"To the highest degree" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to be imitated; and as an evident Mark of Esteem, we must publicly own, that if they were but a little more Friends to the Pathetick and the Expressive, and a little less to the Divisions, they might boast of having brought the Art to the highest Degree of Perfection. ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... of this tendency to modification are found in Pueblo art. Much of the ornament applied to pottery is derived from the sister art, basketry. In the latter art the forms of decorative figures are geometric and symmetrical to the highest degree, as I have frequently pointed out. The rays of a radiating ornament, worked with the texture of a shallow basket, spring from the center and take uniform directions toward the margin, as shown in Fig. 485. But when a similar idea derived from basketry (as it could ...
— Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. • William Henry Holmes
... every respect disadvantageous to England. It was disapproved and denounced throughout England and Europe, as unnatural and inhuman; it was disapproved by the English commanders and even Loyalists in America, and inflamed the colonists to the highest degree. Wherever the Indians were employed, they were a source of weakness to the English army, while their ravages and cruelties disgusted the Loyalists and brought disgrace upon the English arms and cause. Sir Guy Carleton forbade their crossing from Canada into the colonies, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... pretended ignorance. One day my curiosity induced me to go to the Palace of Tears, to observe how my consort employed herself, and from a place where she could not see me, I heard her thus address the wounded ruffian: 'I am afflicted to the highest degree to behold you in this condition,' she cried, 'I am as sensible as yourself of the tormenting pain you endure; but, dear soul, I am continually speaking to you, and you do not answer me: how long will you remain silent? Speak only ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... make his passage with but a dozen with him; "For," says he, "the enemy cannot move after me so fast with a great body, and with a small one we shall be enough to deal with them;" and though he is a man naturally martiall to the highest degree, yet a man that never in his life talks one word of himself or service of his owne, but only that he saw such or such a thing, and lays it down for a maxime that a Hector can have no courage. He told me also, as a great instance of some men, that the Prince ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... in the arena, and let loose a ferocious lion upon them. But the lion, to the astonishment of all, held down his head before them, as if in reverence. On which the ungrateful emperor ordered a brazen ox to be fabricated, and heated to the highest degree. In this his victims were cast alive; but with prayer and supplication they commended themselves to the mercy of God, and three days after, being taken out of the furnace in the presence of the emperor, it appeared as if they had died tranquilly ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... much used in ornamenting boxes and pen-and-ink cases, is turned out in large quantities at Shiraz. It is pretty and effective, though some of the illustrations on the backs of mirrors, etc., are hardly fit for a drawing-room table. Caligraphy, or the art of writing, is also carried by the Shirazis to the highest degree of perfection, and they are said to be the best penmen in the East. To write really well is considered as great an accomplishment in Persia as to be a successful musician, painter, or sculptor in Europe; and a famous writer of the last century, living ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... number of days which he devotes to his loom, the number of his children, the assistance which he receives from them, and the number and quality of the pieces which he can turn out in a month or year; so that, let him exert himself as he will, his industry will always be taxed to the highest degree.' This mode always leads to such details that the government servants cannot enter into it, and the assessment of the tax is, in consequence, left a great deal too much to the Curnums of the villages. No weaver can possibly know what he is to pay to the Cirkar, till the demand come ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... the regular habitues was the Marquis de N., a charming man, fairly broad-minded (given the atmosphere he lived in) and sceptical to the highest degree. He was a great friend of Marshal MacMahon, and had been prefet at Pau, where he had a great position. He was very dictatorial, very outspoken, but was a great favourite, particularly with the English colony, which is large there in the hunting-season. He had accepted ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... to regard religion as a disease of the human mind, cherish also the habitual conviction that it is an evil more easily borne, even though not to be cured, so long as it is only insulated individuals here and there who are infected with it; but that the common danger is raised to the highest degree, and everything put at stake, as soon as a too close connection is permitted between many patients of this character. In the former case it is possible by a judicious treatment, as it were by an antiphlegistic regimen, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Bayard of the Revolution," fresh from the colleges and courts of Europe, a man so handsome that, we are told, people experienced a certain shock when he entered the room, courtly, accomplished to the highest degree, of flawless character, with a mind as noble and elevated as it was intellectual, and burning with the most elevated patriotism,—he took Hamilton by storm, capturing judgement as well as heart, and loving him ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... number of lives that have been lived since Adam down to this present day, there has been only one that we can take as a model. This one is the life of Jesus. He says, "I am the life." To live this life of ours well, to live it to the highest degree of perfection, we must fashion it according to the glorious life of Christ. The life of Jesus is the model life for every other human life. He invites us, yea, commands us, to follow him, to step in his steps, ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... consequent loss of sleep. Add to this condition that of worry, which often accompanies it from the fact of failure in lessons, and a naturally good and well-organized nervous system is sure to fail. Worry, from whatever cause, should be avoided as one would avoid poison, if we would bring ourselves to the highest degree of efficiency. Not only does worry temporarily unfit the mind for its best work, but its evil results are permanent, since the mind is left with a poorly developed or undone nervous system through which to work, even after ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... Shakespeare, or Kepler, or if you turn to the region of meditative thought, to such lives as our own George Eliot—yes, there is that in the mere exercise of intellect which is intoxicating, which is consoling even to the highest degree. But intellect, after all, finds its frontier. I may say of it what I have said of the esthetic sentiment, what I have said of the active sentiment in man: it attracts, it delights—what is more, I think it even consoles; ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... great heavenly circumstances. Summon the consecrated of the highest degree of your circle to go to-night to the palace of Prince Frederick William at Potsdam, and under the very eyes of the old freethinking king we will open to the crown prince the doors of the spiritual world, and consecrate him to the highest degree. But first the Invisibles shall speak with him, and announce the heavenly region of the unapproachable. Finish the preparations, my brothers—fulfil exactly and punctually my orders, and then come to the hotel to receive ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... that they will be on the way to the highest degree of progress when they are capable of "verifying" the theses of the professor—nay, more, of giving a further impetus to science, and inscribing their own names among those quoted as having contributed to its wealth or having ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... go shopping every time her school friends went. The big Chicago stores appealed to her just as much as to any country girl who ever fell under their charm. In the Windy City the department stores—that mammoth of modern commerce—is developed to the highest degree. ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... in. I was carried on board the schooner; but the rest of the men were left on board the brig to work her, so that I hope that their lives may have been preserved. She was a privateer out of Saint Malo. Your determined attempt to escape excited their anger to the highest degree; and at the very moment that the vessel was struck by lightning, from the effects of which she foundered, they were swearing vengeance against you, wherever you might be. Their terrific shrieks and cries, as one after the other they were ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... a conviction that my presence would promote tranquillity and good order, and under the assurance that, if I did quit the place, confusion and bloodshed would, in all probability, be the inevitable consequence. The manner in which those in authority had treated them, had irritated to the highest degree the people in and near Manchester, and they had also been excited to acts of desperation and violence, by some of those who professed to be their leaders. As for Johnson, the brush-maker, he was a composition of vanity, emptiness, and conceit, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... yet another style of crossing which when practicable, may, it is believed, be made a means to the highest degree of improvement attainable, and especially in the breeding of horses. The word "breed" is often used with varying signification. In order to be understood, let me premise that I use it here simply to designate a class ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... of the Grail story, represented by our Bleheris form, relates the visit of a wandering knight to one of these hidden temples; his successful passing of the test into the lower grade of Life initiation, his failure to attain to the highest degree. It matters little whether it were the record of an actual, or of a possible, experience; the casting into romantic form of an event which the story-teller knew to have happened, had, perchance, actually witnessed; or the objective recital of what he knew ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... when his Affection towards it was increas'd to the highest degree, both upon the account of its Beneficial Effects, and its Extraordinary Power; he began to think that the Substance which was departed from the Heart of his Mother the Roe, was, if not the very same with it, yet at least of a Nature very much like it. He was ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... yards nearer to them than where I was, which, by taking a small circle round, I might come at undiscovered, & then I should be within half a shot of these devourers. And this consideration alone, to be more perfectly revenged upon them, made me withhold my passion, though I was enraged to the highest degree imaginable; when going back about twenty paces I got behind some bushes, which held all the way till I came to the other tree; and then I ascended to a little rising ground, not above eighteen yards distance, and there I had a full view of these ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... bounds—intra terminos parochii mei, within the two ends of my parish: verbum sat—which is, I'm sure you're a sensible and discreet young man. Your father, Dionysius, is a parishioner whom I regard and esteem to the highest degree of comparison, and you will be pleased to report my eulogium to himself and to his dacent family—and proud may they be of having so brilliant a youth among them as ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... bring the sexes together, and so to maintain the species, have been evolved in the males into means for exciting the female. And we can hardly doubt, that the females are most readily enticed to yield to the butterfly that sends out the strongest fragrance,—that is to say, that excites them to the highest degree. It is a pity that our organs of smell are not fine enough to examine the fragrance of male Lepidoptera in general, and to compare it with other perfumes which attract these insects. (See Poulton, "Essays on Evolution", 1908, pages 316, 317.) As far as we can perceive them they resemble ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... ammunition was inferior to that taken by the Springfield. The War Department decided to attempt a change in the bore of the Enfield so that it would use Springfield cartridges, and to make other minor simplifications and improvements. The experiment proved successful to the highest degree. The modified Enfields were reported to be only slightly inferior to the Springfields and by the end of December, 1917, five thousand a day were being turned out. Altogether American manufactories produced during the war ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... well study to imitate. In lightness, rapidity, freedom and ease of motion, it has not been, and cannot be, surpassed. Its draft, even when bearing a considerable burden, was so slight, that it would glide over the shallowest bars. It was strong, durable, and easily kept in repair. Although dangerous to the highest degree under an inexperienced and unskilful hand, no vessel has ever been safer when managed by persons trained to its use. The cool and quick-sighted Indian could guide it, with his exquisitely moulded paddle, in perfect security, through whirling rapids and over heavy seas, around headlands ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... laid up my boat, I could not possibly be on shore any where thereabouts: secondly, when I came to measure the mark with my own foot, I found my foot not so large by a great deal. Both these things filled my head with new imaginations, and gave me the vapours again to the highest degree, so that I shook with cold like one in an ague; and I went home again, filled with the belief that some man or men had been on shore there; or, in short, that the island was inhabited, and I might be surprised before I was aware; and what course to take for my security ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... receive this whole Treatment with the utmost Complacency; An Embarrassment of this sort, finely described, would have yielded the greatest Pleasure to the Reader, and carried the Raillery upon Horace, without hurting or degrading him, to the highest Degree of Poignancy; And from hence may be conceiv'd, what delightful Entertainments are capable of being drawn from ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... in hers. But to return, in order that I might have for the important purposes, the strongest and most springy hair, I procured, at a vast expense, the tails of English stallions, which when twisted, baked and then untwisted and properly prepared, is elastic to the highest degree. ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... and sharp, but perfectly calm, and I felt myself awakened to the highest degree, almost as if my senses were volatilised by ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... required that all the proprietors of land should swear fealty to him, every one who refused or delayed giving this testimony of submission, was outlawed and imprisoned, and punished without mercy; and the bravest and most generous spirits of the nation were thus exasperated to the highest degree against the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... contradict. To read them, after even the finest stories of de Maupassant or Murray Gilchrist, is like having a bath after a ball. Their effect is extraordinarily one of ingenuousness. Of course they are not in the least ingenuous, as a fact, but self-conscious and elaborate to the highest degree. The progress of every art is an apparent progress from conventionality to realism. The basis of convention remains, but as the art develops it finds more and more subtle methods fitting life to the convention or the convention to life—whichever you please. Tchehkoff's tales mark a definite new ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... conditions more in favour of acetylene. They are not, however, constant, since the so-called "impurities," which on combustion cause vitiation of the air, vary greatly in amount according to the extent to which the gases have been purified. London coal-gas, which was formerly purified to the highest degree practically attainable, used to contain on the average only 10 to 12 grains of sulphur per 100 cubic feet, and virtually no other impurity. But now coal-gas, in London and most provincial towns, ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... women of the reign of Louis XIII.—Mmes. de Hautefort, de Sable, de Longueville, de Chevreuse, etc.—were exceedingly talented talkers, they were poor writers: but in Mme. de Sevigne, Mme. de La Fayette, and Mlle. de Scudery both arts were developed to the highest degree. ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... them as envoys or join them as allies, and among the splendid gems which adorned their persons they recognized emeralds and turquoises of such rare perfection and beauty that their cupidity was excited to the highest degree. During the after years of conquest and occupation the avaricious spoilers sought in vain for the parent ledge where these precious stones were found. Recent times have, however, revealed the home of the Mexican turquoise, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... the most tempestuous gayety; nothing indeed remains absolutely superficial, though nothing is presented without an artificial polish. In the discussions constantly occurring in this country, where conversation is an art cultivated to the highest degree, and occupying much time, there are always those present, who, whether the topic discussed be grave or gay, can pass in a moment from smiles to tears, from joy to sorrow, leaving the keenest observer in doubt which ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... by a member of one race against a member of another race is avenged in such fashion that it seems as if not the individual criminal, but the whole race, is attacked, the result is to exasperate to the highest degree race feeling. There is but one safe rule in dealing with black men as with white men; it is the same rule that must be applied in dealing with rich men and poor men; that is, to treat each man, whatever his color, his creed, or his social position, with even-handed justice ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... but, on the other hand, these were all good troops and mostly veterans. Though the benefits of Bath waters had been more than neutralized by nearly three months of buffeting on the element he so loathed, Wolfe spared himself no effort. He was not only a fighting, but to the highest degree an organizing, general. Every sickly and unlikely man, small as was his force, was weeded out. Every commissariat detail down to the last gaiter-button was carefully scrutinized. Seldom had England sent out a body of men so perfect in discipline, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... that so important a railway center as Rheims should not have been a strongly fortified place. It had been so once, though the fortifications were old-fashioned. But, instead of bringing these points of natural defense up to the highest degree of modern efficiency, the French had dismantled them entirely, so as to make Rheims with its glorious cathedral an open town, safe from bombardment. It was, according to the rules of war, safe from bombardment, but only in the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... of contentment. Equally serene, to all outward appearances, was her daughter, with her head swathed in veiling against the complexion-destroying wind as she rocked to and fro while bringing her already perfect nails to the highest degree of polish with a chamois-skin buffer. Hugh Disston sat on the top step cleaning and oiling his shotgun with the loving care of the man who is ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... machines. Chapelain tells us that he took particular care so to arrange his poem that "everything which happens in it by divine favour might be believed to have taken place through human agency carried to the highest degree to which nature is capable of ascending." Herein we discern the dawn of the ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... so, in the Vulgar Acceptation of the Word; that is, he shall have no Religion or Conscience; fear neither God nor Devil, and not believe either a Providence in this World, or any Thing that is said of another: But he must be a great Genius, daring to the highest Degree, indefatigable, supple to his Interest, and ready as well as capable to act any Part, and put on any Disguise, that shall be required to serve or promote it. Every brisk, forward Man, who pretends to an extraordinary Zeal for his Party, and the Cause he is engaged in, and who shews ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... very beginning of my introduction to Maya studies the enormous burdens placed on research therein at every turn, bore upon me as upon every other student. The subject and its possibilities stimulate enthusiasm to the highest degree; the rewards of success are greater than those of any like problem today; and yet, fifty years since the present Codex was discovered, and thirty years since Dr. Foerstemann's unsurpassable edition of the Dresden Codex, ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... heard from a very good source, all the details of the affair, and I hasten to transmit them to you; they are, I think, of a nature to interest you to the highest degree. ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... tennis grounds was called 'Jo's Court', and here the little lady ruled like a queen; for she was fond of the game, and being bent on developing her small self to the highest degree of perfection, she was to be found at every leisure moment with some victim hard at it. On a certain pleasant Saturday afternoon she had been playing with Bess and beating her; for, though more graceful, the Princess was less active than ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... did work under Douglas, then on his second visit, public and successful, to gain Russia to the French alliance; for, dismissed in October 1755, Douglas came back and publicly represented France at the Russian Court in July 1756. This was, to the highest degree of probability, d'Eon's first entrance into diplomacy, and he triumphed in his mission. He certainly made the acquaintance of the Princess Dashkoff, and she, as certainly, in 1769-1771, when on a visit to England, gave out that ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang |
