"Pinnacle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... imbecile peace of his bosom; "For in my own," he mused, "is such a combat of devils, That I believe torpid age or stupid youth would be better Than this manhood of mine that has climbed aloft to discover Heights which I never can reach, and bright on the pinnacle standing In the unfading light, my rival crowned victor above me. If I could hint what I feel, what forever escapes from my pencil, All after-time should know my will was not less than my failure, Nor should any one dare remember ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... and that the gate must have been a fallen tusk, and one fallen near and recently. Therefore he decided that it were better to flee at once; so he commanded, and the sailors went to the sails, and others raised the anchor to the deck, and just as the highest pinnacle of marble lost the last rays of the sun we left Perdondaris, that famous city. And night came down and cloaked Perdondaris and hid it from our eyes, which as things have happened will never see it again; for I have heard since ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... of his own grand house, than in providing cottages for his people where decency is possible; then let us not pass him by with a torpid wonder or a vanishing emotion of pleasure—rather let us seize him and raise him up upon a pinnacle, that other landlords may gaze upon him, if, perhaps, their hearts may prick them; and the world shall learn from what one man has done what they have a right to ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... When the Commodore Jacques Cartier to the westward sailed away; In the crowded old Cathedral, all the town were on their knees, For the safe return of kinsmen from the undiscovered seas; And every autumn blast that swept o'er pinnacle and pier, Filled manly hearts with sorrow, ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... committed myself. After all what right had I to raise myself on a moral pinnacle now? And what did it matter, anyway? I was flying from the danger of my own infidelities, not to save my husband ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... without austerity never chilled them, but whose tragic story and the impression she made of already dwelling in a heaven of her own, notwithstanding her sweet and consistent humanity, placed her on a pinnacle where any display of affection would have been unseemly. Only once, after the beautiful ceremony of taking the white veil was over, and Teresa's senses were faint from incense and hunger, ecstasy and a new and exquisite terror, Sister Dominica had led her to her cell and kissing ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... at last and at least was happy, perched now on a pinnacle of fame, and in the Patriotic Daughters of America as represented by their Vice-President and Accredited Representative in the Philippines, virtue and rectitude reigned triumphant. Zenobia Perkins was in her glory. Of all the citizens or soldiers of the United States in and about Manila, ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... beautiful butterfly, basking in the bright sunshine, the envy of the child and the admiration of the man. Is there no appeal in this wonderful and enchanting fact to man's highest reason? Does it contain no suggestion that man, representing the highest pinnacle of created life upon the globe, must undergo a final metamorphosis, as supremely more marvelous and more spiritual, as man is greater in physical conformation, and far removed in mental construction from the humble worm that at the call of ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... slept, and cooled his brow with gentle breezes stirred up to life by fairy fans. His last thoughts had been of his vast wealth, his uninterrupted prosperity, and his great power. He was king of kings, and the whole world trembled at his feet. He had attained to the highest pinnacle of glory. Earth had yielded to him its most costly treasures, and had nothing more that she could give. Men had profusely showered upon him their highest flatteries, and addressed him ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... was a scraggly "old soldier," worn thin with drink. In the past he had spent unnumbered weeks in the guard-house, but recently, thanks to the drill-master famine, he had been elevated to his present pinnacle. His complexion was full of shell-holes—it bore an unmistakable resemblance to those aerial photographs of "the battle-field at Blank." Once a week he got drunk down-town on white liquor, returned quietly to camp ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... between the rewards of man's and woman's labor at the base of the social edifice, is carried up to its very pinnacle. Of a brother and sister equally qualified and effective as teachers, the brother will receive twice as much compensation as the sister. The mistress who conducts the rural district school in summer, usually receives ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... She had soon found that the deep language of her inner soul was to her husband an unknown tongue. Of her spiritual struggles and joys and exaltations she did not speak to him or to any other human being. They were her secret with her God and Saviour. Yet her husband stood to her on a pinnacle, as rounded in character, blameless in life, and perfect in his ministrations. Almost angelic he seemed to her when he stood in the chancel, and in his deep, melodious voice sang all the parts of the service that the church rules allowed ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... patience and faith; and not suppose in haste, that when those hands are stretched out it will be needful for us to leave our standing-ground, or to cast ourselves down from the pinnacle of the temple to earn popularity; above all, from earnest students who are too high-minded to care for ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... Zal cast his noose on a pinnacle, And descended from those happy battlements, As the sun was rising redly above the mountains, And the bands of warriors were gathering in their ranks. ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... a pinnacle of rising ground, about a hundred yards from the Danube, from whose bank the ascent is by a stupendous marble staircase, to the grand portico. The columns are of the finest white stone, and the interior is completely lined with German marbles. Busts of the distinguished warriors, poets, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... while receiving visits and speaking of business, he avoided thinking of the unexpected resistance. How was this! She—the woman for whom the highest favor, the pinnacle of happiness had been the possibility of remaining at the head of his house, in the brilliancy of wealth and general respect, dared—had the shamelessness to oppose his will! He felt such contempt that, in thought, he threw that woman on the ground to trample ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... in the long run, rightly or wrongly, always assume the ascendency over an excitable one. The moderateness of Rupert's words, the coolness of his manner, here brought Tanty rapidly down from her pinnacle of passion. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... frontage of the experience, to find some glimmer of the thoughts, emotions, and meanings behind. And in the long run such a habit of inquiry must bear fruit in understanding and sympathy. Joseph Conrad (who seems, by the way, to be more read by newspaper men than any other writer) put very nobly the pinnacle of all scribblers' dreams when he said that human affairs deserve the tribute of "a sigh which is not a sob, a smile ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... given herself over to him,—she, with her pride, her courage, her endurance. Wogan had seen too closely into her heart to bring any foolish charge of unmaidenliness against her. No, the very completeness of her submission raised her to a higher pinnacle. If she gave herself, she did so without a condition or a reserve, body and bone, heart and soul. Wogan knew amongst the women of his time many who made their bargain with the world, buying a semblance of esteem with a double payment ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... dark background of European history, and with the broad level of obscurity stretching over the ages at its feet, there rises one shining pinnacle. Considered as man or sovereign, Charlemagne is one of the most impressive figures in history. His seven feet of stature clad in shining steel, his masterful grasp of the forces of his time, his splendid intelligence, instinct even then with ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... satisfaction in the music of our own groans. Nor is this said by way of paradox; daily experience shows the truth of these observations. It is almost impossible to elevate the spirits of a man groaning under ideal calamities; but nothing is easier than to render him wretched, though on the pinnacle of felicity: as it would be an herculean task to hoist a man to the top of a steeple, though the merest child could topple him ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... visit Le Puy, the best plan is to begin with the Cathedral. From the high side of the Place de Breuil, at the N.W. corner, ascend by the streets St. Gilles, Chenebouterie, and Raphal, to the Place des Tables, with a stone pinnacle fountain in the centre. From this ascend by the R. des Tables to the flight of 40 steps, leading up to the tetrastyle portico in front of the church. Forty-one more steps lead up through this portico to the portal of the west faade of the church, built up ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... news half way round the world in a few seconds, we can make it known to a whole city in a few hours. And so it was with this "prophet fresh from God"; in spite of himself, he was seized by the scruff of the neck and flung up to the pinnacle of fame! He had all the marvels of a lifetime crowded into one day—enough to fill a ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... perceived a needle-shaped rock that overlooked the abyss under the fortress, so taking off my boots, I scrambled up and attained the pinnacle; but the view was so fearful, that, afraid of getting dizzy, I turned to descend, but found it a much more dangerous affair than the ascent; at length by the assistance of Paul I got down to the Mutsellim, ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... the earth seemed to sink from beneath him. His feet no longer touched the ground; a sense of supernatural buoyancy pervaded every fibre of his body: he felt himself floating in obscurity; then sinking softly, slowly, like a feather dropped from the pinnacle of a temple. Was this death? Nay, for all suddenly, as transported by the Sixth Supernatural Power, he stood again in light,—a perfumed, sleepy light, vapory, beautiful,—that bathed the marvellous streets of some Indian city. Now the nature of the murmur became manifest to him; for he moved ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... spaces, on either side the fir-clad ridges rising like ramparts. Here all is gentleness and golden calm, but soon we quit this warm, sunny region, and enter the dark forest road curling upwards to the airy pinnacle to which we are bound. More than once we have to halt on our way. One must stop to look at the cascade made by the Vologne, never surely fuller than now, one of the prettiest cascades in the world, masses of snow-white foam tumbling over a long, uneven stair ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... had his ear closer to the ground and listened more attentively to the tramp of the oncoming multitudes.' He 'held Great Britain's end up' at the International conference. A 'magnificent tribute was paid to him by Earl Balfour' but it 'did not put him alone on a pinnacle'. And then we read of the whirligig of time, of 'clouds of misunderstanding which point to the coming of a storm'; of how 'foreign nations suddenly became aware that a new star had swum into the world's ken'; of how 'the situation of this country ...
— Tract XI: Three Articles on Metaphor • Society for Pure English
... can never again attain. At the moment it is often impossible to detect this point, but when the man and his career have passed into history, and we can survey it all spread out before us like a map, the pinnacle of success can easily be discovered. The reply to Hayne was the zenith of Mr. Webster's life, and it is the place of all others where it is fit to pause and study him as a parliamentary orator and as ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... cried the boy, as the dogs, stretched out to their full lengths, with tails held straight out behind them, swept down a gentle slope on the other side of the valley, and, taking the hill on his side, rose rapidly to the pinnacle where he was sitting ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... Americans had reached the main works. The scaling-ladders were planted and the men scrambled over the wall. Even then the Mexicans were not without a faint hope, for their banner still floated over the highest pinnacle. Suddenly it disappeared, and the Stars and Stripes took its place. The victory had been won. On the second day after the first gun was fired at Chapultepec, the American troops were following their flag into the ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... through sloping pastures, white villages, and bits of larch forest. In its narrow bed, far below, the river Boite roared as gently as Bottom's lion. The afternoon sunlight touched the snow-capped pinnacle of Antelao and the massive pink wall of Sorapis on the right; on the left, across the valley, Monte Pelmo's vast head and the wild crests of La Rochetta and Formin rose dark against the glowing sky. The peasants lifted their hats ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... what had a foot-path on the side of the road; in others there were bye-paths which led from the road into the country, sometimes to a village, the chimnies only of which were visible; at other times to a chateau, the gilded pinnacle of which shone afar from some distant hill. I observed several fields of flax and hemp, and we passed several cottages, in the gardens of which the flax flourished in great perfection, Mr. Younge informed me, that every peasant grew a sufficient ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... accepted gladly, and during the trip there were many long discussions between the three as to the future of the Circus Boys. They had worked hard during the season and had won new laurels on the tanbark. But they had not yet reached the pinnacle of their success in the canvas-covered arena, though each had saved, as the result of his season's ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... I think your sympathetic nature causes you to understand much which you have not experienced, and knowing as you do the great pride I feel in my son's career, and the ambition I have for him to rise to the very highest pinnacle of success and usefulness, I am sure you will comprehend my anxiety when I see him exhibiting an undue interest in a girl who is in every way his inferior, and wholly unsuited to fill the position ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Adam; but such a structure there certainly was, perhaps an ancient Kist-vaen, or the like. John Marignolli, who was there about 1349, has an interesting passage on the subject: "That exceeding high mountain hath a pinnacle of surpassing height, which on account of the clouds can rarely be seen. [The summit is lost in the clouds. (Ibn Khordadhbeh, p. 43.)—H.C.] But God, pitying our tears, lighted it up one morning just before the sun rose, so that we beheld it glowing with the brightest ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Nature—the goddess, as she has been called, of a hundred voices—until here and there he can pick out a few simple notes to which his own powers can resound. If, then, at a moment when he finds himself placed on a pinnacle from which he is called upon to take a perspective survey of the range of science, and to tell us what he can see from his vantage ground; if at such a moment after straining his gaze to the very verge of the horizon, and after describing the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... of at the same time, so that she was now left mistress of the field. She governed absolutely in all things; the ministers became instruments in her hands; the King and Queen agents to work out her will. She was at the highest pinnacle of power. Together with Orry she enjoyed a power such as no one had ever attained since the time of the Duke ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... wanted repairing or replacing. Many years ago, when I was spending the whole Long Vacation at Oxford, I could watch from my windows a man who was supposed to be testing the strength of these pinnacles. He was armed with a large crowbar, which he ran with all his might against the unfortunate pinnacle. I doubt whether the walls of any Roman castellum could have resisted such a ram. I spoke to some of the Fellows, and when the builder made his next report to us, we rather objected to the large number of invalids. He was not to be silenced, ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... Inscribed as with the silence of the thought Upon its bleak and visionary sides, The history of many a winter storm Or obscure record of the path of fire. There the sun himself At the calm close of Summer's longest day Rests his substantial orb; between those heights, And on the top of either pinnacle, More keenly than elsewhere in night's blue vault Sparkle the stars, as of their station proud: Thoughts are not busier in the mind of man Than the mute agents stirring there,—alone Here do ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... and a transverse band of red decoration at each end, and white quichiquemils, decorated with brilliant designs in red wool, are also made here. Our object was not so much to see the village and the garments, as to visit a famous witch's cave, situated in the noble pinnacle of rock, plainly visible from Pahuatlan. The whole party started out from Pahuatlan, but at the bottom of the great slope, I left my companions to swim, while the guide and I, crossing a pretty covered ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... nothing improbable in the idea that witches had the power, in virtue of their compact with the Devil, of riding aloft through the air, because it is recorded, in the history of our Lord's temptation, that Satan transported him in a similar manner to the pinnacle of the temple, and to the summit of an exceedingly high mountain. And Cotton Mather declares, that, to his apprehension, the disclosures of the wonderful operations of the Devil, upon and through his subjects, that were made in the course of the witchcraft ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... walls of the romantic ruins of Caernarvon Castle, some years ago, two agile goats were seen,—now leaping over a rugged gap, now climbing some lofty pinnacle, now browsing on the herbage overhanging the perilous paths. Presently they approached each other from opposite ends of one of the narrow intersecting walls. When they met, finding that there was no room to ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... declares, that never at morn or evening prayers at chapel church or meeting, never where concords of sweet sound sacred or social flow around or harmony is woo'd, nor where the Horse-Shoe meets his sight on land or sea by day or night on lowly sill or lofty pinnacle on bowsprit helm mast boom or ...
— The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil • Edward G. Flight
... time, also, philosophical discussion had reached its pinnacle of boldness. Infidelity had woven the web of discord in the human mind, which was now ripe for experiment, and ROUSSEAU and VOLTAIRE were the ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... never felt that any indescribable fear, any overpowering shudder draws us back, and flings the knife from our hands. If poor naked Joy, that is so meanly clad, she is ashamed to walk about the earth, were once to enter our doors, then the stab of the bright dagger would only be the last glittering pinnacle of our joyous transport. For after that brief pulsation is over, how bald is the earth, how black is life! It is because I know not whither I am going, or whether I am going, or whether there be a whither, that the act is so alluring. ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... surrounding country, as can be obtained from no other place. On the top of the centre and highest turret, is a grotesque figure of a fiddler; rather a strange looking object, we thought, to occupy the most elevated pinnacle on the house of God. All dwellings in the neighbourhood appear like so many dwarfs couching at the feet of the Minster; while its own vastness and beauty impress the observer with feelings of awe and sublimity. As we stood upon the top of this stupendous mountain of ecclesiastical ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... singularity of their entertainment. The Count, at length, rose from the table, and addressing himself to the company, said, "Gentlemen, I was willing to convince you how well I can rely upon the officers of my artillery; for I ordered them to fire during the time we continued at dinner, at the pinnacle of the tent, and they have executed ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... Amos lay belly down in a low clump of pine scrub at the top of a precipitous rocky pinnacle. Below them in the blistering noon lay the palace walls of the Lord of the Seven Seas, Descendant of the Sun and the Moon, Overlord of the Mountains and the Plains, Prince of all the Isles, Father of Plenty, and Brilliance-Before-Which-All-Cast-Down-Their-Eyes, ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... little less than ruination. But Roscoe Orlando Gibbons, who had been about the world not a little and who drew sanction for the young architect's doings from more quarters of the Continent than one, instantly rose to the occasion and landed on the topmost pinnacle of the shining temple at a single swoop. Here he stood tiptoe and beckoned. This confident pose, this encouraging gesture, had its effect; the others toiled and scrambled up, each after his own fashion, but they all got there. Even old Oliver ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... able to hurt her—there struggled in her bosom an indignation more profound, more moving, than any merely personal emotion could be. Her resentment was directed not against Florrie, but against some abstract destiny which had permitted Florrie to have her way without paying the price. For on the pinnacle of a destructive career, unsinged by the conflagration she had so carelessly started, Florrie was poised securely, crowned, triumphant, rejoicing. On her dazzling height, successful and happy, she was as far removed as one could imaginably be from the repentant Magdalen of tradition. The ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... Baltic finally found themselves on the pavement, the face of the first wore an expression of exultation, while the latter, in his reticent way, looked soberly satisfied. Both had every reason for these signs of triumph, for they had touched the highest pinnacle of success. ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... 19.—We have lost our last Cape canary through moulting; he was a beautiful singer. Yesterday afternoon we went some way up the mountain just above the settlement. We walked for some distance up the Goat Ridge, crossed a ravine to our left, and then got on to what is called the Pinnacle, where we had a view which was awe-inspiring. There lay before us two or three yawning chasms stretching away down the mountain side. I hardly liked to look at them. One was Hottentot Gulch, whose sides, ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... this grand pinnacle, we must not tarry longer upon Greylock. Let us now take a trip down the Housatonic valley, close beside the Taconic range. This forms an almost continuous ridge across the State, and its summit is nearly upon the line between our State and New York. There ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... form an impressive chapter in the history of Europe; and one of the most striking episodes in the narrative is the checkered life of the last king of France—one week among the mightiest monarchs on the loftiest pinnacle of ambition, he was, the next, an exile in a foreign land—his ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... said he, with a visible effort, after the coffee was come and our pipes lighted, "you can never understand the gratitude and loyalty I bear you. You don't know what a boon it is to be taken up by a man that stands on the pinnacle of civilization; you can't think how it's refined and purified me, how it's appealed to my spiritual nature; and I want to tell you that I would die at ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... neat arcaded town, deserves mention for the beauty of its situation, and the fine Alpine panorama which it commands. The glittering pinnacle of Monte Viso, is the most striking feature through this ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... David's ear that a census would be a good thing, while Jehovah whispers a similar suggestion on the other side; asking Jesus to turn pebbles into penny loaves, lugging him through the air, perching him on a pinnacle, setting him on the top of a mountain whence both squinted round the globe, and playing for forty days and nights that preposterous pantomime of the temptation in the desert; getting miraculously multiplied, bewildering a herd of swine, and driving them into a watery grave; ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... death of the Kin emperor, Oukimai, who had upheld with no decline of luster the dignity of his father Akouta, completed the discomfiture of the Kins, and contributed to the revival of Chinese power under the last emperor of the Sung dynasty. The reign of Oukimai marks the pinnacle of Kin power, which under his cousin and successor Hola ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... steel; And banish weak-eyed Mercy to the weak, Whence she will greet thee with a gift of peace And not betray thee with a traitor's kiss, As when she keeps the company of rebels, 130 Who think that she is Fear. This do, lest we Should fall as from a glorious pinnacle In a bright dream, and wake as from a dream ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the retired New York capitalist, belonged to that older school of American financiers who, having built up large fortunes by taking advantage of the speculative opportunities of their day, look somewhat doubtfully from the pinnacle of a successful old age upon the same adventurous spirit when shown by the active younger generation. George Cartwright was ready to take a chance, certainly. He had taken chances all his life. But George Cartwright ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... hour what the wind and the sun have dispelled and consumed, Those full deep swan-soft feathers of snow with whose luminous burden the branches implumed Hung heavily, curved as a half-bent bow, and fledged not as birds are, but petalled as flowers, Each tree-top and branchlet a pinnacle jewelled and carved, or a fountain that shines as it showers, But fixed as a fountain is fixed not, and wrought not to last till by time or by tempest entombed, As a pinnacle carven and gilded of men: for the date of its doom is no more than an hour's, One hour ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... friends, and Malin himself had endeavored to undermine her in the community. Her preoccupying thought was the overthrow of Bonaparte, whose ambition and its triumphs excited the anger of her soul,—a cold, deliberate anger. The obscure and hidden enemy of a man at the pinnacle of glory, she kept her gaze upon him from the depths of her valley and her forests, with relentless fixity; there were times when she thought of killing him in the roads about Malmaison or Saint-Cloud. Plans ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... and which to the ordinary pedestrian were signalled by a warning board as "Dangerous." But "Giant's Castle" itself was merely the larger and loftier of the two towering rocks which guarded the sea-front of Weircombe village. A tortuous grassy path led up to its very pinnacle, and from here, there was an unbroken descent as straight and smooth as a well-built wall, of several hundred feet sheer down into the sea, which at this point swirled round the rocky base in dark, deep, blackish-green eddies, sprinkled with ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... sheep has one mental trait that its host of ardent admirers little suspect. It does not like pinnacle rocks, nor narrow ledges across perpendicular cliffs, nor dangerous climbing. It does not "leap from crag to crag," either up, down or across. Go where you will in sheep hunting, nine times out of ten you ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... Zeus, counsellor supreme, not though ye toiled sore. But once I likewise were minded to draw with all my heart, then should I draw you up with very earth and sea withal. Thereafter would I bind the rope about a pinnacle of Olympus, and so should all those things be hung in air. By so much am I beyond gods ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... everything to which he has aspired for milleniums, we instill in him, through the media of entertainment, knowledge of all the survival practices known to the backtimers who painfully nurtured civilization from an embryonic idea to its present pinnacle. We can ...
— DP • Arthur Dekker Savage
... the rocks on all fours, and were glad to stop frequently and draw breath and rest our tired limbs. My boy comrade, having fewer things than I to lure him by the way, and being, perhaps, a little more agile as well, went far on ahead of me, often standing on a dizzy pinnacle of rock, and waving his butterfly-net or his cap in the air, and shouting at the top of his voice to encourage his lagging parent and announce his triumph as ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... of springs, increased in volume and in sound, but it was soon far beneath us, pursuing its headlong course till it reached level ground, where it flowed in the midst of a beautiful but confined prairie. There was something sylvan and savage in the mountains on the farther side, clad from foot to pinnacle with trees, so closely growing that the eye was unable to obtain a glimpse of the hill sides, which were uneven with ravines and gulleys, the haunts of the wolf, the wild boar, and the corso, or mountain-stag; the latter of which, as I was informed ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... his own importance, accustomed to the deference of the country people, the young marquis came to Paris with the expectation of being a lion, supposing that his name and fortune were sufficient to place him upon any pinnacle ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... he had ceased to caper on the pinnacle upon the cessation of the firing, which had given occasion for his whimsical exercise, continued, as perched on the top of an exposed cliff, too conspicuous an object to escape the sharp eyes of the Highlanders, when they ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... here! and oh, grip tight!" and she knelt and crawled on hands and knees round the base of the nearest pinnacle. ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... Ministry seems obvious. Passages of similar import to the advertisement occur in the piece itself. Thus the play is declared to convey a "beautiful image of the instability of human greatness"; and the spectacle is promised of the 'author of a mighty farce' at the pinnacle of human greatness and adored by a crowd of dependants, become by a sudden turn of ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... the English drama are imposing and glorious! Shakespeare alone has gained the highest pinnacle of fame in dramatic art. He has had to interpret him such great artists as Garrick, Kemble, Kean, Macready, Siddons, and Irving; and the literary and dramatic critics of the whole world have studied and analysed both author and actor. At present, ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... the pinnacle of my happiness, my dear Vicomte," she wrote, "which is that of all France. I rejoice in your glory. M. Delaitre has rendered me the greatest services, and during the past two months has been constantly journeying in my ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... impossible perspective, manages to record a fleeting glimpse of truth. But you spoil every denouement by those flat, drab, obliterating strokes of your brush that I have so often complained of. If you would rise to the literary pinnacle of your dramatic senses, and paint them in the high colors that art requires, the postman would leave fewer bulky, self-addressed ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... well, for he grew very uneasy, and in his queer ways, with snatches of singularly applicable speech, he remonstrated most strenuously. But we now were not very far from the top, and so fascinating seemed the prospect of reaching the very pinnacle, that I could not withstand the impulse of making the effort to get there. Over the loose stones I scrambled, clinging with hands and feet as best I could, whilst an avalanche of rocky fragments slid, tumbled, and ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... done away; the voice of reason will be unheard; the passions only will bear sway; famine, distress, havoc, and dismay will spread around; hatred, violence, war, and bloodshed will be the infallible consequence, and from the pinnacle of happiness, peace, refinement, and social advantage, we shall be hurled once more into a profounder abyss of misery, want, and barbarism than ever, by the sole operation of the principle of population!"—Such is a brief abstract of ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... he skilfully cast it up and over the pinnacle of rock nearest to him. It was now a comparatively easy matter to climb by going hand over hand up the rope and bracing his feet against the side of the rock at the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... painful remorse that in his early days he had been accustomed to eat his little bits of dinner with people of a different kind. But there had been nothing really painful in this. Since his marriage with a daughter of the De Courcys,—by which marriage he had intended to climb to the highest pinnacle of social eating and drinking,—he had gradually found himself to be falling in the scale of such matters, and could bring himself to dine with a Dobbs Broughton without any violent pain. But now he had fallen so low that ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... satisfied herself that her strength would not be wasted on an incomplete object, she made a second attempt to lay the palace low. Again she was frustrated. The building had soared, by this time, to an ambitious height, and its splendour had reached the limits of the materials at command. The final pinnacle which was required to cope the structure had been mislaid. Hadria was searching for it, when Martha, seizing her chance, struck the palace a blow in its very heart, and in an instant, the whole ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... fell on to the stage. But the proud one of Seville did not deign to return to pick them up, and one of the gentlemen in livery was deputed for that purpose. When, however, her measure was encored, she stepped down from her pinnacle and actually condescended to accept an additional bouquet that had been tossed by a fair ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... forest spread With silken trees upon thy head; And when I see that other dress Of flowers set in comeliness; When I behold another grace In the ascent of curious lace, Which, like a pinnacle, doth shew The top, and the top-gallant too; Then, when I see thy tresses bound Into an oval, square, or round, And knit in knots far more than I. Can tell by tongue, or True-love tie; Next, when those lawny films I see Play with a wild ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... can find a thousand dramas in the books on geography if she knows how to interpret the pages of the books, and with these inspiring dramas she can lift her pupils to the very pinnacle of appreciation. Such tales are as fascinating as fairy stories and have the added charm of being true to the teachings of science. A raindrop seems a common thing, but cast in dramatic form it becomes of rare charm. It slides from the roof of the house and finds its ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... not the misfortune to possess large estates? Most of my companions had some real or imaginary grievance, some old uncle or father, some cursed profession to complain of; but I had none. They had hopes and fears; but I had none. I was on the pinnacle of glory, which they were endeavouring to reach; and I had nothing to do but to sit still, and enjoy the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... disorders in church and state from 1680 to 1685; and would have done more (being now made chancellor and captain of the castle of Edinburgh) had not the Lord, by his own immediate hand of providence, interposed in behalf of his church; for, first, being disgraced at court, while on the pinnacle of dignity, he was tumbled down unto his first original: then taking a tour through Kyle, came near Douglas, and was at last set upon by James Douglas (afterward lord Fotherald) in the valley of Catslaks, in revenge for his accusation ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... Bracy to the soldiers around him; "do ye call yourselves cross-bowmen and let these two dogs keep their station under the walls of the castle? Heave over the coping stones from the battlement, an better may not be. Get pick-ax and levers and down with that huge pinnacle!" pointing to a heavy piece of stone-carved work ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... no opinion. I explained nothing. I let him continue to believe what he believes; because it is the only way to keep you on the pinnacle where he has placed you. Let any other reason for your conduct than an almost infantine ignorance of men and things be suggested and accepted, and down you will come, my poor Jane, and great will be the fall. ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... true that most of the generals of distinction in the more recent wars were men destitute of military education,—men who rose from the ranks to the pinnacle of military glory, through the combined influence of ignorance of military science and contempt for military instruction? Let us glance at the lives of the most distinguished of the generals of the French Revolution, for these are the men to whom reference is continually made to prove that the Military ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... her first anchorage in the lovely harbor on the west side of Prince's Island. That island, in about 1 30' north latitude, covered with all the luxuriance of tropical growth and verdure, and broken into every conceivable shape of pinnacle, castellated rock and chasm, and frowning precipice, streaked with silvery threads of leaping streams in their dash to the sea, is indeed one of the most enchanting spots the eye ever rested on. The chief inhabitant of the ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... offices, I, from force of habit, mechanically went direct to the ticker—and dropped all in an instant from the pinnacle of Heaven into a boiling inferno. For the ticker was just spelling out these words: "Mowbray Langdon, president of the Textile Association, sailed unexpectedly on the Kaiser Wilhelm at noon. A two per cent. raise of the dividend rate of Textile Common, from the present four per ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... this pool of utter night flew by unceasingly the white foam of the rapids; sound there was none save their thunder. The majesty and beauty of the scene fascinated me, and I stood leaning with my back against a rock pinnacle watching it. Do not imagine it gave rise, in what I am pleased to call my mind, to those complicated, poetical reflections natural beauty seems to bring out in other people's minds. It never works that way with ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... descended mighty canyons and gorges; and ever, from every view point, there spread out before us, in all directions, range upon range, the unceasing mountains. We slept at night in holes and crevices, and on one cold night we perched on top a slender pinnacle of rock that was ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... To greet Royal progeny with melodious twitter. Seated on the resplendent cloud of official Elysium, Far away, far away from fuliginous busy hum You are now perched with phenomenal velocity On vertiginous pinnacle of poetic pomposity! Yet deign to cock thy indulgent eye at the petition Of one consumed by corresponding ambition, And lend the helping hand to lift, pulley-hauley, To Parnassian Peak this poor perspiring Bengali! Whose ars poetica (as per sample ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... respectable appearance. A third letter had been published, and a fourth was preparing. I was in high favour. Men of all ranks visited the earl; and dukes, lords, and barons became as familiar to me as gowns and caps had formerly been in the streets of Oxford. I stood on the very pinnacle of fortune; and, proud of my skill, like a rope-dancer that casts away his balancing pole, I took pleasure in standing on tiptoe. Noticed by the leading men, caressed and courted by their dependants, politics encouraging me on this hand, and theology ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... following it for some distance I came to an abrupt hillock, and fancying that from the summit a good view might be obtained of the surrounding country, I left my followers to seek the spoor, while I ascended. I did not raise my eyes from the ground until I had reached the highest pinnacle of rock. I then looked east, and to my inexpressible gratification, beheld a troup of nine or ten elephants quietly browsing within a quarter of a mile of me. I allowed myself only one glance at them, and then rushed down ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... high moral level, Raising at once his eye-balls and the devil? Great King of Cant! if Nature had but made Your mouth without a tongue I ne'er had prayed To have an earless head. Since she did not, Bear me, ye whirlwinds, to some favored spot— Some mountain pinnacle that sleeps in air So delicately, mercifully rare That when the fellow climbs that giddy hill, As, for my sins, I know at last he will, To utter twaddle in that void inane His soundless organ ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... attention as a healer. From here he went to Albuquerque, where he treated as many as six hundred persons in a day, many very effectively. After forty days' fast, which was broken by a hearty meal of solid food, he went to Denver and here reached the pinnacle of his fame and success. At the home of a sympathizer, daily from 9 A. M. to 4 P. M., he treated those who came to him, always without any remuneration. From two thousand to five thousand people would congregate in line, reaching nearly around a city block, ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... of the atmosphere; forward of the galley the ship was out of sight at times when it came thundering down out of the blackness aft, white as any smother of spume. She pitched with the majesty of a line-of-battle ship, as she launched herself in long floating rushes from gleaming pinnacle to seething valley with a heavy, melancholy sobbing of water all about her decks, and her narrow, distended band of maintopsail hovering overhead black as a raven's pinion in the flying hoariness. We were washing ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... Christmas Margamores, (* Big Markets) and fully sustained the anticipations which were formed of him by his relations. For a year or two afterwards no quarrel was fought without him; and his prowess rose until he had gained the very pinnacle of that ambition which he had determined to reach. About this time I was separated from him, having found it necessity, in order to accomplish my objects in life, to reside with a relation in another ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... genius and the wonder of the thing!" he cried. "The man pervades London, and no one has heard of him. That's what puts him on a pinnacle in the records of crime. I tell you, Watson, in all seriousness, that if I could beat that man, if I could free society of him, I should feel that my own career had reached its summit, and I should be prepared to turn to some more placid line in life. Between ourselves, the ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... Siam, Sumatra, and Ceylon, the districts in which the elephants most abound, are all hilly and mountainous. In the latter, especially, there is not a range so elevated as to be inaccessible to them. On the very summit of Adam's Peak, at an altitude of 7,420 feet, and on a pinnacle which the pilgrims climb with difficulty, by means of steps hewn in the rock, Major Skinner, in 1840, found the spoor of ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... rather slender pole of ironwood, called pantar. A gong or gutshi strung near the top signifies that the deceased was a person of wealth and prominence, while a wooden image of the rhinoceros hornbill occupies a lofty position on the pinnacle. On account of its ability to discern objects at a great distance, this bird is regarded as a good watchman to guard the sacrifice, whether it be a water-buffalo or other animal. The pantar itself simply means "in memoriam," as if enjoining: "Don't forget this man!" ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... seized it by the hair. He is one of three leaders of the Irish Nationalists. Understood that his Party consists of a single member, so shadowy that there are varied reports as to his identity. Member for N.W. Meath leaped on to pinnacle of enduring fame when the present Parliament met to elect a Speaker. Before Mr. LOWTHER was qualified to take the Chair, and whilst as yet no recognised authority existed, GINNELL, master of the situation, delivered a long harangue. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... former on the naked ledge, the latter in the crevices in the face of the cliff Here the jackdaws appeared quite at their ease, their loud, merry note being heard above every other sound, as they flew in and out of the fissures in the white rock or sate perched on a pinnacle near the summit, and leisurely surveyed the busy ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... could not go to war himself, on account of me and the children; but, I dare say, if he could have prevailed upon me to give him up to the cause of liberty, he'd have clomb rapidly to the highest pinnacle of earthly glory, and to-day I'd have been Mrs. General Crane, a leader of the brilliant society at Washington, with my name in the papers as 'the wife of our distinguished General Crane,' or the 'stately and dignified lady of the brave ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... self-forgetfulness comes to him again and as a diviner thing. By and by, as the man walks up the mountain, he seems to pass out of the cloud which hangs about the lower slopes of the mountain, until at last he stands upon the pinnacle at the top, and there is in the perfect light. Is it not exactly like the mountain at whose foot there seems to be the open sunshine where men see everything, and on whose summit there is the sunshine, but on whose sides, ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... mind that day. Sir Harry had at that time learned a good deal of his cousin George's mode of life in London, and had already decided that this young man was not one whom it would be well to set upon the pinnacle. ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... thickest of the wood. The green road in which they were riding dipped down to a low marshy place, where a stream soaked through the path. The rock, which seemed like a little pinnacle, rose sharply on their left clear of the bushes: all else was forest, except that a little path or clearing led up to the left, among the trees. There was an utter stillness in the air, which was all full of a golden light. The swords ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in point of character. All the genealogies in the world may be reduced to four kinds. The first are those families who from a low beginning have raised and extended themselves, until they have reached the highest pinnacle of human greatness; the second are those of high extraction, who have preserved their original dignity; the third sort are those who, from a great foundation, have gradually dwindled, until, like a pyramid, they terminate in a small ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... regard it in sections. Far to the north east lies Virginia, from which the long waving line of the Blue Ridge comes, and passes directly under the Black, making a point of junction, near which it towers into the steep Pinnacle and stately Graybeard—so called from the white beard which it wears when a frozen cloud has iced its rhododendrons. From our greater eminence we overlook the Blue Ridge entirely, and see the country below spreading into azure distance, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... the interior on horseback, were Brock's chief pastimes. He became a fearless horseman. Mount Hillaby rose 1,200 feet above the Caribbean Sea. The very crest of its almost impossible pinnacle Brock is said to have ascended on horseback. Between Bridgetown, in Barbadoes, and Kingston, Jamaica, he divided his time, and though monotonous, his life in the Windward Islands was not ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... heard it from the Chamois, who have a habit of bounding about everywhere, as you know. Your dear husband reached the middle of the Glacier in safety, when—being hampered by a satchel and a green cotton umbrella—he fell in attempting to jump an ice-pinnacle, and sprained his foot so severely that he was unable to move. Though he bleated loudly for help, no one came except some huntsmen who were in search of Chamois. They picked him up, and dragged him to the Inn on the other side ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... side stands Josephine. We were not destined to part eternally. In Louis Napoleon Bonaparte her blood and mine commingle. Restez-vous, mon patrie; Napoleon shall decide aright. No, petit garcon, Napoleon le Grand will place you upon the highest pinnacle of peace. ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... sorrow—a fear of what is to come—a doubt of what is—a retrospect to the past, leading to a prognostication of the future? (The best of Prophets of the future is the Past.) Why is this? or these?—I know not, except that on a pinnacle we are most susceptible of giddiness, and that we never fear falling except from a precipice—the higher, the more awful, and the more sublime; and, therefore, I am not sure that Fear is not a pleasurable ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... heaven will be flooded with blue light, and one after another the stars will be submerged and lost, until only a solitary shining pinnacle of brightness will here and there remain out of the whole host of them. It is curious to think that, were the moon but a little brighter and truly the ruler of the night, rising to its empire with the setting of the sun, we should never dream of the great stellar ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... those thirty years he saw much and travelled far; met many men of varied qualities and attainments and character; learned much by personal experience and observation and much from other people's experience; tested almost the pinnacle of earthly splendour in his Indian tour and learned in private something of the suffering which comes to all individuals whether great or little. He created the position of Heir Apparent as now understood; gave it a significance and value never before attained to; and filled ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... crazy logic, thanks to the concordance of his personal malady with the public malady, to the early manifestation of his complete madness in the midst of the incomplete or tardy madness of the rest, he alone steadfast, remorseless, triumphant, perched aloft at the first bound on the sharp pinnacle which his rivals dared not climb ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... received a letter from Mary, saying that she and her aunt intended spending the summer at Fabyans, and he felt that Quincy, being near Mary, would probably be on a higher pinnacle than any mountain could supply, and the "eternal hills" would become objects of secondary importance. But, Tom wisely refrained from mentioning these thoughts, for lovers do not seek confidants ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... the little ferry-boat that steamed its way across from Garrison's on that eventful afternoon I viewed the hills about West Point, her stone structures perched thereon, thus rising still higher, as if providing access to the very pinnacle of fame, and shuddered. With my mind full of the horrors of the treatment of all former cadets of color, and the dread of inevitable ostracism, I ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... exotic forcing house of accumulated endeavour and democratic emancipation must indubitably have been the first to realise that the austerity of his massive intellect was within measurable distance of completing that predestined cycle of universal knowledge and aspiring ultimately to the glorious pinnacle of ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... condemnation of Charles (S448), were dug up from their graves in Westminster Abbey and hanged in chains at Tyburn.[1] They were then buried at the foot of the gallows along with he moldering remains of highway robbers and criminals of the lowest sort, but Cromwell's head was cut off and set up on a pinnacle of ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... saving Dante on his solitary pinnacle, there was no figure in modern literature at the time of the Renascence to compare with the men of antiquity; there was no art to compete with their sculpture; there was no physical science but that which Greece had created. Above all, there was no other example of perfect intellectual ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... superstructure was to be finally edified. But the architect who placed each block in its proper niche, who planned and designed the whole elevation, who planted the building firmly on the rock and poised the coping-stone on the topmost pinnacle, was the author of the 'System of Synthetic Philosophy,' and none other. It is a strange proof of how little people know about their own ideas, that among the thousands who talk glibly every day of evolution, not ten per cent. are probably aware that both word and conception are ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... was quite obdurate. No, he would not go to the Brookes' again, since Ethel had once objected to his going. And on this pinnacle of austere virtue he remained, thereby reducing Ethel to a state of self-abasement, which spoke well for his chances of mastery in the married ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... represents death, for whom all the peoples are yearning. And finally, in the last scene we are suddenly shown the Tower of Babel, and certain athletes at last finish building it with a song of new hope, and when at length they complete the topmost pinnacle, the lord (of Olympia, let us say) takes flight in a comic fashion, and man, grasping the situation and seizing his place, at once begins a new life with new insight into things. Well, this poem was thought at that time to be dangerous. Last year I proposed to Stepan Trofimovitch to publish ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... But tell Tullia she must request her uncle to keep secret about it. Go, my dear. Celeste, our dear child, will be a millionaire! I can't say more; but she'll have, from me, a husband who will put her on a pinnacle." ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... agreed. "I'm afraid we'll shock the ladies terribly, Dick. We ought to get out on a pinnacle with a good ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... she chided me. "But even if my ideals be too lofty, would you have me descend from the height of such a pinnacle to the level of the Lord Giovanni—a weak-spirited craven, as witnesses the manner in which he permitted the Borgias to mishandle him; a cruel and unjust tyrant, as witnesses his dealing with you, to seek no further instances; a weak, ignorant, pleasure-loving fool, ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... the slope the chestnut trees massed their foliage in heavy plumes of green, plume upon plume, wave upon wave, a still cascade of verdure held between jagged ridges of granite. Here and there the granite pushed a bare pinnacle above the trees, and over these pinnacles ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... of Milan, only to put the change well before your eyes, because you all know that building so well. The duomo of Milan is of entirely bad and barbarous Gothic, but the passion of pinnacle and fret is in it, visibly to you, more than in other buildings. It will therefore serve to show best what fulness of change this pulpit of ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... being sloped at the top to carry off the rain. In larger buildings the buttress generally finishes with a triangular head or gable, and is frequently carried above the parapet, except where stone vaulting is used, in which case it is covered with a pinnacle either plain or ornamented. The edges are often chamfered or the angles ornamented with slender shafts. A niche to contain a statue is occasionally sunk in the face of the buttress, but this feature is more common in the next or Decorated period, ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... to sanction and establish my glory and to set it on the topmost pinnacle of fame? I ask you, what is there lacking? Aemilianus Strabo, who has already held the consulship and is destined, as we all hope and pray, soon to be a proconsul, proposed the resolution conferring these honours upon ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... says:—'In ten years the spire and all its elaborate tracery will have become obsolete and effaced for all artistic purposes. The atmosphere of London will have performed its inevitable function. Every 'scroll work' and 'pinnacle' will be a mere clot of soot, and the bronze gilt Virtues will represent nothing but swarthy denizens of the lower regions; the plumage of the angels will be converted into a sort of black-and-white ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... the bar, the senate, and the church. Physically contemptible, politically ostracized, and in a humble social position, he could yet win this dazzling prize and force his way with his pen to the highest pinnacle of contemporary fame. Without adventitious favour and in spite of many bitter antipathies, he was to become the acknowledged head of English literature, and the welcome companion of all the most eminent men of his time. Though he ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... suddenly face to face with unexpected dangers. And so it was with both Bobby and Jimmy, and thus it came about that Bobby did not lose his head when the iceberg began to turn, and when it was again at rest he found himself upon a high pinnacle, with the seething waters all around him. To be sure, his heart beat faster, and it was but natural that he should be excited, but his nerves were nevertheless under ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... at the pinnacle of government and in his court Louis was thus making his power felt, and was engaging a new set of servants, he was zealously endeavoring to win over, everywhere, the middle classes and the populace. He left Rouen in the hands of its own inhabitants; in Guienne, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... as if it had been done accidentally, for he dropped it before coming quite up. If so it was a fortunate accident, for it served as the tiny fulcrum on which to place the point of that mighty lever which was destined ere long to raise him to the pinnacle of canine erudition. Dick Varley immediately lavished upon him the tenderest caresses and gave him a lump of meat. But he quickly tried it again lest he should lose the lesson. The dog evidently felt that if he did not fetch that mitten he should have no meat or caresses. In order, however, to ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... B., as told to Nellie Snyder Yost. Pinnacle Jake, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1951. The setting is Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana from the 1880's on. Had Pinnacle Jake kept a diary, his accounts of range characters, especially camp cooks and range horses, with emphasis on night horses and outlaws, could not have been fresher or more precise in detail. Reading this book will not give ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... forth the palace to the horse and mounting it, turned the pin of ascent, whereupon bird-like it flew with him high in air and soared towards the upper regions of the sky. In early morning his father missed him and, going up to the pinnacle of the palace, in great concern, saw his son rising into the firmament; whereat he was sore afflicted and repented in all penitence that he had not taken the horse and hidden it; and he said to himself, "By Allah, if but my son return ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... luncheon basket on Saturday, May 25th. We left the hotel early for a six-mile drive, passing first through the crowded streets, again noting the dusty way of the Imperial City, which wound around near the walls of the Forbidden City, every pinnacle and roof gleaming in the morning light. Leaving the outskirts of the town, the country view was the pleasantest we had seen. Our road lay alongside of the canal, where there were more ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... Regained and Samson Agonistes, are each brought to a close which exactly resembles the close of Paradise Lost. After the splendours in the last book of Paradise Regained—the fall of Satan, "smitten with amazement," from the pinnacle of the Temple, the elaborate classical comparisons of Antaeus and the Sphinx, and the triumphal chorus of Angels who bear the Son of God aloft with anthems of victory—the poem ends ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... Falling water was everywhere. We rode above the clouds, under the clouds, and through the clouds! and every now and then a shaft of sunshine penetrated like a search-light to the depths yawning beneath us, or flashed upon some pinnacle of the crater-rim thousands of feet above. At every turn of the trail a waterfall or a dozen waterfalls, leaping hundreds of feet through the air, burst upon our vision. At our first night's camp, in the Keanae Gulch, we counted thirty-two waterfalls from a single viewpoint. ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... against their common enemy—Dunlavey. Curiously, during the past few days he had felt a decided change in his attitude toward life. His old ambition was no longer uppermost in his mind—it had been crowded out of his existence. In its place had been erected a new pinnacle of promise. A seat among the mighty was a worthy goal. Yet the lowly bench of sacrifice was not ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... ridge like a bastion upon the right side of the terrible khor up which the camels were winding. At one point it rose into a small pinnacle. On this pinnacle stood a solitary, motionless figure clad entirely in black, save for a brilliant dash of scarlet upon his head. There could not surely be two such short, sturdy figures or such large, ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... my being? What was it? Anxiety, joy, dread? I was poised on the pinnacle of hope that overhangs the abyss of despair. Fearfully I paused. I was racked with suspense, conscious of a longing so poignant that the thought of disappointment became insufferable pain. So violent was my emotion that a feeling ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... from the day's toil, stopped here, as if by a common impulse, to gaze upwards, and, gazing in silent wonder, they saw such a sight as London has never seen before. On the highest pinnacle of the Victoria tower where the flag of another nation has never before shared its proud eminence there floated together from one flagstaff Old Glory and ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... a striking revelation of the inmost intentions of the man of twenty-five, who already stood on a pinnacle where hard heads and mature might well have been dizzy. Evidently he knew him self, and even in his brief experience with the world he understood how uncertain and evanescent are the winds of Fame. If he had ever suffered from a "swelled head," he was now cured. He felt the emptiness ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... time, too, and sympathy, and kindness. It's no use, Mrs Willoughby. I've put you on the topmost pinnacle in my mind, and nothing that you can say can pull you down. I think you are the best ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Nigondin or Toombuddra, which runs past the walls of the city, to a certain spot where this ceremony is usually performed, where there is prepared a large square pit full of dried wood, having a little pinnacle or scaffold close to one side four or five steps up. On her arrival, a great banquet is prepared, where the victim eats with as much apparent joy as if it were her wedding-day; and at the end of the feast there is dancing and singing so long as she thinks fit. At length she gives orders of her ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... SMALL LETTER ETA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA}).(261) One of these Athena uses to hurl against Ares, who, falling where he stood, covers seven of the pelethra that the stones were used to divide. A pinnacle of stones is the only boundary to be seen to this day between the strips of cornland in Palestine. Easily dislodged as these landmarks were, they were specially protected by a curse against their removal, and were with the Greeks ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm
... awful to warn or punish. Mysteries are unfolded, secrets reveal themselves, hidden things are proclaimed, and courts and juries, awed and abashed, yet elevated and inspired, accept and act upon his conclusions as infallible. For one hour he touches the pinnacle of human achievement. ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... and the shadows begin to fall, every turret and pinnacle stands out in bold relief. The bands of yellow and red shade into purple, and everything, save the long winding trail, begins to have a ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... it shyly, and felt that it was indeed a proud moment for him. To be called Mr. Trotter by the great Bunsby, and to have his hand shaken into the bargain, put him on a pinnacle of greatness which he ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... chaise a porteux. Both alike were terrible to poor Mary; however, she made up her mind to the latter, and all the long way was to her a dream of terror and discomfort, and of trying to admire—what she knew she ought to admire—the wonderful pinnacle-like aiguilles of the Schern cleaving the air. For some time the way lay over the great plateau of the Scisser Alp—a sea of rich grass, full of cattle, where her husband and niece kept on trying to bring their mules alongside of her to make her participate in their ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... than earth with a charge of plagiarism in the Scotsman. Report would have it (I daresay, very wrongly) that he was betrayed by one in whom he particularly trusted, and that the author of the charge had learned its truth from his own lips. Thus, at least, he was up one day on a pinnacle, admired and envied by all; and the next, though still but a boy, he was publicly disgraced. The blow would have broken a less finely tempered spirit; and even him I suppose it rendered reckless; for he took flight to London, and there, in a fast club, disposed ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... phenomena, in themselves sufficiently difficult of explanation, are rendered still more anomalous by the occasional enclosure in the drift of huge fragments of Chalk many yards in diameter. One striking instance occurs west of Sheringham, where an enormous pinnacle of Chalk, between 70 and 80 feet in height, is flanked on both sides by vertical layers of loam, clay, and gravel ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... significance, suggested by the falseness of the common code of morality, which is apt to be overlooked by many readers in the strong interest of the tale. It is one of the few books of that period which may still be said to live. It is quite the best of his novels. "It raised Godwin's reputation to a pinnacle," according to contemporary criticism, though some of his other novels, notably "Fleetwood," have been preferred for their descriptive writing. He was an exceedingly industrious writer; essays, biography, political philosophy, and history ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... him. Very high. Most to sky," the chief told Rand, and indicated in "pigeon" that the cliff was a pinnacle of three spires of rock standing alone and utterly inaccessible from any side. He said it was two days' journey by easy trail, and ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... soon enough; and Freia flies to Wotan for protection against them. Their purposes are quite honest; and they have no doubt of the god's faith. There stands their part of the contract fulfilled, stone on stone, port and pinnacle all faithfully finished from Wotan's design by their mighty labor. They have come undoubtingly for their agreed wage. Then there happens what is to them an incredible, inconceivable thing. The god begins to shuffle. There are no moments in life more tragic than those in which the humble common ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... were stuck with swords, Great streams of light go upward. Then the lords Of havoc and unrest prepare their storms, And o'er the silent city, vulture forms— Eris and Enyo, Alke, Ioke, The biter, the sharp-bitten, the mad, the fey— Hover and light on pinnacle and tower: The gray Erinnyes, watchful for the hour When Haro be the wail. And down the sky Like a white squall flung Ate with a cry That sounded like the wind in a ship's shrouds, As shrill and wild at once. ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... the great Asiatic trade failed to carry the nation or the people which possessed it to the highest pinnacle of wealth and power, and with it, to the highest attainments of letters, art, and science. And so will it continue to be. An American road to India, through the heart of our country will revive upon its line all the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick |
