"Loftiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... towards the two there in the shadow of the great oak, although unwitting that others were so near, and neither man dared to move. The moonlight, in softened silver, fell upon the faces of the lovers, disclosing all the beauty of the woman's and all the loftiness of the man's. Harley thought he had never seen a ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... occupied himself with such a variety of things, he never ceased drawing and working in relief, pursuits which suited his fancy more than any other. Ser Piero, having observed this, and having considered the loftiness of his intellect, one day took some of his drawings and carried them to Andrea del Verrocchio, who was much his friend, and besought him straitly to tell him whether Leonardo, by devoting himself to drawing, would make any proficience. Andrea was astonished ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... the first of a long series of antagonism and recoils, and as the child had matured, the purity and loftiness of her nature had by this very contact grown chilled toward austerity. Thus nature lends a gradual protective hardening to a tender surface during abrasion with a coarser thing. It left Isabel more reserved with her grandmother than with any one else of all the ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... thought, that is very effective. It does not destroy the effectiveness that the real cause of the darkened lids and cavernous orbits, when not antimony, is most probably internal disease; eyes of this sort stand for spirituality and loftiness of thought and intense womanliness of nature, and, as all men are neither chemists nor doctors, the simulation does quite as ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... an innate loftiness, an ethereal quality, about the girl's personality which Carder always felt, in spite of himself, even at the very moments when he was obtruding his familiarities upon her. She was like a fine jewel which he had stolen, but which baffled his efforts to ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... palace-gate, which is a great pillared archway, of wonderful loftiness and state, giving admittance into a spacious quadrangle. A stout, elderly, and rather surly footman in livery appeared at the entrance, and took possession of whatever canes, umbrellas, and parasols he could get hold of, in order to claim sixpence on our departure. This had a somewhat ludicrous ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... reception into the city. Philip received the keys, but did not deign a word of reply. The distance and reserve which it had been customary to maintain between the English sovereigns and their people was always pretty strongly marked, but Philip's loftiness and grandeur seemed to surpass ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... when words like these could make Job angry. Bildad follows them up with an attempt to frighten him by a picture of the power of that God whom he was blaspheming; but Job cuts short his harangue, and ends it for him in a spirit of loftiness which Bildad could not have approached; and then proudly and calmly rebukes them all, no longer in scorn and irony, but in high, tranquil self-possession. 'God forbid that I should justify you,' he says; 'till I die I will not remove my integrity ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... when Captain Sword got up next morn, Lo! a new-fac'd world was born; For not an anger nor pride would it shew, Nor aught of the loftiness now found low, Nor would his own men strike a single blow: Not a blow for their old, unconsidering lord Would strike the good soldiers of Captain Sword; But weaponless all, and wise they stood, In the level dawn, and calm brotherly good; Yet bowed to him they, and ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... "those things which are most surely believed among the disciples."* "It is an account," says Bishop Gore, "which there is no evidence to show the imagination of an early Christian capable of producing; for its consummate fitness, reserve, sobriety, and loftiness are unquestionable. What solid reason is there for not accepting it?" It is extraordinarily difficult to imagine that St. Luke, whose accuracy and care have been, in recent years, so severely tested and found not wanting, should have been so careless ...
— The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord - A paper read (in substance) before the confraternity of the Holy - Trinity at Cambridge • B. W. Randolph
... de Garnache," said he with a fine loftiness, and in his heart he pondered what he would say and how he should say it; how he should stand, how move, and how look. His roving eye caught sight of his secretary. He remembered something—the cherished pose of being a man plunged fathoms-deep in business. ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... deserted, without a living soul in it. So (quoth Abdallah), 'I alighted and hobbling my she-camel, took courage and entered the city. When I came to the citadel, I found it had two vast gates, never in the world was seen their like for size and loftiness, inlaid with all manner jewels and jacinths, white and red and yellow and green. At this I marvelled greatly and entering the citadel, trembling and dazed with wonder and affright, found it long and wide, as it were a city[FN137] for bigness; ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... started this scheme to his mother, she heard it with mingled admiration of his disinterestedness, and regret at its occasion: yet the loftiness of her own mind, her high personal value for Cecilia, her anxiety to see her son finally settled while she lived, lest his disappointment should keep him single from a lasting disgust, joined to a dejection of spirits ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... her two little sisters, who gave her no peace till her desk was opened, and a manuscript drawn forth, that they might hear the two new pages of her morning's work. It was a Fouque-like tale, relieving and giving expression to the yearnings for holiness and loftiness that had grown up within Isabel Conway in the cramped round of her existence. The story went back to the troubadour days of Provence, where a knight, the heir of a line of shattered fortunes, was betrothed to the heiress of the oppressors, that thus all ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... threw over the part an air of Spanish loftiness. He looked, spake, and moved like an old Castilian. He was starch, spruce, opinionated, but his superstructure of pride seemed bottomed upon a sense of worth. There was something in it beyond the coxcomb. It was big and swelling, but you could not be sure that it was hollow. You might wish to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... and to the other papers which describe his life, particularly those which recount his marvellous dreams. In these papers we find the passages where De Quincey's passion rises to the heights which few other writers have ever reached in prose, a loftiness and grandeur which is technically denominated as "sublime." In his Essay on Style, published in Blackwood's, 1840, he deprecates the usual indifference to form, on the part of English writers, "the tendency of the national mind to value the matter of a book not only as paramount ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... chapter of the story of the tenement everywhere. Gibbon quotes the architect Vitruvius, who lived in the Augustan age, as complaining of "the common though inconvenient practice of raising houses to a considerable height in the air. But the loftiness of the buildings, which often consisted of hasty work and insufficient material, was the cause of frequent and fatal accidents, and it was repeatedly enacted by Augustus as well as by Nero that the height of private dwellings should not exceed the measure ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... the north porch (says Cassell), the visitor will be struck with the size, loftiness, and rich colour of the interior, 435 feet long and 89 feet high. The 'clerestory' of the sixteenth century is full of painted glass. On each side of the nave there is a series of chapels, constructed in the fourteenth ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... of Thomas Campbell, "The Pleasures of Hope" is one of the most finished epics in the language; it is alike faultless in respect of conception and versification. His lyrics are equally sustained in power of thought and loftiness of diction; they have been more frequently quoted than the poems of any other modern author, and are translated into various European languages. Few men evinced more jealousy in regard to their reputation; he was keenly sensitive to criticism, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... of Burns is of a high order: in brightness of expression and unsolicited ease and natural vehemence of language, he stands in the first rank of poets: in choice of subjects, in happiness of conception, and loftiness of imagination, he recedes into the second. He owes little of his fame to his objects, for, saving the beauty of a few ladies, they were all of an ordinary kind: he sought neither in romance nor in history for themes to the muse; he took up topics from life around ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... loftiness; elevation; stature, tallness; eminence, exaltation; summit, zenith, apex, culmination. Associated words: altimetry, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... man, though apparently fervent and prayerful, is impure and therefore insincere, what must be the 8:12 comment upon him? If he reached the loftiness of his prayer, there would be no occasion for comment. If we feel the aspiration, hu- 8:15 mility, gratitude, and love which our words express,- this God accepts; and it is wise not to try to deceive ourselves or others, for "there is nothing covered that 8:18 shall not ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... which again was an immense success, and was greeted invariably by a specially selected choir chanting the Hymn of Hate. And yet the damage done was not very great from the material point of view. It was the mental jolt, the jar to their spiritual loftiness, that tickled the dear souls ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... scientific investigator and discoverer. The attempt to respond to this desire has been to me a labour of difficulty, if also a labour of love. For however well acquainted I may be with the researches and discoveries of that great master—however numerous the illustrations which occur to me of the loftiness of Faraday's character and the beauty of his life—still to grasp him and his researches as a whole; to seize upon the ideas which guided him, and connected them; to gain entrance into that strong and active brain, and read from it the riddle of the world—this is a work not easy ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... something of both the learned Lady and the lofty Spire. He is at once spinsterish and architectural. I mean that he is a very beautiful object to look at, and at the same time a frustrated and perverse nature. Moreover his learning partakes of a drawing-room character, while his loftiness dwindles away to a point which affords no foothold for the sons of man. One may look up to him now and again, but a constant regard would be rewarded by nothing more serviceable to the admirer than a stiff neck. He points upward indeed, but to follow his direction is to discover ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... was taking a great interest in you. It seemed to me that if you did wrong I was doing wrong myself. It seemed to me that if by any chance your soul was smirched, or made unhappy, or blackened, or any of its loftiness and its god-like quality removed, my own soul was smirched too, my own nature lowered. But I thought no special harm of you, although I was troubled; and that night I learned for the first time that I was interested in you because I loved you, because you ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... of speech In loftiness of sound was rich; A Babylonish dialect, Which learned pedants much affect; It was a parti-color'd dress Of patch'd and piebald languages: 'Twas English cut on Greek and Latin, Like fustian heretofore on satin. It had ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... to enjoy a kind of supremacy over the rest of the inhabitants of the air. Such is the loftiness of his flight, that he often soars in the sky beyond the reach of the naked eye, and such is his strength that he has been known to carry away children in his talons. But many of the noble qualities imputed to him ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... at the Literary Club. The great are never greater than in the hearts of their homes and the simplicities of their friendships. At this club the gods forgot their power and high beings laid aside their loftiness. In the midst we find the man they teased the man most welcome; that one that all affected to despise, each in his inmost heart unfeignedly respected. The man most laughed at was most loved. Oliver Goldsmith ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... at the threshold of life,—a woman gently wise, kindly sympathizing, shaming him by the spectacle of her own purity from all grosser errors, elevating him from mean tastes and objects by the exquisite, ineffable loftiness of soul which is only found in the noblest order of womanhood. Come, I will open my heart to you still. I fear it is more wayward than ever. It still feels estranged from the companionship and pursuits natural to my age and station. However, I have ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... solitude of the place permit the thought of an excursion into the realms of any sort of dalliance. Moreover, though Karl's words might have led her to think of him as ready to play with a sentimental situation, the essential loftiness of his gaze forbade ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... mental lucidity, the spiritual loftiness of his changed mood, his visitor wished to take leave of him with this image in her memory; but just then a half-paralyzed Jewish graybeard made his appearance, and Heine's instant dismissal of him on her account made it difficult not to linger ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... effects an important reform by the centralisation of the different kingdoms of Spain—The Duke of Orleans heads a faction inimical to the Princess—She demands and obtains his recall—Her bold resolution to act in opposition to the timid policy of Versailles—The loftiness of her past conduct and character—The victory of Villaviciosa definitely seats the House of Bourbon on the throne of ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... last kings of Babylon, Nebuchadrezzar, recorded a prayer which reveals the loftiness of religious thought and feeling attained by men to whom graven images were no longer worthy of adoration and reverence—men whose god was not ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... the servants were the severest sticklers for propriety, and the butlers of the old families rivalled each other in the loftiness of their standards. Jack, the butler of "the last of the Barons," was wide awake to the demands of his position, and when an old sea captain, an intimate friend of Mr. Huger, dining with the family, asked for rice when the fish was served he was first ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... height, altitude, elevation; eminence, pitch; loftiness &c. adj.; sublimity. tallness &c. adj.; stature, procerity[obs3]; prominence &c. 250. colossus &c. (size) 192; giant, grenadier, giraffe, camelopard. mount, mountain; hill alto, butte [U.S.], monticle[obs3], fell, knap[obs3]; cape; headland, foreland[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... stars could not keep it there without artificial aid, the immense value of his influence remained. He is one of the most interesting representatives, not only of his own, but of all similar periods of exaggerated feelings and ideals. Despite his loftiness of thought and speech, and his seraphic raptures, he was not without a full share of sensuous development, and women's eyes, or a girl's rosy lips, would draw him away from the finest ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... most airy room in the house. In the town, if it be in the topmost story (provided the apartment be large and airy) so much the better, as the air will then be purer. The architect, in the building of a house, ought to be particularly directed to pay attention to the space, the loftiness, the ventilation, the light, the warming, and the conveniences of a nursery. A bath-room attached to it will be of great importance and benefit to the health ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... of narrowin' the Lord down to ministers,' said Mrs. Fleming, with a certain loftiness. 'We all know He can do ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... resolution which could not have been exceeded had she been encouraged by the most constant success. And in the last terrible hours, when the monsters who had already murdered her husband were preparing the same fate for herself, she met their hatred and ferocity with a loftiness of spirit which even hopelessness could not subdue. Long before, she had declared that she had learned, from the example of her mother, not to fear death; and she showed that this was no empty boast when she rose in the last scenes of her life as much even above her earlier displays ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... here attributed to the second class of seers (vates). The highest class, that of the Druids, were, he says, in accordance with the rule of Pythagoras, closely linked together in confraternities, and by acquiring a certain loftiness of mind from their investigations into things that were hidden and exalted, they despised human affairs and declared the soul immortal. We see here the view expressed that socially as well as intellectually the Druids lived according to the Pythagorean philosophy. Origen also refers ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... was peculiarly distinguished by loftiness of spirit, that of Dante by intensity of feeling. In every line of the Divine Comedy we discern the asperity which is produced by pride struggling with misery. There is perhaps no work in the world so deeply and uniformly sorrowful. The melancholy ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Skiddaw hovers in the distance. There is little mention of mountainous scenery in Mr. Wordsworth's poetry; but by internal evidence one might be almost sure that it is written in a mountainous country, from its bareness, its simplicity, its loftiness, and its depth! ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... feasts? That downy bloom of happiness, which unfaithful and ignoble poets have persisted in declaring always vanished at the touch and wear of life, is delicate and fresh as ever, and must remain so if we remain unprofane. The sacredness, the loftiness, the ethereal delicacy of such a soul as my husband's will keep heaven about us. My thought does not yet compass him. December. For the world's eye I care nothing; but in the profound shelter of this home I would put on daily a velvet robe, and pearls in my hair, to gratify my husband's ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... change in the policeman, and it was not difficult to account for. He was more easy and familiar in his speech: while formerly he had bowed as from the peaks of manly intellect to the pleasant valleys of girlish incompetence he now condescended from the loftiness of a policeman and a person of quality to the quaint gutters of social inferiority. To many people mental inferiority in a companion has a charm, for it induces in one's proper person a feeling of philosophic detachment, a fine effect of personal individuality ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... Mahler is not a great man, he is at least the silhouette of one. The need of expression that drove him to composition was indubitably mighty. The passion with which he addressed himself to his labor despite all discouragement and lack of success, the loftiness and nobleness of the task which he set for himself, the splendor of the intentions, reveal how fierce a fire burnt in the man. He was not one of those who come to music to form little jewels. On the ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... ordinary topics of the youthful ballad-monger. She had uttered her apostrophes to the eagle, soaring through the black, billowy masses of the coming thunder-storm; to the lonely but lofty rock, lonely in its loftiness, which no foot travelled but her own; to the silent glooms of the forest—to the majesty of white-bearded and majestic trees. The dove and the zephyr now shared her song, and a deep sigh commonly closed it. She was changed from what ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... the hard duties which fate had imposed on him. I only dissembled with him in one particular; I endeavoured to soften his wife's too conspicuous follies, and extenuated her failings in an indirect manner. To this I was prompted by a loftiness of spirit; I should have broken the band of life, had I ceased to respect myself. But I will hasten to an important change in ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... in character. The little group of the blue-stockings of the day regarded the great master of knowledge and eloquence with mixed feelings. They felt for Burke the adoring reverence which women offer, with too indiscriminate a trust, to men of commanding power. In his case it was the moral loftiness of his character that inspired them, as much as the splendour of his ability. Of Sheridan or of Fox they could not bear to hear; of Burke they could not hear enough. Hannah More, and Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, ...
— Burke • John Morley
... splendid use of mean associations by Shakespeare; Milton's wise avoidance of mean associations, and of realism; nature of his similes and figures; his use of proper names; his epic catalogues; his personifications; loftiness of his perfected style; the popularity of Paradise Last; imitations, adaptations, and echoes of Milton's style during the 18th century; his enormous influence; the origin of "poetic diction"; Milton's phraseology stolen by Pope, Thomson, ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... been conscious of from the first—the strangest thing in his friend's large little composition, a temper, a sensibility, even a private ideal, which made him as privately disown the stuff his people were made of. Morgan had in secret a small loftiness which made him acute about betrayed meanness; as well as a critical sense for the manners immediately surrounding him that was quite without precedent in a juvenile nature, especially when one noted that it had not made this nature "old-fashioned," as the word is of children—quaint ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... a sort of loftiness that doesn't belong to her life, though she takes things with outward calmness, but I have a feeling that some day she will break out in an awful tempest, and I doubt her being that woman's daughter. Mrs. Boyd never talks frankly about ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... ancestors is the cause of Nobility, or rather the baseness of the ancestors never was, it is not possible for oblivion of them to be, since oblivion is a destruction of remembrance, and in those other animals, and in plants, and in minerals, lowness and loftiness are not observed, since in one they are natural or innate and in an equal state, and Nobility cannot possibly be in their generation, and likewise neither can vileness nor baseness; since one regards the one and the other as habit and privation, which are possible to occur in the ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... mastered by sentiment. In the very circumstance of being free from such conventions as the cameo relief, the picturesque costume details, the goldsmith's work characteristic of the Renaissance, now so much in vogue, M. Rodin's things acquire a certain largeness and loftiness as well as simplicity and sincerity of sentiment. The same model posed for the "Saint Jean" that posed for a dozen things turned out of the academic studios, but compared with the result in the latter cases, that in the former is even more remarkable for sentiment than for ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... needful. He could neither arouse enthusiasm nor win friends. He was large visioned and adept at mapping out broad policies, but he lacked the elements of leadership requisite to carry his plans into effect. He scorned the everyday arts of politics, and by the very loftiness of his ideals he alienated support. In short, as one writer has remarked, he was "a weigher of scruples and values in a time of transition, a representative of old-school politics on the threshold of triumphant democracy. The people did not understand him, but ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... seemed to have increased in circumference and loftiness. She could get new and expensive dresses, and silk ones at that, every time she went to New York, and she went quite often now. And none of her neighbors could wear such fine lace on their caps. It was surprising to see how this fat, fussy woman could toss her head and talk ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... satisfied with my life at that time; with its arduous study, and its growing fame, and Guy, with the delicious task of educating his supple intellect to my ideas, and penetrating his nature with my personality. Only the loftiness of my ideal saved it from making womanish shipwreck on this episode in its austere voyage towards ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass'd, The next in majesty, in both the last. The force of Nature could no farther go; To make a third she join'd the ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... an hour later the door of the gaol opened and Commander Mattei came in: he found Murat standing with head proudly erect and folded arms. There was an expression of indefinable loftiness in this half-naked man whose face was stained with blood and bespattered with mud. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Nightingale have all the comforts of life when she did her great work? Was it not by her indomitable perseverance, her great patience, and her enthusiasm for others that she won such an honored place for herself? You know almost before I say it, that there can be no loftiness of purpose, no enthusiasm, if there are not difficulties to be conquered, and you all know that complaining about sick people will never alter their characteristics, and that complaining about the nervousness of the relatives will never make less unreasoning, ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... the dignity of Bucolicks is sufficiently cleared, for as much as the Golden Age is to be preferred before the Heroick, so much Pastorals must excell Heroick Poems: yet this is so to be understood, that if we look upon the majesty and loftiness of Heroick Poems, it must be confest that they justly claim the preheminence; but if the unaffected neatness, elegant, graceful smartness of the expression, or the polite dress of a Poem be considered, then they ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... good emperor survive, like the writings of Epictetus, St. Augustine, and Thomas a Kempis: one of the few immortal books,—immortal, in this case, not for artistic excellence, like the writings of Thucydides and Tacitus, but for the loftiness of thoughts alone; so precious that the saints of the Middle Ages secretly preserved them as in accord with their own experiences. It is from these "Meditations" that we derive our best knowledge of Marcus Aurelius. They reveal the man,—and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... forget," still feeling that convincing loftiness was not easy, "that when a man leaves his wife, or she deserts him, it is she who is likely to be called upon to bear the onus of ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... loftiness of that Christian dignity which, by its royal power, rules over all things, even over death, life, and sin, and, by its priestly glory, is all-powerful with God, since God does what He Himself seeks and wishes, ...
— Concerning Christian Liberty - With Letter Of Martin Luther To Pope Leo X. • Martin Luther
... voluntarily exclaim, 'We will break our swords,' and will destroy its whole military system, lock, stock, and barrel. To make ourselves defenceless (after having been most strongly defended), from loftiness of sentiment, is the means towards genuine peace.... The so-called armed peace that prevails at present in all countries is a sign of a bellicose disposition, that trusts neither itself nor its neighbour, and, partly from hate partly from fear, refuses to lay down ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... without dread of frost, and perhaps God will allow my efforts to fulfil themselves in the future. My very various attempts at work all have an indescribable immaturity about them still, a halting execution, which consorts badly with the real loftiness of the intention. It seems to me that my art will not quite expand until my life is further advanced. Let us pray that God will allow me to ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... even if it had never come to me through any other way. Let me stay." She said the last words, in spite of all her pride, appealingly. But still, there was a note of high pride in all this—in all she said and did, in her attitude and movement, in the tones of her voice, in the loftiness of her carriage and the steadfast look of her open, starlit eyes. Altogether, there was something so rarely lofty in herself and all that clad her that, face to face with it and with her, my feeble attempt at moral ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... more conspicuously seen the energies of a noble soul. At first it seemed that his reign could be extended only over gory corpses and smouldering ruins. Undismayed by the magnitude of the disaster, he consecrated all the activity of his genius and the loftiness of his spirit to the regeneration of the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... bad bargain-driver. David's nature was of the sensitive and affectionate type that shrinks from a dispute, and gives way at once if an opponent touches his feelings. His loftiness of feeling, and the fact that the old toper had himself well in hand, put him still further at a disadvantage in a dispute about money matters with his own father, especially as he credited that father with the best intentions, and took his covetous greed for a printer's attachment to his ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... by time, extends. It is a stratified arch, whence you gaze down two hundred feet upon the flowing water; its sides are rock, nearly perpendicular. Popular conjecture reasonably deems it the fragmentary arch of an immense limestone cave; its loftiness imparts an aspect of lightness, although at the centre it is nearly fifty feet thick, and so massive is the whole that over it passes a public road, so that by keeping in the middle one might cross unaware of the marvel. To realize its height it must be viewed from beneath; from the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... his youth when he first sang in New York, his voice was yet in perfect preservation. It lacked nothing that is to be expected in a tenor voice of the first class; and it had that mingling of manliness and tenderness, of human sympathy and seraphic loftiness which, for lack of any other or better word, we call divine. As a vocalist he was not in the first rank, but he stood foremost in the second. His presence was manly and dignified, and he was a good actor. But it was as a vocalist, pure and simple, that he captivated and moved his audiences. ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... but died ere yet dishonor's cloud O'er that young heart had gathered as a shroud, I then had mourned thee proudly, and my grief In its own loftiness had found relief; A noble sorrow cherished to the last, When every meaner wo had long been past. Yes, let affection weep, no common tear She sheds when bending o'er an honored bier. Let nature mourn the dead—a grief like this, To pangs that rend ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... death may, in some sort, and was then entirely ascribed. But circumstances appeared after his death which led to a conclusion that concealed sorrow, might have had some share in it. From refined motives of tenderness for a beloved wife's feelings, and that loftiness of spirit which clings to the perfect gentleman, he concealed the state of his affairs in England, which had for some time been in a rapid decline, and of the complete ruin of which he had a short time before been fully informed. His patrimonial ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... not be even more than this? The character of John was strong, grand in its wild magnificence—like some Alpine crag, with the pines on its slopes and the deep dark lake at its foot; he had courage, resolution, an iron will, a loftiness of soul that could hold commerce with the unseen and eternal. He was a man capable of vast heights and depths. He could hold fellowship with the eternal God as a man speaks with his friend, and could suffer unutterable agonies in self-questioning and depression. But is this ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... incurred by others made him unwilling that his daughter should press even for the payment of the debt due for the publication of her pamphlets and campaign documents, though published at the request of the War Department on the understanding that she was to be repaid. His loftiness of feeling and unbounded generosity continued ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... husband passionately, but she feared the loftiness and roughness of his character; and as she felt herself not to be his match in intellect, was not much pleased to see that he would often talk with Edith Plantagenet in preference to herself, simply because he found more amusement in her conversation, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... there. They will be 'my high places,' that I never could have got at by my own scrambling, but to which Thou hast lifted me up, and which, by Thy grace, have become my natural abode. I am at home there, and walk at liberty in the loftiness, and fear no fall ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Randolph. He was a high-bred, high-spirited man of thirty, descended from a long line of proud and chivalrous men; educated, refined, sensitive, generous, and brave. His fine talents, his dash, his polished manner, his industry, his integrity, his loftiness of character, had lifted him upon the shoulders of popularity and prosperity; so that, in the city of his home, there was not another man of his age, a member of his profession, the law, who was so well known, so well liked, ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... in the Arctic regions. "The Exact Sciences, what else is there to depend on?" thinks French cultivated society: "and has not Monsieur done a feat in that line?" Monsieur, with fine ex-military manners, has a certain austere gravity, reticent loftiness and polite dogmatism, which confirms that opinion. A studious ex-military man,—was Captain of Dragoons once, but too fond of study,—who is conscious to himself, or who would fain be conscious, that he is, in all points, mathematical, moral and other, the man. A difficult man to live with ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... valiant and reliable. While the masterly ability and soldierly vigor and decision of General Johnson must excite the profoundest admiration, those who remember him may be pardoned for dwelling quite as much upon the grandeur, the loftiness, the heroism of his character. In this we may look in vain for his peer, except to the great Virginian, his immortal comrade, the man whom every former Southern soldier must feel it is his religious duty to venerate. Through all that period of ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... the passage, you find yourself in a rectangular hall, upon which was lavished the chief display in the way of loftiness and decoration. In the middle of the ceiling is an open space, square or oblong, to which the tiles of the gabled roof converge from above, and in the middle of the floor beneath is a corresponding basin, edged and paved ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... away full of that undefined discomfort experienced by generous young spirits when their elders, more worldly-wise (or foolish), fail even to comprehend the purity or loftiness of motive which they themselves thoroughly believe. Yet, though she had infinitely more faith in Humfrey's affection than she had in that of Babington, she had not by any means the same dread of being ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Two-Shoes to him may be correct. Charles Welsh, who edited the best recent edition for schools, says it "will always deserve a place among the classics of childhood for its literary merit, the purity and loftiness of its tone, and its sound sense, while the whimsical, confidential, affectionate style which the author employs, makes it attractive even to children who have long since passed the spelling-book stage." The version that follows has been shortened by the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... favorite measure is the octosyllabic couplet, and in his skilled hands this simple metre assumes a new and sparkling lustre. Rev. Frederick Chenault is a prolific lyrical poet whose sentiments are of uniform loftiness. The substitution of exact rhyme for assonance in his lines would double the already immense merit of his work. Other new bards of established ability are W. S. Harrison, Kathleen Baldwin, Eugene B. Kuntz, Mary Evelyn Brown, Henry Cleveland ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... especially the Minuet and Trio; yet the music is not pure Schubert. About six years elapsed between this and the next sonata, in A minor (1823). Schubert had already written his B minor Symphony, and though the first two movements of the sonata will not compare with those of the former in loftiness of conception, there is a certain kinship between the two works. In both there are fitful gusts of passion, a feeling of awe, and a tone of sadness which tells of disappointed hopes, of lost illusions. The Finale, though fine, stands on a lower level. During the years ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... entirely upon their boarders for their bread; yet their manners were a mixture of loftiness and condescension that had the effect of making their guests believe that they—the guests—were highly honored in being permitted to board ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... animated, he brought together words, that were astonished to find themselves in each other's company, and created a language of his own, a language rich and impressive, that might sometimes infringe established rules, but compensated this happy fault, by giving more loftiness and vigour ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... poor way she loved him—loved him as she would probably never love another. Some women are made in that way, they take pride in the loftiness of the height from which they drag men down. Then he must be saved, she told herself, at all costs saved! He would live to thank her yet. A thought of him lying dead in his blood by the dark embrasure that masked ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... over to see if he were worthy of the occasion. He certainly was in splendid looks, his rich, profuse beard and hair were well arranged, and his fine bronzed face had not lost its grave expression when at rest, but had acquired a certain loftiness of countenance, which gave him more than ever the air, I was going to say, of a demigod; but he had now an expression no heathen Greek could give; it was more like that of the heads by Michael Angelo, where Christian yearning is added to classic ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... accepted this manly response. Although, contrary to his custom, he had a lady on his knee, he adjured the young prince, with a sublime loftiness of soul, to be ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... girl's wit fled for joy and she went forth from his presence and returned to her mistress. When she came in to her, she acquainted her with that which she had seen of Al-Abbas and that which was with him of servants and attendants and set out to her the loftiness of his station and gave her that which was with her. Mariyah opened the mantle, and when she saw that necklace (and indeed the place was illumined with the lustre thereof), she looked at her slave-girl and said to her, "By Allah, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... who would seek to diminish the force of this moral spring; he would cripple at a blow all the virtues. I do not, however, place this noblest of sentiments on the somewhat isolated height where it is put by the exclusive adorers of liberty. Let us not confound dignity with mere loftiness. Moreover, by the side of dignity let us never forget that other inspiring sentiment, which is at least its equal in value, humanity; that is to say, the remembrance, the care, of that great number who are condemned to a life of poverty and suffering, and whose precarious condition ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... clear and sharp at every angle, and each moulding and flower true and perfect as the chisel had newly left it. The deep archway of the west front opened in stately magnificence, and yet with a light loftiness hitherto unknown in England, and somewhat approaching to the style in which the great French cathedrals were then rising. And its accompaniments were, on the one hand the palace and hall, on the other hand the monastery, with its high ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as necessary to the exercise of that profession. He had a singular force and solidity of thought, an admirable ardor of ambitious devotion to the service of poetry, a deep and burning sense at once of the duty implied and of the dignity inherent in his office; a vigor, opulence, and loftiness of phrase, remarkable even in that age of spiritual strength, wealth, and exaltation of thought and style; a robust eloquence, touched not unfrequently with flashes of fancy, and kindled at times into heat of ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... at all times ready to give assistance to his friends, and others, in revising their works, and in writing for them, or greatly improving their Dedications. In that courtly species of composition no man excelled Dr. Johnson. Though the loftiness of his mind prevented him from ever dedicating in his own person[2], he wrote a very great number of Dedications for others. Some of these, the persons who were favoured with them are unwilling should be mentioned, from a too anxious apprehension, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... proud, dark father, as everyone said. I remember the sally of an indignant Parisian street arab, who called after me: "Hey, boy, why so high and mighty?" And in my own country, where one turns more quickly to measures sharper than words, this loftiness brought upon me even fiercer attacks. A country lad imitated my proud bearing and pure Italian, getting for it a slap with a towel which I carried on my way to bathe in the sea. On my return the answer came - a stab in my back which for days forced me to assume ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... affectation, which I knew was little likely to attract a taste so refined and unadulterated as her's. I discovered in her a mind which, while it charmed me by its tenderness and freshness, elevated me by its loftiness of thought. She was, at heart, perhaps, as ambitious as myself; but while my aspirations were concealed by affectation, her's were softened by her timidity, and purified by her religion. There were moments when I opened ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Anjou, and brother of St. Lonis. He died in 1284. The annalist of Florence remarks, that "there had been no sovereign of the house of France, since the time of Charlemagne, by whom Charles was surpassed either in military renown, and prowess, or in the loftiness of his understanding." G. Villani, 1. vii. c. 94. We shall, however, find many of his actions severely reprobated in ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... isolated examples in former ages, perhaps no series of writers exists, hardly even the Greek, certainly not the Neo-Platonist nor the Cartesian, which, in far-reaching penetration, in minuteness of analysis, in brilliancy of imagination, in loftiness of genius, in poetry of expression, in grasp of intellect, in influence on every branch of thought or life, approximates to the series of illustrious thinkers which commenced with Kant and ended with Hegel.(731) The two philosophers at this time whose teaching formed a new influence, were Fichte(732) ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... we are taught by Cicero, that the loftiness of great virtues delights us, as does that of high trees, while we are not equally interested in the roots and trunks; so, also, the first beginnings of his admirable disposition were kept concealed by many circumstances which threw a cloud over them; though ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... yet formed into an isolating chain that refinement of mind and loftiness of character which your want of self-control may convert into misfortunes instead of blessings. Whenever, even now, a sense of total want of sympathy forces itself upon you, you console yourself with such thoughts as these: "Sheep herd together, ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... refinement that is directly endangered by contact with the realities of life, for instance by participation in local politics and other social contests, and by such practice of charity as must be accompanied by physical exertion and bad smells. Culture is, to them, the name for that serenity and loftiness of mind that can be attained and preserved only by keeping a safe distance from the madding crowd; and the cultured man is pictured by them as sitting in a comfortable chair, preferably with a book in his hand, and rapt in meditation on ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... I saw Stiva when he was in love with you. I remember the time when he came to me and cried, talking of you, and all the poetry and loftiness of his feeling for you, and I know that the longer he has lived with you the loftier you have been in his eyes. You know we have sometimes laughed at him for putting in at every word: 'Dolly's a marvelous woman.' You have always been a divinity ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... young men f'r th' civic ideel, Father Kelly tells me. Th' on'y thrainin' I know f'r th' civic ideel is to have an alarm clock in ye'er room on iliction day. He believes 'young men shud be equipped with Courage, Discipline, an' Loftiness iv Purpose;' so I suppose Packy, if he wint there, wud listen to lectures fr'm th' Profissor iv Courage an' Erasmus H. Noddle, Doctor iv Loftiness iv Purpose. I loft, ye loft, he lofts. I've always ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... all-essential subject. Fourteen years after the publication of Dr. Owen's epoch-making book, John Bunyan's Holy War first saw the light. Equal in scriptural and in experimental depth, as also in their spiritual loftiness and intensity, those two books are as different as any two books, written in the same language, and written on the same subject, could by any possibility be. John Owen's book is the book of a great scholar who has read the Fathers and the Schoolmen and the Reformers till he ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... irked me much that any one should take advantage of me; yet everybody did so as soon as ever it was known that my wits were gone moon-raking. For that was the way they looked at it, not being able to comprehend the greatness and the loftiness. Neither do I blame them much; for the wisest thing is to laugh at people when we cannot understand them. I, for my part, took no notice; but in my heart despised them as beings of a lesser nature, who never had seen Lorna. Yet I was vexed, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... civic spirit, Glasgow remains grey, prosaic, intolerable—the champion platitude of commercial civilisation. Aberdeen would have been a far finer example of the schematic city of which theorists dream. There is something heroic about the spaciousness of its streets, the loftiness of the buildings, and the omnipresence of granite—a Tyrtaean spirit, which finds its supreme embodiment in the noble statue of Wallace poised on rough craglets of unpolished granite, and of General Gordon with his martial ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... with a big hand that held a short smouldering pipe. Donkin bent over the cask, drank out of the tin, splashing the water, turned round and noticed the nigger looking at him over the shoulder with calm loftiness. He moved ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... an aspiration of which the loftiness is in no way affected by the lowliness of the means employed to ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... remote from indifference or dejection. He appeared, indeed, to view in its proper light the danger of the position in which he stood, but he viewed it with the calm, unshrinking energy of a brave man who is always prepared for the worst. Indeed, there might be observed upon his broad, open brow a loftiness of bearing such as is not unfrequently produced by a consciousness of innocence, and the natural elevation of mind which results from a sense of danger; to which we may add that inward scorn which is ever felt for baseness, by those who are degraded to the necessity of defending themselves ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... that all men were not fitted for the work. It needed a beefy person with fat legs and a large amount of inexplicable dignity, a regular God-knows-why loftiness. Truth, in those days, real talent was usually engaged in some form of rascality, barring the making of books and sermons. When one remembers the impenetrable dulness of the great mass of the people, the ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... as our capacities widen, more abstract and sublime. On one great point the mind of Epicurus was at peace. He neither sought nor expected, here or hereafter, any personal profit from his relation to the gods. And it is assuredly a fact, that loftiness and serenity of thought may be promoted by conceptions which involve no idea of profit of this kind. 'Did I not believe,' said a great man. [Footnote: Carlyle.] to me once, 'that an Intelligence is at the heart of things, my life on earth would be intolerable.' The utterer of these words ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... her family, in her court, in her kingdom, she remained equally mistress: the force of the tender passions was great over her, but the force of her mind was still superior; and the combat which her victory visibly cost her, serves only to display the firmness of her resolution, and the loftiness ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... him, and was destined to shine forth brightly from his toils and dangers. As Caesar did not know this, hoping that many great additional successes would fall to his own lot he acted in no moderate fashion, but was filled with loftiness as if immortal. [-42-] Though it was no foreign nation he had conquered, but a great mass of citizens that he had destroyed, he not only personally directed the triumph, incidentally regaling the entire populace again, as if in honor of some common blessing, but also allowed Quintus Fabius ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... broken-hearted; he has his sores, his running sores, his stinking sores; wherefore he is pained, and therefore covets to be handled tenderly. Thus God has broken the pride of his spirit, and humbled the loftiness of man. And his ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... here comes in, and sustains the fallible conjectures of our unassisted reason. The Holy Scriptures speak of us as fallen creatures: in almost every page we shall find something that is calculated to abate the loftiness and silence the pretensions of man. "The imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth." "What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous[5]." "How much ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... induced him occasionally to exercise the functions of the Christian ministry. Hence he sought and received ordination according to the usages of the Congregational churches, and in that relation stood in his lot. With what earnestness and pureness of motive, with what loftiness of purpose and fidelity in his high calling, and acceptance to those who heard him, I need not try to express. But I may say that it was not for want of solicitation that he did not exchange his professorship for ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn; The first in loftiness of thought surpassed, The next in majesty, in both the last. The force of nature could no further go; To make a third she ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... between a rich farmer and a poor gentleman, would go into the lodging-house business." I couldn't help agreeing with Jone, and I didn't like it a bit. The gentleman hadn't said anything or done anything that was out of the way, but there was a benignant loftiness about him which grated on the ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... patiently bowed to toil and weariness. Men living in self-indulgence have shaken off their sloth, and roused the old slumbering fearlessness of their race. Men, living for selfish ends, have been penetrated by the light of a great purpose, and have risen to the loftiness of human duty. Men, who shrank from pain as the sorest evil, have voluntarily accepted pain, and borne it with a fortitude we once believed lost from among mankind; and, over all, the flaming light of a worthy cause that men might worthily live for and worthily die for, has ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low; and the Lord alone shall be exalted ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... "Well, my old gentleman, what do you think of these things?" To their amazement the "old gentleman" replied for an hour in an eloquent and convincing defense of the Christian religion, in which he answered in order every objection the young men had uttered. So impressive was the simplicity and loftiness of his discourse that the erstwhile critics were ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... leading reformers say is that it upsets the budding intellect of the rising generation to present life to it as life is not. As a general rule I'm not much taken up with eminent reformers. They're a class of citizens I don't admire, though I admit they have their uses in supplying loftiness of view and generally keeping up the more serious kinds of charm practised by the female sex. But in the matter of the effect of movies on the young mind those reformers may be right. It seems to me you've gathered in some foolish notions about life, ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... person of evident integrity and loftiness of character rose into notice in a particular country and community eighteen centuries ago, who made these communications about himself—that he had existed before his natural birth, from all eternity, and before the world was, in a state ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... by vigil. The devil, seeing himself vanquished thus, took the shape of a young and lovely woman and imitated the most lascivious actions in order to beguile him, but Antony raising his thoughts towards heaven and considering the loftiness and excellence of the soul which is given to us, extinguished these burning coals by which the devil hoped to inflame his heart through this deception, and drove away the ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... sure specific which he follows always in a monotonous bondage. This can only happen when he is capable of the highest method. The teacher has arrived at the highest point of ability in teaching when he can make use of all means, from the loftiness of solemn seriousness, through smooth statement, to the play of jest—yes, even to the incentive of irony, and ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz |
