in the great style, and a superlatively honest one. He had the initiative, the knowledge, and above all the judgment that made some men call him the Napoleon of Threadneedle Street. At forty-five he launched the Union Bank of Brazil and Uruguay; and to that colossal undertaking ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... last act, his performance was superlatively great. So great indeed, that if all the other parts had been nearly equal to it, we should not at all hesitate to put it in competition with the Othello of any man now living. As it was, we pay it no compliment ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... at him more closely. He was superlatively well-built, light, and lithe and strong; he was well-featured; his yellow eyes were very large, though, perhaps, not very expressive; take him altogether, he was a pleasant-looking lad, and I had no fault to find with him, beyond ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... among the rocks, too, and on some beaches a strange kind of lobsterish delicacy called in Tahiti varo, a kind of mantis-shrimp that looks like a superlatively villainous centipede. They grow from six to twelve inches long and a couple of inches wide, with legs or feelers all along their sides, like the teeth of a pocket-comb. Their shells are translucent yellow with black markings; ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... abundance of courtesy, gentleness, magnanimity, have suffered badly. No gentle and lofty mind can turn from the reading of Digby's "Broad Stone of Honor" to that of Thackeray's "Book of Snobs," without deep pain. Here is a field of influence superlatively fitted for the activity of women, and worthy of the aspirations of the most favored and admirable representatives of the sex. Opinions ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... I know what I am going to have this evening. Such enjoyment as there is I get it, and there's an end of it, and no worry about it. As for you, you are all worry; and even granted that you get, in the end, something superlatively satisfactory, why, it will hardly make up to you for all you have ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... witness, ultra[Lat], in the extreme, extremely, exceedingly, intensely, exquisitely, acutely, indefinitely, immeasurably; beyond compare, beyond comparison, beyond measure, beyond all bounds; incalculably, infinitely. [in a supreme degree] preeminently, superlatively &c. (superiority) 33. [in a too great degree] immoderately, monstrously, preposterously, inordinately, exorbitantly, excessively, enormously, out of all proportion, with a vengeance. [in a marked degree] particularly, remarkably, singularly, curiously, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... same old passage from your mouth to your belly," added an elastic Harlequin, reaching an arm across the women's shoulders. "Come, Cantapresto, we'll help you line it with good wine, to the health of his most superlatively serene Highness, the heir-presumptive of Pianura; and where is that ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... medals, will see how carefully they kept their pure Greek blood uncontaminated by African intermixture. Think of this description and this picture applied to one who Dio says —and all antiquity confirms him—was 'the most superlatively beautiful of women, splendid to see, and delightful to hear.'{2} For she was eminently accomplished: she spoke many languages with grace and facility. Her mind was as wonderful as her personal beauty. There is not a shadow of intellectual expression ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... records. Their history suggests the ways in which, Jehovah opened the spiritual eyes of the people. From the beginning to the present day it has been characterized by a series of crises unparalleled in the life of any other race. Experiences, intense and often superlatively painful, have come to them in rapid succession, forcing them to think and develop. The little street Arab, alert, resourceful, uncanny in his prematurity, is a modern illustration of what grim necessity and experience can produce. It was in the school supremely ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... farrier had re-established his self-complacency, and waited with confidence to hear himself named as one of the superlatively sensible men. ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... political education, this lesson was to be crucial; it would decide the law of life. All these gentlemen were superlatively honorable; if one could not believe them, Truth in politics might be ignored as a delusion. Therefore the student felt compelled to reach some sort of idea that should serve to bring the case within a general law. Minister Adams felt the same compulsion. He bluntly told ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... neighbouring land proprietor, to whom Emily had for a twelvemonth been betrothed, had the night previous returned from a continental tour. In consequence, Emily looked especially radiant, Delme much pleased, and Clarendon superlatively happy. Nor must we pass over Mrs. Glenallan, Miss Delme's worthy aunt, who had supplied the place of a mother to Emily, and who now sat in her accustomed chair, with an almost sunny brow, quietly pursuing her monotonous tambouring. At times she turned to admire her niece, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... pedagogues. Nor does the system of instruction then in effect at the Conservatory appear to have been thorough even within its own sphere. MacDowell used to tell of a student who could play an ascending scale superlatively well, but who was helpless before the problem of playing the same scale ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... moods one imagines the composer to have been in at the time. Nor is there anything discrepant in the Ballade. But if the sadly-ailing composer really created, and not merely elaborated and finished, in Majorca the superlatively-healthy, vigorously-martial, brilliantly-chivalrous Polonaise in A major, we have here a remarkable instance of the mind's ascendency over the body, of its independence of it. This piece, however, may have been conceived ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... How superlatively happy she had been that night! Not for anything that life could offer would she have parted with that one precious romance of her girlhood. She clung to the memory of it as to a priceless possession. And year after year she had gone to the Hunt ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... imported, but they are inferior in style to those made in this country—notwithstanding they come from Paris, and everything from that place is supposed superlatively choice and to be desired, as you are very well aware. In the United States there is one factory—and but one, so far as I could ascertain—which supplies a large quantity, about fifteen hundred dozens, for the American market, sending them ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... should be misled by that avowal, I must inform them, that in my estimation all country towns, from the elegant Bath, down to the laborious Bristol, are (whatever their respective polite or mercantile inhabitants may say to the contrary), positively, comparatively, and superlatively, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various
... London an old man sat in a large paneled room in one of the streets near Soho-square. Every thing in the apartment was brown with age and neglect. Nothing more superlatively dingy could well be imagined. The leathern covers of the chairs were white and glossy at the edges; the carpet was almost of a uniform tint, notwithstanding its original gaudy contrasts; there were absurd old engravings upon the walls—relics of the infancy ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... of her talents, and whose misfortune to be brother'd and sister'd by a couple of creatures, who are not able to comprehend her excellencies) I might at one time have been plunged into difficulties. But pert as the superlatively pert may think me, I thought not myself wiser, because I was older; nor for that poor reason qualified to prescribe to, much less to maltreat, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... it from the housetops!" As she spoke she swept aside her veil and he saw her face, a superlatively pretty face with scarlet smiling lips and dark luminous eyes that were ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... her appearance to mark or remember. However, a relative of hers, he had been told, distant but authentic, had been a lady-in-waiting to the Queen. Gilbert Bromhead's wife was southern, a small appealing compound of the essence of the superlatively feminine. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... that it is hardly to be classed among the polite fruits. But in ancient times this was not so. Biblical, historical, and mythological lore abounds with evidences that the apple was the aristocrat of fruits. We still say 'the apple of the eye' when we wish to describe something superlatively precious. We find in Proverbs the comparison to 'apples of silver.' No other product of tree or vine has been so utilised in figurative speech. Who has not heard of and longed for the 'apples of the Hesperides'? I need not call your attention to ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... her, Belford, that her prayers and wishes, her superlatively-generous prayers and wishes, shall not be vain: that I can, and do repent—and long have repented.—Tell her of my frequent deep remorses—it was impossible that such remorses should not at last produce ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... to be wondered at if, under such circumstances, the blacks had gradually come to regard the possessor of a white skin as the incarnation of everything that was superlatively detestable, and a person to be destroyed promptly with as little hesitation or compunction as one would destroy a particularly venomous snake; and such was the feeling which Grosvenor and Dick inspired in the breasts of those natives in whose hands they found themselves ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... morning. Shunning the public roads; we could not rest until we believed ourselves safe from pursuit. Ascyltos, when he had caught his breath, gloatingly exulted of the pleasure which the looting of a villa belonging to Lycurgus, a superlatively avaricious man, afforded him: he complained, with justice of his parsimony, affirming that he himself had received no reward for his k-nightly services, that he had been kept at a dry table and on a skimpy ration of food. This ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... he believed the Jesus of the Gospels to be "the Son of God." And what a sense of responsibility he must at the time of writing this letter have experienced to cause him to declare, "I am in the garden of Gethsemane now, and my cup of bitterness is full and overflowing!" Only a superlatively good man, only a man of genuine piety, could use honestly such language as this. These words do not indicate unbelief or agnosticism. If ever a man in public life in these United States was removed the distance of the antipodes from the ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... and more active life. But I had allowed myself to be enervated by this baneful languor, this insidious far niente; and my moral torpor was such that the mere thought of reappearing before a polished audience struck me as superlatively absurd. 'Where was the object?' I would ask myself. Moreover, it was too late; and I went on dreaming with open eyes, careering on horseback through the savannas, listening at break of day to the prattle of the parrots in the guava-trees, at nightfall ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... which had once belonged to Governor Darling. His portrait thus arrayed soon appeared in the print shops; an ingenious artist (Mr. Fernyhough) having drawn his likeness very accurately. Piper was just the sort of man to enjoy superlatively all his newly acquired consequence. He carried his head high for (as he now found) everybody knew him and not a few gave him money. With these donations he purchased silk handkerchiefs and wore them in ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... mile away, was once the home of another writer. Fanny Burney lived there for four years after she had married General d'Arblay, and the two of them with their baby, and an income of L125, were superlatively happy. Here she wrote Camilla, which was to build and to christen the house she lived in later, and it was from Bookham that she set out to take the first bound copies to King George and the Queen at Windsor. "About ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... with consistent vigour. The sons had neither brains to conceive nor discretion to carry out the conceptions of others. The sires had been persons whom it had been possible for the commonalty to respect. The sons were persons whom it was impossible not to despise. Surely a more superlatively commonplace and contemptible race of human beings has seldom been seen on the earth than four-fifths of the second generation of this bastard aristocracy of Upper Canada. It bore no resemblance to any other aristocracy ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... in the first half of the sixteenth century, something near its former perfection. Again it can go no further; and since then it has changed but has not progressed. In Phidias, by which name I would signify the sculptor of the pediments of the Parthenon, we have the coincidence of a superlatively great artist with the moment of technical and scientific perfection in the art, and a similar coincidence crowns the work of Michelangelo with a peculiar glory. But, apart from the work of these two men, a the essential value of a work of sculpture is by no means always equal to its technical and ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... invariably being amongst those present at every possible form of entertainment, and punctiliously calling on people afterwards. She was always mounting staircases, going up in lifts, and driving about leaving cards, and was extremely hospitable and superlatively social. Bertha always wondered at her gregariousness, since one would fancy she could have got very little satisfaction in continual intercourse with a crowd of people whom she forgot the instant they were out of ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... patient sufferance of her lover, who, from night to night, frequently continues his exercises for many hours, heaving the deepest sighs, and casting the most piteous looks towards the window; at which if his goddess at last deigns to appear, and drops him a curtsey, he is superlatively paid for all his watching; but if she blesses him with a smile, he ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... ideological ant, a poetical ant, or an ant inclined to metaphysical speculations. No human mind could attain to the absolute matter-of-fact quality of the ant-mind;—no human being, as now constituted, could cultivate a mental habit so impeccably practical as that of the ant. But this superlatively practical mind is incapable of moral error. It would be difficult, perhaps, to prove that the ant has no religious ideas. But it is certain that such ideas could not be of any use to it. The being incapable of moral weakness is beyond the need of ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... block-houses, armed with six guns, while in front of the fort, in the middle of the river, there was a gun-boat of considerable size, in which there were no less than fourteen pieces of ordnance. McKay was superlatively polite. He sent a message to the commander of the fort, recommending an immediate surrender. But, as McKay had only one gun, the American promptly refused, and was not a little ironical in his refusal. McKay, highlander as he was, could stand anything but irony, and he opened ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... now a man,—he was a grievance; he was the most deadly kind of grievance, the irrational kind. A superlatively fine cigar did a little—not much—to solace him. He smoked it with scientific slowness, and watched the restaurant empty itself.... He was the last survivor in the restaurant; and fifteen waiters ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... bear stimulants, are so extremely critical about one's personal habits! And, after all, the Rev. Amos never came near the borders of a vice. His very faults were middling—he was not very ungrammatical. It was not in his nature to be superlative in anything; unless, indeed, he was superlatively middling, the quintessential extract of mediocrity. If there was any one point on which he showed an inclination to be excessive, it was confidence in his own shrewdness and ability in practical matters, ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... served in half sections, with French dressing," she said dreamily. "I'm too happy to eat, but I'll have some with you. Look at them all, don't they look relaxed and soothed and refreshed? Every individual has a perfectly balanced ration of the most superlatively good quality, slowly beginning ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... details to his book, and preface, among other things. He was entirely through a few days later. Since then the lack of any strong interest to employ his mind has enabled the tedious weariness to kill him. I think his book kept him alive several months. He was a very great man and superlatively good. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... State of the Case in the general Acceptation of it; I do not say 'tis really so, nay 'tis even an Inconsistency in it self; for one would think, they need not capitulate with the Devil to be so, and so, superlatively wicked, and give him such a Price for it, seeing, unless we have a wrong Notion of him, he is naturally enclin'd, as well as avow'dly willing to have all Men be as superlatively wicked as possibly they can, and must necessarily be always ready to issue out his Licenses ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... Superlatively dainty as to his fopperies of orthodoxy, Asirvadam is continually dying of Pariah roses in aromatic pains of caste. If in his goings and comings one of the "lilies of Nilufar" should chance to stumble upon a bit of bone or rag, a fragment of a dish, or a leaf from which some one has eaten,—should ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... grievances he found them clever, subtle and interesting. It was unlikely that this woman had a grievance of that sort or was looking for a chance to get at the generous but elusive udder. Her pearls might not be real, but her gown was superlatively expensive, her evening wrap of mauve velvet lined with ermine, and her little car perfectly turned out. He'd look like a fortune-hunter with his salary of fifteen thousand a year and a few thousands in bonds . . . not if he knew it! But find out who she was, know her, ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... world-compellers. How can women who care much what is on the outside and little what is on the inside of their heads, and whom a box of lily-white, a French novel, a poodle-dog and another dude will make superlatively happy, suckle aught but fops ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... for a man to kneel down to in worship, a girl who, as he had seen her last, was a fairylike creature born of music and soft laughter and starlight, a maid indescribably sweet. In the harshness of the mood which gripped him, she seemed to him superlatively adorable; the softness of her eyes at the moment before he had kissed her haunted him. As he strode on seeking Quinnion, who had spoken evil of her, he carried her ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... with a moderate and cautious temper, enlightened views, and a solid understanding; and after due deliberation, Elizabeth, that penetrating judge of men, decided, in spite of ridicule, that she could not do better than make this superlatively-excellent dancer ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... applied to the case in which the old metaphysical notion of innate and indelible differences is still nearly as strong as ever it was, and in which its moral and social consequences are so inexpressibly disastrous, so superlatively powerful in keeping the ordinary level of the aims and achievements of life low and meagre. The accurate and unanswerable reasoning no less than the noble elevation of this great argument; the sagacity ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... because you were superlatively desirable and precious already; but you should never have experimented. Don't you know that Love is ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... could select. Their women are the first in the world in everything but beauty; sensible, agreeable, and infinitely informed. The philosophes, except Buffon, are solemn, arrogant, dictatorial coxcombs—I need not say superlatively disagreeable. The rest are amazingly ignorant in general, and void of all conversation but the routine with women. My dear and very old friend [Madame du Deffand] is a relic of a better age, and at nearly eighty-four has all the impetuosity that was the character of the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... why; and uncommonly discontented he knew not wherefore; but had he troubled himself to analyze such feelings, he would have discerned their origin to be solitude and idleness. Mrs. Honeydew brought tea; she had buttered a couple of muffins superlatively well; and making her master's fire burn exceedingly bright, placed them on the cat before it, and a kettle, which immediately commenced a delicate bravura, upon the glowing coals; then, modestly waiting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... apprehension for which no ostensible reason can be assigned. Strange as it might appear, the influence of our dreams upon our waking state is very remarkable; we may awaken refreshed from a dream which has made us, in our sleep, superlatively happy; or we may rise with melancholic feelings after suffering intense affliction in some dream, and the details of both dreams may alike be forgotten. We can not, after being so much disturbed, at once regain our composure; the billows continue heaving after the tempest ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... mangled corpses of our companions, rendered more ghastly from the numerous wounds they had received, the provisions, clothing, &c. scattered about the ground, the hideous yells of exultation uttered by the natives, all conspired to render our situation superlatively miserable. ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... the weight of it that nothing but my nose prevented me from being crushed to the ground. It was very funny and also very unfair in more ways than one, because I did not start my crusade with any idea of becoming important, and I have no feature which is superlatively large. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... great rate, now this scale now that kicking the beam. For he holds the door of the Alps, Bully Bourbon on one side of it, Bully Hapsburg on the other; and inquires sharply, "You, what will you give me? And you?" To Maria Theresa's affairs he has been superlatively useful, for these Two Years past; and truly she is not too punctual in the returns covenanted for. It appears to Charles Emanuel that the Queen of Hungary, elated in her high thought, under-rates his services, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the threshold of the door, her forehead against the ground, and remains in this attitude of superlatively polite salute as long as I am in sight, while I go down the pathway by which I am ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... are highly dangerous, as many of the most poisonous so closely resemble the edible species that they can with difficulty be distinguished. There is one kind of fungus that I have met with in the forests which, from its offensive odor and disgusting appearance, should be something superlatively bad. It grows about four inches high; the top is round, with a fleshy and inflamed appearance; the stalk is out of all proportion in its thickness, being about two inches in diameter and of a livid white color; this, when broken, is full of a transparent gelatinous fluid, which smells ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... us human nature without a veil, and allows us to take deep views of the inmost recesses of the mind, the impression produced is only the more deep and powerful. The short scene in which John urges Hubert to put out of the way Arthur, his young rival for the possession of the throne, is superlatively masterly: the cautious criminal hardly ventures to say to himself what he wishes the other to do. The young and amiable prince becomes a sacrifice of unprincipled ambition: his fate excites the warmest sympathy. When Hubert, about to put out his eyes ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Indian Capsicum, superlatively hot and burning, is yet by the Africans eaten with Salt and Vinegar by it self, as an usual Condiment; but wou'd be of dangerous consequence with us; being so much more of an acrimonious and terribly biting quality, which by Art and ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... is my very character, says many a doubting, broken hearted sinner. Well, thank God, says many a self-confident, whole-hearted Pharisee, it is far from being mine. We can only say this, he that knows most of his own superlatively deceitful and desperately wicked heart, suspects himself most, and exercises most godly jealousy over himself; while persons, who see least of themselves, are most self-confident and daring. Even Judas could as boldly ask, 'Master, is it I' who shall betray Thee? as ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... order of the words, in no respect differ from the most unimpassioned conversation. There are words in both, for example, 'the Strand,' and 'the Town,' connected with none but the most familiar ideas; yet the one stanza we admit as admirable, and the other as a fair example of the superlatively contemptible. Whence arises this difference? Not from the metre, not from the language, not from the order of the words; but the matter expressed in Dr. Johnson's stanza is contemptible. The proper method of treating trivial and ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... the same features; but it is just the differences in degree between the same feature in this civilization and in that—it is just these differences which together constitute and illustrate the idiosyncrasy of each. It seems to me that the brains and the imagination of America shone superlatively in the conception and ordering of its vast organizations of human beings, and of machinery, and of the two combined. By them I was more profoundly attracted, impressed, and inspired than by any other non-spiritual phenomena ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... their hands, and placing a large portion of it, as well as a parrot, Indian corn, and some roots upon the leaves, put it before me. My appetite was tremendous, seeing that I had tasted nothing since the morning. I therefore immediately fell to on the roasted monkey, which I found superlatively delicious: the flesh of the parrot was far from being ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... God ought to copy your tenderness, and forgive men as you do! We are certainly called upon to conform our conduct to the best standard, and to imitate the best being. If you are the best, then God and man ought to be called upon, and entreated to imitate you! No; says the objector, God is superlatively the best being in the universe. You may talk, and tell me so, till the morning sun sinks beyond the western hills, and yet your creed will contradict every word you utter. What you have just acknowledged, ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... plan in a torrid country, where decomposition is rapid and salt none too plentiful; but it has its drawbacks, and is best suited to the taste of those who appreciate the chewing of leather with a superlatively ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... neighborhood of the Inns of Court, etc. They did not sacrifice much to outside show and decoration. They were divided into boxes or pews, and were generally speaking clean and well ordered; the prices were moderate, and the fare simple but superlatively good. There is nothing to equal it now. Chops were cooked in the grill. The tea and coffee were of the best; the hams were York hams and the bacon the best Wiltshire; they were the last places where real buttered toast was made. The ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... to employ the people around in felling trees, and cutting up wood enough to supply not only the camp, but his own cook-rooms and those of his friends for the next six months. The men so employed commonly get nothing; but the native officer receives credit for all manner of superlatively good qualities, which are enumerated in a certificate. Many a fine tree, dear to the affections of families and village communities, has been cut down in spite, or redeemed from the axe by a handsome present to this officer ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... given homage as probably to the best men of their time, to the old monks of the Middle Ages, who climbed up on mountain tops and lived in monasteries alone with God. If I felt just as they felt about being superlatively religious and wanted to pick out and proceed to live the most deeply, intricately religious life I could think of I would refuse to look like a saint and be President of the American Board of Commissioners for ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... tentacles. Disgust at my cruel act and horror at my extraordinary habiliments were written all too plainly in her seraphic lineaments. At least, so I thought. But it turned out to be otherwise; for the Wenus produced from behind her superlatively radiant form a lump of slate which she had extracted from ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... there to misinterpret it; that phrases which seem intended to forestall prejudice are there to create it; that phrases which seem antidotes are poisons in disguise. The naked facts arrayed in the book establish Shelley's guilt in that one episode which disfigures his otherwise superlatively lofty and beautiful life; but the historian's careful and methodical misinterpretation of them transfers the responsibility to the wife's shoulders as he persuades himself. The few meagre facts of Harriet Shelley's life, as furnished by the book, acquit her ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with a witness, ultra [Lat.], in the extreme, extremely, exceedingly, intensely, exquisitely, acutely, indefinitely, immeasurably; beyond compare, beyond comparison, beyond measure, beyond all bounds; incalculably, infinitely. [in a supreme degree] preeminently, superlatively &c (superiority) 33. [in a too great degree] immoderately, monstrously, preposterously, inordinately, exorbitantly, excessively, enormously, out of all proportion, with a vengeance. [in a marked degree] particularly, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... rest, to prevent the pamphlet from being published. If, whenever I detected his drift, I urged the true motives by which I was actuated, he always immediately admitted them, praised them, and allowed them to be superlatively excellent: but never failed to give them such an air as should suit the project he had conceived; and allow of such an interpretation, in future, as would exculpate my opponents and criminate myself. But ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... as the growth of the germ that starts from the buried acorn, and moves on to its full development in the great oak. Science records with unerring certainty the progress of the earth, and of animal life, from the lowest existences in the mollusca and polypi, up to the superlatively complicated, and delicate structure of man, tracing it step by step, until it is finished in the noblest work of God, a human body coupled with ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... singer seemed unable to make us visualize the characters he endeavored to portray. It was always Caruso who sang a certain part; we could never forget that. But constant study and experience have eliminated even this defect, so that to-day the singer and actor are justly balanced; both are superlatively great. Can any one who hears and sees Caruso in the role of Samson, listen unmoved to the throbbing wail of that glorious voice and the unutterable woe of ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... is meant by creation, by imagination, by insight, by wisdom, by wit, by humour, by eloquence, and by verbal music; then we cannot fail to acknowledge that here is the all-round, the all-comprehensive genius, superlatively dowered with each and all of them; that here is the entire mind, where others are partial; that here, as I believe some one has put it, is the man who, when others have said, or depicted, or argued, or pleaded, seems to come along and say, "let me show you how this should be done," ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... which really stir mankind are neglected or treated as mere accidental disturbances of the right theory. Mill seemed to him not so much cold-blooded as bloodless, wanting in the fire and force of the full-grown male animal, and comparable to a superlatively crammed senior wrangler, whose body has been stunted by his brains. Fitzjames could only make a real friend of a man in whom he could recognise the capacity for masculine emotions as well as logical acuteness, and ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... moment at the expense of a woman, who was obliged to submit to their discourtesy. Of all the guests Mdlle. Selpdorf alone stood erect, forgetting, in her indignation, to join in the general obeisance. The Grand Duke, looking up, found her flushed and flashing, and superlatively handsome. His flabby cheeks twitched, and his bleared ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... kind of thing to-day. Knowledge, stark truth—children must have in stark truth all the knowledge there is on all the things that come about them. It's strange; yes, it is strange. No parent would be such a fool as to trust a child with all the money she has nor with anything superlatively precious that she possesses; but knowledge, which is above all wealth and above all treasure, the child is to have to play with as it likes. Oh, it is strange. Where is it going to stop? If you bring up ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... The challenge was superlatively offensive. "You a beautiful secretary have. You lose her for weeks—months. Yet you do not know of her return—yet? Sho! You are not the man for this beautiful secretary. She ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... which the pupils, when she was angry or when she was scheming, retreated upward towards the temples, emitting a luminous green ray that shot through space like the gleam that escapes from a dark-lantern; complexion superlatively feminine (call it not pale but white, as if she lived on blanched almonds, peach-stones, and arsenic); hands so fine and so bloodless, with fingers so pointedly taper there seemed stings at their tips; manners of one who had ranged all ranks of society from ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... eve of Mariette's wedding, and she passed those six months in one of the superlatively beautiful mountain resorts of Austria. She was solitary, for the most part, and she did an excessive amount of thinking. She returned to her duties with a deep disgust of life as she knew it, a cynical contempt for women, and a profound sense ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... How superlatively presumptuous appeared Elliott Roscoe's avowed admiration and preference! How dared that humble impecunious divinity student now sojourning in the "Land of the Veda," lift his eyes toward this priceless treasure, which Erle Palma wanted to call ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... warrant that conclusion: and, no doubt (though, with an audacity that wants chastising out of you, you seem to question it), they will be a superlatively happy pair. He must love such a handsome, noble, witty, accomplished lady; and probably she loves him, or, if not his person, at least his purse. I know she considers the Rochester estate eligible to the last degree; though (God pardon me!) I told her something ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... Chicksey, Veneering, and Stobbles had ever been shut up by three happier people, glad as most people were to shut it up, they must have been superlatively happy indeed. But first Bella mounted upon Rumty's Perch, and said, 'Show me what you do here all day long, dear Pa. Do you write like this?' laying her round cheek upon her plump left arm, and losing sight of her pen in ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... she would soon be opening that door and coming into lawful possession of all the effects, remnants, and refuse left on the premises, and would be sure to hand that house over to the landlord in a superlatively clean and ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... flattered by this allusion to the fame of his celebrated ancestor, replied by professing himself only a distant relation of the preux chevalier, and added, 'that in his opinion the wine was superlatively good.' ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of critical opinion seemed to be that her performance of Perdita was better than her performance of Hermione; but beneath that judgment there was, apparently, the impression that Hermione is a character fraught with superlatively great passions, powers, and qualities, such as are only to be apprehended by gigantic sagacity and conveyed by herculean talents and skill. Those vast attributes were not specified, but there was a mysterious intimation ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... compensation, which rules that unusual growth in one direction must always be counterbalanced by deficient growth in another direction, is the saving principle of human society. That a man should be superlatively good in one single line of effort is the demand of modern life. It is a platitude to say that this is the age of the specialist. But specialism, while it always means a gain to society, also always means a loss to the individual. Darwin, at the age ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... my last memory of England for some time to come. Mademoiselle Wielitzska is very wonderful. As much actress as dancer—and both rather superlatively." ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... you also remember that modern styles, modes, fashions, inventions,—call them what you will,—are the mere average product of human thought and labor during a few years; the old that abides is drawn from the superlatively good of former countless generations, culled over and over again till that alone remains which has stood the test of your critics and reformers all along down from Adam, or up from the last monkey who wept to find his first-born without a tail and ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... impulses of men. We have to assume that the instructed class believe the catholic dogmas to be untrue, and yet wishes the uninstructed to be handed over to a system that reposes on the theory that these dogmas are superlatively true. What then is to be said of the tenableness of such a position? To the plain man it looks like a deliberate connivance at a plan for the propagation of error—assuming, as I say, for the moment, that these articles of belief are erroneous and contrary to fact and evidence. ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... not superlatively clever boys; but, whether by chance or design, they certainly hit upon an admirable method for bringing the matter ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... Cowper Powys is arresting and thrilling. This is superlatively true of his essays in ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... Quarterly Reviews, is an exemplification of the potent influence which party spirit exercises over those journals. In the latter, one or two of her works have been criticised with overwhelming power, and in a tone and spirit superlatively bitter. In the former, on the contrary, she is spoken of with studied lenity, although the Reviewer is obliged to confess that he is not one of her particular admirers, and seems to be perpetually restraining himself from indulging in the language of raillery ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... the message with considerable amusement and a cordiality in which there was some mixture of the quizzical. He was the taller; and the robust manliness of his appearance, his splendid health and boxer's figure offered a sharp contrast to the superlatively lean tippler. Corliss was humorously aware of his advantage: his greeting seemed really to say, "Hello, my funny bug, here you are again!" though the words of his salutation were entirely courteous; and he followed ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... indebted to me for any thing he may find particularly good; and above all things to load my wretched 'Principal' with the blame of every thing that is wrong. If he comes to any passage which he is disposed to think superlatively bad, let him be assured that it is not mine. If he changes his opinion about it, I may be disposed to reconsider whether I had not some hand in it. This will be the more reasonable in him, as the critics will "feel it their duty" to take the very opposite course. However, if he ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... published in 1680, and is written in a language which fraudulent tradesmen at that period could not misunderstand; using terms now obsolete or vulgar. It is full of anecdotes, which reveal the state of the times, as superlatively immoral, and profane. He incidentally notices that a labourer received eightpence or tenpence per day.[305] At that time, bread and all the necessaries of life, excepting meat, were dearer than they are at present. In fact, our days are much happier for the poor than any ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... man with the basket had retired to the other side of the fire, and a group of Kachins watched the Ruby King respectfully from a little distance. The watching group now gave a loud murmur of wonder and admiration, as if they had divined some superlatively clever trick of their master's, and were applauding it. Then U Saw turned and came across the courtyard, his right ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... as usual, we admit everything," responded Wilkeson. "But, pray condescend to tell us how you know this fine old boy to be superlatively rich." ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... either side of his high, narrow forehead, his hair, instead of being worn according to the prevailing fashion, was suffered to fall in long elf-locks about his ears. Notwithstanding all these disadvantages, his eyes were so superlatively beautiful that they almost persuaded you into the belief that he was handsome. From their lustrous depths there streamed a meteoric splendor, which, more than words, revealed the genius, the enthusiasm, and the noble soul to which Nature had assigned ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... the honor of addressing the Countess Laniska? (Aside.) Flounces, frills, filagrees, and furbelows, but she's superlatively odd! ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... expect an absolutely commonplace ending (the marriage of Flora to Charles Haslam), and then substituted one which, if not very brilliant, was at least ingenious and unforeseen. Thus, by defeating the expectation of a superlatively bad act, he made a positively insignificant act seem comparatively good. Such feats of craftsmanship are entertaining, but too dangerous to be commended ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... Superlatively brutal as this appeared, I could not help reflecting that our public executions in England convey a similar moral; the only difference being in the conduct of the women; the savages having to be DRIVEN to the sight as witnesses, while European females throng curiously to such disgusting exhibitions. ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... I cannot suppose that any thing you have said should occasion this rupture, and the reputation of a quarrel is always so ridiculous on both sides, that you will oblige me in mentioning it to her, for 'tis now at that pretty pass, she won't curtsey to me whenever she mets me, which is superlatively silly (if she really knew it), after a suspension of ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... as it is the first time, you must be elegantly dressed, and you must not wear the same dress on the birthnight. So, Mrs. Franks, let this be finished first, as fast as you can, and by that time, perhaps, we shall think of something superlatively charming for the night ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... if they missed something, strayed from the track and drew us against the dripping bushes. After one such excursion, which had nearly been the ruin of us, and which by calling out coachee's scourging powers had put him thoroughly in good-humor, he turned to us and said, superlatively,— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... and had it indeed been "bright jewels of the mine" which the voyagers sought they might have been pardoned for thinking they had found them there. And all ashore under this alluring blue haze lay a country that was superlatively lovely even under frozen skies and on the shortest day of the year. Southerly toward it the shallop sailed in 1620, under flocks of whirling white gulls, through flocks of black and white Labrador ducks that then wintered in numbers along our shores, from Clark's ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... the Marquis de Lasalles and Maurice. She was in the highest spirits, and looked superlatively lovely. The brow of the countess gradually smoothed as she noticed how gayly the heiress chatted with ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... that," said Bertha, slyly, "and come round with a watering-can next time you are reciting your rhetoric. Give me some red now; oh, that is a beauty! There! that's enough for one load; unless you see just one more little one that is superlatively beautiful." ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... had deliberately asserted all that bad and poisonous dunghill refuse, to be good and wholesome food?' My official friend replied that it was a remarkable fact, that whereas some officers were only positively good, and other officers only comparatively better, those particular officers were superlatively the very best of all ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... proceedeth from a desperate corruption of mind, from a mind hardened and emboldened, sold and enslaved to wickedness: whence they who deal therein are in Holy Scripture represented as egregious sinners, or persons superlatively wicked, under the name of scorners ([Greek], pests, or pestilent men, the Greek translators call them, properly enough in regard to the effects of their practice); concerning whom the wise man (signifying how God will meet with them in their own way) saith, "Surely ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... amiable and intelligent gentleman, a good citizen and an honorable opponent." As a speaker he was ready, precise, fluent and his manner before a popular assembly was just as he pleased to make it; being either superlatively ludicrous or very impressive. He employed but little gesticulation but when he desired to make a point produced a shrug of the shoulders, an elevation of the eyebrows, a depression of his mouth and a general malformation of countenance ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... the Lower Oolite as they do now; and the glimpse which they lent of so remote an antiquity, through the medium of an antiquity which, save for the comparison which they furnished the means of instituting, might be well deemed superlatively remote, I have felt singularly awe-inspiring and impressive. Macaulay anticipates a time when the traveller from some distant land shall take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to survey the ruins of St. Paul's. In ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... shouting in a perfect scream, "Flesh and blood can't bear this. One of us must die!" The man whipped up his horses and made off, and Mr. Haldimands tried in vain to hush up a story which made him appear so superlatively ridiculous. ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... William was King James's son,' too. I always loved to play, but was hardly ever chosen because I was so fat and ungainly. I remember once, though, when I went to a children's party in a pale blue silk dress that made me look like a young mountain. I thought myself superlatively beautiful, however, and the rest of the little girls were so impressed that I was a great social triumph, and made up for the times when I had been passed by," concluded ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... old Constitution!—ha, ha, ha, ha. Superlatively ludicrous and facetious, upon my erudition; and highly productive of risibility—ha, ha, ha. The old Constitution! A very shadow of a government—a perfect caput mortuum;—why, one of my schoolboys would make a better: 'tis grown as superannuated, embecilitated, valetudinarianated, ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... lightning, came on, which disturbed the rest of all who were exposed to it. Yet in spite of the inconvenience arising from the shower, I cannot say that I felt disposed to grumble at the interruption, for it appeared that what I had before considered as superlatively sublime, still wanted this to render it complete. The flashes of lightning vied in brilliancy with the flames which burst from the roofs of burning houses, whilst the thunder drowned for a time the noise of crumbling walls, and was only interrupted by the occasional roar of cannon, and of ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... your stockings well gartered up, and your shoes well buckled; for nothing gives a more slovenly air to a man than ill-dressed legs. In your person you must be accurately clean; and your teeth, hands, and nails, should be superlatively so; a dirty mouth has real ill consequences to the owner, for it infallibly causes the decay, as well as the intolerable pain of the teeth, and it is very offensive to his acquaintance, for it will most inevitably stink. I insist, therefore, that you ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... articles." The Squire apparently was not aware that the superlatively excellent Hollands, Geneva, and India-hand-kerchiefs were, the one the manufacture of Spital-fields, and the other the sophisticated balderdash known by the name of Maidstone gin. It is a fact, altho' not generally known, that at the different ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... fortune which he spent magnificently as a prince, and that he had a superlative gift which for all they were aware he had flung wantonly away as soon as the money came into his hands. Moreover he was even more interesting because of his superlatively bad reputation which still followed him. The public would have found it hard to believe that at last Alan Massey was leading the most temperate and arduous of lives and devoting himself exclusively to one woman whom he treated as reverently as if she were a goddess. The gazes focussed ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... arms, when you never had one there? You put words of temptation into the mouth of your villain which no real scamp would think of using, for their only effect would be to alarm your heroine. You talk of a planned seduction as if it were part of an oratorio. And you make your hero so superlatively pure and sweet that no woman formed of flesh and blood could ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... standing breathless and unmoved on some unknown wharf on the left bank of the Hudson might fairly be described as superlatively honest persons, nor had they done any act which could be construed as wrongful by the most captious critic; yet McCulloch's concealment of the lamp suggested something thievish and illicit, and, though he alone could give a valid ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... infixed, unrelenting fangs of some incurable idea; such an one, could he be found, would seem the very man to dart his iron and lift his lance against the most appalling of all brutes. Or, if for any reason thought to be corporeally incapacitated for that, yet such an one would seem superlatively competent to cheer and howl on his underlings to the attack. But be all this as it may, certain it is, that with the mad secret of his unabated rage bolted up and keyed in him, Ahab had purposely sailed ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... determined to concentrate no more on it, but rather to commit it to the ice-house or safe of her subconscious mind, from which at will, when she felt refreshed and reinvigorated, she could unlock it and examine it again. The whole problem was more superlatively baffling than any that she could remember having encountered in all these inquisitive years, just as the subject of it was more majestic than any, for it concerned not hoarding, nor visits of the Prince of Wales, nor poppy-trimmed gowns, ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... splendid worker. Doing very well in Classics, and making marvellous progress in French." From later reports the following expressions are taken: "Keen in the extreme, and a hard worker; a marvellously retentive memory." "His work has been superlatively good; conduct excellent; drawing poor; written work marred by blots and smudges." "Developing very much; thoroughly deserves his prizes; his work is neater; composition and geography excellent; and even in mathematics ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... steadfast in her opinion that honour compelled her to meet him. Probably the very longing to avoid him lent additional weight to the conviction; for she was markedly one of those who sigh for the unattainable—to whom, superlatively, a hope is pleasing because not a possession. And she knew it so well that her intellect was inclined to exaggerate ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... effeminate. As for Hamilton, his head never looked more massive, his glance more commanding, than when he was in full regalia; nor he more ready for a fight. All women know the psychological effect of being superlatively well dressed. In the days of our male ancestors' external vanities it is quite possible that they, too, felt unconquerable ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... follows: "My lord, your most illustrious Excellency must please to know that Baccio Bandinello is made up of everything bad, and thus has he ever been; therefore, whatever he looks at, be the thing superlatively excellent, becomes in his ungracious eyes as bad as can be. I, who incline to the good only, discern the truth with purer sense. Consequently, what I told your Excellency about this lovely statue is mere simple truth; whereas what Bandinello said is but a portion of the evil ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... a matter of inherent race nature, of brain structure, or of mind differentiation, but wholly a matter of social evolution; and, fourth, that if there is such a trait as they describe, it is not due to a deficiently developed but on the contrary to a superlatively developed personality, which might better be called super-personality. To state the position here advocated in a nutshell, it is maintained that the asserted "impersonality" of the Japanese is the result of the communalistic nature of the social ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... moment what I mean," he presently said. He felt agitated, intensely eager; now that he had opened the discussion he wished to discharge his mind. But he wished also to be superlatively gentle. ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... dropped something somewhere along the line which we must replace at once or we will be laid up for repairs. But lo and behold! "Easy Street" is fair to look upon. It dazzles the eye—it takes hold of the sensibilities. Everybody wears "Sunday clothes" on this street and seems to be superlatively happy. Surely it wouldn't hurt to linger awhile and see what is going on. Why, this is the most talked about street in the world! Some of the people we have dealt with have told us about it. They said it ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... of merit with which a cold heart and a phlegmatic taste will be better satisfied than with the magnificent irregularities of exalted spirits. It stretches some minds to an uneasy extension to be obliged to attend to compositions superlatively excellent; and it contracts liberal souls to a painful narrowness to descend to books of inferior merit. A work of capital genius, to a man of an ordinary mind, is the bed of Procrustes to one of a short stature, the man is too little to fill ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... the husband promised through a thousand secret voices, whom a superlatively good Providence had thus thrown across her path? Was he, indeed, the being created for her—the being to whom she would devote her existence? Were they the two predestined beings whose affection, blending in one, would ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... of myself if it weren't constantly before me and if I hadn't my feelers out in more quarters than one. But I've not so much as thought of Mr. Mitchett—who, rich as he may be, is the son of a shoemaker and superlatively hideous—for a reason I don't at all mind telling you. Don't be outraged if I say that I've for a long time hoped you yourself would find the right use for him." She paused—at present with a momentary failure of assurance, from which she rallied, however, to proceed ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... unimaginable experience of holding that thrilled and thrilling body close to his, seemed to him to be a marvellous piece of sheer luck and overwhelming good fortune. She was so sensuous and yet so serious. Her gaze stimulated not only love but conscience. In him ambition was superlatively vigorous. Nevertheless he felt then as though he had never really known ambition till that moment. He thought of the new century and of a new life. He perceived the childishness and folly of his favourite idea that an artist ought to pass ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... performance of these operations, in the strictest sense scientific, we will first look to the existing so-called "science" of Political Economy; we will ask it to define for us the comparatively and superlatively rich, and the comparatively and superlatively poor; and on its own terms—if any terms it can pronounce—examine, in our prosperous England, how many rich and how many poor people there are; and whether the quantity and intensity of the poverty ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the impacts of fighting; to such tearing injuries as resemble those made by teeth and claws (Fig. 9). On the other hand, the sharp division of tissue by cutting produces no adaptive response; indeed, one might imagine that the body could be cut to pieces by a superlatively sharp knife applied at tremendous speed without ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... with them only a few days ago, but they told me you were off to Paris, to marry something superlatively beautiful, and most enormously rich, the daughter of a duke, if I remember right; but certes, they said your fortune was made, and I need not tell you, there was not a man among them better pleased that I was to ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... Siticines, said I, were superlatively wise in devising thus a means for you to compass whatever all men naturally covet so much, and so few, or, to speak more properly, none can enjoy together—I mean, a paradise in this life, and another in the next. Sure ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais |
