"Outvie" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... down to the orange trees of the monastery gardens; of the avenue of cypresses serpentining from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the gorge; of the torrents covered with myrtles; in short, of the immense ensemble, the infinite details, which overwhelm the imagination and outvie the poet's and painter's dreams. Here it will be advisable to confine ourselves to the investigation of a more limited sphere, to inspect rather narrow interiors ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... characteristics of the East Indian is extravagance. To outvie one another in celebrations of births, weddings, deaths and coronations they beggar themselves. In this the Oriental and the Occidental have one thing in common. This principality was small, but there was a deal of wealth in it because of ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... More virtue never existed in their favourite shepherdesses than in these Welsh and Shropshire girls! For beauty, symmetry, and complexion, they are not inferior to the nymphs of Arcadia, and they far outvie the pallid specimens of Circassia! Their morals too are exemplary; and they often perform this labour to support aged parents, or to keep their own children from the workhouse! In keen suffering, they endure all that the imagination of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... There were jewels, and gold, and the amulet's power, A hero to spout, and to rant by the hour; A lady to love, and be loved, and to faint, As a matter of course, turning pale through her paint! There were clowns who the grave-digger clown could outvie, And princes who on the stage strutted so high That Prince Hamlet they'd cut; who could pick up a scull, Vote his morals a bore, and his wit mighty dull! There were spirits that roam in the caves of the deep, Coming back to our earth, as ghosts will do, to peep! A ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... shall Freedom show, What mighty States successive grow. What charming scenes attract the eye On wild Ohio's savage stream. Here Nature reigns, whose works outvie The boldest pattern art can frame. The East is half to slaves consigned, And half ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... of display, the rich outvie them. The pomp of a rich man's obsequies finds its beginning while he is yet on earth, when the padre goes in state to administer extreme unction. His vehicle, a gilt coach which looks like the pictures of those of the seventeenth century, is often preceded by a band, ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... complaint of their pitiful plight. They deemed that Arthur himself had fallen upon them with all his meinie at his back. Their hearts turned to water, by reason of the number of their dead. The levies of Poitou closed about them, and the Britons failed not at need Each company strove to outvie its fellow, contending earnestly for the greater glory. The Romans could do no more. They turned about and fled the field, utterly discomfited and abased. Their one thought was to get to shelter, or else they were all dead men. The Britons pressed hardly on the fugitives, slaying many. In ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... busy night Is yours, in which you challenged are to fight With such an arm'd, but such an easy foe, As will, if you yield, lie down conquer'd too. The field is pitch'd, but such must be your wars, As that your kisses must outvie the stars. Fall down together vanquished both, and lie Drown'd in the blood ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... intermediary nations, destitute of great men, have disappeared without leaving their visiting cards on the globe. All works of genius are the epitome of a civilization, and presuppose an immense utility. Forsooth, a pair of boots will not outvie a stage-play in your eyes, and you will not prefer a windmill to the Church of Saint Ouen. So, a people is animated with the same sentiment as a man; and man's favourite idea is to survive himself mentally as he reproduces himself ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... must be said of them that they were marvelous good men in the field, dexterous archers, and powerful with the battle-axe. In their great pride and self-will, they always sought to press in the advance and take the post of danger, trying to outvie our Spanish chivalry. They did not rush on fiercely to the fight, nor make a brilliant onset like the Moorish and Spanish troops, but they went into the fight deliberately, and persisted obstinately, and ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... impossible for either author to outvie the other in success and glory. Week in, week out, you saw cancelled either's every momentary advantage. A neck-and-neck race. As thus:—Maltby appears as a Celebrity At Home in the World (Tuesday). Ha! No, Vanity Fair (Wednesday) has a perfect presentment of Braxton by 'Spy.' Neck-and-neck! ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... hope so," said the prefect with a sigh. They are bent on giving all that is their best; but in the endeavor to outvie each other every one is at war with his neighbor, and I still feel the effects of the odious wrangling which I have had to listen to for hours, and that I have been obliged to check again and again with threats of 'I ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... measure swords, meet hand to hand; take up the cudgels, take up the glove, take up the gauntlet; enter the lists; couch one's lance; give satisfaction; appeal to arms; &c (warfare) 722. lay about one; break the peace. compete with, cope with, vie with, race with; outvie^, emulate, rival; run a race; contend for &c, stipulate for, stickle for; insist upon, make a point of. Adj. contending &c v.; together by the ears, at loggerheads. at war. at issue. competitive, rival; belligerent; contentious, combative, bellicose, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to hand; take up the cudgels, take up the glove, take up the gauntlet; enter the lists; couch one's lance; give satisfaction; appeal to arms &c. (warfare) 722. lay about one; break the peace. compete with, cope with, vie with, race with; outvie[obs3], emulate, rival; run a race; contend &c. for, stipulate for, stickle for; insist upon, make a point of. Adj. contending &c. v.; together by the ears, at loggerheads at war at issue. competitive, rival; belligerent; contentious, combative, bellicose, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... searching eye He scanned the small competitors for choice. Obedient to his governor, the bird Poured forth his song, oblivious of the crowd Of vain and envious round him, in whose eyes He stood contemptible. The Prince, entranced, Broke forth at length: "Nor hue, nor elegance, Nor fascination, can outvie the gift Of genius. My choice is made." And to the great offence Of one bright bird, at least, the humble gray Became ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... well as the above there are many beautiful garden hybrids, some of which in point of floral colouring far outvie the parent forms. Included in the following list are a few of the ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... more eclat to his own vanity than credit to their discretion, or regard to truth, she determined to give concerts, though she had neither ear nor taste for music; conversazioni, though she had no talents for conversation; and to outvie, if possible, in the gaieties of her parties and the magnificence of her liveries, all the noblesse of Venice. This blissful reverie was somewhat obscured, when she recollected the Signor, her husband, who, though he was not averse to the profit which sometimes results ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... object in life already, and was as deeply committed to philanthropic labors and letters as either Lady Latimer or Lady Angleby. They were both numbered amongst her correspondents, and she promised to outvie them in originality and fertility of resource. What she chiefly wanted at Castlemount was a good listener, and Bessie Fairfax, as yet unprovided with a vocation, showed a fine turn that way. She reposed lazily at the end of ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... we travelled on four days with malevolence perpetually increasing, and without any endeavour but to outvie each other in superciliousness and neglect; and when any two of us could separate ourselves for a moment, we vented our indignation at ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... driven to the huge palace of Necessidades, which is but a wing of a building that no King of Portugal ought ever to be rich enough to complete, and which, if perfect, might outvie the Tower of Babel. The mines of Brazil must have been productive of gold and silver indeed when the founder imagined this enormous edifice. From the elevation on which it stands it commands the noblest ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with guns and game-bags; and this was a pleasure in itself, to remain behind while these elegant pleasure-seekers took the first of the morning. In this way, all the world may be an aristocrat, and play the duke among marquises, and the reigning monarch among dukes, if he will only outvie them in tranquility. An imperturbable demeanour comes from perfect patience. Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no occasion for hurry, and there was much laughing and joking over the work. Their hunting-shirts and breeches served as patterns from which to cut out the skins; and as each strove to outvie the others, the garments when completed were very fair specimens of work. The hunting-shirts were made with hoods that, when pulled over the head, covered the whole face except the eyes, nose, and mouth. ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... as these I am alive to behold the day wherein the corporation of authors can outvie all its brethren in the field—a happiness derived to us, with a great many others, from our Scythian ancestors, among whom the number of pens was so infinite that the Grecian eloquence had no other way of expressing it than by saying ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... there was a magnificent feast prepared. The guests were regaled with richest music. After such an entertainment as even the opulence of the East had seldom furnished, there was an exchange of presents. The emperor and the queen strove to outvie each other in the richness and elegance of their gifts. Every individual in the two retinues, received ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... grew the works up, no less stately in size than exquisite in form, the workmen striving to outvie the material and the design with the beauty of their workmanship, yet the most wonderful thing of all was the rapidity of their execution. Undertakings, any one of which singly might have required, they thought, for their completion, several successions and ages of men, were every one of them ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... exaggerated by their enemies, and often overrated even by their friends and companions. With characteristic fervour they enter enthusiastically into every thing in which they engage; and, when they indulge in dissipation, delight to sport on the brink of all its terrors, and to outvie in levity and extravagance the most practised professors of their new art. Few that see or hear them think, that even in the midst of their revels their hearts are often far away, or are extracting good from the evil spread before them; and that all the waste ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... a pistol. Mr. Caton is violently carried off, locked up in a horrible stinking room, prevented from seeing his friends; after a day or two he is forced on board a tender, where Mr. Tripp, a midshipman, behaves with humanity, but the Captain and Lieutenant outvie each other in brutality; Captain Hamilton behaving as an 'enraged partisan.' Poor Mr. Caton is released at last by the exertions of Mr. Edmund Burke, of Mr. Farr, and another devoted friend, who travel post-haste to London to obtain a Habeas Corpus, so that he is ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... that she had Tibb as a familiar, old Chattox was not without her Fancy. If the former had skill in waxen images, the latter could dig up the scalps of the dead, and make their teeth serviceable to her unhallowed purposes. In the anxiety which each felt to outvie the other, and to secure the greater share of the general custom of a not very extended or very lucrative market, each would wish to be represented as more death-dealing, destructive, and powerful than her neighbour; and she who could number up the most goodly assortment of ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... Walpole, who became the bride of Earl Waldegrave, and later married the Duke of Gloucester, the King's youngest brother. At another time, when a lady wrote telling him of the advent of a beauty who was expected to outvie the Gunnings, he replies: "There was to have been a handsomer every summer these seven years, but when the seasons come they all seem to have been addled ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... light, Did they flinch from the battle's roar, When they burst on the guns of the Muscovite, By the echoing Black Sea shore? On! on! to the cannon's mouth they stride, With never a swerve nor a shy, Oh! the minutes of yonder maddening ride, Long years of pleasure outvie! ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... taught, Whose art was nature, and whose pictures thought; Now for two ages, having snatch'd from fate Whate'er was beauteous, or whate'er was great, Lies crown'd with princes' honours, poets' lays, Due to his merit, and brave thirst of praise. Living, great nature fear'd he might outvie Her works; and dying, fears herself ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... must lead to the conclusion that they could not have committed them to slight or ordinary buildings, for they were decorations which the experience of more than fourteen hundred years has scarcely surpassed. Even the looms of modern Brussels, in elegance and beauty of pattern, cannot fairly outvie the Mosaic Carpets of the ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... creature who dyes her hair and paints her face, as the first articles of her personal religion; whose sole idea of life is plenty of fun and luxury; and whose dress is the object of such thought and intellect as she possesses. Her main endeavor in this is to outvie her neighbors in the extravagance of fashion. No matter whether, as in the time of crinolines, she sacrificed decency, or, as now in the time of trains, she sacrifices cleanliness; no matter either, whether she makes herself a nuisance and an inconvenience ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... increasing energy). Appease these throbbings. Give me the man in whom my thoughts are centered—the man I adore, without whom life were worse than death. Let me but hear from his lips that the tears of love with which my eyes are bedewed outvie the gems that sparkle in my hair, and I will throw at the feet of the prince his heart and his dukedom, and flee to the uttermost parts of the earth with the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... born, it was greatly enhanced by his marriage with the Princess Marie Therese Louise, only daughter of the Duke of Penthievre, the most richly-endowed heiress in Europe. Thus he attained wealth which made him the richest subject in Europe, and which enabled him almost to outvie the splendors of royalty. But, notwithstanding this vast wealth, he plunged so recklessly into extravagance that his ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... whom the report came, misinterpreted his Mongolian title Ung-Khan as denoting a priest-king named John, and it was this distant Eastern potentate who came to be known in Europe as Presbyter Johannes or Prester John. It was the Syrian Christians who, in their desire to outvie the boastful arrogance of their Latin neighbours, together with many apochryphal tales invented a letter from this dignitary to some of the sovereigns of Europe, including the Pope. Equally fabulous seems to have been the report to Alexander ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... philosophic motions. Music was become vertiginous; a mad vortex, wherein whirled mad atoms, madly embracing. Dancing, the dissonant corybantes of the Dionysian evangel flitted by, scarce touching earth in their efforts to outvie the Bacchantes. With peals of thunderous and ironical laughter the Sphinx sank into the murmuring sand, yawning, "Music is ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker |
