"Quintessence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in that matter the very quintessence of woman. Even I, who have known her for years, don't pretend ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... Loveliness was the quintessence of her. With his innate feeling for words, he had never—even accidentally—applied it to Rose. Had she, too, felt impatient? Was she coming over to breakfast ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... moreover, does not accurately name a single one of the essential ingredients of true love, dwelling only on associated phenomena, whereas Shakspere's lines call attention to three states of mind which form part of the quintessence of romantic love—gallant "service," "adoration," and "purity"—while "patience and impatience" may perhaps be accepted as an equivalent of what I call the mixed moods of hope ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... utmost limit the implications of the theory of the two kingdoms—a supposition which their passive submission to the Act of 1712 restoring lay patronage decisively refutes. Bramhall had no doubt that their discipline was "the very quintessence of refined popery," and the argument is repeated by a hundred less learned pamphleteers. Neither the grim irony of Defoe nor the proven facts of the case could wean either the majority of Churchmen or the masses of the people from the belief that the Revolution endangered ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... would take it for granted that you need no further enlightening on any of our very select societies, especially the St. Cecilia; but you may not have enjoyed a residence so distinguished, rendering unnecessary a few explanatory remarks. You must know that we not only esteem ourselves the quintessence of refinement, as we have an undisputed right to do, but regard the world outside as exceedingly stupid in not knowing as much of us as we profess to know of ourselves. Abroad, we wonder we are not at once recognized as ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... even at their most rapturous, they are penetrated. This is a score rich in beauty and strangeness, yet the music has often a deceptive naivete, a naivete that is so extreme that it reveals itself, finally, as the quintessence of subtlety and reticence—in which respect, again, we are reminded of its perfect, its well-nigh uncanny, correspondence with ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... Quintessence of worldliness, Mrs. Mountstuart appeared through his farthest window, swinging her skirts on a turn at the end of the lawn, with Horace De Craye smirking beside her. And the woman's vaunted penetration was unable to detect the histrionic Irishism of the fellow. Or she liked ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... stream close by afforded water for our blessed teapot; venison frizzled with mild, appetizing sound upon the ends of pine sticks; matchless beans allowed themselves to become seductively crisp upon our tin plates. That supper seemed to me then the quintessence of gastronomy, and I am sure Cotter and I must have said some very good after-dinner things, though I long ago forgot them all. Within the ring of warmth, on elastic beds of pine-needles, we curled up, and fell ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... against it was to no purpose. He told me one Day, That all the Philosophers allow'd, nay, maintain'd, that both Animals, Vegetables, and Minerals, were generated, grew, and were nourished, by the Spirit of the World: A Quintessence partaking of all the Four Elements, tho' it was no One, might be called Air, and was not; Fire, and was not Fire, &c. That this Spirit was assisted by the Influence of the Planets, and tended to the highest Perfection of Purity. That all Metals were generated by the said Spirit, ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... that Mathematics, the quintessence of Truth, should have found admirers so few and so languid. Frequent consideration and minute scrutiny have at length unravelled the cause; viz. that though Reason is feasted, Imagination is starved; whilst Reason is luxuriating in its proper Paradise, Imagination is wearily travelling ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of this world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... against the perfect revelation of the love of God in Christ. There the sin of man reached its climax and did its worst. What was done there against Christ, and against God in Him, was a kind of embodiment and quintessence of the sin of the whole world. And undoubtedly it was this which was pressing on Jesus; this was "the travail of His soul." He was looking close at sin's utmost hideousness; He was sickened with its contact; ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... by your letter—and even if the object had not been answered, I ought still to thank you. But it is thoroughly answered. Such a letter from such a hand! Sympathy is dear—very dear to me: but the sympathy of a poet, and of such a poet, is the quintessence of sympathy to me! Will you take back my gratitude for it?—agreeing, too, that of all the commerce done in the world, from Tyre to Carthage, the exchange of sympathy for gratitude is the most ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... the grass that springs up and soon withers away; but he is also more than this. The quintessence of dust, he is a son of the gods as well as a son of the soil. He is the direct product of the great creative power; therefore all the Athapascan tribes west of the Rocky Mountains—the Kenai, the Kolushes, and the Atnai—claim descent from a raven—from that same mighty cloud-bird, who ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... of venom which distils from the sting of the smallest insect, or the spikes of the nettle-leaf, there is concentrated the quintessence of a poison so subtle that the microscope cannot distinguish it, and yet so virulent that it can inflame the blood, irritate the whole constitution, and convert day and ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... merit's exalted 'Tis excellent sport to decry it, And trail its good name in the gutter; And that cynics, white-gloved and cravatted, Are the cream and quintessence of all things, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... are as odd and as aukward as her Person; her mind a Composition of Hypocrisy and Vanity; her Head, like the Study of Don Quixot, Stuffed with the exploded— Romances— of the two last Centuries— her Style the quaint Quintessence of Romantic Fustian, and her Manners those of a Princess ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... wicked than most other children of his years; but, having learnt from experience that the attempt to gratify any of his desires was usually checked and termed "bad," he naturally felt that a state of delight so intense as that to which he had at last attained, must necessarily be the very quintessence of iniquity. Being resolved to go through with it at all hazards, he felt proportionately wild and reckless. Such a state of commotion was there in his heaving bosom, owing to contradictory and conflicting elements, that he felt at one moment ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... recognise him, and after having stared at him for some time he hastened towards him with open arms exclaiming, "A happy meeting with the mirror of chivalry, my worthy compatriot Don Quixote of La Mancha, the flower and cream of high breeding, the protection and relief of the distressed, the quintessence of knights-errant!" And so saying he clasped in his arms the knee of Don Quixote's left leg. He, astonished at the stranger's words and behaviour, looked at him attentively, and at length recognised him, very much surprised to see him there, and made great efforts to dismount. ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Turcomans: that the hunger, the thirst, and the barbarous treatment which he had experienced, were nothing, when compared with the privation of the all-gracious and refulgent presence of that pearl of royalty, that gem of magnificence, the quintessence of all earthly perfection, the great king of kings! that as the vilest reptile that crawls is permitted to enjoy the warmth of the glorious sun, so he, the meanest of the king's subjects, hoped once more to bask in the sunshine of ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... existence. It covered so large a field and was so many-sided that only careful study can give a full realization of the giants of intellect and power who made its greatness, and who left behind them work that shows the very quintessence of genius. ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... aetatem declamavit," as Martha has justly remarked, form the key to Juvenal's literary position. He is the very quintessence of a declaimer, but a declaimer of a most masculine sort. Boileau characterises him in two ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Intrinsicality.— N. intrinsicality[obs3], inbeing[obs3], inherence, inhesion[obs3]; subjectiveness; ego; egohood[obs3]; essence, noumenon; essentialness[obs3] &c. adj.; essential part, quintessence, incarnation, quiddity, gist, pith, marrow, core, sap, lifeblood, backbone, heart, soul; important part &c. (importance) 642. principle, nature, constitution, character, type, quality, crasis[obs3], diathesis[obs3]. habit; temper, temperament; spirit, humor, grain; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... less than three times exhorts every man to continue in the condition in which Providence has placed him. "And this rule," says he, "ordain I in all the churches." Yet—would any man believe it possible?—the very quintessence of abolitionism itself has been extracted from this passage of his writings! Let us consider for a moment the wonderful alchemy by which ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... and beneficial use of the national domain. Neither could he agree with Eastern statesmen who deplored the gratuitous distribution of lands, which by sale would yield large revenues. His often-repeated reply was the quintessence of Western statesmanship. The pioneer who went into the wilderness, to wrestle with all manner of hardships, was a true wealth-producer. As he cleared his land and tilled the soil, he not only himself became a tax-payer, but he increased the value of adjoining lands and ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... him,—so long as Nature will only condescend once in a hundred years to produce for us a creature so perfect, so finely fashioned to all beautiful uses! Let other people go through the toil to acquire; their aim is truth: but here is beauty in its quintessence, and what is beauty but three parts of truth? Beauty is harmony with the universal order, a revelation of laws and perfections of which, in our common groping through a dull world, we find in general nothing to remind us. And if so, what folly to ask of a human creature that it should ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with what unscrupulous laxity and versatility in the choice of means, the Jesuits fought the battle of their Church, is written in every page of the annals of Europe during several generations. In the Order of Jesus was concentrated the quintessence of the Catholic spirit; and the history of the Order of Jesus is the history of the great Catholic reaction. That order possessed itself at once of all the strongholds which command the public mind, of the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have it delivered to Gen. Grant. Mr. Benjamin thinks there is some occult diplomatic danger in the papers—at least he is idle, and wants some diplomatic work on his hands, in the regular way. How to avoid doing anything whatever, diplomatically, with this matter before him, is the very quintessence of diplomacy! He can look at it, read it, handle it, and return it to Lord John, and then diplomatically prove that this government never had ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... stronger worts, and then it would be neighbourly Charity to give them away to the poorer Person. Hence may appear the Hardship that many are under of being necessitated to drink of those Brewers Malt Liquors, who out of avarice boil their Hops to the last, that they may not lose any of their quintessence: Nay, I have known some of the little Victualling Brewers so stupendiously ignorant, that they have thought they acted the good Husband, when they have squeezed the Hops after they have been boiled to the last in small Beer, to get out all their goodness as they vainly imagin'd, which ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... appear; All that I have to live I'd gladly change For one such month as I have wasted here— To draw long dreams of beauty, love, and power, From founts of hope that never will outrun, And drink all life's quintessence in an hour, Give me the days ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... our fashionable end and aim— Strasburgh, Rappe, Dutch, Scotch—whate'er thy name! Powder celestial! quintessence divine New joys entrance my soul while thou art mine; Who takes? who takes thee not? Where'er I range I smell thy sweets from Pall ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... part. They must not think that other men are so cowed or grown so tame, as to stand still blowing of their noses, whilst they bridle them and ride them at their pleasure. It is time to let the world see that this discipline which they so much adore, is the very quintessence ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... worse. The gross flattery, the dull impudence, the renegade intolerance, and impious cant, of the poem by the author of "Wat Tyler," are something so stupendous as to form the sublime of himself—containing the quintessence of his own attributes. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... husband's, your sire's were a difficult part; You're a byway to suicide, Adela Chart; But to read of, depicted by exquisite James, O, sure you're the flower and quintessence ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not a prohibition district, and if the happy, unreflective bird chooses to partake even to excess of the free offering of Nature, the quintessence of the flowers of the tree distilled by sunshine, why should not he? Am I the only one to be "recompensed by the sweetness and satisfaction ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... farm, Sweet as thy milk, and brisk as bottled beer, Wholesome as mutton, and as water clear, In wildflowers fertile, as thy fields of corn, And frolicksome as lambs, or sheep new shorn. I ask not ortolans, or Chian wine, The fat of rams, or quintessence of swine. Her spicy stores let either India keep, Nor El Dorado vend her golden sheep. And to the mansion house, or council hall, Still on her black splay feet may the huge tortoise crawl. Not Parson's butt my appetite can move, ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... earth, the self-gratification of the modern Teuton, can be traced directly to the influence of Zarathustra, and it is significant that the latest German exponent of Imperialism, General von Bernhardi, should have selected an aphorism of Nietzsche as the quintessence of his ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... the stretching of a span, buckles in his summe of age. Some of violated vowes, twixt the soules of friend, and friend: But vpon the fairest bowes, or at euerie sentence end; Will I Rosalinda write, teaching all that reade, to know The quintessence of euerie sprite, heauen would in little show. Therefore heauen Nature charg'd, that one bodie should be fill'd With all Graces wide enlarg'd, nature presently distill'd Helens cheeke, but not his heart, Cleopatra's Maiestie: Attalanta's better part, sad Lucrecia's Modestie. Thus ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... see excellence anywhere or nowhere, as it happens. Here, the cleverest of our caricaturists, with mischievous eyes and bitter tongue, lay in wait for epigrams to translate into pencil strokes; there, stood the young and audacious writer, who distilled the quintessence of political ideas better than any other man, or compressed the work of some prolific writer as he held him up to ridicule; he was talking with the poet whose works would have eclipsed all the writings ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... every poet were a Shakespeare the world would be a dull place; you need the tripe to form a contrast. The best way to enjoy the quintessence of roses, Mac, is to take a ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... would be wicked to treat with impatience. She even struck her mother with awe by the grandeur of her ideas and the depth of her theories. Nor let it be supposed that she rushed away at once to the consideration of the great fabric which was to be the ultimate sign and mark of her status, the quintessence of her briding, the outer veil, as it were, of the tabernacle—namely, her wedding-dress. As a great poet works himself up by degrees to that inspiration which is necessary for the grand turning-point of his epic, so did she slowly approach the hallowed ground on which she would sit, ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... opinions of the accused, not conceiving it possible that anyone could think differently from themselves except in pure perversity. Believing themselves the exclusive possessors of truth, wisdom, the quintessence of good, they attributed to their opponents nothing but error and evil. They felt themselves ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... poet of pure art, for he was the most typical exponent of his school. Most of his poems are short, and present a picture of nature, or of some delicate, fleeting psychical emotion, but they are all filled with enchanting, artistic charm. His poetry is the quintessence of aesthetic voluptuousness, such as was evolved on the soil of the sybaritism of the landed gentry in the circles of the '40's of ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... at large that we take such pains to avoid destruction; it is that we insensibly regard death as threatening to the continuance of the ego, in spite of the theories of a future life which we have so elaborately developed. Indeed, the psychical shrinking is really the quintessence of the physical fear. We cleave to the abstract idea closer even than to its concrete embodiment. Sooner would we forego this earthly existence than surrender that something we know as self. For sufficient cause we can imagine courting death; we cannot conceive of so much ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... certain directions. For example, standing apart from the movement of the world, as they will do to a very large extent, the archaic, opulently done, will appeal irresistibly to very many of these irresponsible rich as the very quintessence of art. They will come to art with uncritical, cultured minds, full of past achievements, ignorant of present necessities. Art will be something added to life—something stuck on and richly reminiscent—not a manner pervading ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... I may call attention to the fact that the germs of civilization were first planted in China by people strongly imbued with the belief that the pearl was the quintessence of life-giving and prosperity-conferring powers:[169] it was not only identified with the moon, but also was itself a particle of moon-substance which fell as dew into the gaping oyster. It was ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... pleasure, relished without witnesses; it is like a duel with an absent enemy, slain at a distance by a quill; a journalist might really possess the magical power of talismans in Eastern tales. Epigram is distilled rancor, the quintessence of a hate derived from all the worst passions of man, even as love concentrates all that is best in human nature. The man does not exist who cannot be witty to avenge himself; and, by the same rule, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Smith wished to express the very quintessence of brutality and meanness, he would refer to the ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... disappointing creature, after all a mere "quintessence of dust," unless he can rise above himself by relation with some superhuman being, and make his final fortune in some better region than this world. Reason requires that we love ourselves, and love our fellow-men, for and in order to the development of the highest gifts and capacities ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... the quintessence, The soul, and grand elixir of my wit: For he (according to his noble nature) Will not be known to want, though he do want, And will be bankrupted so much the sooner, And made the subject of our scorn ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... round her silver urn, 480 (Bright climbs the blaze, the crackling faggots burn), Culls the green herb of China's envy'd bowers, In gaudy cups the steamy treasure pours; And, sweetly-smiling, on her bended knee Presents the fragrant quintessence of Tea. ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... who winnows all this earthly passion to a fine, fruitful dust, fit to make bread for angels. Ecstatic reason, passion justifying its intoxication by revealing the mysteries that it has come thus to apprehend, speak in the quintessence of Donne's verse with an exalted simplicity which seems to make a new language for love. It is the simplicity of a perfectly abstract geometrical problem, solved by one to whom the rapture of solution ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... pleased the Blessed Master that I should suffer reproach and vilification for my testimony, then it was that the river of joy which flows from the Throne flowed through my heart as never before. It was a new experience—a quintessence of joy. The shouts of burning martyrs were no longer a mystery. I stagger no more at the account of the saints who took joyfully the spoiling of their goods. My soul is bathed in an ocean of balm ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... the Buddha into five periods, regarded as progressive not contradictory, and expounded respectively in (a) the Hua-yen Sutra; (b) the Hinayana Sutras; (c) the Leng-yen-ching; (d) the Prajna-paramita; (e) the Lotus Sutra which is the crown, quintessence and plenitude of all Buddhism. He also divided religion into eight parts,[818] sometimes counted as four, the latter half of the list being the more important. The names are collection, progress, distinction and completion. These terms indicate different ways of looking at religion, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... the most sane, the most unselfish thing in the world. It calls up some delightful image—a little nut-tree with a silver walnut and a golden pear; some romantic adventure only for the child's delight and liberation from the bondage of unseeing dullness: it brings before the mind the quintessence ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... Musset, De Vigny, Rossini, Meyerbeer, Auber, Sainte-Beuve, Adolphe Nourrit, Ferdinand Hiller, Balzac, Dumas, Heller, Delacroix,—the Hugo of painters,—Michelet, Guizot, Thiers, Niemcevicz and Mickiewicz the Polish bards, and George Sand: the quintessence of the ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... something extraordinary.' Mme. D'Artlay's Diary, ii. 400. 'Dr. Johnson's history,' wrote Horace Walpole, on June 20, 1785, 'though he is going to have as many lives as a cat, might be reduced to four lines; but I shall wait to extract the quintessence till Sir John Hawkins, Madame Piozzi, and Mr. Boswell have produced their quartos.' Horace Walpole's Letters, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... understood nothing of cookery. In like manner it may be concluded, that you, James Boswell, and I Andrew Erskine, cannot write serious epistles. This, as Mr. Tristram[19] says, I deny; for this letter of mine shall contain the quintessence of solidity; it shall be a piece of boiled beef and cabbage, a roasted goose, and a boiled leg of pork and greens: in one word, it shall contain advice; sage and mature advice. Oh! James Boswell! take care and don't break your neck; pray don't ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... to the operas, concerts and plays, and compliment her good looks, which are wonderfully well preserved for a woman of forty-five. I am twenty-six, you know, and so no one ever associates us together in any kind of gossip. She is the very quintessence of fashion, and I am one of the danglers whose own light is made brighter by the reflection of her rays. Do you see the point? Well, then, in return for my attentions, she takes a very sisterly interest in my future wife, and has adroitly managed to let me know of her niece, a ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... aside practice for theory... in establishing the interests of a great kingdom, in securing freedom to 25,000,000 of people, seems to me the very acme of imprudence, the very quintessence of insanity." ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... with strips of cane which with sullen lurch, take the wash of the boat. The boys jerk their heads in the direction and murmur "wur-gun," and speculate on the last user. The day is young. For the time being the best the ancient river has to show—the quintessence of the season, superb October—shall be ours. The cloudless sky is richly blue, lighter in shade than the shapely mountain which seems to block the way miles ahead. The sun gives a taste of its quality, not to fret or discomfort, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... than the Iliad itself. The events described are as lofty as those sung by Homer in his great work, and the characters brought upon the stage still more interesting. I think Hotspur as much of a hero as Hector, and young Henry more of a man than Achilles; and then there is the fat knight, the quintessence of fun, wit, and rascality. Falstaff is a creation beyond the genius ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... not come which I most wish to read, namely, the culled results, the quintessence of private conviction, a liber veritatis, a few sentences, hints of the final moral you drew from so much penetrating inquest into past and present men. All writing is necessitated to be exoteric, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Nicolette cannot be made into a representative medieval romance: there is nothing else like it; and the qualities that make it what it is are the opposite of the rhetorical self-possession, the correct and deliberate narrative of Chrestien and his school. It contains the quintessence of romantic imagination, but it is quite unlike the most fashionable ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... he left in writing, these Daughters of St. Francis of Sales, on the occasion of their Tercentenary, give to the English-speaking world a work which, in its wise curtailment and still full detail, may be called the quintessence of the Spirit of their Master, the Founder of their Institute. We thank them for their labour; and we beg God's blessing upon this book, that it may be the means of showing to many souls that safe and easy ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... all of us must be counted, worms of five feet long, mortal angels, the world's epitome, heaps of atoms which Nature has kneaded with blood into solid flesh, little worlds of living clay, sparks of heaven, inches of earth, Nature's quintessence, moving dust, the little all, smooth-faced cherubim, in whose souls the Ring of stars has drawn ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... get from gesticulation alone is an abstract notion of the essential drift of what is being said, and that, too, whether I judge from a moral or an intellectual point of view. It is the quintessence, the true substance of the conversation, and this remains identical, no matter what may have given rise to the conversation, or what it may be about; the relation between the two being that of a general idea or class-name to ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Michaelis, who was shivering at Aix, preaching in a desert while all the world was gone to hear strange things at Sainte-Baume. "Michaelis, you preach away, indeed, but you get no further forward; while Louisa has reached, has caught hold of the quintessence ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... should read them. They are, if I may say so, a "mathematical biology"—the survey of a life long study of "tropisms," which is the name given to express "forced movements" in organisms. They give the quintessence of laboratory experiments as to what are the effects of different energies such as light (heliotropism), electricity (galvanotropism), gravity (geotropism), etc., in their reaction and influence upon the movements and actions of living organisms. These experiments are conclusive ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... to you!" said Sean O'Donohue in the very quintessence of bitterness. "And to Moira, too, if she has more to do with you! I'll have naught to do with shenanigannin' renegades and blasphemers that actually import snakes into a world St. Patrick had set off for the Erse ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... thoroughly feminini generis—? Again I say, the Christians of to-day are too modest for me.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} If Wagner were a Christian, then Liszt was perhaps a Father of the Church!—The need of salvation, the quintessence of all Christian needs, has nothing in common with such clowns; it is the most straightforward expression of decadence, it is the most convincing and most painful affirmation of decadence, in sublime symbols and practices. The Christian wishes ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... always better to leave out something that is good than to write down something that is not worth saying. Hesiod's [Greek: pleon haemisu pantos][6] finds its right application. In fact, not to say everything! Le secret pour etre ennuyeux, c'est de tout dire. Therefore, if possible, the quintessence only! the chief matter only! nothing that the reader would think for himself. The use of many words in order to express little thought is everywhere the infallible sign of mediocrity; while ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... said, lowering his voice and choosing his words carefully, "I beg a thousand pardons. Can you ever forgive me?" She regarded him gravely, his intent green eyes, his mouth, that to her thirteen-year-old, arrow-collar taste was the quintessence of romance. Yes, Myra ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... are the quintessence of luxury, so much so that he who has once enjoyed them will long to turn lotos-eater, forget the painful and laborious past, and live and die at "Miles' Hotel." Oh, Madeira! gem of the ocean, land of pine-clad mountains that foolish men love to climb, valleys where wise ones much ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... sent out of the way at once of all companions capable of abandon and enjoyment; and, as to the "father" she quoted from, I could imagine him as the embodiment of asinine wisdom, so to speak—the quintessence of the practical, which so often, I observe, inclines its devotees ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... him with awe. Though I dwell by Cam's slow river, and I hope am not a bigot, I think that Isis cannot boast a better man than PIGOTT: Active, and strong, and steady, and never known to shirk, Of Corpus the quintessence, he is always fit for work. The men of Thames will be amazed when they see our "Three" so strong, And doubt if such a mighty form to mortal mould belong. "What son is this?" they, one and all, will ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... "Great Liberator." The "unwelcome guests," the colored men present, quickly embraced the opportunity, utilizing for a platform a dry goods box, upon which I was placed to give the Negro version of this climax of inconsistency and quintessence of hypocrisy. This was the unexpected. All the people, both native and foreign, had been invited and special places provided for all except the Negro, and on the native platform he was not allowed space. The novelty of the incident and curiosity to hear what the colored ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... ground in the extremity of his surprise, and Mynheer Superbus Von Underduk having taken off his spectacles, wiped them, and deposited them in his pocket, so far forgot both himself and his dignity, as to turn round three times upon his heel in the quintessence of astonishment and admiration. There was no doubt about the matter—the pardon should be obtained. So at least swore, with a round oath, Professor Rub-a-dub, and so finally thought the illustrious Von Underduk, as he took ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... that we meet with everywhere in Jewish quarters. No settlement in which we find a minyan (ten men necessary for divine worship), but there we will also find a cheder, a school in which the Bible and the Talmud are taught. Indeed, study is the first duty of the Jew; it is the quintessence of his religion. The unravelling of God's Word has been from time immemorial regarded as the greatest need, the most ennobling occupation of man—a work commanded by God. The Talmud teems with precepts concerning ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... members are also professors of technical universities, and other specialists. The body contains no laymen who are ignorant of public works; and the parliament may be said to contain the flower and quintessence of the technical science and skill of ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... on which a debate arose was that which recognised the original contract between King and people. It was not to be expected that the Tory peers would suffer a phrase which contained the quintessence of Whiggism to pass unchallenged. A division took place; and it was determined by fifty-three votes to forty-six that the words ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... jealous? he's the very quintessence of jealousy; he keeps no male creature in his house; and from abroad he lets no ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... thought with which his previous Essay has made us familiar. He next considers the influence of the past, and especially of books as the best type of that influence. "Books are the best of things well used; abused among the worst." It is hard to distil what is already a quintessence without loss of what is just as good as the product of our labor. A sentence or two may serve to give an impression of the epigrammatic wisdom ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... taste: The quintessence of this fivefold test. Just cuddle a crumb with your tongue and if it tickles the taste buds it's prime. When it melts in your mouth, that's proof it will melt in ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... any democracy that ever drew breath. The first act of that memorable revolution was to proclaim a state of peace with an appeal not to the kings, not to the rulers, but an appeal to the people of all nations. They are the very breath of democracy; the quintessence of freedom. They made their appeal to the people of all nations, the Allies as well as the Central Powers, to send representatives to lay down terms of a peace that should be lasting. Here was a fine opportunity ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing
... said Dave, taking his pipe out of his mouth. "You shut up, Jim. As I said, Bill Barker was the quintessence of a drover. He'd been at the game ever since he was a nipper. He run away from home when he was fourteen and went up into Queensland. He's been all over Queensland and New South Wales and most of South Australia, and a good deal of the Western, too: over the great stock routes from one ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... great as Flaubert, and greater than Daudet or Maupassant, though I have profoundly appreciated the exquisite artistry of both these. No French writer, however, has moved me so much as the Spanish, for the French are wanting in the humor which endears these, and is the quintessence ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the composing-room. The light in the boy's face was worship, the foreman was his lord, head of his group. The pat was an accolade. It was as precious to the boy as it would have been if he had been an aristocrat's son and the accolade had been delivered by his sovereign with a sword. The quintessence of the honor was all there; there was no difference in values; in truth there was no difference ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... first importance to realise the strength, and also (what has not been so clearly recognised) the limits, of Macbeth's imagination. It is not the universal meditative imagination of Hamlet. He came to see in man, as Hamlet sometimes did, the 'quintessence of dust'; but he must always have been incapable of Hamlet's reflections on man's noble reason and infinite faculty, or of seeing with Hamlet's eyes 'this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire.' Nor could he feel, like Othello, the romance of war or the infinity ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... sense, books are the galleries in which spirits are caught and fastened upon the pages. Books are storehouses into which facts and principles have been harvested. Just as a bit of coal tells us what ferns and flowers grew in the far-off era, so the book gives us the very quintessence of man's thoughts about life and duty and death. Nor is there any other way of gaining these vital knowledges. Life is too short to obtain them through conversation or travel. Nor is any youth ready ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... amid all perplexities was the absolute and indestructible existence of the universal as perceived by us in love, beauty, and delight. Though the destiny of the personal self be obscure, these things cannot fail. The conclusion of the "Sensitive Plant" might be cited as conveying the quintessence of his hope upon this most intangible ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... nurse, did apprehend her straite, yet would extract the quintessence of all: And therefore childe (quoth she) vse no deceipt, but tel me freely whence these teares doe fall I am thy nurse, and from my aged brest Thou hadst thy second being, tell the rest. I doe coniure thee, by these siluer haires, which are grown ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... seated beside Yeager must have been in her very early twenties, but her pretty face, finely modeled, had the provocative effrontery that is the note of twentieth-century young womanhood. Its audacity, which was the quintessence of worldliness, held ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... we need is the approval of Monsieur Vauquelin; enlightened by his science, we shall mislead the public. I was in the markets just now, talking to a seller of nuts, so as to get hold of the raw material, and now I am about to meet one of the greatest scientific men in France, to get at the quintessence of that commodity. Proverbs are no fools; extremes meet. Now see, my boy, commerce is the intermediary between the productions of the vegetable kingdom and science. Angelique Madou gathers, Monsieur Vauquelin ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... Elia is the quintessence of modern essay-writing from Addison to Stevenson. There are probably no better works of the same kind in our literature. Some critics aver that there are ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... many precautions of long preliminary conversation: This has no other idea than that of itself, and can only refer to itself: this is no one special consideration, nor two, nor three, nor four, nor a thousand; 'tis I know not what quintessence of all this mixture, which, seizing my whole will, carried it to plunge and lose itself in his, and that having seized his whole will, brought it back with equal concurrence and appetite to plunge and lose itself in mine. I may truly say lose, reserving nothing to ourselves ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... De Quincey's well-worn phrase. For that which is deepest in this group of masterpieces is not power, but something greater and more inclusive, of which power is but a single form of expression,—life; that quintessence of the unbroken experience and activity of the race which includes not only thought, power, beauty, and every kind of skill, but, below all these, the living soul of ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... than a just sacrifice to his wronged honor? As such he would accept it. If she had, it was best—best for her, and best for him! What so much did it matter! She was very lovely!—true—but what was the quintessence of dust to him? Where either was there any great loss? He and she would soon be wrapped up in the primal darkness, the mother and grave of all things, together!—no, not together; not even in the dark of nothingness could they two any more lie together! Hot tears forced their way ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... so far off from reluctances and remorse of conscience for these things, that he counted them the excellency of his attainments, the quintessence of his wit, his rare and singular virtues, such as but few besides himself could be the masters of. Therefore, as for those that made boggle and stop at things, and that could not in conscience, and for fear of death and judgment, do such things as he, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to fatten the fortunate cook who inhales them. An evident proof that these exhalations[96-*] possess the most restorative qualities is, that THE COOK, who is in general the least eater, is, as generally, the fattest person in the family, from continually being surrounded by the quintessence of all the food she dresses; whereof she sends to HER MASTER only the fibres and calcinations, who is consequently thin, gouty, and the victim of diseases ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... then some really sweet and amiable verses on a French lady, separated from her own children, fondling the baby of a neighbouring cottager;—after which we have this quintessence ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... wild uproar Stood ruled, stood vast infinitude confined; Till at his second bidding Darkness fled, Light shone, and order from disorder sprung: Swift to their several quarters hasted then The cumbrous elements, earth, flood, air, fire; And this ethereal quintessence of Heaven Flew upward, spirited with various forms, That rolled orbicular, and turned to stars Numberless, as thou seest, and how they move; Each had his place appointed, each his course; The rest in circuit walls this universe. Look downward on that globe, whose ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... he was quite willing it should bear any meaning the words would fairly bear; to the best of his recollection his meaning when he wrote it was "the hate of the quality hate, &c.," but he thought the meaning of "the quintessence of hatred" finer. He said there had never been a poem so misunderstood by the "ninnies of ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... solved at the end, however. But even at the end of a ghost story, the underlying mystery remains. In the ghost story, we have the very quintessence of mystery. ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... delicacy of their diet, diving into the fat capons, drinking your rich wines, feeding on larks, sparrows, potato-pies, and such good unctuous meats, how their wits are refined and rarified; and sometimes a very quintessence of conceit flows from them, able to drown ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... as active and helpful as possible; but especially she is busy trying to keep the peace between the old house servants and the imported cook. This Sicilian is a notable character. To him cookery is not a handicraft: it is the triumph, the quintessence of all science and philosophy. He talks a strange professional jargon, and asserts that he is himself learned in astronomy—for that teaches the best seasons, e.g. for mackerel and haddock; in geometry,—that he might know how ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... dog going into a fight or the delight of a bird in the air. And not simply in the heroic field of war and the air do I want to understand. I want to know something of the jolly wholesome satisfaction that a hungry pig must find in its wash. I want to get the quintessence of that. ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... incorporation of the spirit of anarchy and despotism, by the grace of the foreign secretaries of the three great powers of Europe, possesses a more singular body of military than even the defunct Ottoman corps of green-grocers. It consists of officers without troops. Its inventor, Armansperg, the quintessence of Bavarian corruption in Greece, called ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... again; abroad; never mind which or where; have experienced many Inns and many outings, but find all Grand Hotels much the same. "Lawn-tennis, English Church in the Spatious Grounds, good station for friends of the Fisch-Sport."—But the quintessence of Grand-Hotelism is "Mr." ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... will write the long dreamed-of poem in twenty-four parts. For her I will besiege the private dens of my friends the booksellers. Dear, helpless little atomy! infinitesimal object of love! bud, germ, seed, blossom, tidbit, morsel, mannikin, tomtit, abbreviation, concentration, quintessence! tiny multum in parvo! charming diamond edition! thou small, red possibility! weeping promise of glad days to come! For thee will I put the world under contribution! For thee will I master 'pathy and 'logy and 'nomy and 'sophy! All was and is for thee! For thee sages ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... lying in wickedness, in the innermost heart of the nation. It is a wonderful testimony to a man that he should have thus been able to imprint his own characteristics upon his race: and no doubt it is because he was himself of the very quintessence of its national character to start with, that he has maintained this prodigious power through these ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... astonishment, and faces with confusion, that they neglected the weightier matters of the law, and over stretched some other particular duties, to fill up the place of this, which is the end, the fulfilling of the law. It appears by this that charity is a cream of graces. It is the spirit and quintessence extracted out of these cardinal graces, unfeigned faith, a good conscience, a pure heart. It is true, the immediate end of the law, as it is now expounded unto us, is to drive us to believe in Jesus Christ, as it is expressed, Rom. x. 4. "Christ is the end of the law ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... leaving your husband and wishing to live alone —natural enough!—but what I cannot understand is that you, the quintessence of delicate breeding, should walk the streets at night and sit in dives. I wonder you can stand being in the room with such women, to ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton |
