"High-wrought" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... great and far-descended school, which claimed for itself rightful possession of the ground which it held. There was nothing effeminate about it, as there was nothing fanatical; there was nothing extreme or foolish about it; it was a manly school, distrustful of high-wrought feelings and professions, cultivating self-command and shy of display, and setting up as its mark, in contrast to what seemed to it sentimental weakness, a reasonable and serious idea of duty. The divinity which it propounded, though it rested on learning, was rather ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... Mirabeau, Mr. President, or what other master of the human passions, who has told us that words are things? They are indeed things, and things of mighty influence, not only in addresses to the passions and high-wrought feelings of mankind, but in the discussion of legal and political questions also; because a just conclusion is often avoided, or a false one reached, by the adroit substitution of one phrase or one word for an other."—Daniel ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... no fear," answered Lord Glenvarloch, ashamed of the construction she put upon a momentary hesitation, arising from a dislike to look upon what is horrible, often connected with those high-wrought minds which are the last to fear what is merely dangerous—"I will do your errand as you desire; but for you, you ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... miserable lies." The report of the Tuam Herald reads like a faction fight in a whiskey-shop. You can hear the trailing of coats, the crack of shillelaghs on thick Irish skulls, the yells of hurroosh, whirroo, and O'Donnell aboo! Towards the end your high-wrought imagination can almost smell the sticking plaister, so vivid is the picture. "The bare-faced slanders of this hireling scribe from the slums of Birmingham" were hotly denounced, but nobody said what they were. The clergy and their serfs were equally silent on this point. I steadfastly adhere ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... his actions, this was no pleasing prospect for the secret pride of Waverley to stoop to. And yet what other conclusion remained, saving the rejection of his addresses by Flora, an alternative not to be thought of in the present high-wrought state of his feelings with anything short of mental agony. Pondering the doubtful and dangerous prospect before him, he at length arrived near the cascade, where, as Fergus had augured, he ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... health. I could do nothing more at that time for the dreadful condition of the wretched husband, and less for the more dreadful state of the miserable wife; and the personal pain I experienced in witnessing this high-wrought scene of terror, forced me to depart, leaving the one still raving in his madness, and the other bound in the stern grasp of the most ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... Brunswick, was ready for the stroke that was to destroy the anti-revolutionists, that was to strike terror to the hearts of all enemies of the people. But the awfulness of the deed delayed its execution. The day passed in high-wrought excitement; at any moment news might arrive of the fall of Verdun,—that might be the signal for the explosion of ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... historians of antiquity)—on the subtle reasonings and melting pathos of Euripides, on the harmonious gracefulness of Sophocles, tuning his love-laboured song, like sweetest warblings from a sacred grove; on the high-wrought trumpet-tongued eloquence of Aeschylus, whose Prometheus, above all, is like an Ode to Fate, and a pleading with Providence, his thoughts being let loose as his body is chained on his solitary rock, and his afflicted ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... especially the case with a man like Professor Valeyon, who was half a dreamer, and half a practical, common-sensible individual. With Sophie, however, whose whole life was necessarily a tissue of delicate and high-wrought theories, there was no safeguard of the kind to ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... '63, with its high-wrought excitements, brought Beecher the peril of a nervous breakdown. His exhaustion illustrates the fact that some men who stayed at home endured as much as others who went to the front. Generals and their marching regiments often ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... what is false, but what will most speedily effect the destruction of Southern slavery. Any thing that seems to answer this purpose is blindly and furiously wielded by them. The Edinburgh Review, in a high-wrought eulogy on an American authoress, says that she assails slavery with arrows "poisoned by truth." Her words, it is true, are dipped in flaming poison; but that poison is not truth. The ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... other great capital. But then, you are told that these objects are not in the style and taste of the people. Be it so; but then do not let the minds of those who cannot see for themselves be led away by high-wrought and fallacious descriptions of things which do not exist." The maxim is a valuable one, and we hope that the rebuke will save the reading public from a heap of those "picturesque" labours, which really ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... nature proud, Who patient in all else demand but this— To love and be beloved with gentleness; And being scorned, what wonder if they die Some living death? this is not destiny 210 But man's own wilful ill.' As thus I spoke Servants announced the gondola, and we Through the fast-falling rain and high-wrought sea Sailed to the island where the madhouse stands. We disembarked. The clap of tortured hands, 215 Fierce yells and howlings and lamentings keen, And laughter where complaint had merrier been, Moans, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... high-wrought English literature has suffered in Tennyson's passing from the age on which he has shed so much glory those can best say who are of his era, and have been intimate, as each appeared, with every successive issue of his works. To the latter, as to all thoughtful students of his writings, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... trial came, and the remarkable man presented himself, the very picture of buoyant health, of unbroken rest. All this had been done by the unyielding resolve of his will—his triumph was complete; high-wrought expectations were more than realized, prejudice was demolished, professional jealousy silenced, and he descended from the rostrum, freely accorded his proper place among the orators and statesmen of ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... He slung his sword Athwart his shoulders; dazzling bright it shone With gold emboss'd, and silver was the sheath Suspended graceful in a belt of gold. 35 His massy shield o'ershadowing him whole, High-wrought and beautiful, he next assumed. Ten circles bright of brass around its field Extensive, circle within circle, ran; The central boss was black, but hemm'd about 40 With twice ten bosses of resplendent tin. There, dreadful ornament! ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... for a significant life and rich, satisfying experience, exists in day-long pettiness, gossips, frivols, scolds, with money enough to do what she pleases, and nothing vital to do. She also relieves her pent-up idealism in plays or books—in high-wrought, "strong" novels, not in adventures in society such as the kitchen admires, but in stories with violent moral and emotional crises, whose characters, no matter how unlifelike, have "strong" thoughts, and make ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... dictated by wisdom, philanthropy and beneficence, and to stigmatize its opposite as impelled by narrow-minded selfishness and only upheld by prejudice and ignorance. The French widow who appended to the high-wrought eulogium engraved on her husband's tombstone that "His disconsolate widow still keeps the shop No 16 Rue St. Denis," had not a keener eye to business than these apostles of the Economic faith. No consideration ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... that they would stand forth in full relief, inducing him almost to imagine that he stood in their midst. Though many years have rolled by since those events occurred, they still linger in my memory like the vivid scenes of a high-wrought drama; and often in the 'dead waste and middle of the night' do I revisit in my dreams scenes which I should be sorry ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... honour, which so is rated a necessary of life, is an immaterial substance in a peculiarly high-wrought degree, being not only not physically tangible but also not even capable of adequate statement in pecuniary terms,—as would be the case with ordinary immaterial assets. It is true, where the point of grievance ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... shaping of his poetic world than did his sense of form. But intellectual growth inevitably modified the primitive instinct which it could not uproot; and his sense of Power traverses the whole gamut of dynamic tones, from the lusty "barbaric" joy in the sheer violence of ripping and clashing, to the high-wrought sensibility which throbs in sympathy with the passionate heart-beats of ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... magnanimity as well as valor. Indeed, the chivalric virtues were refined upon to a degree sometimes fastidious and constrained; but at other times, inexpressibly noble and affecting. The annals of the times teem with illustrious instances of high-wrought courtesy, romantic generosity, lofty disinterestedness, and punctilious honor, that warm the very soul to read them. These have furnished themes for national plays and poems, or have been celebrated in those all-pervading ballads which are as the life-breath of the people, and ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... the allied armies were now assembled to the number of twelve thousand men. The loud booming of the siege artillery had been heard by me for some hours before; but notwithstanding this prelude and my own high-wrought expectations, I was far from anticipating the magnificent spectacle which burst upon my astonished view. The air was calm and still; a clear, blue, wintry sky stretched overhead, but below, the dense blue smoke of the deafening guns rolled in mighty ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... off his cloak, and folded it round her, and she offered no resistance. She was sinking into that passive state, which often succeeds too high-wrought emotion. ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... principles of Civil government ever had an enunciation so candid and heroic, so sublime and comprehensive, so ennobling to man and honoring to God? These principles were not flashes of a high-wrought imagination; they were practical. The Covenanted fathers reduced them to practice. These nations embodied them. The time was short, yet long enough ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... it from our present vantage-ground, it contains absolutely nothing of the marvellous. We discern the means which were in operation, and which are theoretically sufficient to produce the result. Those means consisted in,—first, high-wrought expectation and excited fancy, enough alone to set some of the most excitable into fits;—secondly, the contagious power of nervous disorder to cause the like disorder in others, a power augmenting with the number of persons infected;—thirdly, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... The latter he describes as "a lawyer, and the completest speaker I ever heard. If his future speeches are equal to the small samples he has hitherto given us, they will be worth preserving; but in a letter I can give you no idea of the music of his voice, or the high-wrought yet natural elegance of ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler |
